No Time to Die... from COVID-19

[hazard]

As of 23rd of March, the Netherlands have tightened the restrictions on public interaction (most likely caused at least in part by the good early spring weather causing the beaches to be crowded). And I mean 'the public safety coordinator can declare public spaces closed and enforce them with the force of law' tightening of restrictions. Barbers, beauticians and other close contact professions are closed. Restrictions will remain in place until the 6th of April, but all public events have been canceled until the 1st of June.

Number of cases, severe cases and deaths continue to rise and continue to rise faster, but it's been noted that not all information is passed on during the same update cycle it is acquired. It's expected that the social distancing measures instituted 2 weeks ago will start showing results by the end of the week, or early next week.

[Dartz]

Ireland seems to be holding steady at a 23% daily increase - on a 7 day average.

Coronavirus tally so far.
1501 cases all-island.
23% seven day average increase.
780 less than expected on the 16th of this month.

At current rate, approx 6900 all-island cases by end of month.

17000 tests in ROI so far. Of which 1329 are positive.

At a stupid guess, that means maybe 7.8% hit-rate. Backlog of 40,000 tests.

At an ever stupider guess, that means maybe 3127 'undetected' cases.

Real cases maybe 4500-5000.

Yikes.

Private hospitals and public hospitals will treat coronavirus patients equally, at no cost. No more 2-tier system. Shit just gets done.

[nocarename]

Maskwacis activates 'medicine chest' treaty clause, declaring state of emergency.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/...-1.5507902

Treaty 6 includes provisions that there be medical support amongst other things from the Federal Government. This action is to formally activate that support requirement.

For those interested in such things, Treaty 6 covers part of Alberta and Saskatchewan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_6

[robkelk]

Prince Charles tests positive for coronavirus

---

Something to tell the conspiracy theorists:

No, the new coronavirus wasn't created in a lab, scientists say

[classicdrogn]

"Bah, scientists. Of course they'd say that, they're probably in on it, and if not they're covering it up!"

[robkelk]

How a lab in Saskatchewan that focuses on animals became Canada's $23M hope for a COVID-19 vaccine

Maybe, if we're lucky, even a broad-spectrum coronavirus vaccine.

Why hasn't this happened already?

Finding a pan-coronavirus vaccine has never been a winning pitch for grant money — until now

[SilverFang01]

From what I read, if the work on a SARS vaccine had not been stopped it could have given us quite a leg up with a vaccine for COVID-19

[Dartz]

Prince Charles in isolation with Covid-19
Prince Andrew in isolation with Kerry-14

.... >..>.... I'm going to hell.

[LynnInDenver]

The rest of the Denver metro area (all four counties) are going into lockdown tomorrow morning. We're exempt at my work because we're doing printing and communications for three major hospitals, a senior care service, and a child service organization, etc. I now get to have my temperature checked before I punch in, and after I punch out, and I've asked my husband to administer a temperature check every morning before I head to work.

I'll also be budgeting more time to get to work in case I get stopped and asked to justify my commute.

[Norgarth]

[LynnInDenver]

...and my husband just got laid off today because of this whole mess.

He had to physically remove the list of projects from my hand before I could start crossing stuff off it.

And had my first bonafide crying jig on replacement hormones, yay for achieving gender transition milestones during stressful scenarios.

What a gawdawful week this is turning into.

We'll be fine for a couple of months, they're paying him for four weeks, and he took money out of the retirement account because he had a feeling we might need it, and he should be more than eligible for unemployment... but still. Second year in a row we're getting our financial teeth kicked in. Literally, like 13 months since him getting laid off and me getting two days of hospital stay and 3 months worth of surprise billing after that. I'm probably going to be really hard against incepting large projects going forward given that we can't seem to keep enough traction without someone throwing loads of loose sand under us.

Edit: And the State is now going into "please stay the hells home."

My husband already has applied for three jobs. Then he went to bed earlier than normal.

I was going to work on projects tonight. I can tell you that just didn't happen.

[robkelk]

This shouldn't need to be said, but...

The government of Canada does not have time (or bandwidth) to send individuals text messages regarding employment insurance at this time. Any such message you might have received is a scam. You have to ask the government (not the other way around), and you have to go through the government's website https://canada.ca (leaving the URL bare on purpose) in order to get the money.

Soap and water works because of the soap - there is medical evidence that soap disrupts the outer layer of the coronavirus. The water is just along for the ride. All those suggestions about rinsing with warm water, or gargling with warm water, or gargling with warm water with some salt in it, well... any water hot enough to kill a virus on its own will also kill you from the live-steam burns.

