@JaxonH Yeah, linear graphs are more effective when it comes to simply striking the fear of God into people, but log graphs are definitely more useful for contrasting and interpreting multiple pieces of data.
@Maxz Based on this information, do you think others are right when they say this is going to get worse before it gets better? Or now that it seems everyone is taking it seriously, things will start getting better?
And what about the economy? At first the resentful and partially jealous part of me was laughing at the Wall Street types losing everything - but then the mass lay-offs started in the US and I'm getting really scared that this might do massive economic damage to everyone in a ripple effect.
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@Heavyarms55 I’ve tried not to make outright predictions on these developments, because, A) it feels too morbid to fill my thoughts up with deaths and sickness that hasn’t even happened yet, B) there’s so much information to process on a day-to-day basis that casting one’s thoughts a month into the future is difficult, C) over-speculation can be a source of panic which can then lead to irrational behaviour and exacerbate issues, and D) I’m certainly not an expert (I mean, I have a mathematics background with a peppering of statistics, but that’s it). As such, I’m more interested in directing people to what I feel are reputable sources and data than making predictions of my own.
The difficulty from the start was been communicating the potential gravity of the situation without causing panic or coming across as a preachy proclaimer of the apocalypse. This thread itself can be seen as documentation of the shift of attitudes over the course of its many pages.
I find it important to remember that at any given time the future is not set in stone, and we’ve seen a range of outcomes depending on how countries and peoples have acted at various points during developments. Ultimately, I feel we should adopt measures relative to heavier outcomes while keeping in mind that things are constantly evolving, and the way things unfolds depends on the actions taken today (on a governmental, communal, and individual level).
Still, I don’t feel “it’ll get worse before it gets better” is a bad working hypothesis at all. In fact, it’s probably the one we should all be working with. But what matters much more that what we think is what we do (or in many cases, don’t do). The good news for us nerds is that staying home and playing video games turns out to actually be a very sound strategy in combatting a pandemic, and is something we can afford to be completely self-indulgent in. But on a communal level, it may turn out there are other roles we can play, which is something worth keeping in mind. The importance of community is ever more apparent in isolation, so in their way, even these forums are playing their part.
@Maxz I cannot remember who it was - but I read one public official was saying "If in two months we look back and can say 'wow, we really overreacted!' that will be a win!"
I don't know what the future holds but I do know I'm getting scared. I'm looking at the virus numbers and the number infected seems to be growing faster each day. I'm looking at the economic reports and thousands are getting laid off as the markets tank and the US government just dumps money on it hoping it will fix things without much plan beyond that. My friend in Texas works at a Target and she sent me pictures from the store - empty shelves and yet there were apparently people lined up in front of the store at opening. My aunt in Michigan has no work because the bar she tends is closed. At my mother's call center all the lunch lobby areas are closed but because she takes calls for medical orders they're busier than ever. My uncle who was supposed to have special tests to see if he has cancer has been told to wait because they don't have the staff to spare and he is lower priority...
I'm not worried about the end of times - but I am worried about the next 6 months to a couple years. Even if we bring the virus under control in a month or two, the damage to the economy could be devastating for a lot longer - and I'm not convinced the virus will be under control in a month or two yet...
@Heavyarms55 I think that quote is bang on. One thing the SARS epidemic did was at least alert many East Asian countries to dangers of viruses of this, and drive home the need for early, collective, sweeping, preventative measures. The harder you go at the beginning, the easier the rest of the process. It we had extinguished this while it was only kindling, no doubt this thread would be full of comments claiming that it was never a big deal in the first place. It would have been infinitely more preferable to the current situation, but still. The very least we can hope is to learn something from these events. If there’s one thing we can learn now, it’s that the earlier measures are taken, the better, and the earliest possible time at the moment is, well... the moment itself.
I know how you feel regarding relatives. My Dad is in his 80s and living alone back in the UK, and had a lung operation several months ago. Other than that, he’s generally in pretty good health, and remains quite active and frisky, but it’s definitely a very ‘at risk’ group. We had a long video chat yesterday, and it was nice to hear from him. He’s seems to be pretty philosophical about the whole thing (“I’ve had a good life and raised five beautiful children”, to quote), but I was at least relieved to hear that he’s taking sensible measures as he was a habit of throwing himself into things and paying the price later. He came and visited me in Hokkaido last January with my brother (where I was more concerned about him getting pneumonia or eaten by a bear), and it was wonderful to spend some proper time with him again after being away for over a year. Anyway, we’re going to be calling more regularly from now on. He also asked me to subscribe to his blog, which is the most 2020 last which I can imagine.
