Hope you’re all safe; hope you’re all washing your hands; hope you’re all hunkering down. Our federal government (here in the US at least) has failed in pretty much every way it’s possible to fail and to a large extent we have to rely on our state and local governments — and each other.
In some ways the most horrific thing I’ve learned in the last few days was this: Trump, who hits new lows as a president and as a human being on a daily basis, has been trying to basically buy a German firm working on a vaccine that he wants to be available exclusively in the US.
Here are some other articles I’ve found useful in making sense of all this. Some of them are disturbing, but we can’t successfully confront what we don’t understand.
The Quiet Terror of Coronavirus, by Talia Lavin, GQ
Cancel Everything, The Atlantic
Social Distancing: This is Not a Snow Day, Medium
These simulations show how to flatten the coronavirus growth curve, Washington Post
The Worst-Case Estimate for U.S. Coronavirus Deaths, NYT
Infected people without symptoms might be driving the spread of coronavirus more than we realized, CNN
Please post any other articles and resources you’ve found to be helpful.
–DF
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@Naglfar:
Here in the US we have members of Congress going on Fox to tell people to go to their favorite bars to stimulate the economy.
Not in Ohio; see above. (Erratum: as of 9:00 PM EDT, stores have not yet been ordered to close.)
@FMO
I was referring to Devin Nunes, who is a representative from California who went on Fox to tell people that. It seems Ohio is being far more sensible about this by closing down restaurants.
@Lyzzy : I finished Pandemic Legacy Season 2 saturday night.
Current event sort of gave a nice backdrop to the last games.
From a french POV, the strategy of the UK seem full-on insane, and a danger to continentals since apparently they want the coronavirus to be endemic to the UK. Then again, before criticizing too much I guess we need to see how well the various europeans countries will do.
Macron, the french president, might actually put up a curfew enforced by the military, after seeing way too many people doing open air party yesterday. I dislike that turn, but also it might be needed indeed if people don’t get that it’s actually a potent disease, not some hyped up common cold.
@Ohlmann
For what it’s worth, I agree *with Rahu (sorry for the confusion). Mistakes happen and are not to be confused with malice. Please rest and heal, please stop your mind from sabotaging the healing by being addicted to bad news. Try some reading, puzzles, tv or something maybe?
Also no spoilers on pandemic please, except of course if they are useful for the real world.
I’m terrified out of my mind, TBH. News media in the US keeps saying “mortality rate is only 1% tho!” but it’s going to be a lot higher once our medical system is overloaded and the ventilators run out. If 20% of cases result in ARDS and no ventilators are available, then up to 20% of cases may be fatal.
I keep thinking about how many friends I’m going to lose, how bad this is going to be for queer people and disabled people and everyone marginalized. The angriest, most brilliant feminists I know are all people who are not pretty enough, young enough, thin enough, or white enough that I’m confident of them being chosen to live in a triage situation. The numbers are big enough that triage plus bias might turn into genocide.
People who are young, healthy, able-bodied: please, please, please stay home. Please think about how many people you might kill if you do not. TBH I want to specifically ask healthy young men to think about how many women they might kill by having irresponsible fun during a pandemic, but I honestly don’t think most care, except insofar as they see us as MPDGs/sex dolls/precious objects; it’s like asking a shark to show loving kindness. I don’t want to be at the mercy of tech bros but there seems to be no help for it.
And meanwhile the far right clearly see this pandemic as an opportunity for eugenics and genocide, and I have no idea how we can fight that when even public gatherings are lethally dangerous.
I’m terrified of dying, I’m terrified of seeing my loved ones die, but more than anything I’m terrified of people like me being erased from this Earth forever. And I have no idea how to make everyone else care.
[Edit: specified US related stuff, sorry, need to work on that US-centric bias]
Tip: Small-town grocers haven’t been that badly picked over yet – at least mine hasn’t – so if you can hop in the car and drive a couple of hours you might try that. My town doesn’t have one, but I hear Asian grocers still have a lot of stuff – a lot of people aren’t going there because they wrongly believe Asian people and goods carry the virus.
A lot of Asian staples – dried mushrooms, rice, bean paste, Japanese curry roux, etc. – are shelf-stable, so it’s worth checking them out. A couple of weeks ago, romance author Courtney Milan posted a list of good stuff: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1233139619576918040.html
@Cyborgette
As harsh as it sounds: The next step in loving-kindness (a (zen) bhuddist concept) would be to scratch the idea of being terrified of dying or becoming an extinct concept from your mental space. That’s … also why it’s so hard to convince the priviledged, especially problematic dudes (instead of say, fathers or responsible men or a lot of menfolk who have had their share of troubles). I’m not saying do that because obviously it’s a bad idea when you are in your current situation. But please consider the limits of your responsibility. Us less-cool feminists are on a steady diet of self-inflicted misery, let’s stop that, find our composure and help others. We can’t teach loving-kindness to genocidal monsters but we can be there for those in need who let us help them help us all. If everyone does this, that’s more than enough. It’s as simple (and hard) as that.
