Coronavirus (No Politics)

All schools in the Netherlands are closed,
So i gave all my lesson online (I am a chemistry teacher). I was pleasantly surprised.
All my student logged in on time, even the ones who are always late…
Sometimes Bad Times brings out the best in us.

Let’s try to do our best, and help each other!

That's good to hear. Last night on the TV, I was listening to columnist David Brooks talk. He said he has been studying past epidemics. Unlike other tragedies, such as war, people isolate themselves and often turn on each other during epidemics. There aren't very many personal accounts of those times, he said, because people were often ashamed of their behavior.
 
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In a situation like this we can't just think about ourselves, there are tons of people with respiratory issues, its not just elderly people either. Clearly shows what an absolute **** you are, only thinking about yourself because you happen to be healthy and you would most likely survive it. My example is just one of many, obviously. As for globalism, yeah right, which country will suffer the most from this you think, a country with some common sense (like Hungary) or open-borders hippie mentality-Sweden :p We'll have tons of undeniable evidence after this incident of what an absolutely horrible idea globalism really is.

Again, i'm amazed at the absolute stupidity on this forum. I won't return. Have fun.

Vurt here is a great explanation of why you shouldn’t quarantine too early and why I think the UK and Sweden are actually doing the right thing
https://youtu.be/nl6tTwxzCi8
 
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Vurt here is a great explanation of why you shouldnÂ’t quarantine too early and why I think the UK and Sweden are actually doing the right thing
https://youtu.be/nl6tTwxzCi8

Very interesting, and it might actual.ly be true. At the moment I have two possible issues (I'm not arguing):

1. I believe it could be very difficult to find the optimal time to implement restrictions. Doing it early seems to be intuitively safer, because at least we're not doing it too late.

2. The video argues that by waiting, we can avoid unreasonably long or repeating quarantines. I'm not convinced that we won't be needing restrictions for a very long time, no matter when and how we do it.

These are the two things I was thinking about when I saw the video. Observe that I'm on very thin ice here, so don't put too much faith in what I've written (I certainly don't). It is an interesting aspect.

a pibbur who assumes we will know some time before we know when TES VI is released.
 
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@a pibbur; nailed it.

Nice having a former DR. on the forums here. Yes if you’re under 50 the current mortality rate is hovering around 0.1 to 0.2% (that’s less danger than routine surgery). After that however, it goes up not just in doubles, but exponentially. Not all of us are under 50. Further to that risk factors are hypertension, diabetes, obesity (or cardiovascular disease and related in general), cancer, smoking, etc. Just that small increase in mortality would completely overwhelm emergency medical services.

So the precautions aren’t about the one side of panic, and they’re not about the other side of trying to eradicate the disease (it’s probably here to stay or until a vaccine is default). They’re mostly to slow everything down so we can all catch up on the madness and make sure everyone has a good chance of survival. My sister and family was just in isolation because they had flu symptoms after flying home from Florida. It turned out to be a just your average coronavirus flu, and not COVID-19 but were told to continue to self isolate. Spreading a normal flu can also weaken the immune system for others and give them less of a chance should they be exposed.

A lot of this data we thank Singapore for, since they’ve dealt with a few epidemics and through trial and error, set some very good systems in place of what works and what doesn’t.
 
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It's interesting how some countries seem to be getting spared so far. Only 129 reported cases in India and 93 in Russia.
 
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trump says stay indoors and ….


maybe beaches have a magic shield :))
 
Yep, that's typical Floridians for you. Most of those are probably college kids though who are letting their excitement over spring break override their better judgment.
 
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Concerns over COVID-19 have continued to increase and the effect on the global box office has been felt. This weekend's top ten combined for an estimated $50.35 million, which is the lowest, week eleven combined gross for the top ten since 1995 with all holdovers dropping -60% or more compared to last weekend. With all new wide releases postponed until April 10, things are unlikely to improve.

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?ref_=bo_nb_we_tab

The weekend box office in the US has almost collapsed. It still means about 5 million people went to the cinema though.

To be fair, it's probably a good opportunity to watch films in a more peaceful environment if you like your cinema experience to be like that, though they'll probably start closing at some point anyway if people stigmatise going to the cinema as irresponsible, even though most young folks of the type who go see the average blockbuster aren't the at risk category.
 
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@Cacheperl;, your link doesn't work. The web is infected :uhoh:
EDIT: Nevermind. It's working now.


So, last night, France baby-president Emmanuel Macron decided that nobody was allowed to leave their homes (with a few exceptions).
Fine for "loitering" the streets starts at 35E and goes to 600E.

I know it's a sanitary measure and not a authoritarian curfew but I can't help myself, I reaaaaally don't like it.
It's maybe not fairly related to the situation but a famous quote hasn't left my mind since:
Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
(Ben, 1706-1790)
 
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It's interesting how some countries seem to be getting spared so far. Only 129 reported cases in India and 93 in Russia.

Could also be that they are not extensively testing for it yet, not reporting cases and just being in the dark in general about how many cases they have.
 
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@Cacheperl;, your link doesn't work. The web is infected :uhoh:
EDIT: Nevermind. It's working now.


So, last night, France baby-president Emmanuel Macron decided that nobody was allowed to leave their homes (with a few exceptions).
Fine for "loitering" the streets starts at 35E and goes to 600E.

