Not Online!!! wrote:So again: not only are you in your OWN logical system not coherent or complete enough to form an actual argument, but are also complaining about "virtue signalers".
You, of course, did a better job than me laying all that out. Sqorgar never bothered to respond to me, so I doubt you'll get a well thought out reply either. I really just dislike it when people just take pseudo-Utilitarian approaches as if they are something like a notional "natural law" or somehow self-evident. I also couldn't remember who has the critique of viewing people as primarily just economic units, might just have been a flawed summary I got of Arendt or something though, but I think it applies here too.
Duskweaver wrote:On a lighter note, the Youtube algorithm has apparently become self-aware and is laughing at us. Here's what it suggested to me this morning:
I actually got the same recommendation this morning too,
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Ah the joys of being stupid enough to smoke, and having little to do. Means you smoke more. Leads to a tight chest.
you could pretend for a second you'd have to pay swiss prices on cigs that scares that nonsense right out of you.
Might actually be the time to give up,
Every three packs you don't smoke is a licence to buy a pack of GW models.
We'll swamp your smoke for bones! Plastic bones....
Three? Damn I'm glad I don't live in Europe. Or are our gw prices that much higher over here?
Wait...how...how much does a pack of cigarettes cost?
Am I having a Bluth moment where I'm just like "I dunno, five dollars?" and it's actually like 20 dollars? I legitimately do not know, never smoked in my life.
About $5.50 as a starting point in the US. But much, much more expensive in many nations. £10-14-ish in the UK. Over $20 in Australia.
Christ, I remember back in 2009 when I worked in Morrisons, the regular smokkers could get 40 sticks for £10, 20 Mayfair for £4.90, and 20 lamberts for £5.10. It was like it was planned.
r_squared wrote: Yes, you're absolutely right. Our priorities should lie with the life of a human being over the financial systems which are there to service us, not the other way around.
I acknowledge you as a morally superior person. Consider your virtue signaled.
But over here in the real world, things are more complicated. Let's say there are two people who need a liver transplant. One is a 20 year old female with her whole life ahead of her and one is a bedridden 80 year old alcoholic. Is the decision of who gets the liver not as obvious to you as it is to me?
A prolonged lockdown would kick us so hard in the recession that our grandchildren will feel it. It will affect every single person in the country. Already, thousands of people have been fired from the service industry and we haven't even technically started a lockdown yet. Who's gonna pay for their unemployment? Most places have a hiring freeze on right now. When will they be able to get jobs again? I guess they could work at Amazon warehouses...
The stock market has wiped out many people's retirement funds - and a lot of them won't be around long enough to see it rebound and come back. Who knows how this will affect them if they need that money for healthcare? There's several industries which are already on the verge of collapse, and local businesses don't have the capital to go several months without income. Many of those unemployed people won't have jobs to come back to.
Isolation is literally considered a form or torture, and the effect on the mental health of people asked to spend a month or longer away from other human contact will be measured in depression and suicide. And with all this will come an increase in crime. And all this for a disease that has taken less lives than the seasonal flu?
It isn't that I don't feel bad for the bedridden 80 year old alcoholic, but if I have to choose who to give the liver to, I'm going to give it to the person with a future, who might have kids one day, and who might survive more than a few more years with it.
--> You have no idea about the consequences yet.
--> you have no idea about potential effects on the market yet.
--> You would sacrifice x ammount of people for a bit of money. Having no idea about potential rebounds through things like historically happened with the "New Deal" or other such instruments.
--> You also assume the "Greater Good" for people with pensions etc is more important then the whole society .
--> Most tyranical systems claim to do things for the "Greater good" including but not limited to the Extreme right wing Nazis to the Terrorregimes of socialist countries to military dictatorships "protecting" from socialist countries. That is a dangerous clause to invoke there lad.
--> Utilitariansim gives you the ilusion of actual decision making based on rationale, let me ask you do you know what happens when x / y surivives? No? then how can you decide?
--> Utilitarianism ALLWAYS has underlying ethics. Even your exemple has, therefore you enter again into subjectivity, scuse me that is not the way to go forwards.
--> Further, the virus damages the lungs, follow sickness will damage the economy and health of the people more throughly if let unchecked and most certainly longterm.
--> further , the vast to be expected losses through overcrowding of the medical system will lead to casualities that were not necessary, and will seriously disrupt local and national live even moreso then anything else. Disrupting the chains of transport which are as off yet thankfully still working.
So again: not only are you in your OWN logical system not coherent or complete enough to form an actual argument, but are also complaining about "virtue signalers".
You realize this applies almost the same to the actions we are taking, its all risk judgement right now there is no certainty either way.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
queen_annes_revenge wrote: Now is definitely the time to stop smoking, although the economy will definitely collapse if everyone stopped now.
have you looked at the economy in the last couple weeks, that ships already sailed, and no i wont feel bad if tobacco companies lose money.
Not Online!!! wrote:So again: not only are you in your OWN logical system not coherent or complete enough to form an actual argument, but are also complaining about "virtue signalers".
You, of course, did a better job than me laying all that out. Sqorgar never bothered to respond to me, so I doubt you'll get a well thought out reply either. I really just dislike it when people just take pseudo-Utilitarian approaches as if they are something like a notional "natural law" or somehow self-evident. I also couldn't remember who has the critique of viewing people as primarily just economic units, might just have been a flawed summary I got of Arendt or something though, but I think it applies here too.
Meh, i dislike arendt for other reasons.
Further, even IF you look at humans as solely economic units, as economics tend to do, it makes 0 SENSE, because supply line disruption is vastly worse. So even if you go with an underlying ethic of humans only as human capital and fully accept that premise as flawed as it may or may not be, it would not lead to the desiered effect of the greater good simply due to casualities and disruptions of supply.
Further, and even adam Smith supports this, human capital has other relevant aspects to it, education f.e. vastly improves productivity , to educate you need to generally spend money. Taxes are another exemple, because roads and infrastructure rarley build themselves and you can look at italy how well certain bridges got maintained.ofcourse in that exemple the organized crime aswell is an issue but in general a state if he says he controlls stuff he does controll stuff. Generally.
Else heads roll-
You realize this applies almost the same to the actions we are taking, its all risk judgement right now there is no certainty either way.
Yes i do, however, as has been shown rather extensively in this thread sofar, understimation is not the way forward.
We know that it damages the lungs.
We also know that it does hospitalizes the younger aswell whilest rarely more often worse if it does.
Yeah, pack of 25 Marlboro is $42.99 over here.
25g Winfield RYO is $45.95.
Gov mandated price hikes on smokes are something I can get behind.
COVID-19 hasn't really had a great effect on life in WA. Social gatherings above 500 people outside/100 people inside have been banned, all the emergency services have cancelled non-essential training. There's been no community transmission in WA, we're basically trying to preemptively halt it.
Shopping centres are still getting flogged, though.
Further, even IF you look at humans as solely economic units, as economics tend to do, it makes 0 SENSE, because supply line disruption is vastly worse. So even if you go with an underlying ethic of humans only as human capital and fully accept that premise as flawed as it may or may not be, it would not lead to the desiered effect of the greater good simply due to casualities and disruptions of supply.
Further, and even adam Smith supports this, human capital has other relevant aspects to it, education f.e. vastly improves productivity , to educate you need to generally spend money. Taxes are another exemple, because roads and infrastructure rarley build themselves and you can look at italy how well certain bridges got maintained.ofcourse in that exemple the organized crime aswell is an issue but in general a state if he says he controlls stuff he does controll stuff. Generally. Else heads roll-
Well, I pretty much agree with all of that. To me, mind you, a total lay-person, but I don't think there could ever be a univariate manner of moral analysis that could capture the complexity of actual moral Being. If there were, the system would have to be just as complicated as the thing being modeled and that that point, we'd be right back where we started, with the universe as a whole, still vast complex and likely just as unclear. So, a hard-line Utilitarianism only "makes sense" in so far as we jettison all the prospective mitigating factors/concerns.
To me, what Sqorgar expresses is a notion that human sacrifice, that is, the sacrificing of lives (framed, of course, as people who are "objectively" deserving to die, because they were notionally "unwell" to begin with) is well worth the maintenance of economic "normalcy." But, as you (and others) have well pointed out, that is both not guaranteed, nor even a logically sound expectation in all likelihood, because even if that quoted 99% of people who suffer COVID-19 and die had underlying conditions holds, there are vast, second and third-order effects (and so on) that undermine the whole precept that "everything can just stay as "normal if we just keep everything as it was." Even if we run with a, say, 3% fatality rate, that is with intervention, so to suppose that it would hold there minus intervention is, to say it charitably, logically suspect.
But, ethical and moral simplicity is intoxicating and pleasurable, most likely. It's an uphill battle to even get people to evaluate the complexity, let alone grasp the scale and scope and grapple with all of that.
But, ethical and moral simplicity is intoxicating and pleasurable, most likely. It's an uphill battle to even get people to evaluate the complexity, let alone grasp the scale and scope and grapple with all of that.
Definitely. It's one of the reasons that populism can be so effective at gaining power (and subsequently ineffective at improving things when said power is gained). Human beings as a general collective entity seem to love the idea of simple solutions to complex problems, be those problems ethical, moral, economic etc. Unfortunately most problems we face are not so simple, sometimes due to the human element.
I'd also like to add that I always enjoy reading the philosophical discussions that you engage in
A Town Called Malus wrote: Definitely. It's one of the reasons that populism can be so effective at gaining power (and subsequently ineffective at improving things when said power is gained). Human beings as a general collective entity seem to love the idea of simple solutions to complex problems, be those problems ethical, moral, economic etc. Unfortunately most problems we face are not so simple, sometimes due to the human element.
I'd also like to add that I always enjoy reading the philosophical discussions that you engage in
Well, thanks, haha. I mean, I try, or at least, I'd like to think I am trying. Not that I think I have anything like an answer, or answers. I just think that a sort of Socratic-method has value and try to apply that. I certainly do not have a real grasp on the complexity of anything, but I try to stay always on the hunt. This is why I, in isolation, as sympathetic to Sqorgar's initial "frame" of some amount of skepticism about induction, or general philosophy of medicine. However, reductive skepticism, or skepticism for a political or economic end without applying the same skeptical lens to that frame itself, seems, how to say it, self-serving?
I guess, in a way, I do think of things you mention in the way Zizek reframes the "religion as the opiate of the masses" as "now we have two opiates: opium and the people." So, drugs themselves and people (i.e. populism). But, to not get political or anything, to bring this back, this pandemic places a ton of stress on a number of systems that were likely not "functionally sound" (that is, not capable of handling the extraordinary) which means that we failed to account of the worst case scenario. Now, since we have not planned for that, we need to take preventative measures to avert that, because just allowing the worst case to happen unmediated makes for even an even worse case going forward. While some might see a path on the left-wall or right-wall as preferable (that is, no action vs. extreme action) even those have second and third order effects. So, we really aren't left with much to do than to play both sides against the middle, which will also have consequences. Just ones that might be more palatable and relative.
In the end, we have to ask, should we literally sacrifice lives to the economy? The powers that be have instead decided to sacrifice the economy to lives. Depending on your subjective valuations, maybe you don't like that trade. The reality is not that cut and dry though. Even if we just let this run wild and lay down all those lives to this virus, the long term effects that could likely tank the economy anyway (not to mention collapse the medical system) and we'd have done nothing, or even less than nothing, but delayed the outcome.
But I think I am likely getting rambly here, let me stop
But, ethical and moral simplicity is intoxicating and pleasurable, most likely. It's an uphill battle to even get people to evaluate the complexity, let alone grasp the scale and scope and grapple with all of that.
Definitely. It's one of the reasons that populism can be so effective at gaining power (and subsequently ineffective at improving things when said power is gained). Human beings as a general collective entity seem to love the idea of simple solutions to complex problems, be those problems ethical, moral, economic etc. Unfortunately most problems we face are not so simple, sometimes due to the human element.
I'd also like to add that I always enjoy reading the philosophical discussions that you engage in
Funny. that was allways the argument against any direct democratic process.
The best recipe against this? Education, integration (into the government process) and decentralisation (timely and regionally)
Has worked for us sofar, why, i can only make a educated guess.
Probably because education and the posibility of it allow for an more egalitarian society bridging gaps. Further egalising society via conscription into a government position (even if just sitting around and doing push ups or shooting mostly) serves further to bridge gaps and build trust into authorities whilest also enforcing responsibility through requirement of loyality due to a monopol of force maintained by Militia. Therefore reliably integrating people into political process. And decentralisation, localizing government, making it responsible localy weakening it and therefore having to accept social structure and parallel self organisation in many forms for help, strengthening both transparancy and controll from citizen upward.
A Town Called Malus wrote: Definitely. It's one of the reasons that populism can be so effective at gaining power (and subsequently ineffective at improving things when said power is gained). Human beings as a general collective entity seem to love the idea of simple solutions to complex problems, be those problems ethical, moral, economic etc. Unfortunately most problems we face are not so simple, sometimes due to the human element.
I'd also like to add that I always enjoy reading the philosophical discussions that you engage in
Well, thanks, haha. I mean, I try, or at least, I'd like to think I am trying. Not that I think I have anything like an answer, or answers. I just think that a sort of Socratic-method has value and try to apply that. I certainly do not have a real grasp on the complexity of anything, but I try to stay always on the hunt. This is why I, in isolation, as sympathetic to Sqorgar's initial "frame" of some amount of skepticism about induction, or general philosophy of medicine. However, reductive skepticism, or skepticism for a political or economic end without applying the same skeptical lens to that frame itself, seems, how to say it, self-serving?
I guess, in a way, I do think of things you mention in the way Zizek reframes the "religion as the opiate of the masses" as "now we have two opiates: opium and the people." So, drugs themselves and people (i.e. populism). But, to not get political or anything, to bring this back, this pandemic places a ton of stress on a number of systems that were likely not "functionally sound" (that is, not capable of handling the extraordinary) which means that we failed to account of the worst case scenario. Now, since we have not planned for that, we need to take preventative measures to avert that, because just allowing the worst case to happen unmediated makes for even an even worse case going forward. While some might see a path on the left-wall or right-wall as preferable (that is, no action vs. extreme action) even those have second and third order effects. So, we really aren't left with much to do than to play both sides against the middle, which will also have consequences. Just ones that might be more palatable and relative.
In the end, we have to ask, should we literally sacrifice lives to the economy? The powers that be have instead decided to sacrifice the economy to lives. Depending on your subjective valuations, maybe you don't like that trade. The reality is not that cut and dry though. Even if we just let this run wild and lay down all those lives to this virus, the long term effects that could likely tank the economy anyway (not to mention collapse the medical system) and we'd have done nothing, or even less than nothing, but delayed the outcome.
But I think I am likely getting rambly here, let me stop
Very well put.
For the record I am for sacrifice economy for people, one can recover the dead cannot (unless you include zombies, none spotted as of yet).
A Town Called Malus wrote: Definitely. It's one of the reasons that populism can be so effective at gaining power (and subsequently ineffective at improving things when said power is gained). Human beings as a general collective entity seem to love the idea of simple solutions to complex problems, be those problems ethical, moral, economic etc. Unfortunately most problems we face are not so simple, sometimes due to the human element.
I'd also like to add that I always enjoy reading the philosophical discussions that you engage in
Well, thanks, haha. I mean, I try, or at least, I'd like to think I am trying. Not that I think I have anything like an answer, or answers. I just think that a sort of Socratic-method has value and try to apply that. I certainly do not have a real grasp on the complexity of anything, but I try to stay always on the hunt. This is why I, in isolation, as sympathetic to Sqorgar's initial "frame" of some amount of skepticism about induction, or general philosophy of medicine. However, reductive skepticism, or skepticism for a political or economic end without applying the same skeptical lens to that frame itself, seems, how to say it, self-serving?
I guess, in a way, I do think of things you mention in the way Zizek reframes the "religion as the opiate of the masses" as "now we have two opiates: opium and the people." So, drugs themselves and people (i.e. populism). But, to not get political or anything, to bring this back, this pandemic places a ton of stress on a number of systems that were likely not "functionally sound" (that is, not capable of handling the extraordinary) which means that we failed to account of the worst case scenario. Now, since we have not planned for that, we need to take preventative measures to avert that, because just allowing the worst case to happen unmediated makes for even an even worse case going forward. While some might see a path on the left-wall or right-wall as preferable (that is, no action vs. extreme action) even those have second and third order effects. So, we really aren't left with much to do than to play both sides against the middle, which will also have consequences. Just ones that might be more palatable and relative.
In the end, we have to ask, should we literally sacrifice lives to the economy? The powers that be have instead decided to sacrifice the economy to lives. Depending on your subjective valuations, maybe you don't like that trade. The reality is not that cut and dry though. Even if we just let this run wild and lay down all those lives to this virus, the long term effects that could likely tank the economy anyway (not to mention collapse the medical system) and we'd have done nothing, or even less than nothing, but delayed the outcome.
But I think I am likely getting rambly here, let me stop
nono, by all means your onto something here.
We have an issue here due to the federal government placing duty to have a emergency supply of medicaments in the hands of hospitals.
Most hospitals also make not enough money here, and either locally subsidized and have to fight the insurers.
Meanwhile the federal government intervenes against growing costs and cuts ino profit margins of Hospitals.
It seems sofar that they are taking lessons from this and actually planning on improvment.
But "Hinedri si alli Schläuer " is a sad fact of life. (Afterwards we are all smarter.)
Technically, nobody does. And the WHO doesn't have the best track record for predictions.
But here is what has happened. My sister lost her job as a bartender and has moved back in with my parents. My in-laws' retirement fund has lost half a million dollars. They were going to retire on April 1st. Now they can't. A local pizza joint that has been a staple of my city for as long as I've been alive (seriously, I had my 8th birthday party there) has posted a sign that says if they close for the virus, they won't be able to reopen. My social circle is relatively small - these aren't isolated cases. It's hitting others far worse. And there hasn't even been a lockdown yet.
My state (Florida) doesn't have a state income tax, and several others like estate tax or inheritance tax. The reason for this is because that deficit is made up in sales tax from the truly absurd number of tourists we get every year. With Disney World and Spring Break closed, and the Miami cruise ecosystem dead, the devastation, not just to the local economies of places like Panama City Beach or Orlando, but to the funding of the entire state will be incalculable. This is money that is used to fund schools, sanitation, health, elder care, women's shelters, transportation, and so on. This has the potential to change the entire landscape of Florida, and not in a good way.
California just issued a stay home order. How many people do you think are employed by Hollywood? How many caterers, carpenters, drivers, errand boys, electricians, and so on depend on Hollywood operating to live? These aren't jobs you can telecommute to. Even when the stay order is rescinded, how long will it take Hollywood to get back to full production capability? It won't just be some switch you flick and society will return to normal.
--> you have no idea about potential effects on the market yet.
It's not the market that I'm worried about. Ultimately, I'm worried about society turning into the open of The Last of Us, where we have to display out certificates of travel to be able to move about the city (like the currently use in China, and France) and have quantum barcode tattoos delivered through vaccinations. I don't want an end to encryption on the internet. Basically, if it comes out of a page from Brave New World or 1984, I'm rather against it.
--> You would sacrifice x ammount of people for a bit of money. Having no idea about potential rebounds through things like historically happened with the "New Deal" or other such instruments.
First of all, the New Deal was a sweeping change made during a depression that essentially rewrote American government to move from states rights to a more powerful, centralized federal government. Do you know who the president is right now? Do you think Trump is capable of doing something like the New Deal, or even Biden? They ain't no FDR.
Second, you keep coming back to this money thing. I don't care about money. But we live in a capitalist society, and that means that money is how we operate. You want to eat, you exchange money for food. If you don't have money, you don't have food (we lost the ability to hunt and gather a long, long time ago). More practically, when the government doesn't have money, things like school lunches will be the first things lost. Welfare programs, social security, and so on. Programs to build giant solar panel farms to offset the overuse of fossil fuels. Hiring enough inspectors to check the conditions of all the offshore drilling platforms. Child services to help and support children in the foster care system. Hiring enough police officers to face down the crime wave that immediately follows an increase in poverty.
Shutting down the US for an extended period of time won't hurt my wallet. But it will essentially be the end of socialist policies in America. A large portion of our infrastructure will probably be bought up by corporations for pennies on the dollar, and do you think they are going to pick up the slack on welfare? Detroit shouldn't be the model for the rest of the US. People will die, destitute and sick. A lot more people than the coronavirus will be able to kill.
--> You also assume the "Greater Good" for people with pensions etc is more important then the whole society .
I do not know why this keeps coming back to money for you. You think that if people don't have money that everything else will be the same? A few people losing their saving, sure. But a recession, or even a depression? Holy feth, read a history book.
--> Most tyranical systems claim to do things for the "Greater good" including but not limited to the Extreme right wing Nazis to the Terrorregimes of socialist countries to military dictatorships "protecting" from socialist countries. That is a dangerous clause to invoke there lad.
I am very explicitly against tyrannical systems, as I mentioned above. You think a collapse of our society is going to reduce the number of these, or increase them?
--> Utilitariansim gives you the ilusion of actual decision making based on rationale, let me ask you do you know what happens when x / y surivives? No? then how can you decide?
--> Utilitarianism ALLWAYS has underlying ethics. Even your exemple has, therefore you enter again into subjectivity, scuse me that is not the way to go forwards.
--> Further, the virus damages the lungs, follow sickness will damage the economy and health of the people more throughly if let unchecked and most certainly longterm.
--> further , the vast to be expected losses through overcrowding of the medical system will lead to casualities that were not necessary, and will seriously disrupt local and national live even moreso then anything else. Disrupting the chains of transport which are as off yet thankfully still working.
