COVID-19 in your part of the world

[Koa Zo]

Sorry to bring a morbid topic to the forum.
However as this is an international community and more than a few of you seem to be rather intelligent and well informed, I'd like to hear some of your experiences and knowledge about the unfolding pandemic.

I'm in Pennsylvania in the eastern United States. Today it was reported that we have the first two confirmed cases in our state.
At my place of employment in a large office tower there has been absolutely no apparent preparation and most coworkers who have something to say have been dismissive and likened COVID-19 to the flu or cold - apparently taking their talking points from conservative media. Though today after the reports of 2 confirmed cases in our state we got an email reminding us to wash our hands etc... This is pathetic.

These co-workers, many of them "conservative" voters, seemed to think that somehow this was still a Chinese and Asian problem. One woman just took a cruise last week and said there was nothing to worry about because she wasn't going to China. That's how dumb and uninformed these people are. That same lady and her friends today were downplaying the virus by citing how there are only two cases in Pennsylvania. I blurted out "because no one is being tested!" That literally had not occurred to them. One had the sense to ask why more tests aren't available. When I replied "Because Trump gutted the funding and staffing for the Center for Disease Control", a hush fell over the nearby cubicles ...we don't mention politics at work!

I'm angry and frightened at the complete lack of leadership nationally, statewide, and at my large employer. Our bathrooms at work aren't even cleaned regularly, there is no cleaning service for the rest of the building, employees are responsible for buying their own vacuum cleaner and cleaning supplies and cleaning their own cubicle areas if they so desire. I think we're fucked.

What's the outlook with the rest of you all?

[Weak Boson]

My understanding is that while it is a serious illness unless you are old or have some preexisting complication it's highly likely that you can beat it just by taking care of yourself as you normally would when you get sick.

Unfortunately with its ease of spreading it's going to be hard to stop people being put at risk.

I do wonder how the lack of access to healthcare will inhibit the containment/treatment of the virus in the USA compared to other places.

In any case we should do what we can to avoid catching and spreading the virus (since you will be infectious before you show symptoms) and also to make sure you are able to isolate yourself the moment you show symptoms.

[kitten]

tired to death of hearing about it - the internet, in particular, is almost nonstop apocalypse-crying on this shit. however, i walked into a wal-mart to grab some compressed air last night and saw a tabloid cover in the checkout aisle saying it was "DESTROYING THE WORLD." there's fear-mongering all over about the subject and the psychological pandemic is frankly a lot more alarming than the biological one.

yes, it's dangerous and a bad thing and we should all probably be on heightened awareness about our cleanliness and what we do in public spaces for a little while, but it's not the end of the world. this happens every damn time one of these things goes around - sars, h1n1, mad cow disease, etc. i think part of the reason The Common Folk insulate themselves from having a measured and reasonable response to these things is that half of the legitimate news and their entire social media feed is making this out to be the end of structured society, and they've developed a natural resilience to paying attention to people yelling about armageddon. it's a lot easier to listen to your (patently evil, snake-tongued) rush limbaugh or sean hannity or whatever telling you not to worry at all about it and that it's only gonna kill those damned minorities than it is to listen to those insinuating you're dumber than cattle and going to kill us all if you don't start panicking.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Who among the "intelligent and well informed" on here has ever gotten a flu vaccination (which is available each and every year, based on the previous year's strain of virus)? Likewise, who believes that antibiotics are any good against any viral disease?
Most likely, by the time anti-this one vaccine gets eventually made accessible, the media will find an altogether "new" hot topic to stimulate the masses.

[Koa Zo]

Yeah, that's what I've been getting - that people are cynical and dismissive of it based on the predictable media marketing of fear.
But my impression is this is different and more substantial already than H1N1, SARS, Hantavirus etc. The breadth with which it has spread in brief time is alarming. None of those other epidemics caused such growing disruption on such a scale. The media and internet aren't creating that.
Perhaps mine and many other's fears are being manipulated by political narratives. But indeed the lack of cogent leadership in the United States, coupled with our eroded social safety net is entirely unnerving. People have already been on edge and at odds thanks to our president.

Beyond the surviveability and health impact, I'd raised this thread to hear about how other countries are dealing with this - their leadership, and their media, and their medical systems, and personal experiences?

