Tag Archive for: quarantine

Coronavirus Conversation

Coronavirus Conversation

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We’re in lockdown, not just in UK, but all over the world. Old conversation habits die hard, such as ‘what did you get up to last night’. There’s not many different things you can do whilst in lockdown. So our friends over at Stylist have devised a new way of spicing up our answers to questions. Here’s some Coronavirus conversation to help spice things up!

Stylist have come up with some really funny ways to respond when someone asks what you got up to last night. They make you sound like you did really exciting things. When in reality they’re quite mundane:

 

  • INSTEAD OF SAYING: “I HAD A CHEEKY WINE IN THE GARDEN”

Say: “I partook in an al fresco wine tasting. It was glorious. I particularly enjoyed the bergamot top notes in the chardonnay.”

  • INSTEAD OF SAYING: “I WATCHED TIGER KING ON NETFLIX”

Say: “I watched an innovative and divisive documentary exploring the complex relationship between man and beast. It threw up some interesting philosophical dilemmas, actually.”

  • INSTEAD OF SAYING: “I WENT FOR A WALK”

Say: “I indulged in my evening constitutional.”

  • INSTEAD OF SAYING: “I CHATTED TO SOME FRIENDS ON ZOOM”

Say: “Some close acquaintances and I met face-to-face using a cloud-based video conferencing service, whereupon we discussed all manner of things.”

  • INSTEAD OF SAYING: “I FINISHED MY BOOK”

Take a leaf out of Jane Austen’s book and say: “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than of a book!”

  • INSTEAD OF SAYING: “I SCROLLED AIMLESSLY THROUGH INSTAGRAM”

Say: “I visited the world’s largest image gallery and perused the many exhibits on display, in order to gather inspiration for the interior design of my future home, outfits I will wear once I can go outside again, and cakes I will bake once I can actually buy flour and eggs.”

  • INSTEAD OF SAYING: “I ATE ALL MY QUARANTINE SNACKS IN ONE SITTING”

Say: “I struggled in vain to curb my innermost desires, but alas! I am only human, and some temptations cannot be resisted.”

  • INSTEAD OF SAYING: “I PLAYED VIDEO GAMES FOR A BIT”

Say: “I used an innovative software system to test my mental and physical reflexes, not to mention my decision-making.”

  • INSTEAD OF SAYING: “I WENT TO THE SUPERMARKET”

Say: “I embarked on an intrepid mission outdoors, in a bid to replenish our supplies and see us through this infernal quarantine.”

  • INSTEAD OF SAYING: “ I MADE A SPOT OF DINNER”

Say: “Cooking is an expression that crosses boundaries, and last night saw me transcend all boundaries as I whipped up a culinary storm in my kitchen.”

  • INSTEAD OF SAYING: “I TRIED TO DO A JOE WICKS WORKOUT”

Say: “I did my best to exert myself with the help of an old friend. One always feels better when the blood starts pumping, doesn’t one?”

  • INSTEAD OF SAYING: “I HAD A SHOWER”

Say: “I shed my clothes, until I was as naked as the day I was born, and stepped under a stream of gushing water. It cleansed me, body and soul, and left me feeling utterly invigorated.”

  • INSTEAD OF SAYING: “I DID A LOT OF UNNECESSARY ONLINE SHOPPING”

Make like Barbra Streisand in Hello Dolly and say: “Money, pardon the expression, is like manure. It’s not worth a thing unless it’s spread around, encouraging young things to grow.  And so I sacrificed my disposable income in a bid to give the economy a boost.”

  • INSTEAD OF SAYING: “I FELL ASLEEP ON THE SOFA”

Say: “I hunkered down for the night far from my creature comforts, with nary a duvet or pillow in sight.”

(Stylist)

 

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Mobile Gaming Hits $9.7 Million Daily Revenue

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Mobile gaming is continuing to grow in popularity. Mobile games are too generating impressive amounts of profit for game developers. GoldenCasinoNews have found the five leading iOS gaming apps in the US hit a whopping $9.7M in daily revenue as of April 2020. Thats $2.7M of daily profit. While Roblox represents the top grossing US app store for April

Mobile Gaming reaches $5 Million in Daily Revenue

2019, Roblox Mobile hit more than $1BN in lifetime revenue. While 67% of that came from the US alone. The kid friendly game reached over 290M downloads. Furthermore Google Play downloads made 75% of that amount, yet, it was Apple users more likely to spend in game. With iPhone and iPad spending account for 76% of the revenue.