So again: not only are you in your OWN logical system not coherent or complete enough to form an actual argument, but are also complaining about "virtue signalers".
I'm going to just group the rest of your bullet points in one response. You seem to think that I'm acting selfishly, and that the only thing I care about is money. And I doubt there is anything I can do to dissuade you from such an ignorant notion. So let me just leave you with this final thought before you go off and rage at a cloud about what a terrible, awful person I am:
More people will die from this isolation and economic shutdown than will be saved from it. It won't be over in a month or two when the coronavirus stops killing. It will affect the health and well being of millions for decades.
Recent estimations from Italy and china come to the following conclusion:
40-60% of the population will catch it. depending on the measures taken.
of those about 20% catch a hard case, need a hospital.
of those 20% about 25 % need artifial rebreathing.
That is according to the best numbers we have here estimated by local staff.
There's a non zero chance we are overreacting, but heck if I know what that percentage is. If it was a 99% chance we're overreacting most people here would say that's bad, if it was only a 1% chance Sqorgar would probably say we're doing the right thing. Unfortunately we've got two variables whats the chance we're overreacting and what's an individuals risk tolerance. Just because of the number of unknowns I think there's a decent chance we're overreacting just not high enough to change my preferred risk posture.
In Sqorgars defense the medical experts are not thinking about impacts outside their purview when their making recommendations, you just have to hope the leaders are balancing those impacts against the mitigation strategies.
Recent estimations from Italy and china come to the following conclusion:
40-60% of the population will catch it. depending on the
of those about 20% catch a hard case, need a hospital.
of those 20% about 25 % need artifial rebreathing.
That is according to the best numbers we have here estimated by local staff.
Now look at the number of available rebreathers.
The numbers we have don't directly support that, especially that first percentage. In Lombardy 40k cases is significantly less than the 10M people that live there, of course you could try and make the argument that there are 100X more cases than are actually known but then it makes those second two percentages overinflated .
Greece: Close to 500 cases , 9 dead, 20 more in critical. Idiots fleeing capital may transfer virus to rural areas. As of today leisure ships are forbidden to sail from berth, ships bound for islands will no longer carry non- islander passengers. Public parks in the capital are shut down. Public bazaars shut down. I feel like that scene from the movie Threads where someone is faxing some other about the effects of nuclear falllout. Stay safe people.
Recent estimations from Italy and china come to the following conclusion:
40-60% of the population will catch it. depending on the measures taken.
of those about 20% catch a hard case, need a hospital.
of those 20% about 25 % need artifial rebreathing.
That is according to the best numbers we have here estimated by local staff.
Now look at the number of available rebreathers.
I feel like I've gone over this before, but in case you missed it, you need to look at how they arrived at those numbers, see why those numbers are those numbers, then identify where those numbers may be wrong or not applicable. As Mark Twain is quoted as saying, there's lies, damn lies, and statistics.
1) There's no way to predict that 40-60% of the population will catch it. For one thing, there are mitigating factors that could greatly affect transmission. Northern Italy is in the perfect climate area for this virus, meaning that if you move a little bit to the north or south of it, the infection rate is considerably slower. The virus is most able to survive in the 40s Farenheit, and even 1 degree can make a huge difference in the spread. The majority of the US is not in this band right now. You could possibly say that New York City will have a similar infection rate, but even that will probably not work out the same because NYC is starting much later and it is getting warmer and warmer. It is possible that we could see similar outbreaks in similar climates in the southern hemisphere, or potentially again in the US next year, but right now during this emergency, the US is not going to resemble Italy.
2) They aren't testing everybody, so we have absolutely no idea how many people have or have had the virus. There is an extreme selection bias in the number of confirmed cases as we are only testing people we think already have the disease (that is, showing symptoms, previously in contact with confirmed cases, and/or at risk). People who are in hospitals are the ones we are overwhelmingly testing, since they have all three conditions. So, if you look at the number of cases of hospitalization from a biased data set that is largely taken from people ALREADY IN THE HOSPITAL, you are going to get some seriously warped numbers. If you look at the numbers in South Korea, where they are testing everybody en masse, you'll find numbers that don't resemble anything like Italy.
3) We know from the Diamond Princess (which is still biased, as a closed environment like that would increase the rate of infection) that about 19% of people caught the disease, of which two thirds were entirely asymptomatic. Literally no symptoms at all. Not even a headache. This means that only about 8% of the passengers showed any signs of illness at all. If 20% of those end up hospitalized (this number is certainly lower because gaps in our testing), that's a whopping 2% of the population - or about 6x less than you are predicting. Again, this is still a biased data set, but it is closer to the testing of a random population sample and is likely more indicative of the actual numbers for this disease.
4) Italy has a biased population. It has the most number of old people in Europe. 1 in 3 people smoke. 56% have hypertension. If age, smoking, and preexisting conditions are a factor in the spread and severity of the disease (and it seems like it - 99% of those who died in Italy had preexistng conditions, most had 3 or more, and the average age was 79.5), then a country with younger people, fewer smokers, and less health problems would naturally have lower numbers anyway. Basically, Italy (specifically northern Italy) is a perfect storm of everything this virus wants and needs... If we don't have the same factors, our numbers won't reach the same highs. Likely by a large margin.
That being said, people will get sick and some of them will die. My dad is 70 years old with diabetes and hypertension, and he thinks he can just take a pill and ignore dealing with them. He'll be the first on the chopping, so I'm not suggesting we just go about life as normal and ignore the disease entirely. Social distancing, face masks, and washing hands should be enough to mitigate the spread of the virus and save thousands of lives - and honestly, that should probably be the new normal going forward during flu season. I'm not advocating we do nothing. I just think a lockdown of our society will be completely disastrous and I think, in that case, the cure will be worse than the disease. And going forward, I'd like to see more care given to how we treat diseases like hypertension and diabetes - and especially how we prevent them - so that next season and every season after that we have fewer and fewer people at risk.
At the very least, I don't think it is possible for another country to look like Italy or have Italy's numbers going forwar
Italian society is also much more extrovert, so people get inside each other's personal space much more often than elsewhere. When I visit my father's hometown in Italy, I basically kiss everyone on the cheek I know over there. Large groups of people dance in the piazettas on weekends, meet in bars every single day, multiple times a day etc.
This is just another factor contributing to the "perfect storm".
I'm not surprised, I suspect a lot of pubs/restaurants etc.... were all expecting this news at some point very soon anyway. Though they've left the door open to allow them to keep doing take away food haven't they - so some will be able to maintain some form of business
That said I'd also heard from a newer food outlet that some of their suppliers have been hit hard in some regions with regard to food stocks. Esp where some more industrious retailers have managed to secure bigger portions of the food supply or where individuals have used contacts to let them food hoard at the source rather than at the supermarket.
The numbers we have don't directly support that, especially that first percentage. In Lombardy 40k cases is significantly less than the 10M people that live there, of course you could try and make the argument that there are 100X more cases than are actually known but then it makes those second two percentages overinflated .
Eeh just in case you don't know this is just a start. Of course it's lower than 40%+. If it was that pandemia would be already over.
The thing is Sporgar, if we don't do anything;the economy will take the hit anyway.
Companies and businesses were deciding to do close and lock down themselves anyway. People themselves were no longer going out. We might as well go all in and try to get the lock downs over as quickly as possible than drag it out longer.
It reduces the overall pain on the health system, economy, and lifestyle.
The numbers we have don't directly support that, especially that first percentage. In Lombardy 40k cases is significantly less than the 10M people that live there, of course you could try and make the argument that there are 100X more cases than are actually known but then it makes those second two percentages overinflated .
Eeh just in case you don't know this is just a start. Of course it's lower than 40%+. If it was that pandemia would be already over.
Exactly they're estimates with a huge error bar and everyone here is treating them like gospel
BertBert wrote: Italian society is also much more extrovert, so people get inside each other's personal space much more often than elsewhere. When I visit my father's hometown in Italy, I basically kiss everyone on the cheek I know over there. Large groups of people dance in the piazettas on weekends, meet in bars every single day, multiple times a day etc.
This is just another factor contributing to the "perfect storm".
Same here for some Kantons.
And tendencially we do have comparatively alot issues.
Easy E wrote: The thing is Sporgar, if we don't do anything;the economy will take the hit anyway.
Companies and businesses were deciding to do close and lock down themselves anyway. People themselves were no longer going out. We might as well go all in and try to get the lock downs over as quickly as possible than drag it out longer.
It reduces the overall pain on the health system, economy, and lifestyle.
Hit wouldn't have been nearly as big just look at the spring breakers........So from an economic standpoint whats better a quick shock or a long drawn out slowdown and by how much then combine it with the medical risk, there are no simple answers just hard problems.
One thing I wonder with the economic shock being non economic caused how that will effect the recovery.
Easy E wrote: The thing is Sporgar, if we don't do anything;the economy will take the hit anyway.
Companies and businesses were deciding to do close and lock down themselves anyway. People themselves were no longer going out. We might as well go all in and try to get the lock downs over as quickly as possible than drag it out longer.
It reduces the overall pain on the health system, economy, and lifestyle.
Hit wouldn't have been nearly as big just look at the spring breakers........So from an economic standpoint whats better a quick shock or a long drawn out slowdown and by how much then combine it with the medical risk, there are no simple answers just hard problems.
One thing I wonder with the economic shock being non economic caused how that will effect the recovery.
No one can predict what comes next just because the full effects of the disease are unclear, but economies and markets are capable of steep growth too.
Easy E wrote: The thing is Sporgar, if we don't do anything;the economy will take the hit anyway.
Companies and businesses were deciding to do close and lock down themselves anyway. People themselves were no longer going out. We might as well go all in and try to get the lock downs over as quickly as possible than drag it out longer.
It reduces the overall pain on the health system, economy, and lifestyle.
I'm not so sure that many Americans can just take a two week vacation from society. For instance, I live in a city with about 400,000 people (75,000 of which are college kids - we've got three colleges) and two dozen grocery stores. Each grocery store would have to service maybe 30,000 people full time if all the restaurants, bars, cafes, nightclubs, coffee shops, and whatever else closed. Sure, all that stuff isn't considered "essential services", but collectively, the ease the burden on the essential services considerably. We don't have the food supply through grocery stores to support our population.
Meanwhile, those 75,000 college kids don't have full time jobs. They can't telecommute. They are students, primarily - though right now, the college is closed for the foreseeable future. The main college, at least. No idea about the other two. They are looking into keeping the college closed and doing virtual classes for the rest of the semester. This college employs about 14,000 administrative and and academic people. Many of them won't have anything to do during a virtual semester - how many janitors and parking enforcement officers will they need on an empty campus. And many of those 75,000 college kids are from out of town. If they take classes virtually, many of them will leave.
(just checked and the other two colleges are also virtual for the foreseeable future - something they could always reverse, but at a certain point, people just won't be in a position to come back. I know one college in Georgia is closing the dorms and kicking all the students that live in them out.)
Basically, even without a lockdown, we're looking at a complete devastation of my city's economy just from the decision to make school virtual only. A full quarter of my city is built around these three colleges directly, and who knows how much of the city is indirectly supported by them. Our local economy is built on a workforce of part time college students who then go spend their wages on beer, sports, and food. The entirety of businesses in college town will basically wither and die without students around. This is the equivalent of the local plant closing down.
It's possible that the students might not leave town as a whole, and it is possible that they reopen classes sooner than later. During the summer semester or in the fall, the students should come back as a whole. But how many local businesses can afford to wait for that? How many will be there when they get back? We will probably be able to bounce back from this eventually, but we're going to lose at lot of our local culture and traditions in the meantime. We might lose a portion of our population too, as people have to leave our modestly sized city to go find jobs away from it. And this is WITHOUT a lockdown.
Here we've been told that you need minimum 60% alcohol to kill the bloody thing. Mass produced vodka as well as other non bootleg drinks rarely go above 40%.
Galas wrote: Someday I'll find someone that will be able to explain to me why the US health system is better than most european ones.
Or at minimun, is a functional health system. I'm still waiting for that day.
That really sucks Bob. I hope you'll pass this without bigger problems.
All I can say is this. Ten years ago, if I had a medical problem, I would call my mother who is a nurse and ask who the best doctor in my area was to go and see. She would tell me, and I would call them up. Usually I could up their office, head over within 7-10 days (sooner if it was more serious) and be seen, prescribed and on my way. Then one day there was this new law that was passed, the law that is commonly known as Obama Care. Ever since the passage of that law my ability to get treatment, the cost of my medications, my ability to even bee seen in a timely manner has gone from acceptable to nearly unusable. My insurance costs skyrocketed to much that I had to change providers a total of three times in a 4 year period just to keep costs manageable. My average wait time to be seen for medical help in the last two years has figured out to around 20 days.
Technically, nobody does. And the WHO doesn't have the best track record for predictions.
So what's your alternative? You keep going on and on about how experts are wrong some of the time without offering any kind of decent alyernative beyond "listen to me, I've read some stuff".
But here is what has happened. My sister lost her job as a bartender and has moved back in with my parents. My in-laws' retirement fund has lost half a million dollars. They were going to retire on April 1st. Now they can't. A local pizza joint that has been a staple of my city for as long as I've been alive (seriously, I had my 8th birthday party there) has posted a sign that says if they close for the virus, they won't be able to reopen. My social circle is relatively small - these aren't isolated cases. It's hitting others far worse. And there hasn't even been a lockdown yet.
My state (Florida) doesn't have a state income tax, and several others like estate tax or inheritance tax. The reason for this is because that deficit is made up in sales tax from the truly absurd number of tourists we get every year. With Disney World and Spring Break closed, and the Miami cruise ecosystem dead, the devastation, not just to the local economies of places like Panama City Beach or Orlando, but to the funding of the entire state will be incalculable. This is money that is used to fund schools, sanitation, health, elder care, women's shelters, transportation, and so on. This has the potential to change the entire landscape of Florida, and not in a good way.
That sucks, but it's more a scathing inditement against unregulated capitalism and, as a state, putting all your eggs in basket, than an argument to do nothing in the face of a pandemic - or even a potential pandemic.
It's not the market that I'm worried about. Ultimately, I'm worried about society turning into the open of The Last of Us, where we have to display out certificates of travel to be able to move about the city (like the currently use in China, and France) and have quantum barcode tattoos delivered through vaccinations. I don't want an end to encryption on the internet. Basically, if it comes out of a page from Brave New World or 1984, I'm rather against it.
I'm sorry, what? This is heading into straight-up conspiracy theory tin fgoil hat stuff here.
First of all, the New Deal was a sweeping change made during a depression that essentially rewrote American government to move from states rights to a more powerful, centralized federal government. Do you know who the president is right now? Do you think Trump is capable of doing something like the New Deal, or even Biden? They ain't no FDR.
Point. But then again, you reap what you sow - he was elected president. And that's the end of this one, lest the thread gets locked.
Second, you keep coming back to this money thing. I don't care about money. But we live in a capitalist society, and that means that money is how we operate. You want to eat, you exchange money for food. If you don't have money, you don't have food (we lost the ability to hunt and gather a long, long time ago). More practically, when the government doesn't have money, things like school lunches will be the first things lost. Welfare programs, social security, and so on. Programs to build giant solar panel farms to offset the overuse of fossil fuels. Hiring enough inspectors to check the conditions of all the offshore drilling platforms. Child services to help and support children in the foster care system. Hiring enough police officers to face down the crime wave that immediately follows an increase in poverty.
Shutting down the US for an extended period of time won't hurt my wallet. But it will essentially be the end of socialist policies in America. A large portion of our infrastructure will probably be bought up by corporations for pennies on the dollar, and do you think they are going to pick up the slack on welfare? Detroit shouldn't be the model for the rest of the US. People will die, destitute and sick. A lot more people than the coronavirus will be able to kill.
Or you could, I dunno, actually improve the things that literally just proved to be non-functional in your society.
I do not know why this keeps coming back to money for you. You think that if people don't have money that everything else will be the same? A few people losing their saving, sure. But a recession, or even a depression? Holy feth, read a history book.
I am very explicitly against tyrannical systems, as I mentioned above. You think a collapse of our society is going to reduce the number of these, or increase them?
1) So, money. Just like all of your objections and observed effects to for example that pizza place, revolve around money.
2) A few weeks shutdown /= collapse of society. It may lay bare some inherent weaknesses to whatever system you have, but that is then something you can learn from and improve on.
I'm going to just group the rest of your bullet points in one response. You seem to think that I'm acting selfishly, and that the only thing I care about is money. And I doubt there is anything I can do to dissuade you from such an ignorant notion. So let me just leave you with this final thought before you go off and rage at a cloud about what a terrible, awful person I am:
More people will die from this isolation and economic shutdown than will be saved from it. It won't be over in a month or two when the coronavirus stops killing. It will affect the health and well being of millions for decades.
You can't possibly know that - you just started this post and one before it about how statistics and (by extension) large numbers are unreliable (kudos for mentioning my favorite Mark Twain quote, by the way).
The problem is, statistics is one of the only ways we have of dealing with large numbers. And while it can be and often is manipulated - especially by people/corporations/organisations with vested interest- when used correctly it can also offer great insights.
Plus, what else do you suggest we use? What alternatives do you offer?
I am very glad I no longer have a main street small business right now. Those are all dead without direct government infusions of cash. Tax breaks won't cut it because you have to be in business long enough to collect.
My town is a tourist driven local economy. I expect it to be completely and utterly destroyed by this.
However, even without the county closing them down..... they would have been destroyed anyway.
They've banned all on-premise serving at restaurants in Florida. Pretty much every server in the state just lost their job. But that's not the weird thing.
The governor has released an executive order deciding which medical procedures can be performed. Maybe it is just me, but I think the doctors are best able to judge what medical procedures are necessary and they are capable of doing. I'm not really sure why the state government has the ability to decide, for example, what procedures a dentist is allowed to perform. Seems a bit unconstitutional to me (I'd protest, but my right to assemble is a bit limited if more than 5 people show up).
This is bs. This is dangerous. People literally can't go to the doctor right now. They can't get procedures that will improve their health or even save their lives because someone decided that the procedure is elective. Somebody needs to explain to me why a dermatologist's office needs to stop seeing patients because of the coronavirus...
Sqorgar wrote: 1) There's no way to predict that 40-60% of the population will catch it. For one thing, there are mitigating factors that could greatly affect transmission. Northern Italy is in the perfect climate area for this virus, meaning that if you move a little bit to the north or south of it, the infection rate is considerably slower. The virus is most able to survive in the 40s Farenheit, and even 1 degree can make a huge difference in the spread. The majority of the US is not in this band right now. You could possibly say that New York City will have a similar infection rate, but even that will probably not work out the same because NYC is starting much later and it is getting warmer and warmer. It is possible that we could see similar outbreaks in similar climates in the southern hemisphere, or potentially again in the US next year, but right now during this emergency, the US is not going to resemble Italy.
Uh, what? Perfect climate?
If you actually bothered to look at virus infection rates, one of the most heavily hit countries in the world (total cases per 1000) is Iceland, followed by Faroes and Norway. Last time I checked, none had Italian climate and all were in fact considerably colder. Ditto for Holland and Germany, two other major European hotspots. On the other end, the country hardest hit after Italy is Iran, followed by Brunei, Bahrain and Quatar (last three have about 3.5x infection rates per population UK or USA have). These countries are all considerably warmer than Italy. Where do you see this "perfect" climate, because you can make similar arguments for literally every single Eurasian climate zone? Especially seeing Iran thanks to US embargo has extremely limited access to medicine supplies, including tests, and its regime has a lot of extra incentives to hide virus numbers (and no free press to report it, meaning it's probably much harder hit and what they reported is rosy propaganda) making their 'real' numbers likely much higher - funnily enough, this supposed 'warmth' effect did little to help them.
Also, now that I think about it, Iran's response very much resembles that of USA, not European/Asian model - people mostly left to their own devices, a few blind token gestures, no centralized state/healthcare response - and guess what its numbers predict? Minimum 150.000 cases in USA, with at least 2.000 dead - and that's with their 'official' numbers, as well as USA suddenly relocating to south Mexico to gain this mythical 'huge difference' in the spread - because more realistic assessment is 3 to 4 times that. Likely more, much more because Iran doesn't have so many big cities or people traveling the length of the country so often and if the temperature did in fact help Iranians, USA won't see similar effect for months, especially heavily populated north of the country. So, yeah, if you're correct in that the USA won't resemble Italy it will be because it will resemble Iran, a considerably less pretty picture:
Okay I am an accountant in a small UK firm. The boss has told us that he wants us to continue working at the office in the town centre. How reasonable is to object to this? For context, I have a laptop, all the company files and records can be accessed remotely. The only thing I won’t be able to do is directly consult with the manager face to face and prepare a physical accounts file. Most of our clients aren’t using physical records and where there do they can scan these over. I can reasonably do the greater part of my job from home. In fact I have worked from home several times before. His position is that our ability to operate remotely is not sufficient and that quality of work would suffer.
We were asked to provide reasons on our availability to work from home. I was pretty emphatic but the general advice is that unless you have children or live with someone ask risk he still wants us coming into the office.
I am concerned because both my Dad just turned 60 and my mums a few years younger. However they’re not in the at risk group. Plus, I have not been diagnosed with any medical conditions but I am not particularly healthy myself. So I have worries about catching this thing. Maybe I am overreacting. Perhaps.
Am I within my rights to object to this and insist on working from home?
I’ve also been asked to attend a stock take at a commercial meat factory. This is despite me knowing nothing about stocktaking and purely to keep up the appearance of a familiar face to the client.
Eh I'd say that your health and those of who you live with comes before the boss's desire to maintain things as they are. It's my observation that some people adapt to a changing situation more readily than others. Some just want things to keep going as they were and not worry about it and part of that is trying to keep things just as they were.
