outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

Does anyone know what's likely to happen to global shipping over the next few weeks? Like seriously what happens if ships carrying all kinds of vital things (food, commodities, medicine, whatever) from certain countries aren't allowed to dock?

Have we even seen the ripple effect yet from Chinese manufacturing slowing down radically while major regions of the country were on lockdown?

https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/global-shipping-holds-its-breath-as-the-coronavirus-continues-to-spread/

(as i literally just read a tweet claiming you can tell yr not infected if you can hold yr breath and comfortably count to ten this headline appealed to me, even tho the article is a bit dated)

as someone who spent one whole shift working at the docks in 1990-something, my expert opinion is that the ship could dock for unloading but nobody allowed to disembark. all containers are lifted off by crane anyway, only risk is if virus can survive on impermeable surfaces for extended periods xps

also it apparently takes six to eight days to cross the atlantic in a boat so that time would serve as some sort of control measure in itself

correction: 10-20 days

Researchers have discovered that smooth (non-porous) surfaces like door knobs transmit bacteria and viruses better than porous materials like paper money because porous, especially fibrous, materials absorb and trap the contagion, making it harder to contract through simple touch.

assume the new polymer notes are better fomites than old paper currency

Fuck me. Just went to book next weekend's Tesco shop and no delivery slots (or click & collect) available until the week after.

“If you’re healthy, you and your family, it’s a great time to go out and go to a local restaurant, likely you can get in easy. Let’s not hurt the working people in this country...go to your local pub” pic.twitter.com/jXdhOfwe9R

— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) March 15, 2020

aye we had to take 8-9pm next friday for our delivery slot. only one available : /
xp

Have we even seen the ripple effect yet from Chinese manufacturing slowing down radically while major regions of the country were on lockdown?

i work in IT procurement and there is still an ongoing problem with supply of some tech stuff. one of lenovo's main manufacturing facilities is in wuhan for example, and i believe there was a problem with workers returning to the city after chinese new year amongst all the other lockdowns that were going on. and then you have disruption in distribution networks on top of that. so lead times on some items were going right up, leading to empty shelves here. and now the virus has reached these shores and everyone has been thinking that they need to prepare for working at home, all of a sudden everyone wants eg lots of laptops that aren't there in the first place so there's a huge demand spike on top of a supply shortage. someone from dell was telling me that their public sector laptop sales in the uk went up by something like 500% in the last week, and that's before any major measures have been announced by the uk government

35 Italian tourists to Ethiopia 🇪🇹 refuse to return to Italy 🇮🇹 despite the expiration of their visas. European undocumented migrants finally arrive in Africa! History is full of irony ...(google translate) https://t.co/UKUFkDvjCB

— Stella nyanzi’s breasts (@Afrowomanist) March 14, 2020

According to my vape guy it's definitely already impacting on their supply chains

I guess this is a pretty good time to quit though...

I’m an emergency physician at a hospital in the Bay Area … Perhaps this is all common knowledge and not informative – but I find the disconnect between what I see at work and in the news disconcerting so figured I’d add my two cents.

Everyone I work with seems resigned to a sense of impending doom, and an expectation that we will all be infected in the weeks ahead, and that we have no alternative course of action without abandoning our patients.

Many coworkers live with their parents, immunocompromised family members, etc, and are terrified about what they will do when they get sick. Live in a call room? stay in a hotel? not go home for 2 months? We’re slowly changing our operations, adding staffing, infectious screeners, etc – but there is organizational resistance to make the big changes that are already necessary. Despite near-daily reports from Italy of WWII-era triage decisions, shortages of key equipment, PPE, etc – we are still operating as if we can add a couple shifts to the schedule and otherwise operate normally. We’re not isolating URI patients from other patients in the waiting room, nor keeping them out of the “clean” areas of the hospital. We still have zero ability to test anyone who isn’t critically ill. We’re still using PPE for individual patients, discarding it, then using a new set for every patient. This would obviously be appropriate under any other circumstances, however we have recently been told that we will run out of PPE, most likely masks, within several days. Colleagues in the NYC area report that in the last few days there has been a surge of ill ARDS/covid patients, including one facility which intubated 5 of these patients in a single 12 hour stretch. In addition they have been told only to wear masks if intubating because of shortages … Reports from China suggest Covid patients typically require ventilators for 2+ weeks before improving.

