new thread on covid-19 updates in your location

[everything]

Congrats, bailewen, and thanks for the fantastic overview of what's going on over there where you are.

Over here, I'm sure nobody can imagine phone tracking or signing in and out of everywhere. Everyone in my little 3 mile square area stays 6ft apart from each other. We went to the pharmacy and they put a folding table in front of the register to create a little distance. I do wish everyone got their temperature taken wherever they go. There was a crazy looking dude wearing a gas mask in the store yesterday. OTOH, he probably kept everyone else safe from his germs so perhaps good for him for doing that, and we should copy him. Traffic is not super low but not high. Everyone is probably out shopping, looking for TP.

The hoarding (done during other disasters as well) is interesting. Panic buying just begets panic buying. I think we feel some more sense of control over at least something ("what can I do? I can prep by buying some stuff.").

[everything]

Also (especially in Asia), are you noticing any differences now that there is supposedly a second wave happening, mostly from some returning travelers (supposedly)?

Not sure this is showing up in official stats.

There are some news reports (But a key reason for this thread is to hear more directly from RSF members)

[everything]

Also (especially in Asia), are you noticing any differences now that there is supposedly a second wave happening, mostly from some returning travelers (supposedly)?

Not sure this is showing up in official stats.

There are some news reports (But a key reason for this thread is to hear more directly from RSF members)

[Michael]

Also (especially in Asia), are you noticing any differences now that there is supposedly a second wave happening, mostly from some returning travelers (supposedly)?

Not sure this is showing up in official stats.

There are some news reports (But a key reason for this thread is to hear more directly from RSF members)

There is an overseas Chinese woman in the USA (probably now a USA green card holder or citizen because she was a religious dissident in the Chinese mainland), has been posting short videos about this on youtube and twitter. It's difficult to check these kinds of sources, you really have to look at several and still end up speculating to a large extent.

I came across her vids a few days ago when she posted 20 seconds of a Chinese high school classroom (iphone 4 portrait mode) with everyone wearing medical masks. She said Guangzhou schools were opened again, but that was totally incorrect and the vid likely came from recent openings in other provinces, referenced in this article, that will probably not load if you have a popular VPN running:

School is Back in Session (For Some) in China

曾錚的視頻博客Jennifer Zeng's Vlog
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfirnX ... X36npwaE3A
https://twitter.com/jenniferatntd

[grzegorz]

793 died in Italy today.

[Michael]

From what I've heard, the average age of Italian deaths is 80.1 years and it's assumed most were smokers.

[Steve James]

Afa average age
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aN_2KavDgdY

Moreover, young people with severe cases require just as much hospitalization, maybe more. Overwhelmed hospitals will start to do triage and give treatment to those most likely to survive. That will always skew the figures. How much care will hospitals be able to give a 90 year old?

[Steve James]

Same for Aussies, until a few hours ago. Fwiw, a few years ago, there was an "Aussie flu" that spread to the UK. Still, the Aussies were also late to the party. For them, the results will be seen in a few weeks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTyS8bC9qNI

[windwalker]

In Taiwan, an island of 23 million, arrivals from Wuhan were subject to health screenings before human-to-human transmission of the virus was confirmed on Jan. 20.

By Feb. 1, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore had all proactively implemented travel restrictions on passengers coming from the mainland, contravening the World Health Organization’s [WHO] insistence that travel bans were not necessary. The precautions came at a significant economic cost to these international hubs, which all rely on mainland China as their biggest trading partner and source of tourists.

https://time.com/5802293/coronavirus-co ... ng-taiwan/

A little harder for the US to implement travel restrictions with out understanding if they were needed or not.
The WHO initially said they were not needed.

The U.S., he adds, “should learn from Singapore’s response and then adapt what is useful.”

Interesting equating a city state authoritarian rule, with a country of 327.2 million spread out in a republic composed of 50 states,

[Peacedog]

An interesting link on the smoking rate in Italy. Short answer: 1/3rd of Italians currently smoke and over half either currently or previously smoked. Most are young men as well.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/866 ... -in-italy/

Also keep in mind that the areas of Italy hardest hit were traditionally associated with heavy industry. While air quality and occupational safety in the developed world is quite good today, when the people who are currently dying in greatest numbers were younger that was not the case. And the smoking rate when they were younger was much higher. Bottom line: most of these people were probably walking around with reduced lung function to begin with. No consolation to anyone impacted, of course, but relevant points to consider.

Also, and this applies to people in delivery services and transportation, so far airline crew and service personnel are not reporting particularly high infection rates. People working in these industries are typically younger and outside of Iceland no population has been comprehensively tested either so they may simply be asymptomatic or untested.

Plus, a lot of the tests administered early on may well have simply been inaccurate. Some data I've seen indicates a 48% failure rate of earlier generation tests for Coronavirus. That is not a comprehensive answer, but again an interesting data point. We don't really know how accurate the current tests are as they are too new to be sure (percentage of false positives versus false negatives). And this opens the door to a lot of the people dying simply having had a different illness that had respiratory symptoms.

Plus, when people go into a triage medical environment mistakes frequently get made with whatever other medications they were on. How many of these people died because they were not reliably receiving their other medications in addition to being subjected to the stress of Coronavirus? It is an important question. And finally, as anyone here who has dealt with the elderly well understand, it takes very little outside stress, real or imagined, to result in their dying. Fear, and uncertainty, kills with this population and this is a pretty frightfully uncertain situation.

We don't know what we don't know. We will get more knowledgeable with time.

So bottom line, do your diligence, wash your hands, if you smoke/vape stop doing so for the time being, and try not to freak out.

[grzegorz]

Thank god I played and ocassionally play the saxophone because it sounds like it is the pneumonia which is killing off people. I also don't idle and don't understand why people seem to do it so much these days. Too much time on their phones I suppose.

For the record 80 or not it is a tragedy. A family in New Jersey lost 4 people. I am not stock piling bullets and toilet paper like some I know are but I am certainly not downplaying a crisis which has only just begun to take lives in the US. This is going to go on for the long haul until this country figures out how best fight this war. Blaming the Chinese and pumping money into the economy definitely isn't going to stop the virus.

Funny how Americans don't like socialism until they need it.

[Trick]

Wow, so many posts already in the thread. Many people stuck at home with more WWW at hands.
Maybe that’s what will come out of this. We will be isolated within a personal confide space, and connected up to an collective virtual reality .....

Maybe we already are there....8)

[BruceP]

Congrats, Omar!

Hope mom and baby are doing well. You are a good man - may your family gain from your strength.

[bailewen]

Thanks, of course, Bruce.

Also (especially in Asia), are you noticing any differences now that there is supposedly a second wave happening, mostly from some returning travelers (supposedly)?

Not sure this is showing up in official stats.

There are some news reports (But a key reason for this thread is to hear more directly from RSF members)

I don't know if there's a next "wave" happening, but it's true that most of the new cases this week have been from people entering the country.

Also, about the masks, I just realized today that my facebook avatar is me in front of a classroom full of kids, with all of wearing masks. Thing is, that pic is from the last virus to fly through China, but that time the schools didn't have to close.

Also, in China, and I think a lot of Asian, everyone wears a mask through most of the winter anyways. The only thing special about that Facebook avatar is that we would normally take the masks off indoors. At work right now, everyone has to keep wearing the masks even in their cubicles. We only take them off to eat.

[bailewen]

2009