So, 2/3rds of my income for March and April has just vanished. :0
I’m cancelling direct debits now.
In Spain at least they’re instituting a mortgage and utilities moratorium.
jostly
4824
This is an unsubstantiated “killgissning” (bro-guess?) as we say in Sweden but maybe men in general are more risk taking? Since the amount of virus exposure apparently correlates to severity, it could be a factor.
In a totally unrelated research piece I skim read once, apparently having 2 copies of a chromosome helps longevity.
Maybe also helps health in general?
The bad news: it’s not as effective in severe cases
If the government measures come into force and stay enforced for a long time, I suspect we’ll all be homeless eventually.
So much this.
So Ioanniddis is famous for writing “all your numbers are bunk” articles, that is pretty much his thing. This article, though, isn’t great.
For a person who loves to debunk bad numbers, it’s pretty disappointing to see him cherry-picking numbers like those from the DP to make a point. Because he doesn’t need to do that. Is the range of conceivable possibilities large? Absolutely. If you dig into the numbers, you’ll see that scientists are quite open about this. But he completely ignores the special circumstances on the DP and the overwhelming weight of evidence from both this and similar outbreaks in the past (which is what others are using for their estimates), to make a misleading pedantic point.
Are the numbers wrong? Absolutely. I mean - you look at the UK with 2000 cases and 72 dead, and then at Germany with almost 10K confirmed cases and 26 dead, it’s obvious something is hugely off. But it’s easy to talk dismissively about 10K vs 100K dead in a blog post. Politicians and scientists have to make decisions now and these are not just numbers in a paper, they’re actual flesh and blood humans who, or may not, die depending on what decision is made. Choosing to wait for more data is also a decision - a decision that can cost lives. And as Dr Ryan - who has actual experience fighting outbreaks - puts it:
“Perfection is the enemy of the good when it comes to emergency management. Speed trumps perfection … The greatest error is not to move. The greatest error is to be paralyzed by the fear of failure. If you need to be right before you move, you will never win.”
You clearly failed to tell them the rules
To lighten the times a wee bit, relevant Soviet culture:
Which maybe now frees you up to go back to doing it with just your team.
A better boss-response would have been to publicize the idea, and let each team organize their own. Maybe not too late to suggest that?
So, this is trivial in the big scheme of things, but I am going around in circles with Iberia. They canceled my upcoming flights, as they should, and then offered me the standard ‘rebook now for dates up to November or accept a voucher for rebooking through December’ that they are offering to everyone. The thing is, my tickets were always fully refundable. So I called them and told them that and they said ‘Ah, OK, we will refund your money.’ Then a day or so later I get an email saying ‘click here to get your voucher’. Then I call them and repeat the process.
I’m in no hurry, and happy to wait a reasonable amount of time for them to do the refund, as long as I know they intend to. As it is, it’s hard not to believe they’re simply resisting doing it and trying to push me to a voucher. And I would really prefer not to tie up their agent call time, especially given how busy they are with real problems, but I’m trying to avoid the default of receiving a voucher I don’t want instead of $4 grand.
I imagine all the airlines are trying to push customers into choosing to let the airline hold onto their money, and I certainly understand it. But nobody knows when you will be able to use a voucher, and in any case I deliberately bought a fully refundable ticket.
KevinC
4833
So I wake up this morning stressed about Coronavirus and then as I get up to make coffee, the house starts shaking and swaying like I’ve never felt before. Neat. Probably something really small for folks living in CA but I’ve never felt something like that in my life.
Guess I don’t need that coffee anymore.
EDIT: was a 5.7 quake.
I like Outbreak, but it’s a terrible movie for these times.
Outbreak , in that, offers the easy assurances that any such action film will. It creates a universe in which right and wrong are both extremely—cartoonishly—legible. Its dramas are, often literally, explosive. That makes for good entertainment; it also, as it happens, makes for extremely poor insight into the current pandemic. One of the defining qualities of COVID-19, after all, is precisely its lack of explosive, surround-sound dramas. The virus resembles the flu. It is carried, sometimes, without revealing its presence through any physical symptoms at all. It is deadly in part because it seems so banal. It hides in plain sight. And combatting it demands, often, the action of inaction: staying home. Doing nothing.
