Larian Studios Forums General Chat RPG Chat Coronavirus

So how are you lot dealing with the coronavirus I am just sticking to playing video games or just talking in forms like this my life has not really changed do to the coronavirus do to the fact that 90% of the time I stay in do to being disabled

I've spent most of the day (bearing in mind I got up at 2:30am) trying to sort out some online grocery orders. Needless to say it was a fruitless endeavour. I would say "literally", but as I tend to avoid fruit and veg at the best of times that's not really earth-shattering news! Other than that I never go out anyway, so I'm just cursing the sun reflecting off my screen as I try to play Andromeda and making my motion-sickness even worse. Arse. etc.

So much the same by the sound of it.

On the plus side, now that the roads are pretty much empty I'm much less stressed about driving to where I need to be. But to negate that positive, there are still speed cameras. argh.

Probably be a profitable business for a while to come up with speed camera jammers.

Cool keep safe

It hasn't really affected me that much other then the panic buying having deleted some items I needed (dog food, paper towels, etc) at the stores. In the very small city nearby (I think about 3000 people), most every business is essential thus open with some new precautions. Tomorrow I'll be going to the not as small city (Spokane, WA) to see if I can scrounge up some dog food so, that might prove interesting. My nearest neighbor is a mile away (nearly 2 miles by car) and I tend to not make trips to town anyway unless there are items I badly need (diesel for the electricity, bottled water (my well water is mineral rich so tastes awful)) so it's not much of a change.

You might be better off getting your dog food online that's what I had to do with my pug

Ordering stuff online has become all but impossible. Quite worrying really. I don't think the major retailers have adapted to the situation very well at all and yet again I'm wondering why these "professional CEOs" are paid so much as things always seem to go wrong under their stewardship. Contrast that with the "we need a temporary 4,000 bed hospital and quarter of a million volunteers": a day or two later, it's done. Imagine if it was left to the CEOs? We'd have a wait of several years by which time they'd provide three beds at a charge that would bankrupt the country. Grr.

It has gotten harder to buy stuff online but I always buy my dog food online do to not being able to buy it in pet shops I agree with you that leaving it up to the big business companies would be a very bad idea the main problem we are having in the UK is people are thinking it's a bank holiday and not do what there have been told to do stay in unless you really have to go out like doing your food shopping the main thing that really is disgusting me is how some business are trying to make money out of the pandemic like Sports direct trying to keep it's doors who in there right mind would want to by sports gear in a pandemic? what there are doing is pure greed and putting the workers at risk

The owner of that company has previously caused significant controversy about his treatment of workers. It's probably safer to not go into too much detail but e.g. insisting that they submit to intrusive searches carried out in their own time when they leave work didn't win him any popularity contests. And a huge problem we're now seeing with business is this just-in-time logistics fad that was one of the Gordon Gecko-era management idiocies which I knew at the time (I learnt about it as part of my IT diploma) was way too fragile and a problem waiting to happen. And now it has happened. The problem isn't panic-buying but a system that is so precarious that it took almost nothing to topple it over.

Added to that the austerity programme inflicted on the country by the UK's worst ever comedy double-act, Porky & Cokey. It snuffed out the slight recovery in the economy it was supposed to save and made the problem much worse than it already was, and pretty much every area of support and infrastructure was trashed and left in a dysfunctional condition even without an additional crisis to test it.

If anything good comes out of this, I hope it's the end of that particular era. 40 years was too long and I want to see my country rebuilt.

Sadly I think this coronavirus will be lasting for about a year well in the UK anyway do to what the UK government have done and what there have not done I mean who lets in people from coronavirus zones into another county without testing them to see if there have the coronavirus? but on another note do you lot need help on what masks to buy I can help you lot out on that here is me wearing my mask it might be a bit on the extreme side but I know this coronavirus is going to get a lot worse before it gets better also me and my family members are high risk to the coronavirus so I can not afford to take any risks my mask is the mp-5 polish gas mask I got it on ebay if you lot do buy masks make sure it is not a medical mask there only stop you from giving it to other people there do not stop you from getting it you need to go for masks that are p2 or p3 respirator masks I hope this helps you lot out

I'm quite happy staying indoors, so no need for a mask! That is a bit... large, and I'm somewhat reminded of the one I had in the army: fun and games going for a long "double march" (i.e. jog) on a randomly hot October day in a respirator and "noddy suit", i.e. a nuclear-biological-chemical protection suit you wear over your regular camo (i.e. heavy) gear. That was unpleasant.

Apart from the risk of frightening small children, you'd need to check it would filter out the relevant particles or vapour: not all masks filter all things. And if it's an older one (which it doesn't seem to be) or of unknown provenance that it doesn't use asbestos as a filter medium: very good at filtering stuff but not so good for other reasons.

Well the mask is a modern gas mask but on the filters I am planning getting myself a new filter on monday it's the s10 and nato gas mask filter that will do the job but on the good side of wearing this mask is it is keeping away people who would try to come up to me and my pug so it is keeping me safe in more ways than one lol but on the bad news I have just found out my cousin and my aunt have got the coronavirus over facebook both of them are high risk my aunt is over 60 years old but my cousin is pregnant and has a 2 year old girl I hope there can come out fine

Isolation and distancing will be much more effective than a respirator, which will just make you sweaty and may even provide an infection vector if you don't have the means to keep it absolutely clean.