It's sometimes the fact that they've not taken it all on board; or they have and trying to avoid changing things is part of a coping mechanism to lowering their stress. If they aren't changing its not "real".
I'd say if you can work from home put your reasoning in and then self-isolate. It's a risk of course, but at the same time its very reasonable considering the current climate; especially in urban areas.
If you actually bothered to look at virus infection rates, one of the most heavily hit countries in the world (total cases per 1000) is Iceland, followed by Faroes and Norway. Last time I checked, none had Italian climate and all were in fact considerably colder. Ditto for Holland and Germany, two other major European hotspots. On the other end, the country hardest hit after Italy is Iran, followed by Brunei, Bahrain and Quatar (last three have about 3.5x infection rates per population UK or USA have). These countries are all considerably warmer than Italy. Where do you see this "perfect" climate, because you can make similar arguments for literally every single Eurasian climate zone? Especially seeing Iran thanks to US embargo has extremely limited access to medicine supplies, including tests, and its regime has a lot of extra incentives to hide virus numbers (and no free press to report it, meaning it's probably much harder hit and what they reported is rosy propaganda) making their 'real' numbers likely much higher - funnily enough, this supposed 'warmth' effect did little to help them.
If you bothered to read my past posts, you would've found that I've linked this article multiple times.
The green area is the the perfect climate. This graph is the average temperature from March 2019 to April 2019, and thus the exact location of that green area is probably slightly different in 2020 (not to mention that the outbreaks started in February, when the green would've been lower). And, as expected, as the temperatures warm, the green area moves further north. You'll find most of the countries you listed in that green band, or close enough to it. Iran and the immediate area has cooler temperatures due to its proximity to the sea.
According to this article, "An increase of just one degree Celsius and 1% relative humidity increase substantially lower the virus's transmission...". They studied the coronavirus outbreak in 100 Chinese cities and found a relationship between temperature and humidity to the severity of the outbreak. There's some pretty graphs in this article that should make the green band a little more explicit.
There's two different studies - two different sources - that essentially say the same thing.
Overread wrote: Eh I'd say that your health and those of who you live with comes before the boss's desire to maintain things as they are. It's my observation that some people adapt to a changing situation more readily than others. Some just want things to keep going as they were and not worry about it and part of that is trying to keep things just as they were.
It's sometimes the fact that they've not taken it all on board; or they have and trying to avoid changing things is part of a coping mechanism to lowering their stress. If they aren't changing its not "real".
I'd say if you can work from home put your reasoning in and then self-isolate. It's a risk of course, but at the same time its very reasonable considering the current climate; especially in urban areas.
My concern is that it would lead to disciplinary action if I was to insist on this and not going on the stocktake. We are one week away from the March payroll and I don’t want that in jeopardy. I had assumed that he was building towards everyone working from home because it’s such an obvious move. For him to come to the totally opposite conclusion is horrendous. I don’t get it. Not only that but to even be considering stocktakes and send me out when I am literally going to be wheeled around for some reason.
From talking to my friends all of them are working from home apart from the doctor and the nurse....
His interpretation of the guidance is that unless somebody is sick then there’s no need to self isolate or distance staff. Even then he was talking about just putting sick people in other rooms...where there’s a shared toilet and kitchen area.
Wait, I thought you didn't trust statistics?
But now a statistical correlation is in your favour it's suddenly ironclad proof of " the perfect virus temperature"?
TW - honestly if he's talking about isolation of the sick being in another room it sounds like he's really not grasped the situation at all. I'd say you'd likely not be the only disgruntled one in the office at this news. Honestly I'd talk to other staff, chances are if a bunch of you simply walk out and work from home he won't have much of a leg to stand on and might well back down.
You might also talk to citizens advise (if you can get through); there might well be legal recourse if he aims to take disciplinary action against you when your walk out is based on government mandated health advice. Sometimes even the threat of that to a boss giving an unreasonable request can force them to reconsider their actions.
It's a tough call though, as you say you've got a months pay just a week away that you don't want frozen or withdrawn - which of course pays for food and shelter (important things for healthy living).
Bran Dawri wrote: Wait, I thought you didn't trust statistics?
But now a statistical correlation is in your favour it's suddenly ironclad proof of " the perfect virus temperature"?
I trust statistics when I know how they are calculated. When someone says the coronavirus is 20 times more deadly than the flu - how did you arrive at that statistic? If you can't show me where it came from, then it definitely is suspect. Case in point, they calculate the flu mortality rate using estimated numbers, which are at least three times higher than confirmed cases, but calculate the coronavirus mortality rate using only confirmed cases. This means that you can't say that the coronavirus is more deadly than the flu because you aren't comparing two statistics talking about the same thing. And because I know what that methodology is, I know that the statistics are bs. If I didn't know that, and believed that the two mortality rates were equivalent, I'd be the same dumb donkey-cave as everyone else freaking the feth out over complete bs.
Interestingly enough, if you compare the same statistics - confirmed deaths divided by confirmed cases - the flu has a mortality rate that is at least two to four times that of the coronavirus. And that's with the extreme selection bias in coronavirus testing.
These two articles associate the temperature and humidity with transmission rate. How they calculate the transmission rate is largely irrelevant, so long as they use the same methodology for each data point. The two different studies can even use two different transmission rate calculations, as long as they are internally consistent. In the end, they independently arrived at similar conclusions, using two different sets of data and two different (consistent) methodologies, which makes a very strong argument for their being a correlation, even if they individually differ about the explicit value of that correlation.
Historically speaking, pandemics and social unrest usually is followed by rapid growth and change.
The Black death killed feudalism, WW1 gave birth to female voting and boom in economy, maybe this thing will be the push to do away with corporate oligarchy in many western countries, now that we know supermarket clerks are more vital to our civilization than a whole bushel of ceos.
The guy posted a theory and backed it up with evidence... Unless you have a counter theory you can also back up with evidence, then you can't just dismiss it out of hand. I haven't really followed your back and forth throughout the thread, but that's what I've seen on this page at least.
How about a confirmed news report (NYT) of a family dinner last Tuesday, followed by 4 of the family members dead by the following week, and 2 in intensive care, with 19 others being tested. All the deceased and those in intensive care positive for coronavirus.
All the deceased under 60, with no preexisting conditions that have been listed by the authorities? This really is no joke.
Cruentus wrote: How about a confirmed news report (NYT) of a family dinner last Tuesday, followed by 4 of the family members dead by the following week, and 2 in intensive care, with 19 others being tested. All the deceased and those in intensive care positive for coronavirus.
All the deceased under 60, with no preexisting conditions that have been listed by the authorities? This really is no joke.
1. Literally no one has called this a joke. "Same as flu" is the most dismissive I've seen. Bit dishonest there.
2. That's your angle here? We found a body of 20 people infected with four dead. And this means we should allow governors to shut down elective surgeries? How long exactly should we quarantine the world now? Four months? Four weeks? However long the experts recommend plus one week because of this family?
3. I'm quite sure one of the deceased you mentioned was 73. All the rest were indeed under 60, but over 50.
I know that you are dealing with people who are not taking this seriously. Far more of them exist than is good for humanity.
Please understand there are also sky is falling types we (at least I personally am) are dealing with as well.
TW: I would offer a compromise, work at home but come in one day a week of his choice. Yes, you will be considerably more exposed but it gives your boss something and shows you at least respect his viewpoint on the matter. If/when he turns it down, say you can do two days a week. If he turns that down respectfully inform him it wasn't an offer because the lives of your family members are more important than his desires for the schedule. His ability to punish you has limits, because 15 minutes of on social media about how he is penalizing you for trying to keep your family healthy would destroy him. To say nothing of a potential lawsuit.
But that is very, very IMO. I obviously know extremely little about the greater context so take with enough salt to ward off Horticulous.
Been disinfecting doors, desks, counter tops ect in the warehouse, offices and shop front twice daily(at least) for two weeks. Delivery drivers and counter staff wearing latex gloves to interact with customers(cant get hand sanitizer, and washing your hands all the time is not always practical and murder on your skin) for a week and a half. Put up signs about social distancing three days ago. Today we marked out a one meter deep box in front of the counter with hazard tape on the floor and put a sandwich board in front with a distancing sign on it.
Watching the general publics behaviour over that time we might as well screaming into a hurricane
Cruentus wrote: How about a confirmed news report (NYT) of a family dinner last Tuesday, followed by 4 of the family members dead by the following week, and 2 in intensive care, with 19 others being tested. All the deceased and those in intensive care positive for coronavirus.
All the deceased under 60, with no preexisting conditions that have been listed by the authorities? This really is no joke.
Does being morbidly obese count as a preexisting condition? They may not have had any diagnosed conditions, but it you told me they all had undiagnosed, untreated cardiovascular disorders and type 2 diabetes, I wouldn't be shocked. The husband of one of my kids' math teachers was about that size and he died of a heart attack at age 34.
The grandmother was 73, and the people under 60 were all in their mid-to-late 50s. The four that died were the two women in the front and the two men in the back, farthest to the left.
Also worth noting that the grandfather was born and raised in Italy, first coming to the US when he was 18. That's a weird connection and I wonder if maybe there is a genetic component at play here.
And side note, I found another article with a similar picture of the same people in front of the same mantle, but they seem considerably thinner.
GoatboyBeta wrote: Been disinfecting doors, desks, counter tops ect in the warehouse, offices and shop front twice daily(at least) for two weeks. Delivery drivers and counter staff wearing latex gloves to interact with customers(cant get hand sanitizer, and washing your hands all the time is not always practical and murder on your skin) for a week and a half. Put up signs about social distancing three days ago. Today we marked out a one meter deep box in front of the counter with hazard tape on the floor and put a sandwich board in front with a distancing sign on it.
Watching the general publics behaviour over that time we might as well screaming into a hurricane
I disagree; even if the general public does not take safety measures you doing so still has a benefit. Perhaps not as much of one, but it is still something.
Galas wrote: Someday I'll find someone that will be able to explain to me why the US health system is better than most european ones.
Or at minimun, is a functional health system. I'm still waiting for that day.
That really sucks Bob. I hope you'll pass this without bigger problems.
All I can say is this. Ten years ago, if I had a medical problem, I would call my mother who is a nurse and ask who the best doctor in my area was to go and see. She would tell me, and I would call them up. Usually I could up their office, head over within 7-10 days (sooner if it was more serious) and be seen, prescribed and on my way. Then one day there was this new law that was passed, the law that is commonly known as Obama Care. Ever since the passage of that law my ability to get treatment, the cost of my medications, my ability to even bee seen in a timely manner has gone from acceptable to nearly unusable. My insurance costs skyrocketed to much that I had to change providers a total of three times in a 4 year period just to keep costs manageable. My average wait time to be seen for medical help in the last two years has figured out to around 20 days.
Lucky you!
Prior to Obamacare that was my life, and it's only since Obamacare that I've been able to get ANY medical care.
The problem isn't Obamacare. The problem is that American health care is fundamentally broken for two-thirds of Americans.
I did a little more shopping today. Some people were coughing in the supermarket. Stocks are low, out of key items now like milk.
As of today I have decided to shut the door and bunker down, the mask did not arrive and I was advised that if I travel to London don't return to look after my father, mask or no mask. So I decided to ignore the mandatory gas safety check. I am staying here where I can look after my father. I will not leave the house again until I have the mask. The % of infection is rising daily and I no longer want to risk it.
The housing association might cause problems, but I can cover myself under the mantra of 'self isolation'.
Any idea on how to freeze milk? I am thinking of converting some catheter bags.
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Cronch wrote: Historically speaking, pandemics and social unrest usually is followed by rapid growth and change.
The Black death killed feudalism, WW1 gave birth to female voting and boom in economy, maybe this thing will be the push to do away with corporate oligarchy in many western countries, now that we know supermarket clerks are more vital to our civilization than a whole bushel of ceos.
I agree with this in general principle. The virus can be a catalyst for change. The US is ripe for social change. However it could also mean the downfall of western economic dominance, global destabilisation and war.
The Blacjk Death left a resource void, COVID-19 will not. Instead it will destabilise power blocks and some could use this to grab a larger share of the planets diminishing resources.
Bran Dawri wrote: Wait, I thought you didn't trust statistics?
But now a statistical correlation is in your favour it's suddenly ironclad proof of " the perfect virus temperature"?
I trust statistics when I know how they are calculated. When someone says the coronavirus is 20 times more deadly than the flu - how did you arrive at that statistic? If you can't show me where it came from, then it definitely is suspect. Case in point, they calculate the flu mortality rate using estimated numbers, which are at least three times higher than confirmed cases, but calculate the coronavirus mortality rate using only confirmed cases. This means that you can't say that the coronavirus is more deadly than the flu because you aren't comparing two statistics talking about the same thing. And because I know what that methodology is, I know that the statistics are bs. If I didn't know that, and believed that the two mortality rates were equivalent, I'd be the same dumb donkey-cave as everyone else freaking the feth out over complete bs.
Interestingly enough, if you compare the same statistics - confirmed deaths divided by confirmed cases - the flu has a mortality rate that is at least two to four times that of the coronavirus. And that's with the extreme selection bias in coronavirus testing.
Bollocks. Flu CFR is ~0,1%. Even if I'm assuming 10 times the number of infected corona patients than are currently confirmed (277K vs 11K dead, CFR OF 2,5%) without adjusting flu numbers, corona is STILL roughly three times as deadly.
Flu estimates 3x as many cases as are confirmed (probably a number on the low side), with almost no testing reducing its actual statistics even further. Corona, which is being tracked MUCH more vigorously likely has less of an actual multiplier, yet even using a much higher one is still deadlier.
It also doesn't take into account that in areas where the healthcare system is overwhelmed the CFR jumps to 6-7% for corona, though that number may be on the high side as testing is then prioritised to those at risk and untested cases obviously are not represented in a CFR.
I wouldn't even call these numbers statistics. This is basic math.
Just done my grocery shop. Shop had plenty of stuff. Bread was full. The usual suspects were pretty bare, aswell as bottled beers, I'm assuming due to the recent pub closing thing in the UK. Still, I picked up a few hobgoblins and a couple of ipas for my evening tipples. Cold medicine and frozen were strapped, except for the name brand stuff, so it's good to see that even in an emergency were still tight fisted. Plenty of people walking around with plastic gloves on for some reason, and my personal highlight, a woman who kept a furry scarf pressed to her face around the whole shop. People are dumb.
Dogs can't get covid 19. This begs to question can furries get it? Quick write a grant, those trillions in government funds have to be spent on something useful. It could save the hooman race.
Brian and Sqorgar (and anyone else who wants to have an honest discussion on numbers)
The big question is transmissible since we have no good data on what would happen absent intervention, so as a thought experiment for different percentages of the population that would get it how would death rates stack up compared to already occurring causes of death for both Flu death rate and the 3x death rate Brain hypothesized. (US 2017 Numbers in comparison)
So at 5% of the population infected (or 15% for flu rate) the Wuhan Virus would crack the top ten.
At 18% of the population (54% for flu rate) it would take over third place just ahead of random accidents.
Not until 67% of the population is infected assuming a 3X death rate would it take over #1 from heart disease.
Of course somewhere in there the medical system gets overwhelmed and the death rate increase but for now its food for thought. So how contagious do people think this is with what rationale. Given the number of medial personnel who've become sick and would have been taking the standard precautions and our bodies haven't experienced this before I could believe that number could be high, so lets say absent drastic measures it would be the number one killer in the US. Does that justify the drastic measures ?
@jerram, sqorgar and others There is much that is not known. There are models that are thrown around (not toy soldiers). However, like many things, these models can be inaccurate.
So, for example, many people are quoting the roughtly 3 percent rate of mortality. They then extrapolate to the number of people who get the disease, and voila arrive at a number. However, all of that is based on the disease effecting all groups of people in the society equally. My understanding is that at-risk groups have the true high mortality rate, which is in excess of 10 percent. I would hope that these groups are protected. If they are, I also hope that the casualties from covid-19 are much lower than 3 percent of the individuals who contract it.
spaceelf wrote: @jerram, sqorgar and others There is much that is not known. There are models that are thrown around (not toy soldiers). However, like many things, these models can be inaccurate.
So, for example, many people are quoting the roughtly 3 percent rate of mortality. They then extrapolate to the number of people who get the disease, and voila arrive at a number. However, all of that is based on the disease effecting all groups of people in the society equally. My understanding is that at-risk groups have the true high mortality rate, which is in excess of 10 percent. I would hope that these groups are protected. If they are, I also hope that the casualties from covid-19 are much lower than 3 percent of the individuals who contract it.
Part of my point exactly. So what do you do with so much unknown, look at a range of possibilities and assess their likelihood. The fact that even if you think some of the doomsday scenarios aren't well supported by data even lower numbers could easily have this as the number one killer in the US for 2020 if substantial measures weren't/aren't taken is still rather disconcerting to put it mildly.
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Ghool wrote: Heres a little tidbit released by the DoD concerning COVID19 vulnerability due to the flu vaccine:
TLDR; if you’ve been vaccinated for the seasonal flu, you are more susceptible to COVID19 infection.
It would be more accurate to say you could be(probably are) more susceptible, study is not based on current virus or current vaccination but is from 2018 using that vaccination and other corona type viruses going around at the time. Would be interesting to see what the increase in risk is and interestingly enough since you're dealing with DOD personnel you're talking younger and healthier than the general population.
One of the first things they do when you are hospitalized, especially if you are older and at risk, is give you the flu vaccine and pneumonia vaccine. It's not generally a good idea, since if you are hospitalized, your immune system is already either compromised or working overtime trying to fight whatever put you there (even if it is a broken arm). Even though it is typically a bad idea to further stress the immune system, it is policy based on recommendations by the CDC.
I think that if we don't see more than 50,000 people dead from the coronavirus (and I doubt we'll see that many), we should declare the CDC and WHO terrorist organizations for the sheer amount of damage they will have done to our world's infrastructure.
Sqorgar wrote: One of the first things they do when you are hospitalized, especially if you are older and at risk, is give you the flu vaccine and pneumonia vaccine. It's not generally a good idea, since if you are hospitalized, your immune system is already either compromised or working overtime trying to fight whatever put you there (even if it is a broken arm). Even though it is typically a bad idea to further stress the immune system, it is policy based on recommendations by the CDC.
I think that if we don't see more than 50,000 people dead from the coronavirus (and I doubt we'll see that many), we should declare the CDC and WHO terrorist organizations for the sheer amount of damage they will have done to our world's infrastructure.
I think if studies show that if we had done liitle there would be less than 50k deaths you can start to have that conversation, However even that relies on a false argument alot of people make, that a probabilistic decision is post facto determined to be right or wrong based solely on the outcome. To use an example everyone should understand, if you play Russian Roulette and survive it doesn't change the fact you're just as much of an idiot as the person who didn't survive.
Can I get some advice on agency workers rights here? If an employer determines that it’s not safe to have its employees in the building at this time, and tells them to stay away, can it then turn around to agency workers and say ‘you have to come in and work here, in this same building’?
Jerram wrote: I think if studies show that if we had done liitle there would be less than 50k deaths you can start to have that conversation, However even that relies on a false argument alot of people make, that a probabilistic decision is post facto determined to be right or wrong based solely on the outcome. To use an example everyone should understand, if you play Russian Roulette and survive it doesn't change the fact you're just as much of an idiot as the person who didn't survive.
My city has 5 confirmed cases - every single one directly attributable to interaction with a known infected traveler (and isolated appropriately). We've had one death, who was actually brought here from a hospital in Georgia and tested positive here (because it was suspected beforehand, proper sanitation procedures were followed to the letter). One of the other cases was someone on a Japanese cruise ship who is a resident of my county, but which wasn't infected here and has been quarantined well away from here. So we have a non-resident, infected in Georgia but tested here, and a resident who isn't here and wasn't tested here - these are both counted among the minuscule cases in my city. My question is whether or not that dead guy from Georgia is also being counted in Georgia using the same criteria as our cruise ship resident. Regardless, neither of which should realistically be counted as cases in my county. But good thing we put a stop to all those elective and non-critical medical procedures! (You know there are people who went through the entire colon prep, just to have their colonoscopies canceled because of this)
So the WHO is burning the candle from both ends with their reporting of numbers, and they (and the media) are not reporting pertinent details that convey an accurate sense of what is going on. They are purposely increasing the level or fear through intentionally inflated, overly vague numbers that hide the true nature and significance of the spread of this virus. They are greatly overstating the risk to individuals and communities, and using some of the worst math I've ever seen to arrive at fake statistics intended to frighten the general populace.
You know what? I'm going to coin a new term: "Fake Math". The WHO is using Fake Math with the intention of instilling an irrational sense of fear - terror, if you will - in order to pressure the world governments into enacting their policies. The WHO is, by definition, a terrorist organization.
What agenda do you see them pressing, Sqorqar? It reads like they're gathering information, and trying to limit the infections. They aren't advocating for quarantine or lockdown- from what I've read, experts think that is just postponing the problem. Limited contact, and a self quarantine for 1 week once you become symptomatic, or 2 weeks if someone in your household gets it.
I'm really not trying to gotcha or anything like that, I don't understand what goal you see the WHO advancing.
I definitely get that all methodologies that conflict with your viewpoint are flawed, and the corona virus cannot be compared to any other illness or study in your opinion.
So leaving aside the reliability of their statistics- what do you think the WHO are trying to do?
TLDR; if you’ve been vaccinated for the seasonal flu, you are more susceptible to COVID19 infection.
Isn't that likely to be because people the majority of people who get seasonal flu vaccines are already in higher risk groups (old, compromised immune systems etc.)?
