The Spreading (And Potentially Deadly) Coronavirus Epidemic....

[Richardhead | 2,813]

Holy fuck! Governor came out and did not issue the shelter in place! That’s good news to me. 

[Gloves | 11,780]

44 minutes ago, Richardhead said:

Holy fuck! Governor came out and did not issue the shelter in place! That’s good news to me. 

Terrible news for the world though, most likely. 

[JamesRobot | 5,800]

1 hour ago, Richardhead said:

Holy fuck! Governor came out and did not issue the shelter in place! That’s good news to me. 

You're still employed! Although the liquor store is def an essential job.

[Estil | 1,265]

9 minutes ago, JamesRobot said:

You're still employed! Although the liquor store is def an essential job.

 

[Richardhead | 2,813]

1 hour ago, Gloves said:

Terrible news for the world though, most likely. 

Rest of the world doesn’t have to come to my place of business. The grocery stores are much more “dangerous” than where I work. 

[Gloves | 11,780]

51 minutes ago, Richardhead said:

Rest of the world doesn’t have to come to my place of business. The grocery stores are much more “dangerous” than where I work. 

You have to go to and from work. Do you work entirely alone? 

[Richardhead | 2,813]

19 minutes ago, Gloves said:

You have to go to and from work. Do you work entirely alone? 

Nope. 8 of us serve a ton of people ATM, 7 days a week. I use public transport too. I am probably fucked! Damn your Canadian logic!

[Gloves | 11,780]

3 minutes ago, Richardhead said:

Nope. 8 of us serve a ton of people ATM, 7 days a week. I use public transport too. I am probably fucked! Damn your Canadian logic!

Yeah so I'd say it's a pretty shitty thing that you'd be able to go to work right now.

You should be given time off and compensation for the time you spend away from work.

[Richardhead | 2,813]

10 minutes ago, Gloves said:

Yeah so I'd say it's a pretty shitty thing that you'd be able to go to work right now.

You should be given time off and compensation for the time you spend away from work.

I work for a small a business. They can’t afford that. It’s not fair for them to have to take care of me if they can’t afford it. Fortunately, I’m a saver and can weather this storm. 

[Gloves | 11,780]

1 minute ago, Richardhead said:

I work for a small a business. They can’t afford that. It’s not fair for them to have to take care of me if they can’t afford it. Fortunately, I’m a saver and can weather this storm. 

No but I mean they shouldn't HAVE to afford it. The country bails out airlines for billions, but can't support small businesses to let you stay home where you are safe and can't yourself infect others?

Everything should be shut down except for absolute necessities. It's literally lives on the line, and with actual support we could save millions of lives.

[Richardhead | 2,813]

1 minute ago, Gloves said:

No but I mean they shouldn't HAVE to afford it. The country bails out airlines for billions, but can't support small businesses to let you stay home where you are safe and can't yourself infect others?

Everything should be shut down except for absolute necessities. It's literally lives on the line, and with actual support we could save millions of lives.

Don’t derail this with America vs Canada politics. While I agree with you, I also understand that I/we need to take special precautions to stay safe, which I have been doing. Along with my coworkers. 

[Gloves | 11,780]

1 minute ago, Richardhead said:

Don’t derail this with America vs Canada politics. While I agree with you, I also understand that I/we need to take special precautions to stay safe, which I have been doing. Along with my coworkers. 

I'm not derailing with politics at all. I'm not comparing countries either. I'm simply stating that the priority right now should be keeping people safe and that ideally means you not going to work.

[SpoonMan Abrams X | 697]

Update from my work;

In response to the extreme difficulty in keeping up with sanitation guidelines and restocking, all stores (not just the one I work at but company wide) is closing during the night hours, only remaining open from 8am to 10pm, though allowing emergency, health & other public service workers and employees to enter at 7am to shop uninhibited.