Fortnite came in 2nd in the US with a total of $2.3M of daily income for April, revealed by Statista data. Fortnite, owned by Epic Games, became the leading free to play game in 2019, reaching a total of $1.8BN of revenue.

Both Roblox and Fortnite, two leading mobile iOS gaming apps in the US, garnered over $5M of daily revenue for April. This accounts for $1.8M of daily profit. With Candy Crush Saga coming in 3rd for the most profitable mobile game in the US app store.

Coin Master Hit $1.7 Million 

4th is Coin Master. Statistics show that the popular single player game, which was created by Israeli studio Moon Active. Hit $17M of revenue and over $2M of downloads last month.

PUBG Mobile -2nd Anniversary came in 5th in April. Hitting $1.4M daily profit. Last month the free to play multiplayer game hit 11M downloads and $23M worth of revenue worldwide. With $1.7 million daily, Coin Master ranked fourth on this App Store list. Statistics show the popular single-player mobile game created by Israeli studio Moon Active hit over $17 million in revenue and more than 2 million downloads globally

(GoldenCasinoNews)

 

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Coronavirus

Coronavirus: Are you helping to flatten the curve?

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Drastic measures have been put into place to stop the spread of Coronavirus. Every country affected by the Coronavirus have put in varying levels of lockdown to help dampen and flatten the curve until many of us can go back outside again. But what would happen if we do go out?

Coronavirus Explainer: What if you go out?

  • You go out and visit friends and family
  • However, you don’t display any symptoms of COVID-19 and think that you are safe.
  • Turns out you have COVID 19 but don’t show any symptoms whatsoever
  • When visiting friends and family you pass it on to 2 of your friends and a grandparent
  • Each of those go on to visit their own friends and members of their family
  • According to scientific modelling, those affected, on average, without social distancing in place, will pass on the virus to 3 other people.

Spreading Coronavirus

  • As a result out of one infection, cases will soon start to spread quickly and far outside your own network
  • Most of those infected, however, would experience either mild symptoms or have a nasty flu like experience, making a full recovery. Some would require hospital treatment.
  • According to scientific modelling by Imperial College London, about 4.5% of those infected would need to be admitted to hospital
  • The same model predicts that out of 100 people, 30 would need a critical care bed.
  • However the NHS face problems as out of those 30 people only 1 person can receive a bed once the pandemic hits peak
  • Therefore NHS doctors face dilemma’s as to who does and who doesn’t receive the bed
  • Should Patient A, a 78 year old retired teacher and grandmother of 7 get the bed. Or Patient B, a 68 year old retired fire fighter who is the sole carer of his wife who has Alzeihmers disease?

Overcoming the disease

  • The Imperial team have assessed various different ways of reducing the number of people needing the NHS’s critical-care beds.
  • The team discovered that if people experienced symptoms and those who lived with them. Stayed home for 2 weeks. Whilst those over 70 reduced social contact and kept it to a minimum. The impact on the NHS would be reduced.
  • However, even with this measure it still leaves 8 patients needing 1 bed.
  • Therefore the team discovered that if social distancing measures applied to everyone. Schools and Universities closed. The two week quarantine period applied to households who had people living in them that showed symptoms. Then the NHS can cope.
  • This would then lead to the NHS being able to cope with the number of patients in their wards at the peak of the pandemic
  • However, despite all these measures. Those in places where demand happened to be above average, NHS services would still be be strained.
  • The research undertaken by Imperial College has been very influencial. The approach explained here is similar to what UK government ministers have implemented. The NHS, so far, has not been overwhelmed largely because of social distancing and lockdown measures.

2nd Wave

  • Though, we have to be careful.
  • As, as soon as the measures are lifted, the research predicts that another outbreak could occur. Which would be just as bad if we had done nothing this time round.
  • There are only 2 ways out of lockdown. A development of a vaccine. Or a more effective way of testing people, tracing all those who had come into contact with those who were tested positive.
  • Since the research was released, so far there has been a huge effort to increase the number of critical care beds available, up from 5,000 that the NHS had at the time
  • To keep the curve flat, we must stay at home and work from home where possible. It is vitaly important.