There are reports coming out of South Bay that hospitals there are inundated in covid patients – but everything is being kept hush-hush for no discernible reason. All the staff I work with (MD, RN, tech, etc) are quite certain that we are headed for a catastrophe of somewhat epic proportions. Some people in the news have been saying we can do it better than Italy – I think the opposite is likely true. We have less beds per capita than any other industrialized society, and a completely inadequate number of ventilators, prone beds, ECMO circuits, perfusionists, etc for the wave that seems to be coming. We have a population that is half-heartedly pursuing social distancing measures, and no capacity to truly isolate the infected (home quarantine is a joke. the majority of the cases in China were transmitted via family clusters). We have national leadership that is both arrogant, incompetent, and seemingly determined to pursue political advantage regardless of the price to the nation. There will be some extremely difficult decisions ahead for our leaders, and I have less than zero faith they will be able to nimbly guide us out of a crisis.

We are used to dealing with regional disasters in the US: hurricane in NO: send aid from the rest of the country. Fires in CA: send in firefighters from the other regions. We haven’t faced a crisis that occurs in every state simultaneously since…? WWII?
I think our leaders, health departments, hospitals, emergency managers, etc have grown complacent that any shortcoming will be resolved when the cavalry arrives in the form of a federal/national response. In this case I think there will be very limited reinforcement. This will hit WA, northern CA, and NY first, then the rest of the country will follow within 2-4 weeks due to the lack of testing capability and governmental inaction. I find myself daily wondering how we have had a less effective public health response than China, South Korea, New Zealand, Italy, etc. Our persistent lack of testing capability is incomprehensible, crippling, and infuriating at this stage of the crisis.

I’ve cared for loads of patients in situations that were plenty scary. I don’t think I’ve ever been as scared for myself, my colleagues, my neighbors, and our country as a whole.
Sorry if this is a bit scattershot, lots of long shifts this past week with not enough sleep – and the wave hasn’t even hit yet.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/from-the-trenches-4

one kind of obvious thing i've been thinking about, and was just reminded of in the bold part above - is this the first time that a crisis has hit pretty much the entire world at the same time? speaking of WWII, maybe that was the last global-scale event of this nature? and in that case, countries were able to "assist" each other by sending supplies and skilled staff to wartorn areas. i'm not sure that's going to be happening much now, at least for a while. the US certainly won't be helping other countries out - we can't even get our own shit together.

anyways, just very surreal because it feels like a sort of Watchmen giant alien that suddenly afflicts everyone at once.

is this the first time that a crisis has hit pretty much the entire world at the same time

i mean, obviously there have also been previous outbreaks on a global scale (1918 flu, black plagues, etc). i guess maybe i should add "in our lifetimes" to the conditions above

9/11 was a global crisis, to some extent.

Shipping is still going for now. One of the things keeping planes flying Australia to China with next to no people on is air cargo. Lots of food goes from Australia to China and that doesn’t seem to have stopped, and I can still buy things from alibaba and rakuten. Plus all the make sellers seem to be Chinese right now. Sea freight is still going although with enhanced precautions in ports. More of an issue is manufacturing slowing down and there being less things to ship.

I’m guessing China really ramped up ventilator manufacturing and they’ll be a lot of airfreight of those. I hope medical device approval standards get lowered, if only temporally. I’d rather be on an unapproved (or hurriedly approved) Chinese ventilator than no ventilator at all.

9/11 was a global crisis, to some extent.

― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, 15 March 2020 22:05 (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

american govt reaction to 9/11, sure

it's tough for me to be objective about 9/11's global impact, as an american, but i didn't consider it as a global "event" on the coronavirus scale just because i'm sure the "event" for many countries was just "god i hope U.S. doesn't invade us". whereas with coronavirus i'm sure pretty much any place with an airport is directly affected

9/11 was everything for a week or so, then we all knew it would have huge repercussions, as far as how it affected the everyday lives of people in most countries around the world over the following year, not so much.

Feels more like the great financial crisis, with ground shifting beneath us, but more so.

meanwhile in arkansas:

“One pastor said half of his church is ready to lick the floor, to prove there’s no actual virus,” an Arkansas pastor told me. “In your more politically conservative regions, closing is not interpreted as caring for you. It’s interpreted as liberalism.”https://t.co/n1pweTSS3Q

— Julie Zauzmer (@JulieZauzmer) March 15, 2020

9/11 wasn't even a crisis in the US relative to coronavirus

35 Italian tourists to Ethiopia 🇪🇹 refuse to return to Italy 🇮🇹 despite the expiration of their visas. European undocumented migrants finally arrive in Africa! History is full of irony ...

Can I...just......

Fleeing likely death in your own country and illegally entering/overstaying in a safer one............how novel.

