The Corona Virus Thread

[Wrench 9,801]

Ok, people. We all know what's happening out there. What I wanted to do here, is give you all a place to vent, commiserate, give support, whatever you want. Tell us what's going on in your part of the world. What you're feeling thinking, experiencing.  Photos, videos, links to local news services, etc are all OK.

Since a lot of you don't have you location linked, tell us where you are (city, country)

Think of this as a therapy thread, if you want. 

Please, all be safe and take care of each other.  I'll be posting my thoughts/feelings later; just wanted to get this ball rolling

This thread will be pinned at the top of this forum.

Kevin "Wrench" Stein

Los Angeles California

 

[JosefK 911]

Thanks Wrench.

Up here in Skagit in Washington State, we're taking this seriously.  As someone who has extensive contacts in "TransitWorld", it's a nerve wracking time.  We know the curve is going up exponentially, and this virus still has community spread.  So much so, the Left Coast is going into lockdown as much as we can.  

We also know on the flip side will be a depression.  We know many small businesses just can't save up enough to cushion from a fall and will... fail.  We know the only other alternative is in a word: inhumane.  Nonetheless, we're bracing for economic impact and a real, genuine loss of community places and community spirit over to corporatism & maybe some orange online store named after a river in Brazil.

Me personally, I have a lot of stuff that's been on hold due to the COER Conflict of lawfare against OLF Coupeville on Whidbey Island.  My calendar is starting to clear now that my involvement is done - maybe that's a 100% separate topic for the pub.  More time to finish up that Nihon Hitori campaign, paint planes, and beta-test Tornadoes.

More later............... 

[Balto 1]

Balto  in France, local area "haut-rhin" near germany and switzerland

Here in France,  my local area is what we call a "foyer d'infection", i think in english you call it an epidemic  cluster. The emergency hospital is full. There is a lack of material and beds. hospital staff is worn out. We expect many many death especially among old people and apeople who have others deases. It is said that youngs can not die but a few of them are already in reanimation. If things continue as they are hospital staff will soon start the "war" sort as they are short of oxygen devices, but today it is not yet the case.

Yesterday evening our president  told us we can now only move from home to go to work, help people, buy food, buy medecine and walk around our blocks to make some sports alone. Youngs can not go visit grand pa and grand ma.Restaurants,theaters are closed. Schools are closed too.

Personly i have some immunodepresive medecine (following a lunge transplant)  so i have to avoid the virus. My sister living 25 minutes frm me will buy me some food and the medecine i need.I am lucky as my company gave me a laptop so i can work at home and thus i can take care of my little girls. they do homework given by school. My sister will buy me food and the medecine i need and will also do it my mother (84 year old).

Wrench and Joseffk i  find really cool that you started this topic and that you have a thought to everybody even foreigners in europe. You are good guys

 

 

Edited March 17, 2020 by Balto
spaces deleting

[+Gunrunner 314]

France here, slooowly going into "full lockdown", only delayed about two weeks from what it should have been because some muppets kicked up a fuss about postponing mayoral elections (facepalm, prioririties people, priorities).

Kindergarten, schools and universities have been closed since saturday, retirement homes are on lockdown and the rest of the country is preparing to officially be in a few hours.

Idiots raid shelves only to have them filled again* in less than a day, others continue living as if nothing was happening, still shaking hands etc... until the last moment.

The government is slowly taking over paying wages of people who can't telecommute and compensating small businesses and independents so as few as possible go under; Rent, taxes, loan repayments etc are or will be suspended for the duration, utility bills will be waved, most other european countries are preparing to do the same and we expect the European Central Bank to start printing money like mad, same as in the US.

Things on the medical front are still somewhat holding except in eastern France (well, where Balto is) where some fucking evangelical gathering, despite warnings, started a cluster that's spreading like wildfire. The Army will set up a field hospital there to alleviate the situation as there are too many patients and transferring too many of them toward other regions would create cascading problems.

Many people "flee" the big cities, at the risk of spreading the infection, but hoping for better quality of life should the lockdown take more than the three weeks announced so far (yeah, right... more like two month).

