outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

it's been locally transmitted in chile and it's hot and dry as shit here.

i was wrecked by the flu one summer, it was the worst!

i'm supposed to be going to cdmx in a month -- according to the cdc that's Not A Problem Yet but can't really see that holding

just declared a global pandemic by the WHO

Keeping the kid home from school today due to the sniffles, which is more of an excuse; normally he’d go but I’m worried LAUSD is going to shut the barn door after the horse has bolted as it were. Assuming the schools will be closed down sooner rather than later regardless.

just seen some children playing tag calling out “you’re gonna get corona” each time they tag each other.

which means that’s it. we’re done for. #ringaroses

omg

this is the last day I'm going to be teaching in person for a spell I think, the kids are not to be trusted

The White House has ordered federal health officials to treat top-level coronavirus meetings as classified, an unusual step that has restricted information and hampered U.S. government’s response to the contagion, according to four Trump admin officials https://t.co/LoQmWZyGez

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 11, 2020

Co-worker’s husband is negative so that’s something.

i will be working from home from next week for the foreseeable.

good to hear, enbb.

When a reporter in the Capitol asked Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, 85, what precautions he was taking to protect himself from the disease known as Covid-19, he said none — and extended his arm with confidence: “Wanna shake hands?” https://t.co/JOrdZ5n7p8

— Josh Barone (@joshbarone) March 11, 2020

The reason the flu drops down in warm weather has less to do with the temperature and more to do with people spending less time in close quarters indoors, iirc.

"my governor's a republican and i don't mind dyin'!!!!"

Good! Die you old fuck xp

xpost Man, I wish I had covid just so that I could shake his hand.

That's good news, ENBB. Was reading upthread and vicariously outraged. I loathe the cavalier, stiff-upper-lip, 'you're all going barmy' attitude of some British people I have spoken to.

Despite the fact that I (as an average tutor) am on 8+ packed buses/tubes every day, none of these umbrella companies have issued a single message about precautions. Today was my last day teaching anything in person.

Good news E!

My work is still open, with no more than hypotheticals about closing the office (everybody check your VPN, make sure to bring your laptops home etc). I just wrote to my manager asking for WFH effective immediately.

We have had team meetings where people are reassuring each other it will just be some coughing for a couple of days and that it "only" seriously affects old people and people with underlying health conditions.
Each of those categories is ~20% of the population and also almost 20% of the team being briefed (including me).

i work in a MH clinic and one of the concerns we've had is that our patients are often elderly (the median age in my community is 55yo!) and a decent chunk of our patients are, for various reasons, not as likely to abide by our requests to not come to appointments if sick

my workplace has been very responsive about the situation and we just got ok’d to work from home indefinitely if that’s what we’d prefer to do. expecting this to become mandatory by next week

i feel very lucky and can’t help but feel horrible for the many many ppl whose workplaces are way less flexible and way more ignorant

Glad for you ENBB, and happy for everyone who can wfh. Assuming my workplace is going to insist we keep going in, have decided to pick up a few small items every time I go out just to keep us topped up. Not stockpiling, but dry goods that will keep and are useful to have. Have been wearing gloves on public transport as well. My father in law has a number of conditions and we’re used to staying away with colds, if it was my choice I’d have no issue staying in at all.

Change.org just sent this out to campaign for a reduction in time-consuming reviews for NHS staff amongst other things: http://chng.it/qJHdBrLdJw

(It's almost at target already!)

Well that’s my weekend plans ruined. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2020/mar/11/hands-off-can-orgies-survive-in-the-age-of-coronavirus

https://voca.ro/8WLuFQPmwdg

ty :)

Between this and the Amersham dogging community cancelling their gatherings, it’s a tough time all round.

xp I enjoyed the “on the money”

Big Ears is cancelled.
https://bigearsfestival.org/big-ears-festival-covid-19-cancellation/

new york's suny and cuny schools are closing . . . but not until next thursday (they might be on spring break now? not sure)

https://media.giphy.com/media/bqOXGPltRyedrOrB6h/giphy.gif The Yelawolf concert on Friday will happen as planned https://media.giphy.com/media/bqOXGPltRyedrOrB6h/giphy.gif

BBC staff all continuing to go to work smh

india has suspended all tourist visas through april 15

enbb so glad like gyac I've been seething privately about that post you made

couple I know just proudly announced they are still going on their cruise today smh

At this point choosing to go on a cruise feels like locking yourself in a castle to avoid the Red Death.

L. Ron Hubbard knew what was up.

A friend reports that some late-night shows (i.e. Fallon) will go ahead without audiences

We are all set up to work from home (and usually do a couple of days a week) but weirdly we’ve been told it’s business as usual. Have told my team to stay home this week, would imagine now it’s an official pandemic the advice might change.

Friend of mine (from Manchester, Chinese parents, lives in Madrid) has had people yelling CORONAVIRUS at her in the street and someone in her office asked if she was Chinese and then, when told ‘no’, said ‘oh you’re not dangerous then hahaha’. One of the worst things about any sad/bad situation is how it shines a light on how awful people are.

um this is odd

The White House has ordered federal health officials to treat top-level coronavirus meetings as classified, an unusual step that has restricted information and hampered U.S. government’s response to the contagion, according to four Trump admin officials https://t.co/LoQmWZyGez

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) March 11, 2020

they were told that the virus just dies when it gets warmer!

arrggh! viruses aren't alive. they don't eat, can't metabolize, and can't reproduce outside of a host cell. they're just rogue bundles of genetic material that enter your cells and fuck them up. they can't 'die', but they can become damaged to the point where they become functionally inert.

