Neverending Covid-19 Coronavirus

Instacart delivery was a success! I now have enough groceries for at least 2 weeks, if not more. I seriously do not plan to leave my apartment, other than a walk outside for exercise (away from people), for at least the next 3 weeks. Also please tip your delivery people well. I felt bad about how much groceries I ordered ($200+) and gave them a total tip of $35. They’re out there potentially catching this virus 😱 with no other recourse so they need that $$$
 
Ed Selley said:
Joking aside, Disney+ goes live in the UK a week tomorrow and I am genuinely looking forward to watching specific issues of The Simpsons with my son. I shall leave the adventures of Princess Elsa to his mother.
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Thanks for reminding me about a stupid first world problem to take my mind off the virus.

WHEN ARE YOU FIXING THE SIMPSONS' ASPECT RATIO DISNEY?!

😂
 
Captainfog said:
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Here's the thing. At first I had a degree of alarm about the proposed UK strategy. A few days in and I'm pretty sold on it.

Why?

First up, I just don’t think containment with a view to elimination is possible any more. I’m absolutely sure that South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore etc can lock down and eliminate their current outbreaks and China probably can too. I imagine it might be technically possible for Europe and the US to do the same thing, albeit at unknown cost to their ability to function as nation states. The thing is that Iran has effectively lost control of their outbreak, there’s a worrying lack of information from Russia (a border 2,516 miles long with China and no cases apparently...) and it is present in Africa and Indonesia too. Unless we lock down travel forever, I can’t see how you can avoid it coming back. It has a significant symptom free period and many of these places have long land borders. Even if COVID19 lacks the ability to flare up on its own- and we'll see about that soon enough- it's out there.

Secondly, having watched people flailing around buying toilet roll like demented acolytes of the Golgothan, it is abundantly clear that we lack the self-discipline for actual, prolonged self-isolation. I am to virology what R-Kelly is to teen mentoring but I have worked from home for a decade and I'm a borderline recluse so I understand the tenets of self-isolation pretty well. Even so, the idea of doing two crushing, fucking weeks with the hatches battened fills me with dread and- feel free to judge me at this point- even with the motivator of not catching a grim illness, I don't think the bulk of people in Europe or the US can do it, let alone longer. Inherent in much of the stuff doing the rounds on social media is that we're sort of up for it (maybe, depending on schedules, work etc) but only so long as there's a ready supply of poor people to keep the niceties running- Deliveroo, Amazon etc.

The UK Strategy (there's a less loaded take on it HERE and further information on how the vulnerable elements of society are to be handled HERE) is cynical or realistic depending on where you sit (and, let's be honest, I've made my views pretty clear above I guess). It makes the in built assumption that the ability of the modern populace to actually lock down for any sustained period of time is very limited and the button won't be pushed until later because it can only be pushed once and only for a limited duration. Now depending on whether you harbour a positive view of humanity or not, this can seem crushingly bleak. Based on feedback from the field though, I don't feel it is.
 
The last tweet on that thread suggests that someone might have been infected for a second time in Japan. If that has happened then we're fucked because herd immunity isn't going to work.

I think you have to strike a balance between complete lock down and a free for all. The flattening the curve thing is real. There aren't enough hospital beds to cope if we don't do that. There probably won't be enough beds anyway, but what we don't want is a situation where doctors are having to decide who to try and save and who they just let die.

I'm worried that in 6 months we're all going to know someone who died from this.
 
When the numbers start to really pop and 10 deaths in a day are looked back on as the good times then will the government hold firm with this approach or will they blink and start putting us on lock down? It was only when the hospitals became overrun and people were left to die in corridors that Italians pressed the panic button and tried to quarantine everyone.
 
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