The Coronavirus Thread

forget Wikpedia ,the best history of the Taiping Rebellion can be found in G M Fraser's " Flashman and the Dragon" Delightfully un-PC, a ripping good yarn and meticulously researched. The fact that Flashy was a fictional character should not detract from his status as the greatest military hero of the 19th century.

 

Ask not what your country can do for you.
Ask what you can do for your country.

And in the immortal motivational words of Senator Blutarsky

 

Hopefully this is helpful to some here, especially those who may be wondering about the safety of food, etc. :
https://www.seriouseats.com/2020/03...rehensive-guide.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab

" ...... Are we sure food isn’t a vector of COVID-19 transmission?
No, we don't know for sure. However, there is strong evidence to suggest that food is not a vector. ......"

 

So, I'm curious. Who's doing take out? I'm kind of torn. Personally, I'm guessing the food is probably fine, especially if it's hot. But it seems like there are so many hands potentially touching packaging, etc. I'm hesitant. What are you all doing? It's sad to think about so many small restaurants struggling.

 

My wife works in public health...get the takeout, put it in your own dishes, throw the boxes out, and wash your hands before eating.

Bon appetit!

 

Have to agree with @Donald North

I picked up some indian food from the best local place earlier, and they were in bad shape. No one in the shop, no one calling to order pick up. "We aren't going to make rent this month..."

This is a pretty popular place, so I can only imagine a lot of places are hurting. Badly.

 

I'm seeing a TON more NY plates lately. This is a snowbird town, man. A lot of people from up north live down here for the winter. They come in a distinct series of waves starting around Halloween. Funnily enough, April is when the first wave starts reeling back... usually right after Easter. It's like a natural migration pattern for them. You can predict drastic shifts in the whole population equilibrium at several specific, narrow ranges of dates every single year.

Now, it looks like they're not heading back, and their relatives are coming from NY to stay with them, too. The pattern is all fucked up.

Or maybe south Florida is a utopia destination now? Some sort of pandemic safe haven? The last bastion of true freedom and bliss?

I don't know. People are more on their toes, but it's selective. The rest of the time they're on vacation. *shrugs* I think that's a lot of people out right now. Either retired or relatives down for an indefinite visit. The working class locals aren't out as much... probably just glad they're not one of the people stuck out working with the public.

It might actually be good for the economy here. More people that bring money down and spend it here than usual, especially for this time of year. Majorly seasonal economy. As spring moves along, profits everywhere trail to an eventual drop to an exponentially lower level. Restaurant turnouts are astonishingly good lol. You just know that isn't going to last though.

On the other hand, travelers are usually the carriers... so there's that. They could've brought it to people here themselves, or caught it on the way down. Or maybe they get here just as it's striking and now they're locked-into being away from home. And now our local healthcare is looking at a potentially larger patient pool than it's usually geared for... really didn't do us or them any good.

I doubt they're the ones that brought it here. My county was in a bubble surrounded by counties with positives and even deaths right before they showed up. So it was here a while before they were.

I wonder how many travel-related cases we'll see from out-of-staters though. Right now it's only ~70 out of over 1000 positives. In our county, it's pretty insular. Between the network of cities and towns, most live here because it's an isolated hub with everything in its borders. The airport is two counties away. We're a rural pocket surrounded by urban cities further off. Most people pass all of our small cities by on the freeway. And most are too far away from the urban commuter jobs in the real urban sprawls.Very, very 'local' area with a side of older seasonal residents.

Only 2 cases thus far. Residents. One travel-related. One unknown.

I've been tracking it here. Actually there is all sorts of good information on that little app, it even keeps up with country-wide and global to a general extent.

But there's also only been 50 tests in a population of 150,000 people. Not even 9500 tests done in FL yet. So nobody really knows what's actually going on. It's like being in the eye of the storm. Oddly peaceful. People are acting blase and normal, only with slightly different flavors of conversation. But you can feel the tension. People drive even more aggressively than usual. People are a lot more reserved in public.

There's an ambivalent sense of general normalcy between the people who are genuinely concerned and people still trying to live out the early Fox News narrative, just getting annoyed and flippant. They see what's not happening around them as proof that it's still nothing. Everyone else kinda keeps quiet.

I guess they figure it's all they can do. I mostly go to work and go home. Most of my friends live elsewhere in the state or in other states now. My parents live in town so every now and then I stop by to chat and help out with things. Not doing that anymore. The weather has been nice. I'd love to go for a hike. There's a lot of places that are just parking and trails that pretty much nobody ever uses. Most don't bother because they're not well-maintained. You have to wear the right clothing and footwear as the traversal can be dicey, basically prepare for being out all day or don't bother. And you have to be able to actually navigate and spot. People here aren't up for that lol. They want sidewalks through pine scrubs, or beaches.