The economy is definitely another concern. If one thing is for sure it’s that crises have a habit of reshaping society, so the least we can hope is that people can pull together and support each other in ways that allow each other to keep growing, possibly in new ways. A lot of local businesses in this town (particularly restaurants) has changed the way they do things. For example, offering more take-out based meals, which is turn has kept the kids out of school fed, and the parents from having to spend all their time cooking. I believe there have also been subsidies from the town to keep the prices of these meals closer that of standard school meals. People have rallied around local institutions, which can at the very least have helped to dull the blow. Again, these are very small stories in a very global scale event, but they do underscore the importance or rethinking the way we do things and of community in all its forms. It’s become a cliche at this point, but we’re very much all in this together, even if that means spending a more than average amount of time apart.
What I truly don't understand at all is WHAT people are buying? What changed? What are people buying so much of now that it's collapsing the entire supply chain in a week? There wasn't a production shortage of most things. Even imports weren't that shorted, save for a few countries and the obvious effect of China. A week ago, everything was 100% normal in the supply chain outside a handful of categories. IN a week the shelves are bare everywhere, etail is a week behind in shipping, and somehow in the past few hours Amazon has apparently changed that deliveries of anything they themselves haven't determined to be essential are pushed back a MONTH. They've been shuttering all retail and telling us to shop online - and now we find out that the empeor has no clothes and online isn't actually capable of replacing retail, backing up a month with just a week of acting as retails replacement. But what are all these people buying this week that they weren't buying last week, that it indefinitely cripples the supply chain?
Further, Amazon was pretty much our only real source of goods before as retail collapsed even before this. With them offline, the ability to purchase almost anything goes out the window, and let's face it, this is basically them going offline for a month.
As of today, Amazon does not exist.
THey tell the sick not to leave their homes.....yet food delivery and such is booked up weeks out. It never had much capacity to begin with. So of COURSE the sick are out shopping. What choice do they have? And with the supply limits, everyone's going multiple times a week or to every store in the area to even shop weekly.
It's exceedingly clear that the entirity of modern civilization was built "as fast and as high and as dense" as was possible without any thought as to how it actually functions is less than ideal conditions. The "Western World" is an ultra high rise without a fire escape. And the basement is on fire.
We are currently cut off mostly from reasonable supplies within reasonable timeframes. Life is generally halted. But stranger - there's no actual reason for that to have happened. There weren't real shortages of anything. Maybe delays, like the week before Christmas, due to a demand surge. But no real shortages of anything at all. Poeple CREATED a shortage - I have no idea what they're buying but they're buying so much of it delivery is booked for a MONTH on "Earth's Largest Selection" - Are people really consuming 4x what they were consuming before? What do they suddenly need in that volume they didn't need prior? It all makes no sense.
I find myself in the position that I already lived largely as a hermit beyond work. I had my little niche...my little things I do and keep busy....in practice I'd have been in great position to weather it just fine. And yet this weird overrun of the entire supply chain means I can't even get basics - or things that are for me basics rather than whatever Bezos wishes to define as what should be basics for everyone as Minister of Consumerism for All Earth, and the supermarket as well.
It makes no sense.
@Heavyarms55@Maxz Despite the humility there, the future projection is quite obvious, has always been obvious, and really was obvious even without this particular disease emerging. Based only on human behavior we've seen in Europe and the US (probably not you guys in Japan), enough of the population doesn't care - they are spreading it endlessly beyond any ability to contain. Doesn't matter if it's most people or not. It's merely enough. They are telling us this is all a 2 week shutdown (as of last week) meaning one week left. As of the following monday we'll all be back to our regularly scheduled programs. If we do that, than the 2 weeks had no value at all and might as well not have been done (and then the supply chain nightmare wouldn't have existed.) On the other hand we can't endure indefinite shutdowns of all life, financially, and meanwhile, with stores like Amazon basically shut down for a month, key infrastructure of just doing a normal routine and functioning business is down. The unemployment is mounting - and a lot of what isn't now will keep growing over years. I don't see how 100% of the population does not get the disease over the course of now, and when a vaccine comes out, and even after that certainly not everyone will get a vaccine, want a vaccine, or be capable of a vaccine in that time. I'm not even sure I'd trust a brand new vaccine to a brand new disease concocted in the utmost of rushes and releaed with a nod and win and fingers crossed out of necessity. There's that risk of trading corona for cancer or something worse. That won't go well either. Yet we can't live forever in a lockdown. MOST of us here are expecting as of a week from now we go back to the daily commute to the office. No one has said otherwise....yet Best Buy is suspending appliance delivery for 30 days starting now. There are mixed messages from all corners. Officially it's a 2 week holdover and we're half way done. Yet stores are closing for a month. Which is it? Yet cases keep climbing (though that was expected.) There's been several cases here, so it's certainly been in the stores that I now have to be in multiple times a week. How do all of us not get it at that point? And if so, what's the point of even doing the lockdown at all? It needed to be a stated 1 month or 2 month or whatever time from the start, not daily changing strategies that most people don't even know about. And the daily changes fueld more of the panic. It wasn't an unknown situation. China and Italy already existed....the information was already there.