I'm completely astonished and dismayed that tests haven't been available, or are hardly available in the US. Aren't other nations testing on a large scale? How did they manage to ramp-up and deploy testing etc? Were we just sitting on our asses waiting for this?

[BIL]

Worried about my folks and my dog, they're old. Turned a cruise ship away which was pretty tight. As for me my stiff pecs and massive hog will obliterate Chinese Bat AIDS on contact, so Winnie better get back to the ol' bioweapons R&D drawing board, naw mean.

[it290]

We're in an especially bad time right now with regards to the current government and its ability or willingness to respond to this, particularly in the middle of an election cycle where the worse the news gets the more the stock market will plummet. That's why we have Propaganda Minister Pence in place to be the official sanctioner of COVID-19 news from the government. Make no mistake, this is bad. It's not 1917/1918 Spanish Flu levels of bad (at least not yet), but outside the disease effect the impact this will have on the global economy (which is in a super vulnerable position) is huge and unfortunately creates a vicious cycle with the disease itself.

I'm not sure if anything could have really stopped this outbreak once it went global, but even if the US health system were operating at 'nominal' capacity we still would not be able to impose draconian measures to the degree China has done. And yes, competence has something to do with it, and at root humans as a group are just not that competent and I don't think it's realistic to expect that en masse people will stop a virus with these characteristics. Denial goes hand in hand with fear and most people don't want to confront a problem until it's staring them in the face—that includes medical professionals and government officials.

The good news is, there are more cured cases than active at the moment, so we are by and large winning the battle. The bad news is, there are likely huge numbers of undetected and asymptomatic cases out there. We're beyond the point of containment, and most of the experts seem to be saying that this virus is just a perennial thing that we'll have to detal with, so be prepared for Coronavirus testing to be just another part of your dystopian regime.

The virus has proven to be both highly transmissible and fairly lethal (at least in elderly populations and those with preexisting conditions) so far, but, again, it's not as bad as the flu which we live with every day and is considred relatively mundane. Vaccines will be developed, people will develop resistance, and the virus will continue to mutate. Eventually it'll become part of the status quo; that's not good in any scenario, but it's not doomsday either. The current market panic is the bigger immediate threat on most people's lives.

I will say that the US government has handled this extremely poorly so far and we can expect that trend to continue. Some of the issues with the supply, manufacture, and distribution of testing kits are to be expected given the urgency of the situation and the impact on the global supply chain—underscoring some of the glaring problems with how global capital works in general, and cenrtalized manufacturing in particular—but I saw a tweet today from a journalist who had just returned from the danger zones in Italy and was let back into the country with no screening or questions about anything. At this point the virus is in—the call is coming from inside the house—and it's really just a matter of dealing with it, because even if we all are lucky enough to skip COVID-19, we'll probably be infected with a future iteration at some point.

[GaijinPunch]

I was pointing out to a dear mate that one of my go to sources of international noteworthy news was devoid of a COVID-19 thread, which meant it was likely nothing. I guess I should worry now.

[spmbx]

To me this seems more of a conservative<->liberal left<->right thread with some corona sauce on top than a genuine corona thread.

[BIL]

They're TURNIN' ALL THE BATS GAY :O

[MintyTheCat]

My understanding is that while it is a serious illness unless you are old or have some preexisting complication it's highly likely that you can beat it just by taking care of yourself as you normally would when you get sick.

Exactly : once again, something blown entirely out of proportion. As an idea: more people will die through Amphetamine use than this strain of the flu.

It's likely to take out a few of the oldsters sooner but for the very most part the majority will survive this like they have every other *major threat* to humanity, but, alas the Tabloids need something - anything to keep us all hooked. It's not worth worrying about.

[MintyTheCat]

Yeah, that's what I've been getting - that people are cynical and dismissive of it based on the predictable media marketing of fear.
But my impression is this is different and more substantial already than H1N1, SARS, Hantavirus etc. The breadth with which it has spread in brief time is alarming. None of those other epidemics caused such growing disruption on such a scale. The media and internet aren't creating that.

Your memory is short: rewind back to the SARs and Bird Flu *armageddon* - last time.

Perhaps mine and many other's fears are being manipulated by political narratives. But indeed the lack of cogent leadership in the United States, coupled with our eroded social safety net is entirely unnerving. People have already been on edge and at odds thanks to our president.

