Coronavirus

[Michael Hopcroft]

The news about AX doesn't make me all that comfortable. I'm concerned about what this will do to the cultural life of, well, the entire world. Will live music ever come back as it did? Already we have seen tons of canceled tours, and local arts organizations are closing their seasons knowing that their main source of income has dried up completely.

 

The cons are a bad loss for graphic artists in particular. Conventions are the most common place for "fan artists" to sell their work and take commissions. While for most this is not how they earn their living, it is a substantial source of extra money that they often need to get by -- not to mention the lost opportunities to hone and refine their craft. Artists cannot work in complete isolation. 

[Iuz the Evil]

We are looking at easing Shelter at Home restrictions in the SF Bay Area. 7 inner Counties maybe differently than the exterior ones as totally different epidemiological presentation. Keeping social distancing, maybe adding face covering language, this just is not sustainable in current framework. 

 

People are also starting to crack under the strain of isolation, or just resisting compliance. Domestic violence numbers are going to be horrifying once we unpack the event. Child abuse. Substance abuse. And nobody getting preventative health care? Humans are not designed for this. It isn't just about social norms, this is not something large populations are able to sustain over long periods barring "strong external controls" (which nobody in Western society would accept. GPS tracking, heavy individual penalties for noncompliance, police action on a pretty massive scale). 

 

So hard decisions about to be made. We will see how it plays out. The surge modeling at least appears to have achieved success in flattening the curve in California, preliminarily.

[ScottishFox]

I wonder how long before this thing is literally everywhere and we can resume normal operations.

 

Some Stanford researchers found that 40x to 80x the number of people have the virus than previously thought.  (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/antibody-study-suggests-coronavirus-is-far-more-widespread-than-previously-thought )

At the time of the study, Santa Clara county had 1,094 confirmed cases of Covid-19, resulting in 50 deaths. But based on the rate of people who have antibodies, it is likely that between 48,000 and 81,000 people had been infected in Santa Clara county by early April – a number approximately 50 to 80 times higher.

That also means coronavirus is potentially much less deadly to the overall population than initially thought. As of Tuesday, the US’s coronavirus death rate was 4.1% and Stanford researchers said their findings show a death rate of just 0.12% to 0.2%.

 

Here in Texas it looks like we'll open up very soon and go mostly back to normal although schools will remain physically closed for the rest of the school year.

 

Not sure why this makes me think of Strikeforce Morituri.

[Ragitsu]

57 minutes ago, ScottishFox said:

I wonder how long before this thing is literally everywhere and we can resume normal operations.

 

Whatever gains that have been won will be squandered once a fresh rash of outbreaks crop up across the nation. We can forget about "normal" until some sort of treatment is perfected and a vaccine is given the green-light: full stop. Quite frankly, I find all these people pushing for a premature opening to be reckless in their messaging. Finally, we have to prepare for the possibility that this virus is going to mutate.

[BNakagawa]

1 hour ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

The news about AX doesn't make me all that comfortable. I'm concerned about what this will do to the cultural life of, well, the entire world. Will live music ever come back as it did? Already we have seen tons of canceled tours, and local arts organizations are closing their seasons knowing that their main source of income has dried up completely.

 

The cons are a bad loss for graphic artists in particular. Conventions are the most common place for "fan artists" to sell their work and take commissions. While for most this is not how they earn their living, it is a substantial source of extra money that they often need to get by -- not to mention the lost opportunities to hone and refine their craft. Artists cannot work in complete isolation. 

there is some talk that conventions might not come back in a form we recognize. From restrictions on artists to regulations on vendors to changes to the code of conduct for attendees, the cons that happen, assuming they are ever allowed to happen, might not be the same.

 

For artists, vendors, crafters and others, this might be an end to an era.

[unclevlad]

Problem with the antibody studies is there's still questions about whether the antibody test is accurate.

[Cygnia]

Heartland hotspots: A sudden rise in coronavirus cases is hitting rural states without stay-at-home orders

[TrickstaPriest]

1 hour ago, Ragitsu said:

Finally, we have to prepare for the possibility that this virus is going to mutate.