They're also giving a company wide $2 per hour raise starting this Sunday through til May 1st for all non-management employees because of the potential steep cut in hours (though as of right now everyone basically is allowed to work overtime if they want, for the time being but will probably be wrangled in soon)

My department (the Deli) is still cutting meats to order and we reopened hot case after literally one day closed, but are serving a much more limited selection. The only thing that has stuck was the closing of the cafe/seating area and bulk salads to order... though I still highly expect the hot case and meats to order to be ceased before too much longer.

Edited March 21, 2020 by SpoonMan Abrams X

[Estil | 1,265]

 

3 hours ago, Gloves said:

I'm not derailing with politics at all. I'm not comparing countries either. I'm simply stating that the priority right now should be keeping people safe and that ideally means you not going to work.

Kinda similar to how one deals with a snowstorm sort of situation...unless you really have to, don't go out in it!

[NZCollector | 107]

Universities are closing for a week now where I am. 

Works out quite well for me actually, gives a seven day period to get all my assignments done early. 

[Kguillemette | 1,544]

I have survived week one of the madness. This was one of the most challenging weeks of my life, right up there with when my youngest was born.

[tbone3969 | 304]

2 hours ago, Kguillemette said:

I have survived week one of the madness. This was one of the most challenging weeks of my life, right up there with when my youngest was born.

What do you  do?

[Boosted52405 | 178]

We are headed towards a national lock down, I would prepare for it.  Hopefully folks are not still turning the other cheek with the seriousness of what we're dealing with (like earlier in the thread).

Again, this is killing a lot of people, not just elderly but innocent folks that are not super healthy to begin with.  People are slipping into comas...rumors are some survivors may have permanent lung damage coming out of this.

At this point it also seems to be relatively factual to avoid using ibuprofens as it seems to be enhancing the corona symptoms (apparently many of the fatalities had this in their system).

One can have the virus and not even show any symptoms, and then unknowingly proceed to pass it to everything/everyone they encounter.  This is straight insane and we really need to be holing up and/or taking precautions with all possible avenues.  We all don't have the luxury of holing up entirely I get it, but all those individual non-essential decisions one makes throughout the day really need reconsidered.

When the dust settles, this is going to be one for the history books.

[Kguillemette | 1,544]

12 minutes ago, tbone3969 said:

What do you  do?

I manage a local sub shop take out counter that's in a gas station. First, let me say that I am thankful to have work to do. But the business is in survival mode all of a sudden. I've had to slash hours, which sucks. Not only am I running it solo for much of the day, which is stressful in itself, I have to tell some great employees they aren't gonna make ends meet this month. I dont like having to do that.

Also, we are probably the third or fourth choice for a lot of customers we have. Sales have dropped 20% in store, but 40% company wide. Every customer that comes in is on edge. So many are nervous about being shut down including tradesman that figured they were safe. One of my regulars is an electrician that just rewired a house to make it pass a building inspection. After he was finished, the city suspended all of its non-essential employees, so the building inspector can't do the house. The lady who owns the house can't go back and needs to live in a hotel until this is over.

Customers overall have been extremely rude in comparison to normal. I usually get screamed at by an irrational customer maybe once a month. It has been once an hour now.

And there are lots more sanitation restrictions to follow that slows down service. Every hour I need to stop production and orders to disinfect the front counter, gloves are now used on the register, which makes counting money very difficult to do and the gloved fingers are ineffective on computer screens.

 

In addition, I had a homeless guy come in and start stealing beer and being belligerent on the gas station side of the store in an attempt to get arrested. A cop happened to be there filling his tank at the time and explained that he was instructed to not arrest people if possible because the court system is suspended at the moment, meaning he would just remain in jail. So the homeless guy tried to steal more stuff, but the cop pulled him outside, the manager gave him the beer as a favor to the cop so he wouldnt have to arrest him.

And it's only just starting. If the business closes, it's not up to me. But Manchester, NH already has a serious  problem with heroin and homelessness. The corona virus is going to make the desperate even more desperate and it will be a rough ride.

And after that, I get to come home to begin homeschooling my 3 kids while trying to mask the anxieties of my work day so they don't see me all strung out.