Now you really are talking out of your arse. The president or anyone else is not responsible for your thinking and your behaving sanely, and they can do what ever they wish to do but it doesn't change anything : you are still you and you can use your own mind.

[Udderdude]

Uh oh, here it comes. Better fight over what meager scraps are left on the shelves after all the panic buying.

"How am I gonna wipe my ass after the apocalypse?!"

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-n ... -in-sydney

[dan76]

I don't really know what to think about all this. On the one hand it is a new virus which is killing people, there's no vaccine and it's easy to catch. On the other it think it's been way overblown by the internet. This is the paranoid world we live in now. I don't know how to filter through the shit to get to truth or facts.

I remember in the early 90's I got the flu - the rumour was that the Beijing circus brought it to town. I was ill for 2 weeks, couldn't move for about 4 days and lost a couple through fever. It was really bad, but there was hardly anything on the news, just a rumour about the circus. It was a bit of a nightmare and I'm sure the death toll was higher that year in the UK, but I didn't think about it when I went out. It wasn't a big deal. Would the internet have blown up about it back then?

Is this just a shitty thing or should it be on our minds constantly? Does it underscore every waking fucking hour? You would think so given the amount of panic and bullshit coming from certain news outlets and the web. Right now I think we are all going to come into contact with it, the whole isolation thing will go out the window soon. I'm assuming I'll get it at some point.

[Steamflogger Boss]

Still importing stuff from Asia. Yolo bitches.

[BIL]

"How am I gonna wipe my ass after the apocalypse?!"

He may be an unrepentant murderer but OJ's got the right idea on this one!

[Udderdude]

He couldn't find any gloves that fit, though.

[orange808]

There are statistics you can google on this.

You'll find that it kills people over 65 and a few with existing conditions.

[brentsg]

Yeah this reads more like a political OP than a virus thread.

But as a person with asthma I have to take it somewhat seriously, though what I can do is limited. I'll agree that it's tough to know what to be concerned about given the way that the internet and media blows everything up.

I have to think that "control your controllables" is the best motto here. I do what I can to avoid the flu, but I don't let it run my life. It won't be any different here.

Edit: I do find it odd that some people seem to be hoarding bottled water. Is this some edge case where people who can't make coffee with tap water are trying to avoid a catastrophe?

[Randorama]

I am currently living in Guangzhou, and I am Italian (second country for contagions) with a South Korean wife (third country for contagions). I spent the whole quarantine period in my district of the city, as movements were officially limited (as in: "do not leave the city, full stop").

In China the fatalities are slightly over 3000 (seniors and people with pregress illnesses are roughly 94% of the total), but out of roughly 8k contagions (and something like 96% in Wuhan), 57k patients have now completely recovered. The rate is turning out to be 30 fatalities 1k recoveries per day, and contagions have stopped 5 days ago.

Wuhan was a hell for one month or so, for the simple fact that if 70k-something people get sick in a short amount of time, any system of hospitals would collapse, anywhere (and yes, the army quarantined the whole city).

In Italy, fatalities are 150 or so (over 80 years, all pregress illnesses). 1000 contagions or so. South Korea, I haven't checked the numbers. In Italy the government does not know what to do (Surprise! Really?), and in South Korea there is an app that allows people to stalk potential victims and harass them (Surprise! Really?).

Numbers in hand, it is quite worse than a normal flu, but because normal flus cause extremely low percentages of fatalities (0.01% or something?). And still, ObiWan points out a few truths on the matter that I will not repeat as his post is perfect.

Interestingly, the Chinese government does not want to comment on why in Italy it seems to only be lethal for real seniors, and in China it did kill people younger than 60 and with apparently minor problems (Stronger virus? General health conditions of Chinese people being shit? Italians being though sons of bitches? In Vino Veritas? Dumb Luck? A mix of all of the above?).

Alcohol abuse in China usually counts for 2M deaths or so every year, and around 80k deaths in Italy, if I recall numbers correctly (No, I cannot be bothered to double-check again). The rest? Numbers are still *astronomical*, if we want to believe that death is some kind of mysterious even that seldom enters our lives.

Tension-wise, though, the tension is still astronomical.

