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You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 Coronavirus / COVID-19 Coronavirus Update – Sunday/Monday, March 15/16

COVID-19 Coronavirus Update – Sunday/Monday, March 15/16

by | 55 Comments

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I can’t pretend to understand finance, but I get the feeling that’s going to be the BIG coronavirus-related news today, even / because of the Oval Office Occupant’s antics:

Seems like Boris Johnson is determined to make his American counterpart look good, whatever it takes…


China right now, America… eventually (assuming we survive):

Reader Interactions

55Comments

  1. 1.

    David C

    Good morning! Federal government is on “telework if you can” mode.Thank you for your Covid-19 posts. As a scientist I often have to sift through information to find out how accurate it is, but you have a good set of sources. Anthony Fauci made the rounds yesterday, and it’s worth watching a few clips. They are all pretty similar – things will get worse, people should stay home if they can, and testing capability is ramping up. Faceless bureaucrats are coming through – mainly from home.

    This is a slower-paced and less dramatic version of Contagion. Being in the preparedness business, I feel that people walking around as if this were nothing (or a media plot to hurt Trump) are like pod people, unaware of who they are (#streamingsuggestion).

  2. 2.

    prostratedragon

    Boris Johnson once said his political hero was the mayor in “Jaws,” praising him for defying mass hysteria to keep the beaches open after a constituent is eaten by a shark. As the coronavirus now stampedes across the world, he’s heeding the same principle.

    Pod people indeed. One looks on in wonder at the persistent inability of certain political types we have these days to decode the most blatant culturally expressed messages. And so with real life.

  3. 3.

    Betty Cracker

    The all-Republican leadership of my mostly rural, tourism-dependent county is making every stupid decision they can, and I hope their loud, dumb fecklessness is burned in every resident’s brain. A planned parade and shrimp festival went forward this weekend, despite incontrovertible evidence that there’s community spread of the virus in the state and the first confirmed report of the virus in the county. So far, the county fair is still supposed to open next week. The county wasn’t going to shut down the schools, but the state made them.

  4. 4.

    WereBear

    Got the news today, oh boy. Working at home for next month. We have local delivery from grocery: tho mysterious choices and much of what I need is not online. Basically bunkered the whole past week. Ate an Italian sandwich with Muenster cheese yesterday. So scraping the fridge at this point.

    However, the handy graph of business density should still be operational: hitting my local Aldis when they open at 9am should work. Gloves, social distance, I operate my own card at the machine.

    I won’t get back my own quarter! Due precautions will be taken.

  5. 5.

    HeartlandLiberal

    I was watching news reports from Germany last night, multiple online source, and Berlin had police going door to door all over city, closing all bars, restaurants, theaters, bordellos…. Yep, whorehouses are being closed, too. Bit of a cultural shock thing, there. Of course Germany announced yesterday they were closing borders with Denmark, France, Switzerland, Austria, except for those commuting across border to work, and not stopping movement of goods. But cutting traffic by probably 80%.

  7. 7.

    HeartlandLiberal

    @Betty Cracker:

    Poll out yesterday reported 30% of all Republicans do not believe there is any reason to engage in social isolation, and intend to go out and shop, eat, socialize as normal. Devin Nunes on Twitter has doubled down that this is a good time to get the family and friend together and go out to eat, because restaurants will not be crowded. Self-selection Darwinism in action, I call it.

  8. 8.

    Eural Joiner

    Crowd sourcing this question and would appreciate any feedback – my mother is in Texas and just picked this moment to get very seriously ill (she’s 85 and this is very serious). I’m in South Carolina and need to get there in the next few days. Should I fly as I’ve done in the past (into Houston, then a shuttle to where she lives) or drive it in a two day split? It’s about the same price but I’m thinking the car gives me a lot more flexibility and isolation.

  9. 9.

    WereBear

    @HeartlandLiberal: This frankly shocks me: I did not think the brainwashing had gone this far.

    Though fools are always with us, I figured the survival instinct would kick in sometime.

    Yes, I’m up and didn’t get to sleep until late. My new normal.

  12. 12.

    Betty Cracker

    @HeartlandLiberal: Too bad the consequences of their stupid behavior won’t be confined to that 30%. It’s maddening.

