Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[merithyn]

Boston was cancelled for the first time ever. 

Please tell me Baltimore will be cancelled.

So far no changes.
I'm hoping that MCM won't be cancelled too. Though I would understand if it is.

[Eddie Teach]

Boston was cancelled for the first time ever. 

I had more than a feeling that would happen.

[HisMajestyBOB]

Boston was cancelled for the first time ever. 

Please tell me Baltimore will be cancelled.

So far no changes.
I'm hoping that MCM won't be cancelled too. Though I would understand if it is.

Marathons

[crazy canuck]

Boston was cancelled for the first time ever. 

I had more than a feeling that would happen.

Begin dreaming you will watch them all running away

[Legbiter]

Well the antibody results are in and only 0.9% have antibodies against the bug here. So we're...quite a ways from any herd immunity if 99.1% remain uninfected.

[Josquius]

Fascinating to read about this talk of "air Bridges" Johnson has apparently announced to save summer holidays.
The way the papers are telling it they're there to make exceptions for countries with low corona virus rates in the quarantine restrictions.
Which.... Wait what? Isn't it the UK which is the dangerous one easily on track to have the highest case load in Europe?

[Tamas]

Fascinating to read about this talk of "air Bridges" Johnson has apparently announced to save summer holidays.
The way the papers are telling it they're there to make exceptions for countries with low corona virus rates in the quarantine restrictions.
Which.... Wait what? Isn't it the UK which is the dangerous one easily on track to have the highest case load in Europe?

Well yes but that's hardly compatible with (previously justified) British self-image now, is it?

[Syt]

Next steps towards normality. From this weekend on, movie theaters are permitted to open again, same as the stages of opera and theater. However, distance must be kept, so every other seat will remain empty.

Hotels are permitted to open again with some security measures. Some will wait a bit, some become more creative. E.g. Hotel Sacher allows you to book rooms for a meal. That helps them make use of their empty rooms, and allows them to serve more people than they could in their restaurant and café.

15th June will be a big one. The obligation to wear masks in shops will fall. Masks will remain mandatory in public transport, in healthcare related places (pharmacy, doctor's office, hospital etc.), and the rules for restaurants will be further relaxed.

[Sheilbh]

So the UK has set up a Joint Biosecurity Centre. It's sort of based on the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (and I think is being headed by the guy who set that up). It's meant to do two things basically. One is to indpendently analyse the different bits of data to understand prevalence and transmission of covid-19 in the community to try and provide government with real-time analysis of the disease and potential outbreaks - this is basically the "threat level". The second funtion is to advise government on how to respond to spikes in infections in local areas. It's sort of set out here:


It's not fully clear how it interacts with SAGE or if it will stay after covid-19 as sort of a permanent pandemic/disease analysis centre. I think it's basically because ultimately SAGE's job is to present advice and option, but it's ad-hoc and made up of various experts in different bits of academia. The job of this centre seems to be to sort of synthesise the different bits of advice SAGE produces, and the different experts produce and provide recommendations and analysis.

Honestly it sounds like quite a good idea. It's a bit like JTAC where you've got loads of data streams coming in from different intelligence agencies, police forces, international partners about terrorism risks and they are there to analyse and synthesise, which feeds into the "terrorism threat level". I can see how this would be useful in the future too.

On Wednesday Johnson basically said they were hoping to see the threat level reduced and on Thursday announced the lockdown lifting measures. But apparently the JBC has assessed the evidence and disagreed. They've said that the government can't reduce the covid-19 threat level from 4 to 3.

But the lockdown lifting will continue. It's almost like there's some other reason they're doing it

[alfred russel]

Nightclubs and bars just got the greenlight to open here on Monday, if they follow guidelines. Amusement parks can reopen on June 12, also if they follow guidelines.

[Agelastus]

Well, in some ways things are improving.

(Hopefully because they've raised capacity so much) Tesco is back not only to booking four weeks in advance, but to also having slots available on more than one day in that fourth week. They have slots available on four days that week (and at almost any time on those days.)

[Eddie Teach]

Having the store gather your groceries and deliver them still seems unfathomable luxury to me. 

[Valmy]

Having the store gather your groceries and deliver them still seems unfathomable luxury to me. 

HEB does that...or I guess would do it if you still lived here. Though you have to do it pretty far in advance.

[Eddie Teach]

I wouldn't be surprised if the stores here did it too, it's just not a service I've ever utilized.

[garbon]

Having the store gather your groceries and deliver them still seems unfathomable luxury to me. 

I used to think that too. I've now learned otherwise.