outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

:-(

dude is probably just trying to get by. it sucks that he may have put others at risk, but not everyone can afford to take time off. https://t.co/C1sdul4zGA

— putting the pal in palestinian (@jennineak) March 8, 2020

There'll be no shortage of people who can't afford to take time off over the next few months

my best bud in Seattle is posting conspiracy memes about this now and saying it’s “overhyped” and he works in the service industry at a very popular and acclaimed restaurant there so... uh, good luck usa

Plz just say what restaurant some of us live here. Not that I’m likely to go to many restaurants for the next three weeks.

I would suggest not going anywhere in the James Beard situation til like summer if you want me to be explicit

no sign any species of panic buying has hit my local hackney corner shop yet

I have a ticket for a debate on Tuesday night in which Alexis Goldstein is going to demolish the competition in support of student debt relief and now I'm like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

No blatant panic buying at the supermarkets in my part of Williamsburg but I stopped by Whole Foods on Bedford Ave last night and there were whole sections denuded (pasta, rice, water, toilet paper, frozen vegetables).

this is a really pointless frustration to express but: why r people buying bottled water in new york!!!!! ugh

yeah I would also like to understand the bottled water thing. is the virus going to infect the water supply too?

ppl are irrational beasts

I found these helpful to get a solid sense (as much as possible) of what we know at this point and its implications:

Audio Interview: What Clinicians Need to Know in Diagnosing and Treating Covid-19 (March 5) https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2004244

Anthony Fauci NEJM editorial: Covid-19: Navigating the Uncharted (Feb. 28)

https://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMe2002387?articleTools=true

I'll post this again, too, which is pure stats and facts, updated regularly: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Thanks Josh. It's chhilling to see all those nation-states in that Confirmed Cases & Deaths table, and among them one row dedicated to "Diamond Princess"

On a personal note, I just received an email from my 75-year old brother-in-law. He went to the ER for flu-like symptoms, including fever and dry cough, tested negative for flu, pneumonia and strep, and was sent home with a face mask and without a diagnosis. He also has a heart arrhythmia. I'm hoping for the best possible outcome here, but he's clearly at risk.

Another brother-in-law and sister-in-law (both in their mid-70s) report they are quite ill with "a whopper of a cold/flu". I don't think they've sought medical care at this point. All three of these live in the Portland metro area.

I suppose if there is a 'good' time to catch this virus, it would be when ICU beds are still not over-booked and supplies still available. The inability to test them for a positive diagnosis is very frustrating to all of us.

The inability to test them for a positive diagnosis is very frustrating to all of us.

American exceptionalism at work.

Governor Cuomo asks New Yorkers to avoid crowded trains, buses and workplaces

Expecting the work from home message from corporate sometime today

And obviously, thankful I have the dumb luck of being ‘white collar’ enough that we are being offered that option

aimless, very sorry to hear that about your in-laws - hoping the best for them.

a likely story

#Coronavirus | Désinfox
❌ Non, La cocaïne NE protège PAS contre le #COVID19 .
✅ C’est une drogue addictive provoquant de graves effets indésirables et nocifs pour la santé des personnes.
👉 https://t.co/ajSGwecauL pic.twitter.com/4GZ01Qmg5X

— Ministère des Solidarités et de la Santé (@MinSoliSante) March 8, 2020

lol, nice try, random cocaïnomane.

She don't lie

SEATTLE — A week after a deadly coronavirus outbreak was reported inside a nursing home in the Seattle suburbs, officials from the long term care center said on Saturday that 70 staff members were out sick with symptoms resembling coronavirus and six residents were also ill.

A federal strike team of nurses and doctors arrived Saturday to support the staff at the long-term nursing home, Life Care Center of Kirkland, Wash., where officials have announced the deaths of 13 residents and a visitor who were infected with the virus. Tim Killian, a spokesman for the care center, praised the workers who continued to show up even as 70 of the nursing home’s 180 employees have developed symptoms.

“The amount of work and stress that these staff and employees and caregivers are under is tremendous,” Mr. Killian said. “They truly are heroes.”

Earlier on Saturday, Mr. Killian said that the center was still unable to get all of its staff members tested for coronavirus. The home had received 45 virus testing kits, Mr. Killian said, which was not enough for the 63 remaining residents and dozens of staff members.

Later in the day, Life Care managers said the state had provided additional test kits, enough for all of the residents. It was not clear whether there were also enough kits to test staff members.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/07/us/coronavirus-nursing-home.html

this story on the Life Care Center outbreak is p horrifying and when the dust settles there's going to be some very miserable lawsuits

https://www.kuow.org/stories/the-days-leading-up-to-the-outbreak-at-life-care-center-in-kirkland

yikes

that is completely terrible.

