Re. NHS worker deaths, the official figure is clearly low. There are newspaper reports of at least 56 deaths amongst healthcare workers I understand part of the discrepancy is that the official figures don’t include agency staff or care home workers or ancillary staff. Cynically, there doesn’t seem to be an appetite to count the numbers properly
You would expect fewer than 200 deaths because of the age profile of NHS workers – there are lots of youngsters doing the cleaning and heavy lifting. By definition none of them are retirees.
The one that startles me is the Transport for London figures. Apparently Transport for London has lost 20 bus drivers and 6 other staff, from amongst 30,000 staff. I suppose they might have been exposed early on in the outbreak before patients started coming to hospitals. Even so, I find it a shocking figure.
Italy has lost 131 doctors to the outbreak, which is more than would have been expected by chance
Silvaire wrote:
Mid-century Modern is in renewed vogue for furniture and architecture, maybe mid-century automobile based urban planning will now follow Double decked highways anyone, to relieve traffic congestion?
The solution to city transport is most definitely not more cars. Excessive use of cars blight our cities, making them unlivable, polluted, dangerous and very noisy.
The solution for the city is the bicycle. You can park 10 bicycles in the space taken to park a single car. Instead of people getting fat and unhealthy in their cars, they are getting fitter and healthier and saving money. Cities get quieter and more pleasant places to be, without huge swathes of land taken up (to quote Prince Charles) “monstrous carbuncles” such as multi-storey car parks and double deck highways. Spaces that would otherwise be covered in concrete and parked cars can become open spaces, or residential property, or something a damn sight more useful and better looking than a car park.
We are killing ourselves with our own cars.
Before you think I’m some sort of commie anti-motorist, I own one car, four motorcycles and an aeroplane. I love driving my car, and riding my motorcycles even more, but there’s a time and a place where cars simply are not a good solution. For example, the commute to work (in normal times) is not a good solution for a car, so I don’t – I use my bicycle (even though I live in a rural area). It means there’s an extra parking space available at work for someone who doesn’t have an option but to use their car.
That’s true but first you have to do something else: get people to accept lower salaries, and in general less interesting jobs, by working locally.
It’s a tough challenge.
The corona virus might help it a bit, but I am not hopeful.
alioth wrote:
, making them unlivable, polluted, dangerous and very noisy.
That’s how I feel about cities, and it’s nothing to do with the cars :)
Bikes probably do work far more effectively in cities, although you don’t get the benefit of cabin filters and the isolation from wheezing mamils (middle aged man in lycra)
Off_Field wrote:
Bikes probably do work far more effectively in cities, although you don’t get the benefit of cabin filters and the isolation from wheezing mamils (middle aged man in lycra)
It’s the cars that mean you need the cabin filters in cars. With enough cars done, they aren’t needed.
MAMILs don’t wheeze – that’s the point – they are fit, and are much less likely to be “wheezing” because they have healthy cardiovascular systems.
I personally just wear normal clothes on a bike (I believe utility cycling requires only one special piece of equipment: a bicycle), I’m closer to 50 than 40, and I can quite happily do the 40km round trip to work and back without even a trace of wheezing – and my route is far from level terrain, and I do this in nearly all weather. In fact it leaves me feeling energised. If I spend too much time without cycle commuting (I’m doing a fake commute at the moment, given I’m working from home) then I get a low-level feeling of constant malaise, which I believe most of the unfit population has – but are so used to it they don’t even notice it any more (at least until the first heart attack). If I can do it, then most other people with no health complications can do it.
I used to cycle a lot and miss it for the reasons you state. But I started to doubt whether it was something that everybody could do. I never thought of myself as being sporty but later learned that whilst I couldn’t run as fast as other people and wasn’t as strong, I could keep pedalling for much longer than people I had previously considered more sporty than I was. I think battery packs will make it more accessible.
I am just finishing one of these and looking forward to starting again.
kwlf wrote:
I am just finishing one of these and looking forward to starting again.
What exactly is it? and what is front and what is back? Have you made it?
… I wonder what do the ‘there are no excess deaths’ Swiss doctor and his acolytes say now? …
However, here is the flip-side of the current measures – for the US
[and the dotted line is what matters – the red is a moving average not meaningful at this point]
It’s a velomobile called an Alleweder A4. The black bit in the cockpit is a headrest. I have made it but not painted it. Waiting for the right weather.