Since most are either students leaving their 15m² "apartment" to go back to their parents home, or families with young children leaving the city to go to some family house in the country where the kids have space to play, I can't really be mad at them, especially considering we're at the stage where we should consider the virus already reached almost everywhere.

The only downside is that they will increase the stress on medical staff in regions already under equipped for the regular population, potentially putting lives at risk.

Me, not getting out of the house ? Avoiding human contact ? Working from home ? Muhahahahah, I've been training for this all my life.

 

It's the US and UK I worry for... We have kind of screwed up our response to the crisis for idiotic reasons, especially with Italy giving us good examples of what works or not, but at least we're doing something and not expecting to let it run its course and let the plebs die, either literally or financially.

 

* The shelf raiding being both for themselves and in some examples, a very entrepreneurial streak appears, stocking up on things in larger quantities they'll ever need, hoping to make a profit on the eventual black market with it if things come to this... I just love humanity.

Edited March 17, 2020 by Gunrunner

[RustyKurnass 657]

There in Rome we are in the first week of lockdown and in some instance,looking at streets and road look almost as the 1st season of Walking Dead...when Rick is in the outskirt of Atlanta!

Like always some idiot still take the situation less than seriously and ignore the advice to don't exit  and in some cases people organized even birthdays for their sons with many kids!

At least I can finish my modeling work,so when all will finish I can make happy my collector!

[Nuni 132]

Hi there, here in Andalucia, south Spain.

Our situation is of total lockdown in the whole country, only determined jobs can still continue functioning and we are confined in our homes, being able to go out only for supplies, work (in case you can not telework), etc.

The major infection clusters are in Madrid, and other northern cities, however, Madrid is the worst place in Spain right now. Before the State of Emergency and the possibility of being put into quarentine, lots of people also flee from this cities to the South where I live hahaha. As well as other countries supermarkets were completely out of stock (mostly of toilet paper as you may know hahaha).

Now we are hoping that with the lockdown and the emergency state the growth of the virus will slowly decrease, and we are watching very closely how is going to our neighbours in Italy.

The goverment have also screwed up a little, having done nothing to avoid massive crowds like the 8th of March where there was a massive feminist march all over the country, now even the most feminists are criticising the goverment for not doing anything, and in fact, a lot of female polititians are giving positive in coronavirus tests...

At least, now the goverment have starting preparing economic aid to help the population and the bussinesses to cope with the situation, the Emergency Unit of the Army have been deployed to critical cities as well as other branches of the Armed Forces. They are "medicalizing" Hotels in the capital city to host the non-critical patients, and most of the population have finally realised that the situation here is serious... (needless to say that when schools and universities closed, a lot of people took it as a vacation... we never learn...)

As for me, my situation down here is calm, however I am mostly concern about my parents with who I live this year, because my mother had gone through chemotherapy last year (everything ended up well and "that" problem was solved properly) however that may mean she is still a little bit inmunosuppressed (I don't know if I wrote that correctly). We are more concern about my cousing who lives in a city not in the countryside, and she is actually having chemotherapy right now. However, she is clever, strong and her boyfriend is there helping her not getting exposed.

And indeed, I have been also preparing for this all my life, at least I can stay in my home without people judging me!! muahahahahahah

I am also a little bit concern about the situation in UK ans US, i hope goverments take a response soon, and I wish all of you the best luck and a good confinement!

Coronoavirus will die, nobody messes around with humanity!

[mono27 84]

Here in Canary Islands, Spain.

For 2 weeks almost everything is closed and we must stay at home. We are only allowed to go out to buy food and a few things more.

Only supermarkets and gas stations are open.

 

[+acesfakia 1,198]

Hello to All.... how about ..page ...from a book......?       or not .. ?               Greece  for 2 weeks      ...almost... everything is closed   and we must stay at home....and until now died only people...more than  4   person's ....  65-95 y old...with medical health  problem's... 65 patients are hospitalized, 9 of them are intubated hospitals ICU in Athens, Thessaloniki and Patras. 51 of the cases have no identified source of contamination.

