Coronavirus (No Politics)

Gloomy Thoughts

Yesterday I heard that our local town (though it claims to be a city) had it's 1st death from The Virus. Sort of brings the whole thing a bit closer to home. Not sure about the UK government. It feels, to me, like they are running around shouting "Don't Panic! Don't Panic!" a la Corporal Jones (Dad's Army). Still they may be right.

If I was a conspiracy nut then I would suggest that this government has solved the Long Term Care problem. If the virus kills off all the poorly over-65s then there is no need to provide Homes and Nursing Homes. Keeps taxs down and get voted back into power. (By the way I am 65 this year.) I of course do not believe this but then there are those who think that genocide never happens.

A bit down today. Need some chocolate.

Main railway station in Cologne yesterday after work : Ann eerily emptiness …
Normally, the station is full of tourists - but it was as empty as I remember it from the days between the years.

The Dutch government has requested that people in the province I live in, work from home where possible. It is not a requirement, it is a request. So, I am working from home now for a week.
The main reasons for it is that in this small part of The Netherlands there are not only the most corona infected people, but also the most people of which the origin of that infection is unclear.
At this moment, The Netherlands has a total of 321 infected patients, of which for 90 it is still unclear how they got to be infected.


On the bright side, the amount of traffic jams has been reduced quite a bit in this part of the country. Not that I would have benefited, given that I cycle to work

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Main railway station in Cologne yesterday after work : Ann eerily emptiness …
Normally, the station is full of tourists - but it was as empty as I remember it from the days between the years.

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Huh… interesting to hear. I'll have to browse for current pictures. I'm going through that station a few times each year, I've never seen it in any state that I would describe as 'empty'.

I went and visited my daughter on Sunday. Her husband works from home from a Dc based company. She told me they were being told to have everyone work from home and she added that they had been surprised there was no virus there. With all the travel that goes in and out of Dc.
Today i am reading there are now a number of cases reported there.

Ohio finally reported the first cases but that's because they finally got test kits. Most likely been around here for a few weeks. With the aging population in the U.S. could overrun the health care industry.

My wife has IBS so we always have a shit ton of toilet paper

I told her if I ever start dating again my first question will be, "Do you have IBS?"

Industry? Only wallets can be overrun. I'm pretty sure the healthcare industry leaders are making plans how to profit more from it.

Also, for all I know, IBS is not contagious/transferable.

As anyone probably noticed, heard or read, seems that Italy case is on it's way to become a disaster. Sort the linked in the first post table total by cases per million of citizens column.

joxer said:

As anyone probably noticed, heard or read, seems that Italy case is on it's way to become a disaster. Sort the linked in the first post table total by cases per million of citizens column.

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Which really makes you wonder how China is able to contain it so well.

Because they live in a Big Brother kind of a country that has a long history of placing the collective good above the individual, as well as blind adherence to authority? When a drone flies by telling you to get inside, they run. (See the Trump thread for related video.) Try that in a lot of places in the States, and you're going to be picking your drone up off the ground with several rifle or handgun rounds in it.

And yet: There's reports that a good size of the Wuhan population managed to leave Wuhan before the quarantine came into effect. 5 million people, supposedly.
[source]

And I'm not going to believe they have those drones everywhere, and for a long enough time frame. That's pretty fresh.

Point being: I'm sure China is the most suited country to achieve any kind of large-scale containment. But it's still counter intuitive that they manage to bottle this up so successfully.

But I'm no epidemiologist.

Making an effort, whatever it might be, is often helpful, too, and we haven't really bothered with that in the States yet.

joxer said:

Industry? Only wallets can be overrun. I'm pretty sure the healthcare industry leaders are making plans how to profit more from it.

Also, for all I know, IBS is not contagious/transferable.

As anyone probably noticed, heard or read, seems that Italy case is on it's way to become a disaster. Sort the linked in the first post table total by cases per million of citizens column.

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There's only so many respirators out there and emergency rooms can only handle so many people.

