COVID-19 Mega thread

[GeorgiaModerate]

Does anyone else feel like this is, for lack of a better term, a massive sociocultural shift/moment, because of how it's impacting just about every facet of daily life in some way? As in, one of those events where we'll think about certain times around now in the future as "before COVID-19" and "after COVID-19"?

I don't know. I mean, there used to be a before 9/11 and after 9/11, but I stopped thinking about the past that way a long time ago.

Something that occurred to me today is that in Connie Willis's excellent series of time-travel books, which are set in the 2050's and 2060's, part of the backstory is "the Pandemic" which ravaged the world in the early 21st century.  I guess this is it.

[Higgins]

The nursing director where I work said this has been blown out of proportion and more people will die of the flu this year than will die of Corona.

[Torrain]

Breaking, via the Guardian:

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s wife Sophie has tested positive for coronavirus, AP reports.

[The Dowager Mod]

Don't make me take a flamethrower to this thread again, I am not even in the mood for anymore racist crap.

[Beet]

The Dow has gained about 1,000 points this week and has essentially regained its pre-coronavirus peak, suggesting that the big money does not yet think we are looking at an armageddon sort of situation. Even Hong Kong's Hang Seng has gained about 1,000 points lately. My view is that the big money is dumb money -- it represents largely institutional investors who are not experts or epidemiologists, and is slow to react. Now is a good chance to sell. However that is my opinion.

There are disturbing reports of large burial trenches in Iran.

"Hospitals and doctors indicate the cause of death on their reports but a coroner appointed by the Judiciary has to examine every single body. The cause of death which appears on the official death certificate reflects his view, not what the hospital has announced," he said and added that coroners on many cases put "respiratory failure, pneumonia, or flu" on death certificates to keep the real coronavirus death toll down.

https://en.radiofarda.com/a/how-iran-reduces-official-toll-of-coronavirus-deaths/30472252.html

Also, the Johns Hopkins website has not updated tonight so I am switching to https://ncov2019.live/data.

Death rate.

Officially 4,967 died and 68,346 recovered. The case fatality rate rose to 6.8%.

The number of confirmed cases by Region:
Total overall: 135,781 (+9,916)
China: 80,793 (+2)
Italy: 15,113 (+2,651)
Iran: 10,075 (+1,075)
South Korea: 7,869 (+114)
Spain: 3,059 (+782)
France: 2,876 (+592)
Germany: 2,512 (+604)
U.S.: 1,336 (+55)

[Mr. Illini]

Stores are packed and running out of stuff. People are so stupid. STOP hoarding things.

[Tekken_Guy]

What will Coronavirus be best remembered for at the end of the day?

[GP270watch]

 Sadly people forget about those who died because those who remember them best also die. But people are always interested in economics and markets, kinda sad and shows what we truly value.

[Beet]

I think it's going to be a paradigm shift where security experts and those in many other fields suddenly have a lot more respect for the biological sciences and how vulnerable societies are to viruses or other biological agents. Since the conquest of disease in the late 20th century this is the second great blow to confidence-- the first being, of course, the discovery of the AIDS retrovirus. The late 20th century was the golden age of virology-- the discovery of cell culture in 1949, the structure of the DNA double helix in 1953, of RNA, the plaque assay, the Northern blot test, PCR, genome sequencing, and X-ray crystallography. Viruses can be turned to good as well as evil. One day we will be able to use them to track down criminals [Give person X a harmless virus, and you can track if they met person Y and Z], to do micro-manufacturing, to better understand inheritance, and much more.

Another thing you are seeing with this outbreak is the public engaging more directly with scientific journals. Normally you would have a lengthy process of peer review, publication in a journal with no one reads except colleagues, and if it gets to the public, mediated via a reporter or journalist who may have a poor education or severely dumb down the message. Now you are seeing many preprints being directly consumed and commented on publicly. You have many scientists commenting directly on social media instead of being mediated through journalists. I am not sure if this is going to last- partly yes, partly no. It has both positives and negatives.

[RINO Tom]

Regardless of what you think of it, the answer is objectively option three at this point.  This is completely unprecedented.

[Hammy]

Stores are packed and running out of stuff. People are so stupid. STOP hoarding things.

Target and a few other places are having to put caps on how much of certain things you can buy because it's gotten so absurd.

[RINO Tom]

Stores are packed and running out of stuff. People are so stupid. STOP hoarding things.

There’s a fine line between stocking up more than usual (like adding some frozen food to our barren apartment) and being a part of the problem (buying WAY more essential goods than you need).  People need to use common sense.

[T'Chenka]

Went to the grocery store just now and it was packed. Toilet paper was completely sold out.

Same thing in my Greater Toronto Area community. There was reportedly a fist fight at the local Costco wholesale warehouse today.

[Florida Man for Crime]

Stores are packed and running out of stuff. People are so stupid. STOP hoarding things.

They are running out of stuff because the USA long since shifted to a just-in-time delivery system for retail. The average grocery store only stocks about 3 days or so of food, so it is extremely vulnerable to the slightest temporary surge of demand.