I'm so tempted to go, but can't bring myself, to. It's the actual parks where people walk their dogs and jog that are full of people, but still. Just on principle I'm trying to keep myself making as little exceptions for going out as possible. Work and essentials. I'm glad I have a lot of hobbies. I can finally catch up a bit.

 

He sounds half the time crazy and half the time brilliant


its true, most small business will go bankrupt if this crisis persist over 4- 6 months.

 

I believe it's global- there were news articles about Amazon reprioritising how it ships. Also reports in the local forum that I frequent that inventory seems to have changed- lots of stuff is no longer available to HK (where people have been panic buying for over a month now).

 

Life has been and continues to be relatively normal here in Taiwan. Most obvious change is that instead of a few people wearing face masks, most people are. Work from home is generally not accepted here, but my tech company announced a practice run for partial/full WFH this Wed/Thu, depending on job duties.

Taiwan has been getting a lot of positive press lately, and I think the situation here is a combination of timely actions and a bit of luck (nobody got infected by Diamond Princess passengers and we were one of the last ports of call before Yokohama). A list of measures taken referenced in this article is pretty impressive (see attached pdf).
https://nationalpost.com/health/how...tain-covid-19-while-letting-normal-life-go-on

 

Decided that it would be safer to wear these and disinfect when I get home
https://www.amazon.com/Gloves-Latex-Cleaning-Household-waterproof-dishwashing/dp/B07BVNTWLN

 

Maybe... If a sufferer coughs over it, and one then eats it with one's hands!

David Ike is still around? Good grief.

By the way, I heard this about a somewhat-ex friend (she became too crazy for me to handle) from a mutual friend: She had the virus for one day, but her guru healed her.

Now... I am not averse to all kinds of weird stuff that many might consider dumb shit. But I do firmly believe that the metaphysical can only work with the physical within the bounds of physical laws and possibilities.

And the big ones too. And they are doing the screaming --- well, I guess they have the loudest voices.

Whilst I have huge sympathy for small businesses, I don't have much for those who distribute their cash reserves and then cry for bailouts because they didn't keep anything for a rainy day/week/month/year. Or cry because they are down to their last billion and the staff have to suffer.

But hey, exceptional times. The world is going to look different this time time next year. Rules might get rewritten. Who knows!

 

IMHO, it's more complicated than that and hence I have to respectfully disagree. Having been a number cruncher and data analyst for most of my working life, here's what I wrote to my friends and colleagues ten days ago on March 13, when extensive lockdown measures were announced in Austria and everyone was scared shitless as a result. This is of course just a simplified evaluation based on insufficient data, but nevertheless it has proven fairly accurate so far:

(Google translate from German, but I hope it's mostly understandable for those interested)

TL;DR:

• Don't look at the number of positive cases, since they don't mean much. Look at the death toll instead.
• South Korea has most comprehensive testing and a mortality of ~1%. Every developed country will eventually end up close to that number, as long as they can protect their health care system from getting overwhelmed.
• Death toll multiplied by 100 will give you the real order of magnitude of infected people 10-14 days ago.
• Do not compare countries based on registered positives. Those numbers are widely off.
• To protect the health care system from getting overwhelmed, early and extensive measures are well justified.

Not wanting to come across as an alarmist, but IMHO people should avoid elevators whenever possible. This virus has the potential for airborne transmission, and while the latter may not be a common scenario, it's better to avoid small and badly-aerated rooms like elevators or public toilets. In Austria, a substantial number of skiers have probably been infected on closed cabin gondola lifts.

Stay safe everyone!

 

We're 4 floors up, so bringing food home is not the easiest thing.

Happily - for us - home renovations are non-essential and shut down, so no more workers in the building.

 

What is very surprising is the low % of deaths in Florida, < 1%, with the average age of population, at least this time of the year, probably higher than anywhere else.

In all this CV debacle there is only one category of people who I absolutely hate are those who actually make a living trying to generate more panic, the business news headlines editors are great example. Every day they have to come up with more scary and stronger headlines and they do:
"... the second wave of unemployment will come crushing down"
" Dow futures plunge as coronavirus slams market"

Words like slams, plunges, convulse, crushing appear in series in a single sentence.

 

Not surprised that the Dow plunges further down. Standard political theater in DC. McConnell knew that he didn't have the votes to move it forward, but he wanted to guilt the Dems in voting further for this bill when the market opens. After all of this is over, political ads will be over the place saying "GOP try to save the economy and the people, but the Dems don't support the American people." And blah blah blah.

 

Watch out with these kind of people as information sources.

If you want insight into the economy and how small and medium sized businesses will do, research into annual reports and double checking sources, numbers and articles is effective enough. A man known for utterly strange theories, hmmm you might as well ask the Pope to reserve a spot for you in heaven.