Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Admiral Yi]

I think the end game is us producing enough protective equipment for everyone, so that when you walk into your local Target, the first 10 feet of it would be surgical masks stacked from floor to ceiling.  Then people would be coming back to normal life, with everyone forced by law to wear a mask in public.  I think sufficient protective equipment for everyone coupled with much better general knowledge about limiting the spread of coronavirus would alone keep this manageable enough for life to resume to near normal, until vaccine/cure/better supportive care is discovered.

I think a key variable is how long someone can be asymptomatic and still contagious (which I haven't seen discussion of anywhere).  If we know that, we can say that period of time after the last hospital admission, we are relatively safe and we can start slowly resuming normal life. 

[Legbiter]

What we're seeing here is around half of all the infected have very mild or no symptoms. With protective gear for the public and the changes in social behaviour we've adopted, we'll begin to do a phased relaxation in a few weeks. People over 60 with the relevant risk factors might have to stay in place for longer.

[Zanza]

Has/when did Germany lockdown? Are they restricting to actually focus the testing strategy?

Just wondering because I feel like you'd expect those numbers to go down

The lock down was introduced in phases between about 13th and 20th of March. There are few restrictions on testing now, but you still need a doctor to decide that you should be tested (based on symptoms or contacts or whatever).

Germany expects its peak a bit after Easter, so figures not yet going down is expected. 

[Razgovory]

Cole county (this where I live), took a lot of flak for refusing to disclose the numbers of people treated for CoV-2 and so release some of their numbers.  Now we've gone from zero deaths to 9.

[Zanza]

There are numbers on tests at Worldometer now - quite different test numbers per capita in different countries.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Iceland has by far the highest figures and some other Western countries are doing well too.

[alfred russel]

I just thought I would share a recent experience. A friend in Seattle challenged me to do a workout that I needed a track to perform - I would try to beat his time.

So I went to a park with an adjacent track. There were about a dozen guys playing an american football game in the middle, and a basketball game was being played on the basketball court.

I was like 10 minutes from finishing the workout and the police came and made everyone leave. Some of the guys playing football were laughing about it "maybe we shouldn't be doing this". I obviously don't know what they are doing now: here is a guess it isn't socially distancing.

Meanwhile I'm not able to use the track.

[Zanza]

Google has statistics on how much social distancing actually happens, also broken down into subnational regions.

https://www.google.com/covid19/mobility/

[Josquius]

Saw this on reddit and it's encouraging. The historic changes in the UK unemployment rate.


The Spike after the war?
Snow storms closed down most factories.

[Josephus]

Another record day

708 deaths in the UK (+19%) again the rate isn't increasing/accelerating.

Sucks. One of those dead is my mother's cousin who lived in Epsom, Surrey. 

She was in her mid-to late 80s

[Sheilbh]

Oh I'm so sorry to hear that

[merithyn]

There will be no service economy until the outbreak stops. If you stopped the lockdowns tomorrow people wouldn't go back to restaurants or start traveling again.

You should know that isn't true. It would be diminished and some people would stay home, but if you really thought that was true there is no point to ordering the service economy closed or to stop traveling.

I wonder if you have noticed how no one else here agrees with you. Your company in the public at large are backwater Trumpist governors and MAGA internet warriors. Just because you're willing to endanger public health does not mean 90% of the remainder of the public will go along with you.

On the point to which you responded, I think that most people here agree with me, and probably you understand I am right as well. Which is why you didn't address the point.

Nevertheless, look at the deaths by state.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/coronavirus/country/united-states/

An absolute majority of them are in New York and New Jersey. Europe is getting creamed compared to the US. It seems dense urban populations reliant on public transportation are the vulnerable populations (completely the opposite of the crap being peddled about vulnerable rural populations).

This is in spite of the Trumpist governors staying open for spring break or allowing people to go camping. We are doing dramatically better than Europe despite being led by the Orange One.

A one size fits all solution of "lock everything down" does not seem to be indicated. Those bird watchers walking alone in the lake district really aren't contributing to the disease spread.

It just hasn't grown enough yet. It will.

Virus hot spots in South poised for disproportionate suffering

[Sheilbh]

Now I think people need to get out but follow the rules and I'm really not sure about this angle by the Daily Mail:

[mongers]

Now I think people need to get out but follow the rules and I'm really not sure about this angle by the Daily Mail:

Clickbate revenue is more important than doing the patriotic or sensible thing.

Also saw this on the bbc website today, Bournemouth seafront beach near Boscombe, seems very good unlike the disasterous weekend 14 days ago:

[Sheilbh]

Yeah. There's been some bizarre tweet from a NYT reporter in London (they always have a very odd take on Britain) saying they've never seen London so busy and it was like there was a festival. From my experience and everyone who replied to that tweet it was very quiet today. People were out (as they should be) but it was everywhere I've seen, far quieter than normal and people were socially distancing.

[HisMajestyBOB]

I drove on the DC beltway today to the supermarket and I had never seen so little traffic (relatively speaking), even in the evening on the weekend. Verysurreal.