8 ms·

Perhaps people have had to expend more energy just keeping their personal life together in the last few years. People with children have had to deal with the co

by sylens 4y ago

Perhaps people have had to expend more energy just keeping their personal life together in the last few years. People with children have had to deal with the constant school closings, childcare facility closings, etc. and that has taken its toll. They may have family members who got Covid or had treatment for other ailments delayed by the pandemic's rush to treat Covid patients. They could've experienced a huge shift in the switch to remote working in 2020, and are now expected to make another huge shift back to in-office working. This doesn't even account for the incredible decline in civility from customers if you work a customer-facing job. The slightest inconvenience or mistake can end up in a tantrum by an American adult that only sometimes gets captured on video. And in the meantime, a bunch of people walk around opining that "Nobody wants to work anymore" as if they deserve to be waited on hand and foot regardless of circumstance.

ep103 4y ago
During Covid, people were hiding in their homes, quarantined, with nothing to do but work. This year, companies expect workers to return to office, despite little change in conditions, except now we have to deal with all of the above issues you've just mentioned, AND the fact that employees have now proven they can work remotely perfectly well. It should neither be surprising that in a system where healthcare is tied to employment, that productivity jumped while people were locking themselves in their houses from a plague, or that productivity dropped afterwards, or that it might drop given the complete callousness of our current system.
- cestith 4y ago
  All of what you've both said, plus the number of people who thought or still think COVID-19 is "no big deal" who now have a pulmonary deficiency and long-term mental fog.
  - AnthonBerg 4y ago
    Indeed. In support of this—part of it!—here’s one paper of many: “The Neurobiology of Long COVID” by M. Monje, neurobiologist at Stanford, and A. Iwasaki, immunologist at Yale. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2022.10.006 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2022.10.006 People with measurable neurobiological issues will show a measurable productivity drop.
    - Animats 4y ago
      Prevalence of "Long COVID" is hard to measure at this point, but based on symptom reporting, about 15% of people who test positive for COVID have some symptoms more than 2 months later.[1] More data is available for people who have had heart and brain MRI scans, which show inflammation. It may be possible to diagnose this with a special eye exam that detects inflammation in the eye's blood vessels. The tests are still very experimental, but there are objective measures of damage. [1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2797782 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
      - AnthonBerg 4y ago
        In support of this, I want to mention that there are known and measurable biomarkers that connect reported symptoms to undeniable physical symptoms. Low cortisol is very common. That’s just one example. With low cortisol it’s hard to feel good or function 100%. One paper of many that show this kind of relationship (a preprint): “Distinguishing features of Long COVID identified through immune profiling” — https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.08.09.22278592 https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.08.09.22278592 It’s also important to note that there was a study that seemed to show that Long COVID was just anxiety or in people’s imagination. Because people who said they had Long COVID didn’t have SARS-CoV-2 antibodies. The thing is that not everybody seroconverts. Not everybody actually produces antibodies after infection; We simply can’t exclude Long COVID diagnoses based on looking at those particular antibodies. So that study can’t show what it has been said to show. (I can provide sources for this but am out of time. It’s on my honor.)
        ep103 4y ago
        The best explanation I've seen thus far, assuming there aren't other complicating factors (which there often are) is that the immune system stays hyperactive in some people after infection. This causes excess production of IL-6 and IL-10, which in turn causes something called the kynurenine shunt. That in turn results in lowered central serotonin rates in the brain and heightened glutamate. This off balance results in lowered dopamine as the production of serotonin and dopamine are comingled. Dopamine usually breaks down to your typical epinephrine and norepinephrine levels. But since dopamine is at a lowered state, you get less epinephrine and norepinephrine. I'm guessing, but do not know the pathway, that lowered epinephrine and norepinephrine explain the lowered cortisol. Either way, the treatment should be the same. Take a corticosteroid to lower the IL6 & 10 levels, ensure the patient is getting proper sleep and nutrients, and not doing anything to exacerbate lowered serotonin/dopamine levels, and cross your fingers. I've started to hear of companies that are testing for elevated cytokines as a proof of long covid, and my family member's hospital has started educating their staff on cytokine release syndrome in the rare patient who has a reaction to a vaccine shot, both of which, for me, imply the industry might be moving in this direction for explanation. fingers crossed