Future War Cultist wrote: Can I get some advice on agency workers rights here? If an employer determines that it’s not safe to have its employees in the building at this time, and tells them to stay away, can it then turn around to agency workers and say ‘you have to come in and work here, in this same building’?
I would contact ACAS or an employment lawyer. But, from my basic legal understanding. If the location is declared unsuitable then no workers should be entering/expected to work.
TLDR; if you’ve been vaccinated for the seasonal flu, you are more susceptible to COVID19 infection.
Isn't that likely to be because people the majority of people who get seasonal flu vaccines are already in higher risk groups (old, compromised immune systems etc.)?
I'll respond to this first because its in my wheel house.
Not in this case, I'm 99% certain this is all military members (DoD (Department of Defense) mandates and provides for all miltary members to get flu shots in season). I'm fairly sure there's little if any civil service because while they have health insurance they are treated in town with public doctors and not the DoD health system.
So you're talking in general, young and healthy, at least as when compared to the general public.
Future War Cultist wrote: Can I get some advice on agency workers rights here? If an employer determines that it’s not safe to have its employees in the building at this time, and tells them to stay away, can it then turn around to agency workers and say ‘you have to come in and work here, in this same building’?
Agency/temporary workers
Businesses and self-employed people using temporary workers must provide the same level of health and safety protection for them as they do for employees.
Providers of temporary workers and employers using them need to co-operate and communicate clearly with each other to ensure risks to those workers are managed effectively.
You need to agree who does what. Don’t assume the ‘other side’ will take responsibility:
make sure, before temporary workers start, that they are covered by risk assessments, and they know what measures have been taken to protect them
make sure they understand the information and instructions they need to work safely, and have had any necessary training
consider the language needs of temporary workers who do not speak English well or at all (see our advice on migrant workers)
check, before they start, that they have any occupational qualifications or skills needed for the job
agree on arrangements for providing/maintaining any personal protective equipment, display screen equipment eyesight tests, and any necessary health surveillance
agree on arrangements for reporting relevant accidents to the enforcing authority (usually HSE or the local authority)
Under the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003, agencies and businesses that use workers supplied by them must exchange the information they both need to ensure the safety of workers.
You know what? I'm going to coin a new term: "Fake Math".
This is not a new approach, it's the same thing we've seen certain elected officials resorting to when questioned or challenged and they don't have any competent response, and seek to instead discredit the source or questioner.
The WHO is using Fake Math with the intention of instilling an irrational sense of fear - terror, if you will - in order to pressure the world governments into enacting their policies.
...to what point and purpose?
World domination by the evil shadow epidemiologist league?
The WHO is, by definition, a terrorist organization.
O_o
Alternatively, is it possible that a lot of this is instead a reflection of the fact that data is always dirty and takes time to clean and analyze, data in news reports is typically incomplete and that this is still an actively evolving situation, people reporting on it often have no fething clue what they're talking about and the people reading it usually have even less of one, and that specifics often aren't terribly relevant next to the general trendline?
What agenda do you see them pressing, Sqorqar? It reads like they're gathering information, and trying to limit the infections. They aren't advocating for quarantine or lockdown- from what I've read, experts think that is just postponing the problem. Limited contact, and a self quarantine for 1 week once you become symptomatic, or 2 weeks if someone in your household gets it.
I'm really not trying to gotcha or anything like that, I don't understand what goal you see the WHO advancing.
I definitely get that all methodologies that conflict with your viewpoint are flawed, and the corona virus cannot be compared to any other illness or study in your opinion.
So leaving aside the reliability of their statistics- what do you think the WHO are trying to do?
The WHO is a division of the UN, and I don't think is acting independently. The current head of the WHO is accused of covering up cholera outbreaks in Ethopia when he was health minister and over exaggerating the health of the country and his achievements in order to advance politically. The dude is a stooge.
The UN has this effort they call Agenda 2030 (which is an expansion of their previous climate-change based Agenda 21), which you can read about on their webpage. Basically, it is a set of 17 goals which they hope to achieve by the year 2030 - which is rather an impressive thing when there are goals like eradicating (or more precisely halving) poverty, hunger, sickness, violence, inequality, and so on. Like, let's achieve utopia in 15 years, guys! It's not even realistic to achieve these goals by 3030!
Ultimately, though, none of the goals on that list are even remotely achievable without the UN becoming more important that the governments of its members. For instance, two of the goals focus on reducing inequality. What exactly is the UN's plan on enacting sweeping social change regarding inequality in places like the Middle East, where women wear burkas and they throw gay people off buildings? There's a lot of contentious stuff in there that even places like the US are split on, culturally and politically, like globalization, climate change, immigration, and social justice. We couldn't even get these goals passed in the US alone. The only way this works for the UN, realistically, is if they are somehow able to dictate policy in their member countries.
Basically, the UN has the stated goals and desire to become something akin to the EU. While the coronavirus itself is not a manufactured crisis, the escalation of this crisis into a world locked in their houses, gripped in terror is. We're going to walk out of this thing praising the WHO and UN for saving the world, and that's going to give them a lot of clout as a governing body. I expect the UN to be increasingly consulted on national policies, which gives them the kind of power they want to enact sweeping social and political change across the world.
Future War Cultist wrote: Can I get some advice on agency workers rights here? If an employer determines that it’s not safe to have its employees in the building at this time, and tells them to stay away, can it then turn around to agency workers and say ‘you have to come in and work here, in this same building’?
Agency/temporary workers
Businesses and self-employed people using temporary workers must provide the same level of health and safety protection for them as they do for employees.
Providers of temporary workers and employers using them need to co-operate and communicate clearly with each other to ensure risks to those workers are managed effectively.
You need to agree who does what. Don’t assume the ‘other side’ will take responsibility:
make sure, before temporary workers start, that they are covered by risk assessments, and they know what measures have been taken to protect them
make sure they understand the information and instructions they need to work safely, and have had any necessary training
consider the language needs of temporary workers who do not speak English well or at all (see our advice on migrant workers)
check, before they start, that they have any occupational qualifications or skills needed for the job
agree on arrangements for providing/maintaining any personal protective equipment, display screen equipment eyesight tests, and any necessary health surveillance
agree on arrangements for reporting relevant accidents to the enforcing authority (usually HSE or the local authority)
Under the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003, agencies and businesses that use workers supplied by them must exchange the information they both need to ensure the safety of workers.
... that said firms like Uber have challenged -- and so far lost -- these sort of rulings in court.
Depends on the building and the employees in particular too.
If a care home requested agency staff to cover, it may be that some of their employees have at risk people at home or are themselves.
Then the building isn’t safe for thone employees but doesn’t mean it isn’t safe for anyone..
Would have to know the specific job role to know whether any ‘side rules’ like this as it were would make a difference.
Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence. I think the WHO may just be overreacting to compensate for their initial downplaying and kowtowing to China. But at this point Vaks point is more relevant when it comes to National health organizations, the problem is too many people pretend the data isn't dirty and they have the one true answer, frustrating those of us who know better.
I do have some questions about the Wuhan virus, guys:
Why and how did it become such a mess in Italy ? They have been in quarantine for a long time now. Did they do it too late ?
I'm very interested by that !
And another one: how are you doing it in non Western countries ? Like, South Korea and Japan mainly ? About news about them ?
Asian tend to have plenty of masks unlike our incompetent governments
If you want... interesting info about the situation in communist China by a non official source, visit Jennifer Sent Blog on fb
The two things I've heard specifically to Italy, without actually worrying enough to verify, is that they have an ageing population (don't know if disproportionate or just the same as many western economies) and that they are culturally prone to a lot of close physical contact.
Both make sense to me, but, like I say, haven't been troubled sufficiently to check.
They probably didn't do a good enough job of identifying, testing and isolating people who came in to the country with the disease (the UK seems to have been more effective than most at this)
The don't seem to have been as good at contact tracing those who they did identify with the disease so they could isolate and test all the folk they met when they might have been contagious (again the UK seems to have done a decent job)
third Italians seem to be more sociable than many populations because of their social customs, lots of hugs, kisses, family gatherings, they stand closer together when talking to each other (the distance people feel comfortable with is a learned behaviour and can vary quite a lot), larger families and more people living together etc so the virus spreads more easily
they're also an older population on average so they will catch it more easily (your immune system get weaker as you age), and when they do catch it they will be sicker (and I suspect that because their immune systems are weaker older people will release more virus when they cough making them more likely to infect people)
I'm sure there are other factors too, there is speculation that there may be some genetic factor or a link to diet but that's impossible to tell at this point
You know what? I'm going to coin a new term: "Fake Math".
This is not a new approach, it's the same thing we've seen certain elected officials resorting to when questioned or challenged and they don't have any competent response, and seek to instead discredit the source or questioner.
The WHO is using Fake Math with the intention of instilling an irrational sense of fear - terror, if you will - in order to pressure the world governments into enacting their policies.
...to what point and purpose?
World domination by the evil shadow epidemiologist league?
The WHO is, by definition, a terrorist organization.
O_o
Alternatively, is it possible that a lot of this is instead a reflection of the fact that data is always dirty and takes time to clean and analyze, data in news reports is typically incomplete and that this is still an actively evolving situation, people reporting on it often have no fething clue what they're talking about and the people reading it usually have even less of one, and that specifics often aren't terribly relevant next to the general trendline?
I may have him on ignore but it is certainly interesting to see people quote the good bits, even if I do not understand the logic of continuing to respond to what is essentially trolling at this point.
They probably didn't do a good enough job of identifying, testing and isolating people who came in to the country with the disease (the UK seems to have been more effective than most at this)
The don't seem to have been as good at contact tracing those who they did identify with the disease so they could isolate and test all the folk they met when they might have been contagious (again the UK seems to have done a decent job)
Please tell me you do not actually believe that rubish???
You are aware that the Uk only has 4000 emergency respiration units and the UK has been building tents for the dead around parks especially in the London area, this is confirmed.
The infected have jumped to over 5000 and most certainly reach 10000 by next week
Jerram wrote: Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence. I think the WHO may just be overreacting to compensate for their initial downplaying and kowtowing to China.
In all honesty, I think the worst of this is because the US government (and others) are the ones overreacting in their response. The WHO isn't the one shutting down entire states, stopping surgeries, and encouraging curfews. That's incompetence, and we'll be living with it for a long, long time.
The WHO is simply overstating the danger of this disease due to multiple reasons:
1) Their models are incomplete and their methods of collecting and organizing data are an embarrassment. Their predictions are just plain wrong because they are based an bad data and dumb people who don't know how to read it anyway. That being said, they do have data that is relevant and which could put the true severity of this disease into sharp relief, but they are not sharing. They should know better than to compare this coronavirus to the Spanish Flu.
2) I additionally think it is because they think only they can control it and only their methods will work (the idea I stated above, that the UN believes it should be the world government). It's not just about scaring countries into following their gameplan, but also dismissing and downplaying the success of techniques they don't endorse while hyping up the failures of those who didn't follow their plans soon enough. I get a strong "don't say we didn't warn you" and "we told you so" vibe from their press conferences.
3) I think the WHO has a deep and obscene connection with pharmaceutical companies. The only end game they have offered up is the creation of a new vaccine, or the repurposing of existing drugs, and it is obvious that their only considered resolution is a drug which they will distribute. It's like they have blinders on, so any outcome which doesn't result in this singular conclusion is often ignored or downplayed.
4) I think the WHO wants to be the hero. They have the self image of righteous crusaders. Fighting an unworthy foe doesn't fit with their vision of who they are, so every foe must be the worthiest. To use a social justice metaphor, because the WHO is on the right side of history, that makes this virus literally Hitler.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I'm really curious as to why people think that writing long, well organized posts filled with facts and figures to back up statements, and plenty of links to reputable sources, is considered "trolling". Do they really think that, by virtue of having a different opinion, I am being malicious in some way?
NinthMusketeer wrote: I may have him on ignore but it is certainly interesting to see people quote the good bits, even if I do not understand the logic of continuing to respond to what is essentially trolling at this point.
Like, for example, this post seems way more troll-like than anything I've written. It contributes nothing of worth to the discussion, it's overly dismissive, it's aggressive, it's prideful in the fact that he literally hasn't read what he is commenting on, and there's even a bit of name calling. In short, it is a worthless, malicious comment intended to flame the fans of conflict on an internet message board. If that isn't trolling, nothing is.
The Italians and their greeting customs is definitely a big factor, (same with Spain and France.) and one of the reasons I don't think we'll be as affected. Brits aren't that big on physical greetings. A handshake or a hug here or there. And hopefully we've caught it soon enough that people have stopped all that in time. I also believe that's why Germany doesn't have it as bad, because they don't do the whole kissing thing as much as their southern neighbours.
It's not even realistic to achieve these goals by 3030!
There are enough resources and food production to supply everyone on earth with what they need. There is a bottleneck in transport of course, but the obvious bottleneck is how this wealth of resources is distributed. It's not that we can't feed and clothe everyone, it's that the current parasitical class of owners has no interest in it.
The epidemic does wonders for uncovering just how useless the big business boys are too.
They probably didn't do a good enough job of identifying, testing and isolating people who came in to the country with the disease (the UK seems to have been more effective than most at this)
The don't seem to have been as good at contact tracing those who they did identify with the disease so they could isolate and test all the folk they met when they might have been contagious (again the UK seems to have done a decent job)
Please tell me you do not actually believe that rubish???
You are aware that the Uk only has 4000 emergency respiration units and the UK has been building tents for the dead around parks especially in the London area, this is confirmed.
The infected have jumped to over 5000 and most certainly reach 10000 by next week
Say what you like about the British Press, and there's much to be said, but if the government was doing the 21st century equivalent of digging plague pits, I'm pretty sure they'd be letting people know.
But then, as it's confirmed, I'm sure you'll have no trouble providing a link to a reputable source for this.
Considering most hospital morgues are only made to hold a modest number of bodies it would not surprise me in the least if they were preparing alternative storage options in advance considering that things are expected to get worse before they get better.
It's investment that, whilst morbid, is far more practical than letting bodies pile up and cause potential further complications of their own.
Plus its work that can utilise staff who are not medically trained. So it takes no medical resources out of the important treatment part of the process.
I'd honestly be more surprised if they weren't making some kind of preparations to deal with an increased number of bodies. Though what pathway is best to take is likely up for debate; from freezing so that people can bury later; mass burials; fast burials; cremation etc...
My Mother is a nurse living in the midwest. On Monday her hospital had 3 suspect cases, and 2 confirmed.
Today, they have 156 suspect cases, and 43 confirmed, 15 of which are hospitalized. Of those hospitalized, 3 are in the ICU currently on ventilators. All of them are under 45. There are 4 more patients who are deteriorating and will likely require ventilation within the next day. One of her friends, a nurse at another hospital is seeing similar numbers for the ICU, all of them under 45 with he exception of 1.
In the state I live in further west, we had a huge spike in cases over the last two days. Some of them were due to a local church defying order to shelter in place. Nearly 50 people were exposed to three different people with now confirmed infection.
I'm expecting that our state will take more drastic actions in the next two days, as will the university I work for.
Jerram wrote: Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence. I think the WHO may just be overreacting to compensate for their initial downplaying and kowtowing to China.
In all honesty, I think the worst of this is because the US government (and others) are the ones overreacting in their response. The WHO isn't the one shutting down entire states, stopping surgeries, and encouraging curfews. That's incompetence, and we'll be living with it for a long, long time.
The WHO is simply overstating the danger of this disease due to multiple reasons:
1) Their models are incomplete and their methods of collecting and organizing data are an embarrassment. Their predictions are just plain wrong because they are based an bad data and dumb people who don't know how to read it anyway. That being said, they do have data that is relevant and which could put the true severity of this disease into sharp relief, but they are not sharing. They should know better than to compare this coronavirus to the Spanish Flu.
What is your background in medical analysis & statistics, and what is the basis for your assumption that they are refusing to share for nefarious reasons beyond what your gut thinks?
2) I additionally think it is because they think only they can control it and only their methods will work (the idea I stated above, that the UN believes it should be the world government). It's not just about scaring countries into following their gameplan, but also dismissing and downplaying the success of techniques they don't endorse while hyping up the failures of those who didn't follow their plans soon enough. I get a strong "don't say we didn't warn you" and "we told you so" vibe from their press conferences.
WHO is an advisory agency with no direct powers subordinate to an international organization that lacks and claims no soveriegnty of any sort, and is very intentionally designed and kept that way. There's a whole lot of projection here.
3) I think the WHO has a deep and obscene connection with pharmaceutical companies. The only end game they have offered up is the creation of a new vaccine, or the repurposing of existing drugs, and it is obvious that their only considered resolution is a drug which they will distribute. It's like they have blinders on, so any outcome which doesn't result in this singular conclusion is often ignored or downplayed.
Again, a lot of projection and assumption here, but nothing really to back any of this up. This stuff is right out of DeusEx, Altered Carbon, etc.
4) I think the WHO wants to be the hero. They have the self image of righteous crusaders. Fighting an unworthy foe doesn't fit with their vision of who they are, so every foe must be the worthiest. To use a social justice metaphor, because the WHO is on the right side of history, that makes this virus literally Hitler.
And yet we don't see such action or recommendations from these organizations except in very rare cases. In this instance, even the lowest estimated death rates are orders of magnitude larger than typical seasonal flu rates, and is extremely communicable. Wanting to be good at their job in response to such an event doesn't appear to be unwarranted...
I'm really curious as to why people think that writing long, well organized posts filled with facts and figures to back up statements, and plenty of links to reputable sources, is considered "trolling". Do they really think that, by virtue of having a different opinion, I am being malicious in some way?
Mostly because you're manufacturing entire worlds out of snippets, with basically zero professed expertise in any relevant fields.
Honestly, Drastic actions should have been taken to prevent the spread while it was still in fething china, but we where to scared to anger them. what should have happened was all travel to and from china be halted and all suspected people be rounded up and quarantined.
hotsauceman1 wrote: Honestly, Drastic actions should have been taken to prevent the spread while it was still in fething china, but we where to scared to anger them. what should have happened was all travel to and from china be halted and all suspected people be rounded up and quarantined.
Sensible, but that would have been labeled as "racist" had it been done.
Overread wrote: Considering most hospital morgues are only made to hold a modest number of bodies it would not surprise me in the least if they were preparing alternative storage options in advance considering that things are expected to get worse before they get better.
It's investment that, whilst morbid, is far more practical than letting bodies pile up and cause potential further complications of their own.
Plus its work that can utilise staff who are not medically trained. So it takes no medical resources out of the important treatment part of the process.
I'd honestly be more surprised if they weren't making some kind of preparations to deal with an increased number of bodies. Though what pathway is best to take is likely up for debate; from freezing so that people can bury later; mass burials; fast burials; cremation etc...
Hospital morgues have low capacities because they're not intended for long term storage, they're generally only needed until next of kin have been informed and the body collected, typically by whichever funeral home has been employed, until the funeral. Consequently they're not likely to be overwhelmed in the sense of body bags in the corridor.
Even if all the hospitals and funeral homes start to struggle, I'm sure there's any amount of refrigerated facilities that could be appropriately repurposed, up to and including having cold lorries in the car park.
While I don't doubt there are contingencies, I'm fairly confident, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, that Corpses Go Camping isn't even remotely near the top of that list, if it's even on it.
hotsauceman1 wrote: Honestly, Drastic actions should have been taken to prevent the spread while it was still in fething china, but we where to scared to anger them. what should have happened was all travel to and from china be halted and all suspected people be rounded up and quarantined.
Sensible, but that would have been labeled as "racist" had it been done.
We’re already there. The racism is real. However, so is stick-up-the-ass-itis. “Kung flu” is a play on words that is trying to make light of a crappy situation. Spitting on Asian people is disgusting and should never be acceptable in a civilized world. 20 years ago we knew the difference between those two things.
hotsauceman1 wrote: Honestly, Drastic actions should have been taken to prevent the spread while it was still in fething china, but we where to scared to anger them. what should have happened was all travel to and from china be halted and all suspected people be rounded up and quarantined.
Sensible, but that would have been labeled as "racist" had it been done.
We’re already there. The racism is real. However, so is stick-up-the-ass-itis. “Kung flu” is a play on words that is trying to make light of a crappy situation. Spitting on Asian people is disgusting and should never be acceptable in a civilized world. 20 years ago we knew the difference between those two things.
I mean, did we?
After 9/11 racism against people from the middle east sky rocketed.
hotsauceman1 wrote: Honestly, Drastic actions should have been taken to prevent the spread while it was still in fething china, but we where to scared to anger them. what should have happened was all travel to and from china be halted and all suspected people be rounded up and quarantined.
Sensible, but that would have been labeled as "racist" had it been done.
When you're giving speeches and crossing out "coronavirus" and penciling in "Chinese virus", you're not troubled by the optics of racism. This is a halfass way of trying to shuffle the anemic response to the early days of the virus off to the media, everyone's favorite whipping boy.
There are a few factors in place that guaranteed it would have gotten to the US regardless - the Chinese government's initial attempts at a coverup allowed it to spread, coupled with our government's denial that there even was a problem, coupled with the levels of incompetence that have festered at the very top.
In any event, it's here now. so no point in recriminations. Pandemics happen and they aren't owned by any one country, and with the way the world is globally connected now, it's going to be very hard to stop one early now.
Spain and France (all of the Mediterranean countries I think) have close social interaction and greetings I think, but I do agree that Italian are particularly close (at least, that's what is said). But the surge in case, despite the lockdown, is just incredibly catastrophic ! That's what is surprising me.
I'm super interested by South Korea too and how they handled the thing like champions, we should take example on them.
How did they English got so good in identifying the Chinese virus carriers coming to their country ? Is that why they have taken so long to act, thinking they were safe thanks to the sea and the borders ?
