"Coronavirus" is the category, dangit. (COVID-19 thread)

[Mongrel]

Apparently Fox News is now promoting the virus as a hoax.

To its heavily retiree audience.

[Mongrel]

Meanwhile, here, March break is being extended two more weeks and they'll go from there.

When I was at school today I was sad I only had two days there this week and that I was gonna miss the kids next week. Didn't think that that might've been the last time I could potentially see them all school year. :(

Our local grocery stores appear to be doing business as usual with stock being fine, but I did notice that someone had completely cleared out their entire supply of noodle cups. Just this one completely empty section of shelving. LOL

[Brantly B.]

[Upthorn]

I regret to interrupt the shitposting, but

[beatbandito]

Yeah but we canceled the NCAA and NBA so it's all good.

alt response:
yeah but that's bullshit, the numbers are way off. After all that was total cases in italy and just the small number of cases that were actually tested in the U.S.

[Yoji]

Geez, those numbers are so close it's not even funny.

I guess on the bright side, I'll learn how to make my own toilet paper and work on my Death Stranding trophies while we get closer to the bottom of that chart.

[Mongrel]

Well, we didn't ban it entirely, but the government has now officially asked everyone to avoid ALL non-essential travel to ANY international destination.

Which is the very polite way of saying "For the love of god, stay the fuck out of the US or we're all gonna get it too."

[Mongrel]

Yeah but we canceled the NCAA and NBA so it's all good.

alt response:
yeah but that's bullshit, the numbers are way off. After all that was total cases in italy and just the small number of cases that were actually tested in the U.S.

Yeah, the Chief Medical Officer of Ohio is already estimating that there are 100,000k+ cases in Ohio alone, RIGHT NOW.

[Mongrel]

On the other hand, maybe this isn't the worst timeline after all!

[atog]

On the other hand, maybe this isn't the worst timeline after all!

Manus manum lavat

An old Roman saying that means "You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours."

Also "Handwashing has never been more mission-critical than it is for this."

[Friday]

"For the love of god, stay the fuck out of the US or we're all gonna get it too."

You already have it.

Yes, cutting travel will help. But more important is cancelling all large gatherings and shutting down schools, work. Is Canada doing any of that? Otherwise, you're just gonna be two weeks behind us (in the same way that we're 11 days behind Italy), or whatever.

[Mongrel]

"For the love of god, stay the fuck out of the US or we're all gonna get it too."

You already have it.

Yes, cutting travel will help. But more important is cancelling all large gatherings and shutting down schools, work. Is Canada doing any of that? Otherwise, you're just gonna be two weeks behind us (in the same way that we're 11 days behind Italy), or whatever.

Yeah, everything is shutting down hard.

It's not so much that we can't catch it (we already have, as you rightly point out), it's in slowing the rate of exposure to prevent the health system from being overwhelmed to the point where it is in Italy, where hospital staff have been reduced to doing military triage for scarce ICU beds. Obviously that greatly increases the mortality rates both from the virus but also for other conditions (e.g. someone comes in with a heart attack and they're old and have chronic coronary issues... welp). Having tons of people going to the US just skyrockets the potential infection rate because of the specifically American issue of under-testing.

Remains to be seen if it'll be effective enough, soon enough.

[beatbandito]

National State of Emergency, y'all.

[hngkong]

So, panic has already set in at my local grocery store: https://photos.app.goo.gl/ytf1R6pq9bdrBd4g8

[Mongrel]

Some European countries (Sweden and Denmark I know of so far) have now stopped testing mild cases.

This is concerning because it's essentially an acknowledgement by the health authorities in those countries that they believe the virus has passed any point of containment there.

[Thad]

The local elementary school district is closed next week. Lines and shortages at grocery stores are similar to what's been reported elsewhere.

Work is still having us come in to the office, though they've been ramping up the cleaning regimen (they're running ozone machines after hours and I saw one of the maintenance crew wiping down the interiors of the elevators the other day) and they're clearly planning for the possibility of sending people home (someone came around to verify I have a work laptop the other day).

[zaratustra]

My employer sent everyone, across three countries, to work from home for two weeks.

That's when I started really worrying about the virus.

[Brantly B.]

We're sending nobody home but we're holding meetings online-only... inside of our open-office environment.

I'm beginning to suspect my employers may be dumb.

[Yoji]

Hey, I got one of those "we're closing your kid's school for a few weeks" emails, too!

Fuck, I hope I can work from home.

[Friday]

I know this may be scary to people that everything is closing, and I know you may already know this; but let me repeat what I said in #finalfight here:

All of these closures are good. This is all good that's it happening now instead of later. We need more. Earlier would have been better, even.