The Seat of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt am Main is now asking their 3,700 strong personnel to work from home as part of their emergency action plan against COVID-19. Last week they already suggested their employees to not undertake unnecessary business trips, as well as to postpone any conferences within the ECB building itself. About 40% of other major companies in Hesse and other federal states did priorly pretty much the same. Things are starting to get heated up within Germany, it seems.
By the way... did I ever mention that I live in Frankfurt? Feels like I rolled a natural 1 somewhere.
The Seat of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt am Main is now asking their 3,700 strong personnel to work from home as part of their emergency action plan against COVID-19. Last week they already suggested their employees to not undertake unnecessary business trips, as well as to postpone any conferences within the ECB building itself. About 40% of other major companies in Hesse and other federal states did priorly pretty much the same. Things are starting to get heated up within Germany, it seems.
By the way... did I ever mention that I live in Frankfurt? Feels like I rolled a natural 1 somewhere.
Thing is it seems that idiots abound by what they are panic buying... Toilet paper? Seriously? Just how long do they think this outbreak will last? Those that are doing this seem to be buying years' (i.e. more than one year) worth of the stuff. Also, it seems that it's a world (or at least the English speaking portion of it) wide phenomenon - UK and Australia to name just a couple of places. It makes you wonder when one or more of these people will (posthumously obviously) get a Darwin Award. Cest la vie.
At least those are paying for the things they want. There's worse out there. Heck, it's almost a daily occurrence now to hear of people stealing toilet paper and hand sanitizer... from hospitals no less! Gah!
@Kamigoroshi@TarotRedhand
Actually there is a article I didn't post about a woman charged for assault over toilet paper doing all this. Honestly toilet paper being the first thing to go I didn't see coming hand sanitizer definitely (stores near me have been raised of both hand sanitizer and rubbing alcohol), water packs, every time I went to Walmart everyone seem to be buying water jugs or bottle water (even got myself some.)
COVID-19: median incubation period is 5.1 days - similar to SARS, 97.5% develop symptoms within 11.5 days. Current 14 day quarantine recommendation is 'reasonable' - 1% will develop symptoms after release from 14 day quarantine. N = 181 from China
The German researchers found high levels of viral fragments in 13 stool samples from four patients in their study, but they were unable to grow virus from any of them. The paper noted, though, that all the patients had mild illness, and the fact that they could not find virus in their stool doesn’t rule out that it could happen in other cases.
“Further studies should therefore address whether SARS-CoV-2 shed in stool is rendered non-infectious though contact with the gut environment,” they wrote, adding that their findings suggest measures to try to stop spread of the virus should focus on respiratory tract transmission — protecting others from the coughs and sneezes of people infected with the virus.
Virus could not be grown from blood or urine samples taken from the patients, the authors reported.
The study also noted that people who are infected begin to develop antibodies to the virus quickly, typically within six to 12 days. The rapid rise of antibodies may explain why about 80% of people infected with the virus do not develop severe disease.
Not yet peer-reviewed. But nevertheless very important.
You may find this UK research interesting. It is built upon research into an earlier corona virus disease - Middle East Respiratory Disease (aka MERS).
So I saw a Tumblr post that I paraphrased on Facebook today, I think its relevant to the discussion of people stockpiling:
So its been impossible to find hand sanitizer anywhere for about a week now. To those with litres of soap and disinfectant at home: To slow the spread of COVID-19, you need as many other people to be able to wash and sanitize their hands as possible. Having all the sanitizer and soap in the world will not keep other people from being able to spread it to YOU. You are not actually protecting yourself. This is not a rant or anger post. Just a friendly attempt to educate. Thank you, and stay safe.
So I saw a Tumblr post that I paraphrased on Facebook today, I think its relevant to the discussion of people stockpiling:
So its been impossible to find hand sanitizer anywhere for about a week now. To those with litres of soap and disinfectant at home: To slow the spread of COVID-19, you need as many other people to be able to wash and sanitize their hands as possible. Having all the sanitizer and soap in the world will not keep other people from being able to spread it to YOU. You are not actually protecting yourself. This is not a rant or anger post. Just a friendly attempt to educate. Thank you, and stay safe.
Note that my version is far nicer.
People are acting as if hand sanitizer and soap form some kind of imperious shield to the virus. I don't even know where to start with this. Sure, it is VERY important for everyone to be washing their hands multiple times a day right now, but this is JUST as much a precaution to prevent you from spreading it to other people as to prevent yourself from getting it. The only thing that is going to stop the spread is if people who have the virus (showing symptoms and outwardly sick or not) isolate themselves for the necessary period of time. But we have no idea how many people have it, because we are only doing a FRACTION of the testing that places like South Korea is (where the numbers are actually going DOWN, not up). Since we have no earthly idea how many people are actually carriers, there is no real way to gauge how badly hospitals are going to get hit. When the hospitals get hit, they won't be able to test anyone, because they don't have the supplies. In other countries, they are literally doing swabs in drive-throughs. Here, we can't even get the CDC to approve tests for people who are showing symptoms who doctors are requesting them for.