    ETA: We’re one county over from the county that contains The Villages and the other gigantic retirement communities in that part of the state.

  14. 14.

    HeartlandLiberal

    @Eural Joiner: Drive. Drive. Drive. Carry tossable gloves if you have them for pit stops and fill-ups. Do NOT get on an airplane, the air circulation guarantees if there is a carrier onboard, you are likely to be infected. I am sorry about your Mom, I hope she will be OK. Besides, I follow several aviation channels on YouTube that report on aviation industry, and the industry is basically shutting down anywhere from 50% to 80% of flights. Cancellations are exceeding reservations for past few days. Commercial airlines are in deep economic doo. As are we all. Be safe.

  16. 16.

    Anne Laurie

    @Betty Cracker: I sent that tweet to WaterGirl, with the suggestion she use it as a header for the proposed guest posts on combining child care with working-from-home!

    (Depends, of course, on the guest poster’s sense of humor… )

  18. 18.

    satby

    Illinois and Ohio closed restaurants and bars, Indiana hasn’t, but closed the casinos after one of the newly confirmed cases was found to have spent time at a casino, some sporting events and church.

    Still a lot of red staters who think it’s all overblown.

  19. 19.

    HeartlandLiberal

    @WereBear:  Fortunately for the older people in nursing homes who voted Trump into office, the administration of the homes understand. All the nursing homes here where we live closed end of last week to all outsiders. Only residents can enter, and most of them are being told to just stay and not go out in public. I have many older friends, some in their eighties and even mid-nineties, made through duplicate bridge club, living in these homes, and I really hope they will be safe till a vaccine can be created.

  21. 21.

    Tony Jay

    That comparison graph between widescale-testing South Korea and limited-testing Italy is just, yeah, the genie isn’t so much out of the bottle as the bottle was shaken up and sprayed over everyone and we’re all just standing around dripping wet while our esteemed leadership caste are giving speeches telling everyone they must have pissed themselves.

    It’s so wonderful to live in a country where the Electorate recently decided that they’d rather stick with the Party that has systematically plucked, de-boned and filleted the NHS for a decade than vote for massive investment in staff and infrastructure because Racism and Right Wing Media Bias > asking the very comfortable to pay a few pence more in taxes. Nothing to worry about, though. the official Government policy supported by “Patriotic British Science” is to let Corvid-19 sweep through the population unchecked, cleansing our Brexiopia of impurities and giving living space for the stronger, cleaner, hopefully immune Super-Race that will emerge from the ashes.

    That’s not how herd-immunity works, but it is how politically convenient eugenics rolls, so at least there’s some ‘science’ behind the policy, even if it is ‘science’ from the 1890s. And hey, once the dead start piling up I’ll be able to loot their homes of toilet roll and dried pasta. Result!

    These fucking people.

  24. 24.

    Betty Cracker

    CNN says that at 10:30 AM ET, Pence will open his lipless gob and praise Dear Leader’s leaderly leadership and announce new restrictions, possibly to include curfews. (Well, that’s not how they put it, but that’s the gist.)

  26. 26.

    prostratedragon

    @Eural Joiner:
    Agree with driving. You might need the car while you’re there also, though I guess you could find a local rental—better to have as few extra hassles as possible while coping with family needs. Also, possibly few planes.

    All the best.

  30. 30.

    debbie

    @Tony Jay:

    I am appalled at BoJo’s “plan” for people to just get sick and get over it (or maybe die).

    However, here on my local NPR station just a few minutes ago, there was a report about gloating preppers who think they deserve respect from the rest of the country for their foresight.

  31. 31.

    Xentik

    Streets are noticeably dead this morning in DC with the gov’t moving to telework.

     

    Our office had been planning a “telework shakedown” day tomorrow to iron out all the problems, but no sense waiting to try it out at this point.

    @Eural Joiner: Definitely agree with the others; driving is the only sensible option. It’s the only form of travel still allowed by our office for business at this point.

  32. 32.

    Chyron HR

    @debbie:

    I am appalled at BoJo’s “plan” for people to just get sick and get over it (or maybe die).

    Covexit means Covexit. 🤷‍♀️

  33. 33.

    WereBear

    @debbie:

    I am appalled at BoJo’s “plan” for people to just get sick and get over it (or maybe die).

     
    Trump: “That’s possible? Let’s get on this plan!”