Well, presumably the biggest risk is your own citizen tourists returning home. Those are the guys who would need to be identified and quarantined immediately.
Rolsheen wrote: I love coming to this thread, it's always hilarious to read. I get more reliable scientific information about the coronavirus off Pornhub.
I suppose that is a good website to become an expert on things getting into the body.
Rolsheen wrote: I love coming to this thread, it's always hilarious to read. I get more reliable scientific information about the coronavirus off Pornhub.
I suppose that is a good website to become an expert on things getting into the body.
No Lie man, this gave me a nice hard belly laugh i couldnt breath.
If you look at the graph of detected infections in the UK, it looks like we will be like Italy in a week or two.
A lot of undetected infectious people are in the population, and there is still a lot more social mixing than should be going on.
I'm glad I live in a small town. I'd rather never get the virus, but if I am going to get it, I would like to wait until the initial pressure has gone down a bit.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I see no sign that panic buying is dying down. If anything it's getting worse.
Waitrose in central Henley yesterday afternoon was pretty much empty of vegetables, meat, fish, bread, frozen stuff, canned stuff, dry stuff like rice, pasta, lentils and flour, toilet paper. They had some eggs. They still had decent stocks of booze, thank goodness!
My family is actually pretty well stocked up. We've bought a few extra tins and stuff over the past couple of weeks, and we have a reserve of long-life stuff anyway. Even so, it is very worrying to see the empty shelves. Fresh veg and bread iis what we will run out of first.
We usually drive over to Aldi in Reading or Lidl in Wallingford at the weekend, but we're not going to bother. It's not worth the risk of finding the shelves empty.
Rolsheen wrote: I love coming to this thread, it's always hilarious to read. I get more reliable scientific information about the coronavirus off Pornhub.
Get a milk man for eggs, milk and juice. Find a local veg box business. You can buy many long shelf life staples in bulk off amazon. Perhaps time to go African on the maize meal.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I too wondered about pharmaceutical incentives for WHO.
Harvard X on edx runs a free Strenghening Community Health Worker Programs courses.
It goes some way to explaining WHO’s emphasis on vaccines. Even in third world countries having paid low level health workers administrating and delivering vaccination programs has a 10:1 return on investment by extending working lives and reducing time off work.
That return on investment for vaccines is before even considering the cost saved on what have been spent treating the prevented illness or the costs incurred if the vaccinated person had been infected and spread the illness.
Vaccines for serious illnesses are remarkably efficient in economic terms.
Local Sainsbury’s stocks were far healthier yesterday, and I went fairly late in the day.
Booze was pretty much cleared out, but staple foods were there in decent amounts. Staff member said half the problem was finding the time to actually stock the shelves. Sure, some is done over night, but what with everything they’re short handed during most shifts.
Later in the day seems to work, if you time it right to the delivery lorry. Lots of people rush out in the morning and raid their shelves empty but the restocking happens
Which is the issue; lots in the supermarkets are frustraited because people are buying like nuts, but the food is getting back on the shelves in the day anyway. People are just buying way too fast
GoatboyBeta wrote: I think everyone on this board would certainly read it that way yeah
Closing down stuff like Stonehenge and other tourist areas is for the best though. It seems that a lot of people think its some kind of bank holiday.
Thing is there's plenty of counties/towns/regions where there isn't any of the disease yet. So yes the supermarkets are bare and the restaurants and pubs are shut. You're off work or working from home and the schools are closed - but in the end whilst all that's happening the actual "danger" isn't "anywhere near us/me/region".
So for many people after a day or two of this change they get bored, don't know what to do with themselves so figure that they might go out somewhere. As long as they remain "socially distant" from everyone (except anyone working of course ;P) they are "safe". The whole "only for essential trips" bit gets overlooked.
Honestly its probably a bit like in the early days of WWII when everyone was putting up blackouts and being told to shut their lights off at night. Until a bomb lands in their circle of influence its still a remote event that won't have the point driven home for many.
I've been seeing a lot of this. I have a lot of friends and acquaintances who the moment stuff started shutting down were saying things like "hey we should go for vacation" or "hey let's all hang out tonight." Even my local 40k group is all fired up to play since everyone has off. So the people who are stuck working in many of the critical fields are being put in arguably much higher risk than if they had just enforced a hard closure, because now they have to work with a ton of people while the only ones are coming into their business think social distancing is a joke and haven't altered their behavior whatsoever.
Meanwhile I've been putting in 60-70 hours a week even though I've definitely NOT got a job critical to the public, and all I see are hundreds of people showing up to have fun where I work too. Our response was wear gloves, sanitize everything like crazy, and basically everything but close the place down. Which is stupid because so many companies are dragging their feet. Lots of my friends in factories for example can't even do the 6 foot distancing, and they're working with hundreds to thousands of people a day.
I don't think suggesting people stay home is going to work for this, especially in America. The amount of people who can't just stay at home with their own thoughts for a few days is staggering. My default response has become "y'all need to get a damn hobby" because the way some of these folks act you'd think they'd been snowed into a cabin for 3 months. As long as you let anything like retail or fast food be open, people will get together and go because for a lot of them this is the first real time off they've had in years. I don't blame them for wanting to do stuff, it's just frustrating.
TLDR; if you’ve been vaccinated for the seasonal flu, you are more susceptible to COVID19 infection.
Isn't that likely to be because people the majority of people who get seasonal flu vaccines are already in higher risk groups (old, compromised immune systems etc.)?
I'll respond to this first because its in my wheel house.
Not in this case, I'm 99% certain this is all military members (DoD (Department of Defense) mandates and provides for all miltary members to get flu shots in season). I'm fairly sure there's little if any civil service because while they have health insurance they are treated in town with public doctors and not the DoD health system.
So you're talking in general, young and healthy, at least as when compared to the general public.
On Ft Gordon, even Dept Army Civilians (DACs) could get the vaccine for free along with the troops. We had to report by name who had been vaccinated a few months ago when the vaccine was given out.
I walked down to the Tesco on the edge of Henley for exercise, and to see how it was.
I was immensely cheered to find it well stocked with nearly everything needful except booze! The trolley boy was disinfecting the handles of the carts for customers, which was impressive by Tesco.
There weren't many customers, surprisingly. Maybe most of them are at home with piles of panic-bought stuff and don't need to go out for a bit.
A report from Codorgno in Italy, the first town to get slammed, said that the pani buy stopped when shops found time to get their shelves stocked and people could see the food wasn't running out.
TLDR; if you’ve been vaccinated for the seasonal flu, you are more susceptible to COVID19 infection.
Isn't that likely to be because people the majority of people who get seasonal flu vaccines are already in higher risk groups (old, compromised immune systems etc.)?
I'll respond to this first because its in my wheel house.
Not in this case, I'm 99% certain this is all military members (DoD (Department of Defense) mandates and provides for all miltary members to get flu shots in season). I'm fairly sure there's little if any civil service because while they have health insurance they are treated in town with public doctors and not the DoD health system.
So you're talking in general, young and healthy, at least as when compared to the general public.
On Ft Gordon, even Dept Army Civilians (DACs) could get the vaccine for free along with the troops. We had to report by name who had been vaccinated a few months ago when the vaccine was given out.
Yeah they get the same vaccine but that's the end of the interaction, doesn't give the DoD the data that would be used for this study. (And don't even get me started how poorly they track who got the shot when not done in the clinic, had to get "immunized" twice because they lost the paperwork. Im like "Really the Med Grp Commander gave me the shot right in front of the Wing Commander but no one knows I got the shot, GMAFB"
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Seems there are no reported cases in my neck of the woods. And if we all behave ourselves, that may remain the case for a good long while.
Two confirmed in my area(N.Lincs) last time I checked. But the lack of testing is what's pushing me toward paranoia.
Kilkrazy wrote: I cannot understand why the UK isn't testing. I assume the NHS just doesn't have enough equipment and staff.
I assume lack of equipment and staff as well. It might also be that the UK has invested into stuff other than testing kits. Perhaps with the view of herd immunity being the plan they've invested more into treatment plans than into testing plans, since if you assume from the start that your population will majority be infected, there's little point worrying about testing everyone and better to just deal with the actual cases. Of course the UK has been testing and containing things, however it seems that containment has broken in enough spots that casual infection is happening.
It does somewhat show how some populations are much easier to contain and test and restrict movement of. However there's still the question over those countries if they are going to manage to maximise on the containment itself. Ergo you've contained your population; but at soon as things start moving (esp internationally) are you just going to get infection rates sweep through later. I doubt any nation could contain its population and maintain containment for a year or two years (or more) that it might take to develop specific drugs/vaccine to deal with this.
godardc wrote: Spain and France (all of the Mediterranean countries I think) have close social interaction and greetings I think, but I do agree that Italian are particularly close (at least, that's what is said). But the surge in case, despite the lockdown, is just incredibly catastrophic ! That's what is surprising me.
I'm super interested by South Korea too and how they handled the thing like champions, we should take example on them.
How did they English got so good in identifying the Chinese virus carriers coming to their country ? Is that why they have taken so long to act, thinking they were safe thanks to the sea and the borders ?
Italy has been in lockdown for 12 days now. Given the average incubation time of 5 days and the average manifestation time of severe symptoms of 7 days, 12 days is exactly when the peak should happen (remember that only severe cases are being registered right now due to lack of testing kits). So despite the horrifying numbers this is no cause for panic. It's the next week that will be really crucial, next week we should see the number of registered cases curve slowly flatten. If that still doesn't happen by then, that's when we'll know that gak has really hit the fan and that Italy/ Lombardy no longer has the virus under control.
Unless Italy can totally contain 100% of the infected and maintain 0% infected entering the country then any containment is only delaying another spike. Considering that vaccines and medication are talking years and containment is talking weeks to perhaps a month or more - its unlikely that we'll see a continual dip.
If anything there will be a series of dips and rises. Rises whenever containment (national/local) ends and people start moving again; dips when containment locks things down and infection of new people slows.
The real trick would be to lockdown everywhere and then re-activate only specific regions of the country at a time. Essentially any reactivation being an infected zone; but also being staggered so as to allow medical services to keep up and be moved around.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Seems there are no reported cases in my neck of the woods. And if we all behave ourselves, that may remain the case for a good long while.
Kilkrazy wrote: I cannot understand why the UK isn't testing. I assume the NHS just doesn't have enough equipment and staff.
I assume lack of equipment and staff as well. It might also be that the UK has invested into stuff other than testing kits. Perhaps with the view of herd immunity being the plan they've invested more into treatment plans than into testing plans, since if you assume from the start that your population will majority be infected, there's little point worrying about testing everyone and better to just deal with the actual cases. Of course the UK has been testing and containing things, however it seems that containment has broken in enough spots that casual infection is happening.
It does somewhat show how some populations are much easier to contain and test and restrict movement of. However there's still the question over those countries if they are going to manage to maximise on the containment itself. Ergo you've contained your population; but at soon as things start moving (esp internationally) are you just going to get infection rates sweep through later. I doubt any nation could contain its population and maintain containment for a year or two years (or more) that it might take to develop specific drugs/vaccine to deal with this.
We are testing , but only hospitalised patients as bluntly to many in community to test. There are no treatments only symptom management and would love to say there spending the money on ppe, but I am running out of masks already at work but especially the full length gowns.
Your right about restrictions causing issues when lifted not sure how they will solve this.
MrMoustaffa wrote: I've been seeing a lot of this. I have a lot of friends and acquaintances who the moment stuff started shutting down were saying things like "hey we should go for vacation" or "hey let's all hang out tonight." Even my local 40k group is all fired up to play since everyone has off. So the people who are stuck working in many of the critical fields are being put in arguably much higher risk than if they had just enforced a hard closure, because now they have to work with a ton of people while the only ones are coming into their business think social distancing is a joke and haven't altered their behavior whatsoever.
Meanwhile I've been putting in 60-70 hours a week even though I've definitely NOT got a job critical to the public, and all I see are hundreds of people showing up to have fun where I work too. Our response was wear gloves, sanitize everything like crazy, and basically everything but close the place down. Which is stupid because so many companies are dragging their feet. Lots of my friends in factories for example can't even do the 6 foot distancing, and they're working with hundreds to thousands of people a day.
I don't think suggesting people stay home is going to work for this, especially in America. The amount of people who can't just stay at home with their own thoughts for a few days is staggering. My default response has become "y'all need to get a damn hobby" because the way some of these folks act you'd think they'd been snowed into a cabin for 3 months. As long as you let anything like retail or fast food be open, people will get together and go because for a lot of them this is the first real time off they've had in years. I don't blame them for wanting to do stuff, it's just frustrating.
In Oregon, we just had one town close all retail establishments, hotels, rentals, and campgrounds because a ton of people decided to go to the coast this weekend on spring break instead of staying home, and told everyone visiting to leave within 24 hours. Other coastal cities are considering it too and the State gov is likely to increase restrictions as a result. A lot of people just haven't had the reality sink in, don't believe the risks, or just plain don't understand.
GoatboyBeta wrote: I think everyone on this board would certainly read it that way yeah
Closing down stuff like Stonehenge and other tourist areas is for the best though. It seems that a lot of people think its some kind of bank holiday.
Thing is there's plenty of counties/towns/regions where there isn't any of the disease yet. So yes the supermarkets are bare and the restaurants and pubs are shut. You're off work or working from home and the schools are closed - but in the end whilst all that's happening the actual "danger" isn't "anywhere near us/me/region".
So for many people after a day or two of this change they get bored, don't know what to do with themselves so figure that they might go out somewhere. As long as they remain "socially distant" from everyone (except anyone working of course ;P) they are "safe". The whole "only for essential trips" bit gets overlooked.
Honestly its probably a bit like in the early days of WWII when everyone was putting up blackouts and being told to shut their lights off at night. Until a bomb lands in their circle of influence its still a remote event that won't have the point driven home for many.
why shouldnt people go out though? I can walk from my house to my car, drive to somewhere nearby in the countryside, get out and have a walk, then get back in my car, and drive home. theres no way I'm shutting myself in until theres an actual policeman outside my house with a gun.
So question, how does everyone feel about eatin out now? Mostly Carryout? are there a lot of risks or what?
MrMoustaffa wrote: I've been seeing a lot of this. I have a lot of friends and acquaintances who the moment stuff started shutting down were saying things like "hey we should go for vacation" or "hey let's all hang out tonight." Even my local 40k group is all fired up to play since everyone has off. So the people who are stuck working in many of the critical fields are being put in arguably much higher risk than if they had just enforced a hard closure, because now they have to work with a ton of people while the only ones are coming into their business think social distancing is a joke and haven't altered their behavior whatsoever.
Meanwhile I've been putting in 60-70 hours a week even though I've definitely NOT got a job critical to the public, and all I see are hundreds of people showing up to have fun where I work too. Our response was wear gloves, sanitize everything like crazy, and basically everything but close the place down. Which is stupid because so many companies are dragging their feet. Lots of my friends in factories for example can't even do the 6 foot distancing, and they're working with hundreds to thousands of people a day.
I don't think suggesting people stay home is going to work for this, especially in America. The amount of people who can't just stay at home with their own thoughts for a few days is staggering. My default response has become "y'all need to get a damn hobby" because the way some of these folks act you'd think they'd been snowed into a cabin for 3 months. As long as you let anything like retail or fast food be open, people will get together and go because for a lot of them this is the first real time off they've had in years. I don't blame them for wanting to do stuff, it's just frustrating.
Same, quite a few friends of mine feel the same and its like........do you guys think the government would shut down everything if this wasn't serious?
Greece. 550 cases 13 dead 18 critical.Total Lock down. You now (as of tomorrow) need a form filled by you and your employer to go to work. Also a different form to go anywhere else. Fines at 150 eu.
It will get a lot worse as idiots fled the capital the last two days.
Stay healthy people.
Also good luck to the Croats. When you think " well how worse can it get" it usually gets.
why shouldnt people go out though? I can walk from my house to my car, drive to somewhere nearby in the countryside, get out and have a walk, then get back in my car, and drive home. theres no way I'm shutting myself in until theres an actual policeman outside my house with a gun.
Because lots of people will go out to the same spot of countryside; or the same beach or the same park etc... Which is the problem. Plus those who might head out to the highlands or such may not be experienced hikers. So suddenly it puts additional strain on mountain rescue teams which are already understaffed as medical staff are in the hospital system and those who purely volunteer are isolating at home and trying to avoid contact.
Government has already been on the TV to say that being outdoors still runs you at a risk of infection if you're socialising with people.
why shouldnt people go out though? I can walk from my house to my car, drive to somewhere nearby in the countryside, get out and have a walk, then get back in my car, and drive home. theres no way I'm shutting myself in until theres an actual policeman outside my house with a gun.
Because lots of people will go out to the same spot of countryside; or the same beach or the same park etc... Which is the problem. Plus those who might head out to the highlands or such may not be experienced hikers. So suddenly it puts additional strain on mountain rescue teams which are already understaffed as medical staff are in the hospital system and those who purely volunteer are isolating at home and trying to avoid contact.
Government has already been on the TV to say that being outdoors still runs you at a risk of infection if you're socialising with people.
Exactly this on bbc website local news highlands , mountain rescue outlining the problems they have with un prepared people and the risks to them and others. It's cold people up here.
Also did you see the pictures from the Wales walk ways crammed, large groups of bikers out and the fish and chip shop so packed they were like sardines, when it hits its gonna hurt, just remember when a gynecologist is putting you on a ventilator cause the rest of us are swamped you will wish you self isolated.
konst80hummel wrote: Greece. 550 cases 13 dead 18 critical.Total Lock down. You now (as of tomorrow) need a form filled by you and your employer to go to work. Also a different form to go anywhere else. Fines at 150 eu.
It will get a lot worse as idiots fled the capital the last two days.
Stay healthy people.
Also good luck to the Croats. When you think " well how worse can it get" it usually gets.
Thanks man. We have to stay indoors because of the virus, but then our houses could collapse on our heads. The ground has been shaking whole day, just half hour ago there was another noticable earthquake. Everybody are on the edge.
konst80hummel wrote: Greece. 550 cases 13 dead 18 critical.Total Lock down. You now (as of tomorrow) need a form filled by you and your employer to go to work. Also a different form to go anywhere else. Fines at 150 eu.
It will get a lot worse as idiots fled the capital the last two days.
Stay healthy people.
Also good luck to the Croats. When you think " well how worse can it get" it usually gets.
Thanks man. We have to stay indoors because of the virus, but then our houses could collapse on our heads. The ground has been shaking whole day, just half hour ago there was another noticable earthquake. Everybody are on the edge.
That's rubbish man, hope you are safe as are your family, all you can do is deal with the most pressing concern first.
konst80hummel wrote: Greece. 550 cases 13 dead 18 critical.Total Lock down. You now (as of tomorrow) need a form filled by you and your employer to go to work. Also a different form to go anywhere else. Fines at 150 eu.
It will get a lot worse as idiots fled the capital the last two days.
Stay healthy people.
Also good luck to the Croats. When you think " well how worse can it get" it usually gets.
Thanks man. We have to stay indoors because of the virus, but then our houses could collapse on our heads. The ground has been shaking whole day, just half hour ago there was another noticable earthquake. Everybody are on the edge.
That's rubbish man, hope you are safe as are your family, all you can do is deal with the most pressing concern first.
Yeah, we are fine, but the walls of my(like 150 years old ) house are cracked. So...
Luckily nobody died(there are several serious inuries), because it was early in the morning when it happened (people weren´t on the streets). We can only hope there wont be more of the strong earthquakes.
why shouldnt people go out though? I can walk from my house to my car, drive to somewhere nearby in the countryside, get out and have a walk, then get back in my car, and drive home. theres no way I'm shutting myself in until theres an actual policeman outside my house with a gun.
Because lots of people will go out to the same spot of countryside; or the same beach or the same park etc... Which is the problem. Plus those who might head out to the highlands or such may not be experienced hikers. So suddenly it puts additional strain on mountain rescue teams which are already understaffed as medical staff are in the hospital system and those who purely volunteer are isolating at home and trying to avoid contact.
Government has already been on the TV to say that being outdoors still runs you at a risk of infection if you're socialising with people.
We aren't socialising with people. the closest we got to that was smiling or saying hello to people as we walked past them, usually on the other side of the road. I'm not going to be trekking on the mountains. I'll be on footpaths in the oxfordshire countryside. probably no more than 30-40 minutes from wherever I park the car.
How about those of us having a baby any day now? My dog isn’t a midwife. I have to go to the hospital soon. It’s a need. An emergency. But I can’t exactly tell the baby to wait until the virus ends before they come out.
Kids are much easier to keep at home than older people! Besides surely you can use consoles, TV, films, computers, internet, books, boardgames - there's a vast wealth of stuff to keep kids entertained at home. More so than ever before.
I mean there's even these games some people play with models where they have to build and paint them before they play. You could try introducing them to that
Overread wrote: Kids are much easier to keep at home than older people! Besides surely you can use consoles, TV, films, computers, internet, books, boardgames - there's a vast wealth of stuff to keep kids entertained at home. More so than ever before.
I mean there's even these games some people play with models where they have to build and paint them before they play. You could try introducing them to that
Kids are real easy to control with electronics, when i want a break at work, i turn on cocomelon and the kids are tranced. Also thats a lie, you dont have to paint them before you play, or sometimes even build them.
yeah, but I don't wan't electronic devices raising my kids.
my daughter is 3. I'm not sticking her in front of a phone or tablet. that is lazy parenting. She gets to watch a little TV, and sometimes a film like frozen after nursery( before it shut) or after we get home from wherever we go out. She goes crazy if she doesnt get out and do something stimulating, and also doesnt sleep as well.
plus being stuck inside is terrible for you. youre likely to exercise less, youre breathing stale air. getting outside does you the world of good.
as I said, we come into closer contact with people when we go to the shop, or I go to work, so I really dont see the problem.