I know it's a sanitary measure and not a authoritarian curfew but I can't help myself, I reaaaaally don't like it.
It's maybe not fairly related to the situation but a famous quote hasn't left my mind since:

(Ben, 1706-1790)

The question you raise is of course very relevant. Restrictions have costs, and one of those is exactly what you say here. It's a fine balance, and (oh, no, not again!) it's difficult to decide where the balance point should be.

As I've said elsewhere, the Chinese seem to have control over the Wuhan outbreak. But that's at least partly the result of very harsh actions. I don't think we should go there.

Another example. Last year our government tried to get the parliament to pass a law giving the government more power in emergency situations. The law was rejected, partly because it was deemed to be unconsitutional. Now they are (exploiting the crisis?) working on proposing a similar law. Our current government is a centrist-moderately-rightwing one. As a leftie I disagree with them on many issues, but I'm pretty confident that they wouldn't abuse the increased privileges in a situation like we have now. But, even if it's not very likely, we can't exclude the possibility that an illiberal government could come to power some time in the future. Then we would be in trouble.

a pibbur who is physically, possibly mentally (and definitely politically) a bit less balanced than he used to be.
 
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Very interesting, and it might actual.ly be true. At the moment I have two possible issues (I'm not arguing):

1. I believe it could be very difficult to find the optimal time to implement restrictions. Doing it early seems to be intuitively safer, because at least we're not doing it too late.

2. The video argues that by waiting, we can avoid unreasonably long or repeating quarantines. I'm not convinced that we won't be needing restrictions for a very long time, no matter when and how we do it.

These are the two things I was thinking about when I saw the video. Observe that I'm on very thin ice here, so don't put too much faith in what I've written (I certainly don't). It is an interesting aspect.

a pibbur who assumes we will know some time before we know when TES VI is released.

I've found a third issue with this approach:

3. More infections also means that more health care professionals will become infected. Among them are intense care doctors and nurses. Those people are highly specialised and difficult to replace. Therefore, I think (guess) that the British (and Swedish) approach could result in a reduced capacity to treat the seriously ill patients. It's difficult to estimate how much, but those treating the seriously affected patients are also those with the highest exposure to contagion,

Remember that the current strategy in most countries is to keep the current number of intense care requiring patients below our capacity for treating them. And to keep that capacity as high as possible.

It's another issue, but here also I may very well be on thin ice.

a pibbur who now thinks he should go back to playing a game more than posting about things he knows only something about. Even if said game is (joxer, please stop reading now) an MMO (LOTRO).
 
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I'm concerned about the startling increase in the number of self-important attempts made by vapid TV news anchors to be reassuring or inspirational. Does anyone have a handle on the mortality rate for those?
 
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trump says stay indoors and ….


maybe beaches have a magic shield :))

We have a similar problem in Norway (at this time of year not related to beaches). Many Norwegians, sadly I'm not among them, have cottages in the mountains and other rural areas. And many of those, including people in home quarantene (not home isolation), have chosen to go to their cottages, While technically not illegal (yet), it does represent a challenge, because in some commmunities the number of people being there is now 2 or 3 times the "native" population. And in a situation where numerous people may become infected, this significantly exceeds the capacity of the local health services.

Now, there are some good reasons for moving to more isolated areas, but in most cases those are (according to the authorities and me) less important than the reasons for not doing that. So people have ben kindly asked to get the h… eh… go back to the city. And many people have seen the error of their ways and returned, but there are still many that refuse to leave. Until now, gentle and eventually not so gentle persuations have been tried, but a prohibition is on it's way, with up to 2000USD in fines for the perp.. eh …people that still refuse to do what's considered the right thing.

a pibbur who now realises that not only Americans behave irrationally.
 
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It's interesting how some countries seem to be getting spared so far. Only 129 reported cases in India and 93 in Russia.

Very interesting. There are several reasons for this, and I know three of them.

1. The virus may have arrived later in those countries, so they are weeks behind the rest of us. Makes a huge diffference when the infection rate rises exponentially. The number of infected in Norway 2 weeks ago is (AFAIK) less than 10% less than the number of infections today. And we're probably a couple of weeks behind Italy.

2. Differences in the number of patients tested.

3. Other reasons.

a pibbur who is a bit annoyed that he's not playing LOTRO now.
 
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…My sister and family was just in isolation because they had flu symptoms after flying home from Florida. It turned out to be a just your average coronavirus flu….

If you allow me some nitpicking… The flu (meaning Influenza) is per definition caused by the Influenza virus which belongs to the Orthomyxoviridae family, not the coronavirus family.

a pibbur who realizes that many people use the term "flu" a bit more losely, but decides that if one wants to be nitpicking, one has to nitpick.

PS. Actually, I suspect you know this. So maybe I won't post the message. DS.

PPS. Ooops, too late. DS.
 
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tl;dr; Off topic
trump says stay indoors and ….


maybe beaches have a magic shield :))
I couldn't stand the male reporter's voice. Or more specifically his accent. (Most americans don''t sound bad in my ears, but some do. Something about the "R" sound.). It's not as bad as an australian accent, of course.

A pibbur who aknowledges that Norwegians (including himself) speaking English sounds even worse. And who wonders if he should run and hide now.

PS. BTW, Many Norweians think that my Norwegian dialect (Bergenese) is the worst of all. To some degree I agree. DS.
 
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