Topic: Coronavirus outbreak

@Octane Oh, okay. Thanks for that. I’m not a fan of theories either, and I try to check news outlets against each other anyway. Because clicks.

I'm a massive fan of conspiracy theories.

They're just unfortunately mostly untrue.

@JaxonH To be fair, they found one expert that disagreed with the notion that “we do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.”.

In all fairness, it is in all our interests to locate the source of the problem, because that could prevent future outbreaks. But there is a lot of fear-mongering going on. It's the cold war all over again; except instead of Russia and nuclear weapons, it's China and bio-weapons. Modern day society needs something to fear and point their fingers at when something goes wrong.

It may have been a lab accident, but in the end, still obtained from an animal and not bio-engineered. But we don't know. Those wet markets are giant scale petri dishes for all kinds of viruses; so if this outbreak didn't come from a wet market, the next one most certainly will.

all kinds of labs study viruses. not just in china.

I sense a plot to destroy americans. The dark side of the force surrounds china!
Execute order 19! Covid 19 that is!😜

@Zeldafan79 Don't panic. Consider some factors like your age and your health, I am certain you are not 70 year old man on the computer. A young (below 50) and healthy person are likely to survive. Call a doctor to get yourself checked, and isolate yourself for awhile even if it turns out you just have a cold.

We're going to be alright. Once we have therapeutics to help muffle this, herd immunity, etc... we'll get there. This will probably, like the flu, return seasonally in different strains. Panicking, and fear can weaken a body physically, not to mention cause confrontational scenarios.

@Zeldafan79 Don't play with this, get tested. For your safety and those around you. God bless, stay safe! Even if you aren't in the "most at risk" group, the virus can be dangerous for everyone. People of all ages are at risk, different levels perhaps, but at risk.

@Maxz To be fair, I'm not saying Tokyo doesn't get pretty hot and humid, it's just not as bad as Florida or even parts of Michigan in summer. When I was in Florida last time I felt vaguely like I could drink the air and I was worried my food would mildew from kitchen to table...

My social isolation is still going well, though I'll need to grab groceries later this week. I don't get how some people are going crazy from boredom indoors; if I weren't still working, I'd be using this unprecedented time to make a dent in my game backlog and booklog. I have enough material to keep me busy for at least a year.

@Zeldafan79 While I don't think you should go into panic mode, I do think you should get tested. I'd go into quarantine even if I tested negative; I wouldn't want anyone else to get sick!

@Heavyarms55 Florida gets bad, but by far the most humid place I've been is New Orleans in July. If you ever go, bring extra shirts.

Schools are getting ready to open back up here in Japan in about a week. At least for club activities. I guess we'll find out if that low number Japan has has been accurate or not.

@Tyranexx Haven't been there, but with the lake to the north and the gulf to the south and being below sea level, I have to imagine you can indeed drink the air.

@Tyranexx

I have a huge backlog of video games, and Animal Crossing. I've been content with my two paid weeks off. As long as we work together (from a distance, of course), we will get through this. I just hope some idiots like those spring breakers in Florida don't screw everything up.

@Heavyarms55 Drown in it, more like! XD I'm sure it isn't nearly as bad this time of year. I just don't recommend going in the summer.

@MortalKombat2007 Some folks in the company I work for that aren't able to work from home and aren't considered essential personnel right now are on furlough while retaining their pay and benefits. I'm not considered essential per se, but all of us in my team are fully capable of working remotely. My manager allowed us to pull some of our work equipment to make working from home more bearable. I can't complain about the commute!

This situation is frustrating for many people. I know it's definitely affected others way more than it has for me. But yes, if we all work together towards a solution, don't point fingers, and avoid causing unnecessary discord, we'll pull through.

@MortalKombat2007 Personally I am much more worried about the quarantines being cancelled too early than the spring breakers. Interviews with doctors from South Korea, Singapore and China have all said it's absolutely vital to keep the quarantine in place until you have major wide scale testing - then those ill need to be isolated. Only then does the spread slow and "flatline".

If America - or any country - let's everyone go back to normal too quickly, without enough testing and without isolating those sick, then said country could see another major surge of cases. And that could force another mass quarantine and do far more damage to the economy as well.