I've been doing multiple daily walks around my area of a mile or two each every day. It's relatively easy to stay a good distance from people and it keeps me from going crazy inside. That sort of activity is in line with every recommendation I've seen so far. I get dramatically more close contact going to the grocery store.
The part that bugs me is the gray-hairs that all want to sit outside the closed shops and chat with their fellow retirees like they don't have a care in the fething world, not keeping the 6ft separation and blocking the sidewalk for everyone else, and of course they're the demographic most vulnerable.
my daughter is 3. I'm not sticking her in front of a phone or tablet. that is lazy parenting.
Yes but current government advice is to spend two weeks or so lazy parenting darn it!
Use the time wisely to indoctrinate her in the classic cartoons of the 90s. Or in endless games of Munchkin. You can train her at this young age to be the next Munchkin Champion!
hotsauceman1 wrote: I honestly dont get what is so hard about staying home, its like......why cant you just do it?
In the words of Michael ‘Not At All Pob’ Gove?
People have had enough of experts
It’s as if embracing populism and anti-intellectualism has consequences.
Doc wins the Internet today with a splendid niche 80's reference, I've alway seen him as a Deep One hybrid banished from Ryleh for being too fishy and slimy
Rolsheen wrote: I love coming to this thread, it's always hilarious to read. I get more reliable scientific information about the coronavirus off Pornhub.
Pornhub is a solid reliable source of all good information and good things in general
RiTides wrote: It's actually recommended that you go out of the house to exercise most places, just keeping 6 feet away from others. Walks, runs, hiking, etc...
This! As long as you're not touching people, things etc. And if you're out in nature what are the chances of touching something contaminated anyway? Even at the park, the uv light is likely to kill any virus potentially left on surfaces.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: This! As long as you're not touching people, things etc. And if you're out in nature what are the chances of touching something contaminated anyway? Even at the park, the uv light is likely to kill any virus potentially left on surfaces.
A new analysis found that the virus can remain viable in the air for up to 3 hours, on copper for up to 4 hours, on cardboard up to 24 hours and on plastic and stainless steel up to 72 hours.
It does go on to clarify that touching contaminated surfaces isn't thought to be the main way it's being transferred, but nobody's really sure yet. And, obviously, the chances of touching something contaminated would go up as the actual number of infected people goes up.
So, My field just got labeled essential by my state.
Yknow the field where you are in a crowded clinic or where you literally go to peoples houses........Where i already got potentially exposed.
I think people are missing something about going out to the local park or forest. Yes, it's outdoors, and you're theoretically away from people, but most folks, even here, aren't going to the middle of nowhere. They're all going to the same trailheads, all going to the Same gas stations, restaurants, stores, hotels, etc. And they're coming from all over. Very few people are actually going to a remote area away from folks, especially because tons of people had the same idea. Any remotely well known trail or destination is going to be lousy with infected individuals who just don't care.
So essentially, yeah, you're just going to the woods. But if you drove 3 hours to a small town where the nearest hospital is an hour away, and go around doing typical tourist things, you can be a big problem.
I get wanting to take walks and stuff around the neighborhood, I guess that done correctly is fine. My issue is more with people traveling to be outdoors, the spring break folks down in Florida, the swarm of people that descended on my local forest this weekend, the tons of people who keep posting "but just look at those cruise prices, were never gonna get that chance again!" Just frustrating. I do feel like a major contribution to this is just how overworked a lot of younger folks are, especially ones stuck in jobs with awful schedules with retail. How do you tell a guy who worked morning Monday, night shift Tuesday, mid day for 4 hours Wednesday, then closes on Thursday, thinking he has Friday off only to get called in to open is going to respond when you tell him "hey, youve got two weeks off and there's nothing your employer can do about it."
Well, I say nothing, but Hobby Lobby, GameStop, and a lot of other companies seem to be doing their damnedest. You've gotta have some pretty big balls (or pretty stupid) to try and serve a letter to cops saying you're an essential business when you sell videogames and that's it
Just dropping in to wish everyone the best and to say stay frosty. When this thing runs it's course, I want to see all of you knuckleheads back here and in good health.
Avoid a double-teaming by Corona-chan and Papa Nurgle!
Alpharius wrote: How many people are also working with you/near you?
And are they limiting contact with others in their everyday lives, as much as they can?
There are 35 people in my department, but we staggered the schedule so only 2 people physically in the room at a time, sitting a distance from each other, with the rest working remote. I usually work 4 days a week, and now am only coming in once a week and doing the other 3 from home. We're also trying to wipe stuff down with Clorox wipes once per shift.
The other thing, I can't speak to - we are encouraged to. I'm doing my part, which is easy, because I don't like talking to people or going out anyway. I'm even (a single tear slides down my cheek) getting some models in my backlog painted.
A new analysis found that the virus can remain viable in the air for up to 3 hours, on copper for up to 4 hours, on cardboard up to 24 hours and on plastic and stainless steel up to 72 hours.
It does go on to clarify that touching contaminated surfaces isn't thought to be the main way it's being transferred, but nobody's really sure yet. And, obviously, the chances of touching something contaminated would go up as the actual number of infected people goes up.
The experiments in this study are done under a controlled climate - 20-23C with humidity at 40% - which presumably would emulate a typical indoor environment. So these numbers wouldn't be applicable to an outdoor setting, with temperatures are outside this norm and UV radiation bombarding everything.
It's also worth pointing out that the numbers do drop over this time in a linear fashion, such that 50% hours later, there would be 50% the amount of virus. I just skimmed the study, but I didn't see if it went into how much virus was necessary to actually infect someone. So it would stand to logic that your chance of infection shrinks over time, with some point well before the maximum time that infection becomes a trivial concern.
And touching contaminated surfaces is probably not the main way it is transferred because the human skin is the first line of defense in your immune system. That's why they tell you to not touch your eyes, mouth, or nose and to wash your hands (especially before eating). The virus isn't transferred by touch alone.
Personally, bathroom door handles are what scare me. I've seen enough people not wash their hands after using the restroom (even number 2s) that it doesn't take a scary coronavirus to make me think twice about touching those. I think if we want to have a healthiness revolution in this country, we should start with bathroom doors. Getting out of a bathroom without touching the door handle with your freshly clean hands is sometimes a puzzle worthy of Monkey Island.
Sqorgar wrote: Getting out of a bathroom without touching the door handle with your freshly clean hands is sometimes a puzzle worthy of Monkey Island.
I wash my hands, dry them with a paper towel, and then open the door with said paper towel and then toss the towel from there. There is usually a garbage can right by the door.
This is problematic in bathrooms that only have hot air hand dryers, but those are pretty rare.
One of the sites I work at occasionally is a cosmetics manufacturing laboratory, and their toilet has a special door handle that automatically jizzes a load of antibac gel into your hand when you pull it. No-one warned me it did that, was a nice little surprise...
Crispy78 wrote: One of the sites I work at occasionally is a cosmetics manufacturing laboratory, and their toilet has a special door handle that automatically jizzes a load of antibac gel into your hand when you pull it. No-one warned me it did that, was a nice little surprise...
Why not just a motion sensor mounted next to the door?
My workplace has everything in the restroom on motion sensors - faucets, soap dispenser, paper towels and doors. So you don't actually need to touch anything.
A new analysis found that the virus can remain viable in the air for up to 3 hours, on copper for up to 4 hours, on cardboard up to 24 hours and on plastic and stainless steel up to 72 hours.
It does go on to clarify that touching contaminated surfaces isn't thought to be the main way it's being transferred, but nobody's really sure yet. And, obviously, the chances of touching something contaminated would go up as the actual number of infected people goes up.
The experiments in this study are done under a controlled climate - 20-23C with humidity at 40% - which presumably would emulate a typical indoor environment. So these numbers wouldn't be applicable to an outdoor setting, with temperatures are outside this norm and UV radiation bombarding everything.
It's also worth pointing out that the numbers do drop over this time in a linear fashion, such that 50% hours later, there would be 50% the amount of virus. I just skimmed the study, but I didn't see if it went into how much virus was necessary to actually infect someone. So it would stand to logic that your chance of infection shrinks over time, with some point well before the maximum time that infection becomes a trivial concern.
Exactly. Plus, you have airflow to disperse any potential virus and dilute it. That's why they're telling people at work to keep. Windows and doors open.
Crispy78 wrote: One of the sites I work at occasionally is a cosmetics manufacturing laboratory, and their toilet has a special door handle that automatically jizzes a load of antibac gel into your hand when you pull it. No-one warned me it did that, was a nice little surprise...
Why not just a motion sensor mounted next to the door?
My workplace has everything in the restroom on motion sensors - faucets, soap dispenser, paper towels and doors. So you don't actually need to touch anything.
It means it's enforced. You literally can't open the door without getting a handful of hand sanitizer.
That thing I was asking about is for agency sanitation workers. The full time contract staff have been told to stay away from the depot as much as possible but agency workers are at the same time being ordered to report in, and then come back and hang around in confined spaces until clocking out time. An offer to ring in and clock out when the run is finished was rejected. FYI, the bosses giving these orders are doing so from the safety of their own homes. I’ve been told that they’re considered expendable.
This also has the “unintended” consequence that contract workers are deliberately dumping their work onto these agency workers in order to get home early, still on the clock, still on full pay.
A new analysis found that the virus can remain viable in the air for up to 3 hours, on copper for up to 4 hours, on cardboard up to 24 hours and on plastic and stainless steel up to 72 hours.
It does go on to clarify that touching contaminated surfaces isn't thought to be the main way it's being transferred, but nobody's really sure yet. And, obviously, the chances of touching something contaminated would go up as the actual number of infected people goes up.
The experiments in this study are done under a controlled climate - 20-23C with humidity at 40% - which presumably would emulate a typical indoor environment. So these numbers wouldn't be applicable to an outdoor setting, with temperatures are outside this norm and UV radiation bombarding everything.
It's also worth pointing out that the numbers do drop over this time in a linear fashion, such that 50% hours later, there would be 50% the amount of virus. I just skimmed the study, but I didn't see if it went into how much virus was necessary to actually infect someone. So it would stand to logic that your chance of infection shrinks over time, with some point well before the maximum time that infection becomes a trivial concern.
Exactly. Plus, you have airflow to disperse any potential virus and dilute it. That's why they're telling people at work to keep. Windows and doors open.
Plan for the worst, hope for the best.
With genuine respect to all posters, I don’t really know anyone on Dakka from Adam. That means I need to consider any advice on here as both from a knowledgeable source, and the worst kind of ‘4 the lulz’ troll.
So take it on board, and compare to sources I should be able to trust, as their qualification can be verified. Especially because I’ve no qualms at all about admitting my own pig ignorance toward this particular subject.
Hence I’ve made efforts not only to respect government requests for social distancing, but have also tried my best to keep my flat nipping clean. Sure, I’m happy and confident in my own personal hygiene (love a good shower, me). But my flatmate as noted elsewhere is a delivery driver. Who knows what his exposure risk is? Higher than mine (sitting in my flat, working from home) that’s for sure.
Crucially here, I see no reason not to follow official advice. It makes logical sense, and is coming from people I can reasonably trust to know what they’re on about. I won’t be those go crowd a shop. I won’t be those hoarding stuff out of panic. I’ve somewhat changed my diet (I’m a slag for takeout), and have started home cooking (soup maker and slow cooker FTW!). The extra veggies hardly harm matters, but the driving factor here is again cleanliness. I can properly wash my veg, prep it on what I know to be clean utensils etc. Again, all about limiting my and my flat mates exposure to nasties as much as possible. I’m not buying into ridiculous ‘miracle cures’ from the usual snake oil peddlers. I’m not buying into ‘just mix medicine A and Z’ type stuff unless it comes from official government advisory bodies.
Sadly we currently live in an age of wilful ignorance on all sides of the political spectrum. And worse, anti-intellectualism from the ‘holistic’ medicine types, who are primarily interested in selling crap for as much as possible.
The quotes above? Interesting to read how long the virus can stay active outside of a host. Sure, lab conditions etc. But even so, it’s solid food for thought and should not be discounted out of hand.
Keep clean. Eat well. Keep our distance. Sooner people get on board, the sooner the pub can reopen.
agreed, and yeah, the scenes from the weekend of people crowding beaches and fish and chip shops is obviously not good, however, I feel that there's a considerable and pertinent difference between that, and me taking my wife and daughter for a walk along some of Oxfordshires bridleways, where we may come across a handful of people, and even then, only for a couple of seconds as you pass by, obviously keeping as much distance as possible. I come into closer contact with people when I did my grocery shop.
I had my haircut this weekend, and the barber was saying he didnt know how long they were going to be open for. I might have to get the clippers out. dust off my doc martens and Ma-1 jacket while I'm at it.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Just seen on the news that people are still crowding onto tubes, not following the 2 metre thing. but then some people still need to work, and they've reduced the services.. so you cant win?
I just hope all these things dont result in tighter restrictions on movement for everyone else who is being sensible.
There’s a difference between necessary contact, and ‘I’m gonna do whatever I want’.
Me? Sainsbury’s is out the back of my house. Literally a one minute dawdle. That means I can nip round in relative safety to get goodies in. If it’s heaving, I’ll just go home and try again later.
Others? Crowding into chip shops, take always etc, or having parties on the Common.
Sqorgar wrote: Getting out of a bathroom without touching the door handle with your freshly clean hands is sometimes a puzzle worthy of Monkey Island.
I wash my hands, dry them with a paper towel, and then open the door with said paper towel and then toss the towel from there. There is usually a garbage can right by the door.
This is problematic in bathrooms that only have hot air hand dryers, but those are pretty rare.
Uh, maybe where you live. All bathrooms in my city are now ‘environmentally friendly’ by not using any towel at all.
Hand dryers only because paper is bad I guess.
With these sorts of initiatives, it’s impossible to not touch the door handle with your clean hands.
I personally fail to see how a couple of biodegradable towels are more polluting than a hand dryer that uses several hundred volts of electricity for several minutes. Somehow burning coal is more environmentally friendly then using paper.
Ghool wrote: I personally fail to see how a couple of biodegradable towels are more polluting than a hand dryer that uses several hundred volts of electricity for several minutes. Somehow burning coal is more environmentally friendly then using paper.
In 2011, Dyson funded a peer-reviewed study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where scientists summed up all the environmental impacts of the manufacture, use and demise of paper towels, warm hand dryers and high-speed dryers. They assumed that we use two paper towels each time we wash up, that the fastest dryer runs for 12 seconds, and that the slowest for a half-minute. Hard as they were to compare, the study was confident that high-speed dryers were kindest to the environment. When every inch of the process is factored in – mining the ore to make the metal of a hand dryer, making towels out of trees, transporting these products, binning them – paper towels can generate as much as 70% more emissions than the most efficient hand dryer on the market.
Bear in mind that it was funded by Dyson and that it is compared with the most efficient hand dryer (think something like the Dyson Blade as opposed to a brick that feels as damp and pleasant as an asthmatic dog wheezing on you).
But is is worth considering that initial appearances usually mask hidden costs. Dryers do not "uses several hundred volts" and paper has many hidden costs.
Much of the hidden cost of paper is in the harvesting, transportation (esp as much comes from abroad so its going to go long distance). Plus there's the fact that for paper you've got continual production like that going on all the time; whilst for electric driers whilst the actual production per unit likely generates more; the number of units is vastly smaller.
Plus don't forget if you've got nuclear or green energy sources then running the hand drier isn't even causing that much harm when running - though of course the vast scales at which human activities operate at I'm sure there's a significant impact of their use in general. But the same can be said for ALL human impacts when you start to compare things at the national and global scales.
Overread wrote: Much of the hidden cost of paper is in the harvesting, transportation (esp as much comes from abroad so its going to go long distance). Plus there's the fact that for paper you've got continual production like that going on all the time; whilst for electric driers whilst the actual production per unit likely generates more; the number of units is vastly smaller.
Well, the real big environmental cost of paper lies in the chemicals used to make it from pulp in the first place and then bleach it. Lots of liquid byproducts and air pollution leftovers you need to do something with, both of which apply even to recycled paper.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: I also heard that hand dryers are really unhygienic anyway, but then I dont have anything to back that up.
I have seen a few articles, but they all seem to have a thumb on the scale one way or the other. One showed that hand dryers pull in unclear air from the room (bacteria, airborne fecal particles) and blasts it everywhere... but it was funded by a paper towel manufacturer's trade association. Dyson says their hand dryers are way more hygienic. The Mayo Clinic says it's a wash.
My gut says they are never cleaned and probably harbor lots of mold.
I hope this isn't too off-topic, but hand-washing hygiene in this thread seems in the ballpark at least.
Well, it seems to me, paper towels or hand dryer, neither one of them is going to hold a candle to the inner door handle that is used by people who poop and don't wash their hands. If hand dryers replace paper towels, forcing you to touch those handles, it doesn't really matter how hygienic they are.
In my experience, I'll use a hand dryer and then still grab a paper towel to open the door with, meaning I use both, so it isn't an either/or situation.
And I don't know about you guys' bathrooms, but I'm often in bathrooms where I can't get towels without touching a manual feed button, or which have no towels to begin with, or which have the trashcans on the otherside of the bathroom, out of reach of the door. Not to mention that bathroom soap dispensers are often devoid of soap, or those motion detected faucets which run for about 1 second intervals. Oh, and the urinals tend to have the floor surrounding them covered in pee and I have to be careful my shoelaces don't fall into it. And we'll not even bother going into the state of the toilets in the stalls...
I'm serious. You want to see an immediate and marked improvement of people's health, you start with the bathrooms.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: I also heard that hand dryers are really unhygienic anyway, but then I dont have anything to back that up.
I have seen a few articles, but they all seem to have a thumb on the scale one way or the other. One showed that hand dryers pull in unclear air from the room (bacteria, airborne fecal particles) and blasts it everywhere... but it was funded by a paper towel manufacturer's trade association. Dyson says their hand dryers are way more hygienic. The Mayo Clinic says it's a wash.
My gut says they are never cleaned and probably harbor lots of mold.
I hope this isn't too off-topic, but hand-washing hygiene in this thread seems in the ballpark at least.
It's also because simple friction (and maybe absorption sucking them to the towel together with the water?) from towels is way more effective at removing remaining germs from your hands than drying them with hot air.
Dr William Bird, who advises the Government on public health, has calculated up to 7,100 could die this year due to the long-term effects of deconditioning on the body. This can occur if those who self-isolate stop being active for three months. Dr Bird said: "We must encourage people to get outdoors where possible and exercise by walking.
"And, if correct safety precautions and social distancing are observed, walking outdoors is safe even for those who are self-isolating."
Eh that sounds a bit overblown and like its taken the most extreme example - eg sitting at home, with the windows drawn, only watching the TV. There are loads of ways to exercise indoors; you can stand by the window for sunlight etc...
Also when he says "long term effects" are we starting to talk about statistics like "deconditioning shortens the lifespan by X years/weeks/perecent". Because sometimes stats like that are somewhat arbitrary, or can be somewhat abused for specific goals. If its going to potentially cost you a year if you refuse to do any home exercise etc... next to the greater potential cost of Corna virus taking you/lovedones lives now then it might well be the lesser of two evils. Especially since breathing and walking down the average urban highstreet can also come with "life shortening" results due to the pollution from vehicles etc...
Overread wrote: Eh that sounds a bit overblown and like its taken the most extreme example - eg sitting at home, with the windows drawn, only watching the TV. There are loads of ways to exercise indoors; you can stand by the window for sunlight etc...
Also when he says "long term effects" are we starting to talk about statistics like "deconditioning shortens the lifespan by X years/weeks/perecent". Because sometimes stats like that are somewhat arbitrary, or can be somewhat abused for specific goals. If its going to potentially cost you a year if you refuse to do any home exercise etc... next to the greater potential cost of Corna virus taking you/lovedones lives now then it might well be the lesser of two evils. Especially since breathing and walking down the average urban highstreet can also come with "life shortening" results due to the pollution from vehicles etc...
I disagree. I think staying inside permanently is terrible for you, even if you exercise or try and get sunlight from a window. walking outside isn't going to give you the virus, unless you happen to walk through someones sneeze or cough.
I disagree. I think staying inside permanently is terrible for you, even if you exercise or try and get sunlight from a window. walking outside isn't going to give you the virus, unless you happen to walk through someones sneeze or cough.
Point of fact, you get necessary vitamin D from exposure to direct sunlight. How much you need depends on weather, latitude, and the fairness of your skin, but I've heard you generally want at least 10 minutes of sunlight. People staying indoors without getting any sun will absolutely end up with a vitamin deficiency.
It's also an important step in fighting off depression. It is believe that a lack of sunlight might be a major factor in seasonal depression, as in the winter, there is less sunlight and less direct sunlight. People who stay up all night are also a greater risk for depression and cognitive impairment. Exercise also improves mood and cognition, so a walk outside is literally one of the easiest and healthiest things you can do.
So, please, take walks outside. The last thing we want is millions of sickly, depressed people. You won't get the virus from a walk.
That's the point I've been trying to make, but you tell people to do social distancing and they think you need to batten down the hatches and hermit yourself.
I’ve decided to deal with that agency issue myself. It’s surprising how cowardly top ranks get when threatened with media and political attention. I’ve been here before.
Future War Cultist wrote: I’ve decided to deal with that agency issue myself. It’s surprising how cowardly top ranks get when threatened with media and political attention. I’ve been here before.
Rich people do not like to be reminded that the rest of the population is like Skaven--if we unite against a common foe for even a tiny amount of time we quickly overwhelm it by sheer weight of numbers. These days we even have the whole Pestilens shtick to boot!
