outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

Some verified dude deleted his tweet about Bolsonaro having it, now says he’s being tested.

On Thursday Major League Baseball announced that effective Friday, March 13 it would be suspending all spring training events indefinitely, and the delay could potentially impact the start of the regular season.

Via NYT. We need this guy out of office now; he's going to spark a massive panic.

President Trump said on Thursday that he could restrict domestic travel to regions of the United States where the coronavirus becomes “too hot.”

Asked by a reporter in the Oval Office whether he was considering limits on travel inside the country to hard-hit states like Washington or California, Mr. Trump said the subject had not yet been discussed, before adding: “Is it a possibility? Yes, if somebody gets a little bit out of control, if an area gets too hot.”

He did not elaborate, except to say that a containment zone New York state had imposed around the city of New Rochelle was “good.”

“People know that they’re being watched,” he said of the New York measure.

My own state is taking drastic steps w/52 confirmed cases:

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine says mass gatherings are now banned, that's define by gatherings of more than 100 people. Does not include airports, hospitals, shopping malls.

— Jen Steer (@jensteer) March 12, 2020

I mean I certainly advise not visiting Seattle right now

what if this is the rapture

HOUSE OF! CORONA--*yanked violently off the face of the earth by a giant cane*

something a bit specific to santa fe that might actually get a few people killed: it's the beginning of juniper allergy season. this is horrendous normally, in that juniper allergies always seem to be worse than yr typical seasonal allergy, but it's especially bad now because loads of ppl are going to write off COVID symptoms as allergies (even tho allergies are sneezing and COVID seems to be coughing) OR have those symptoms obscured by co-occurring allergies

also even though we've only had a few cases so far, new mexicans seem to be particularly sanguine about this so far

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine says mass gatherings are now banned, that's define by gatherings of more than 100 people. Does not include airports, hospitals, shopping malls.

which of these banned locations does not fit in with the others

sorry, non-banned locations

the new mexicans I know (who are my dad's family and are all delusional Trumpists) are holding firm on their belief that this is a hoax by dems and will only affect horrible coastal elites.

I knew there was no way baseball was really going to open the season on time but I'm honestly kind of shaken now that it's really happened.

this isn't a rapture; as tt said ages ago, it's much closer to a biblical pestilence

speaking of new mexico: meow wolf needs to shut it down, right quick

Yes, if somebody gets a little bit out of control.

“People know that they’re being watched,”

The language he's using almost makes it sound like he's worried about people spreading it on purpose? Echoes of some other times in the past when infected people were treated like a malevolent "other"....

I seriously cannot believe that Johnson came out of this meeting and said oh yeah so up to 10,000 people in the UK might already be infected and lots of people are gonna die but we’re not shutting anything down.
My work is business as usual and we’re not being told to work from home yet. I’m scared and then embarrassed about being scared but I am.

never been more grateful to control my own work schedule

uhhhhhhh

https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/touring/9333748/live-nation-global-pause-tours-concerts-coronavirus?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&__twitter_impression=true&__twitter_impression=true

lol disneyland is specifically exempted from california's ban on gatherings of 250+

France shutting down all schools from Monday. From crèches to universities.

Macron:

nos enfants et nos plus jeunes, selon les scientifiques tous, sont celles et ceux qui propagent, semble-t-il, le plus rapidement le virus

For real? He's essentially saying that younger people are more contagious on average.

Our lot say the same. They don’t get sick so much, and it’s really mild when they do, but they are contagious as hell.

just realized trump STILL hasn't declared a national emergency - despite repeated calls to do so from WA, and i would assume other places as well.

i thought about this while reading a MLB press release on the delay to the start of the season, which referred to the current "national emergency"

Netherlands finally taking some measures as well. Ppl should WFH, don't seek out social contacts, schools are staying open though, all events w/ 100+ cancelled etc etc.

reports are that children are more likely to be asymptomatic but still contagious, right?

so if this starts going wild in elementary schools post-spring break, one asymptomatic kid in a classroom could send the virus home with all their classmates

argh

lol aren't we still in a "national emergency" because of border crossings or whatever

My own state is taking drastic steps w/52 confirmed cases:

Actually only 5 confirmed cases in OH so far, but wait 1 or 2 weeks

All OH schools to close until April 3rd

Los Angeles schools still open. As of less than 24 hrs ago still getting calls regarding how it was cool to send kids in despite oh idk canceling all field trips and not allowing anyone to attend school events who wasn’t student or staff. We’re keeping our kid home, up till the schools close (whispers of them closing Monday for three weeks which seems like not quite long enough...)

worried about the large, close-knit, multigenerational families of new mexico, esp if the kiddos are vectoring

the local public schools are announcing they'll be closed until at least march 30 following this week

Pornhub is making their premium content free throughout Italy, to comfort those in quarantine, plus donating money to hospitals. (via Reddit) https://t.co/vVg63QBXl5

— Eric Nelson (@literaryeric) March 12, 2020

Disneyland closes.

No idea how they got the number, but impetus for Ohio school closures is reportedly an estimated 100k infected, obviously most of them as yet untested.

i'm having trouble processing those two posts together within the same few minutes

xp

today governor made a big announcement that schools are closed for 2 weeks beginning monday and state buildings will be closed to the public, and state employees who can telework are supposed to. i can only partially telework. i am taking tomorrow off for no reason and i want to grocery shop but i'm afraid it's gonna be a mess.

Wuhan now recording new infections in single digits for the first time since this started, according to the Straits Times. Apparently only fifteen new cases across the whole of China yesterday and, outside of Wuhan, six of the seven were infected abroad.

I'm sure Trump's solution will be to drown everybody who gets Coronavirus in the Pacific or Atlantic oceans

awesome news from Wuhan.

that's great news for china obv but it sounds like it only came with the sort of control measures that just wouldn't be possible in most other societies

western liberal democracy really killing the game these days huh

yeah, plus their government was initially slow to react and denied the existence of it at first, which lead to the epidemic explosion to begin with.

xpost yeah, pretty much never wanna hear how the US is the greatest nation again. we have a shortage of tests because our CDC decided to go rogue and then botched theirs, and our President insists we have the best tests, tests for anybody that needs them, superb tests

the tests were perfect

When it became a scandal that the United States simply didn’t have enough tests to screen people—and that an early version of the test was faulty—Trump said that the tests “are all perfect. Like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect.” It’s a telling comparison: His slow coronavirus response and his extortion of Ukraine are linked together in his mind as two things he needs to narrate as the opposite of what they are.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ES8IxqCXsAICn45?format=jpg&name=large

feel like I'm bout to wake up Christopher Walken in Dead Zone style

good atlantic article about how the coronavirus was a failure of authoritarianism before it was a failure of democracy

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/02/coronavirus-and-blindness-authoritarianism/606922/

yes there's enough failure to go around

seems like america has the worst of both systems:
-- an obsequious, authoritarian executive branch unwilling to face the unpleasant truth
-- lumbering, conflicted legislature delaying needed relief (and to go deeper, unwilling to provide obviously beneficial social programs in general)
-- population used to doing whatever it wants all the time, and not used to listening to credentialed experts about anything.

yeah we go all in

yet when it was Ebola, Republican Senators wanted like all of Texas put in a bubble.