outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

So the woman who sits across from me is now out because she and her husband are self-isolating while they await his test results. He’s been sick ever since he returned from Milan 3 weeks ago. She kept on cracking jokes about him having it last week and it struck me as insanely irresponsible of him not to have been tested so I said something to my boss who in turn said something to her and he was tested over the weekend. Kind of feel like a bitch but come on. Also, insert this is fine dog here.

Like, that's as red flag as it gets!

Why has it hit so hard in northern Italy?

He’s been sick for three weeks and they didn’t think of doing anything til you said so?!

I’m not entirely sure but I think it’s at least partly because they have a large population of older and therefore more susceptible people.

X-post - I know!!

The first case of Corona in Congo is introduced by a Belgian. There is so much to unpack here, on different levels. We Belgians causing problems in Congo since over a 100 years... https://t.co/W78SlL1kjN

— Gillian Mathys (@GMathys) March 10, 2020

And yes. She was so flippant about it. Finally last Friday she had to go get cough medicine at lunch because he kept her up all night and I was like uh yeah this is not cool lady.

The Associated Press reports:

A commercial flight from Colorado ski country to Newark, New Jersey made an unscheduled stop in Denver after several passengers became disruptive because they were seated next to someone who they thought was sick, officials said.

Three passengers failed to follow crewmember instructions after growing upset about being seated next to the supposedly sick passenger.

The “sick” passenger in question was apparently suffering from allergy symptoms, and was screened for a fever onboard which came back negative. The three unruly passengers were removed by police in Denver, while the remaining passengers and crew continued on to Newark.

xp I mean me, I would be upset if my husband was sick for three weeks, but obviously not everyone takes that kind of thing seriously!

xpost ugh. I hope your building management had her desk and the shared spaces completely sanitized.

we don't have that many cases yet, but a 2 year old and 14 year old tested positive.

flights, and maybe trains, are gonna get like Invasion of the Body Snatchers

*sneeze*

YOU'RE ONE OF THEM

A 2-year old? That seems like a new development.

am assuming it's probably because they ended up testing them because they were part of the family where someone had symptoms and tested positive.

Why has it hit so hard in northern Italy?

Have read that it's a combination of older population plus social culture that is very tactile with lots of cheek kissing etc

I've read something different - that the only difference is that it started spreading there earlier. Caveat lector obviously.

Yerac as of this week we have had automatic hand sanitizers installed and wipes etc but she hasn’t been in since Thursday so if he has it I presume at least some of us are fucked.

Why has it hit so hard in northern Italy?

Have read that it's a combination of older population plus social culture that is very tactile with lots of cheek kissing etc

― groovypanda, Tuesday, March 10, 2020 9:51 AM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

all the finger kissing can't help

She said it hadn’t really occurred to them to have him tested since he was right on the cusp of when it supposedly became dangerous there but there’s so much we don’t know about this and with those symptoms and even a change that he or she could pass it on to a person in a vulnerable group? If it had been me I would have sought testing immediately.

Anyway hopefully it’s just a coincidence!

I would think they would know the test results by now?

No apparently not yet. I think there’s a big backlog.

Cuomo dispatches Natl Guard to New Rochelle

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/nyc-adds-5-new-covid-19-cases-tri-state-total-more-than-triples-in-days/2319688/

Feels like cases starting popping up earlier in the UK and a few other places but those people (like the guy who came back from the ski lodge) were immediately put into quarantine upon return. I think a lot of people in Italy were spreading it completely unawares for some time.

If the number of cases is going to balloon in Britain then it's surely going to happen within the next fortnight or so?

Yep if you look at the graphs we are all headed for Italy, we are just lagging. And they have a lot of trade links with China, which might explain why they were earliest.

