Coronavirus (No Politics)

You're most definitively not alone. It's everywhere now.

Due to limited testing most statistics are very scary. Only South Korea have extensive testing (216.000 as of yesterday). Their statistics are published daily at https://www.cdc.go.kr/board/board.es?mid=&bid=0030

I guess Korea is nice as it's a good example for the western world on what to expect. Though their numbers are a bit constant.

The increase we see in Italy is much more drastic and expontential, and this is also closer to what we see in other countries such as Germany, France and Spain, which are all a couple of days "behind" Italy.

The US is again maybe a week behind of europe but I expect the US to be hit much harder due to the lack of a decent health care system (removed).

Maps I use to track numbers are the well known: https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/a…23467b48e9ecf6

And this one which shows an increase per country (but it seems to be down atm):
https://hgis.uw.edu/virus/

Removed.

To be it seems like today was the day, when countries almost maxed out their options.
Yesterday already Italy closed down everything but food stores.
Today lots of other european countries followed by closing schools nation wide, incl Romania, Poland, Spain, Denmark, Norway.
US stopped travel from/to Europe (except GB). NBA season was canceled.
Twitter now let's all their employees work from home.

As mentioned before, I think it will get a little worse for europe regarding the measures in the next couple of days, then it will be maxed out and hopefully the numbers don't increase expontentially anymore. The goal needs to be to just get as many infected as people are healed and rotate them through so that the hospitals are not overcrowded.

And I think it will get much worse in the US in the coming weeks.

The market will be interesting though. With the last, smaller viruses these were shortly after a recession and didn't have any additional impact. This time, the virus might have caused a recession and the Oil thing adds to that. Markets are already down by 25% or so. So how far can it go? And does it already reflect the desastrous expectations in the US? Only good news are actually coming from china which starts to get back to work in Factories now as they are (supposedly) past the spike.

Interesting times.

My company (Bayer Healthcare) said this week that my department is "business critical" and we have to work from home now.

Originally Posted by HiddenX
My company (Bayer Healthcare) said this week that my department is "business critical" and we have to work from home now.

At this time, I think thats the reasonable thing to do for everyone where this is actually possible.

Ill just copypaste what i wrote in another place, regarding how stupid some people are

in my country a retired police scum got this disease after traveling to israel in february but he lied to the doctors and staff at first that he didnt travel when he got in the hospital feeling sick and when the truth got out, he already infected his son, grandchildren, wife, doctor at the hospital and the whole hospital in in complete lockdown now; he lied because he was with his mistress, which also got infected, which also infected others as well; so far from around 50 cases here, a quarter is because of this retard

Originally Posted by HiddenX
My company (Bayer Healthcare) said this week that my department is "business critical" and we have to work from home now.

Sort of a good news/bad news situation.

Originally Posted by HiddenX
My company (Bayer Healthcare) said this week that my department is "business critical" and we have to work from home now.

That sounds like the perfect opportunity to ask for a raise.

I work in schools, mostly remotely, and the last couple of days have been a cascade of cancelations and postponements. I'm getting nervous about being able to pay the bills down the road.

@Kordanor: politics are for P&R, I removed your political statements. In this case the OP even explicitly mentioned in her post that political statements would be removed. She might be gone, but it is still applicable.

We even have the first RPG related news on Corona now:

Mount & Blade Bannerlord.

https://www.taleworlds.com/en/News/321

As such, we have taken the decision to close our offices and work remotely for the foreseeable future until the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic is brought under control.

Surprisingly early, only a single case in Turkey reported so far. But hey, this is certainly work they can do well from home, if they have the required infrastructure available for their employees. Good for them, hope this won't bump up the release date.

Though this goes a bit into "P&R-direction", I hope it's ok to post this:
Be aware that these are indeed just "reported" cases and the real number may be different 1. depending on how trustworthy the authority is in that state and 2. how much they actually test for the virus. This "can be" reflected in the mortality rate as well (if you only test for cause of death, but not before, then you got a 100% mortality rate), of course mortality rate can also increase by a missing infrastructure to take care of the sick.

South Korea, as one of the first states which in addition also performed tons of tests of random people (and not just the ones which called due to strong symptoms) probably has some of the most representative numbers. And (to pick a hopefully non-controversal country) North Korea between South Korea and China is probably a good example for not so reliable numbers.