 

While I don't know if a mutation would make the virus more dangerous, it will make it harder to get vaccines or treatment in place.  That's the real problem (in my irrelevant opinion?) with looking at the situation as one that is going to be resolved with vaccines.  I think it's going to be resolved by helping hospitals adapt to it, and what I can only hope will be some herd immunity to slow its progress after that point.

 

I mean that for the proposed 'cures' that are being thrown around too.

 

If 'rumors' of lack of herd immunity are real, then we have a real big problem.

[Ragitsu]

6 minutes ago, TrickstaPriest said:

 

While I don't know if a mutation would make the virus more dangerous, it will make it harder to get vaccines or treatment in place.  That's the real problem (in my irrelevant opinion?) with looking at the situation as one that is going to be resolved with vaccines.  I think it's going to be resolved by helping hospitals adapt to it, and what I can only hope will be some herd immunity to slow its progress after that point.

 

I mean that for the proposed 'cures' that are being thrown around too.

 

If 'rumors' of lack of herd immunity are real, then we have a real big problem.

 

Yes. Increased lethality or no, it would prolong our travail.

[death tribble]

I am encouraged on the decreasing death rate in Spain and Italy.

And despite the precautions the death rate in Britain is still high.

[L. Marcus]

I've been at home for a week now, and the symptoms are keeping steady. A soreness to the throat that comes and goes and a need to clear the throat every minute; I've had worse.

 

Here's a Reason article about the Swedish way to handle this current crisis. Basically, our government has not closed us down; the joke is that Swedes practices social distancing in our everyday lives as-is.

[Old Man]

42 minutes ago, L. Marcus said:

I've been at home for a week now, and the symptoms are keeping steady. A soreness to the throat that comes and goes and a need to clear the throat every minute; I've had worse.

 

 

 

IIRC the coronavirus cases that take a hard turn do so at around the 10-11 day mark, so please be prepared for that eventuality.

[Old Man]

After the massive jumps in fatalities the past couple of days, America will reach 50,000 deaths in about 72 hours.  Looks like there will be 1M cases by the first week of May.

 

As for reopening America, I mean, now that the parachute has slowed our descent, it makes perfect sense to take it off, right?

[L. Marcus]

  

1 minute ago, Old Man said:

 

IIRC the coronavirus cases that take a hard turn do so at around the 10-11 day mark, so please be prepared for that eventuality.

 

Always!

[death tribble]

I'm encouraged that L Marcus is still posting.

[L. Marcus]

And not at all from beyond the veil.

[TrickstaPriest]

It is good to hear from you.

 

Talking with my brother now to see if we can 3d print ear guards.  And more importantly if they will accept them.

[Badger]

I guess one benefit to still having to go out to work.  I can acknowledge working from home would be a nightmare.  With my home, I need to have a space, where work is off-limits.   Whether in actuality or not, it would feel like working 24/7.

 

Plus, if college online classes in my younger days is anything to go by.   It would mean a huge amount of procrastination, inevitably leading to fun stress night on the day before deadline as I try to cram half the semester's workload into one night.  Leaving me later in the night, in the backyard, screaming into the darkness, and throwing random objects into the woods in the backyard......never again.

[TrickstaPriest]

2 minutes ago, Badger said:

I guess one benefit to still having to go out to work.  I can acknowledge working from home would be a nightmare.  With my home, I need to have a space, where work is off-limits.   Whether in actuality or not, it would feel like working 24/7.

 

Plus, if college online classes in my younger days is anything to go by.   It would mean a huge amount of procrastination, inevitably leading to fun stress night on the day before deadline as I try to cram half the semester's workload into one night.  Leaving me later in the night, in the backyard, screaming into the darkness, and throwing random objects into the woods in the backyard......never again.

 

And thus the story of the last year and a half in my life is well-understood.  XD

[Badger]

Heh, I'd like to think 2 decades of maturity would make me do better now.  But, I don't know.   Real life sometimes is putting off some things because you can only deal with one obstacle at a time. 

