Conoravirus ...

[Jamie]

Hard choices every day.

^^^^ THIS

I do fear that the "Hard choices" are going to get harder. As someone with a sheepdog personality (protect the herd!) I hate this. I want all my sheep to be safe!

As John would understand, I’m a huge proponent of “troops eat first.” It kills me that my most vulnerable workers are going to suffer and I’m losing sleep trying to come up for a way to protect them and their families. We just don’t have the resources to carry them for very long.

Yeah. This is the part that gets me riled up about those jackwagons down here in Floriduh. There are real consequences for a lot of people.

[kimbottles]

In the 2007-8 crisis my business partner Tom and I decided to keep all our employees no matter the cost.
It cost us a lot of money.
It was the best thing we ever did.

[H B]

Hard choices every day.

^^^^ THIS

I do fear that the "Hard choices" are going to get harder. As someone with a sheepdog personality (protect the herd!) I hate this. I want all my sheep to be safe!

As John would understand, I’m a huge proponent of “troops eat first.” It kills me that my most vulnerable workers are going to suffer and I’m losing sleep trying to come up for a way to protect them and their families. We just don’t have the resources to carry them for very long.

Yeah. This is the part that gets me riled up about those jackwagons down here in Floriduh. There are real consequences for a lot of people.

If we get lucky, they would stop all recreational airline travel and they'd be stuck on the beach in and the self-quarantine would take care of itself. They'd be trying to Uber up the coast probably.

[BeauV]

Hard choices every day.

^^^^ THIS

I do fear that the "Hard choices" are going to get harder. As someone with a sheepdog personality (protect the herd!) I hate this. I want all my sheep to be safe!

As John would understand, I’m a huge proponent of “troops eat first.” It kills me that my most vulnerable workers are going to suffer and I’m losing sleep trying to come up for a way to protect them and their families. We just don’t have the resources to carry them for very long.

The fact that you're losing sleep over this is going to be obvious to the troops. You've got all the right instincts and the troops can see that. I've found being brutally honest about how tough some choices are with those affected by the choice is always the best policy. The first time I had to lay off a big chunk of a company I co-founded and ran, I had tears running down my face as I delivered the news. No need to hide it, we were all in pain because of what had to be done. But, it had to be done.

[IrieMon]

If we get lucky, they would stop all recreational airline travel and they'd be stuck on the beach in and the self-quarantine would take care of itself. They'd be trying to Uber up the coast probably.

Our beach in SC has been mobbed this past year as the alternatives for the spring-break high-school and college kids are limited. They cleared out at 7p as all the bars/restaurants are closed.
Lots of kids from FL not practicing social-distancing.

City Council just voted this AM to ban non-residents from the island... road block went up at 2p.

[Ajax]

If we get lucky, they would stop all recreational airline travel and they'd be stuck on the beach in and the self-quarantine would take care of itself. They'd be trying to Uber up the coast probably.

Our beach in SC has been mobbed this past year as the alternatives for the spring-break high-school and college kids are limited. They cleared out at 7p as all the bars/restaurants are closed.
Lots of kids from FL not practicing social-distancing.

City Council just voted this AM to ban non-residents from the island... road block went up at 2p.

When everyone turns into zombies, you can just blow the bridge!

[IrieMon]

When everyone turns into zombies, you can just blow the bridge!

Don't zombies swim ?!?

[kimbottles]

Isolated aboard WHITECAP

[Ajax]

Geeze, that boat is immaculate.

[kimbottles]

Geeze, that boat is immaculate.

I am retired, my only job is to take care of my boats.

[Olaf Hart]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-17/ ... a/12060704

Interesting data from the Oz incident reports.

The majority of cases reported come from overseas contacts, but there may be some selection bias here as our testing protocols are still quite restricted due to test kit availability, and one major selection criterion is overseas travel.

We are on the 3/4 day doubling part of the exponential curve at the moment. This is quite scary, as it is around the Italy rate, and we have not closed schools here, it’s a big debate.

The most interesting graph to me is the last one, where the overseas travellers contacted the virus. The US numbers are much greater than Italy and China. Now we don’t know the rates, allowing for raw numbers of travellers, but I suspect the China raw numbers would be close to the US numbers, as we have a large and growing Chinese expat community.

But the US figures really raise the question of what the background rate really is, have the restrictions on testing masked a much higher background rate in the US?

[Tigger]

Olaf--how much faith do you put in the numbers coming out of China?

Personally, I'm highly suspicious, but maybe that's just me being skeptical of an authoritarian regime trying to cover their asses after the fact. I have no way of knowing if the medical details are at arms length from the reach of the party.

[Olaf Hart]

Last year Oz had 1.4 million short term visitor arrivals from China, and 0.8 million from the USA.
Interestingly, China and New Zealand account for the most arrivals, almost equal.
That means one quarter of the NZ population comes to Australia every year!

[Olaf Hart]

Olaf--how much faith do you put in the numbers coming out of China?

Personally, I'm highly suspicious, but maybe that's just me being skeptical of an authoritarian regime trying to cover their asses after the fact. I have no way of knowing if the medical details are at arms length from the reach of the party.

These are Australian figures, not Chinese ones, they are reliable.

My point here is there is something really wrong with the US figures....

[kimbottles]

I bet we have far more than we report due to lack of testing.

[Jamie]

Olaf--how much faith do you put in the numbers coming out of China?

Personally, I'm highly suspicious, but maybe that's just me being skeptical of an authoritarian regime trying to cover their asses after the fact. I have no way of knowing if the medical details are at arms length from the reach of the party.