Remember, that people not being tested for the Virus, are statistically not being infected and can also not show as deaths if they die from it.

Originally Posted by Capt. Huggy Face
Sort of a good news/bad news situation.

Another good thing to come out of this (depending on point of view) is this virus is leaving children relatively unaffected as far as serious cases go. Severity seems to be directly correlated with age. Although the data is still in its infancy. I believe the last figure for mortality rate for those aged 19 to 40 was 0.1%

Arg, that was supposed to be 60/wk in my post. Kinda helps if I give the units.

Ability to test is ramping up quick but, as was mentioned on the news today, South Korea still does more tests per day than the USA has done in total.

News came in at my company that anyone who can work from home should work from home. No face to face meetings with over 10 people, too. As a programmer, I don't expect to be face to face with many people at all for quite a while.

The timeframe given was 3 weeks. I fully expect that to be expanded quite a lot. It will be interesting to see what triggers going back to normal, though. Once we do get a handle on this and slow down the rate of infection, it will be dependent on us staying isolated. If we declare victory and all go back to work, it starts all over again a few weeks later! So… uhhh… do we need to wait until a vaccine shows up? Can people who have had it go back into work a few days/weeks after symptoms vanish? Guess we'll be finding out.

Today brought about mass cancellation of sporting events in the US. Just about everything is getting cancelled now: schools, plays, concerts, &c. Nobody wants to eat out or go anywhere. I'm thinking now this spring might just be a good time to get back into reading again. I'm going to pay a visit to the local library and see what's new.

Has anyone here who's invested in the stock market considered pulling out entirely until this blows over? Panic-selling due to the pandemic is crushing stocks right now. Logic says to wait it out, but I'd be lying if I said I'm not very tempted to sell off and sit on the cash for awhile.

The only thing stopping me is how much I've already lost and the fact that by selling I'd be locking in those losses.

I’m getting hurt in the market but I’m choosing to ignore it due to the horizon of those funds. I’ve got a significant cash position though and if the market hits 15-16K I’m putting in a ton of cash. Seems like an obvious opportunity

Our offices closed yesterday, strange feeling when 500 people are scrambling to pack up their equipment and figure out what everyone needs to work remotely. Felt a bit like a looting scene from a movie. Then I took the subway to central station, so empty and quiet, felt spooky. Like the beginning of the apocalypse.

Originally Posted by JDR13
Has anyone here who's invested in the stock market considered pulling out entirely until this blows over? Panic-selling due to the pandemic is crushing stocks right now. Logic says to wait it out, but I'd be lying if I said I'm not very tempted to sell off and sit on the cash for awhile.

The only thing stopping me is how much I've already lost and the fact that by selling I'd be locking in those losses.

The opposite for me. The market WILL rebound and pass its previous peak. Since I don't plan on touching the investments until after that happens, this dip is simply a fire-sale on stocks, if still investing regularly.

Since my chance of beating the market only falls around 5%, but my chance of matching the market for gains over the long term is 100%, my odds are much better by leaving my money alone.

If you're going to time the market, you might as well be an active investor instead of passive. But you can't be both or you'll really lose. If you're a passive investor, the time wasted worrying what your stocks are doing, and wasting money on buy/sell fees should instead be spent earning something from another source of income, to fund investments in the ultra cheap stocks right now.

Originally Posted by Lemonhead
Our offices closed yesterday, strange feeling when 500 people are scrambling to pack up their equipment and figure out what everyone needs to work remotely. Felt a bit like a looting scene from a movie. Then I took the subway to central station, so empty and quiet, felt spooky. Like the beginning of the apocalypse.

I had this feeling today. I'm in the process of getting the last of our IT equipment prepped so people can work from home if they need (which most people are starting to do). I decided to put in a large chunk of overtime hours to catch up on the last minute urgent stuff. Usually a bunch of people staying late in the evening to work on various projects. This time there was no one except me working in our office of about 550 people on 9 floors. Even the late night cleaners were gone. Zero. The auto-lights were shutting off everywhere except where I was at the time. I felt like the captain of the sinking Titanic, and was waiting for the violinists to start playing Nearer My God To Thee.

EDIT: Ah who am I kidding. I was hoping to play out my Career Opportunities fantasy…