outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

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?

lol, “we encourage you to speak to your manager” aka “take it out on someone else”. Matt otm

BREAKING: Governor Baker declares a state of emergency in Massachusetts for coronavirus. #WBZ

— Liam Martin (@LiamWBZ) March 10, 2020

BREAKING: Massachusetts has just announced 51 *new* cases of coronavirus, bringing the total number of presumptive cases to 92 -- a 124 percent increase from yesterday. Seventy of the cases are related to the Biogen conference in Boston. Six people are hospitalized. #WBZ

— Liam Martin (@LiamWBZ) March 10, 2020

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/10/us/new-rochelle-coronavirus/index.html
Fuck, New Rochelle!

"The containment zone surrounds a synagogue believed to be the epicenter of the outbreak"

Now people can blame Jews in addition to the Chinese

Huh so I think that man they’re talking about in the article is the one my therapist was telling me about last week - her son works in the same building as him and is WFH until further notice.

Heavens above, can the media stop misusing the word epicenter?

The media has been struggling with basic multiplication and division all weeks so I’m not sure there is any hope when it come to words.

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?

― Matt DC, Tuesday, March 10, 2020 5:26 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

current estimates around four weeks from what i'm hearing locally

Nursing homes and assisted living centers should take unprecedented action to curtail most social visits, and should even take steps to keep some employees away, to slow the spread of the new coronavirus, the industry said on Tuesday.

The recommendation follows an outbreak of the virus in the region around Seattle, where five long-term care facilities have been hit with cases, including a facility in Kirkland, Wash., where 18 residents have died. There have now been more than 950 cases of coronavirus in the United States, including 29 deaths.

“The mortality rate is shocking,” said Mark Parkinson, president and chief executive officer of the American Health Care Association. He said that the death rate might well exceed the 15 percent reported in China for people aged 80 and older who were infected.

The challenge of the virus “is one of the most significant, if not the most significant” issues the industry has ever faced, he said.

I read 'two weeks' earlier for a supposed peak but, not that I know shit, that seems off given the surge required for it to be considered the peak of an epidemic. We could have tenfold the confirmed cases we do now in two weeks perhaps. Maybe 10K+ (Italy's level now) in a month? The thought of jumping from a few hundred to over 10K in the space of a month tho...and where Italy may then be up to by early April (but hopefully into declining numbers by then) - fuck.

yeah, see stet's post above (outbreak! (ebola, sars, etc)) - italy went from about 100 to about 10K in the span of 2 weeks, and it looks like several other countries are on the same exponential trajectory

I've read a few pieces that suggest the numbers seem to basically double every six days, which means they start to significantly ramp up after a few weeks

No idea on the validity of those claims (although early numbers seemed to back them up) and assume steps like those taken in Italy and other countries would slow the spread down

xp Matt DC:

Wuhan's in recovery.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EStsOMyXkAAU35b.jpg
US News: China Shuts All Temporary Coronavirus Hospitals in City of Wuhan
France 24: China's Xi visits Wuhan as number of new coronavirus cases drops

Social distancing measures work, including provincewide lockdown. But their effect is only visible in stats about 20 days after initiated, and they may have remain in place for 2 months.

Cornell University to move to virtual instruction: https://t.co/aMGF6GqhU6.

"After spring break all instruction — for the rest of the semester — will be online."

— David Gura (@davidgura) March 10, 2020

my partner's university (in chicago) also talking about doing the same (breaking with the reading period and then teaching online afterward), although it's not official yet

One of our D&D gang who started at Mt. Holyoke last fall just posted "well, I'll probably see you guys a couple of months early." No announcement yet but it's expected.

I’m sure this is going like hubris in a week or less but seems so much better than the bungling and mixed messages coming out about testing in Australia.

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20200310/p2g/00m/0fe/022000c

So apparently the British Health Minister has tested positive.

a British Health Minister, they have redundancy for just this sort of thing.

Nadine Dorries. The most astonishing aspect being that she was given the job - any job - in the first place.

A trained nurse!

I had to go to the GP today for something simple and unrelated to viruses and sitting there while they made anyone who came in "feeling fluey" put a mask on, and asked everyone "are you sick" and had sanitiser all over the place, I felt like Mr Burns when he looks at his tissue and it shouts FREEMASONS RUN THE COUNTRY! at him.

the staggering gap between the sheer force of the moral imperative of things one is told to do -- don't take public transportation! don't go to work! otherwise you are selfish and are murdering people! -- and the infeasibility of doing any of these things without the risk of directly or indirectly torpedoing one's life is what is paralyzing me

acquaintances are posting photos from Disneyworld with their newborn and a pair of grandparents who look to be pushing 80.

base rate cut. ccycb released

The stupid fuckers didn’t scratch the Grand Prix in Melbourne this weekend and now participants are coming down with fevers and having to be isolated. It’s a major annoyance at the best of times but the arrogance of the organisers in saying they would not cancel, postpone or even hold the fucking thing behind closed doors is absolutely galling.

(You may have noticed that I am not in favour or a noisy car race taking place is a central Melbourne park a few kms from my front door)

More serious noises about postponing the Olympics.

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20200311/p2g/00m/0sp/068000c

Just in case anyone (ahem) itt is still convinced that Xi-style authoritarianism is single-handedly responsible for containing the outbreak in China, let us not forget that so much more could have and should have been done from the outset:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/11/coronavirus-wuhan-doctor-ai-fen-speaks-out-against-authorities

Been off work for two days with a dry cough and a fever, three more people went off yesterday 👍

It is sickening to see all this praise of the Chinese government when my family there are still locked in their homes 24/7 in mid-March and public surveillance has gone into overdrive.

The global response to the 2009 H1N1 Swine Flu pandemic was the fastest ever. Between 150-575,000 people died worldwide. It's day 71 of #coronavirus BTW.
via @beautiful__news pic.twitter.com/bP0afRWR2M

— Information is Beautiful (@infobeautiful) March 11, 2020

I don't know how the response to COVID 19 compares, but probably not as rapid I'd guess - I don't think there were test kits being distributed after 17 days from first infection.

Is Nadine Dorries going to kill the queen

badass tbf

One can hope xp

They cancelled the St. Patrick's Day parade here, so I guess some people do know what they're doing.