Even if this thing ends in 2 weeks let alone 2 months, the economy is totalled. Even if the "economy" can rebound, many many many lives will be ruined beyond repair. I imagine the suicide rate will dwarf the disease's death toll. In a sense, a fast killer like Black Death may have been a mercy compared to the future this will leave for more people. Even if the disease becomes a footnote, the real damage is in the collapse of civilization. That's not a bleak contrarianism. We're watching it collapse in real time right before our eyes. It's already in progress.
Even the Medical Industrial Complex is failing. It's faltered back to "real" medicine - disease, injury, emergency care. The rest of the superfluous medical industry is shut down like retail. NO elective procedures, outpatient procedures. No eyeglasses. No dentistry beyond emergency. It's truly a rapid return to the dark ages. And most importantly there's no guidance as to when this ends, if this ends, or if this new third world existance is just our futures. Queue the panic buying of who knows what. In a sense that's smart. Spend every penny now. It's not like you can use it when everything closes.
But never fear, despite having no food, no clothes, and no supplies, despite there not actually being a reason for a shortage in any of those things, no hand sanitizer, because it's sold out everywhere, we'll be back to the daily grind in just seven days over here! Or so they keep telling us today.
The public, and the powers that be, both, thought th were invincible from such things. And nobody considered such problems.
The absolute only good that could come out of this whole thing is the global birth rate could crash to negative percents. That's the one thing the world needs more than absolutely anything. "Density" brought us this disaster. Just as it did the great plagues of the past.
@NEStalgia In defense of Amazon - and I can't believe I am saying this - it's not as though they could have predicted this either. No company expect to be, over night, the primary source of retail goods overnight.
A huge part of the fear is the fact that nothing like this has happened before. Not really. The economy has never had to shut down like this for two weeks and we really don't know how much damage it's going to do. And that fear is driving a lot of people to stock up while they can because they don't trust that it will be there next time they try. And retail, Amazon or brick and mortar, aren't prepared for that sudden surge of demand because it's simply unprecedented. You might have localized issues with natural disasters like hurricanes or tornadoes, but this is something that's happening across the world to greater and lesser extent. I feel like no one was prepared for this because nothing like it has happened before. Governments weren't ready, nor was industry. I even read a news story about plumbing problems - because people are running out of toilet paper, people are using baby wipes and paper towel - which doesn't break up in the sewage like toilet paper does, and is starting to clog up pipes and sewage systems.
And it's like you said, the US shut down officially ends in a week - and yet, some stores are closed for a month and there's nothing to suggest the virus will go away in 7 days. It's a nightmare worst case, but if everyone thinks it's just over and goes out again in a week thinking things are fine, things could get much worse.
If you believe them, China says they managed to contain the virus in Wuhan - but it took a lockdown that lasted almost two months! Not two weeks!
@NEStalgia
When people got panic attack, they will lost their sanity.
They will took action based on their panic level.
The more panic, the more absurd their decision.
Also, here in Indonesia , hoarding is prohibited. Every Supermarket will limit the purchase quantity to avoid hoarding.
@Anti-Matter Those limits are going into place all over - the problem is they can be hard to enforce. Some people are plenty willing to bribe. Fear drives people to "bend" the rules.
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Have you guys seen the extremes that restaurants are going to in order to keep people apart? I went to a subway and they had tape laid out on the floor in an X shape and they expect customers to stand on the X's while ordering their food. Like spacing everybody apart at the restaurants is really gonna save lives. It's like segregation all over again! Pretty soon we won't even be able to be in the same room together at any place. Seeing those masks on everybodys face just looks dumb too btw. I'm like what's up with all the Ninja's? Oh crap i think i just saw scorpion! I don't know if i should run or ask for an autograph!
Oh and would everybody relax with the toilet paper? You're buying more than you would ever use in a six year period if you had continual diarrhea!
Everybody's gone flip city! The mood slime from ghostbusters 2 is the cornholio virus!
"Freedom is the right of all sentient beings" Optimus Prime
@Zeldafan79 The mask thing is actually relatively sensible, I believe. There’s some debate as to how effective they are in stopping you from actually catching the disease, but in terms of stopping it being spread in the first place, I believe they do fair bit of good.
In non-pandemic times, it’s standard practice in many East Asian countries to wear a mask if you have a common cold (etc.) as an act of courtesy. Given that the current virus can be carried without evident symptoms, we don’t necessarily know who has it, so widespread adoption ultimately a desirable thing in a population. You might object on an aesthetic level, but fashion tastes aren’t exactly a top priority in a crisis. Let the people wear their masks. It could be that which saves a relative’s life.
If i could back to December 2019, how did the virus started to spread, who have spread the virus and if it was by human, what motives behind it ?