For instance:

Today my wife decided to use a trolley to buy groceries. The security guards at the gates of the complex where we lived completely lost it and thought that we were trying to come back from South Korea AND Italy while evading quarantine (coordinated laowai attack or something...).

When they figured out that we never went beyond 1 km from our place for the last month or so, they looked like they wanted to disappear from Earth, because of the huge loss of face (Asians and face, etc.). I was about the break the neck of one guy from administration who was being too rude, however (and he got the message: my chinese sucks but my axe murderer gaze makes up for it).

I was also half-tempted to download the divorce papers, too, since my wife has made this blunder & has spent three weeks panicking over absolutely nothing ("no, honey, this is your bloody period, literally. You piss blood from your cunt. Co-VID19 does not include these symptoms, apparently". "Really?" and off the balcony I put her, to reflect on her stupidity).

Numbers-wise...if you care about your physical health, start a decent diet, stop drinking, smoking and doing drugs, and stop crossing streets. Those are serious risks. We had threads for fitness topics and maybe even one for diet matters. If shit happens and you are in a terrible state, a common cold can off you easily.

If you want care about your mental health, avoid people who clearly panic easily and anything that might be related to "the news". That's rubbish anyway, unless clear numbers and careful scientific explanations are involved (and, sorry, provided that you want to understand them instead of panicking, because fear is the perfect drug).

Numbers are what they are, and humans are what they are. I will be lazy again, but there should be quite a few books explaining the psychology of contagion psychosis. We literally evolved with epydemics, and we developed maladaptive behaviours that make us take all kinds of deeply stupid decisions in these situations.

...I am so going to add this in my CV, though.

EDIT:

After Earthquakes, Bushfires, Snow Storms, Terrorist Attacks, Avalanches, Typhoons, Communisms, Capitalisms, Tornadoes and even *Locust Invasions* (capital letter abuse be damned), I might as well as brag a bit about all the personality-forming experiences I matured over the years. Bill Ryzer and Lance Bean who?!



P.S.

I admit missing out on Tsunamis, Meteor Strikes and Vulcan Eruptions, but I did like 10 years of Berlusconi or so. Do I get points for this?

[kitten]

I was also half-tempted to download the divorce papers, too, since my wife has made this blunder & has spent three weeks panicking over absolutely nothing ("no, honey, this is your bloody period, literally. You piss blood from your cunt. Co-VID19 does not include these symptoms, apparently". "Really?" and off the balcony I put her, to reflect on her stupidity).

you put her... "off the balcony." dude, do you just lock your wife on the balcony?

[Xer Xian]

In Italy, fatalities are 150 or so (over 80 years, all pregress illnesses). 1000 contagions or so. In Italy the government does not know what to do (Surprise! Really?)

Those numbers are like one week old, now Italy has 230+ deaths and 5000+ infected (source). And while in Italy you can generally put some blame on the government for most things, this probably isn't one such time. China apparently managed to contain the outbreak but they can rely on an authoritarian system and a disciplined population, Italy has neither. Still, they've taken several strict measures here (towns locked down, closed schools, banned gatherings, etc) but contagion is still spreading fast, hospitals in the most affected areas are overstretched and the economy is tanking. As I'm writing this the cabinet is deciding on whether to lock down the entirety of Lombardy (wealthiest italian region) and an additional 11 provinces.

By the way, I *have* to move from south to north Italy for work (planned before the outbreak) and am currently staring at google maps trying to figure out what route I will have to take to go around the regions that could be locked out as of tomorrow morning. I also shipped 227kg of belongings yesterday and don't know whether they will be delivered anytime soon.

Anyone for whom the internet is the only annoyance out of this whole situation should consider him/herself lucky. I hope that in your country it never gets as bad as it is over here

[CStarFlare]

Had an overseas vacation planned before this all broke out. Went on it anyway - am on it now actually. I live in one of the US's biggest cities with a large Chinese population and a lot of Chinese business ties, and I ride public transit every day. I expect it'll get into my body no matter what I do, if I haven't already.