The zombie apocalypse was in us all along.

So much for pathology, the study of disease, with an emphasis on bodily pain, which at the same time was an emphasis of the body, an emphasis on its pleasures - disease was life’s lascivious form.

I have friends (who are over 65!) who were going to be going on a cruise starting this weekend. But that's off, thank goodness.

The reason the flu drops down in warm weather has less to do with the temperature and more to do with people spending less time in close quarters indoors, iirc.

I think it's because the virus spread more easily in dryer air/lower humidity?

Maybe both?

Glass half full:

Sophisticated modelling of the outbreak suggests that China had 114,325 cases by the end of February 2020, a figure that would have been 67 times higher without interventions such as early detection, isolation of the infected, and travel restrictions.

Glass half empty:

But if the interventions could have been brought in a week earlier, 66% fewer people would have been infected, the analysis found. The same measures brought in three weeks earlier could have reduced cases by 95%.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/11/research-finds-huge-impact-of-interventions-on-spread-of-covid-19

One line I saw was that humidity is worse because the virus 'lingers in the air' longer.

gonna C&P a long thing from a Seattle resident via Yetimike on FB:

Random notes from the epicenter:

Car traffic is drastically reduced.

Three downtown restaurants closed today. For good, not for safety's sake. They ran out of money.

Movie theaters are open but some are capping ticket sales at 50% capacity, to allow for space between people.

As of tomorrow, all gatherings for over 250 people will be banned. I've had two events cancelled in the past two days. I'm not financially impacted by those cancellations but many Seattle artists are. A fund has been started to help them out.
A $2M fund has also been started to help gig workers and other vulnerable communities during what is really the both a health and financial crisis.

Our fatality rate looks insanely high, around 10% vs the 3% reported globally. This is because the supply of test kits is staggeringly inadequate, so the people getting tested are mostly the people who are obviously sick. The state is now spinning up its own test production--and tests will be free-- but the time lost due to federal government incompetence was not time we could afford to lose.

Fewer than 5,000 Americans have been tested. South Korea is testing 10,000 people a day. At the Kirkland nursing home where most of the deaths have occurred, 65 of 170 staff members are showing symptoms but no tests are available to confirm it's corvid19, or to ascertain whether any of the other 105 staffers might be infected but asymptomatic. South Korea is testing 10,000 people a day. South Korea is testing 10,000 people a day.

The cherry trees are blooming. I’m tipping baristas and waiters a hundred percent.

If you can live in a state that believes in science and in helping people, do that. The conversations I overhear in coffee shops (the coffee shops are jumping) are intelligent and rational. People talk about "flattening the curve," a phrase you will come to know well. Flattening the curve means trying to at least slow the spread so that hospitals aren't too overwhelmed. Whatever number of infections we are going to have, if we can have them over three months instead of two, or four instead of three, that's a flatter curve.

Remember, people will still get sick with other things during this pandemic, and they'll need hospital beds, and the hospital beds might all be full.

Microsoft and Amazon employees are working from home all month, and both are paying hourly workers for forty hours a week. Amazon has started a $5M fund to help the businesses around campus weather the storm, and isn't collecting March rent from any tenants in its own buildings. Seattle Power and Light won't be switching off anyone's utilities for nonpayment this month.

All of which is good, because because our president's economic harm-reduction plan is to bail out the oil industry. South Korea is testing 10,000 people a day.

Except for hand sanitizer, the supermarkets are totally normal. My Whole Foods had dragonfruit and toilet paper and something called "cauliflower-based breakfast" and Meyer lemons. No Parmesan, though. Is it somehow related to the virus? I asked. No, the cheese person said. We did a Parmesan demo last week and since then it's just been flying off the shelves. People are just finding out about Parmesan? my husband said when I told him.

The NYT reports today that a research team in Seattle sought permission weeks ago to test samples they had collected for a flu study for coronavirus. The government said no. The team did it anyway, and that's how we know that coronavirus was widespread here much earlier than initially suspected. That no from the government cost a lot of time we could not afford to lose.

Fissures in our safety net are being exposed. For instance: whether to close public schools is a hotly debated topic, and one argument against closure is that some children are reliant on school for food, health monitoring, and medications. This is not something I had ever really considered in my life.

The hospitalized man from my mother-in-law's community died, but only one other resident has been diagnosed so far, and they are getting enough kits from somewhere to test everyone. Maybe from South Korea, which is testing 10,000 people a day. My mother-in-law has a gentle, cheerful kind of dementia and doesn't really remember she's in quarantine. You know, John, I was just thinking I might drive out to the ocean for a week, she told my husband the last time he saw her.

Our next-door neighbor is a two-decade Amazon employee. John keeps finding him wandering aimlessly in his backyard. Oh hey, he says. I'm just picking up dog poop, I guess. Maybe I'll build a new shed. You work from home, right? One question: how? One day John overhears our neighbor on a conference call. So has everyone made their April Fool's Day plans? he is asking.