  - tick_tock_tick 4y ago
    I mean it's such a small percent do you really think it would show up in national data?
    - hezralig 4y ago
      What is such a small percent and where are you getting your data?
      - tick_tock_tick 4y ago
        "Long COVID" and medical journals.... Even the highest estimates only have it as a very small percentage of symptomatic patients which is already a subset of the general population.
        komali2 4y ago
        If you change it instead to be a subset of the working age population, does the percentage look higher?
        cestith 4y ago
        I've been reading it's 10 to 20% of people who test positive have symptoms at least a month, and as much as 5 to 7% three to six months later. The US workforce is around 160 million people. About 60% of the population is estimated to have had SARS-Cov-2 at least once. 60% of 160 million is 96 million. So 5% of that is 4.6 million people or so with at least a solid portion of a year of symptoms. There's mounting evidence that some of the damage could take years to recover or even be lifelong. The current word from the Mayo Clinic is about 20% of folks have what they're calling Post-COVID Syndrome between one month and one year after an infection, with at least one symptom likely from the viral infection. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/coronavirus-long-term-effects/art-20490351 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/i... If we look at 20% of 60% of the workforce that's around 19 million people symptomatic for over a month after the initial positive test. Twelve percent, almost one in eight people in the workplace.
  - baxtr 4y ago
    The difficult part of it is: for some people it is literally nothing. We had it now for the fourth time since 2020 even though we’re properly vaccinated and careful as much as life permits. It’s a bit worse than a cold but much better for than the flu. So, yes, for us life just goes on with COVID. No need to change anything.
    - autoexec 4y ago
      That is a problem. It's a dice roll each time a person is infected depending on a huge number of factors including what strain they've been hit with. Reinfections can give worse odds each time. People who got lucky once or twice before might be more careless thinking their luck will continue and end up screwing themselves. https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20220707/each-covid-19-reinfection-increases-health-risks https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20220707/each-covid-19-reinf...
      - Animats 4y ago
        "Reinfections can give worse odds each time." Not necessarily worse, but there is cumulative damage. In the UK, about 7% of COVID cases that get medical attention are now re-infections. That number increases with time; it was only 4% last February. Immunity from getting COVID is time-limited and not that long. One study said "time between reinfections ranged from 90 to 650 days, with the average being 343 days". Over a decade, this might gradually debilitate most of the population.
        autoexec 4y ago
        I'm hoping that over the coming decade we get better defenses. Improved vaccines, treatments, and a greater understanding of the virus could prevent a lot of that harm. It hasn't been long enough to see what the long term consequences of infections or even our vaccines and current treatments will be for that matter, but I'll stay up to date on vaccines and continue taking sensible precautions against catching or spreading the virus. It's the best I can do to help my odds given what we know currently.
    - AnthonBerg 4y ago
  - krater23 4y ago
    I everytime sayd it's not a big deal. Got my vaccine as it was ready but don't done anything else to don't get it. Now it's 2022, never had COVID, or maybee I don't noticed it. So, yes, not a big deal for me.
    - joebob42 4y ago
      I'm not 100% sure if this is satire but it brought me joy.
  - propogandist 4y ago
    good thing there's the safe and effective vaccine tested on mice and N number of boosters.
- lupire 4y ago
  HN aside, most people don't have jobs that you can do more of at home than at the office / factory / lab / school. Heck, with school it's quite obvious that "teaching hours delivered" sustained during pandemic, but "education learned" dropped by probably half.
slowhand09 4y ago
Lets not discount the people who populate the reddit/r/antiwork forum. Noting like wasting oxygen the rest of the world needs.
- weberer 4y ago