  35. 35.

    SFAW

    AL –

    I don’t know very much about high economics, either, so I’m sure that it’s just a coincidence that Trump threatened to fire Fed Chair Powell one day, and 1-2 days later the rates were cut to zero.

    [NB: I have no idea if the cut makes sense — maybe it does? — but I wish the Orange Plague (Darth Plagueis?) would shut his festering gob for awhile.]

  36. 36.

    PenAndKey

    @Xentik: Our office had been planning a “telework shakedown” day tomorrow to iron out all the problems, but no sense waiting to try it out at this point.

    @Eural Joiner: Definitely agree with the others; driving is the only sensible option. It’s the only form of travel still allowed by our office for business at this point.

    My HQ has a mandatory work from home shakedown today, but all the production facilities are working as normal. We have absolutely no business travel allowed and haven’t since last week pending further notification. They also implemented a mandatory two week self-quarantine for anyone who comes home from international travel, and extended emergency support pay by a week (it’s usually a single week of pay for ’emergency care’ to cover).  They’re definitely taking it seriously, but those of us who can’t just “work from home” are nervous about getting how things shake out for sure. It doesn’t help that MN and WI both shut down our schools until after Easter so employees are scrambling.

  37. 37.

    Robert Sneddon

    @debbie: The estimate is that about half the population of the UK will be exposed to SARS-CoV-2 and have some reaction to it, including being infectious to others. If we quarantine hard (police and troops on the streets, barricades etc.) and test exhaustively and do everything in our power to stop the spread of the disease then in the end about half the population will be exposed, no difference. Contact tracing isn’t workable when there are hundreds of confirmed cases and thousands more who don’t know they’ve got the disease, random mass testing is only useful for statistical purposes and peace of mind for a lot of people while absorbing manpower and facilities that are needed for front-line medical services.

    The restrictions being put in place now will slow the rate of infection, reducing the peak load on the medical services as well as giving time to ramp up medical facilities and arrange production of equipment like facemasks, ventilators etc. The genie is out of the bottle and there WILL be something like 36 million sufferers over the next nine months or so. Deluding ourselves on this is both pointless and self-defeating.

  38. 38.

    SFAW

    “Circling back” (as the saying goes): a week or 10 days ago, I mentioned that I had possibly been exposed via some AIPAC attendees staying at my hotel in DC. [And thanks again for all the words of support from the jackals.] Yesterday was Day 14 since my last contact with that group, and neither I nor my family appears to be exhibiting any symptoms.

    Of course, I hope/expect that Ozark will greet this update with his usual “Blech.”

    Anyway: my anxiety level has, at least for now, been reduced by a little. I’m sure I’ll find something to ratchet it back up, any day now.

  39. 39.

    Fair Economist

    @Eural Joiner: I am not sure which is worse but in Iran it spread along roadsides. Roadside services evidently spread it very well. I suspect bathrooms but no evidence. So if you drive assume every surface is contaminated.

  41. 41.

    Fair Economist

    @SFAW:The Fed cut does make sense. Current bond rates imply the market is expecting essentially zero rates for the next decade. Yes, 10 years. IMO Trump is the rooster trying to claim credit for the sunrise here.

  42. 42.

    SFAW

    @Fair Economist:

    OK, thanks.

    I’m confident that Orange Plague said it without understanding what you just pointed out, but even a stopped moron might be right once a year.

  43. 43.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    @Eural Joiner: Suggestions for the drive from prior experience: small/medium cooler in passenger seat with water bottles, canned cold coffee, grapes, apples and cheese sticks. A box of eyeglass wipes as they are mostly alcohol, a box of wet ones or baby wipes. Flashlight or combo flashlight and magnifying glass, maps just case, extra long charging cable for phone. Bottle of liquid soap in a ziplock bag and some small towels in their own Tupperware container. Container can be used as emergency sink if you bring extra water(1 gallon jug or two)

  44. 44.

    Fair Economist

    @Robert Sneddon: That’s simply not true. The Chinese data shows that strong social distancing reduces R0 below 1 and will eventually drive the virus to local extinction. That will work no matter how many are infected. Testing greatly speeds the process and we will have LOTS of uneployed people who can be trained to do nasal swabs and punch buttons on a PCR machine. These are not high skill tasks.

