(Shirley has some very interesting insights into Star Trek from the perspective of a human resources manager. I'm trying to persuade her that we should co-author a blog post on this, but she doesn't think anyone would be interested. Nerds of the internet, I summon thee !)
Also, I finally finished The Talos Principle. It took me 32 hours, which is way longer than its suggested 15-20 hours. And I had to cheat several times. If I don't solve a puzzle within about 15 minutes, chances are I'm completely flummoxed and could spend an indefinite amount of time fruitlessly doing the same thing over and over again. Likewise, the sigil puzzles are okay when they're small, but just frustrating when they're large. So eventually I stopped seeing the point of them and looked up the answers online (I looked up hints for the main puzzles rather than walkthroughs, expect in a few cases).
That said, I enjoyed the game a great deal. I'm hoping to do the expansions in VR when my Oculus Quest finally arrives. I'm also thinking of trying a Total War game again, a franchise I haven't touched in probably too long. All those medieval dramas are definitely having an effect.
Since "what I've been watching on Netflix" is nearly as dull a topic as "what I did on my holidays", what about The Virus ? Unfortunately my favourite tracking website appears to now have some weird issues on desktop PCs so I had to download the image from my phone, hence the crappy quality.
Basically, a lot of countries are now seeing a continuing plummet (though what the hell's going on with Spain and France I've no idea). There's been a claim floating around on dubious sources that the virus behaviour follows a time-dependent, predictable pattern regardless of lockdown procedures. I'll not link to that since I find it highly suspect, but if anyone know what I'm on about, I'd much appreciate any links to detailed critiques. Is there anything to it or not ? It strikes me as wrong-headed.
On the Czech-specific front, generally the news is good. Daily cases peaked at over 300, but now we're back in the tens - even the low tens. The reproduction number has been below 1.0 for several weeks.
More worrying are the political developments, which, from the view of an English-speaking immigrant, appear to be as though the government suddenly went mad. Initially, everything seemed to go about as well as could possibly be expected - swift, decisive, appropriate action. Even though the Czech intensive care capacity is a mere 500 beds, at one point we were even importing patients from other, more badly-affected countries. Then there was a successful legal challenge that the government actions were unconstitutional : instead of implementing them under one act they should have used another, apparently. The very next day, instead of re-implementing using the correct act, the government moved their ending-lockdown schedule forward two weeks. So instead of noises from the Prime Minister about the borders being closed for a year, they're already open - albeit only in principle, but this is expected to become a practical reality (with Germany, Austria, Poland and Slovakia) by July.
(In the thoroughly excellent Xenophobe's Guide to the Czech Republic, it says, "What keeps them from being quite unbearably astute is a knack for screwing up when it really matters." Indeed.)
I'm all for re-opening borders, but I'm thoroughly confused about what's going on here, and more concerned about the easing of local lockdown measures. When the government decides not to re-implement its emergency powers under a different act (because that would involve paying people compensation) and instead moves it schedule forward, that doesn't fill me with confidence - even if they bring out some epidemiologists to say it's okay. Instinctively, I'm against easing the lockdown right now - surely, waiting an extra couple of weeks would get those case numbers down further and make it easier to track and trace. But perhaps I'm wrong - perhaps the numbers are already low enough that we can move back towards a containment strategy. We'll see soon enough, but my guess would be a second wave and a brand new lockdown. I'd be happier if they'd say more about their track-and-trace program.
I should also say something about the UK's response. I believe firmly in giving credit where credit is due, and what the government has done seems to be more or less correct as far as I can tell. Construction of the Nightingales was genuinely impressive, and while there were problems (like insufficient staff for the number of beds), I submit that similar mistakes would occur under any government. You're going to have problems in an unprecedented crisis regardless of who's in charge.
Similarly, from a purely political perspective, I think the PMQs we've been having lately have been the best in many years. Both sides actually praised each other ! No braying nonsense or waving of papers, but some actual proper feckin' intelligent discourse - yes, even from Dominic Raab, on occasion. I agree with him that we should wait for the expert advice on how the virus is progressing before deciding on a lockdown strategy, although if we can't be told when or what, it would have been nice to hear something about how the strategy is being formulated. Who's involved ? Are they running simulations ? Are their behavioural scientists and epidemiologists involved as well as politicians ?
More worrying has been the fiddling of testing figures. Look, this 100,000 a day by some arbitrary deadline isn't the issue. I would have been perfectly happy if they'd said, "we're not quite there, but we expect to be there soon". Instead they confounded the issue with definitions of testing capacity versus tests carried out and so on, which just feels petty. And the claim that capacity wasn't being used due to lack of demand was a barefaced lie.
As for newly-minted opposition leader Starmer, for me he's got the balance just right. I don't accept critics who say he should stick the knife in and never say a good word about the government - that is wrong. During an emergency, you don't stop to say, "who's fault is that ?". You say, "how can I help ?". Afterwards, well that's a different story. But during the actual crisis ? No - there are bigger issues than who-did-what. When people say or do something wrong you call them out on it (if only to stop them hurting themselves even more), but you don't, during the event itself, go back to pick over all the mistakes they made that led them to that point.
That said, the media are right to say that they should be holding the government to account : it's the politician's job to pull together right now, but the media still have a duty to find fault. If the government can't be criticised when its inactions lead to thirty thousand dead, well, we're in a sorry state of affairs indeed. If there's nothing much wrong with what the government did, it has a hell of a lot to answer for for when it did it. That is not yet a matter for the politicians, but once the dust settles, it most certainly will be.
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