  I never heard about them until I saw that news interview. What a wild ride. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yUMIFYBMnc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yUMIFYBMnc
  - kennend3 4y ago
    antiwork started off good but quickly went downhill. I abandoned it some time ago because it is now a "pro-union eco-chamber". I once advocated serious changes to the labour laws are what is needed, and was inundated with "join a union" posts. It really speaks to just how out-of-touch these people are. Unions only care about large corporations because they can get a lot of members and union dues. The issue with this logic is that small businesses are often totally out of the unions reach and laws benefit EVERYONE. The other issue they overlook is Union contracts only apply to those in the union and can change greatly from one union to the next.
    - the_only_law 4y ago
      I just don’t get why you wouldn’t choose someone a little… brighter to represent you.
      - kennend3 4y ago
        I did not take a position on unions one way or the other on my post there. As i said, i just found it shocking that "join a union" was their only response. Labour laws impact everyone, union contracts don't.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
acdha 4y ago
I think you’re really on the right track with caregiving, and would add the blind push to force people back into offices without any recognition of the costs of those policies (or, often, perceptible benefits). Going into the office is fairly expensive in any case but it especially pushes parents towards needing daycare and aftercare services which were already expensive before the pandemic and became more so after a non-trivial number of providers found other jobs, became too sick to work, died, or decided the health risk wasn’t worth it after seeing that happen to other people. Our local parents group has had stories about people choosing not to go back to professional jobs because the employers insisting on RTO weren’t paying enough to make up for that, especially if they weren’t accommodating when someone’s schedule is disrupted.
D13Fd 4y ago
You're right about daycare/school closings. Even now, essentially post-covid, if our two-year-old gets COVID, that's a 10-day quarantine from daycare. That's 10 days where one of the parents has to work from home and be horribly unproductive because they are watching a child at the same time. And you can get COVID repeatedly. It often from the daycare itself, but also from a sibling who is in school. Even with full, boosted vaccinations, they can still catch it. They don't get very sick, but they have to quarantine. It's unsustainable. I'm sure that's not the only cause, but it's definitely a factor.
- sylens 4y ago
  Not only that, but sometimes even the threat of an outbreak can hamper the availability of childcare. Last winter, a few staff members were exposed to a close contact, so they held them out of work as a precaution - but that resulted in one of the rooms having to close for a week.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    I assume the parents and staff at my daycare just have a collective unspoken agreement to not test for covid. The remaining Covid policies are stupidly inconsistent anyway. RSV is far more dangerous to children, but that is allowed to go unchecked. Hell, you have to pay $250+ just to get tested for it. Rhinovirus/influenza/norovirus/rotavirus/other coronaviruses are all OK, with kids leaking from both nostrils in the classroom. But one kid or adult gets Covid and things have to close? Covid tests are paid for by government, but testing for all the other viruses costs hundreds of dollars? What a farce.
    - spookthesunset 4y ago
      > Covid tests are paid for by government, but testing for all the other viruses costs hundreds of dollars? What a farce. Could you imagine if there was some test that showed you all the viruses that are circulating in your system at any given moment? If we applied the same rules as we do for covid to such a test, people would literally never be able to leave their house...
highwaylights 4y ago
“Expected to make another huge shift back to in office working” Well, you kids have fun. sound of me closing the door in my pyjamas with a nice hot coffee in my other hand
- animal_spirits 4y ago
  - throwaway743 4y ago
    Nobody asked you to make a dickhead remark
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  Yes. I will WFH just for the perk of having good coffee!
AussieWog93 4y ago
>This doesn't even account for the incredible decline in civility from customers if you work a customer-facing job. Not sure if you're in a customer facing job, but I've personally noticed that there seem to be noticeably fewer Karens now compared to pre-pandemic levels. (There was a spike during the first lockdown, but that died down within a few months.) Everyone seems to be used to random disruptions now, and I think all of the campaigns about retail worker abuse have really made customers stop and think.

