outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

let me be clear - it isn't real until it's proven that it was developed in secret chinese labs

one thing missing from today's world - laser beams pew pewing in the distance

Not looking at many covid threads, but just had a squiz at today’s posts itt on zing (so it won’t show up dark on browser version & encourage me to click).

Sympathies to everyone with at-risk or immunocompromised loved ones. Ppl in countries or cities not on shutdown yet, don’t panic, but do prepare as much as you can so you also don’t panic when the shutdown comes. My flat stocked up on rice and dry beans and lentils and curry powder and pasta last week, but are still getting fresh veg and hot animal while groceries & markets & supermarkets are open. (Don’t touch yr face until you get home & wash yr hands, take a little thing of sanitiser with you, don’t lick any handles or strangers, etc)

Basically everything except food shops are shut down here now: museums, cinemas, music venues, bars, the YMCA. Restaurants are allowed to sell takeaway or delivery, breweries can sell sealed growlers & cans but can’t pour or fill anything, bookstores can do mail-order.

The library system was shut down on a day’s notice last week: I spent twenty minutes grabbing a backpacksworth of books just before they closed, but would have run through my “for later” tags to order in stuff from other branches with longer warning - worth a thought for folks, especially as you can make working through them a specific project for distraction or calmness during the isolation period.

(Same goes for your home to-be-read piles obv, but they’re suspending loan periods here, so that’s extra-attractive.)

Planning an outdoor routine or project is another idea to prepare now: say, making a list of local landmarks you can walk or bike a different round trip to on each fine day if achieving projects is good for your mental health, or figuring a specific route, that hits a step count, to do every day if routine is better for you. (Can also be paired with an album-a-day project, or an epic audiobook, or a podcast back-catalogue dive, if extra distraction helps.)

And as things stand (this week at least...) you can still socialise to some degree with people that you know or trust aren’t at-risk by behaviour or age / condition. If one night of the week is a regular pub or movie night, organise gathering at the home of someone (nearby, with room for a few visitors) to have some drinks or watch a DVD / stream. Take yr temperature twice a day to reassure yourself, wash yr hands a lot, and consider that four or five people spread around even a London front room aren’t as close to each other’s faces as six or ten around a pub table, so you’re less likely to even catch a cold than usual.

Also, if you’ve ever really wanted to get into ballot polls on ILX but not been able to commit the time, this is your big chance.

Also also, we should all plan to be posting our cats to the “my cat” thread more.

For people with pets - apparently hand sanitizer has overlapping ingredients with anti-freeze so don’t use this if you handle/pet animals. They will groom themselves and could be the victims of accidental poisoning. Soap and hot water is where it’s at!

xp I have a video but don’t know where to upload it!

There are far too many people on this train, going into work to get my stuff and then turning around immediately.

still quite a lot of people in town here but it’s thinning out. I had to come in because my SRAS failed on day 1 of wfh :/

On my way back out now, more people than I expected in town but I saw them shuttering the Burger King at Victoria and the staff leaving. Incredibly weird to say goodbye to people not knowing when I’ll see them again.

real weird "last helicopter out" vibe in the office last night. We had to say our goodbyes to someone who resigned last week (d'oh) even though he's still working with us for 10 more weeks.

a thing i discovered is that when i'm in a shop thinking "what do i actually need to stock up on?" my brain continues to reply RED LENTILS long after this is really no longer the case

btw in the cheery opinion of my pharmacist this is ALL A BIG FUSS ABOUT NOTHING (he let me have two big packets of paracetamol just in case)

All those elderly gotta die sometime

All those elderly gotta die sometime

Elderly only die twice.

Can't help thinking about how the English are going to react when the story shifts to "hospitals overwhelmed, cannot take more patients" because yeah it's not going to be good.

The Dutch seem to be taking a middle-of-the-road line between full suppression and building community immunity. (sorry for linking to this site, it's just the English translation of Ruttes speech) https://order-order.com/2020/03/17/prime-minister-mark-ruttes-address-dutch-people-english-full-text/

nationalise everything now:

The government of Italy has announced it is to re-nationalise the former national carrier Alitalia to make sure Italian nationals are never again left stranded overseas by a crisis like the coronavirus pandemic.

The takeover, part of a 25bn euro coronavirus response plan, will cost taxpayers up to 600m euros, AFP reports. Deputy economy minister Laura Castelli told Italian radio on Tuesday:

At a time like this, a flag carrier gives the government more leeway. We all saw the difficulties our compatriots faced in returning to Italy. Our decision stems from this.

Transport Minister Paola De Micheli said a “national carrier was strategic for our country” at a time of crisis”.

Nationalising Alitalia is more of a hobby for whoever is in government in Italy. Last year it was going to be nationalised through the back door by having the state railway company buy it. It seems to get nationalised and part privatised or part sold to a foreign airline on a regular cycle.

isn't it famously shit?

Not that it isn’t a good outcome for the people that work there but it not exactly a bold first step on the road to a socialist Italia.

It's not implausible that all the major airlines are going to be bankrupt if something approaching normality hasn't resumed by this time next year so i think it's certainly possible this will be the first of many.

airports are certainly going to be bankrupt shortly too

(is it wrong to be pleased about the carbon benefits of this? I feel v. v. much for the staff)

real weird "last helicopter out" vibe in the office last night. We had to say our goodbyes to someone who resigned last week (d'oh) even though he's still working with us for 10 more weeks.

