Covid: the shape of things to come

Kitchen Knife Forums

Help Support Kitchen Knife Forums:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Status
Not open for further replies.
Jeeze yall, this thing has to run through the population. From what I have read, survival rate is 98% plus. Among young folks 99.+%. What is the freakin big deal. This is not a life threatening illness, unless you have pre conditions.
Quit being scared and live your lives. I am 69.5 years old, makes me at risk I guess, but I refuse to live my life in fear. Lets face it head on, not like a bunch of pansies.

yourstatement is 100% incorrect. I personally know 2 people who were avid bike riders, hikers and kept in really great shape overall. They were both in there mid fifties, not overweight and ate healthy. They were also anti vaccines and I’ll let you guess their other affiliations. They were a married couple and both caught Covid at the same time. They also both died within weeks of contracting the virus. I know several people who have gotten Covid and have either gotten extremely ill or have almost died from it. Some were out of shape and over weight and some were just normal people without any real issues. The truth is you just don’t know how this virus is going to effect you or the people who you care about. It’s completely irresponsible to assume that if you’re young and healthy it won’t effect you. And several of the people I know who got the virus and didn’t end up in the hospital, still have all kinds of long term issues because of it. Lack of smell and taste, joint pain, heart issues and headaches that they never had before. I personally don’t want to get the virus even though I’m triple vaccinated and in pretty good shape. Some day science will figure out why certain healthy people are fine with getting Covid and other healthy people die from it. Until then the smart thing to do is be safe and hope you’re one of the lucky ones. Your cavalier attitude is going to get you or someone else extremely ill or killed.
 
yourstatement is 100% incorrect. I personally know 2 people who were avid bike riders, hikers and kept in really great shape overall. They were both in there mid fifties, not overweight and ate healthy. They were also anti vaccines and I’ll let you guess their other affiliations. They were a married couple and both caught Covid at the same time. They also both died within weeks of contracting the virus. I know several people who have gotten Covid and have either gotten extremely ill or have almost died from it. Some were out of shape and over weight and some were just normal people without any real issues. The truth is you just don’t know how this virus is going to effect you or the people who you care about. It’s completely irresponsible to assume that if you’re young and healthy it won’t effect you. And several of the people I know who got the virus and didn’t end up in the hospital, still have all kinds of long term issues because of it. Lack of smell and taste, joint pain, heart issues and headaches that they never had before. I personally don’t want to get the virus even though I’m triple vaccinated and in pretty good shape. Some day science will figure out why certain healthy people are fine with getting Covid and other healthy people die from it. Until then the smart thing to do is be safe and hope you’re one of the lucky ones. Your cavalier attitude is going to get you or someone else extremely ill or killed.
Yes this may be true but can’t that be said for any health problem, the active runner that drops dead from a hart attack, the non smoker that gets lung cancer, the healthy active person who dies from the common cold or flu. I am not a anti-vaccination person but I am old enough to be able to understand and know that there is a middle ground and that the absolute truth to all that you may think you know, read or heard lies somewhere in the middle of all the B.S.
 
@daveb,

I am sorry for all the admin. I am sure compiling all those lists is a thankless task.

And yes, I'm dusting off resume.

Forgive me... I am not trying to be obtuse. I don't understand the sequence of events here? Are you suggesting your company might lose a critical mass of employees due to the mandates... and might cease trading or simply dump your section?

If this is the case, I hope management have some transition strategy. I also sincerely hope you do not lose your job. That is always stressful and anxious making!
 
Not at all. They (my company) and the healthcare industry at large will lose a lot of employees due to the self imposed mandates with no viable plan to recruit replacements. A part of my job entails covering for employees that miss a shift for one reason or another. Currently that means I cover a shift a couple times a week. With the corp mandate I expect to cover many more shifts and frankly that's a younger mans game. I've been a cook. I don't mind being a cook. But at this stage of my life I'm a better manager than a cook.
 
A part of my job entails covering for employees that miss a shift for one reason or another. Currently that means I cover a shift a couple times a week. With the corp mandate I expect to cover many more shifts and frankly that's a younger mans game. I've been a cook. I don't mind being a cook. But at this stage of my life I'm a better manager than a cook.

As we say: "fair cop" (fair point, no disagreements).

