Coronavirus. Not to be confused with Norcovirus.

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Trivia of the day. I've been referring to this disease generically as "coronavirus" but here is the real info:

The name of the virus:
severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2
(SARS-CoV-2)
However for some reason the press AND health officials seem hesitant to call it SARS-CoV-2... either because it is a mouthful, or because people in Asia will freak out over the name SARS.

The name of the disease caused by this virus:
COVID-19... which is an acronym for:
COronaVIrusDisease-19
 
SnakeCharmer said:
I went to Albertsons today and found that the shelves are slowly starting to see more product. I was thrilled to find produce and some meats and I even scored a hot rotisserie chicken, fresh off the rack. Still no paper products or water, though. The folks shopping were calm and there was hardly anyone in line, just two or three deep. So much better. :)
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I agree. It can't last... the preppers and doomsdayers only have so much freezer and garage space. On Monday I was getting gas at CostCo and talking (at a safe distance) with the gas attendant. He said on Sat and Sun they had lines of about 1000 people at opening, and they had to control the number of people entering the store. The parking lot was at full capacity and people were parking across the street just to get in line. Monday he said they had like 200. I went into the CostCo after getting gas and they didn't have paper products or packaged raw chicken. But they seemed to have plenty of everything else, including rotisserie chicken, bottled water, and canned and frozen food. I picked up some pork ribs, butter, and rotisserie chicken. I'd say about half the people I saw in the store were still in the "stocking up" stage... but the other half were just shopping like normal.
 
See you at the trailhead for the real "safety" meeting
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Tried Trader Joe's this morning after my very nice ride, line around the building and not moving. Shined it and went across the street to Ralph's. Short line, they let a small group in initially and then metered it - one comes out one goes in. Made it to the head of the line and see a sign encouraging us old folks to jump to the door, young worker looks at us and waves us right on through. At least we were next so we didn't get the stink eye and a chorus of hissing. I don't need any assistance walking across the street either. I can wait like everyone else. It was very mellow inside. Not fully stocked on everything but we got most of the groceries we couldn't get a couple of days ago, so we are good to go for a decent while.
 
I'm in an interesting position right now. Living in a travel trailer with no sewage, no heat. I have a small fridge, but it is a travel trailer fridge. I have limited storage space, so I can't stockpile very effectively. Up until now I was CHOOSING to not use the facilities inside my grandmas house to kind of test my resolve for the #VanLife thing. But now I CAN'T use the facilities without risk of infecting my aging grandmother. My plan was to use the work gym for showers, closed. On occasion I use the shower at my GF's, but with her keeping me out of her kids life, and them out of school, that is limited. I can dig a hole in the back yard for taking a dump, but that gets impractical pretty fast, which is why I usually hold it until I go to work or get something to eat ((i'm rarely "home" anyway). I'll survive just fine, but it is going to get interesting.

So I am pretty close to living like I am homeless, but at least with a stable job...until I don't. I am expecting that we will be told on Friday afternoon to not come back to work on Monday, but we don't know anything more than rumors. We have about 1000 people working in this factory, spreading germs around, but we won't stop working and spreading those germs until ordered by the government, or there is a supply chain disruption. Too many people here commuting far and wide, eventually someone will bring it in, and it will spread.

I wrote a long thing about my frustrations with how the working poor are being treated right now, but I cut it.

I also wanted to type up a rant about censoring the media, but I won't. The unconstitutionality of the idea just enrages me.
 
buggravy said:
Crazy times for sure, and I don't mean what follows to sound too idealistic or patronizing. I'm just trying not to get to0 analytical, and therefore worked up, about merits and pitfalls of everything that's being done. Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, and all that. I had all of my work appointments, and therefore income potential for this week cancel when I arrived at the first one this morning. I meet with, and do sales to groups, so I imagine this is a harbinger of things to come. All the bookings at our rental property that we have a mortgage on just got wiped out when the ski resort closed, and my kid's investment based college account is suddenly in the crapper (though it has the better part of a decade to rebound). But I can't do anything about any of that. In the absence of work appointments I walked the dog with my kid when it wasn't raining, and read books with her when it was. I wore flannel pants most of the day, and had a nice family dinner at home for the 4th night in a row. There is some unprecedented shittyness happening, and I'm sure more on the horizon, but this is also a really unique opportunity to slow down, simply because there is no choice. I saw a post on social media about this potentially being a hard reset for how we all interact with our families, and our neighbors. That resonated with me. I feel like I should be stressed, but I'm just not. Kind of feel like I'm going to sleep like a baby tonight.
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Perhaps I'm a little more stressed now. The groups that I sell to are municipal employees, and I meet with them in the city facilities. Literally everything I had scheduled from now until the end of April has cancelled saying some version of the public not being allowed into city facilities, or all group meetings being cancelled. We (the family) are fortunate that we have enough rainy day funds that we won't be in any financial peril, plus my wife's teacher salary will continue to come in, but our overhead is also not trivial. Watching the numbers dwindle is going to be rough.
 
Sidewalk said:
I wrote a long thing about my frustrations with how the working poor are being treated right now, but I cut it.
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I'm not working poor, but I can't understand how the government just expects people to stay at home with no income. They are playing around with the idea of sending everyone a $1000 check... but how long will that money last? Not very. Companies are laying off people by the MILLIONS... does the government believe they are going to simply re-hire everyone back in two weeks? In a month?

That's why I am so frustrated with our government's "shoot from the hip" response.