I'm visiting a friend in his 80s tomorrow, which worries me a bit as I've just gotten off a plane with a coughing child behind me. Mentioned it to him and he just shrugged it off. He's an adult and can decide his own risk tolerance, I suppose. Aside from that my only worry is my vacation being ruined by a flu - worst case would be going to the hospital since I'm sure my insurance isn't going to help me here. (Probably should have thought that through when I decided to go forward with travelling)

EDIT: for those who were around and paying attention during SARS, how does the Chinese response to that outbreak compare to COVID? The main thing that unsettles me is just how big their response seemed to be - it was likely just a precautionary thing, but I look at the impact on the world and can't help but feel some dissonance between the scale of the response and how severe we're told the illness actually is.

[rapoon]

There are statistics you can google on this.

You'll find that it kills people over 65 and a few with existing conditions.

The media intentionally isn't reporting that boomers are the only age group that faces any significant or real danger from Covid-9. They are telling you to stay home, but the death rate for Millennials is .02%. That's almost certainly overstated, because that 02% is among the very small rare fraction of millennials that ended up in hospital (got very sick). It's not dangerous to young people. It's no worse than the flu.

This is all about protecting olds. But, would they do the same for you?

The mortality percentage for millennials (which the majority of us are not) is 0.2%, not 0.02%. And the majority of the reports will have a preface or footnote indicating the statistics are unreliable. Accurate statistics need a baseline and baselines take time.
And it is worse than the flu, for every age group.

Most of the doctors and epidemiologists I've read/listen to say their primary concern is the potential stress on the underlying health infrastructure: hospitals operate at 10-15% bed vacancy and only a fraction of those are ICU beds.

[Vanguard]

Any of you know anything about that old malaria drug that's supposedly effective against this? Sounds pretty promising.

[Randorama]

EDIT: for those who were around and paying attention during SARS, how does the Chinese response to that outbreak compare to COVID?

Government or population? (please read my previous post for background)

My boss was finishing his Ph.D. in Hong Kong, so he compared the two outbreaks as a single individual. He mentioned that the levels of panic may be more or less the same, but at the time the fact that the outbreak started from HK created big psychological hurdles. He was bereaved of friends, so the shock is still present in his psyche (I literally can see it).

Still to this day, people from the mainland and from HK have tons of conflicts because of the complicated political status of HK.

In terms of response, the government has been much faster, but please see my other comments below.

Partially a tangent: I do not see the Italian or South Korean governments building new hospitals in 6 days (they build two, 1k beds, in Wuhan), but then again it would be interesting to measure how many "beds per capita" the three countries have, which is a key factor for epidemics.

The fact that the Wuhan government also had *plans* for building an hospital in 6 days is telling: did engineers have blueprint for cases in which new hospitals were needed quickly? And son on.

The wild rumour I heard from colleagues is that the Chinese government has emergency protocol plans for a bit of everything, because with 1 billion something individuals clustered in big and not so clean cities, all kinds of emergencies can break loose any time.

It is a matter of fact: provincial governments are making titanic efforts to modernise and clean cities, but having 20 M people clustered in "small" spaces and offering them proper hygienic conditions is not easy.

I leave in a clean complex, but the back alley right beside the complex has rats. Lots of them, and probably with lots of interesting virii. The local government knows, and they are working to improve matters, but big changes take time.

Please feel free to have your own opinion on al lof these matters, but please also consider that the picture is very, very complex. I am not defending or accusing any government, but the sheer size of "what must be administered" in these cases, and the structures that allow this task, play a crucial role. Making decisions on such scales is supremely difficult, I believe.

Those numbers are like one week old, now Italy has 230+ deaths and 5000+ infected (source). And while in Italy you can generally put some blame on the government for most things, this probably isn't one such time.

Please don't get me wrong but I did not have fresh numbers, and I was too lazy to find some (sorry, but I don't get paid to find sources to post on the intarwebs, and sorry for the stronzo style of remark).

I am simply tracking whether family members of mine are at risk or not. You may have read that my current situation is a tad complicated. I wouldn't blame "the government", but politicians' general inability to operate through emergency protocols without feeling sorry (but please see below).

China apparently managed to contain the outbreak but they can rely on an authoritarian system and a disciplined population, Italy has neither.

I somehow disagree, in the sense that in case of public emergencies there should be a number of protocols ("draconian measures", courtesy of BBC) that a government can swiftly apply to handle the problem.

To be precise: for emergencies, I think that a government can democratically debate what to do and how well in advance, draft a precise plan, and then trigger the plan as soon as the emergency appears.