This is basically me, I spent a lot of Friday clearing out an old cupboard and my desk (including printouts of a senior partner being a complete prick to an ex-employee on Facebook that I was planning to use if ever I was in danger of working for him again). In the middle of last week I sent around an email saying "my last day's the 9th of April, I'll be going to the pub then", then after we were told on Thursday to prepare to go home, I was telling people that I'd probably go to the pub before I move to Scotland in May.

Like, if you asked me, I'd have said "Oh no this will be massively disruptive", but I still adhere to the old plans.

(is it wrong to be pleased about the carbon benefits of this? I feel v. v. much for the staff)

We're still all at work today. Tate Modern has shut up I here.

... shut up shop, that is.

Lothar Wieler, the president of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) in Berlin, the National Public Health Institute in Germany, has said the risk to Germans was now ‘high,’ adding that is the highest gradation there is.

He told a daily conference said that 99 per cent of registered cases had so far survived the illness, and although he had “no idea” what the death rate will eventually be, at the moment all evidence points to the fact that only 1/5 of persons infected will be seriously ill.

Four out of five people will suffer only light symptoms or none at all. And according to information based on existing and previous cases, only around half of those who will be infected, actually get sick, “the other half do not notice it at all”, he said.

Alarming, wrt self-isolation, if half the people who have it aren't going to have any idea.

friends have just posted new pictures from the warhol exhibition at TM, so it's open today but today is the last day. it currently plans(!) to reopen may 1st.

(xp) I was wondering about that every thing.

my sister works at tate britain and stayed home in hastings today -- she's not public-facing and routinely wfh a couple of days a week anyway but i gathered from her yesterday that BJ's announcement was creating decision cascades in the correct direction within management

presumably there is a way of testing if someone has had this and recovered, though seeing as they're not intending to test people who have symptoms if they don't also need hospitalisation there's not much chance of testing actually being done on the recovered. would certainly seem like a useful thing to know tho.

xxp

Yes, there are antibody tests which tell you if you're believed to be safe – they're being ramped now (in the UK at least)

Yeah the antibody tests should show this.

I may have overdone it. I have liquid handsoap, next to bar soap, next to clorox wipes at the main sink by the door.

next to my slingshot.

thx stet and gyac. i was expecting to have picked up this virus over the last few weeks working at gatwick but had zero symptoms but now apparently that doesn't necessarily mean anything which is a bit worrying as i have been in contact with my elderly mum.

thanks mini mike, very cool!

Bloomberg Philanthropies, the multibillionaire Michael Bloomberg’s charitable foundation, has announced it is to fund a $40m global initiative to fight the spread of coronavirus in low- and middle-income countries.

Announcing the plan, Bloomberg, who recently spent about 26 times that amount in an abortive bid for the Democrat presidential nomination, said:

I know it's Amazon, but short-term, anyway, any kind of hiring has to be good news.

http://www.cnn.com/2020/03/16/tech/amazon-shipping-coronavirus/index.html

ideal time for amazon to perfect their stranglehold on the market as their competitors all tank, great job lex luthor jeff bezos

I know. But I'm trying to think of people who'll need money to get through this.

yeah, and i can't disagree - there are very few correct answers available right now afaict

Meanwhile:

AUSTIN — Thousands of asylum seekers crammed in border towns near the Texas-Mexico border awaiting U.S. immigration hearings are at risk of dying from coronavirus because of poor health access and unsafe conditions, advocates say.

In Matamoros, where around 2,000 migrants live in a sprawling outdoor camp where they sleep in tents and share portable bathrooms and sinks, health advocates warned the coronavirus could spread rampantly. The camp is located across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas.

Last week, Global Response Management, the nonprofit that operates the only health clinic in the camp, launched plans to erect a two-tent, 20-bed field hospital in the camp to house coronavirus patients if and when the virus arrives, said Helen Perry, the group's executive director.

"We are very concerned," she said. "You have a vulnerable, displaced community in poor living conditions without access to health care, where food is communal and housing is communal. It's a recipe for explosive infection and transmission

Can't help thinking about how the English are going to react when the story shifts to "hospitals overwhelmed, cannot take more patients" because yeah it's not going to be good.

― Wuhan!! Got You All in Check (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Tuesday, 17 March 2020 12:00 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

We've had that for a decade and the English overwhelmingly voted for more of the same. It doesn't take a million COVID-19 sufferers to fill the hospitals, there was barely a spare bed before.

Sure it has been severely overstretched for the last decade, this is of an entirely different degree though, we are talking about middle class mail-reading white people being left to die rather than be admitted.

I'm not saying the reaction will be a good one, or that it will make anything better, that would be a massive stretch, but there will be a shitshow for sure.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/17/health/coronavirus-uk-model-study/index.html

I don't get this. how can the US "shift" its strategy? surely containment is impossible now, no matter how dire the report looks? Italy is on lockdown and it isn't as if their cases are disappearing currently.

Iran now done good:

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/coronavirus-iran-releases-85000-prisoners-effort-combat-virus

Saw somewhere that the number of cases are flatlining in Italy

Poor choice of words!

total cases in italy increased 13% from 24,747 3/15 to 27,980 on 3/16.

the day before that, the increase was 17%. so i guess...that's improvement?