If you want someone to blame, you can blame:

1) The managerial types who thought that this was a good idea (they thought it was a good idea because it is more "efficient", and ignored the downside that in times of crisis it is also more prone to breakdown - and they were incentivized to do so by the American neoliberal system). The existence of this system is also why we will have some shortages of various essential items like masks and PPE for health care workers, and prescription drugs.
2) Yourself for not being aware of this deficiency in the retail supply system and not getting whatever food/toilet paper/etc you wanted a month or 2 ago, back when stores had plenty of all of those things and you didn't have to arm wrestle over a carton of bleach. It was entirely predictable a long time before today that there would be runs on stores in the USA.

Don't worry though, stuff will get re-stocked. It just takes time, but the USA has plenty of food, toilet paper, etc. Although we don't have enough of other things, like PPE and prescription drugs that rely on imports from China/India. So do worry about those.

[T'Chenka]

Serious and non-rhetorical question for you all:

Without thinking about left/right politics, and putting every other Trump situation aside, should Trump step down if his bungling of the coronavirus response causes over 5,000+ Americans to die?  His ego won't allow it, but based on the coronavirus response alone, SHOULD he step down if it ends up that bad?

[Lisa's voting Biden]

Gov. Whitmer of MI has closed all k-12 schools public and private until April 6

https://twitter.com/wxyzdetroit/status/1238298185380003847?s=20

[T'Chenka]

Gov. Whitmer of MI has closed all k-12 schools public and private until April 6

"Ontario to close all publicly funded schools for 2 weeks after March break due to COVID-19"

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/mobile/ontario-to-close-all-publicly-funded-schools-for-2-weeks-after-march-break-due-to-covid-19-1.4850653

[Beet]

Some potential good news-- paper claims "One degree Celsius increase in temperature and one percent increase in relative humidity lower R by 0.0383 and 0.0224, respectively."

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3551767

Again, this is all unconfirmed. There is an early paper out promoted by Marc Lipsitch disputing the weather theory, which may be correct. His analysis here.

[Mr. Illini]

Stores are packed and running out of stuff. People are so stupid. STOP hoarding things.

They are running out of stuff because the USA long since shifted to a just-in-time delivery system for retail. The average grocery store only stocks about 3 days or so of food, so it is extremely vulnerable to the slightest temporary surge of demand.

If you want someone to blame, you can blame:

1) The managerial types who thought that this was a good idea (they thought it was a good idea because it is more "efficient", and ignored the downside that in times of crisis it is also more prone to breakdown - and they were incentivized to do so by the American neoliberal system). The existence of this system is also why we will have some shortages of various essential items like masks and PPE for health care workers, and prescription drugs.
2) Yourself for not being aware of this deficiency in the retail supply system and not getting whatever food/toilet paper/etc you wanted a month or 2 ago, back when stores had plenty of all of those things and you didn't have to arm wrestle over a carton of bleach. It was entirely predictable a long time before today that there would be runs on stores in the USA.

Don't worry though, stuff will get re-stocked. It just takes time, but the USA has plenty of food, toilet paper, etc. Although we don't have enough of other things, like PPE and prescription drugs that rely on imports from China/India. So do worry about those.

I’ll blame the people causing the surge in demand, ie the people buying up all the s**t

[Grassroots]

Coronavirus is a deadly virus, basically a more contagious version of SARS. That's the whole point.

[Florida Man for Crime]

Regardless of what you think of it, the answer is objectively option three at this point.  This is completely unprecedented.

LOL no it is not completely unprecedented, similar things happened in 1918 and all sorts of events were shut down (as well as in other previous epidemics in other places).

In some cases they didn't though, like the Philadelphia parade, and the price was paid in body bags.

[Florida Man for Crime]

I’ll blame the people causing the surge in demand, ie the people buying up all the s**t

Even if everyone bought only 1 pack of toilet paper (which would be quite reasonable on the individual level), stores would still run out of toilet paper, because normally only a small fraction of customers buy it. Everyone wanting even a small stock-up of any item overwhelms the system, and that is just the nature of the system we have in the USA.

This is a policy failure, and is a failure of yourself to recognize in advance that a policy failure was coming.

There are more policy failures coming, so if you don't want to get blindsided again by them as they come at you, I suggest looking forward. They are going to come increasingly fast as we progress, because epidemics move at exponential speed.

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

I'm curious--for our Ohio posters and others with Republican governors who've closed schools, what has been the reaction from Democrats? Republicans seem to be criticizing Governor Whitmer here in Michigan for closing schools, and I'm curious if Republican governors are facing opposition from Democrats or if it's primarily Republicans who think governments are overreacting to COVID-19 in general.

[Florida Man for Crime]

Serious and non-rhetorical question for you all:

Without thinking about left/right politics, and putting every other Trump situation aside, should Trump step down if his bungling of the coronavirus response causes over 5,000+ Americans to die?  His ego won't allow it, but based on the coronavirus response alone, SHOULD he step down if it ends up that bad?

No. That is a ridiculous standard. By that standard basically every single world leader would likely have to resign.

[Roll Roons]

Regardless of what you think of it, the answer is objectively option three at this point.  This is completely unprecedented.

LOL no it is not completely unprecedented, similar things happened in 1918 and all sorts of events were shut down (as well as in other previous epidemics in other places).

In some cases they didn't though, like the Philadelphia parade, and the price was paid in body bags.

It's certainly unprecedented in our lifetimes. The swine flu is the closest comparison I can think, and it didn't cause mass societal shutdown.