If they are going to be short on staff, you may have more job security? Although I understand job security and enjoying the work are two entirely separate things!!

It sounds like you have a good history with the company. If you broadly enjoy the job are on good terms with the managers, I am sure they would be understanding and amenable to negotiating a maximum number of cover shifts per week?

If you get the sense they are desperate to retain staff and you are not enjoying the work anymore... you could try testing their limits and ask for a raise while you look for other work??
 
As we say: "fair cop" (fair point, no disagreements).

If they are going to be short on staff, you may have more job security? Although I understand job security and enjoying the work are two entirely separate things!!

It sounds like you have a good history with the company. If you broadly enjoy the job are on good terms with the managers, I am sure they would be understanding and amenable to negotiating a maximum number of cover shifts per week?

If you get the sense they are desperate to retain staff and you are not enjoying the work anymore... you could try testing their limits and ask for a raise while you look for other work??
There comes a point in any persons life where monetary compensation does not make up for the joy of living a life without such pressure and longer hours doesn’t make up for more compensation. I know from my career that quality of life became more important than more money and longer hours
 
Jeeze yall, this thing has to run through the population. From what I have read, survival rate is 98% plus. Among young folks 99.+%. What is the freakin big deal. This is not a life threatening illness, unless you have pre conditions.
Quit being scared and live your lives. I am 69.5 years old, makes me at risk I guess, but I refuse to live my life in fear. Lets face it head on, not like a bunch of pansies.

yourstatement is 100% incorrect. I personally know 2 people who were avid bike riders, hikers and kept in really great shape overall. They were both in there mid fifties, not overweight and ate healthy. They were also anti vaccines and I’ll let you guess their other affiliations. They were a married couple and both caught Covid at the same time. They also both died within weeks of contracting the virus. I know several people who have gotten Covid and have either gotten extremely ill or have almost died from it. Some were out of shape and over weight and some were just normal people without any real issues. The truth is you just don’t know how this virus is going to effect you or the people who you care about. It’s completely irresponsible to assume that if you’re young and healthy it won’t effect you. And several of the people I know who got the virus and didn’t end up in the hospital, still have all kinds of long term issues because of it. Lack of smell and taste, joint pain, heart issues and headaches that they never had before. I personally don’t want to get the virus even though I’m triple vaccinated and in pretty good shape. Some day science will figure out why certain healthy people are fine with getting Covid and other healthy people die from it. Until then the smart thing to do is be safe and hope you’re one of the lucky ones. Your cavalier attitude is going to get you or someone else extremely ill or killed.

One should also bear in mind that 1.8% (or whatever the actually fatality rate is) is still a lot of people. I guess the actual chance of dying is probably less than (confirmed deaths / confirmed cases) due to underreporting of cases, but it still adds up to a lot of people; and this doesn't even include the tons of people who get seriously ill. Also, just letting it run rampant is going to inflate those numbers, because a main point of these mitigation measures is to slow down the spread enough that hospitals aren't overwhelmed with patients, etc.... It's not like everything would just go back to normal if everyone ignored the virus. That said, the number of deaths you think warrants a given level of response is certainly a value judgement, so I can't really argue with that. (I do agree with greg that it can certainly be life threatening and life altering even without preconditions, though.)
 
when I first read that post I had to check if I was on the right page. I thought we finished litigating this line over a year ago.

anyway I have the same take as I had last year; if you genuinely believe that more folks should die than the absolute smallest number we can manage, then you should be willing to lead the way to the afterlife. in my opinion, you cannot ask others to put their lives on the line and not be willing to accept the worst of the consequences yourself, that would just be unfair.

for those unafraid and who appreciate when men were men, there's a ton of historical precedent so I dont think it's unreasonable to suggest.
1637639361150.png
 

Attachments

  • 1637639361150.png
    1637639361150.png
    99.8 KB · Views: 17
There comes a point in any persons life where monetary compensation does not make up for the joy of living a life without such pressure and longer hours doesn’t make up for more compensation.

100% agree! This is why my first suggestion would be to negotiate with management to try and limit the taxing parts of the job (covering kitchen shifts).