Here's the coronavirus data, overlayed with the dates offset by the amounts shown. One of these countries is not like the rest. Everyone else will be Italy in 9-14 days time. pic.twitter.com/VESY54X1gP

— Mark Handley (@MarkJHandley) March 9, 2020

jeez, great job japan

There could be other reasons at work there:

COVID-19 Testing Per Capita pic.twitter.com/8YNSN629XO

— Coronavirus Charts (@covid19charts) March 10, 2020

good luck usa

Covid-19 death toll jumps 36% in Italy
The death toll from an outbreak of coronavirus in Italy has jumped by 168 to 631, an increase of 36%, the Civil Protection Agency said on Tuesday, the largest rise in absolute numbers since the contagion came to light on 21 February, Reuters reports.

The total number of cases in Italy, the European country hardest hit by the virus in Europe, rose to 10,149 from a previous 9,172, an increase of 10.7%.

The head of the agency said that, of those originally infected, 1,004 had fully recovered compared to 724 the day before. Some 877 people were in intensive care against a previous 733.

i was thinking they would not do a quarantine here any time soon because of the still low amount of positives but then I remembered that there are still a lot of protests so of course they would likely start it earlier rather than later to get people off the street. So we are replenishing all supplies this weekend.

Italy's undetected cases must be (many?) multiples of their reported, if they're pushing 6.8% case fatality rate...

xp: Discovered I don't have a thermometer. On Amz, all out of stock / available from 3rd parties at high markup, including oral disposables.

it's fever fever!

this article makes it honestly not seem that big a deal. thank u for crashing my pension lads
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/10/coronavirus-facts-mortality-rate-is-there-cure

if we had the same level of monitoring and attention for flu cases... would the picture not be similar? iunno. in any case a whole bunch of annoying meetings at my work have just been canned - so big fan of all COVIDS including 1 through 19

Gotta catch 'em all!

i think a lot of this is having to make allowances for the great many people who have lost the ability to adapt to anything in life that seems to inconvenience them, so it's going to amplify all the expected knock on effects.

if we had the same level of monitoring and attention for flu cases... would the picture not be similar?

I mean Whitty is Whitty and I'm an internet rando, but it's hard to see confidence in the 1% figure rn

At my company we’ve been commanded not to come into the office at all for 14 days if we get any sort of symptom

What does that mean? Stuffy nose? Headache?

I suspect that will become SOP just about everywhere with the flexibility.

The 1% seems right given the figures from South Korea and the many reports of asymptomatic cases. Probably the thing that’s really not helped in Italy is the incubation period; if they’re saying from 14-24 days then it was obviously spreading far and undetected for ages earlier than they were looking for it. (This is what I always do when playing Pandemic 2, btw!) Still, 1% or not, I wouldn’t fancy being one of the pneumonia cases, and my work’s commitment to presenteeism is agitating because lots of people are worried about themselves/vulnerable people in their lives and it’s not contributing to a great atmosphere... Plus it being cold and flu season already almost everyone is coughing or sneezing.

This is why presenteeism is absolute dogshit, btw! You have viruses lingering in workplaces for ages because people can’t work from home and let their cold clear up, so why not spread it to your workplace and public transport too?

This is why presenteeism is absolute dogshit

Preach it. It doesn't even make sense if you're aiming for optimum productivity, it's just pure ideological bunk.

During swine flu outbreak I'm amazed we didn't spread it office wide

And ofc all the things we’re talking about with vulnerable people apply to your cold or flu too; flu’s not a laugh for the tens of thosands who die of it every year. Oh well, capitalism.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ESxOKubX0AM7WLv?format=png&name=large

Where's brutal and unforgiving natural selection when you really need it.

Just received this email from our "people & culture" (i.e. HR) team:

It has come to our attention that our building in NYC has been compromised with a positive case of coronavirus. The person affected is an employee of another tenant in the building. In order to ensure the health and safety of all our colleagues in our NYC location we have decided to close the office for the remainder of the week and will be evaluating over the course of the next few days to determine when we will reopen for business.

The remainder of our offices will remain open and operational at this time. If you have questions or concerns we encourage you to speak your manager and we will continue to provide updates.

Honestly there are virtually no office jobs that can't be done from a properly networked house and anyone still insisting on 100% attendance at this stage is probably a sociopath.

What is the situation in Wuhan right now?