[Iuz the Evil]

1 hour ago, Old Man said:

 

As for reopening America, I mean, now that the parachute has slowed our descent, it makes perfect sense to take it off, right?

Nobody in Public Health is particularly thrilled about the need to loosen stay at home orders, but the reality is our current model will not be sustainable in weeks to months for more reasons than just economics. But we're not talking about SXSW in the public square either. Social distancing will be maintained, grocery stores and so on included. Many businesses remain closed. A whole host of the restrictions beyond that. 

 

People are going to need to be let out of their homes, and some of these services must be restored. If we don't, you are going to see things you won't like. There's simply no mechanism to manage this protracted restriction to so many of the functions of society. 

 

We are talking about a situation where at one point we were told that the State and National Guard weren't coming in response to our request for support. "You are on your own for the next month, we have other stuff going on" is sort of scary. They've since caught up, but holy Hell. And we are their much of their supply chain when we get that support right now. So based on that i'm thinking State and Federal resources are pretty stretched. 

 

Food distribution also cannot keep up with the growth in demand. When people don't have food or income, they don't comply with civil orders that are not criminally enforceable. 3 weeks ago we had 2700 students getting food support. It hit 9600 a week ago and kept going up last week. Don't have Fridays numbers yet. Yikes. 

 

"Come fine me then, I need to be able to feed my kid" is the answer I'd expect from most parents. And that's without the rental/eviction discussion. Very challenging. Suspending the ability to evict doesn't mean you won't be evicted once this is over. We will have a horrific spike in homelessness. And then there's the DV, child abuse, and other stuff I've already mentioned trending sharply up. It's not getting better the longer this goes on. 

 

So we will let some links in the chain out and hope it doesn't flare up. Pick your poison time. I expect the more populous areas will have more restrictive orders, they have much worse spread. It's going to keep going, we are in no way done. Just trying to mitigate the negative impact of unpleasant necessities. 

[Duke Bushido]

We are having a fit of human nature right now who's outcome I'm rather curious (and concerned) about.

 

I have noticed at work today that there are fewer people out in masks and gloves; fewer people paying attention to personal space, etc---  and that there are more people actually out and about (and I thought it was bad before!).  Seeing them, and listening to pieces of conversations--

 

people are starting to normalize this.  I don't mean the quarantine-- that would be _great_!  If everyone could handle it the way Italy did:  this is life for the next little while; let's see how pleasant we can make it!  The _Mafia_ delivering food and checking on high-risk people!  Kudos to you, Italy!  You are a beautiful people, and an absolutely brilliant display of what should all aspire to be!

 

But people (at least not in this part of the US) are starting to normalize the presence of Corona.  More and more, they are getting that "well, I didn't get it; it must be declining" or "I didn't get it; it must be harder to get than they said" or any of a hundred rationalizations that boil down to "this is just some minor background part of my world; let's get on with things" as if everything was normal.  At this point, I don't think extending things is going to do more than be met with a "you poor misguided panicky children, you" and ignored.

 

I get the survival aspect over-all of being able to normalize change, but this-- this is _bad_, and I fear it will make things much worse, long-term.

 

 

[Zeropoint]

No matter how we deal with it in the US, it's going to be bad, because the measures which would protect people during this time are politically unacceptable.

 

We will get to choose between different flavors of bad, but we can't have "not bad" because there are people who flip the table when that option is presented.

[Iuz the Evil]

6 minutes ago, Zeropoint said:

No matter how we deal with it in the US, it's going to be bad, because the measures which would protect people during this time are politically unacceptable.

 

We will get to choose between different flavors of bad, but we can't have "not bad" because there are people who flip the table when that option is presented.

This is true. It's also far, far too late for "not bad". We have not set up any systems in advance that would allow for that. 

[Zeropoint]

Just now, Iuz the Evil said:

We have not set up any systems in advance that would allow for that.

 

Well, we did. It's just that someone took them apart for political reasons.