Talking points memo: letter from reader PH

Amartya Sen argued democracy was the cure for disasters such as famine, because it and the free press facilitate the flow of information from the reality on the ground to the national leadership and provides the incentives to address issues correctly. And that argument still has some power: the disconnect between medical officials and bureaucrats in Hubei and the national Chinese leadership contributed to this disaster. But in a post-truth world where power wills its own reality, does democracy still have those feedback mechanisms that give it the edge? When I talk to people in China, the general sense is that China essentially got a pop quiz and scored a B+, while other countries are getting a take home exam and failing it. Buy into that analogy or not, if the USA and the West more broadly flunk this test, the Chinese model will be gaining legitimacy over democracy, not losing it. And that loss in legitimacy will happen everywhere, not just in China.

it's a good thing that you're not an ecofascist at all

just asking questions

Silby, disliking and disagreeing with a poster is one thing, but following up every post they make with an attack is harassment. Cut it out.

i love debating and thinking about the merits of autocracy vs democracy and that it's a critical question to weigh but i feel like rumination along that line, esp when prognosticating about the fortunes of autocratic regimes and their ideological popularity, is inappropriate for this thread where people are mostly worried about getting sick and dying (or the same happening to their loved ones) and aren't hoping to be converted away from democracy. but it could be a great conversation in a different thread!

it belongs in the thomas friedman thread as stuff that thomas friedman says.

Dude in Tasmania who went to work in hotel after being diagnosed with covid and told to self-isolate also went out clubbing, etc, so in his case not so much the tragedy of the precariat as much as him just being an irresponsible dipshit.

thoughtless people get sick too that's why ppl are avoiding public events. purim is tuesday we're still sorta debating whether we should go to a party at a private home that will have lots of ppl, lots of children, lots of food and probably lots of germs. my brother's babysitter on thursday told him that she had just gotten back from italy and they decided to stay in.

a friends father died.

thats several hundred people lining up to shake hands with them for the next few days then.

Appreciating the beauty of this:

Americans: if you are sick with fever/cough/ flu symptoms, please don’t go to work!

Employers: PLEASE understand giving your employees flexibility and (paid) sick leave will save you money in the long run- it’s much cheaper than shutting down because everyone else gets sick!

— U.S. Surgeon General (@Surgeon_General) March 8, 2020

Testimony of a surgeon working in Bergamo, in the heart of Italy's coronavirus outbreak. Long and distressing.

Did trump write that?

someone give me a rundown on why Sanpaku was discredited... I want to believe it because I don't like that post

And I was at CPAC (media)

I've just gone over the past week of this fucking thread and it seems to boil down to Silby, aka Dr. McCoy, calling Sanpaku a green-blooded Vulcan for not showing human emotion.

also sanpaku posting information from race science rag Quillette as received from a disaster grifter

Fine, call out shitty posts and shitty sources, doubt him forever, but no harassment. Jumping from "this is a shitty source" to "you're a nazi" is the fucked up behavior here.

I’ll withdraw “Nazi” but stand by ecofascist.

What is an ecofascist? and what was the Quillette article about, measuring the skulls of COVID-19 patients?

The Canadian equivalent of cancelling the Super Bowl.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/business/tim-hortons-scraps-roll-up-the-rim-cups-over-coronavirus-concerns-1.4843439

Sanpaku has precisely one interest, which is monitoring global instability and disaster for his maximum possible advantage. Because he evidently has nothing actually going on in his life and can’t be a disaster capitalist himself, he contents himself by acting like a very wise scientist on an unpopular messageboard and speculating on how things would go better if we simply solved more problems by rounding people up and putting them into camps. His regard for human life is based entirely on a perverse utilitarian worldview where the existence of the maximum amount of humans for the maximum amount of time is the greatest good and no other considerations, ideals, human feeling, etc can possibly register to him as having value. Because he is ignorant, he credulously links to alarmist headlines calling covid “a combination of SARS and AIDS” on flimsy and idiotic pretexts and cites obvious charlatans nobody else pays any heed to as his major sources of news. Linking to Quillette, famous of late for being a hate rag and sponsoring the “journalistic” activities of agent provocateur Andy Ngo is the last straw, he’s either too stupid to know how dangerous his stupidity is or he’s actively involved in loathsome enterprises for his own enrichment and ends. Fuck Sanpaku and the horse he rode in on.

lots of posters post pretty exclusively about putting groups of ppl into camps

its kinda why i want closer posting between uk and us ilx i have a good popcorn recipe

the aids stuff is really beyond the pale. an offensive comparison

I actually posted that dumb Australian tabloid headline because I thought others among you might be facing the "oh its just the flu" crowd. I just learned in the last hour that local ER doctors are seeking testing, but are still denied. That even their own nursing personnel are have swallowed the Trumpist/right wing media line.

I'm not an advocate of putting people in camps. However, in a pandemic, the rights of many to civil liberties should be balanced by the rights of vulnerable populations to live. If you don't understand this, start reading about the pandemics of history, how they've changed the course of history, and the halting development of the science of epidemiology after John Snow (the real important one, 1854).