  

or video .....?    ?        ? ? 

 

Edited March 17, 2020 by acesfakia

[Nuni 132]

35 minutes ago, acesfakia said:

 

You don't have to be a prophet to know that new flu-like epidemies appear every decade, we have had several since the 2000 hahahaha

Edited March 17, 2020 by nuni

[+Johan217 5]

Greetings from Flanders fields... Coping OK so far, but I expect a lockdown will be announced here in the next few days.

Stay safe all! And a big thank you to any members who are out there working in healthcare, fire brigades, police, transport, supermarkets etc.

[+ext 52]

Northern Ontario Canada    No cases yet. Everyday more things are closed and restricted  It is brutal to watch people panic buying. Hopefully everybody comes out of this with no issues.

[+1977Frenchie 1,038]

ext.... you have cases in Ontario and 1 death up to now...

Eastern Province of Quebec here, Canada

A few cases under study now in my region but most cases are at Montreal. We stand at 63 confirm now and 0 death in the Province.

A lot of public places closed (bars, theatres, gyms, ski hills, sugar shacks, arcades, pools, city halls, reataurants (except deliveries and take outs), schools, libraries and the more it goes, the more it gets restrictive...

Border closed to foreign tourists, only Canadian Citizens are authorized. Exception of the US residents that can still cross the border (non-sense for me)...

So we may have a chance to extend the virus so health services MIGHT not be overwhelmed... but only future will know...

Let's hope we will not live this as hard as our European counterparts. My prayers for those who will suffer losses in this and take care all!

[MigBuster 2,884]

Today has been the first "don't go to work" day from the Government over here and they have given out figures that the mitigation strategy will still result in 200,000 estimated deaths by August.

Most sport and cinema has been cancelled but they have not shut the schools yet despite most of the teachers being told they need to stay at home 

The businesses that were not killed by the internet are now being killed by this virus it seems unless the government step in - even seems to be a story about Amazon stopping shipments and not making their robots kill themselves for the shareholders.

 

I don't know why but his video despite being mostly satire seems to be one of the few things to get the message through.

 

 

 

 

 

[+ext 52]

1977Frenchie    Talking about our city Thunder Bay.  One of our kids is on the front lines in medical field.  As of this morning no positives.

[+Gunrunner 314]

40 minutes ago, MigBuster said:

Today has been the first "don't go to work" day from the Government over here and they have given out figures that the mitigation strategy will still result in 200,000 estimated deaths by August.

Do you have a source for that ? I read the 20k estimate for the best case scenario but failed to find that 200k estimate yet.

Anyway I can confirm that Amazon is somewhat impacted as I was due to return damaged products but they contacted me to tell me they weren't in capacity to manage the return and I'd get reimbursed without the need for return, which I suspect means the center my package should have gone to was closed. I suspect this will increase as 16k out of 17k post offices in France are now closed, making it near impossible for anyone other than companies with contracts to expedite packages larger than a shoebox in some metropolitan areas, or at all in the rest of the country (it would take me a bit under an hour to reach the closest open post office).

[+1977Frenchie 1,038]

57 minutes ago, ext said:

1977Frenchie    Talking about our city Thunder Bay.  One of our kids is on the front lines in medical field.  As of this morning no positives.

I did not catch your mention was region specific, my apologies...

May your kid get all necessary precautions and may not become one infected!

[tiopilotos 2,519]

Athens, Greece here and as acesfakia said almost everything is closed. Super markets, pharamacies, gas stations and take away shops mostly work. Also many employees were encouraged to work from home if possible. Many people I know work from home these days. As of now, 387 have been verified as virus carriers and 5 people have died. 

In general majority of people have understood how critical the situation is. Personally, I am afraid a bit more cause I work on a medical center as radiographer and apart from some critical or emergency exams, there are some people who come for their annual check up  ignoring guidelines for public health. Fortunatelly all these irresponsible people are minority.