I know a few people who are at the end of their careers. At this point in their life they are definitely not working for the joy. They dont want long hours and pressure. They are working towards a comfortable retirement. A recurring theme is that job mobility in this age group is difficult. Younger employees are cheaper. Many were able to renegotiate hours worked or the nature of their roll.

While money is not everything... another way to look at it... if there is opportunity to negotiating income upwards (e.g. cover shifts at time and a half pay - to cover for their lack of capacity), at least you might purchase yourself some extra comfort in retirement... or maybe you can bring forward retirement by a few months.
 
yourstatement is 100% incorrect.
Yeah, but pretendland is nicer than reality, quite often. Anyone ignoring long COVID (i.e. anyone who simply quotes simple mortality rates) i.e. either being deliberately misleading or isn't bright enough to actually know even the basics of the situation.
 
Look at the numbers now….how’s that Sweden doing vs Norway now?
Sweden: 116,000 cases per million population, 1,480 deaths per million population
Norway: 45,000 cases per million population, 183 deaths per million population

Norway is currently going through wave #5 with lots of new cases. Sweden is fairly stable, no 5th wave so far. Vaccination rates are similar: both at 69% fully vaccinated. Norway with 7.9% partly vaccinated, Sweden with 2.9%.
 
Vaccine mandates aren't the cause of labor shortages in the food industry. Before any vaccine mandates were even being thought of the shortage was there. The mandate might affect some places and harder in other some areas versus others. It'll be an additional thing, probably minor in the overall picture, to cause the labor shortage.

Now backing out of this conversation while I have some hair left.
Yeah... not to take anything away from Dave's experience because no doubt this is adding to it, but this was already a problem here long before vaccine adoption and talk of mandates was a thing. When things started going into lockdown here a lot of food establishments had to let at least part of their employees go. A lot of those people found found jobs in different sectors and apparently quite a few of them didn't mind the switch. When things started opening up again apparently most restaurants and such had massive problems getting personel because a lot of people simply didn't feel like coming back.
 
Yeah... not to take anything away from Dave's experience because no doubt this is adding to it, but this was already a problem here long before vaccine adoption and talk of mandates was a thing. When things started going into lockdown here a lot of food establishments had to let at least part of their employees go. A lot of those people found found jobs in different sectors and apparently quite a few of them didn't mind the switch. When things started opening up again apparently most restaurants and such had massive problems getting personel because a lot of people simply didn't feel like coming back.

maybe they should just pay competitive wages and benefits and all that.

if the food service industry can only exist by literally exploiting people en masse, I dont think it deserves to continue as is. really sad that it took COVID to show people that though & I still see too few interviews with people who left explaining how they can simply do better by going down the street.
 
Jeeze yall, this thing has to run through the population. From what I have read, survival rate is 98% plus. Among young folks 99.+%. What is the freakin big deal. This is not a life threatening illness, unless you have pre conditions.
Quit being scared and live your lives. I am 69.5 years old, makes me at risk I guess, but I refuse to live my life in fear. Lets face it head on, not like a bunch of pansies.
Others already piled on this so not a whole lot to add... but... This feels like a statement from a year ago.

I could understand this kind of attitude about something like terrorism that really only kills a trivial amount of people on a whole population... but even just 1-2% on a population of 300 million people in the US is still several million dead people. And I'm not sure you realize how many people are categorized as having 'pre-conditions'; with the US's weight and cardiovascular disease problems that's likely to be >50% of the population.
Another issue is that so far in most modern countries we've managed to keep lethality in check because we 'managed' the disease; infections largely remained within the capacity of health systems to treat. When health systems get overwhelmed the situation changes for the worse - even for people who need a hospital bed for something that isn't COVID related.

I agree that there's no point in being scared. But there's a difference between being scared and taking something serious. I'm not scared when I get in a car nor do I worry about getting into an accident, yet I still wear a seatbelt. I was never particularly worried about hitting my head when skiing or mountaineering, yet I still wore a helmet. Managing risks doesn't mean you're scared or panicking.
This epidemic never was an existential risk for humanity - even if it had 10x the lethality it still wouldn't be. But that doesn't mean it cannot have significant societal and economical effects. Part of the problem (and what most of the discussion is about) is that these continue to persist... even though we have tools to mitigate the problem (vaccines).
 