@JaxonH That's incredibly interesting and is something I have not previously heard anywhere. Not hard to connect those dots. Doubtfully intentional (though what research were they doing. Sars studies, or weaponization experiments?) It gets out via infected worker, failed containment, sloppy hazmat refuse an animal got into, ended up in the wet market, and eaten.... Cover-up ensures "we saw nothing to report" and the end of the world begins.

The question after that, though remains if it got out by chance or someone (not Beijing) was spreading it around the world on purpose. Plenty with motive, will, and ability to do so.

@Zeldafan79 There was nothing even remotely similar, at least in the US for the AIDS situation. That was background noise to most of the public. A worry with a lot of unknowns, but you'd have to go back at least as far as the 1930s or before to find something even remotely comparable with things like Polio, Smallpox, Rubella. However nothing documented from them suggests even that was as disastrous as this. WWII is the nearest approximation of total disaster like this, albeit not a disease and therefore not as direct an effect on the general population outside the war theatre countries.

@Heavyarms55 I'm of mixed mind. In one hand two weeks is far too little.... Ending it then would make the chaos of the two weeks meaningless.

On the other hand they all but repeat that they're not even trying to contain it, just to not overwhelm hospitals... They know we all get it at this point.

I don't think it should end on Monday. But if they go 6, 10 weeks like they are saying, most people are dead anyway here. No jobs, no healthcare, no pension, no future. You leave quarantine only to find any minimum wage job no matter how far you travel to do it, and that's probably your life until it kills you? Dying by plague might be a Mercy compared to surviving if that's to be our lives.

I lambasted Trump earlier for his idiotic ignoring of this problem at the start. On the other hand I have to say I don't disagree with some of what he's saying now. We really can't endure the shutdowns, it's destroying more lives than the disease is at the moment, all to avoid a disease they barely guise their statements that it's beyond containment and we're all going to get it anyway. So instead of all risking death to a disease were guaranteeing personal ruin and misery until we end up risking death to the same disease anyway. Either way is a disaster. At this point what exactly are we trying to save? Lives? Or cause of death? The disease terrifies me but the collapse dooms me.

@NEStalgia Dying might be a mercy compared to surviving? The world survived the Great Depression and two world wars. The economy will recover. There's a future waiting for us. But we have to fight this plague. If we just accept that it's going to hit everyone do you realize what that means? Let's look only at America:

Looking at global numbers today there have been apx. 422,000 confirmed cases. 109,000 recoveries and 18000 dead. That's about a 15% death rate. If the virus hits everyone of the 327 million people in America that means nearly 50 million people in America alone will die. That's almost 100 times as many Americans who died in WW2. We must oppose that result with everything we have!

If everyone globally gets this virus that would be well over a billion dead. You want to talk about a shattered economy? THAT will shatter the economy like nothing in history.

Maybe you think dying would be a mercy than living to see that - but then I guess I'm a glutten for punishment and a cruel SOB because I'm not ready to roll over and die, nor do I want anyone I know and love to die either. "mercy" or not.

I don't think we're at the point of no return. Why are you so sure everyone is going to get sick? It seems that China, South Korea, Japan and Singapore have successfully managed to flatline the spread and get things under control. I suppose they could all be lying but I'm in Japan right now and the numbers have remained low. Low enough that they are talking about lifting restrictions soon. I can't speak for the other nations but I feel like it would be rather hard to hide tens of thousands of sick people.

America and others need to follow the same kind of plan: quarantine, mass testing, isolate those infected then slowly lift restrictions. Economically we're probably looking at some tough times ahead. But I don't think we're facing the catastrophe you fear. Not yet. The economy will always recover. It's just a matter of time.

Letting everyone out early, before we isolate those who are sick? That's opening the door to a spread that can't possibly be contained. That happens... see above.

So the 2020 Summer Olympics is going to be delayed till next year. For a moment I thought were going end up with something like this 1936 old cartoon of the Olympics be like in the year 2000:

@Heavyarms55 we've already had one state health chief state that everyone will get it, directly, and the governor of said state not really negating that beyond bring defiant that they'll try to prevent that. Leadership in several other states saying plainly they're just trying to slow it to not overwhelm the health system all at once. The general theme is they're no longer attempting to contain and eliminate it, simply roll it out slowly to the inevitable. I'm sure the picture of bleaker here than, say Iowa, when you look at the map and see that huge red beacon, I'm somewhere under that red beacon of doom that keeps expanding. But there people around here do sure love to galavant even now.... I'm sure plenty of them have all ready been enough other places to spread it plenty.