Even among high-risk people, the actual risk of serious unpleasantness is fairly low so hopefully they'll be okay. The reason they're making such a big deal of it isn't the individual risk, where it's unlikely to become very serious, but that a small risk when multiplied by the entire population (and it is very infectious indeed, much more so than common 'flu: though 1.3 vs. 2 new infections per person doesn't sound much, exponentially it makes a gigantic difference, e.g. assuming both have a five day cycle, over two months assuming a cycle time of 5 days i.e. 12 infection cycles, 1.3¹² would mean 23 new infections, whereas 2¹² would indicate 4,096 new infections. That's a lot of assumptions and not to be taken absolutely literally but it demonstrates the problem) means very quickly overwhelmed critical care units which would make the entire health service cease to function. And other health problems haven't gone on holiday for the duration.

Er, so anyway, that is why it's such a massive big deal at the same time as personal risk is very low and hopefully that will be the case with your relatives.

I understand that children are relatively resistant to the disease. I mean we were all little plague-carriers once and were virtually unkillable!

Well I have been keeping my distance from people and only go out to take my dog for a walk so I only have my gas mask on 20 minutes a day the only other times I have used it is when I need to do my shopping the main worry is for my aunt do to her age and health issues but I am cleaning my mask with a wipe every time I use my gas mask the main problem is in the UK is people are thinking it's a bank holiday this is a group of people today in my town not doing what there have been told lucky the cops have fined them but still there should know better it's people like this that makes my blood boil I mean most of the people had the coronavirus before the lockdown but people like this are making it X10 hander on the NHS who don't have the right gear to deal with the coronavirus in the first place

I still wouldn't bother, it's too much effort and not really necessary, though I do understand the concern even though in my case it's filtered through the lens of "can I be bothered?"

But yeah, the other people. I'm generally not a stickler for the rules (yeah I know, not a great line for a mod) and one of my finest moments was a meeting where I was told off for being "unnecessarily flippant" in front of my co-workers who sniggered a lot, but in this case it's actually important and it's not about them, it's that they couldn't give a monkey's about passing it on to other people. Lucky if they have the coppers dealing with them since both the army and the now otherwise unoccupied pub bouncers are being pressed into service to enforce civil behaviour and are likely to be significantly less delicate about it.

Agreed I do think that the only way people will do what there are told to do by the UK government is by having the army on the streets helping out the cops just saying to people not to go out will not stop some people it will go the same way as speed cameras there will still go out even when there have to pay the £60 pounds fine I really don't like the idea of army people on the streets but if this is the only to stop stupid people from going out than so be it

I am also not a stickler for the rules so don't worry about that but there are people who have no common sense I mean I like to do my own things in life but people like in the pic are just putting others at risk

Well, that's classic "this is why we can't have nice things": there are some people who have to be made to comply as they won't otherwise do so voluntarily. It's always a fine balance because excessive application of the rules infantilises a lot of people and generally pisses them off, and it pisses me off when I see someone pedantically going on about "but it's the rules, it's the ruuuuuules" as if that's all that matters. But sometimes they're important and have to be followed.

Personally I don't have a problem with seeing soldiers on the street and in some regards prefer them to the police as they're more independent-thinkers. They're still selected to a high standard and the "problem" ones weeded out during selection and basic-training. That's not to say you don't get the odd one but overall it's not as if they're just thugs. If anything, the UK is a bit of an oddity in the way it polices, a lot of countries have a similar arrangement to France where the everyday policing is done by the military police, the gendarmes being technically soldiers IIRC (and similarly armed) and the "civil police" being analogous to our CID.

Speed cameras I have a special hatred of because speeding is only a very small part of dangerous driving and often not even a factor, and IME the standard of driving has reduced significantly since most traffic policing is now automated: it makes it much less likely that people get pulled over for actually dangerous driving e.g. tailgating, failing to observe give-way signs etc, drunk driving and generally being arseholes. They had an experiment locally where they turned off the cameras for a short period of time and put patrol cars back on the streets; it made such a difference even just audibly in that the very obvious road-racing that's long been a problem stopped. But being idiots they went back to speed cameras and the problems returned.

Boy, not here in the USA. Every town/city have their own police force. In most of the country, counties have a sheriff's department. In the east coast (and maybe the Pacific coast too - I tend to avoid that area), counties are divided into townships that have their own police forces. The state government has state militias (national guard) and state police. Federal government has several police forces all competing with each other (FBI, Federal Marshals, etc). Dividing power and keeping it close to the people are a real thing here. It does help in this crisis - what works in the cities could be more dangerous then the pandemic in rural areas. Size is one issue, I think. Germany can have a federal police force because it is so small (Germany is about the same size physically as the state of Oregon albeit with a heck of a lot more people jammed in). I think flexibility and local control can be good with a lot of open space between towns; not very good in a city, though.