Which is also to say that COVID-19 is the kind of illness that is made exponentially worse by assumptions that are all too American: that riding out the pandemic without changing one’s habits or behaviors is possible. That people can—and should—go it alone. That independence is morally preferable to interconnection. And that heroism is big and loud and explosive. Outbreak , in that way—in its all-too-easy assumptions—anticipated some of what happened this weekend. It foresaw a moment in which some people would simply defy the exhortations of experts, either because they were not aware of the pleas or because they had seen fit to ignore them. It foresaw a situation in which some would respond to the dire threats of viral contagion by bragging that, instead of self-quarantining or practicing any form of social distancing, they went out for burgers at Red Robin because “this is America” and “I’ll do what I want.” Individualism can be a virtue; in a pandemic, though, it is a liability. It is also, more simply, a lie.
Teiman
4835
That happened to me a week ago. I think the body have a way to realice ship happeend and is on a different schedule than the brain. The brain knows but the body dont…
Here in Spain it feels like every day is sunday now… low traffic, few noises…peace. Is weird.
I miss the noise of childrens playing in the school ( theres 4 schools in the area where I live), and when I think about it, I want to cry. Part of it is that I know is a noise that I will not heard in a long time.
Canuck
4836
I really liked Contagion. I wonder where it is in the rankings.
I found out last night that my niece has been infected. The school she goes to was suddenly shut down in a hurry, as someone there fell ill (and was rushed to the hospital, so it’s serious for that individual). Unfortunately, my niece had very frequent contact with this person. I’m gonna guess 17 year olds haven’t really taken the social distancing thing seriously, and it’s probably really hard to do in certain settings.
Of course, my niece “just felt a little bad” and my relatives didn’t think about it, so her mother has been in close contact with her. The positive test for the original kid at the school came back after my niece had already been picked up, so you could say the family didn’t know. I think that the urge to protect their daughter just overrode any other needs, and they thought the chance the kid who fell sick actually had covid19 was incredibly low. But due to this, both my niece and her mom are presumed positive, but her mom hasn’t shown symptoms yet, and my niece isn’t sick enough to go to the hospital.
Her father was away so wasn’t exposed in the first 24h, and is now living at his dad’s house and thinks he wasn’t exposed. He’s been taking care of my father in law, who’s 90 and just got out of assisted living, so he’s trying to do his best to take care of his family (getting them groceries and supplies) while keeping his exposure minimal so he doesn’t kill his dad.
This sounds like a unique story right now, but I fear in a few weeks something like this is going to be the case for many of us - either we’re going to know someone, or we’re going to be one of the infected.
The silver lining is that so far neither need hospitalization, both are otherwise very healthy and relatively young, and are sick before the spike. They may wind up being superheros in a few weeks, as hopefully they’ll pull through this OK and are immune.
JD
4838
In-fucking-deed. Berlin police had to step in and let know hundreds of teenagers who met up to party and celebrate school closure that this isn’t the brightest of ideas.
To my niece’s credit, she went into a panic not because she was sick, but because she knew she could have infected her grandfather. So, at least part of the message was absorbed.
JD
4840
In somewhat related news: Scotland to close schools and nurseries.
Breaking: Nicola Sturgeon announces schools and nurseries in Scotland will close to pupils at the end of the week.
The first minister said there will be further announcements to support low income students on free school meals as well as students who have exams.
Sturgeon added that people should not assume schools and nurseries will reopen after the Easter break. She cannot promise it will reopen before summer holidays.
She said: “It will not be easy, but together we will get through this.”
ShivaX
4841
Which one has the monkey? Because that movie made me livid.
ShivaX
4842
Also 17-year-old brains don’t process shit correctly. Their frontal cortex isn’t done baking so they do stupid shit.
https://www.aacap.org/aacap/families_and_youth/facts_for_families/fff-guide/the-teen-brain-behavior-problem-solving-and-decision-making-095.aspx
