New SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 Thread

We're on day one of the nationwide four week lockdown, and already people in most of my Facebook groups are acting angry and stressed out. I think half the population might kill each other by the end of week four.

So far ten confirmed cases in my health care district, if news are to be trusted. Gotta dig real hard if you want to find numbers for confirmed cases around the country; almost every news site used to have a graphic of some sort to depict that, but since a week or two ago they're all gone. The secrecy seems almost intentional, and if it's to avoid the 'nah no cases 'round here, we no need to caer' - attitude, I'm fairly ok with it.

Over half of the confirmed cases are around the metropolitan area; they just decided to close off the area on Friday to hopefully prevent serious spread to the rest of the country. You can guess how that went... thousands (some sources read tens of thousands) of people from the metropolitan area left for other parts of the country, summer cottages, relatives etc. for the duration of the lockdown (three weeks). Now we just gotta hope that not too many of these exiles are playing Plague Bearer builds...

Overall not expecting a huge outbreak around where I live. The population density is low enough to prevent that.

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LennyLen wrote:

We're on day one of the nationwide four week lockdown, and already people in most of my Facebook groups are acting angry and stressed out. I think half the population might kill each other by the end of week four.

Makes you wonder - however will we handle that ever-prophecised time when a lot of the economy is automated and we finally get those 15-hour work weeks Keynes' promised us?...

Yesterday was my first full day of freedom from quarantine. I went bungee jumping to celebrate.

My wife was...displeased lol.

=^[.]^=

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Hilbert wrote:

...What will be worse is the recession following the crisis. Many companies live from cashflow and that cashflow is reduced or almost stopped meaning they amass debt.
...

I just wanted to join in the discussion, so picked this... ;)

The thing about looking for safe haven investments in a "collapse" is that there aren't any. You can't predict which investments are going to be "safe." If you could, then... it wouldn't be a "collapse." It'd be a market realigning due to <insert magic here>.

There will be some concerns that can weather certain types of storms. But, let's say there's a magic company out there that can. For how long can they hold out until they need to renew a payroll loan? It's not that uncommon to take on and then, one hopes, release an operating debt, right? Where's that money going to come from when the banks have none coming in? Who's going to factor contract loans? Moreover, who's going to pay?

Steam is happy right now. All the "online" concerns are really happy with all the renewed traffic. Sales are up, more people are looking at new games than every before!

Until they're not because they don't have a job.

The thing about money, being a readily transportable and very handy way to represent some sort of value exchange, is that in order for it to actually help create a stable economy... it has to "move." Moving money is the only way to actually make money reproduce so there can be more monies. :)

There will be no conventional market solution if there is a true "Collapse." I don't think a true collapse will happen. Why? Because today's environment is a very different one than in the early part of the Twentieth. BUT, it will most certainly require direct action to prevent further loss. That means "the heavy hand of government" will have to intervene, not just in the US, but everywhere else that a run on the markets threatens economic stability. What form that will take won't be a "check" or some interest-rate shenanigans. Those are conventional weapons in an unconventional time. If, that is, we do see what could be called a "collapse" looming on the horizon.

As it stands, we have a novel virus with an 80% infection rate, a 20% hospitalization rate, and anywhere from 1.5 to 4% mortality rate, depending upon local conditions and the availability of advanced healthcare services. In the US, unless sequestration and quarantine methods work outrageously well, we're talking about five million dead people.

Of course, that's only if it continues spreading unrestrained. Can we stop it?

No.

We can slow it's spread. We know how to do that.

But, we can't stop it unless we had a "cure" online, right now, and were distributing it in ginormous quantities with lots of needles and alcohol swabs.

So, what will stop it?

Summer in the Northern Hemisphere. That is the hope. That's basically the largest factor contributing to the eventual halting of the 1919 Flu epidemic and the hope is that the coronavirus is, indeed, a seasonal one and can not survive warm seasonal temperatures.

That's good for the Northern Hemisphere if so. Not so good for the Southern as they are soon to be moving into their "Winter."

The hope is that there will be enough time to develop a vaccine before it becomes a situation of chasing the virus around the globe as it rotates.

(All just my opinion. Best wishes for all. Stay safe.)

No Collapse? I know people that literally have no money. Like our single mom secretary we had to lay off and has $29 until end of month and no groceries. OFC I gave her some cash to ride it out until unemployment kicks. There are millions like her in California alone (1 million unemployment claims this week) and unemployment checks don't come immediately and stimulus checks wont come until June. I think within next three weeks most will begin to realize what a massive mistake shuttering whole economy was for a virus and the "cure" will be much worse than virus. Unless you're well healed like ones making this decision. Better have good security though.

There are like 50 million small business like ours who operate on razor thin margins and won't be able to just restart either. They take years to build and can't survive even 1-2 months with zero sales. I don't predict "collapse" I predict epidemic of suicides and other deaths of despair, murders and massive crime/anarchy and we'll long for only a 2% mortality rate of virus.

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LennyLen wrote:

We're on day one of the nationwide four week lockdown, and already people in most of my Facebook groups are acting angry and stressed out. I think half the population might kill each other by the end of week four.

Fuck Facebook and social media at the moment, it's just full of bullshit, scaremongering and negativity.

It's a great excuse at the moment to pick up the phone reconnect with friends I haven't seen for a long time or family I should probably contact more often rather than reading a bunch of mostly first world problems.

I'm on lockdown everyone is on lockdown here.

People lost their jobs, nobody can earn money. Daily people that earned money to get basic things are struggling.

Don't be ignorant and say such things.

Think again if you think you're having a bad time.. there's always someone worse than you specially right now.

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Xystre wrote:

I'm on lockdown everyone is on lockdown here.

People lost their jobs, nobody can earn money. Daily people that earned money to get basic things are struggling.

Don't be ignorant and say such things.

Think again if you think you're having a bad time.. there's always someone worse than you specially right now.

Well that's exactly the position that I'm in at the moment. Despite that I recognize there are plenty of people worse off than me and I'd rather focus on helping them (volunteered for some local organisations doing shopping and running errands for elderly people) than reading how someone had to queue for 30 minutes in the supermarket and they had run out of smashed avocado smoothies.