Mathematicians from Oxford University said putting groups of six in the shapes was space-efficient and could help people maintain the UK’s strict two-metre social distancing rule.
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If you live in chaos, you can get a decent cardio workout just by tidying, moving things at speed off the floor of one room and into another
A couple of years ago, I was trying to place the entire fitness industry on the arc of feminism, with my friend who’s an aerobics teacher. What does it mean, if we’re all dropping a load of time and money trying to hone our glutes? Is it straight objectification? (Must look better to fit society’s view of female form! Must be best self to maximise market value in a neoliberal frame!) Or is it a story of emancipation and strength? (I don’t need a man – I can push over a car using only my thighs.) She said, “You’re partly looking at an aerobics class full of women who no longer do their own housework. The amount of physical activity is the same in a class, it’s just that nothing gets any cleaner.” So really it was more of a Marxist question than a feminist one, but never mind that now.
What I’ve been ruminating on recently is the question: is the amount of energy you expend cleaning the same as an aerobics class? Well, one: only if you plan it to be. Two: there will be gaps in the workout, but you can fill those with bodyweight bolt-ons. Three: cleaning demands – craves – music, because it otherwise drops to a sedate pace. I’d even suggest making some 20-minute 160BPM playlists. (I’ve got a musicals playlist, and everyone hates it: my mister because he hates musicals, the children because they say every time they hear The Greatest Showman, they know I’m going to be in a really self-righteous mood. This doesn’t deter me, as I am possessed by my own righteousness.) Continue reading…
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Millennials are said to be more narcissistic than any other cohort of society. A self-confessed self-obsessive works out whether that’s a problem
I was on the phone to a friend recently, blathering away as usual, when I realised that there was no one on the other end of the line. How long ago had this happened? I checked my phone and discovered, to my horror, that the call had ended almost five minutes ago.
In the pub with another friend, not long after this incident, I asked how self-obsessed she thinks I am – a question only self-obsessed people ask, along with our other hobbies: stalking ourselves on social media and planning our own funerals. Without deliberation, she concluded that I was an 8.5 out of 10. “OK…” I reeled, deeply offended. “But I ask about you too, right? I am a good friend?” Quickly, the subject was changed. Continue reading…
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Increases in coronavirus-like illnesses weren’t apparent until March in places like New York, California and Washington, but a new CDC analysis suggests it was here a month earlier.
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In difficult times, it’s easy to feel at the mercy of big forces, but we’re more resourceful than we think
“What brings you here?” is the question, according to cliche, with which therapists always begin a first session with a client (or did, anyway, until sessions all moved on to Zoom). But in the 1970s, a therapist based in Milwaukee, Steve de Shazer, began to experiment with another approach. Instead of the standard question – which is pretty much destined to get clients detailing their problems – he started asking what not having problems would look like. Over time, one version of this inquiry became codified as the Miracle Question, which runs as follows: “Suppose that one night, while you were asleep, there was a miracle, and this problem was solved. How would you know? What would be different?”
To be honest, this sort of thing raises my hackles. It smacks of magical thinking, and positive visualisation, and somehow catapulting yourself out of the real circumstances of your life (including your rung on the economic ladder) into a realm of unalloyed bliss. But that wasn’t what happened. More often than not, Shazer’s clients came up with strikingly modest visions. In their imagined miracle worlds, one client might wake up and realise she looked forward to the day, instead of dreading it. Another would find that when she talked to her children, they responded; another might find herself standing up to a workplace bully. Continue reading…
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Lockdown has reminded us of the pleasures of walking. But making small changes can boost its benefits to our health, mood and creativity, too
As a form of physical activity, it is easy to dismiss walking as, well, pedestrian. But now its benefits, both physical and mental, are being appreciated once again. Under lockdown, daily walks became sacred. Now they are the safest way to commute, and, for those stuck at home, there is little place else to go other than to wander the streets, forests, towpaths, cemeteries and eerily deserted business quarters.