Reaction times are crucial, so why waste time in debating decisions once it is too late? I cannot honestly see why democracy is supposed to be a short-term process of voting on stuff when it is too late to do so (...maybe the M5S disagree).

I experienced firsthand the 2009 Earthquake in L'Aquila and the 2017 snow blizzards (you know, when there were 4 metres of snow), and the implementation of these protocols was swifter.

True, these problems were *obviously* local, but my understanding is that in a state of emergency any government can swiftly apply "authoritarian" measures, and be within the limits of international law. There *should* be UN-sanctioned protocols on this matter, but my memory may still be bad.

Still, they've taken several strict measures here (towns locked down, closed schools, banned gatherings, etc) but contagion is still spreading fast, hospitals in the most affected areas are overstretched and the economy is tanking. As I'm writing this the cabinet is deciding on whether to lock down the entirety of Lombardy (wealthiest italian region) and an additional 11 provinces.

In the Wuhan case, the province governor tried to play down the initial information before asking for quarantine.

Contagions could have been cut down sensibly (I have read all kinds of numbers in Chinese sources, so reliability is meh), so the decision-making was NOT swift and as authoritarian as it could have been.

Lombardy should have been locked down as soon as the cases emerged, if we follow the quarantine protocol thesis. I honestly doubt that the locals would not understand the issue, except for the stray contrarian.

I also disagree that discipline levels are different. Police here in Guangzhou has arrested 1k people or so for quarantine infractions (I risked arrest yesterday, by a means of an example.

Please read my previous post). The police force has issued a "plea" for people to cooperate, because they cannot see the point in arresting citizens over trivial matters (and slammers are full...).

On this note, I have colleagues from Wuhan (...I was negotiating a contract in Wuhan Central University before the outbreak) who suggest that reports about civil unrest in Wuhan will be forever hidden because the situation there was akin to civil war.

Hearsay? Yes, but out of 10M people, if e.g. the 0.1% of people explode and break the laws (i.e. 10k citizens), the only way to handle public order is call in the army. Where do you put all these people, if you arrest them? In a jail? What about contagion? Should the army quickly build new jails? (They probably could use blueprints for POW camps, I guess, but that would be for their own citizens).

By the way, I *have* to move from south to north Italy for work (planned before the outbreak) and am currently staring at google maps trying to figure out what route I will have to take to go around the regions that could be locked out as of tomorrow morning. I also shipped 227kg of belongings yesterday and don't know whether they will be delivered anytime soon.

Do ask the police if you can move to begin with, and how. If they have to follow strict procedures, it is pointless to break them and end up in a situation in which you may antagonise them just because of the sheer stress of the situation.

Yesterday I literally had to wait for the police to show up and sort out the situation (bloody trolleys!). My Mandarin sucks, building administration and policemen speak Cantonese and Mandarin as a second language, but with a bit of an effort (and my boss' intervention), all was solved.

I hate Italian police and military forces, but on these matters they could be surprisingly helpful (...because of Genoa 2001, which I sit out knowing what was going to happen).

Anyone for whom the internet is the only annoyance out of this whole situation should consider him/herself lucky. I hope that in your country it never gets as bad as it is over here

Not to be pedantic, but the situation over "here" for me is a bit worse (please see previous post...). Nothing unmanageable, as I have literally seen worse. Of course, the internet is all about having free access to the cheapest and most powerful drug: fear.

And now, the incredibly stupid post that reminds me of Churchill's comment on the "worst advertisement for democracy"...

you put her... "off the balcony." dude, do you just lock your wife on the balcony?

We use 5 minutes for small issues, 10 minutes for mid-size issues, 20 for serious business. The offending party must go on a voluntary basis (voting in 2 sounds a bit funny, I know: it's a split vote or a majority). When we were living in Sweden it was a easier way to cool off (well, in winter at least). Well, when we had an open balcony, anyway. Besides, we have spent the last 6 weeks quarantined in our building with permission to go out once every 4 weeks.

Do you now understand what you cherry-picked about, in my post? If not, please do not answer. If you do, please do not answer anyway.

