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Coronavirus/Covid-19 Discussion Thread

First, some fun!

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Now, on the serious side, this is possibly the best article I've read on the whole subject. It honestly tackles some tough questions I've had, such as: is all this shutting down of society and its attendant costs really worth it, if all it might accomplish is delaying the inevitable misery of peak outbreak? And the short answer, as Singapore and South Korea and even China are showing, is yes, less 3 months of radical social distancing may well make a huge and hugely beneficial difference. (Not that I'd disbelieved the authorities who've mandated the shelter in place strategy, mind; I just hadn't seen the reasoning behind it so thoroughly and thoughtfully explained.) Caveat: it's a Medium.com article, so I can't entirely vouch for its claims, but it certainly seems thoughtfully researched and on point:

Coronavirus: The Hammer and the Dance
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CatBus said:
Didn't watch the video, but SARS (2003) was a coronavirus.  Coronavirus is a family of virii that absolutely have caused big trouble in the past.  The current one is called Covid-19.  It just spread so quickly that the world press was still calling it "the Coronavirus" before it even got its own name.  It's a bit like a town being menaced by a bear, but the people there calling it "the mammal".
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macmilln said:
@"Warbler" SARS. SARS was a coronavirus.
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CatBus said:
Didn't watch the video, but SARS (2003) was a coronavirus.  Coronavirus is a family of virii that absolutely have caused big trouble in the past.  The current one is called Covid-19.  It just spread so quickly that the world press was still calling it "the Coronavirus" before it even got its own name.  It's a bit like a town being menaced by a bear, but the people there calling it "the mammal".
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Didn’t know that.
 
My work has slashed everyone's hours and is keeping a skeleton crew, so that we minimize the risk of staff catching or transmitting coronavirus. I'm lucky I wasn't laid off, like so many have been, as my job is considered "essential." But I also can't do my job from home. I'm not sure what to do, honestly - I don't have a second job to keep money coming in. I'm looking at some things to slow the draining of my bank account, like rent reduction or deferral. We'll see what happens I guess. :-/ At least this leaves me more time to be creative, maybe start a new edit... Or maybe I should look for a job writing web content, lol.
 
There is one there that is giving me more and more concern as this covid-19 crisis continues.  

I think I can communicate it without getting too political  by posting these two scenes from the PT:



That is all I will say on the matter.
 
gaargzy said:
What do you think, how much does it drag on? I heard that options are possible with autumn or later.
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I'm going with assuming the whole year and then I'll be pleasantly surprised... unless I'm not being pessimistic enough!?

This is all WORTH IT because this new Auralnauts rap PSA now exists:


Funny and informative.
 
gaargzy said:
What do you think, how much does it drag on? I heard that options are possible with autumn or later.
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Depends on the country.  "Bending the curve" doesn't just mean keeping the peaks under control, it also means making the curve longer (spreading out the infections over time).  So, possibly counter-intuitively, countries where it runs completely out of control and has the highest mortality rates, will also be more-or-less done with it sooner.  Not that they'll be in as good of a state to recover from, mind you, so it would be foolish to want a quick end to the pandemic on those terms.

A lot of people are hoping for a miracle cure which will end this definitively in less than two years.  While that's not completely impossible, it's implausible enough that focusing too much on that will certainly lead to more deaths from despair than we've already had.

IMO, the stay-at-home/shelter-in-place orders will start getting rescinded when the health care system is finally able to cope with the remainder of the (still ongoing) pandemic.  So that's sort of "over", in a way.  Normal-ish life returns (go to work, go to school, go shopping), except for the fact that people may very well still need to occasionally be rushed to a hospital that is capable of dealing with the pandemic.  I'd say for much of the US, Autumn doesn't sound unreasonable to hit that point.  For the vaccine and a true end to the pandemic, IMO 18 months is really incredibly optimistic, two years or more is far more likely.
 
The Bay Area has now been mostly shut down for a week, and California half a week. I don't think modern society/democratic capitalism as we know it can survive more than three months tops of only a small number of essential personnel working. Fortunately, as Singapore and South Korea have shown, if sufficiently aggressive and expert action is taken, that should be more than enough time to bring the epidemic down to manageable enough levels to restore the greater degree of normalcy. It may be a year or more before it's safe to hold concerts or conventions or the like, or to get on a plane without having your temperature taken/lack of a fever verified (heck, that may become a permanent requirement for travel now), and this will of course continue to heavily affect the livelihoods of lots of people, but I think we should be able to return to most jobs/universities/bars/restaurants within three months.

Which is good, because already this pandemic, and the shelter-in-place responses, amount to an massive wealth transfer from the young and poorer (i.e., renters, service workers, those generally not endangered by the virus) to the rich and older (i.e., salaried workers/pensioners, landlords, those most endangered by the virus). Which isn't an argument against an aggressive shelter-in-place response, just an acknowledgement of basic economic realities.
 
CatBus said:
So, possibly counter-intuitively, countries where it runs completely out of control and has the highest mortality rates, will also be more-or-less done with it sooner.
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That's assuming the virus doesn't mutate to a degree that makes such woefully earned herd mentality irrelevant, and wreak havoc once again. Per the article I discussed/linked above, that's not a safe bet by any means.

One thing that's not negotiable in the near long term is we've got to make it easier for people who feel ill to stay at home for up to two weeks. The days of "eh, I'll take a bus/subway to work even though I've if I've got a sniffle, it'll be fine" are on indefinite hold.
 
I went to the hospital to visit my mother today and found they've suspended visiting hours; unless you're there to visit someone on their deathbed, they won't let you in.
 
I can understand why they could would do that under the unique circumstances we have right now, but I know it is tough on people with loved ones in the hospital.  Sorry, Duragizer.
 
I've been feeling like shit, and I ended up throwing up last night. I finally took some Zyrtec prescription ran out a couple weeks ago) and Omeprozol (prescription ended months ago), which I've been forgetting to take despite having a ton of, I guess just because they're not with my other pills, out of sight out of mind and all that jazz.
Anyways, I'm a dumb kid. I'm gonna go lay down for the rest of the day.

Any symptoms I had could be easily written off as my allergies, I'm a fool.
This is being a fun break...
 
I talked to my grandmother for the first time since this shit started.
She's still working, because the factory she works at makes medical equipment, so that's good that someone is still making money at my old home, it just sucks that it's my grandmother who has to work. But she seems to be doing fine.
We're going to meet up on Thursday, though I don't know how that's going to work since she's in Massachusetts where everything is closed down, and a bunch of places in my area of NH are closed too. We'll see.
 
TM2YC said:
No better time to get into the lawman of the future.
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My kid had to postpone his D&D sessions with his friends indefinitely.   When one of them wore a cursed helmet of alignment change, how do you think we explained to him how a lawful neutral character behaves?
 
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