That aside, the only thing that ended the first great depression was ww2. "Economies recover" from disasters doesn't tell the whole story.

@NEStalgia Economies do recover. Sometimes it takes longer or short or dramatic events. The only time in history you can kind of argue that that didn't happen was fall of the Roman Empire and the ensuing dark ages in Europe. But even then, humanity survived and recovered.

But even if they are right, and this is going to hit everyone - I'm not about to roll over and die. I don't see that as a mercy no matter how things get. I'm gonna fight, kicking and scream and darn it all if needed I will literally fight and probably die then. But I'm not gonna roll over and die thinking it's the easy way out. And I'll pressure all those around me to keep fighting. Maybe if things get as bad as you describe I'll eat a bullet for it - but then, I win, I went down fighitng.

@Heavyarms55 The dark ages are probably one of the better comparisons in that it was the plague that extended it as it was. The dark ages lasted nearly 600 years. If you're talking about "recovery" happening centuries from now, that's not exactly what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the lives of the people here now. GoogAzon getting back to full speed and growing their market cap (now with 80% more low cost third world labor!) isn't going to mean much to the millions of homeless that pop up in the next 2 years.

The First Depression (let's be real, that's what that will be soon - historians name this stuff later on, not now - same with Black Death, it wasn't called Black Death, at the time, nor was WWII called WWII at the time) had no visible end. It was the sudden economic activity of major war that ended it. For the winning side, it was the spurred economic activity of production and the "spoils of war" - for the losing side it was the decimation of total population and the "reset" of the economic activity from reconstruction that really ended the depression. There were no other indicators of a recovery beyond that, and with the hindsight of looking at the ideas and methods leaders had at the time...they were going to fail miserably at trying, and always were. Wars tend to spur economic gains , and often have been caused by, and were a resolution of, such economic problems.

Well your good news is odds are you're not going to die from it. You could but odds don't favor it. So there's that. The 15% death rate sounds remarkably incorrect either way. I've not seen that number floated anywhere else. I've seen as much as 4% floated. Officially it kills about 10x more than infuenza, which is substantial, but still in the low single digit percentages overall.

They're putting too much emphasis on those confirmed cases numbers. They largely mean nothing other than statistically identifying hot spots. In the US the official policy is, if you think you have it, stay home, wait for it to go away. Don't go to a medical facility unless you're (I quote) "very, very, very" bad condition. It's safer for you if you don't have it, and safer for everyone else if you do. So only the "very very very" bad cases get tested. They're rolling out more testing for the masses in limited ways now, and, surprise surprise, the numbers are skyrocketing. I.E. a lot more people have it than appear in those numbers and previously would have. It was only the endangered cases that even appeared in numbers before, heavily skewing the values of the death rates.

But what that also tells us is: a LOT of people already have/have had this. The numbers make it look like it's suddenly surging, but the reality is they're just covering more territory in testing people that otherwise would have gotten over it and been fine after. What that makes me question here is: How many people had it in February in the US....but we weren't testing. How many had it in January, but we weren't testing. How many "colds" were actually this for the past several months? Meaning what overall percentage of the population already was exposed long before the lockdowns where it may have been circulating. It's haunting thinking of New Years. They kept touting, "the biggest crowd ever, over a million people from all around the world"....all in shoulder touching space. Weeks after the virus was already known in Asia. They did recaps of the big news stories of 2019....the virus wasn't among them. Do we really believe no one in that crowd (including a large crowd from Asia due to the performance of BTS) may have brought this then? That was Dec 31. NYC appears to be the biggest hot spot suddenly. What if it's been a hot spot for months and nobody knew? If so, it's quite literally EVERYWHERE. Alternately we have the idea that suddenly NYC propagates a disease in a few weeks during a mostly total lockdown far, far faster than LA managed to in over a month plus? That seems hard to believe. They 're similarly dense cities.