I want to time travel and get rid those pesky virus and or those peoples.
If i could back to December 2019, how did the virus started to spread, who have spread the virus and if it was by human, what motives behind it ?
All of the evidence suggests it started in Wuhan, China around November 2019. It's molecular structure is apparently most similar to viruses found in bats and pangolins https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200317175442.htm
So the assumption is that it jumped species to humans via a natural mutation around that time. Viruses do that quite often. It wasn't intended by anyone, just bad luck.
It may have developed naturally but I have no doubts that China deliberately allowed it out into the wider World. Perhaps with the aim of weakening the west and shifting the balance in power. They knew fine well how woefully unprepared we are, experts have warned about it for many years. Their reasons for doing so are all speculation for now. What's not speculation though, is the fact they covered it up for the crucial few weeks at the start and continued to miselad the WHO as late as January 14th. There will be severe consequences for China. They have been getting away with far too much, for too long. Just look to their behaviour in the South Pacific over the last decade and their 90% monopoly on rare Earth materials. They've got the world by the balls and that must change.
@Heavyarms55 Speaking of "worse before better", apparently the top health official in NJ had comment that everyone would get it. The politicians only roughly talked arouned that when pegged down. Other states keep saying things about "trying to limit it to not overwhelm the health system" etc. I think it's not too hard to read between the lines that at this point the expectation is that every last one of us will get it sooner or later, they are just trying to "roll it out" to us so it's not all at once. That's not very encouraging. Of course "get it" is of mixed meaning. Not everyone develops symptoms, even. It seems prone to having carriers which is probably a big part of the spread. For all we know, MILLIONS could have had it since January, spreading it around, and none the wiser. Could be me. could be you. We don't now.
Not in defense of Amazon, they've been single handedly wiping out all retail for years, apparently poised to become the main supplier of goods. Yet now they fall apart? More importantly, Sunday morning they were 1 week behind in shipping like most other shippers. Then Sunday night they roll out some change that everything except some items are a month away. This seems partly about the backup, but also partly some sort of strategic direction they want to take. They're basically dropping most of their customers for only select categories they haven't made clear. Yet their competitors (what few of them there are) don't seem to be in that same place. Worse, sudden changes like that are what is CAUSING the mass panic and hoarding. It makes the hoarders the right ones. You really odn't know if what you see now will be available in an hour, so you really do need to buy everything in sight before it's gone. Amazon's making things worse. When the public sees that everything you need is a month away....what reaction will that cause? Run to the competitors and buy everything before they do it too!!
Even I've started overbuying some things.....there wasn't a real shortage, but the idiots made the shortages a real one so now you really do have to hoard to counter the hoarders otherwise they leave nothing left.....it's a viscous cycle now. Well I didn't really overbuy, it's all stuff I was going to buy in the next 8 weeks or so, ut I had to buy it all up front just in case.
But yet there wasn't a need for ANY of that. If people continued buying like normal, the supplies and economies would have functioned 80% of normal. It's a self fulfilling prophecy. And DISASTROUS communication from a clueless leadership throughout the western world helped the panic. IF they came out day 1 and said "here's what we're doing, we're shutting everythgin down for 8 weeks, we'll contain the disease, stay at hope, there are no supply shortages, there might be extended lead times, just shop normally, that's not threatened." things owuld have been mostly fine. Instead they went with "be careful and wash your hands" to "we're closing some things" to "we're closing everything partly" to "we're closing everything fully" - the daily progression of worse and worse and worse spurred the panic. Because every day you never know what new unthinkable change happens tomorow. If they just said it up front "disease takes x time, containing it takes at least that time, here's what needs to happen at a minimum" - information they should have had.....this is 3 months into the existence of this disease in other countries.....
And I still can't for the life of me figure out what people are buying so much of all at once they weren't buying last month.
@Anti-matter It's a strange moment when you're the only one with rational thought
The lockdown here in The Netherlands has been extended until June. I imagine other countries will follow soon. This isn't going away anytime soon. More extreme measures will be taken and you will be fined if you gather in groups; including birthday parties and the likes. You're not allowed to invite more than three people at a given time. On one hand it sounds a bit extreme, but at the same time it puts into perspective how overworked the health sector must the currently, and will be for the foreseeable future. I also wonder about the economic impacts. I'm not worried about the big companies, but the small pubs and restaurants, how much of those will be left when this is all said and done?
@OorWullie Sabotaging the economies of your best customers who buy all your garbage isn't a very smart economic plan. I doubt the Chinese did it intentionally. I trust Beijing about as far as I can throw it, but while they may be shrewd and manipulative, they're not stupid and self destructive. Now could someone ELSE have done it intentionally? It wouldn't be hard for some other group or country to travel through China then somewhere else....or NK for that matter - right on the border with a lot of back and forth. That's believable. Unlike China, they'd have nothing to lose.
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