Decided to try my luck at the local Tesco extra after work today. Got there just before 6pm and it was not to bad IMO. Granted there was no non flavoured milk left, toilet roll isle was still a ghost town(except for some kitchen roll) and the bread was getting low. But overall a massive improvement on last week. Apart from the milk, getting what I wanted was no problem. I was impressed that they had a hand sanitizing table set up in the entrance, a lot of staff wiping down shelves and tape on the floor for distancing guidance at the checkouts.
The Mcdonalds across the way on the other hand made me double take. The drive though had a queue out of there carpark, down the access road, around the corner and about 100 meters down the main road No wonder fresh fruit and veg was so well stocked at Tesco
Tabletop Combat is shutting down on Wednesday and it sounds like they won't re-open until its all blown over (or at least until it has for their local region Cornwall).
It's not just their factory, but offices and studio as well so no more releases, info, photos or anything until things get back on track.
In theory, it can be argued it’s preferable to visiting a supermarket. Then it’s just me, the delivery person, and the kitchen staff. That’s as few as four, maybe five people.
Compared the supermarket, that’s far less personal contact (staff numbers, shared areas etc).
Except, how many others is the delivery driver off to see? Only takes a single filth wizard, no? But what if the filth wizard was in the supermarket, touching things with their gakky digits?
A) A Richard move, as contactless handover or no, some poor sod is out and about
B) Not a Richard move thanks to contactless handover, and the delivery dude is kept in their job
Thoughts?
Definitely B. Think about it this way: the person doing the delivery has decided that for them personally the risks of being out and about are worth it because they need the money. The alternative is you being out and about, which either way means a human wandering about. The other alternative is not ordering takeout, which is even worse since you go from a potential death by coronavirus to a certain death when you are driven to madness by a lack of processed deliciousness food diversity and either commit suicide or murder your housemates.
nels1031 wrote: Found out today, during Governor Hogan's order to shutdown non-essential businesses, that I am in fact, essential. Yay?
On one hand : Cool, still gainfully employed and don't have to mess with unemployment insurance (yet).
On the other hand : Probs going to face an increased risk of infection dealing with the subset of my customer base that are absolute goons.
Positive spin; many predictions suggest the majority of the population will get coronavirus at some point, and you'll have better odds of getting it out of the way early. Plus once you are through with it, you are likely to be immune or nearly so and have much less to worry about.
This sounds exactly like my situation here in the UK. Selling car spares makes us part of the transport infrastructure apparently*shrug*
I'm in the powersports industry(Motorcycles, ATVs, UTVs and PWCs). Our showroom is shutdown*, but parts, service and accessories will be operating as per normal, as we do indeed fall under the essential category, like yourself.
*The owner is trying to operate in the gray area and just make the showroom an "appointment only" sort of thing. Alot of the salesman have been laid off as of 15 minutes ago.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I’m still dimly hopeful New York will go ahead. It’s not until the very end of June, so there’s some chance this might’ve settled down by then.
I'm hoping Iron Maiden are going to be doing their show in July. Been waiting a long time for that one.
nels1031 wrote: Found out today, during Governor Hogan's order to shutdown non-essential businesses, that I am in fact, essential. Yay?
On one hand : Cool, still gainfully employed and don't have to mess with unemployment insurance (yet).
On the other hand : Probs going to face an increased risk of infection dealing with the subset of my customer base that are absolute goons.
Positive spin; many predictions suggest the majority of the population will get coronavirus at some point, and you'll have better odds of getting it out of the way early. Plus once you are through with it, you are likely to be immune or nearly so and have much less to worry about.
That is the herd immunity theory. One way or another that is how it will pan out.
Some useful hints coming through from Iceland who are planning to test the a good chunk of the entire population of 364,000
The number of individuals tested by the country’s health authorities and the biotechnology firm deCode Genetics — 3,787 — roughly translates to 10,405 per million, which compares to about 5,203 in South Korea, 2478 in Italy, and 764 in the UK.
Those numbers include the first results of the voluntary tests on people with no symptoms, which started last Friday. The first batch of 1,800 tests produced 19 positive cases, or about 1% of the sample.
"Early results from deCode Genetics indicate that a low proportion of the general population has contracted the virus and that about half of those who tested positive are non-symptomatic,” said Guðnason. “The other half displays very moderate cold-like symptoms."
so it looks like half of those (adults) who get it are not symptomatic,
which on one hand is good as it pulls the death rate (not the number of dead) down by 50%, and a lot of folk, even elderly folk, will walk away untouched whatever happens so the world will go on
but on the other hand squashing down transmission is basically going to be impossible without population scale testing (or global vaccination), too many infectious people can't be found without it
I get the feeling that whilst its not been said this evening the UK government still expects the vast majority of people to contract the virus. The shutdown is simply attempting to stem the tide of infections to a level that is easier to cope with than simply letting it run rampant.
The real question will be how well things hold out and how the country will re-activate. I can see them likely relaxing some restrictions, not all, and then clamping down again once the surge of new infections rises.
It might be that we go through several peak and fall periods with the disease.
It does feel like the initial "herd immunity" hypothesis blew up in their face with reports of hospitals already becoming overwhelmed, and they found wisdom in following the standard protocol.
If I were of the suspicious kind, I'd be wondering whose friends sold stock in which businesses before the delayed lockdown announcement.
Overread wrote: Eh that sounds a bit overblown and like its taken the most extreme example - eg sitting at home, with the windows drawn, only watching the TV. There are loads of ways to exercise indoors; you can stand by the window for sunlight etc...
Depends on how you live. I live on 27 square meters. There's exactly one spot in my house that's not my bed where I can lie on the floor without having to pull my legs up or something. And when lying in that spot I can't stretch my arms because the closet is in the way then. As luck would have it I have physiotherapy right now for back and shoulder pains so during my next appointment (which will be by phone most likely) I'll ask for some leg workouts that don't require walking around (as I simply don't have the space for that) because I really don't want to get thrombosis while I'm about 95-99% locked up for the foreseeable future.
For anyone who wants some workout routines to do at home, you could always pick up a copy of Charles Bronson's book (the notorious criminal, not the actor ).
Basically his guide for how he stayed in shape whilst in solitary confinement for decades.
Somewhat sarcastic, no idea how good it is but he has managed to keep in ridiculous shape for someone stuck in a cell for pretty much all his adult life
EDIT
In other news, the latest UK government plans includes the quarantine of people who are vulnerable to the disease for 12 weeks. Seeing as I qualify as vulnerable I guess I'm gonna be cooped up for quite some time, so forgive me if my posts on here become somewhat erratic and nonsensical!
In other, other news; I am off to plead with the king of the potato people to sort this whole mess out so he will let me go.
To commemorate lockdown I have decided to watch the full version of Fukkatsu No Hi, a multilingual classic with no subtitles. Well worth the watch. Link provided.
Overread wrote: I get the feeling that whilst its not been said this evening the UK government still expects the vast majority of people to contract the virus. The shutdown is simply attempting to stem the tide of infections to a level that is easier to cope with than simply letting it run rampant.
The real question will be how well things hold out and how the country will re-activate. I can see them likely relaxing some restrictions, not all, and then clamping down again once the surge of new infections rises.
It might be that we go through several peak and fall periods with the disease.
The problem is we can't afford to let the majority of the population contract the virus. Building group immunity in a way that doesn't overwhelm the medical system will take decades with current Intensive Care capacity. Still a couple years if we manage to increase capacity tenfold. And then there's the risk of the virus mutating so much thanks to having millions of hosts that a vaccine isn't going to cover everything anymore.
Overread wrote: I get the feeling that whilst its not been said this evening the UK government still expects the vast majority of people to contract the virus. The shutdown is simply attempting to stem the tide of infections to a level that is easier to cope with than simply letting it run rampant.
The real question will be how well things hold out and how the country will re-activate. I can see them likely relaxing some restrictions, not all, and then clamping down again once the surge of new infections rises.
It might be that we go through several peak and fall periods with the disease.
The current shutdown is necessary just to prevent total collapse of the health service in the near term(it would have been more effective at doing that if we'd started a month ago, but evidently BoBo and Dom were quite happy to see the herd thinned out a bit until they saw enough polling telling them that actually, most folk would actually be quite angry if forced to roll the dice on whether or not Granny sees another Christmas), but unless and until we get either a vaccine or an antiviral effective enough to knock C19 back to a similar level of seriousness to catching a mild flu, the only practical solution is to follow South Korea's example - mass testing, rapid contact tracing, enforced isolation for the infected.
Honestly I'm kind of baffled as to why the UK government are so hesitant to do testing. It's cheaper for the NHS than letting the virus run rampant. It would allow the economy to return to something approaching normalcy a lot sooner. It would require much less social control. Yet even now with a police-enforced lockdown of the whole country, they're only talking about ramping up testing for health service workers and people who're already showing symptoms.
Overread wrote: I get the feeling that whilst its not been said this evening the UK government still expects the vast majority of people to contract the virus. The shutdown is simply attempting to stem the tide of infections to a level that is easier to cope with than simply letting it run rampant.
The real question will be how well things hold out and how the country will re-activate. I can see them likely relaxing some restrictions, not all, and then clamping down again once the surge of new infections rises.
It might be that we go through several peak and fall periods with the disease.
The problem is we can't afford to let the majority of the population contract the virus. Building group immunity in a way that doesn't overwhelm the medical system will take decades with current Intensive Care capacity. Still a couple years if we manage to increase capacity tenfold. And then there's the risk of the virus mutating so much thanks to having millions of hosts that a vaccine isn't going to cover everything anymore.
80% have mild symptoms and do not require hospitalisation, and 14% require only limited care, the remaining 6% get critically ill. There will be overstretch but possibly not to breaking point. Also herd immunity will reach a point where the isolated do not get it at all when they come out of isolation. The government strategy had a good chance of working, but political pressure got too high, and too many people were totally ignoring all precautions. Lets deal with this sensibly didn't work, too many people are unsensible, now the government must use stick.
I think most people would rather take their chances with the Spanish Flu than wake up in East Berlin - but the media makes it sound like a complete loss of liberty, autonomy, and a grotesque invasion of privacy is fun little family vacation. Why wouldn't you want to save Pop-pop's life by complete authoritarian control over all aspects of your life?
Sqorgar wrote: I think most people would rather take their chances with the Spanish Flu than wake up in East Berlin - but the media makes it sound like a complete loss of liberty, autonomy, and a grotesque invasion of privacy is fun little family vacation. Why wouldn't you want to save Pop-pop's life by complete authoritarian control over all aspects of your life?
proably because we understand it's a temporary measure and some people won't obey the good sense guidelines until they're told they could be arrested if they don't
Overread wrote: Eh that sounds a bit overblown and like its taken the most extreme example - eg sitting at home, with the windows drawn, only watching the TV. There are loads of ways to exercise indoors; you can stand by the window for sunlight etc...
Depends on how you live. I live on 27 square meters. There's exactly one spot in my house that's not my bed where I can lie on the floor without having to pull my legs up or something. And when lying in that spot I can't stretch my arms because the closet is in the way then. As luck would have it I have physiotherapy right now for back and shoulder pains so during my next appointment (which will be by phone most likely) I'll ask for some leg workouts that don't require walking around (as I simply don't have the space for that) because I really don't want to get thrombosis while I'm about 95-99% locked up for the foreseeable future.
Yoga is a surprisingly effective exercise which is done in one spot. It's easy to learn a basic routine.
Overread wrote: Eh that sounds a bit overblown and like its taken the most extreme example - eg sitting at home, with the windows drawn, only watching the TV. There are loads of ways to exercise indoors; you can stand by the window for sunlight etc...
Depends on how you live. I live on 27 square meters. There's exactly one spot in my house that's not my bed where I can lie on the floor without having to pull my legs up or something. And when lying in that spot I can't stretch my arms because the closet is in the way then. As luck would have it I have physiotherapy right now for back and shoulder pains so during my next appointment (which will be by phone most likely) I'll ask for some leg workouts that don't require walking around (as I simply don't have the space for that) because I really don't want to get thrombosis while I'm about 95-99% locked up for the foreseeable future.
Yoga is a surprisingly effective exercise which is done in one spot. It's easy to learn a basic routine.
You know it seems so obvious but I did not think of that. Thanks, seriously.
So with the uk on lock down and my wife and two boys are all safe at home, I’m sat having a coffee before leaving for a job that’s classed as critical and Apper to be a key worker...
Yay pure joy. In all honesty the anxiety is starting to kick in now as have to put my trust in people that I can’t say really warrant it. Been doing well as went in to survival mode making sure my family have everything they would need for a while and had total awareness of the situation..
Even my 4 yrs old knows that he has to be careful and be sure to wash his hands. Hell he even took it in his stride that his nursery was closing due to people getting bad bugs in their belly’s. His words not mine.
I've been home with a slight fever and the runs for a week. Hopefully they give me a test as I work in care for someone on a respirator and it would be good to know if I'm a hazard.
Locally, a bigger problem than corona is our new far-right government (we're talking "nazis were the good guys" far) that refuses to supply us with protective gear and is taking the opportunity to seize more power and embezzle money left and right.
Honestly I'm kind of baffled as to why the UK government are so hesitant to do testing. It's cheaper for the NHS than letting the virus run rampant. It would allow the economy to return to something approaching normalcy a lot sooner. It would require much less social control. Yet even now with a police-enforced lockdown of the whole country, they're only talking about ramping up testing for health service workers and people who're already showing symptoms.
We don't have the capacity until we have faster testing methods in place. Processing labs are overrun and we already have multiday lags.
Future War Cultist wrote: Might be walking into a sacking today, although with what I’ve been recording (even before this all started), god help them if they do.
Oh, turns out they can learn! But only once they get chewed out by their own superiors who we rank and file workers elect to office.
They were asked ‘what’s your solution for this?’
They proposed having the driver in the lorry by himself whilst the two or three loaders get driven around behind it in a van by a line manager. And when the work was done, everyone is brought back to the depot to wait until clocking out time but with a 2m distance enforced by the managers.
Apparently this idea went down so badly, the councillors took matters into their own hands and ordered ‘task and finish’ instead, whilst they also begin proceedings to let some of the managers go.
hotsauceman1 wrote: Honestly, Drastic actions should have been taken to prevent the spread while it was still in fething china, but we where to scared to anger them. what should have happened was all travel to and from china be halted and all suspected people be rounded up and quarantined.
Sensible, but that would have been labeled as "racist" had it been done.
Future War Cultist wrote: Oh, turns out they can learn! But only once they get chewed out by their own superiors who we rank and file workers elect to office.
They were asked ‘what’s your solution for this?’
They proposed having the driver in the lorry by himself whilst the two or three loaders get driven around behind it in a van by a line manager. And when the work was done, everyone is brought back to the depot to wait until clocking out time but with a 2m distance enforced by the managers.
Apparently this idea went down so badly, the councillors took matters into their own hands and ordered ‘task and finish’ instead, whilst they also begin proceedings to let some of the managers go.
Karma is a bitch.
This seems like a 9/11 suggestion that just begs for something to go wrong? Also, when you anaways just wait around doing nothing due to the situation then that is just spitefull torwards your workers and underlings.
IT's like beeing that one dick in the barracks not sending the recruits home on friday afternoon because 5pm is standard even though the poor sods have done everything allready and are basically just standing around.
somtimes i swear people should be forcd to learn positions of companies from the pike up again.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I’m torn.
Is ordering take-out....
A) A Richard move, as contactless handover or no, some poor sod is out and about
B) Not a Richard move thanks to contactless handover, and the delivery dude is kept in their job
Thoughts?
Since we Got Healthy(tm) a year and a half ago, we've rarely gotten takeout or delivery. We ordered it this past weekend from a nice little local family Chinese place that we used to get from on and off as I stopped in their (empty) restaurant after work (before eat-in got nationally cancelled the other day). They were very happy to have our business.
While it was bloody delicious, we got it to give them a little bit of support. I'd order from them every week, but we need to keep our bodies and immune systems in as good shape as we can, and weekly Chinese food will do the opposite.
YMMV of course, but that was my experience.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Preach that creed dude.
In theory, it can be argued it’s preferable to visiting a supermarket. Then it’s just me, the delivery person, and the kitchen staff. That’s as few as four, maybe five people.
Compared the supermarket, that’s far less personal contact (staff numbers, shared areas etc).
Except, how many others is the delivery driver off to see? Only takes a single filth wizard, no? But what if the filth wizard was in the supermarket, touching things with their gakky digits?
Wash everything you bring into your home. Ideally with a little bit of soap or dishwashing liquid, as it's a surfactant and will destroy the fatty membrane that COVID-19 is contained in. Rinse it with regular cold water afterwards. All the food (well, maybe not the meat, but all the fresh). All the packages. Throw away the bags it came in, and wipe down the containers. Put the takeaway in the oven for a couple of minutes to reheat it and kill off any unwanted guests. Enjoy.
You know, funny how that went. Records show Cummings proposed the utterly insane herd nonsense to “protect the economy, and if that means some pensioners die, too bad”. Boris was willing to accept 50.000 deaths, started to waver when they were updated to 200.000, and finally broke when projection shown 550.000+. All through this, crucial time was lost, and containing the virus in UK might now be hard if not impossible. Tories managed to squander the one advantage they had, of being early closed island, all to protect the rich. Bravo.
I won't be petty and say 'told you so', but I must admit, Boris and Cummings must be geniuses. How else they would be still finding fresh idiots ready to believe 5783848395734 lie in a row even when all experts scream it's nonsense and it's the worst possible course of action? Of course, having UK media in their pocket ready to claim white is black on demand helps, but still, it must be black magic of some sort.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I’m still dimly hopeful New York will go ahead. It’s not until the very end of June, so there’s some chance this might’ve settled down by then.
I'm hoping Iron Maiden are going to be doing their show in July. Been waiting a long time for that one.
I wouldn't if I were you. US numbers so far track drastically worse infection rate than China and unless a miracle happens soon (especially in anti-science states) you will soon see tens of thousands new cases per day - and that's not even that pessimistic prediction...
Of course, seeing USA has types even worse than Cummings above, I am afraid even 'pessimistic' take will soon be seen as rosy scenario:
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I’m still dimly hopeful New York will go ahead. It’s not until the very end of June, so there’s some chance this might’ve settled down by then.
I'm hoping Iron Maiden are going to be doing their show in July. Been waiting a long time for that one.
I wouldn't if I were you. US numbers so far track drastically worse infection rate than China and unless a miracle happens soon (especially in anti-science states) you will soon see tens of thousands new cases per day - and that's not even that pessimistic prediction...
Of course, seeing USA has types even worse than Cummings above, I am afraid even 'pessimistic' take will soon be seen as rosy scenario:
Well, the concert is in the Netherlands, and Iron Maiden is a British band as far as I know, but still, given how things are progressing in both countries, basically my only hope is that this thing burns out before then without any of the band members getting it.
Sqorgar wrote: I think most people would rather take their chances with the Spanish Flu than wake up in East Berlin - but the media makes it sound like a complete loss of liberty, autonomy, and a grotesque invasion of privacy is fun little family vacation. Why wouldn't you want to save Pop-pop's life by complete authoritarian control over all aspects of your life?
proably because we understand it's a temporary measure and some people won't obey the good sense guidelines until they're told they could be arrested if they don't
Well, I've read some stories about quarantine measures that sent chills down my spine and made me seriously wonder if they're worth it. A 17 year old girl, wheelchair bound, multiple disorders, lives away from home in an institution for handicapped people. Starts showing flu-like symptoms. Cannot be tested for Corona due to test kit shortage. Is preventively locked up(indicating she's probably unable to understand why she's quarantined, so she's probably also mentally impaired) in her own room until she's no longer showing symptoms. I cannot even imagine the psychological hell this poor girl is going through right now. A 10-year old boy who is in forced isolation because he has corona. Shouldn't it be the autonomous decision of the rest of the family whether it's worth the risk of infection in order to take proper care of their son (they'd have to go into family isolation of course but I'd be more than willing to risk the disease in order to take care of my children if I had them)? I mean, I'm all for proper antivirus measures but... isn't this going a bit too far? And this is in the Netherlands mind you, not in some authoritarian gakhole.
I won't be petty and say 'told you so', but I must admit, Boris and Cummings must be geniuses. How else they would be still finding fresh idiots ready to believe 5783848395734 lie in a row even when all experts scream it's nonsense and it's the worst possible course of action? Of course, having UK media in their pocket ready to claim white is black on demand helps, but still, it must be black magic of some sort.
Got anything to back up that hyperbole, or is it just a throwaway attack on a political party?
Cronch wrote: Good to know that the "country" is economy, not the People. Good old conservatives.
That has nothing to do with the party or political idelogy underlying and more with the issue of money and common sense.
On another note Chinas Central government attempts to restart the economy via again allowing travel etc. Meanwhile local governments attempt to delay this fearing political reprecussions if there is again a rise in infections that they basically die politically.
This morning I stepped out into the bright sunshine and crisp spring air. The other side of the road, a pretty young, tall athletic woman ran past, wearing a tight lycra getup.
This morning I stepped out into the bright sunshine and crisp spring air. The other side of the road, a pretty young, tall athletic woman ran past, wearing a tight lycra getup.
That lifted my spirits I can tell you.
On the former pretty much impossible becuse it is the political executives doing the job off enforcing the policy to deal with this crisis.
on the later, i can understand. Atm i am sadly stuck with green /four fruit pyjama look shooing around people.
This morning I stepped out into the bright sunshine and crisp spring air. The other side of the road, a pretty young, tall athletic woman ran past, wearing a tight lycra getup.
That lifted my spirits I can tell you.