by sylens 4y ago

ep103 4y ago

During Covid, people were hiding in their homes, quarantined, with nothing to do but work. This year, companies expect workers to return to office, despite little change in conditions, except now we have to deal with all of the above issues you've just mentioned, AND the fact that employees have now proven they can work remotely perfectly well. It should neither be surprising that in a system where healthcare is tied to employment, that productivity jumped while people were locking themselves in their houses from a plague, or that productivity dropped afterwards, or that it might drop given the complete callousness of our current system.

cestith 4y ago
All of what you've both said, plus the number of people who thought or still think COVID-19 is "no big deal" who now have a pulmonary deficiency and long-term mental fog.
- AnthonBerg 4y ago
  Indeed. In support of this—part of it!—here’s one paper of many: “The Neurobiology of Long COVID” by M. Monje, neurobiologist at Stanford, and A. Iwasaki, immunologist at Yale. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2022.10.006 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2022.10.006 People with measurable neurobiological issues will show a measurable productivity drop.
  - Animats 4y ago
    Prevalence of "Long COVID" is hard to measure at this point, but based on symptom reporting, about 15% of people who test positive for COVID have some symptoms more than 2 months later.[1] More data is available for people who have had heart and brain MRI scans, which show inflammation. It may be possible to diagnose this with a special eye exam that detects inflammation in the eye's blood vessels. The tests are still very experimental, but there are objective measures of damage. [1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2797782 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...
    - AnthonBerg 4y ago
      In support of this, I want to mention that there are known and measurable biomarkers that connect reported symptoms to undeniable physical symptoms. Low cortisol is very common. That’s just one example. With low cortisol it’s hard to feel good or function 100%. One paper of many that show this kind of relationship (a preprint): “Distinguishing features of Long COVID identified through immune profiling” — https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.08.09.22278592 https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.08.09.22278592 It’s also important to note that there was a study that seemed to show that Long COVID was just anxiety or in people’s imagination. Because people who said they had Long COVID didn’t have SARS-CoV-2 antibodies. The thing is that not everybody seroconverts. Not everybody actually produces antibodies after infection; We simply can’t exclude Long COVID diagnoses based on looking at those particular antibodies. So that study can’t show what it has been said to show. (I can provide sources for this but am out of time. It’s on my honor.)
      - ep103 4y ago
        The best explanation I've seen thus far, assuming there aren't other complicating factors (which there often are) is that the immune system stays hyperactive in some people after infection. This causes excess production of IL-6 and IL-10, which in turn causes something called the kynurenine shunt. That in turn results in lowered central serotonin rates in the brain and heightened glutamate. This off balance results in lowered dopamine as the production of serotonin and dopamine are comingled. Dopamine usually breaks down to your typical epinephrine and norepinephrine levels. But since dopamine is at a lowered state, you get less epinephrine and norepinephrine. I'm guessing, but do not know the pathway, that lowered epinephrine and norepinephrine explain the lowered cortisol. Either way, the treatment should be the same. Take a corticosteroid to lower the IL6 & 10 levels, ensure the patient is getting proper sleep and nutrients, and not doing anything to exacerbate lowered serotonin/dopamine levels, and cross your fingers. I've started to hear of companies that are testing for elevated cytokines as a proof of long covid, and my family member's hospital has started educating their staff on cytokine release syndrome in the rare patient who has a reaction to a vaccine shot, both of which, for me, imply the industry might be moving in this direction for explanation. fingers crossed
- tick_tock_tick 4y ago
  I mean it's such a small percent do you really think it would show up in national data?
  - hezralig 4y ago
    What is such a small percent and where are you getting your data?
    - tick_tock_tick 4y ago
      "Long COVID" and medical journals.... Even the highest estimates only have it as a very small percentage of symptomatic patients which is already a subset of the general population.
      - komali2 4y ago
        If you change it instead to be a subset of the working age population, does the percentage look higher?
      - cestith 4y ago
        I've been reading it's 10 to 20% of people who test positive have symptoms at least a month, and as much as 5 to 7% three to six months later. The US workforce is around 160 million people. About 60% of the population is estimated to have had SARS-Cov-2 at least once. 60% of 160 million is 96 million. So 5% of that is 4.6 million people or so with at least a solid portion of a year of symptoms. There's mounting evidence that some of the damage could take years to recover or even be lifelong. The current word from the Mayo Clinic is about 20% of folks have what they're calling Post-COVID Syndrome between one month and one year after an infection, with at least one symptom likely from the viral infection. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/coronavirus-long-term-effects/art-20490351 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/i... If we look at 20% of 60% of the workforce that's around 19 million people symptomatic for over a month after the initial positive test. Twelve percent, almost one in eight people in the workplace.
- baxtr 4y ago
  The difficult part of it is: for some people it is literally nothing. We had it now for the fourth time since 2020 even though we’re properly vaccinated and careful as much as life permits. It’s a bit worse than a cold but much better for than the flu. So, yes, for us life just goes on with COVID. No need to change anything.
  - autoexec 4y ago
    That is a problem. It's a dice roll each time a person is infected depending on a huge number of factors including what strain they've been hit with. Reinfections can give worse odds each time. People who got lucky once or twice before might be more careless thinking their luck will continue and end up screwing themselves. https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20220707/each-covid-19-reinfection-increases-health-risks https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20220707/each-covid-19-reinf...
    - Animats 4y ago
      "Reinfections can give worse odds each time." Not necessarily worse, but there is cumulative damage. In the UK, about 7% of COVID cases that get medical attention are now re-infections. That number increases with time; it was only 4% last February. Immunity from getting COVID is time-limited and not that long. One study said "time between reinfections ranged from 90 to 650 days, with the average being 343 days". Over a decade, this might gradually debilitate most of the population.
      - autoexec 4y ago
        I'm hoping that over the coming decade we get better defenses. Improved vaccines, treatments, and a greater understanding of the virus could prevent a lot of that harm. It hasn't been long enough to see what the long term consequences of infections or even our vaccines and current treatments will be for that matter, but I'll stay up to date on vaccines and continue taking sensible precautions against catching or spreading the virus. It's the best I can do to help my odds given what we know currently.
  - AnthonBerg 4y ago
- krater23 4y ago
  I everytime sayd it's not a big deal. Got my vaccine as it was ready but don't done anything else to don't get it. Now it's 2022, never had COVID, or maybee I don't noticed it. So, yes, not a big deal for me.
  - joebob42 4y ago
    I'm not 100% sure if this is satire but it brought me joy.
- propogandist 4y ago
  good thing there's the safe and effective vaccine tested on mice and N number of boosters.
lupire 4y ago
HN aside, most people don't have jobs that you can do more of at home than at the office / factory / lab / school. Heck, with school it's quite obvious that "teaching hours delivered" sustained during pandemic, but "education learned" dropped by probably half.