That article that I linked yesterday raised an interesting question. Given the low number of COVID-19 cases, and the low number of deaths, if the medical community had not identified this new virus, would it have even shown up on our national health tracking? In other words, the author noted that the current COVID-19 cases are very similar to standard flu cases, and statistically would easily fall within the annual variability of seasonal flu. They might have been left with a slightly bad flu season... while the entire rest of the world would have gone about their business as usual.

Is anyone tracking whether or not the response to COVID-19 is killing more people than it is saving?
 
BonsaiNut said:
I'm not working poor, but I can't understand how the government just expects people to stay at home with no income. They are playing around with the idea of sending everyone a $1000 check... but how long will that money last? Not very. Companies are laying off people by the MILLIONS... does the government believe they are going to simply re-hire everyone back in two weeks? In a month?
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Well, the same government gave himself a 10/10 in his response, said that this totally caught us by surprise, shut down the pandemic response team two years ago, and claimed that China should have warned us sooner...

I think we are a little early on knowing whether or not this would even show up on our radar if we didn't know about it. We don't know enough, there is way too much conjecture. We can all hope that it is a nothing, but what if it isn't? We don't know yet.

Also, things were shutting down LONG before the government intervened. We can look to other countries and see how things are going.

But I think the fact that people CAN NOT miss any work without going under is a sign of how bad our system is. If I miss work, it is inconvenient. Plenty of other people miss work, they go homeless. We as a society are failing to protect them, but we sure as hell have no problem protecting investors.
 
Sidewalk said:
But I think the fact that people CAN NOT miss any work without going under is a sign of how bad our system is. If I miss work, it is inconvenient. Plenty of other people miss work, they go homeless. We as a society are failing to protect them, but we sure as hell have no problem protecting investors.
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I know we are all frustrated with this. But I can’t help myself, what do you think the “system” is supposed to do? What does it look like when society “protects” them?
 
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fos'l said:
I went to Albertson's last night at 8:45 to pick up a prescription (pharmacy closes at 9:00) since I hoped the store would be relatively empty; no such luck. Need a new plan.
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Santiago Hills Albertsons was almost empty just now. Veggies are plentiful, canned soups are not. Fresh milk is in stock, the ultra pasteurized lactose free milk is not. The cheap eggs were gone, cage free organics were available.

they have a ton of bacon set out in the butcher case. And dang, a lot of corned beef and cabbage.

so basically anything with a just in time supply chain is caught up.
 
Obsidian said:
Wow. I did absolutely no research after reading that, but if that data is true, this whole "crisis" is complete BS. Well, except for the people who have already lost their jobs I guess.
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Right, but stop and think about that article in light of North Americans and their general health. The data basically says if you're old and have underlying health conditions that is where the majority of deaths are occurring. Now consider how many Americans have underlying health conditions, whether older than 70 or not. Overweight, diabetes, heart disease, etc etc. And don't forget everyone who is sensitive to gluten :Roflmao. There is huge potential for this virus to affect those people and lead to large numbers of deaths. As many of us are younger and healthier we may not be at significant risk of death, but if we pick it up and are taking similar precautions as with the normal flu (ie, no precautions) then this virus would likely spread quickly and infect many elderly and people with chronic conditions. Applied against our population of hundreds of millions even a small % mortality rate could become a huge number.
 
Fear of the unknown (almost everything about the virus) plus the known (26 or so people died in the nursing home in WA) plus the political importance to respond decisively precipitated extreme reaction. A more prudent course could have been as effective and less destructive, but we'll probably never know.
 
Blame is pointing to China, buying up all of our stock, and somehow controlled the virus? How? They own the medicine world! I am starting to believe that a communist government will do this, for them 3,000 lives a small price to pay for world domination. Russia with one case? Is this true?
 
Old&InTheWay said:
interesting read :https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/
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If the bit about the tests sometimes giving false positives is true, goes to show jut how little real data there is
hill^billy said:
Blame is pointing to China, buying up all of our stock, and somehow controlled the virus? How? They own the medicine world! I am starting to believe that a communist government will do this, for them 3,000 lives a small price to pay for world domination. Russia with one case? Is this true?
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Russia undoubtedly is simply not testing or not giving a f***.
 
BonsaiNut said:
I'm not working poor, but I can't understand how the government just expects people to stay at home with no income. They are playing around with the idea of sending everyone a $1000 check... but how long will that money last? Not very. Companies are laying off people by the MILLIONS... does the government believe they are going to simply re-hire everyone back in two weeks? In a month?

That's why I am so frustrated with our government's "shoot from the hip" response.

That article that I linked yesterday raised an interesting question. Given the low number of COVID-19 cases, and the low number of deaths, if the medical community had not identified this new virus, would it have even shown up on our national health tracking? In other words, the author noted that the current COVID-19 cases are very similar to standard flu cases, and statistically would easily fall within the annual variability of seasonal flu. They might have been left with a slightly bad flu season... while the entire rest of the world would have gone about their business as usual.

Is anyone tracking whether or not the response to COVID-19 is killing more people than it is saving?
Click to expand...
If we do go into any kind of extended real lockdown, doesn’t that lack of fresh air, exercise, and probably healthy diet; increase risk of diabetes, weight gain, heart disease, and stress-related illness? How many peoples health is going to suffer from becoming unemployed, bankrupt, homeless?
 
sir crashalot said:
If we do go into any kind of extended real lockdown, doesn’t that lack of fresh air, exercise, and probably healthy diet; increase risk of diabetes, weight gain, heart disease, and stress-related illness? How many peoples health is going to suffer from becoming unemployed, bankrupt, homeless?
Click to expand...

I forgot, this is America! Most people are already sedentary and eat crappy.
 
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