And I'm not sure you realize how many people are categorized as having 'pre-conditions'; with the US's weight and cardiovascular disease problems that's likely to be >50% of the population.
Last figures I saw showed that 88 per cent of the US population had some version of metabolic syndrome or other similar issues, meaning that even the (so-called) "young and fit" often were not, it just wasn't immediately obvious that they had "underlying health issues."
 
Last figures I saw showed that 88 per cent of the US population had some version of metabolic syndrome or other similar issues, meaning that even the (so-called) "young and fit" often were not, it just wasn't immediately obvious that they had "underlying health issues."

There are a lot of overweight people in the US , especially in the South. When I went to Australia a decade or so ago I was very impressed by how good of shape most people were in. The school kids getting on the bus wearing their uniforms was very different than what I saw/see here, especially now. My wife and daughter and I have always been very active, skiing, hiking and spending time outdoors. But in many parts of the US that just isn’t the case. When we were in Brighten Beach we would joke that that’s were all the beautiful people were.
 
maybe they should just pay competitive wages and benefits and all that.

if the food service industry can only exist by literally exploiting people en masse, I dont think it deserves to continue as is. really sad that it took COVID to show people that though & I still see too few interviews with people who left explaining how they can simply do better by going down the street.
Yeah I don't blame people for moving on; over here it's usually underpaid for crap hours as well. Retail has a similar problem. That being said I'm not sure it's that simple; paying more to employees will usually mean raising prices which risks pricing oneself out of the market. The only 'fix' to that would be raising the minimum wage universally, but that'd be rather controversial (not just politically).
I never managed a restaurant so I have no clue what the bottom line looks like, but considering how many regularly go out of business even in normal times it doesn't sound like 'just pay more' is all that simple.
 
Yeah I don't blame people for moving on; over here it's usually underpaid for crap hours as well. Retail has a similar problem. That being said I'm not sure it's that simple; paying more to employees will usually mean raising prices which risks pricing oneself out of the market. The only 'fix' to that would be raising the minimum wage universally, but that'd be rather controversial (not just politically).
I never managed a restaurant so I have no clue what the bottom line looks like, but considering how many regularly go out of business even in normal times it doesn't sound like 'just pay more' is all that simple.

I mean of course it's not that simple.

On the other hand, if you work a full time job, you deserve a living wage. Im not personally so committed to the continued existence of the American restaurant experience as it currently exists that I think it should get to supercede human decency and if COVID is gonna hammer that nail into the coffin well Im not sure Im so sad about it.
 
We're catching you guys very rapidly, I fear.
I was going to say, a decade is a long period, just see some news footage/documentary in the street going back to the seventies and then watch something from the eighties...
 
Jeeze yall, this thing has to run through the population. From what I have read, survival rate is 98% plus. Among young folks 99.+%. What is the freakin big deal. This is not a life threatening illness, unless you have pre conditions.
Quit being scared and live your lives. I am 69.5 years old, makes me at risk I guess, but I refuse to live my life in fear. Lets face it head on, not like a bunch of pansies.

i can't speak for the population in general. i can only speak for myself. and maybe make some guesses about people here.

maybe i'm too optimistic, but i'm basically not worried at all about dying from covid. i'm not worried about dying in a car crash either.

however, it seems pretty easy to get covid and get some kind of complication. consider even the most benign complication: viral anosmia.

i love food and drink. i'm guessing basically every user on this forum does, too.

i've experienced viral anosmia once before from some upper respiratory infection. i remember when the infection moved up into my nasal tissue, and i got congested. it wasn't like normal congestion. my sense of smell was totally gone. it stayed like that for over a week after the other symptoms resolved. it slowly came back after that, but for like a year, i was always wondering if i could smell things as well as i could before. it was distressing tbh. i think it's back to normal now, but i still wonder if it's 100%.

so now that there's a hot new highly contagious virus going around known to frequently cause severe respiratory infection leading to anosmia (and worse)... uh...

i personally don't need any more reason than that to keep up with the covid vaccines. lol
 
Last edited:
What do you mean by American Restaurant Experience? We have good ethnic places here.

For many people in USA & other countries too fast food is eating out experience. All that deep fried stuff puts on the weight.
 
We're catching you guys very rapidly, I fear.