@Cyborgette
I hate when the media harps on this. It’s almost like shouting “you probably won’t die, f**k everyone who will!” Even if the mortality rate is 1%, that’s still a lot of people who will die, and it’s horrible to think of them as “only 1%” to be sacrificed. Especially if you are in that 1%. I’m probably less likely to die because I’m younger and in good health, but I really do fear for many others who do not have that fortune.
@Mrs. Obed Marsh
Thanks for the tips. For me, I’ve noticed that at my local supermarket there are many shelves stripped bare and some very specific ones still full. All the whole wheat and vegan mock meat stuff is still there, for example.
In my town, I’ve noticed that half the restaurants are closed and the other half are generally crowded, even during non-peak hours.
When I last went grocery shopping (Friday), there was almost no food on the shelves at the store I went to, aside from plenty of fruit (fresh, frozen, and juice) for some reason. It’s not even “there was still canned and frozen things, people only cleared out the fresh foods”, because those were largely gone too. The meat section was especially empty; it had a few filet mignons, a few black forest bacons, and one pack of breakfast sausage. That was literally it. It’s only Sunday and I have to go grocery shopping again thanks to that. I’m trying a different store. Wish me luck.
Fortunately, I have no need for toilet paper, paper towels, or hand sanitizer any time soon.
Well, if a wet market started this ball rolling, there’s a certain poetic justice if the only food on the shelves is vegan.
Anyone here with a 3D printer? You might be able to help.
Another Ohioan here. Currently (as of 3:30 pm today) the state has 36 cases of COVID-19 (my county currently has no cases but could have as many as 5000 carriers), 85 people who’ve tested negative, and 350 people under investigation. Restaurants being closed applies to table service inside the restaurant buildings themselves-carryout and delivery are still allowed. To allow for optimum restocking, Kroger stores in the Midwest (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Michigan) are open 7 am to 10 pm, and all 24-hour Walmarts are now 6 am to 11 pm.
Cyborgette: the experience is that when ventilators run out, the death rate climbs to around 5% — which makes sense since 5% of cases need a ventilator. I suspect you’re thinking of the roughly 20% who get hospitalized. They mostly just need oxygen, which is much easier to scale up.
5% is awful, awful, awful. Even 1% is 10x worse than the flu.
I’m in the UK too and I’m unnerved by how complacent most people seem to be right now. I’m keeping my kid at home this week as she’s developed a cough over the weekend. I’m pretty sure it’s a routine heavy cold but the current government guidance (which her school has circulated to parents) is clear that a new cough means stay at home, and I’m not arrogant enough to think that the rules don’t apply to me. I ended up having a row with my mother because she thinks that I’m being hysterical. According to her, it’s impossible for my kid to have the virus because there’s only a handful of confirmed cases in our district. Of course, that figure is unlikely to reflect the current situation on the ground, especially since (as I understand it) people with potential symptoms are being told to self-isolate for seven days and aren’t being tested unless they deteriorate. The government’s own experts have acknowledged that we probably have significantly more cases than have been diagnosed. But people seem to be being lulled into a false sense of security by the fact that, on paper, the numbers still don’t sound that scary.
Also, it concerns me that so many people seem to be interpreting “based on what we’ve seen so far, children appear to experience much milder symptoms” as “it’s impossible for children to die or get very sick from this”. A newborn baby was just diagnosed in one of the London hospitals and my social media was full of people saying “but how can that happen? I thought children were supposed to be naturally immune to the virus!”. (It goes without saying that an illness that posed a threat only to older adults would be no less terrible. But it seems early days to be deciding that children are completely bullet-proof).
At my second job tonight some dude told me “trump would be proud of me” because I was wearing gloves. Fun fact about me, I’m really susceptible to bronchitis. I get it all the time and it’s incredibly hard for me to fight it off, most of the time if I get a cold, I get bronchitis after it. So I have a really weak respiratory immune system. I had to have an inhaler for a while just because of the bronchitis. I’m not fucking with this shit just because I need to pay bills and rent.
Round here my cousin’s household had a scare when their child came home from school with very runny cold symptoms. My cousin’s dad is in his eighties and lives with them. NHS advice is it’s almost certainly a cold, but they are understandably watching each other like hawks for symptoms.
On this side of town, my octogenarian diabetic dad, who lives alone, and myself are fretting about potentially having to stay home long – term.
Ate is a healthcare worker.
None of us wants to burden Kevinsson right now, and he’s scared he might bring it back from college with him.
My carer just had a hospital stay brought on by a worsening of their heart trouble precipitated by the sudden passing of their mother-in- law, with whom they were close.
And the best policy Bojo the Clown’s government seems able to manage in the face of all this mess looks like a nationwide old-fashioned ‘chickenpox party’ – without the mood improving consolation of any partying jollity.
Diego,
No problem!
Ohlman,
I hope you feel better soon.
General thread,
People in the Twin Cities seem worried enough to hoard food and TP, but not worried enough to socially isolate. In the worst timing ever, we packed up my mom to move to her assisted living on Tuesday. We kept running out of boxes, so we made two runs to Menards and one to Home Depot in the past two days. The stores were packed all three times. Menards didn’t even have sanitizing wipes at the door.