These are Australian figures, not Chinese ones, they are reliable.

My point here is there is something really wrong with the US figures....

I think it's pretty certain that the US background rate is much higher than we know. We know that, just not by how much.

[Tigger]

As of today here in BC, 77 new cases for a total of 348.

22 in hospital, 10 in ICU

9 dead

6 fully recovered

17,912 tested

For the most part, people are taking it very seriously, thanks in no small part to the Provinces's Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry. Her resume includes fighting Ebola in Africa and SARS in Ontario. She's the perfect person to lead the fight.

[Olaf Hart]

Some more figures, based on the Australian Bureau of Statistics overseas arrival data for 2019 and assuming the case numbers of overseas infected arrivals reported in the last graph represent a true picture of relative rates.

Visitor arrivals 2019 China 1,245,000, USA 750,000

Aus residents returning 2019 China, 613,000, USA 1,042,000

COVID19 infection rate visitor arrivals China 1:96,700, USA 1:21,400

COVID19 infection rate Aus residents returning China 1:41,000, USA 1:30,000

So the background infection rate in Australian arrivals from the USA appears to be somewhere between 36% and 450% higher than China....

[Tigger]

[Anomaly]

What's going on with the numbers in/from Germany? (relatively lots of cases, amazingly low number of deaths-- comparatively speaking)

[Jamie]

Well that's no good....that's closer to the 10MM die scenario. I guess look for an unusually high death rate in the US.

[BeauV]

Olaf--how much faith do you put in the numbers coming out of China?

Personally, I'm highly suspicious, but maybe that's just me being skeptical of an authoritarian regime trying to cover their asses after the fact. I have no way of knowing if the medical details are at arms length from the reach of the party.

These are Australian figures, not Chinese ones, they are reliable.

My point here is there is something really wrong with the US figures....

I think it's pretty certain that the US background rate is much higher than we know. We know that, just not by how much.

I've been reading everything I can about this topic, as it'll tell us how far up the total disease will go before we manage to control it if we ever do. From everything I can figure out the US has between 5 and 9 times as many undiagnosed folks as confirmed cases.

That means as of today we have between just under 100,000 to around just under 175,000 infected people. The doubling rate of diagnosed cases is currently at apx 1.5 days. Given many folks who have the disease are not diagnosed, It is easy to believe we will have 280,000 undiagnosed cases by tomorrow and just under half a million by Sunday.

All of this is predicated on us not really clamping down on folks hitting the beaches to party.

If we don't we could have over 2 million folks infected by the middle of next week. A daunting thought.....

Exponential curves look like vertical walls once they get going.

[Jamie]

My boss is a virologist. He says that COVID lives for 2 years in -20. Cardboard half-life at room temp is 10hrs - so be careful with those deliveries.
- So no cardboard in the house - unwrapped outside of the house, frozen food needs to be disinfected before it comes in the house

Some fun reading...

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2004973

[BeauV]

Jamie, this is fascinating. I already empty all cardboard packages outside, I wipe down everything within the package with alcohol. I dispose of all the packaging. Then, having wiped down my hands I take the contents inside. Similarly, when shopping at the store, I don't put things into cloth bags. I have the checker put everything back in the shopping cart. I wipe it off with alcohol wipes as I lift the objects from the cart and put them into the back of the truck. The biggest problems are the fresh veg in plastic bags. I wipe the bags, but then dump the vegs into the water with chlorine. They soak there for a while and are then put in a rack to dry and to let the chlorine burn off into the air. The kitchen smells like a swimming pool.

I'm trying to get my kids to do this, but they simply aren't fearful enough.

[slap]

"Public health is not commonly understood as a security issue, but it should be. Pandemic disease can destabilize regions undermine economies, and create fertile territory for social and political unrest.......We need to break the cycle in which our own public health system is beholden to emergency appropriations for specific epidemics, lacking the long-term budget certainty we need to shore up our defense for long term, accelerate development of vaccines...."

Hillary Clinton, in 2016.

[BeauV]

Slap,

My entire life I've been trying to get folks to understand that the way you win any war is by having an extremely strong economy. The way you have a strong economy is by having well educated, motivated, and healthy people; and the capital and systems to put them to work.

We in the US used to think that investing in public education made our economy strong, we don't seem to believe that now. I completely agree with H. Clinton's statement that Public Health is a security issue, so long as one includes mental health.

[Olaf Hart]

Without wanting to overstate the case, mankind has always been just one mutation away from annihilation.

Today, with so much rapid travel and interaction, this is even more the case.

As a Public Health Physician as well as a Primary Care Physician, I have been in this space for close to fifty years, none of this mess surprises me.

I am just grateful that we will learn our lesson on something relatively mild like Coronavirus, rather than something with a much higher morbidity and mortality rate....

[BeauV]

OH, well said. I keep thinking of what happened to the Polynesians when the measles arrived.

[BeauV]

This YouTUBE video is the best talk on Social Distance that I've heard:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHUuWq6y8F0

[LarryHoward]

Slap,

My entire life I've been trying to get folks to understand that the way you win any war is by having an extremely strong economy. The way you have a strong economy is by having well educated, motivated, and healthy people; and the capital and systems to put them to work.

We in the US used to think that investing in public education made our economy strong, we don't seem to believe that now. I completely agree with H. Clinton's statement that Public Health is a security issue, so long as one includes mental health.

No doubt. Education, health care and agriculture have been foundational to national power forever and taught as such at the senior service colleges for a century.