Some Good News Stories

Doing the weekly big shop last night I was thinking there are some positive changes since all of this began.

1. Everything has slowed down a bit. People are driving more slowly as well and driving is actually a pleasure these days. This must be what it was like 60 years ago on our roads!
2. Playing with the children and not feeling that there is something more important you need to be doing.
3. Home baking is making a big comeback. Home made pizzas are improving here to the standard we would get in restaurants! And we may have nailed Grannys brown bread recipe finally!

I can also see the real possibility of change in work practices after this, with more people working from home more often. That should reduce the traffic on our roads and the pressure on our public transport.
 
Problem with working from home for a while is the feeling of isolation. Different if you have a family around you. Many people have said that is the worst thing. You will talk to anyone. Yes you may be more work done but you forget the time and work longer day than normal.

Times like this you see what is important. Family and friends.

Old fashioned cooking has increased so diet has improved also. Hard to get flour to bake.

The sense of community is back and people make time to help.
 
If they could find some way to teach third level from home, would certainly ease the burden or even last 2 to 3 months.
 
I am guessing it's more of a conduit for donations but still incredible sums...

A 99-year-old war veteran has walked 100 laps of his garden to raise £14m and counting for the NHS.
Captain Tom Moore originally wanted to raise £1,000 for NHS Charities Together by completing laps of his garden before his 100th birthday.
But he smashed his target after more than 700,000 people made donations to his fundraising page.
www.bbc.com

Coronavirus: Capt Tom Moore's NHS fundraiser hits £17m

As he completed the 100th lap of his garden earlier, Capt Tom Moore said: "I feel fine."
www.bbc.com
 
Ironically Covid 19 will save lives indirectly, such as road deaths, maybe some crime related deaths will be down as well, and probably countless other quirks of fate under lockdown across the globe. Maybe it will give some people pause for thought about social habits, gambling, lots of things really.

The most amazing thing for me during lockdown is spending time with my two little daughters (4 and 6). Myself and my wife are working from home during lockdown have very busy jobs and you are always going with little or nothing to show for it but the simplicity of going for a cycle or a scoot around the estate or slightly out the country beside where we live is just lovely. Small things, very silver linings.
 
Sophrosyne said:
Necessity is the mother of invention.

UL rapid innovation unit living up to name as they produce PPE for frontline health staff.

“the normal production time on a project like this would take months, but it was done in only nine days, thanks to local companies working very intensively together enabling capacity to manufacture up to 5,000 visors a day.”
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There's lots of businesses making stuff like this. The problem with the face shields is the availability of the correct thickness of Lexan/Perspex sheets.
Any clown can bend a sheet of Lexan/Perspex into a box. If that's the limit of the skills at the rapid innovation unit at UL I seriously question why they are there.
We would have had those boxes made within 48 hours where I work and we wouldn't have been a team of graduate engineers to do it either. Sweet This post will be deleted if not edited immediately, there's some amount of self congratulatory bull being circulated at the moment.
 
Purple said:
There's lots of businesses making stuff like this. The problem with the face shields is the availability of the correct thickness of Lexan/Perspex sheets.
Any clown can bend a sheet of Lexan/Perspex into a box. If that's the limit of the skills at the rapid innovation unit at UL I seriously question why they are there.
We would have had those boxes made within 48 hours where I work and we wouldn't have been a team of graduate engineers to do it either. Sweet This post will be deleted if not edited immediately, there's some amount of self congratulatory bull being circulated at the moment.
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I think you have mis-understood what a thread about good news stories is about..... I know it goes against your naturally positive cheerful outlook!!
 
Purple said:
There's lots of businesses making stuff like this. The problem with the face shields is the availability of the correct thickness of Lexan/Perspex sheets.
Any clown can bend a sheet of Lexan/Perspex into a box. If that's the limit of the skills at the rapid innovation unit at UL I seriously question why they are there.
We would have had those boxes made within 48 hours where I work and we wouldn't have been a team of graduate engineers to do it either. Sweet This post will be deleted if not edited immediately, there's some amount of self congratulatory bull being circulated at the moment.
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I can't disagree with you Purple, but a statement such as this in these days where everybody is a hero is like entering a Jesuit Monastery and slamming the Roman Catholic Church.
 
Sunny said:
I think you have mis-understood what a thread about good news stories is about..... I know it goes against your naturally positive cheerful outlook!!
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:)
On a positive note the HSE has more than enough respirators. That must be the case as they have failed to respond to Irish companies offering to provide them with respirators.
They must also have lots of PPE since they have failed to respond to Irish companies who have contacted them offering to make PPE for them.

I'm not a fan of Communist Party type "good news stories" which mask reality.
 
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Purple said:
:)
On a positive note the HSE has more than enough respirators. That must be the case as they have failed to respond to Irish companies offering to provide them with respirators.
They must also have lots of PPE since they have failed to respond to Irish companies who have contacted them offering to make PPE for them.

I'm not a fan of Communist Party stype "good news stories" which mask reality.
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Well - on a positive note, I was talking with a friend on the very front line - involved with admissions and bringing people into the hospitals. His assessment was that we aren't hitting capacity or stressing the critical care units. He thinks we'll see deaths as high for a few more days but they are already seeing a drop in the pipeline and new critical cases and they estimate the R value is somewhere around 0.7 now and dropping. Thinks we should see numbers start to drop early next week.

One caveat - the numbers might remain high as care home deaths get reported. That, for him, was the main concern. The general population not so much at this stage
 
Purple said:
If that's the limit of the skills at the rapid innovation unit at UL I seriously question why they are there.
We would have had those boxes made within 48 hours where I work and we wouldn't have been a team of graduate engineers to do it either. Sweet This post will be deleted if not edited immediately, there's some amount of self congratulatory bull being circulated at the moment.
Click to expand...

That's an interesting viewpoint. You could have but UL did.
 
Sophrosyne said:
That's an interesting viewpoint. You could have but UL did.
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Yea, so did some other private companies. They've made masks just like the ones from UL (conforming to requirements etc) and offered them to the HSE and the HSE haven't even answered their emails.
Other companies have offered respirators and supplied oxygen ventilators and have had no response. None. I'm aware of a company which has even engaged with a TD in an attempt to get a response. Nada from the HSE. So UL did, and so did others.
 
Purple said:
Yea, so did some other private companies.
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Yeah, lots of other companies and even private individuals with 3D printers got there back in mid-March, if not before, making the models freely available to download. UL just seem to be pushing this as a PR exercise. I haven't seen a detailed enough image of the UL one, but it looks identical to the earlier designs.
 
UL is one story. I am sure there are many others, like @Megafan's.

This thread is an opportunity to post about them.

It is not a about rivalry.
 
Sophrosyne said:
UL is one story. I am sure there are many others, like @Megafan's.

This thread is an opportunity to post about them.

It is not a about rivalry.
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No, but all this self congratulation from the "heroes" on the "front line" is masking the utter ineptitude of the HSE and the cynical self interest of these same heroes who have resisted reform and improvement for decades. Deflection makes people feel good about themselves but it solves nothing.
 
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