We have become nosy tourists in our own neighbourhoods. We seek out less-travelled backwaters, eyeing curiously the fragments of human and animal lives that we pass, gazing on seasonal changes like besotted new parents. But are we walking to the best of our abilities? Possibly not. Sports scientist Joanna Hall has dedicated her career to coaching people in how to walk the way their bodies were designed to, which no longer comes easily in this sedentary, screen-based era. Continue reading…
http://dlvr.it/RXb7RP
NISHINIPPON SHIMBUN
Amid the pandemic, students who are required to go through practical training, including on navigation so they can attain national qualifications, are not able to carry that out at present.
Most schools in the Kyushu region have resumed classes now the state of emergency has been lifted. However, teachers at schools offering practical training are worried whether they will be able to go through the necessary areas required for the national qualifications by the end of the academic year, which ends in March.
A comment recently posted on the website of the Kumamoto Agricultural High School, a prefecture-run institution in the city of Kumamoto, reads, “Even during the school closure, plants on our farm are growing quickly!”
Photos posted on the website also shows school teachers and staffers harvesting white radish. But absent from the photos are the students who sowed the seeds in March.
Third-year students at the high school traditionally use the harvested radish in a sports festival dancing program in May. But the sports event itself was canceled due to the coronavirus outbreak. The school has also canceled farming class sessions during which students were set to cultivate spring crops such as watermelon and tomatoes and harvest them in the summer.
The pandemic has also affected the school’s livestock handlers. Students enrolled in the school’s livestock breeding course take care of about 500 chickens and several dozen cows and pigs.
Normally, students would collect freshly produced eggs, milk the cow and clean the barn every morning. Due to the pandemic, teachers have had to take over these obligations.
“You can’t conduct cropping and harvesting lessons, or training on how to raise farm animals online,” said Takamitsu Kusano, the school’s vice principal. “I am looking forward to seeing our students back on our farm.”
After the state of emergency was lifted in the prefecture, some training sessions resumed for students in the second and third year, on a rotating basis from May 18. The school plans to resume face-to-face classes from June 1.
Meanwhile in Fukuoka Prefecture, students enrolled at Fukuoka Technical High School, a public school located in the city, are supposed to learn how to operate processing machines, including those for metal — some students even become skilled enough to pass an electrical worker certificate. But schools have not been able to offer lessons for such skills due to the prolonged school closures.
The school resumed classes in smaller groups starting May 19 and fully reopened Friday. But the closure has especially taken a toll on first graders, who need to learn how to operate specialized machines and tools from scratch.
The delay has also sparked concerns about safety, given that students need to acquire sufficient knowledge and skills to operate tools to proceed with the curriculum.
Fisheries schools share the same problem. Students enrolled in fisheries courses are now unable to board vessels to learn about navigation and fishing.
“The vessel actually is our school. If you don’t get on board, you won’t learn how to steer,” said Akihito Oshiba, 53, who teaches marine science at the Fukuoka Prefectural Suisan Marine Studies High School in the city of Fukutsu.
After completing the school’s three-year basic course, students improve their skills during a two-year specialized program.
Every year, about 10 students on the specialized program cruise off the coast of Hawaii, where they spend about a year learning how to navigate and gaining knowledge about tuna longline fishing. This year, the cruise scheduled to start in April was called off.
Now that the state of emergency in Fukuoka has been lifted, the school is revising its curriculum. Due to the ongoing pandemic, the school plans to shorten its onboard training program, which will resume in September and will not include Hawaii in the itinerary.
However, such changes will affect students who are required to complete training lasting at least a year so they can take the level three maritime officer certificate, a national qualification.
The school, along with other institutions, is urging the government to allow students to take the exam by counting classroom lectures as equivalent to the practical experience required for national qualifications.
School authorities worry, however, that even after classes are resumed, onboard training will pose a high risk of infection due to closed and poorly ventilated spaces.
The school will require its students to self-quarantine for two weeks before boarding the training vessel.
“I want to help our students, including their mental status, and send them on a journey across the seas,” Oshiba said.