Source? I can't seem to find anything other than that tweet.

the immediate crisis of 9/11 - for the areas of the country outside of the immediate impact zones, outside of the immediate families of the deceased - was preparing for the continuing crisis that we were totally unprepared for, which never actually arrived. at least, to my 18-year-old derpbrain that's how it felt. whereas this seems like the actual arrival of that crisis, without preparation.

xp

just could not feel less confident in our national leadership after that press conference

US local/state leadership on the other hand appears to be making intelligent strides by and large; just unclear how this is going to be working in june

Oh I don't know anything about that story, I just took that tweet at face value, maybe that was naive of me.

I feel dread and fear I'm going to start drinking a lot

It would have been nifty indeed but it's likely bullshit. The original French tweet was deleted btw.

xp

It will probably take a few days to get any more of a report on it if at all. Just enjoy.

NYC schools closing

full story:

New York City’s public school system, the nation’s largest with 1.1 million students, will begin to largely shut down this week, in what is the city’s most aggressive and disruptive effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

“I’m very, very concerned that we see a rapid spread of this disease, and it’s time to take more dramatic measures,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said late Sunday afternoon. “This is a decision I have taken with no joy and a lot of pain.”

Public schools in Long Island and Westchester County will also close this week, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Sunday. The governor ordered New York City school officials to develop a plan within 24 hours on how to offer child care to students of parents who work in essential industries like health care and to provide food to students who will need meals.

In New York City, the schools will be closed on Monday for all students and staff, but teachers will be asked to report to work later in the week for training on how to provide remote learning, Mr. de Blasio said.

“These children need you,” the mayor said in an appeal to the city’s teachers. “Keep their education going.”

The decision to close the schools came after the mayor faced increasing pressure throughout the day, including from the governor.

Some campuses will reopen on March 23 as “enrichment centers.” They will be set up to provide instruction and services for vulnerable children, likely including many of its homeless students and children with special needs.

The mayor said the goal is to reopen all the schools on April 20, though he cautioned that could be overly optimistic. He said there was a strong chance that the schools would not reopen at all this school year.

“The facts have given us no other choice,” he said.

All public and private schools in Nassau County, which includes some of the most densely populated areas of Long Island, will be closed starting Monday, Laura Curran, the county executive, announced Sunday.

In New Jersey, Gov. Philip D. Murphy said Sunday that a statewide school shutdown would be “imminent.”

In Connecticut, Gov. Ned Lamont said Sunday that all public schools in the state will shut down on Tuesday and stay closed until at least March 31.

Can I...just......

Fleeing likely death in your own country and illegally entering/overstaying in a safer one............how novel.

― There's more Italy than necessary. (in orbit), Sunday, 15 March 2020 22:19 (twenty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

im not certain that this a good look but we can meet up after all this is over and have a fight and a drink about it

Doesn't matter, it's just a revenge fantasy.

the coronavirus emptying the stadiums and turned professional wrestling's high-octane zaniness into a taut and terrifyingly tense Beckett play https://t.co/mev27EWiDR

— Anthony Oliveira (@meakoopa) March 15, 2020

I'm happy for it not to be true, it's absolutely ghoulish. But it's also no *more* ghoulish than what some of our countries regularly do. Certainly not mine.

That's amazing.

xp

Knew you'd like that better

The Queensland Police Service will suspend roadside breath-testing for drugs and alcohol for the time being in order to minimise the risk of transmission of Covid-19 to police officers and the community.

Seems like this is not the sort of thing you should announce to the general public, especially not in Queensland.

Queensland cops are not the brightest bunch

I went to see Endgame a few weeks ago and didn't expect it to be so short-term prophetic.

60 year old GP, Dr Clare Gerada, has #COVIDー19.
She explained on #BBCBreakfast what having the virus was like ⤵️#coronavirusuk #coronavirus pic.twitter.com/Otv3rbIHau

— BBC Breakfast (@BBCBreakfast) March 16, 2020

I suspect the no breathalyzing thing just means they will instead use "field sobriety tests," which are subjective and kinda bullshit, but that's another matter.

CAUSE OF ARREST: he look drunk

I watched this last night - extraordinary. They're two months in. UK-only unfortunately I think

Wuhan: Life under Lockdown
With exclusive access to two film-makers inside the Chinese city of Wuhan, Our World tells the story of life under lockdown.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000gj5f

CAUSE OF ARREST: he look drunk

― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Monday, March 16, 2020 9:38 PM (twenty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

And/or not white.

This is Queensland we’re dealing with.

Here's a 10-minute version of the Wuhan doc:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-asia-china-51858226/coronavirus-life-inside-china-s-lockdown

My spouse is staying home as of tomorrow since the university is going online next week. We are still in double digits of cases and almost all imported. Last semester classes were basically canceled for over a month because of protests and student strikes so he ended up recording like 8 lectures for the students and then just did a final exam. I listened to every lecture from another room and am trying to make him stop saying "effectively...".