|OT| Novel coronavirus (COVID-19) news & discussion - No, it's not just a flu

ISee

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I'll have to adjust my grocery shopping schedule and diet a little, I think. I tend to go shopping every 3-4 days to get fresh food but I'm guessing it's a better idea to have enough for a last me a week. I'm not exactly in a risk group, but if I can avoid catching it that'd be nice. Especially since I'm a long-time smoker, it's not gonna go by asymptomatically I would imagine. Never had pneumonia or even any illnesses with a serious dry cough though. So maybe that's a good sign.
That's what we'll do on Tuesday. Not because there is a chance of food becoming rare or unavailable, but we want a two week supply so that we do not need to go shopping twice a week and to have something if we need to be quarantined.
 

beep boop

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Most people never had a pneumonia. :sweatrat:
My relatives must have an unlucky streak then I guess :')
Thought it was something plenty of people had some form of at some point.

While it's nice to just be home and play games, I think I still need to go out at leats for a walk.
Exercise and sunlight are good for you, so definitely. On the weekends, we typically get a lot of tourists here but it's noticeably calmer now. Not entirely dead but you can tell more people are opting to stay indoors.

Since yesterday, we got 176 new patients and 8 new deaths in The Netherlands, which now makes it a total of 1135 (reported) infected and 20 deaths. Last week it was little more than a tenth of that.
 
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ISee

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WTF?!
Germany is closing its borders on Monday. No idea why or how this is supposed to help tbh.
 

Ruvon

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WTF?!
Germany is closing its borders on Monday. No idea why or how this is supposed to help tbh.
Wow. Didn't see that news, do you have a link ?

This is huge. I work with Germany all day long, importing stuff.
Got it from rts.ch :

It's in French but it means : Germany closing borders with France, Switzerland and Austria.
 
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ISee

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Wow. Didn't see that news, do you have a link ?

This is huge. I work with Germany all day long, importing stuff.
Got it from rts.ch :

It's in French but it means : Germany closing borders with France, Switzerland and Austria.
Sure, just a german source.
There will be exceptions for daily commuters and movement of goods.
Which is good, but makes the border closing even more pointless imo.
 
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Ruvon

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Sure, just a german source.
There will be exceptions for daily commuters and movement of goods.
Which is good, but makes the border closing even more pointless imo.
Thanks ;)

I guess that the strategy is the same as elsewhere : limiting spreading as much as possible. If it can delay some contaminations and give time to health facilities to deal with most serious cases, it should limit the number of avoidable deaths.
 

kio

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WTF?!
Germany is closing its borders on Monday. No idea why or how this is supposed to help tbh.
Makes sense. I wish Portugal would do the same with Spain since the cities near the border aren't prepared to deal with this, at least not as much as our coastal cities, due to the lack of means in the hospitals and the fact that the average age over there is well over 40 years old.
 

Ruvon

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We're living unexpected times.
 
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NarohDethan

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Sounds more like a capitalist wetdream to me.XD
I was mocking a guy on twitter who went to Cuba expecting to see empty shelves and lines of starving people but when he went to the supermarket and he saw aisles full of stuff he started spouting nonsense about competition and other weird shit
 
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ISee

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Breaking news about todays conflict between Germany and the United States:

The pharmaceutical company @CureVacAG in Tübingen (Germany) is not going to accept a deal with the United States. An exclusive contract with a country for a #Coronavirus vaccine is out of the question. A potential vaccine is meant to be used by the whole world and not by individual countries. #Trump #BaWue
 

LEANIJA

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That shade. The part was retracted, but a lot of people in the comments wants NTNU to put the original in again.

Well, thats just true.


I'm curious how work will be tomorrow. As I mentioned, I work for the state health insurance here in Austria, and we will close our building tomorrow. Employees will use the side door, and only the entrance area will be open to the public, and only to drop off forms etc. People working there will have safety clothing.

Our chancellor also hammered home the point we have to bring the whole country to a minimum, in line with other countries. I don't like him, but it is good that he is not beating around the bush and says it as it is: if we dont want to have a situation like in northern Italy here, where infections and death numbers are still rising, we will have to take harsh measures.