[hazard]

Well, no.

The water is there to have a function too; it's a solvent that will take up the soap and facilitate its functioning. It'll also carry away all the dirt (including bits of virus) that it picks up in the process of washing.

That said, the chemistry won't care about whether you wash with cold water, warm water or boiling hot water, as long as you are using liquid water and are scrubbing properly for the required 20 seconds. So use whichever you find more comfortable. I know I don't want to feel like my fingers are freezing off my hands.

[robkelk]

Well, no.

The water is there to have a function too; it's a solvent that will take up the soap and facilitate its functioning. It'll also carry away all the dirt (including bits of virus) that it picks up in the process of washing.

Well, yeah - that's what I meant when I said the water was just along for the ride.

[LynnInDenver]

A helpful posting from a friend:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p09hpKAv9Jc

Also, we went for a walk along the block when I got home... it's helped both of us a bit.

[Bob Schroeck]

Well. Ran out right after work ended to see if I could get a few things. And yay -- toilet paper was available at the local BJ's, bread and OJ at the Stop 'n' Shop... I found everything on my list for the first time in some two weeks. Maybe the covidiot sheep have finally run out of room in their homes to hoard supplies.

[Shepherd]

Still lots of bare aisles at my local (major chain) supermarket despite - as of this morning's newspaper - there being only 5 confirmed cases among a population of well over 300,000 in my county. Of course this may have almost as much to do with the supply chain as the shoppers. One of the employees noted he works in the seafood department, ordered over 40 boxes of stuff, and got 6. No wonder the shelves are empty if he's getting 15% of what he ordered.

[hazard]

Just in time supply chains. Very efficient, very little wastage, very vulnerable to demand spikes and loss of cargo.

[Star Ranger4]

[GethN7]

A little something I wrote on some advice on how to deal with this pandemic:

https://gethn7.blogspot.com/2020/03/some...virus.html

[LynnInDenver]

We're at least a week out still in Colorado from getting a better sense if the curve is actually being flattened by the measures. I'm still annoyed at all the people who didn't take this thing seriously when health officials were asking that we try to stay home, since it's made this take longer than it should have in the first place when we realized it was in the country.

Denver put up construction fencing around certain park amenities, because people kept taking the caution tape down; Denver can't clean the facilities at the required rate to keep them open.

There is still encouragement to go outside and get exercise, as long as we all keep our distance, and keep to our local parks.

My husband and I busted through most of the campaign expansion for the game Space Base today. I'm 3D printing some bits for Gloomhaven; I want us to get it on the table more than we have been.

Edit: 13 more deaths already this weekend. And there's still the screaming for more PPE (they're pretty much having a donation drive every weekend for anyone who can donate whatever, and I'm waiting for the demand that if we have it and it's unused, we must absolutely give it up); I suspect there's going to be a demand to increase the PPE available specifically for medical facilities after this is over, if necessary with a commensurate reduction in the PPE made available for private parties if production rates can't be improved. Additional Edit: I realize part of the PPE lack is the way this has absolutely hammered the supply chains, including that China likely sequestered a lot of it just to deal with their own major surge.

[hazard]

It's been anticipated in the local news for a while now, but the Netherlands are extending its social distancing regulations to April 28th, another 22 days from the previous April 6th date.

The RIVM has also switched its public data tracking on the map from 'number of cases known' to 'number of cases hospitalized' in what is to me a pretty clear attempt to make the current administration look more capable by using a lower number.

Current total and today's numbers are:
12 595 infected (845 today)
4 712 hospitalized (722 today)
1 039 deceased (175 today)

We are seeing a slowdown in the rate of infection here in the Netherlands, so at least the regulations in place to slow the rate of infections are working.

Testing is still not comprehensive, but a few clever boffins have figured out that they can detect COVID-19 particles in sewage water. While this won't tell them who is infected, they can use this to figure out a rough estimate of how much of a given watershed is infected and if the number of infected is rising or shrinking.


Regarding PPE: A part of that is how in the modern economy you generally want to keep your stocks as low as possible, as the just-in-time economy can deliver a box of new supplies in a couple of days. Unfortunately, while that works perfectly well for things with an always steady demand and supply, it's very vulnerable to sudden surges in demand and drops in supply. Like you are seeing here and now, with the COVID-19 outbreak. It would be less bad if hospitals kept larger stocks of PPE.

