ECN Forum Forums Thread Like Summary - How's all our Non-US folks doing?

Hi Guys,
It's been a while since there's been a new thread in this area and I thought I'd ask the question as to how you're all going?

Considering that different parts of Europe and the UK have been in and out of lockdown, are you folks still managing to eek out a living?

Have any of you folks had a near-miss with the Covid-19?

I'm opening the floor up to any and all comments from you, let's talk this over.........

Florida is pretty much wide open. We have a bump in infections among the unvaccinated but nobody here seems that concerned about it.

For me,
I went into business on my own, 6 months before this virus even was a thing.
Things have been ROUGH, a good percentage of my work dried up overnight, not because I couldn't do it,
but because everyone was so scared that they couldn't even afford to eat or pay the bills.

I only do Commercial and Industrial work, but there were so many places that closed up on the Commercial side of things, factories kept running, places like restaurants and service firms all closed their doors, which would have been the perfect time to do things like preventative maintenance and the like, just had no money to do it, they were trying to pay their staff, when there were no customers coming through the doors.

I'm not going to gloat about how New Zealand was so lucky, the Government could have done more to ensure our safety and well-being.
Personally, they should have opened up the individual traders (fruit and vege shops, butcheries, etc), so that we had real choice (and pricing) where we got our food from at the time.
The supermarkets here, elevated their prices as soon as the lock-down started, we only have two companies that work in a duopoly, that is really piss-poor.

I have not lost employment (TV broadcast engineer), and my free-lance radio station engineering clients have been able to pay my invoices, so I've been fortunate. We've had our Pfizer shots, so my wife feels more comfortable sitting inside restaurants and going shopping. Still diligent wearing masks in public, not only because of COVID but pollen...my allergies are in high gear with trees and flowers in full bloom.

We're starting to see an increase in copper theft. I am getting ready to slobber tar over exposed grounding straps at the tower sites to lessen their appeal to the thieves. Prices for wire and lumber are going sky-high, which might affect some of my upcoming projects.

Cool that you guys are still around! I haven't been here for a long time. I'm not working directly with electrical equipment anymore, just doing desk work. In the past few years I've worked with nuclear, wind power and most recently a huge battery factory.

Hi ECN members, I also have to apologize for my slackness. Life is busy here in Auckland, NZ. Keeping busy with utility work, also sometimes working away from my normal base in Palmerston North and Wellington.
We are still more or less Covid free in NZ except, Wellington has gone level 2 with an Australian visitor who was positive, Geno sequencing at this stage has proven so far that there is no transfer, see what will happen over the next week or so.
Just heard in the news that New South Wales , Australia is going into a 2 weeks lockdown from 6 PM local time.
Regards, Raymond (Rodalco)

I think the stray case is always the fear in a largely sequestered population. There is no naturally acquired immunity. What is your vaccination rate there? Do you have an active anti vax population?
The vaccine seems to be knocking it down pretty fast here but we still have a significant number of people refusing it.