Meanwhile, a lot of people still do not seem to get how serious the situation is. I feel like they need to experience a full-blown catastrophe first to understand that acting early can prevent exactly that.
 
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Wok

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Still the same exponential growth in France, with 36 deaths in the past 24 hours, for a total of 127 deaths.
400 people are in a critical case, and each day, the number will exponentially increase.

The situation in Italy with 3590 new cases and 368 deaths in the past 24 hours is crazy.
There is a total of 1672 people in a critical case.
 

ZKenir

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The situation in Italy with 3590 new cases and 368 deaths in the past 24 hours is crazy.
There is a total of 1672 people in a critical case.
just to add the deaths are included in that number the 3590 is the increased total amount counting deaths, recovered and new cases

edit: I misread
 
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NarohDethan

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We have home office until new notice, which is supposedly in one month
 
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texhnolyze

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I still go to work today. Since schools and universities are closed starting today, The streets are much emptier than the usual, and I see more people wearing a mask. Google estimates for my commute has also gone down from 25-30 minutes to 20 minutes this morning.

It kinda feels surreal, and this is just the start.
 
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NarohDethan

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In my country we had a massive concert held yesterday, people truly don’t give a shit
 

Ruvon

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I still go to work today. Since schools and universities are closed starting today, The streets are much emptier than the usual, and I see more people wearing a mask. Google estimates for my commute has also gone down from 25-30 minutes to 20 minutes this morning.

It kinda feels surreal, and this is just the start.
I'm at work too. But not for long. I don't know if my coworkers will show up since they can work from home (with less resources they would have at work, but still).
 
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texhnolyze

texhnolyze

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I'm at work too. But not for long. I don't know if my coworkers will show up since they can work from home (with less resources they would have at work, but still).
Yeah, we are setting up remote work SOP today to make sure that everyone's device is ready for WFH in the coming days.
 

Acidote

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I've started remote working about an hour ago. Although I still have a couple of things left to do to be 100% operative. Not like this will last too long, my workplace should shut down soon so I'll be temporarily unemployed.
 
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With about a delay of 45 minutes I finally succeded in being operative. While I can work remotely I suspect that some of our customers will temporaly close, so i don't know if we will have enough work.
 

LEANIJA

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We have a home office starting soon. Several people already left, a skeleton crew will remain, and more and more will go home in the next few hours and then stay home for the forseeable future.
 

Hektor

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As an IT guy in a government office not one bit ready for large scale home office, this is a fun Monday so far!

Spent the last 3 hours denying home office requests and telling them to wait until after the offices crisis conference later today
 

LEANIJA

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As an IT guy in a government office not one bit ready for large scale home office, this is a fun Monday so far!

Spent the last 3 hours denying home office requests and telling them to wait until after the offices crisis conference later today
I'm certain thats what our IT is doing right now, too
 

Dandy

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Where I live in Canada there are still no confirmed cases, though there are 3 probable cases. All three were traveling abroad. March Break is this week for kids, but all schools and daycares will not be re-opening until further notice and public health officials will be on site to assess international travelers at our airports.

The owner of our company is starting to get worried and has sent e-mails about potentially having to close down for several weeks by Easter. She has also sent hand sanitizer and wipes to all of our locations, and we have wipe down all pens, debit terminals, counters, door handles, etc... after each customer leaves. I can't work from home because I am a florist. My shop is technically a retail space, though most of our business if over the phone and online... I probably have 3-5 walk-in customers a day. It will be interesting to see what happens. I have enough savings to survive for several months, thank goodness.
 

Wok

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It will be interesting to see if the UK plan (let younger people get infected as much as possible while vulnerable people stay home) works in the end.

It does not sound like a good idea from my layman perspective, because if there is a minor glitch, everything falls flat or worse. For instance, if vulnerable people are not isolated well enough, or if younger people are not as invulnerable as we think they are.