During the ebola outbreak we'd have seen something similar if it wasn't for the fact that ebola has a very short incubation time, patients are infectious only for a very short time and IIRC not before they develop symptoms, that symptoms are obvious and debilitating and that ebola is very difficult to transmit to another. All of which combine into a disease that, while nasty, can be quarantined and isolated effectively and easily.

COVID-19 however has an incubation time of 14 days or more, it's infectious during that incubation time, it is very easy to transmit, and most insidious of all a large section of the population develops either no symptoms despite being infected and infectious, or has mild symptoms that may be confused for the flu or common cold. This is not a disease that's easy to isolate and quarantine, which means it'll spread and that more of the world will need PPE for longer.

[LynnInDenver]

They're already talking here in Denver about the need to extend the Stay At Home period through April 30.

The two of us are going to be job hunting, my husband to just get a new job to replace the one he lost last week, and me to get one that's going to be rather less sensitive to economic shocks in general - I'd already been considering moving out of the printing industry, and this is a pretty good incentive to do so now. I'm also going to be diversifying my income stream over the coming months; YouTube, Patreon (I was already in the ramp up to launch a Making channel), and probably trying to make my scale modeling and 3d printing work into a "self-supporting" hobby (read: I sell some of my finished models on Etsy or similar). I won't completely eliminate the non-self-supporting hobbies, but we are scaling a lot of that stuff back even if we both get into full time work before we're forced to consider more drastic actions.

[Labster]

My husband and I busted through most of the campaign expansion for the game Space Base today. I'm 3D printing some bits for Gloomhaven; I want us to get it on the table more than we have been.

What's funny is that I just sold my copy of Gloomhaven.  I bought it on sale on Amazon, and sold it for almost the same amount to a gamer who wanted to set up his own copy while self-isolating and playing with the group on Zoom.  When I bought it I didn't realize Gloomhaven was just a tactical minis board game, without a compelling enough story to get my family into it.  I think we like the classic Euros better than the wargames.

Meanwhile, now that the winds died down, every day is grill day in California.  Time to be out gardening the yards, home remodeling, and walking the dogs, and of course BBQ.  Social distancing at its finest.  I'm still stuck inside with work, which is fortunate but doesn't feel that way.  California was the first state to go on full lockdown, and as a result, has the flattest curve in the U.S.  We worry about our figures and avoid excess curves in L.A.

That said, you may want an alternative to grilled meats.  If any of you eat at small, locally-owned restaurants you would like to survive this crisis, order take-out from them.  Large chains will likely survive, but the restaurant business is hard even in the best of times.

[LynnInDenver]

What's funny is that I just sold my copy of Gloomhaven.  I bought it on sale on Amazon, and sold it for almost the same amount to a gamer who wanted to set up his own copy while self-isolating and playing with the group on Zoom.  When I bought it I didn't realize Gloomhaven was just a tactical minis board game, without a compelling enough story to get my family into it.  I think we like the classic Euros better than the wargames.

About the only games we don't care for are the social deduction and hidden role games. Gloomhaven scratches one itch (although it is at heart tactical minis, there's also a little bit of a couple of other things in it), Power Grid another, Feast for Odin yet another. Gloomhaven is just a bear to set up, though, I'm hoping the 3D printing (I've been throwing filaments at it that I've been intending to use up/finish the leftovers of) helps in the regard of making it easier to play and hence easier to get on the table. Plus, at least right now we don't have to tear it down for friends coming over. That said, we've found only one such game can be with us at a time, because of the legacy element; it fired Mice and Mystics and Descent for us.

Meanwhile, now that the winds died down, every day is grill day in California.  Time to be out gardening the yards, home remodeling, and walking the dogs, and of course BBQ.  Social distancing at its finest.  I'm still stuck inside with work, which is fortunate but doesn't feel that way.  California was the first state to go on full lockdown, and as a result, has the flattest curve in the U.S.  We worry about our figures and avoid excess curves in L.A.

We occasionally grill here, but the weather has still been very inconsistent. Plus, allergies. While I managed to dodge the pine allergy my mom has, I've found lately that I do get the "hay fever", which means I'm at least mildly allergic to something around here. And my husband suffers greatly in any pollen bloom.

That said, you may want an alternative to grilled meats.  If any of you eat at small, locally-owned restaurants you would like to survive this crisis, order take-out from them.  Large chains will likely survive, but the restaurant business is hard even in the best of times.

Yeah, we ordered in some pizza yesterday, but by the same token, we can't afford to order in very often right now.