Source: Japan’s farming and fisheries schools struggle to move lessons online | The Japan Times
KYODO
While medical workers in the United States and Europe have often been heralded as heroes in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, many nurses and doctors in Japan have faced discrimination and ostracism despite heightened social media efforts to recognize their contribution.
In an April survey conducted by the Japan Federation of Medical Worker’s Unions, 9.9 percent of its 152 offices across the country responded that medical workers in their jurisdictions had encountered discrimination or harassment due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Cases included being told by family members not to come home, being shunned even by staff from other wards and being subjected to abuse when making house calls.
A study also found that hospitals and their workers were blamed when coronavirus infections occurred there, resulting in the children of hospital staff being refused entry to kindergartens and other child care facilities or being pressured to stay away from school.
The Kobe City Medical Center General Hospital in Hyogo Prefecture, which had admitted a total of 96 coronavirus patients as of May 22 and seen 29 of its medical workers contract the virus, has released a report detailing how staff members and their families have been subject to discrimination.
The husband of a nurse at the hospital was told by his company not to come into the office should his wife continue working. He was effectively forced to choose between his wife quitting her job or quitting himself, according to the report.
Another nurse who was pregnant was denied a medical examination by a doctor at a different hospital, it said.
Elsewhere, Kosui Tago, 27, a nurse at a hospital in Nagano Prefecture treating coronavirus patients, spoke of the discrimination his colleagues face.
The daughter of a nurse at an elementary school has become a victim of bullying, being nicknamed “corona-chan,” he said, while another nurse is now living apart from her family out of fear her son might get bullied at elementary school.
“I do understand the anxiety, but it is necessary for the people who discriminate to have a wider view,” he said. “I think we are not seeing a trend of us being treated as heroes like in other countries because in general, the Japanese like to stay low-key. I’m not working to be treated as a hero but to help the patients.”
Tago spends around six hours on average a day wearing protective gear and attending to patients. “Although the state of emergency has been lifted, we still have to be very careful. The gear is very stressful as we cannot eat or go to the toilet,” he said.
Similar experiences of discrimination reported by nurses continue to be shared on Twitter under a Japanese hashtag meaning “corona discrimination.”
In late April, a Twitter user who said she was a nurse posted that she had been told by a mother to refrain from going to a playground with her child.
The tweet attracted more than 2,000 comments, most of which were supportive of the nurse.
“I’m at a loss for words. Are they saying medical workers should only travel between their home and workplace?” one user wrote. Another said, “Medical workers are thanked and respected overseas. What happened to the Japanese people? Shameful.”
But while some consider such reactions to the coronavirus unwarranted, others have taken a more sympathetic view.
“I think people who turn to coronavirus bullying are tired. Because they have no place to let out the stress that accumulates every day, they use the coronavirus as an outlet,” one user wrote.
Medical anthropologist Maho Isono said that while such discrimination should not be condoned, it reflects shortcomings in how the Japanese government has presented its COVID-19 countermeasures to the public, accusing it of messaging that “scares people and creates anxiety.”
“When people are required to avoid those who have been in close contact with an infected person, it is understandable as a risk hedge approach that people discriminate against medical workers, even if it is a morally incorrect action,” Isono said.
“It is remarkable how a pandemic, and the way that it is communicated to the public, has changed people’s moral consciousness,” she said, calling on the government and the media to offer more reassurance to the public.
Tatsuya Sato, professor of social psychology at Ritsumeikan University, said uncertainties surrounding the pandemic were fueling risk aversion.
“Since so few PCR tests have been conducted in Japan, there is an overall fear that there are more infections than reported officially. In such a situation, and when the government’s approach is to ask people to make voluntary efforts to avoid infection, it is actually natural that they move away from potential sources — such as medical workers — to create a zero-risk situation,” he said.
Sato believes such behavior will persist as long as there is no vaccine or proven treatment for the virus and physical distancing is viewed as the most effective way to prevent infections.
“This behavior would change if we knew with clarity who is infected and who is not, but the characteristics of the new coronavirus make this hard,” he said.