Have you ever traveled with someone with bad IBS? A one hour trip becomes two hours :lol:

Cacheperl said:

Point being: I'm sure China is the most suited country to achieve any kind of large-scale containment. But it's still counter intuitive that they manage to bottle this up so successfully.

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Indeed. Just crunch the numbers. If unchecked, every carrier infects 2-3 other people. Under those circumstances, the spread would only be stopped by herd immunity once ~2/3 of the population have been infected and thus become immune. Now imagine a scenario wherein ~15% of 2/3 of the population require intensive medical care at more or less the same time…

But instead, the Chinese somehow managed to bring it to more or less of a halt at ~80,000 people out of ~60 million inhabitants living in Hubei province, i.e. at 0,13% instead of 2/3.

So, either there must be a HUGE number of people that have been infected and acquired immunity, but stayed asymptomatic, or the draconian measures implemented there were responsible for bringing that factor of 2-3 down to ~1. In either case, there is a glimpse of hope there that that thing might be contained, even though matters might get a little uncomfortable for a while.

I'm a bit dubious about China's numbers, too, even with ancient, red draconian measures.

I heard this morning that Kansas can test about 60 people per week now. We've got a population of about 3,000,000.

Just got some toilet paper today. It's definitely running low but there was still some here. Powdered milk is gone.

P.S. Got a quest going in Yakuza 1 where I'm gathering pocket tissues for a guy stuck in the restroom and in need of TP. Funny how art reflects life sometimes.

Buy it in the Steam sale? I picked up Yakuza 0 for $5. Always been curious.

Zloth said:

I'm a bit dubious about China's numbers, too, even with ancient, red draconian measures.

I heard this morning that Kansas can test about 60 people per now. We've got a population of about 3,000,000.

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Yeah, no offence, but this is much less than what should be possible at this time, and a ball appears to have been dropped there. Plenty of countries, including such that still like themselves a bit of the ol' civil liberties, have more *confirmed* cases than that per million, let alone tests having been administered (Or is that 60 tests per day? That would be more reasonable).

Of course it's absolutely possible that there is underreporting going on in China, but I don't think the numbers are far off the mark either. But maybe the number includes diagnoses based on symptoms alone?

As far as I know, the Chinese hospitals also make efficient use of chest CTs in diagnosing COVID-19. Such a scan takes <30 minutes (and might even be more sensitive than the swab), so if they ran a round-the-clock operation, a single hospital could almost test 60 people per day. Tell your local radiology department!

Zloth said:

P.S. Got a quest going in Yakuza 1 where I'm gathering pocket tissues for a guy stuck in the restroom and in need of TP. Funny how art reflects life sometimes.

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All chapter 4 sidequests in this game are awsome. Unless I missed some that aren't…
Hint: to complete the toilet stuck guy you need

Capt. Huggy Face said:

Buy it in the Steam sale? I picked up Yakuza 0 for $5. Always been curious.

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Dunno about him but I did. Play Y0 to get introduced to characters and the world design then buy Kiwami1 only if you liked Y0.

…

On topic and suspecting numbers…

North Korea so far has not a single case of infection reported. They say so. Should we believe?
Well, upon information about the outbreak they closed the border and then set a month long quarantine for everyone who enters. Everyone and their mother. Yes. Also they've temporarily closed places of mass gathering (example: cassinos)

On the other hand Turkey. Also no infections. A tourist destination that did absolutely nothing related to prevention of this new virus spreading. Well sorry, but I don't believe it.

With cca 100K registered infections already I don't see any reason for China to manipulate their numbers. What they need to do is getting rid of stupid unhealthy traditions that can hurt the worldwide society. Eating raw meat probably caused this outbreak. Humans don't cook stuff because of it's taste but to kill viruses, bacteria and parasites. Or to get rid of poisons (no eating eel raw due to poisonous blood).

Well E3 is cancelled, as expected

The kind of idiots I have to deal with in this podunk town I'm living in.