Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[Tamas]

Contiuning the patterns of people getting lax this weekend, following the street party, the pizza delivery guy didn't do the whole contactless delivery thing. i was sort of waiting for him to put the boxes down or something but then didn't want to be That Guy so I took them from him when he was handing them over.

[Syt]

AfD and FDP in Thuringia joined a march with ca. 1,000 attendees in Gera, protesting against curtailing civil liberties as part of Covid-19 measures and in favor of re-opening the economy.

[alfred russel]

Considering that the US has the most reported cases of the virus in the world I don't think protecting the borders is the primary concern for containment.

If the path to getting the disease to go away without a vaccine and before we reach herd immunity is contact tracing, that is going to be beyond much of the developing world. So if we succeed, it is tough to imagine us returning to normal activity without lifting the drawbridges connecting us to the developing world. I'm just pointing out that there are a lot of drawbridges and that won't be easy.

[Syt]

So apparently Germany will do per district lockdowns if there's a certain number of new infections reported in any one.

Seems my old home district up North is a candidate.

[Admiral Yi]

AfD and FDP in Thuringia joined a march with ca. 1,000 attendees in Gera, protesting against curtailing civil liberties as part of Covid-19 measures and in favor of re-opening the economy.

You're right wing nuts aren't as menacing as ours.  Especially Comic Book Guy.

[Sheilbh]

If the path to getting the disease to go away without a vaccine and before we reach herd immunity is contact tracing, that is going to be beyond much of the developing world. So if we succeed, it is tough to imagine us returning to normal activity without lifting the drawbridges connecting us to the developing world. I'm just pointing out that there are a lot of drawbridges and that won't be easy.

Yeah - I mean the key for the developing world is hoping we can develop a treatment or vaccine quickly. The other side is it may be less fatal in large chunks of the developing world because the age profile and pre-existing conditions are different.

But in a way I feel like it's a better alternative for the developing world than lockdown given risks around intra-household transmission and multi-generational households, and the economic cost is so much higher. Developing countries will have contact tracing systems in place, they just need support (from the rest of us) to increase capacity very quickly. And some developing countries have been very quick at launching apps as part of this (in part it's easier when you have slightly less restrictive privacy laws) - so India and Ghan, for example, already have an app in place and, I think, in both countries have mandated all private and public sector workers to download it onto their phones.

[ulmont]

Cool. So what's the price tag for a human life?

US government agencies (most notably the EPA) tend to use around $10 million, not that the number was the point.
https://www.npr.org/2020/04/23/843310123/how-government-agencies-determine-the-dollar-value-of-human-life

[mongers]

Scott Shapiro, Grandma Killer
@scottjshapiro

The trolley is barreling down the track towards five grandmothers. You can pull the switch and redirect it so that it kills no one. But you have to wear a mask to buy a toaster oven. What do you do?

[Syt]

You're right wing nuts aren't as menacing as ours.  Especially Comic Book Guy.

True, but they're more. 10s of thousands were protesting against the Corona measures in Germany yesterday

[Zanza]

Germany is back at R0 > 1 already. Maybe we were able to manage the first wave well, but I fear the saying "there is no glory in prevention" will hit us now.

[Syt]

Yesterday in Stuttgart:



One of the initiators was Ken Jebsen who says that the Corona lockdown was initiated by the WHO which is controlled by Bill Gates. His YT channel has 470k subscribers.

[Zanza]

Crazy conspiracy theorists have been around before, but I find it a bit frightening how many now join these protests.

[Syt]

And it's really difficult to deal with them. We're living in a time when you can largely ignore reported truths from credible sources if you so choose, because there'll be tons of alternate sources who will stitch the facts into something that fits what you want to believe - that removes a lot of doubt for the believers. If you're not the only one believing a crazy theory but part of a sizable group then you're much less likely to doubt your preferred narrative. Media competency and education are IMHO the only, albeit very slow, way out of this dilemma.

[Josquius]

Heh. Bill Gates seems to have had a Spike in popularity with the nuts lately. Amazing how a man who spends so much of his fortune on curing disease could have suddenly decided to get into the disease business.


Noticed the uk numbers have been unmoving at a peak for a while now.
Goes to show we are actually far higher than the numbers show and its our lack of testing that is to blame...

[Tamas]

This morning, the UK government introduced a new slogan, "stay alert, save lives", to replace the "stay home, save lives" slogan used so far. It appears to be part today's change in lockdown conditions, with some relaxation of measures expected to be announced at the government's briefing tonight.

The slogan gained attention in the media this morning, with Sunday newspapers reporting on the new slogan and Cabinet minister Robert Jenrick discussing it on Sky News and the Andrew Marr show.

However, since the reveal, Scotland's first minister Nicola Sturgeon, and Northern Ireland's first minister Arlene Foster, have both said that they will not be adopting the new slogan. Sturgeon said it was too early for Scotland to drop the "stay home" message.

The health ministers in Scotland and Wales, along with Sturgeon, have said that they were not consulted on the change of message.

Also, apparent big news is that garden centres, GARDEN CENTRES, might get opened from tomorrow.

This can be such a weird country.