[quash]

One thing that's making me wonder how bad things really are is how the biggest travel hubs in the US have been largely spared so far. You'd think by now that LA, NYC, Dallas and Atlanta would be looking more like post apocalyptic hellscapes than they usually do, but so far they're no worse off than most of the country. Of course you could argue that there's a lack of testing kits, people don't wanna be charged thousands of dollars to get tested, etc., but if this is really the end all be all that's gonna kill us all in a matter of weeks, you'd think we'd be seeing people collapsing all around us by now.

There is also the elephant in the room of how the majority of reported deaths have been Asian men, particularly elderly ones. Not to say that this means you have nothing to worry about if you don't fall into this group, but it lends credence to the targeted bioweapon theory.

Just treat the coming months like an extended flu season, and of course stock up on food, water and ammo in case things do go sideways fast. Other than that, what else can you do?

[kitten]

Do you now understand what you cherry-picked about, in my post? If not, please do not answer. If you do, please do not answer anyway.

rando, if you don't see the paragraph you wrote as a remarkably strange sentiment (in isolation or as part of your greater post) to share with a forum, i'm not sure what else to say. telling people you put your wife on the balcony to reflect on her stupidity after instructing her she didn't even know what her own period was while you thought about filing divorce papers is bound to rouse a little bewilderment.

[Randorama]

rando, if you don't see the paragraph you wrote as a remarkably strange sentiment (in isolation or as part of your greater post) to share with a forum, i'm not sure what else to say. telling people you put your wife on the balcony to reflect on her stupidity after instructing her she didn't even know what her own period was while you thought about filing divorce papers is bound to rouse a little bewilderment.

Kitten, sorry but did you read the rest of the posts, and the specific comment? Each one of us has to go out when he/she causes pointless problems. I spent evenings in self-confinement, in the past (as a quarantine to calm down from murderous intents, yes). We quite literally vote (raising hands, even), to decide this. Do you agree that if I need to repeat this, you are not paying attention on a thread that, by the way, is about a completely different topic? (Y/Y/VLS, please pick an option).

Besides, the "I am downloading the divorce papers ASAP" had the useful shock effect to make her realise that she was panicking and associating just about everything to CoVID-19.

Unbeknowst to me, the wife spent her last 2 weeks measuring her temperature every 2 hours or so, and wondering why she did not have the fever. This because she was taking for granted that she *had to* be contagied, since the doctor told her 2 months ago that she needs to take up exercise again, change diet and generally keep herself in health, after 2-3 years of lax habits.

My wife (and my boss, but he survived SARS...) fall squarely in the category of people who need shock methods to understand that their attitudes are excessive, and that stressing me will not improve the situation. Who am I, to abstain from this draconian procedure? We decided on "shock therapy" a long time ago and we are simply implementing it. No cross-punch anime-style, but harsh language is officially in.

Also, confinement in the balcony in a place with mild weather and a great view on the Pearl River is not too hard to deal with We have wi-fi, so we can survive it without too many problems (were you taking me for a monster, by chance?).

EDIT: police have been "arresting" panicking individuals reporting themselves as sick when they clearly aren't. It is 12 hours in the nearest police station with a counselour telling the person that they need to STFU because panicking won't get them anywhere (well, not in these terms). My wife risked "arrest" for this, twice, and 5 people were "arrested" in my complex for this very reason.

It is not even reported in the residence/criminal offence files, because in China "cooling-off arrests" can be enforced for a lot of reasons (e.g. being drunk and dangerous). Counseling in these cases is NOT free, however. Offending citizens pay the service because they should have known better (according to the law, I am not debating this).

The situation being what it is, we do not need to deal with the police as immigrants from the two most affected countries outside China, thank you very much.

EDIT:

I already experienced people mobbing me because they thought I was bringing back the virus from Italy, by the way. What you US members are talking about, again? Your own navels? Congrats, as always.

At any case, this is not even a personal issue.

Here in China, in case you missed this tiny detail, by chance (or: there are two people exposed to the issue, in this thread: Xer Xian and I. Everybody else does not belong to the discussion, frankly).

[ED-057]

I see this as more of a threat to business and the general order than to health. Our corporate overlords are not prepared to deal with huge quarantines or large numbers of peons not showing up to work.

In the USA, the 2020 census is coming up which traditionally involves census workers going door to door to gather data.

Better stock up on popcorn.