But I have today off, so I get to decompress a little bit. 

[zombiemicrowave | 42]

Whelp. I'm (temporary) laid off now. Now I just need to try to stay positive and not go all "Shining" on my family. 

[Estil | 1,265]

11 minutes ago, zombiemicrowave said:

Whelp. I'm (temporary) laid off now. Now I just need to try to stay positive and not go all "Shining" on my family. 

I know, there'll be no One Shining Moment this year

[SpoonMan Abrams X | 697]

So this might be a thing https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/needing-urgent-help-americans-await-answers-stimulus-n1163501

13 hours ago, Boosted52405 said:

We are headed towards a national lock down, I would prepare for it.

There's word going around that Michigan as soon as tomorrow may be locked down as well, though because I work retail I'm considered "essential" lol

[Link | 2,713]

takeaways from the UCSF COVID-19 town hall today - infectious diseases conference

1. If you’re exposed to COVID, you’re likely to see symptoms in about 2-9 days, with median of 5 days.

2. The common symptoms are acute respiratory distress and fever, often high, which may be intermittent but can be persistent and last over 10 days.

3. Breakdown of cases: About 80% of those who contract COVID only get mildly ill; 14% get hospital-ill, 6-8% critically ill. The mortality rate seems to be between 1-3%, but that needs to be adjusted for age. Mortality is 10-15% over 80, and drops lower for younger cohorts.

4. The bulk of those who fall ill are aged 40-55, with 50 being the median. But being young and healthy (zero medical problems) does NOT rule out serious illness or death; it may just delay the time course to developing significant respiratory illness by about a week or longer.

5. Findings confirm that COVID-19 is spread simply through breathing, even without coughing. It seems unlikely that contact with contaminated surfaces is a primary means of spread: "Don't forget about hand washing, but if you don't want to get infected, you can't be in crowds.”

6. The virus spreads by air and in droplets (sneezing and coughing), but also via fecal-oral transmission. This is where hand washing with soap is key. And try to eat only cooked foods if you didn’t prepare them yourself.

7. COVID likely originated in bats. But for those sharing rumors that COVID came from Chinese people eating them, researchers now believe it went from bats to another animal species before jumping to humans, and that fecal-oral transmission was the likely vector. WASH YOUR HANDS.

8. There are no real treatments for COVID yet. Remdesvir has shown signs of reducing mortality but it is in still in tests, is in short supply and only available under restriction. Steroids, a common treatment for respiratory illness, may make things worse.

9. The terminal phase of COVID is acute respiratory distress, treated by putting patients on a ventilator. We have 160K ventilators in the US. About 1M will need ventilators. Half will die in the first week; survivors stay on for 4 weeks. “We don’t have enough ventilators.”

10. Italy is already overwhelmed. Many countries are just days behind Italy on the case curve. The US is actually breaking the curve—because of the Trump admin’s mismanagement of the situation.

11. 40-70% of the US is likely to get the virus. Around 150 million is the UCSF estimate, with a 1% rate of mortality, which means 1.5 million Americans will likely die of this disease in the next 12-18 months.
To put this in context: In 2019, 606,880 Americans died of cancer.

12. We are “past containment” at this point, experts say. The massive errors by this administration early on make it impossible to stop the spread—we can only slow it so healthcare can catch up. And no matter what anyone says: We won’t have a vaccine for at least 12 months.

[Tulpa | 3,502]

9 minutes ago, Link said:

10. Italy is already overwhelmed. Many countries are just days behind Italy on the case curve. The US is actually breaking the curve—because of the Trump admin’s mismanagement of the situation.

12. We are “past containment” at this point, experts say. The massive errors by this administration early on make it impossible to stop the spread—we can only slow it so healthcare can catch up. And no matter what anyone says: We won’t have a vaccine for at least 12 months.

Man, who'd have thought defunding the CDC and removing the epidemic task force would cause this?

[Link | 2,713]

We can just buy the vaccine from Greenland

I’m sorry, is that too political?