Heh, I'm already past the point that I can enjoy that I'm afraid. The only thing I'm interested in right now is that there's more than 1.5 meters between me and whoever I walk past on the street.
This morning I stepped out into the bright sunshine and crisp spring air. The other side of the road, a pretty young, tall athletic woman ran past, wearing a tight lycra getup.
Well. Madrid has allready collapsed. 12% of mortality rate (I know the real one is lower for all the infected with mild symptoms) and they are starting to choose. They need to choose wo can access to respirators and who can't. And even young people that should pass this, as they can't access to the equipement to be hospitalized, are on risk of dying.
Yaay. 10k more infected tested and positives on a single day.
Galas wrote: Well. Madrid has allready collapsed. 12% of mortality rate (I know the real one is lower for all the infected with mild symptoms) and they are starting to choose. They need to choose wo can access to respirators and who can't. And even young people that should pass this, as they can't access to the equipement to be hospitalized, are on risk of dying.
Spain has 28,572 cases with 1,720 deaths.
France has 15,821 cases with 674 deaths.
Germany has 24,774 cases with 94 deaths.
It's not the coronavirus which is causing this problem. This is not due to lack of testing either - Spain and Germany has a similar number of confirmed cases. There is something environmental that Spain has that Germany does not (or vice versa) which is causing is discrepancy.
Spain has about 30% smoking rate, but so does Germany. Spain is actually warmer than Germany right now (high 50Fs compared to high 40Fs). The air pollution index doesn't seem that bad. Spain has a population of 47m, Germany 83m. In Spain, the population is centered in the 40s, Germany in the 50s. Even with the 5G conspiracy theory, Spain only really has 5G in Madrid, so unless the majority of the cases are coming from Madrid, that wouldn't explain it either.
By all standards that previously seemed to affect the virus, Germany should be at least equal to Spain, or far worse, and yet it has a fraction of deaths for roughly the same amount of cases. But the question remains, how are these two countries different that Spain is have a 17x higher mortality rate?
Access to healthcare. Family size. Social interaction norms. Employment demographics.
I'm not sure how these compare, but at broad strokes I would suspect that more people tend to find themselves in larger groups for family/church/social reasons in Spain than in Germany, and there are pretty big differences in how tactile the average person in each populations is.
nfe wrote: Access to healthcare. Family size. Social interaction norms. Employment demographics.
I'm not sure how these compare, but at broad strokes I would suspect that more people tend to find themselves in larger groups for family/church/social reasons in Spain than in Germany, and there are pretty big differences in how tactile the average person in each populations is.
That would affect the number of infected, not how many people dies. I don't think is incorrect to say that probably Germany health system is more robust than the spanish one. But with so many death I believe that probably, or the deaths haven't just started to appear, or they are counting differently the deceased.
The only thing that seems to link increased death rate to my knowledge is whether or not the healthcare system is overwhelmed - Wuhan vs rest of China, Italy early on, ie are there enough hospital beds and respirators for the severe cases. I have no idea about the state of Spanish healthcare and hospitals TBH, I'm just assuming Germany's is bigger due a larger and older population, and thus simply has more beds to fill before it's overwhelmed
Beyond that, diet (including alcohol consumption) might be a factor? Spanish, and mediterranean cuisine in general is different from NW Europe. I honestly have no idea what else might be involved.
nfe wrote: Access to healthcare. Family size. Social interaction norms. Employment demographics.
I'm not sure how these compare, but at broad strokes I would suspect that more people tend to find themselves in larger groups for family/church/social reasons in Spain than in Germany, and there are pretty big differences in how tactile the average person in each populations is.
That would affect the number of infected, not how many people dies. I don't think is incorrect to say that probably Germany health system is more robust than the spanish one. But with so many death I believe that probably, or the deaths haven't just started to appear, or they are counting differently the deceased.
Germany infections started in a younger demographic of workers of multinational companies like Webasto.
OTOH the Spanish is hitting heavily in the elderly, including a few retirement homes which skew the results.
Germany has also tested considerably more than Spain so my guess is Spain has a lot of asymptomatic undetected cases and mortality rate similar to Germany's.
Alpharius wrote: The leader(s) of the US Federal Government are making noises about 'restarting the economy' as of March 30.
No idea what that means, other then going against all the advice Health Officials are giving them.
It's just noise. The rich are just getting upset that The Number isn't happy and that they can't trade stocks or travel everywhere as they morally must be able to do. They're even less happy that the only thing to actually do to stop the disease is to tell people to stay put and enact multiple welfare policies to make sure they can do that.
The best case scenario is that throwing people out into the workplaces would keep the disease circulating for years, forcing other countries to essentially blockade the US until a vaccine has been developed and administered. The worst case scenario is 80+% infection rate in a month and millions of dead as hospitals are overloaded and the economic system collapses anyway. It's pure ideology.
Procured a second Disney+ subscription, which I’ve shared with the single parent families I know. They’ve all got multiple kids (same Dads, those that might Judge), so hopefully it’ll help maintain sanity in their households.
Galas wrote: You are a little out of the date Sqorgar.
Today we are at 39k infected with 2700 death. 12k infected alone are from Madrid.
I got it off the official WHO coronavirus map. It's usually a day or two behind - are you tell me that there have been 1,000 deaths in one or two days? That seems extreme even compared to Italy or China.
Money is ideology, and thus politics, there is no going round that.
As for Spain, I don't think Spanish economy ever truly rebound from the 2008 depression to anywhere the same level as say, Germany (which enjoyed a decade of stability). So it might be there was a lot of stressed immune systems for the virus to attack. If that were the case, the thing will go through USA like a buzzsaw through a sausage. That's pure speculation of course, but it is a fact that long term stress affects health.
Long story short, I got tested this morning, but results will take 7-10 days to come back. Experiencing some of the symptoms (shortness of breath in particular, which would be an awful coincidence if it was something else, as it feels quite different from a cold to me) along with pretty strong body ache, which came first.
Isolating and let everyone I may have come into contact with know. Not worried about myself but hoping I didn't transmit it to anyone at risk, if I do have it (we were being very careful the last 10 days in particular, but with my little kids who catch everything I figured it was a matter of time).
Just wanted to update, stay safe and socially distant (but ideally still connected, like on here) everyone!
RiTides wrote: Long story short, I got tested this morning, but results will take 7-10 days to come back. Experiencing some of the symptoms (shortness of breath in particular, which would be an awful coincidence if it was something else, as it feels quite different from a cold to me) along with pretty strong body ache, which came first.
That's tough. I had the opposite experience last week- went in to check on a completely unrelated problem, apparently said the wrong key word (despite repeating 'no fever, no cough, no symptoms'), the receptionists had a quiet panic and I got sent off to be tested regardless. They didn't even let me check in to the system properly, and later insisted to family that tried to check up on me that I hadn't been there at all (though a shift change might have been involved as well, I dunno).
What I actually went in for got very little time or attention (turned out to be fairly minor, but neither they nor I knew that at the time), and got shuffled off with very little fanfare and next to no explanation of the results of the cursory check. And at the time, there had been no local cases of Covid in the county so far (its now 6), so their rush and disorder seemed excessive. As did getting checked over in a converted (and leaky) storage closet/shower- but that's where they could hook up some electronic gear in isolation. They basically weren't letting anyone into the actual ER, most people they were checking in a tent outside.
Of course, its now been 6 days since I was tested, and haven't gotten any results yet. So if I did have it, there'd be potential problems (though I haven't left my property since)
Alpharius wrote: The leader(s) of the US Federal Government are making noises about 'restarting the economy' as of March 30.
No idea what that means, other then going against all the advice Health Officials are giving them.
In Massachusetts, the Governor is basically closing all non-essential businesses starting...today, at noon.
Hard to believe that he'd sign up for anything even close to 'Business as Usual' in less then a week.
I guess we're fortunate to have Governors who will side with common sense - I hope.
That's right. The governors will do what they think is right to protect their people. And let's remember that some prominent, supposedly evil corporations shut down their operations at an enormous cost before the federal government asked them to do anything (did anything at all?).
TL;DR -- Everyone has family. No one wants to see people die. There are plenty of grown-ups in leadership positions.
Galas wrote: You are a little out of the date Sqorgar.
Today we are at 39k infected with 2700 death. 12k infected alone are from Madrid.
I got it off the official WHO coronavirus map. It's usually a day or two behind - are you tell me that there have been 1,000 deaths in one or two days? That seems extreme even compared to Italy or China.
Galas wrote: You are a little out of the date Sqorgar.
Today we are at 39k infected with 2700 death. 12k infected alone are from Madrid.
I got it off the official WHO coronavirus map. It's usually a day or two behind - are you tell me that there have been 1,000 deaths in one or two days? That seems extreme even compared to Italy or China.
And 10k new infected at least detected on a single day, yeah.
That's right. The governors will do what they think is right to protect their people. And let's remember that some prominent, supposedly evil corporations shut down their operations at an enormous cost before the federal government asked them to do anything (did anything at all?).
TL;DR -- Everyone has family. No one wants to see people die. There are plenty of grown-ups in leadership positions.
Except for a certain Lt. Governor in Texas, anyway.
Galas wrote: You are a little out of the date Sqorgar.
Today we are at 39k infected with 2700 death. 12k infected alone are from Madrid.
I got it off the official WHO coronavirus map. It's usually a day or two behind - are you tell me that there have been 1,000 deaths in one or two days? That seems extreme even compared to Italy or China.
And 10k new infected at least detected on a single day, yeah.
More like 6K.
6584 to be precise. The situation is bad enough without having to resort to hyperbole.
So in Britain in the last few days, we've had, people robbing schools and nurseries for freezers, people robbing NHS workers for IDs, and people calling 999 to ask the police if they're allowed to leave their houses. Jesus were stupid.
gorgon wrote: That's right. The governors will do what they think is right to protect their people.
Surely there is a line they can't cross, though? Should we allow governors to decide which surgeries are elective or non-life threatening and can't be performed? Shouldn't that be a risk assessment made by actual doctors and their patients? Can they shutdown, for example, every bar in a state - many of which can not and will not be able to reopen? Should we give power like that to just one person with no oversight or recourse? It'd be like letting the governor unilaterally deciding to make abortions illegal - oh wait, those are elective and non-life threatening, so you can't get them done right now anyway...
gorgon wrote: [That's right. The governors will do what they think is right to protect their people. And let's remember that some prominent, supposedly evil corporations shut down their operations at an enormous cost before the federal government asked them to do anything (did anything at all?).
The federal government has no ability to declare a national lockdown or quarantine, which is why they did not and cannot. The best they can do is intercept people who are crossing state lines. All of this has been done at the state level, because that is where the authority to do so happens - but in reality, the states were generally late to the party as you say - private companies were taking measures by and large on their own.
---
Why are people in Spain dying at so much more rapid of a pace?
That's right. The governors will do what they think is right to protect their people. And let's remember that some prominent, supposedly evil corporations shut down their operations at an enormous cost before the federal government asked them to do anything (did anything at all?).
TL;DR -- Everyone has family. No one wants to see people die. There are plenty of grown-ups in leadership positions.
Except for a certain Lt. Governor in Texas, anyway.
Yeah well...lieutenant governor is a useless position of epic proportions. I think some states don't have them at all. This is the lieutenant governor of PA and his wife:
Spoiler:
And I think they ultimately get it with regard to the position. Last year they opened up the pool at the lieutenant governor's residence to camps and groups with inner city kids who ordinarily wouldn't have pool access. They don't stay there and don't want to, and figured the place should go to some good use if the public is paying for the thing.
Why the feth? What is that going to accomplish beyond destryoing logistical goods?
In other news.
Official swiss statistic in. sitting at 8836.
over 700 new from yesterday- In a population 8'57 mio inhabitants (some estimate that we have about 5k more. )
Effectiveness of meassures taken slowly denting in some regions according to some however federal governmnt does not reccomend lassier faire and expects further increase due to all non swiss italian regions beeing behind 2 weeks in essence.
It's important to remember that cases is directly linked to a countries testing. The UK doesn't seem to be doing mass testing and screening beyond those in a serious state already and beyond the early days infection and tracking for containment attempts.
So chances are the UK value could be far greater than the under 10K it currently stands at.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: So in Britain in the last few days, we've had, people robbing schools and nurseries for freezers, people robbing NHS workers for IDs, and people calling 999 to ask the police if they're allowed to leave their houses. Jesus were stupid.
gorgon wrote: That's right. The governors will do what they think is right to protect their people.
Surely there is a line they can't cross, though? Should we allow governors to decide which surgeries are elective or non-life threatening and can't be performed? Shouldn't that be a risk assessment made by actual doctors and their patients? Can they shutdown, for example, every bar in a state - many of which can not and will not be able to reopen? Should we give power like that to just one person with no oversight or recourse? It'd be like letting the governor unilaterally deciding to make abortions illegal - oh wait, those are elective and non-life threatening, so you can't get them done right now anyway...
The ban in Washington State covers elective surgeries and dental procedures only. I would assume that, if its something life threatening, its no longer an elective surgery. I don't think Jay Inslee (or any other governor) is in on every consult determining what is or isn't life threatening.
I have yet to hear anything about life critical surgeries being denied due to the ban on elective surgeries and dental procedures.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: So in Britain in the last few days, we've had, people robbing schools and nurseries for freezers, people robbing NHS workers for IDs, and people calling 999 to ask the police if they're allowed to leave their houses. Jesus were stupid.
Jesus !
What ,Here they wanted to Rob a bakery and i know of an instance of Stolen handsanitizer from a Hospital.
RiTides wrote: Long story short, I got tested this morning, but results will take 7-10 days to come back. Experiencing some of the symptoms (shortness of breath in particular, which would be an awful coincidence if it was something else, as it feels quite different from a cold to me) along with pretty strong body ache, which came first.
Isolating and let everyone I may have come into contact with know. Not worried about myself but hoping I didn't transmit it to anyone at risk, if I do have it (we were being very careful the last 10 days in particular, but with my little kids who catch everything I figured it was a matter of time).
Just wanted to update, stay safe and socially distant (but ideally still connected, like on here) everyone!
Stay safe, get better, hope all goes well you are doing the right thing.
RiTides wrote: Long story short, I got tested this morning, but results will take 7-10 days to come back. Experiencing some of the symptoms (shortness of breath in particular, which would be an awful coincidence if it was something else, as it feels quite different from a cold to me) along with pretty strong body ache, which came first.
Isolating and let everyone I may have come into contact with know. Not worried about myself but hoping I didn't transmit it to anyone at risk, if I do have it (we were being very careful the last 10 days in particular, but with my little kids who catch everything I figured it was a matter of time).
Just wanted to update, stay safe and socially distant (but ideally still connected, like on here) everyone!
If it makes you feel better, it seems coronavirus simply does not kill children, or even hit them very hard at all. Last I heard there were literally zero deaths below the age of 10. The biggest danger regarding kids is them transferring the disease to adults.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: So in Britain in the last few days, we've had, people robbing schools and nurseries for freezers, people robbing NHS workers for IDs, and people calling 999 to ask the police if they're allowed to leave their houses. Jesus were stupid.
Jesus !
What ,Here they wanted to Rob a bakery and i know of an instance of Stolen handsanitizer from a Hospital.
I work in an office environ (currently working from home) and we have bottles of hand sanitizer at every door. Within 2 days of things starting to get a little more serious in Washington State 2 of the full bottles that were by doors that weren't used as frequently were stolen.. Its pretty mind boggling.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: So in Britain in the last few days, we've had, people robbing schools and nurseries for freezers, people robbing NHS workers for IDs, and people calling 999 to ask the police if they're allowed to leave their houses. Jesus were stupid.
Jesus !
What ,Here they wanted to Rob a bakery and i know of an instance of Stolen handsanitizer from a Hospital.
In my hospital, they RIP them off the wall, we even had a guy walking around with a tub emptying all the hand sanitizer into it. Better yet a complete tool managed to ignore all the warning signs , massive signs, and forced open the door into the infection ward as he was looking for his mum who was visiting someone else in a different ward. How he didn't notice the dr and nurses in basically hazmat suits I will never know.
Also why have hospitals not banned visitors in the UK yet? Some have but many haven't.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: So in Britain in the last few days, we've had, people robbing schools and nurseries for freezers, people robbing NHS workers for IDs, and people calling 999 to ask the police if they're allowed to leave their houses. Jesus were stupid.
I take it your police have issued the same idiotic decrees about how they will only be responding to certain egregious crimes and will be working at minimal capacity as many of the departments over here have?
queen_annes_revenge wrote: So in Britain in the last few days, we've had, people robbing schools and nurseries for freezers, people robbing NHS workers for IDs, and people calling 999 to ask the police if they're allowed to leave their houses. Jesus were stupid.
Jesus !
What ,Here they wanted to Rob a bakery and i know of an instance of Stolen handsanitizer from a Hospital.
In my hospital, they RIP them off the wall, we even had a guy walking around with a tub emptying all the hand sanitizer into it. Better yet a complete tool managed to ignore all the warning signs , massive signs, and forced open the door into the infection ward as he was looking for his mum who was visiting someone else in a different ward. How he didn't notice the dr and nurses in basically hazmat suits I will never know.
Also why have hospitals not banned visitors in the UK yet? Some have but many haven't.
having banned visitors allready, also why do you think sods like i are now drafted for helping out and marking presence?
Otoh it has settled down here, mostly due to an actual effort off the government and well the Kantons on top of it and measures taken aswell as higher awareness. So you have it worse then us.
Still i could do all sorts of things which would be more interesting then carrying beds and standing guard over sanitizer....
thankfully swiss apothecaries are now allowed to make their own hand sanitizer.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: So in Britain in the last few days, we've had, people robbing schools and nurseries for freezers, people robbing NHS workers for IDs, and people calling 999 to ask the police if they're allowed to leave their houses. Jesus were stupid.
I take it your police have issued the same idiotic decrees about how they will only be responding to certain egregious crimes and will be working at minimal capacity as many of the departments over here have?
in such situations one needs to CALL in all the manpower to maintain order. No quarter given until the people actually realise that they are beeing stupid, then send that manpower back again.
they are. my wife is freaking out because our hospital has basically said i can be there for the birth, but thats it. soon as baby appears I'm out. its insanity.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: So in Britain in the last few days, we've had, people robbing schools and nurseries for freezers, people robbing NHS workers for IDs, and people calling 999 to ask the police if they're allowed to leave their houses. Jesus were stupid.
I don't know if it's a reference I'm not aware of, but for a few days I've been referring to the collective sub class that does this ballcocks as "the pork." I'm not sure where it came from, I assume I saw it on social media somewhere, but it's just spot on for the herd.
So first day of running a "key" retail operation(car spares) during the lock down was enlightening. Turns out my idea of what counts as a essential purchase is very different to what other people think. One of the most worthy moments was when a guy walked through the door past the social distancing and only one customer at a time posters, into the area we had cordoned off from the rest of the store with tables and hazard tape, and asked "cant I just have a look around?" Oh and the police had to be called to the local high street to disperse crowds of people who thought it was some kind of Sunday trading deal.
The numbers coming out of Spain and Italy are horrifying. But today I've interacted with people who still think the UK government is over reacting The stupid are going to kill so many people in this country before this is over.
My job has me out and about on the streets. We’re taking it upon ourselves to act as ‘social isolation wardens’, trying to spread the word to people who haven’t quite got the message, and helping to sic the cops on the ones that refuse to heed it.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: So in Britain in the last few days, we've had, people robbing schools and nurseries for freezers, people robbing NHS workers for IDs, and people calling 999 to ask the police if they're allowed to leave their houses. Jesus were stupid.
I take it your police have issued the same idiotic decrees about how they will only be responding to certain egregious crimes and will be working at minimal capacity as many of the departments over here have?
in such situations one needs to CALL in all the manpower to maintain order. No quarter given until the people actually realise that they are beeing stupid, then send that manpower back again.
Do you have any idea how much manpower that would entail in a country as big and heavily armed as the United States? With vast swaths of poor rural areas? Here in Appalachia you generally only see a cop when either a local drug dealer fails to pay his "taxes" or shots are fired as is in areas like mine. Actual police protection around here is only for the wealthy. They only exist for the rest of us to enforce the property rights of said wealthy and the government.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: So in Britain in the last few days, we've had, people robbing schools and nurseries for freezers, people robbing NHS workers for IDs, and people calling 999 to ask the police if they're allowed to leave their houses. Jesus were stupid.
I take it your police have issued the same idiotic decrees about how they will only be responding to certain egregious crimes and will be working at minimal capacity as many of the departments over here have?
in such situations one needs to CALL in all the manpower to maintain order. No quarter given until the people actually realise that they are beeing stupid, then send that manpower back again.
Do you have any idea how much manpower that would entail in a country as big and heavily armed as the United States? With vast swaths of poor rural areas? Here in Appalachia you generally only see a cop when either a local drug dealer fails to pay his "taxes" or shots are fired as is in areas like mine. Actual police protection around here is only for the wealthy. They only exist for the rest of us to enforce the property rights of said wealthy and the government.
First, guns per capita are here verifyably in the Level of texas. More likely more. So no guns have no impact alone.
Secondly depends on Terrain and how willing the state and institutions would be and how converted the Effort is, including Recruiting locals as auxilia etc.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: So in Britain in the last few days, we've had, people robbing schools and nurseries for freezers, people robbing NHS workers for IDs, and people calling 999 to ask the police if they're allowed to leave their houses. Jesus were stupid.
I would have thought crime would go massively down with a lockdown order?
Over here crime is reportedly down 50%, pollution has dropped by about the same level, I can actually hear songbirds all morning from my new home office.
If only once all this is over we could all rethink a bit about the general attitude towards telecommuting.
It could save the hooman race.
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