Even medical workers not involved in the coronavirus fight have come under fire. Ironically, given the reaction to those who are, they are being blamed for not being on the front-line themselves.
A nurse in her 40s working at a hospital in Osaka Prefecture where no coronavirus patients have been admitted, said, “I was told (by an acquaintance) that despite being a nurse, I was not contributing to society,” she said. “People regard those of us not treating coronavirus patients as useless. I want people to know that this sort of discrimination exists as well.”
With over 14 years of experience in caregiving and eight years in nursing, she expressed her frustration at being regarded as a “low-level nurse,” simply because her hospital has no coronavirus patients.
“We can’t pick our patients, but we take care of them day after day. Even though I have a young child, I still take night shifts,” said the single mother of three children, the youngest aged 5.
“We nurses are not only fighting against coronavirus. We treat patients infected with viruses other than corona,” she said.
To counter the hostility experienced by some medical workers, sports figures, companies and local governments have stepped in to show their appreciation in various ways.
In early April, five players from a professional soccer league in Japan established the Instagram account “ThanksMedicalWorkers.”
“We want this message to be sent to many medical workers to invigorate them as much as possible,” said Kazuki Nagasawa, the striker and club talisman of the Urawa Reds who initiated the movement.
A Japanese hashtag meaning “medical workers are our heroes” has also been trending, with many professional tennis players, boxers and baseball players posting photos of themselves with fists raised in gestures expressing their support for front-line workers.
The iconic pose originates from a gesture characters in the popular manga and anime “One Piece” make when expressing solidarity with each other, Nagasawa explained.
Outside of the sports world, Godiva Japan Inc. drew attention on social media after it began donating chocolates and cookies to send “hope and joy” to medical professionals at around 1,000 hospitals in the country.
The campaign began in mid-April after the popular confectioner was inspired by one of its founders, who had delivered chocolates in a pink van to citizens in Brussels in the aftermath of World War II, said President Jerome Chouchan via a spokesperson.
Drawing inspiration from the cheering and clapping for medical workers as seen overseas in Europe and the United States, officials of some municipalities in Japan also applaud at a fixed time of the day, in what has been dubbed by some as the “Friday Ovation.”
Among them is the city of Iwaki in Fukushima Prefecture, along with the cities of Aomori, Hiroshima and Fukuoka, as well as Ibaraki, Okayama and Okinawa prefectures.
The clapping in Iwaki, conducted daily at noon, began on April 17 when around a dozen city hall employees gathered in the lobby and applauded for 30 seconds.
Hiroshi Numata, an official from the city’s health and welfare department, said he hopes the applause makes people more conscious about the supportive role they can play and helps counter baseless rumors about medical workers.
“By clapping regularly, we ourselves will be reminded to not put a strain on them and be careful in our behavior,” Numata said.
In the skies above Tokyo, meanwhile, the Air Self-Defense Force’s Blue Impulse acrobatics corps performed a flyover for about 20 minutes on Friday afternoon to express appreciation to medical workers on the front lines fighting the pandemic.
Besides moral support, some local governments are also providing financial assistance by tapping into donations via their furusato nōzei (hometown tax donation) system, which allows people to donate to a municipality of their choice in return for gifts and certain tax exemptions.
Donations to Ena, Gifu Prefecture, are used to provide medical masks and disinfectants, with donors receiving specially designed masks from the city in exchange.
Several prefectures also allow people via the hometown tax system to specifically identify “aid to medical workers” as the destination for their money.
Hokkaido, which began soliciting donations from April 24 without any gift in return, hit its target of ¥50 million ($464,000) in just two days.
The prefecture, which declared a state of emergency in February long before the central government, became one of the hardest-hit regions in Japan after facing a second wave of infections.
The donations will be accepted through July and demonstrate the public’s support for medical workers, said Shigenori Goto, an official from Hokkaido’s public-private sector coordination division.
“What we very much want medical workers to realize is that over 7,000 people made donations, and that so many people want to do something for them,” he said.