My work allows work from home when there’s a snowstorm. But for pandemic, everyone who doesn’t have Covid-19 symptoms have to come in as normal. Super fucked up. I suppose they don’t want to be seen as valuing the health of associates, but not contractors (who can’t work from home) and since there aren’t enough associates to keep us going, they’re just going to make everyone come in. Although schools close starting Wednesday so they’re going to have make allowances for that I guess.
Honestly, at this point we should be closing all non-essential businesses. But this country is awful so that’s not going to happen anytime soon.
Even from a greed perspective though, it’s terrible to try to run things like normal. The worse the pandemic is, the worse the economy will get. It’d be better to take the hit now and keep things from crashing later. But corporate greed makes one short sighted I guess.
So, lucky me. I get to take public transportation to a busy office in a pandemic.
Had a lovely weekend stitching and playing board games and video games and doing piles and piles of neglected laundry and other indoor things. Tried not to remember that the reason I had so much free time is that I don’t have any paying work at the moment, which isn’t great since I suspect my work is going to totally evaporate as a result of this pandemic for a month or two at minimum.
Tomorrow I have to leave my house for some paying work, which is good but also not good, you know? I’ll just have to remind myself to wash my hands a bazillion times.
I hope neither my husband (who is working from home for the duration) nor my cat get sick of me. I might start to get sick of me if we’re cooped up too long.
Currently sleeping in and watching anime like “Dorohedoro” and “Somali and the Forest Spirit”
Note from small-town Taiwan: When it first started to make the news in late January it was scary because we’re so close to China and have so much trade with them, business people going there, Chinese tourists coming here etc.
Our government was really on top of things: flight inspections, quarantines, testing, school closures, health screenings (we have national health care) – they really shut it down. Just now after a morning watching scenes from Europe and America I took a walk to a take-out place and it’s perfectly normal- a few more masks than usual, but a lot of people wear them in winter anyway. Stores are stocked, no panic buying- was some earlier; yes, toilet paper- seems universal.
Thank God for serious people in charge. Everybody else, stay safe.
…The other store I went to closed 5 minutes before I got there to “optimize restocking and cleaning”. I had to call around, and located a place outside my usual shopping range which was still open. The place wasn’t too badly wiped, with only a few things being completely sold out (toilet paper, paper towels, eggs, and tortillas – the latter being annoying because I was hoping to buy some). and a small number of seemingly random things were rather sparse (bananas, onions, some kinds of squash, bread, and frozen pizzas that I noticed) but otherwise it was still decently stocked. I was able to get some real shopping done.
There was security staff wandering about and checking people, though, and at one point they were chasing someone… this wasn’t even a Walmart, it was a Safeway. I don’t know if I was there at a particularly bad time or if there were issues with erratic and/or criminal behavior, but it was still a bit uncomfortable. Screw it, I got some wine and candy and I’m going to pamper myself a little. (That does not mean “get drunk and binge”. I spread that kind of thing over 3-4 nights, not all at once.)
Goddamnit, people freaked out because of the State of Emergency and started panic buying frenzies. Every supermarket is filled to maximum capacity and has lines outside. Needless to say it is completely unnecessary because the decree states that ALL convenience stores, food markets, pharmacies and hospitals will remain open during the 30 days isolation.
The problem is these people have just created the perfect fucking storm for the virus to spread. If everyone is out panic-buying, this defeats the purpose of the curfew and restriction of transit. Imagine thousands of people packed in every last market and supermarket…
We were just 71 infected some hours ago. Tomorrow, we will be in the hundreds thanks to this little stunt.
Diego: it takes 5 days on average for incubation. So not tomorrow, but five days from now, you’ll know how bad it was.
Day 3 of my self-isolation (or self-quarantine; I can’t keep the two straight) due to returning from international travel on Thursday: I crave hanging out with people. But the cats are cute at least!
It start to get better for me. I did have one of the longer and more exhausting night ever.
I definitely need to take a stroll somewhere, for physical exertion. Dunno where, I hope the parks in my city are empty.
As far as I can tell, specifically in my city there weren’t even shortage, albeit they were bigger than usual files. I didn’t hear much shortage problem in France, but also I had more problems to see to.
@Diego : the worst isn’t even certain, but yes it seem awfully stupid of them. One of the problem of suddenly enforcing big restrictions.
@numerobis : if only everyone did like you. Apparently military-enforced curfew will soon be needed in France, because people are morons.
Right now, I’m very scared. I always try to have a positive attitude, but this thing has me down. The dread is the worst. If we had a different president in the USA, it might look very different here. Best of luck to everyone. Stay well — or else recover quickly.
My work sent me home for the foreseeable future. I can go to get critical equipment tomorrow but will not have access after that, on pain of unspecified criminal penalties due to a county public health order. This is in the United States. Some States/Cities/Counties are serious, but the lack of a cohesive federal response is predictable and will result in completely preventable deaths.