(BBC)

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sweden

Sweden has a FAR different approach to COVID

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Sweden is one of the few countries not to enter a partial or full lockdown to help the fight against coronavirus.

Swedish authorities have opted for a relaxed measure to help isolated confirmed cases as much as possible. Keeping schools for younger children, restaurants and most shops open. While Denmark, Finland and Norway have all imposed some form of lockdown 3 weeks ago.

Sweden still operate social distancing guidelines. Traffic data from Citymapper suggest that trips within Stockholm have fallen 70%. As most people are working from home if they can.

However, the most recent figures are suggesting that this wasn’t enough. Sweden have now recorded almost 800 deaths from Coronavirus. Which is twice as many as it’s Scandinavian neighbours combined.

Sweden’s strategy is a bold one, though if deaths keep rising at the current rate, it has not worked as intended.

(Chartr)

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Quarantine Queries

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The guys over at Chartr use Google Trends to gather up lovely data for us all to look at. A LOT of it is very interesting. At a time like this where we are all in quarantine, what better time to look at the data. So they checked out Google trends to map out ways we’re living differently.

First of all, a lot of us are googling ‘What is Zoom’. Why is this important? Well a few months ago Zoom only had 10 million users. Now? Well, there’s over 200 million users.

“Bars Near Me” has been replaced with “Wine Delivery”. Those who are looking for puzzles may be digging out old copies of the sims.

Furthermore “Gym Membership” search queries has been replaced by “Online Yoga”. While no one is searching for “Hot Outfit For A Date” and “Weekend Getaway” anymore.

Also, no one is searching for “Bus or Train Timetables”, people are searching for “Buy A Desk”, but not “Buy a Suitcase”. While people searching on “How To Watch Harry Potter”

 

Harry Potter is childhood nostalgia and comfort. Therefore it makes sense as to why people are searching for Harry Potter and are re-watching them during quarantine.

Quarantine Potter

Chartr have plotted the number of mentions of Harry Potter books against the screen time of those characters, across all 8 movies. This is so they can see which of the characters were relatively promoted during the transition period from book to screen.

The results showed that the film adaptations of the books, did a pretty good jon. As most of the main characters were promoted well. This suggests that the producers did stick faithfully to the books. However, this could be down to how closely JK Rowling worked on the makings of the films.

Screen Time

However, some characters did in fact do better! Lucius Malfoy was mentioned 249 times. Which would equate to 6 minutes of screen time. Yet he got more than 15 minutes. Narcissa also got more screen time. Though many of the Weasley family, Bill, Percy and Molly got less screen time.

The above chart shows 100 most mentioned characters that got at least 1 minute of screen time. Though some didn’t make it into the films at all! For example Ludo Bagman got 250 mentions in the books. Though he never made it into the movies. Bagman was the head of the Department of Magical Games and Sports. Peeves the Ghost, Winky the crouch family elf or Charlie Weasley didn’t make the cut either.

Mad Eye Moody also got hit hard. Though his screen time may be attributed to Barty Crouch Jr who pretended to be him in the Goblet of Fire.

Overall though the data suggests a very good adaptation of the books, and the screen did well to portray the book. Which is good considering the over 4200 pages of source material.

 

Technology has served us well in quarantine too. Data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics has shown an interesting trend in the US over the last 45 years.

Things produced in the US per hour (Productivity) has gone up 120% since 1970. While the compensation of workers has gone up by little over 50%. Why aren’t they closer together like before 1975?

Well, it could be attributed to globalisation, bargaining power, minimum wages, public policy and legislation all impact how wages are determined.

Quarantine Robots

Technology is getting better and better. More and more people are being replaced by technology. Which on the surface of things is a good thing. A factory worker could go do what he/she wants. The new car people want to buy is cheaper as it was made by a robot, which works more productively and up to 24 hours a day.

However, if retraining is difficult or there isn’t as much competition, the company will reap all the benefits. Which in turn will result in the transfer of income from labour to capital owners. While studies suggest consistently that technological change decouples wages from productivity.

The chart is not intended to show a political point but to stimulate debate when many jobs which are deemed lower skill are absolutely essential to our survival.

While a study from McKinsey suggests that “about half of all the activities people are paid to do in the world’s workforce could potentially be automated by adapting currently demonstrated technologies”. Automation is coming, and if we manage it properly it could be wonderful for millions of people.

(Chartr)

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