Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Barrister]

My understanding is that while they've been able to detect the virus on stand-alone surfaces for up to several days, it's no longer a live virus.

The live virus only survives outside of a host for a few hours at most.

[Savonarola]

NURSES OUT OF CONTROL!

A woman got to say goodbye to her mother over FaceTime before she died thanks to a nurse at this Washington hospital

[alfred russel]

My understanding is that while they've been able to detect the virus on stand-alone surfaces for up to several days, it's no longer a live virus.

The live virus only survives outside of a host for a few hours at most.

The point isn't that the nuts in a snickers bar are a vector of transmission. The point is that the supply chain for even simple everyday essential products (like snickers bars) involve a myriad of human touch points across rural communities and there is no way to isolate rural communities from this.

Just like the country wasn't saved through a travel ban with China.

[Josquius]

The name of the game isn't to create an absolutely perfect seal which locks off all chance of transmission. It's to cut down touch points as much as possible and to slow the spread ever more until we can get it below 1.0 infections per infectee.

[Admiral Yi]

He repeats Shelf's argument about the need to allow the Hobbits of the Shire to gambol and frolic, which I think is incredibly selfish and self-centered.

Will you make the same argument about selfishness when we'll inevitably confront the matter of debt and default?

Probably not, seeing as how I don't see the connection, but feel free to do so yourself.

[Admiral Yi]

People need to voluntarily accept the quarantine system, and it needs to be sustainable for a month plus (or however long this is to last). You can't make the rules so difficult that people can't comply without going insane, and you can't make the rules so arbitrary they seem nonsensical. Birdwatching isn't going to lead to doom from coronavirus. Closing the public boat ramps so people can't go out on their boats won't save us either.

Bird watching will lead to doom if people are close enough to transmit.  I don't expect anyone to go insane from denied access to their boat.

[Josquius]

Currently playing in my head, the specials ghost town.
With goat instead of ghost 🐐

[Razgovory]

Apparently MSNBC ran a big story about Missouri and how our governor isn't taking this seriously enough.  The Missouri Medical Association asked the governor to issue a shelter in place.  Something the Governor has failed to do.

It's going to be bad in the rural communities in no small part because the people in those areas think this is some kind of hoax.

[Sheilbh]

There's a big concern here about rural areas and hospitals potentially being overwhlemed quickly because they're really not designed for ICU and this sort of situation. I imainge it's an even bigger issue in a country like the US (or Canada).

[mongers]

What I do when someone is approaching me down the sidewalk is to step off it, either onto the grass or onto the road if it is safe, in the hope that the other person will do the same but on the other side.

It's annoying when they are jogging down the middle and don't bother even to move over. 😄

Joggers cannot deviate apparently. I mean I'm on fucking crutches and I tend to be the one who gets out the way to try and keep distant from joggers/runners

Yes I've seen that and also similar arrogance from groups of young men on mountain bikes along shared paths.

This evening on my shopping trip three of them came down the old railwayline two abreast, I pulled in to the side and stopped, in effect making my point and they just carried on two abreast at the front with no acknowledgement.

Presumably they went on to annoy/harass all the other pedestrians and dog walkers I'd politely and safely past in the preceding couple of miles.

[Razgovory]

There's a big concern here about rural areas and hospitals potentially being overwhlemed quickly because they're really not designed for ICU and this sort of situation. I imainge it's an even bigger issue in a country like the US (or Canada).

Yeah, it's scary.  There are two hospitals in my town, but out in the boondocks there is really poor coverage.  There is also a huge shortage of doctor in rural areas.  It's not a good situation at all.

[Oexmelin]

Probably not, seeing as how I don't see the connection, but feel free to do so yourself.

Mostly that selfishness never seemed to bother you when it concerned the pursuit of greed, but now that it concerns health, you seem ready to unleash police forces against everyone.

[garbon]

Probably not, seeing as how I don't see the connection, but feel free to do so yourself.

Mostly that selfishness never seemed to bother you when it concerned the pursuit of greed, but now that it concerns health, you seem ready to unleash police forces against everyone.

[Admiral Yi]

Mostly that selfishness never seemed to bother you when it concerned the pursuit of greed, but now that it concerns health, you seem ready to unleash police forces against everyone.

Yeah, I don't see the connection aside from the shared word.

Selfishness in the context of a deadly pandemic is putting your own happiness above the health and lives of others.  "It is expected that 0.02 people will die as a result, but it's very important to me to get exactly the Easter egg I want."

Selfishness in the economic context generates pareto improvement.  I toil and labor to invent and produce the perfect Easter egg, people's lives are improved as a result, and I also reap monetary benefits.

Now you could counter that the producer of the old shitty Easter egg did not experience improvement and that's true.  That's the nature of competition.  I suppose you can call the inventor selfish in relation to the shit producer.  That seems to be the driving force behind corporatism.  Fix everything, no hiring no firing, no progress no change.  All so we can protect the producer of shitty eggs and his employees.  Which to me seems very selfish in relation to the inventor, but most importantly in relation to the consumer, who has been denied the chance to improve his life.

[Sheilbh]

So the FT have update their trackers - they now show weekly new cases. So if the line's going up then there's more and if it goes down then there's fewer cases/deaths.

In terms of new cases - I am very dubious of Chinese numbers now you see it in comparison with, say, South Korea. It looks like Italy has peaked - though there's a horrible long plateau. Spain, France and Germany look like they're starting to plateau. The UK and US continuing to increase (100,000 new cases in the US this week):


It also looks like Italy has peaked in terms of new deaths, but still growing everywhere else (at different rates)


The sub-national regions are also really striking. All of the US ones here (except for Washington) look concerning. We're also seeing the escalation in London, as we've been warned - Sadiq has said the prediction is that London will peak in 2-4 weeks so hopefully that rate slows down because it's really grim at the minute and you can see how it's likely we'll definitely need an extra 4,000 ICU beds.