slowhand09 4y ago

Lets not discount the people who populate the reddit/r/antiwork forum. Noting like wasting oxygen the rest of the world needs.

weberer 4y ago
I never heard about them until I saw that news interview. What a wild ride. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yUMIFYBMnc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yUMIFYBMnc
- kennend3 4y ago
  antiwork started off good but quickly went downhill. I abandoned it some time ago because it is now a "pro-union eco-chamber". I once advocated serious changes to the labour laws are what is needed, and was inundated with "join a union" posts. It really speaks to just how out-of-touch these people are. Unions only care about large corporations because they can get a lot of members and union dues. The issue with this logic is that small businesses are often totally out of the unions reach and laws benefit EVERYONE. The other issue they overlook is Union contracts only apply to those in the union and can change greatly from one union to the next.
  - the_only_law 4y ago
    I just don’t get why you wouldn’t choose someone a little… brighter to represent you.
    - kennend3 4y ago
      I did not take a position on unions one way or the other on my post there. As i said, i just found it shocking that "join a union" was their only response. Labour laws impact everyone, union contracts don't.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]

acdha 4y ago

I think you’re really on the right track with caregiving, and would add the blind push to force people back into offices without any recognition of the costs of those policies (or, often, perceptible benefits). Going into the office is fairly expensive in any case but it especially pushes parents towards needing daycare and aftercare services which were already expensive before the pandemic and became more so after a non-trivial number of providers found other jobs, became too sick to work, died, or decided the health risk wasn’t worth it after seeing that happen to other people. Our local parents group has had stories about people choosing not to go back to professional jobs because the employers insisting on RTO weren’t paying enough to make up for that, especially if they weren’t accommodating when someone’s schedule is disrupted.

D13Fd 4y ago

You're right about daycare/school closings. Even now, essentially post-covid, if our two-year-old gets COVID, that's a 10-day quarantine from daycare. That's 10 days where one of the parents has to work from home and be horribly unproductive because they are watching a child at the same time. And you can get COVID repeatedly. It often from the daycare itself, but also from a sibling who is in school. Even with full, boosted vaccinations, they can still catch it. They don't get very sick, but they have to quarantine. It's unsustainable. I'm sure that's not the only cause, but it's definitely a factor.

sylens 4y ago
Not only that, but sometimes even the threat of an outbreak can hamper the availability of childcare. Last winter, a few staff members were exposed to a close contact, so they held them out of work as a precaution - but that resulted in one of the rooms having to close for a week.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  I assume the parents and staff at my daycare just have a collective unspoken agreement to not test for covid. The remaining Covid policies are stupidly inconsistent anyway. RSV is far more dangerous to children, but that is allowed to go unchecked. Hell, you have to pay $250+ just to get tested for it. Rhinovirus/influenza/norovirus/rotavirus/other coronaviruses are all OK, with kids leaking from both nostrils in the classroom. But one kid or adult gets Covid and things have to close? Covid tests are paid for by government, but testing for all the other viruses costs hundreds of dollars? What a farce.
  - spookthesunset 4y ago
    > Covid tests are paid for by government, but testing for all the other viruses costs hundreds of dollars? What a farce. Could you imagine if there was some test that showed you all the viruses that are circulating in your system at any given moment? If we applied the same rules as we do for covid to such a test, people would literally never be able to leave their house...

highwaylights 4y ago

“Expected to make another huge shift back to in office working” Well, you kids have fun. sound of me closing the door in my pyjamas with a nice hot coffee in my other hand

animal_spirits 4y ago
- throwaway743 4y ago
  Nobody asked you to make a dickhead remark
quickthrower2 4y ago
Yes. I will WFH just for the perk of having good coffee!

AussieWog93 4y ago

>This doesn't even account for the incredible decline in civility from customers if you work a customer-facing job. Not sure if you're in a customer facing job, but I've personally noticed that there seem to be noticeably fewer Karens now compared to pre-pandemic levels. (There was a spike during the first lockdown, but that died down within a few months.) Everyone seems to be used to random disruptions now, and I think all of the campaigns about retail worker abuse have really made customers stop and think.