 
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Le Pertti

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I haven't been to the store in a while but need to get some bananas today! But don't expect the situation to be that crazy in Paris, so much so that there aren't any fresh fruit.
 

ZKenir

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Somewhere in that twitter chain there's a link to the research, I thought it was interesting

 
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Copons

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It will be interesting to see if the UK plan (let younger people get infected as much as possible while vulnerable people stay home) works in the end.

It does not sound like a good idea from my layman perspective, because if there is a minor glitch, everything falls flat or worse. For instance, if vulnerable people are not isolated well enough, or if younger people are not as invulnerable as we think they are.
Yeah, for as much as I've hated and still hate BoJo from the depth of my heart, I've been trying to set the despise aside and level with him.

As far as I can understand the UK as a non-British person living here, is that they are really involved in keeping the people's mental health in check. Compared to Italy, where pretty much nobody gives a fuck how you feel, here there's a constant stream of "reach out if you woke up sad" kind of ads going on everywhere.
So when BoJo tells me that if the lockdown starts now we end up having at-risk people (elderly, sick, etc.) breaking down right when the pandemic is at-peak, I honestly believe him.

But at the same time, the strategy of the entire world is to buy time and spread the most serious cases apart to relieve pressure on hospitals, ICU, and health workers. And that makes a lot of sense to me.
So when BoJo tells me that we need to delay the lockdown until the pandemic is at-peak, I also think that for some reasons we are actively pursuing an early peak, and I wonder what the fuck will happen next week, when all the hospitals will be overloaded (they are at capacity right now), because the Brits really needed to cheer up with a pint at the pub, instead of staying the fuck home.
 

「Echo」

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I am... working up my anxiety and it's making my stomach churn.

Living in America without insurance, sickness already scares me. I live in a smol town, in a smol county, in NY. I thought it would be well isolated from this, not to the point of "oh it won't come here" but I did think it would take longer. Than yesterday, 3 cases are confirmed in my county. Not locals. But people from the city with Vacation houses moved here to isolate... and brought it with them.

I'm young, just 27. But I've had Asthma since I was born. It got easier to live with as a I grew, almost no impact on my daily life. But it always without fail flairs up when I catch colds/infections. The common cold is gone from my parents within a week, yet for me the same virus will carry on for 3. Allergy season is upon us too, and I get hay fever like crazy every year without fail. (Which also flairs up my Asthma.)

Neither of my jobs, (I work 2), can be digitized or done from home. Both involve heavy person-to-person interaction, and neither are likely to shutdown entirely unless via Government mandate. By day I butcher meat at a Super market, by evening and night I am a bartender.

... I am distraught. The more I think on it, the worse I feel.
 
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Hektor

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Confirmed infections here in Germany have gone from 500 to 7000 within the last 10 days

Of course that's not too surprising since it's easier for the virus to spread ther more infected there are, but i think it Highlights how ill equipped the world is for large scale epidemics.

Spooky to think what would be if this virus had a higher mortality rate.
 
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Wok

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Confirmed infections here in Germany have gone from 500 to 7000 within the last 10 days
The thing is it might be 15k in 3 days, 30k in a week, etc.



Spooky to think what would be if this virus had a higher mortality rate.
You need to play this game: if the mortality rate is too high, the virus won't spread as effectively.


Using young people as a way to spread in silence and kill people older than 50 y.o. like some of their parents or grand-parents is much more effective.

Plus, one can carry the virus and spread it around for up to 2 weeks without knowing it. That is how we end up in a situation like this, with twice as many people infected every 3 days in France for instance.
 
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Wok

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Waited over an hour and still not in the store.
Yes, I come back from the supermarket, and it triggered some anxiety.

Thankfully, I stocked up on toilet paper a bit, so that I did not feel too devastated when I saw the empty shelves of toilet paper, pasta, rice, meat, cheese, cans, white vinegar, bottled water, etc. But still anxious after I bought what I wanted (cereals).

There is a queue of ten people outside the chemist's. And no hydro-alcoholic gel or mask, of course.
 
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