When we were there some of the American fast food restaurants were just starting to move in. I’ve read since that the population has started to gain weight. It really is a legal crime in my opinion. It was also when people were planting grapes and wine was taking off in the Victoria region. While the wine from there being shipped to the US was pretty bad and pretty sweet, we were buying really good wine at the small grocery store in Brighton. And since our dollar was really strong at the time we were loving the price of that great wine. I loved walking down the street there were you could walk from the bakery to the butcher to the grocery store all on the same block. Something that was long gone by the time I was growing up here, at least when where I grew up.
 
Jeeze yall, this thing has to run through the population. From what I have read, survival rate is 98% plus. Among young folks 99.+%. What is the freakin big deal. This is not a life threatening illness, unless you have pre conditions.
Quit being scared and live your lives. I am 69.5 years old, makes me at risk I guess, but I refuse to live my life in fear. Lets face it head on, not like a bunch of pansies.
For me there is a big difference between "living a life in fear" and "behaving carefully and appropriately in life due to the circumstances caused by Covid".

The survival rate may be as high as you say, but even 0.5% to 2% of the population still has a lot of Covid-related deaths. Deaths that would not have happened without Covid.

From my point of view, every single death caused by Covid is one too many. And a death that could have been avoided.

From your point of view, there may be a tiny number of people, but each and every one of these people had a right to their life. Each and every one of these people meant something to another person, as a relative, as a child, as a parent, as a love, as a friend. Each and every one of these deceased people is an unnecessary and tragic loss!

I can only speak for myself, but I don't want to live with the knowledge that another person has found an unnecessary and premature death due to my behavior and that I am partly responsible for it. So I act accordingly, it's not just about my life and my health, but about the life and health of all people with whom I come in contact.

Covid may not be life threatening for everyone, but every life is valuable. And the behavior of each and every one of us has a decisive influence on the life and death of some people.

And apart from the deaths, the consequences of Long-Covid can also be serious, these consequences also occur with harmless disease processes, regardless of age or state of health. I don’t want these consequences to anyone and I don’t want to be responsible for that another person is affected by my behavior!
 
Also; it's not the final mortality that is causing the major trouble in our hospitals, it's Covid's unique pattern of morbidity that is the key issue....Our health care systems have generally become pretty good at keeping patients alive, yet that comes at a high cost and the specialty resources needed to keep Covid patients alive are scarce and actually right now they are more scarce than ever due to the earlier Covid waves. Care is so scarce that Covid is now scavenging resources intended for 'regular' care, meaning patients with other diseases suffer longer or more or do not get any care to begin with.

It is the ICU and hospital care congestion causing lockdowns all over Europe, not the mortality...
 
Also; it's not the final mortality that is causing the major trouble in our hospitals, it's Covid's unique pattern of morbidity that is the key issue....Our health care systems have generally become pretty good at keeping patients alive, yet that comes at a high cost and the specialty resources needed to keep Covid patients alive are scarce and actually right now they are more scarce than ever due to the earlier Covid waves. Care is so scarce that Covid is now scavenging resources intended for 'regular' care, meaning patients with other diseases suffer longer or more or do not get any care to begin with.

It is the ICU and hospital care congestion causing lockdowns all over Europe, not the mortality...
Honestly at this point I think it's fair to start a process to de-prioritize COVID-affected patients who are willingly unvaccinated from medical care if capacity becomes a problem. I say willingly, because of course there's a group with immune disorders etc who have no choice in the matter.
But I think it's unfair to keep cancelling and postponing 'regular care' for vaccinated people. That will result in significant long term health effects and potentially death for at least some of those people simply because they're not getting their medical care in time. All because we're dealing with a big surge again that's significantly larger than it should be...

If people want to retain their freedom of choice and ignore what medical science has to offer, fine, but then you have to be consistent about it. Maybe that pushes them over the edge to finally get vaccinated, but I'm unwilling to see that stubbornness hurt the health of other people who aren't undermining public health with their 'choices'.
 
@Jovidah

Understand what you are saying, and I cannot say I disagree with it...the problem is that although there are people out there walking around with things like a 'do not resuscitate/intubate' declaration but I've not heard anyone doing something similar around Covid. Who else is going to make that decision? Politicians? Medical staff?
Triage during a code black will not likely de-prioritize non vaxxers over others...
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top