Coronavirus

[sighyoung]

My son just received a communication from the Fulbright Program ordering all participants to return to the United States by April 12th. This is a change from just a few days ago, in which the program said it would support students' decisions to stay in place in certain countries such as Taiwan, whose public health system has done an admirable job so far. At the same time, Taiwan is excluded from the World Health Organization because of China, so there may be special risks, as well.

Frankly, I would prefer that he stay in Taiwan right now: it is dangerous to be traveling now, with greater and extended exposure to the coronavirus en route to the United States, and uncertainty about quarantine requirements and conditions when he returns. The timing couldn't be worse: he's entering the U.S. when the number of cases will still be trending upward sharply, and hospital capacity in numerous cities will be overtaxed.

This is a complete [expletive] show.

[tlombard]

My day has been awesome! Last night I saw on FB that a worker at a gas station in St. Charles (Circle K on Elm) has tested positive for the virus. Of course that is the gas station that a friend and his brother frequent. And the GF was there once over the weekend. And I have spent time with her. And she's been around the friend who's brother was at that particular gas station multiple times last week. Their doctors have told them to quarantine for two weeks obviously. I guess I should too.

Then to make it more fun, I tried to run a quick errand between meetings. I had an hour and a half and I figured the errand would only take twenty minutes. Of course being in a hurry I forgot to swerve the nasty pothole around the corner and got a flat. Thankfully I have a spare in the trunk. The GF got a flat on Saturday (when she was with the friend) as well but her Spark doesn't have a freaking spare so she wasn't as lucky and had to get towed to Dobbs to get a new tire.

I figure we'll give it a week and if neither of us are showing any symptoms by then, we're probably going to just quarantine together the last of the two weeks.

[thrill]

My son just received a communication from the Fulbright Program ordering all participants to return to the United States by April 12th.

What a subtle flex. Shout out to sigh Jr and his academic excellence.


The only mental/emotional arithmetic I'd do on this one is whether or not your son is comfortable enough with his social support over in Taiwan to weather this event. If he is, it seems like a smart move to stay over there. If he's not, it might be worth the risks to be somewhere he's comfortable in a crisis.


I let an old friend move in with me for three months as he was between jobs and I'm extremely grateful. Being alone for weeks as a single person would be tough. Also, my house is large enough to be comfortable in. If I were stuck in some of the places I lived when I was your son's age, I'd get cabin fever in mere days.

[CardsofSTL]

Finally a plan to encourage social distancing that might actually work.

[BottenFieldofDreams]

Finally a plan to encourage social distancing that might actually work.

At first my reaction was "how dare this guy not cram this tweet full of double entendre?" But then a secondary response was "oh no, what if he did and I'm so out of touch I didn't catch it?" Terrifying times, these.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Are there any statisticians on the board that can kind of parse the numbers? USA, in general, looks like a complete [expletive] show. I think they may have finally slown down from the 1.33x gains in total cases they were making every day, but not by much. At the same time, there seem to be quite a few states past the n=100 mark that are well below the 1.33x line while other states (NY in particular) was well above it for a while. And, honestly, NY is driving the USA numbers accounting for almost half.

In short, don't know if I said it or not, but this is going to turn into each state making decisions and each city within the state making further, more stringent decisions, as necessary (like San Francisco going to SIP before CA).

Not to get political, and I don't think this is...I certainly don't mean it as a criticism/praise, just a general observation. Trump says he wants to re-open the economy. But, it's not really his decision. Sure, he could lift the national state of emergency, but the states will still keep theirs especially after seeing how little help the feds can provide. If the economy is going to reopen, at a minimum, the capacity of the healthcare system has to be expanded orders of magnitude overnight to accomodate all those that will require treatment. The hydroxychloriquine zpack is not nothing, but hydroxychloriquine has some serious side effects (including cardiac arrest) so it's not like there's a magic pill.

At the same time, at some point, even if its 6 months down the road, the world does have to open back up. How do we go about doing that if only, say, 10-25% of the nation got the virus and has immunity. It gets back to the fact that preventing outbreaks would require testing which may come available, but in order to do it properly would require tracking....something the citizens of America certainly won't be comfortable with. In short, IDK. There has to be answer, but I don't know what it is.

[Joe Shlabotnik]

I hear thisa loy - America is not OK with tracking. I don't believe it. Cell phones in every pocket, Alexa in the living room, Ring at the door, and Google Assistant everywhere else. We're ALREADY tracked. Have been for years.

Wake up and smell the hummus.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Not disagreeing. But, that's - in theory - consensual. People choose to put alexa in their living room. People let google track them or at least they think they have the ability to stop them.

The government telling everyone to download an app designed specifically to track them so they can be alerted if they cam across someone with a virus and be put into quarantine (ala S. Korea)? That's a bit different.

[Leroy]

I don't know about the whole shelter in place. I moved to ND from SD, and the two towns I'm based in are the high in each state are the hotspots. ND county has 18 cases, and SD county has 13. I'm still not really worried, it seems like we had a heads up on the whole thing before it got out of control. We are distancing, restaurants are carry-out only, public places like courthouses are screening, and my wife works at a hospital and is screened every day. I mean if she gets sent home, obviously I gotta too.

I guess we will see, we are doing a lot of things, but not shutting down completely. If anything, neither of our employment is screwed as the wife's job should be safe, and I do audits of governments, and nothing should change there.

There are a lot of people that are going to lose jobs and I can't see how $1,200 does anything for that I guess.

[heyzeus]

There are a lot of ways this could go, obviously. The one I worry about the most is that the cities and more, let's say, aggressive states that initiated SIP see their numbers decline by early May, leading to pressure to open back up. Meanwhile, the rural areas and non-aggressive states will have a later peak due to their refusal/failure to take necessary quarantine measures. There aren't many hospitals in these areas, and people don't like dying, so they relocate to the urban hospitals and create a second flood to overwhelm our healthcare system and healthcare workers, many of whom by this point will have gotten it too. In this scenario, there will be no re-opening for America of businesses, schools, sports, etc. In this scenario 30% unemployment is conservative. Also, the death toll is millions, plural.