Take care.

 

Edited March 17, 2020 by tiopilotos

[PFunk 198]

Near Fort Worth, Texas.

Most of the restaurants and bars in FTW and in Waco to the south of us are closed or restricted to take out only.  Seems to be a huge run on toilet paper, bottled water. and ammunition; Texans may be a friendly lot, but we tend to go worst-case-scenario quick, fast, and in a hurry.

Six confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Tarrant County, but due to the shortage of testing kits, it's almost certainly more than that.  National Guard units are being called up, not sure what exactly they plan to do.  76 confirmed cases statewide and one confirmed death, an elderly patient down on the coast.

Schools were in Spring Break when all this started, or about to begin, but they're all closed down now, at least until the end of March, possibly until the end of the summer.  Schools are doing distance learning, home education for the moment and a lot of homeschooling parents have stepped up and posted a lot of lessons to information boards, Facebook, etc., so, believe it or not, school is still happening in a lot of places.  My sister teaches down near Austin and they've all gone 1:1 with iPads and full distance learning.  

The economy is most certainly going to take a hit from this.  UPS and USPS have reassured everyone that shipments will continue, but the Fulfilled by Amazon program is going to essential supplies only.

One thing that is really helping us is a Texas grocery chain called H-E-B (natives will know exactly what I'm talking about), who have stepped up in a big way.  They're restricting hours, restricting the number of items you can buy, but they're making sure everyone that walks in gets what they need.  H-E-B has done a lot of disaster work in the past, so they've got a pretty good system in place.

Everyone hunker down and be safe.

 

[MigBuster 2,884]

1 hour ago, Gunrunner said:

Do you have a source for that ? I read the 20k estimate for the best case scenario but failed to find that 200k estimate yet.

 

That is for the UK following a mitigation strategy - can never tell if based on modelling or just scaremongering.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51915302

Change course or a quarter of a million people will die in a "catastrophic epidemic" of coronavirus - warnings do not come much starker than that.

The message came from researchers modelling how the disease will spread, how the NHS would be overwhelmed and how many would die.

The situation has shifted dramatically and as a result we are now facing the most profound changes to our daily lives in peacetime.

This realisation has happened only in the past few days.

However, it is long after other scientists and the World Health Organization had warned of the risks of not going all-out to stop the virus.

The crucial piece of evidence came from the scientists at Imperial College London who first realised the scale of the problem in China and whose advice is heavily influential in government.

They said coronavirus was the most serious public health threat seen in a respiratory virus since the 1918 flu pandemic - known as the Spanish flu.

They assessed three strategies:

• Suppression - break chains of transmission, effectively trying to stop the epidemic in its tracks, and bring cases down as low as possible, as China has done
• Mitigation - accept you cannot stop the coronavirus so slow its spread and prevent a massive peak in cases that would overwhelm the NHS while trying to protect those most at risk of severe disease, which appeared to be the UK strategy last week
• Do nothing - and let the virus rip through the population

It was on only Friday that Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser, explained the mitigation plan to the BBC.

He said: "Our aim is to try and reduce the peak, broaden the peak, not suppress it completely.

"Also, because the vast majority of people get a mild illness, to build up some kind of herd immunity so more people are immune to this disease."

If mitigation worked it would have avoided the most draconian measures other countries have used and built up immunity, which would help limit the spread of coronavirus.

Mitigation involves some social distancing strategies, while suppression beefs up those measures, including possible restriction of movement and increased periods of isolation.

The modelling projected that if the UK did nothing, 81% of people would be infected and 510,000 would die from coronavirus by August.

The mitigation strategy is better, but would still result in about 250,000 deaths and completely overwhelm intensive care in the NHS.

The experience of Italy, and the first cases in the UK, led to this dawning realisation.

[+Gunrunner 314]

Thanks, another option is that it is scaremongering and political games.

1) Screw up the crisis response with an incompetent irresponsible plan.

2) Announce an inflated number of predicted deaths.

3) Finally enact some reasonable measures.