  45. 45.

    Tony Jay

    @satby:  And they don’t even bother to conceal it. Feed the delusions of the Base and leave the chaff-production to the ever reliable normalisers of the modern day Political Media. Twofer.

  47. 47.

    Chris Johnson

    @Tony Jay: Pro tip: if you kill billionaires, there’s a 30% chance they drop toilet paper :)

    Good to see you post, I’ve been hoping to hear from you about the UK mess. Eugenics is not too strong a word and we will be seeing that same attitude attempted here in the US. I think it’s part of the Russia war: some of these people are LITERALLY trying to get our populations to kill themselves in large numbers. Dangerous times, these.

  48. 48.

    evodevo

    @Eural Joiner:  The drive will be a bitch, (don’t I know…I live in Ky and visited my sister in San Antonio a couple years ago – vowed never to do that drive again!) but getting on a sardine tin full of coughing people is NOT an option…what if you catch it and are too sick to take care of her? Do it the cautious way…besides, how do you know how well the rental car is cleaned?

  49. 49.

    evodevo

    @SFAW: No…short answer.  Once you have pulled this trigger, there is literally NOTHING else the Fed can do in the event that there is a global meltdown, like there was in ’08.  The right thing to do would have been to  vacate the tax deal for the rich and dedicate those trillions to shoring up working people and small businesses.  Instead, we have Krudlow and Nooch.  And here we are…

  50. 50.

    Dupe1970

    @Eural Joiner: The drive is brutal but I would recommend that. Especially having a car you know and can stock up with supplies if needed. There has not been a run on gas so I think you should be safe.

  51. 51.

    Robert Sneddon

    @Fair Economist: The virus jumped species from some sort of mammal host, maybe bats. There is no way to make SARS-CoV-2 “extinct”, not without driving its wild hosts (bats maybe?) to extinction too. It’s going to be with us for a long time.

    The UK government is making plans for another outbreak of the coronavirus next winter, something that is highly probable. There may be a workable vaccine by then, there may not. If there is a vaccine the number of doses available may be limited depending on production facilities and a host of other factors. Acquired immunity in most people/survivors may be the only thing that stops the next outbreak from being a serious as this one is.

    As for testing, remember that people will need to be tested repeatedly, a negative test today doesn’t mean someone won’t get infected next week and then pass it on to all and sundry because “I got tested and it was negative! Let’s party!!!”

    There’s no reported numbers of false positives and false negatives for all the different sorts of tests too, another reason to downplay the “testing kits will save us” approach to this mess.

  52. 52.

    Tony Jay

    @Chris Johnson:

    Cheers, mate. I kind of backed away from posting anything about the catastrophic abdication of humanity and sense that historians have labelled The Recent UK General Election because even thinking about it made me want to cut people and kneel on throats. That kind of seething anger isn’t healthy, and, since the lavishly rewarded fuckers in Government seem determined to prove how disastrous the Electorate’s lack of soul has proven to be right the fuck away, I haven’t felt to need to point to it.

    I’ll probably vent something long-winded and borderline rabid at some point, but in the meantime I’m just lurking.

  53. 53.

    SFAW

    @Tony Jay:

    the catastrophic abdication of humanity and sense that historians have labelled The Recent UK General Election

    Up until the last few words, I thought you were talking about ‘Murica. [No, not really.]

    because even thinking about it made me want to cut people and kneel on throats.

    Are you SURE you’re not talking about America? Because a few of us feel the same way.

    I’ll probably vent something long-winded and borderline rabid at some point

    How would we be able to tell the difference from your normal writings? [Just kidding: I love reading your stuff. Well, the prose. The content is pretty effing depressing, of course.]

  54. 54.

    J R in WV

    @Tony Jay:

    …in the meantime I’m just lurking.

     

     

    Tony, don’t do that! there’s way too much happening to talk about. Let us know what you really think, about everything…

    More seriously, best of luck to you and yours over in Ol’ Blimey. I think we all need a bit o’ extra luck right now!

  55. 55.

    ziggy

    @Tony Jay: Good to hear from you again Tony Jay! Please keep us posted on how the “experiment” is going over there and stay well!

    Here’s the depressing thing about that second graph–most of those numbers are not even close to reality (because of testing limitations).

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