Source: Front-line health care workers in Japan face discrimination over coronavirus | The Japan Times
Cancer, asthma and organ transplant patients were dropped from the Government’s coronavirus shielding list in an abrupt text message, it emerged last night.
Patients with various health conditions that raise their risk of dying from Covid-19 were told they had been removed from the scheme in the GOV.UK text.
The message – which has caused confusion and upset – also informed them they would no longer qualify for state-provided food parcels.
Those who received the text included liver transplant patients, those with brittle asthma, certain types of cancer, liver disease and people on immunosuppressant medications.
Many patients were alarmed that they had been dropped from the National Shielding Service without being talked through the decision by their GP.
It’s unclear how many patients received the text last week, but more than 2million people in England were put on the shielding list at the start of the pandemic.
Cancer, asthma and organ transplant patients were dropped from the Government’s coronavirus shielding list in an abrupt text message, it emerged last night.
Patients with various health conditions that raise their risk of dying from Covid-19 were told they had been removed from the scheme in the GOV.UK text.
The message – which has caused confusion and upset – also informed them they would no longer qualify for state-provided food parcels.
Those who received the text included liver transplant patients, those with brittle asthma, certain types of cancer, liver disease and people on immunosuppressant medications.
Many patients were alarmed that they had been dropped from the National Shielding Service without being talked through the decision by their GP.
It’s unclear how many patients received the text last week, but more than 2million people in England were put on the shielding list at the start of the pandemic.
‘This will not affect your eligibility for a supermarket priority delivery slot or any slots you already have in place.’
Leading health charities and several MPs have demanded the Department of Health give the patients some clarity.
The British Liver Trust said the decision had ’caused real worry for patients’ and urged those who had received a text to ‘continue to shield unless you have spoken to your doctor’.
Asthma UK said: ‘We have heard from people with severe asthma and lung disease who have been alarmed about receiving text messages with no explanation, dropping them from shielding. Some are saying their GP had also not been told. This is an utter mess.’
A spokesman for the Government said: ‘The government is committed to supporting the clinically extremely vulnerable and all decisions about whether someone should shield are clinically led.
‘In some cases health experts have advised that a patient no longer needs to shield themselves from coronavirus. Where this is the case, the person will be informed that they are not on the shielded patient list.
‘Those advised that they no longer need to shield may still access forms of support including the NHS Volunteers network, and will retain their supermarket priority delivery slots.’
An official shielding list was assembled at the start of the pandemic, which included patients with health woes that put them at risk of coronavirus complications.
They were advised to ‘stay at home at all times’ and offered food packages so they did not need to venture to the shops where they could be exposed to the disease.
One in 25 people in England are on the shielding list and classified as extremely vulnerable.
Care assistant Louisa Fenton, 24, who suffers from severe asthma, said getting the message on Friday had caused her extreme distress.
She told the Guardian: ‘This has made me feel awful. Throughout lockdown I’ve been living on my own and I’ve been relying on the food boxes.’
Ms Fenton said she felt like ‘a guinea pig in some kind of experiment’.
It comes just weeks after more than 100,000 people were wrongly told that they were ‘extremely vulnerable’ to coronavirus.
Letters were sent to 2.16million people advising them to ‘shield’ themselves by not leaving their homes and minimising all face-to-face contact – even more stringently than the measures applied to everyone else.
But around five per cent of the recipients were incorrectly included. It follows the revelation that 10,000 letters had been sent to the homes of people who had died, causing distress to families.
The initial list of qualifying patients was put together in haste in mid-March, around the same time Prime Minister Boris Johnson began addressing the nation about the impending crisis.
But the speed and complexity of the process meant errors were included. After GPs were asked to validate the initial shielded patient list, around 107,000 patients were removed, the Department of Health and Social Care said.
source: http://dlvr.it/RXXfGr
Critical care nurse Sue Snelson, 64, from Lincolnshire, spent 12 days in the ICU at Scunthorpe General Hospital and told on GMB she tested negative for coronavirus twice.
http://dlvr.it/RXXf11
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