4) When the crisis ends and the numbers are lower than your inflated expectations, pretend you won the crisis and saved lives, hoping the electorates forgets that in actuality you screwed up and sacrificed more lives than necessary.

[+gerwin 451]

 

3 hours ago, Gunrunner said:

Thanks, another option is that it is scaremongering and political games.

 

I agree with this part.

I manage my own health, don't want or need their rubbish.

Edit: Here is a nice article describing the "testing" for COVID:

https://thedoctorwithin.com/blog/2020/03/10/newsletter-march-2020/

Edited March 18, 2020 by gerwin

[+Erik 1,805]

Coronavirus AKA Covid19, discovered in November 2019 in China when the alert sounds were sounded. The 19 in Covid19 means discovered 2019, fun fact. Western civilizations and European countries were all asleep at the wheel watching the train wreck in the US that not even the loudest siren in Asia could be heard over the whine. China postponed the Chinese New Year folks, they don't do that for a run a day flu or cold. This is not political, just utterly disgusting and I digress. May you all weather the storm and sail again another day even in times like these when stupid is manning the helm.

Be well all.

E

[JosefK 911]

1 hour ago, Erik said:

Coronavirus AKA Covid19, discovered in November 2019 in China when the alert sounds were sounded. The 19 in Covid19 means discovered 2019, fun fact. Western civilizations and European countries were all asleep at the wheel watching the train wreck in the US that not even the loudest siren in Asia could be heard over the whine. China postponed the Chinese New Year folks, they don't do that for a run a day flu or cold. This is not political, just utterly disgusting and I digress. May you all weather the storm and sail again another day even in times like these when stupid is manning the helm.

Be well all.

E

Erik;

I generally agree with you.  The US Public Health apparatus had time to at the very least ramp up testing and demand emergency funding.  But of course when the President disbands the high level pandemic unit according to the AP....

[+Menrva 4,194]

Couldn't agree more with you, @Erik

We Italians warned our neighbors as much as possible, but other EU countries did not want to listen. They preferred to keep activities open for money and economy. Now they'll have bigger trouble than us in a matter of weeks. This is what happens when you care more about money and less about health. The EU leaders thought they could get away with it, let Italy go into recession while they could grow their own economies. They didn't realize everyone is going to suffer from the consequences of the outbreak.

And don't get me started about the "herd immunity" crap from UK's PM; I also read Netherlands wants to do the same, but not sure if it's true. Be ready to see your hospitals being overwhelmed, without remaining ICUs. Number of deaths will increase because of such horrible, Hitler-like decisions. A strong government will protect the weaker, a weak government will only let the "strong" live.

For once, I am proud to be Italian. Our government took its time, but now is dealing with this very seriously. At the moment, we have more than 300 deaths a day, at this rate we'll have 2,000 deaths by the end of the week. The Northern regions' hospitals are collapsing due to ICUs being full.

My town just got hit yesterday by the virus, with the first contagion. Me and my loved ones are all in lockdown, we have enough supplies for this week.

PS: China is helping Italy by sending lots of medical supplies. The EU was somewhat mocking us and even blocked our orders of masks our doctors need. We payed for those, but we haven't seen them. So much for solidarity in the EU, pfff. Rant over, from the guy who believed in the EU.

Edited March 18, 2020 by Menrva

[Dysko 93]

Long time since I last posted here, but I lurk from time to time to search for some good mods and I found this thread...

Northern Italy here, from one of the most badly hit provinces of the country. Total lockdown was enacted one week and a half ago. Companies are still open, and it was difficult to persuade my boss to allow me to work from home, since Italian bosses tend to think that smart working is for slackers.

Before the lockdown many people behaved very irresponsibly: overcrowding ski resorts (one of them is in an area close to where I live where one of the first clusters was found, which possibly explains why my area is so badly hit) and escaping en masse to the at the time unaffected southern regions, spreading the disease in the whole country.

In my area hospitals ran out of ICUs few days ago. Field hospitals are popping out everywhere, but we know they will not be enough to save everybody.