This is American arrogance at it's most profound. And it's going to expose a half a dozen other fault-lines in our society. The lack of universal medical care. The lack of paid sick leave for 25-30% of workers forcing them to go to work when the shouldn't. The closing of schools will reveal that scores of kids only get full meals AT school. The horrendous conditions in many of our nursing homes. We could go on all day. It's going to lay bare how greedy and morally bankrupt we are as a society.
I was going to reply but my initial reply would serve only to politicize the event and there are already far too many people doing that--I refuse to be one of them.
Airlines and trains will recover because the people on them aren't really on them for all that long and they get regular disinfectant cleanings. Cruise ships...*yeesh* I will never get on one of those floating petri dishes, where you spend a week swimming around in all the bacteria and viruses left by the two previous groups of passengers. Gross.
People can sit around and pretend this is just going to magically get better (it won't) or they can take the extreme measures China and South Korea have and now their cases are actually dropping. American citizens don't believe they're susceptible to this kind of thing, because we are essentially inoculated from much of the misery in the world. So we'll continue to walk around like nothing is wrong until it's blanketed the entire country. I just sat here for the last 5 minutes listening to people talk about it at work and I'm frankly aghast at what I'm hearing. No one is going to take this seriously until forced to by circumstances. Two main talking points I picked up??:
Austria has now prohibited events with 100 people or more inside buildings. Open air events are prohibited if 500 or more are attending. Even schools and universities are national wide closed (no corona-holidays for them tho - video chat classes from home are mandatory). There are also now more extreme border controls: all trains and flights coming from and to Italy have as of today ceased. Even drivers with foreign license plates on their vehicles aren't allowed to make stop inside Austria anymore if they appear to be sickly. Yup... Austria's border controls now take temperature checks of each single driver.
Maybe telecommuting will really take off in the United States now. My job is IT--I can connect at home, VPN to work, connect Jabber and my headset, then do everything I need to do from my desk there as opposed to being in a cube here. All I do is talk on the phone and remote onto other people's computers, anyway--I don't need to be in a building with other people. A lot of people have jobs like that--accounting, AP/AR, network/telecom, HR, medical billers, etc. Any job which is 85% computer-based in a cube can be done from home.
My son is sick and the doctor says its a cold. This happened the day after news of the 1 case in my state broke. Luckily:
1. Our family doctor has always been amazing, so I trust them.
2. The one person took the issue seriously and went in simply because they had traveled recently. She was watched for a month before symptoms even started. So my son wouldn't have caught it from her.
Fingers crossed he didn't get anything from an unknown carrier. We've had him under partial quarantine for about a week, and we're keeping a very close eye on him.
I find it interesting how polarized even this issue has been. There's a new illness, be aware of it, take precautions and be prepared. But don't panic, and don't ignore it. No, it's not the end of days, but it it's a very real threat. Some social distancing, would seem a reasonable precaution. It won't stop the disease by itself, but it will slow it and ease the strain on the healthcare system. Without a sudden spike in cases hospitals can more effectively handle those cases that do occur. This, in turn, increases recovery.
Purely out of interest by a UK citizen, I have a question that is not so easy to find the answer to on this side of the pond. What happens to the american government if that very prominent senior citizen Donald ("we're doing great") Trump gets it?
Purely out of interest by a UK citizen, I have a question that is not so easy to find the answer to on this side of the pond. What happens to the american government if that very prominent senior citizen Donald ("we're doing great") Trump gets it?
The President would have to be incapacitated to transfer decision-making abilities to the Vice President. Barring that, only him temporarily signing over authority (never happen with this guy) or dying would do so. Trump is absolutely part of the at-risk age pool (73). Pence is much younger (60). Neither of them simply HAVING the virus would mean anything unless they reached critical condition. The chances both of them would contract it and die seems very remote. But if that DID happen, the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, becomes President. She is 80. Next in line is the President pro tempore of the majority party in the Senate, which I believe is the longest serving member.
There's something of a role reversal in China. The number of new cases there has slowed to a trickle in recent days and they've now announced that international arrivals will have to be quarantined for 2 weeks to try and ensure they don't re-import a problem ...
Meanwhile, the US is set to become the new largest reservoir for the disease. To date they've only tested around 3,000 people (exact numbers are uncertain as no figures are published) and identified over 1,000 cases. That high hit rate certainly means that there are large numbers of unidentified cases out there which will result in major growth in the coming days and weeks.
Compare that with the UK where more than 25,000 people have been tested, with 382 positive diagnoses. Successfully identifying most cases at an early stage means the UK is still in the containment phase of the disease.
However, there have been a number of cases identified where the infection route is not known and it's still thus considered likely that numbers will grow and the UK will move into the delay phase in the next couple of weeks - that's intended to slow down the rate at which the disease spreads in order to avoid the widespread disruption to the health service a major peak in cases would cause.
Edit: UK cases up to 456 today, confirming that the virus is starting to get a hold. Plans are in place to increase testing from the recent 1,500 - 2,000 a day up to 10,000 a day in order to more accurately track progress in a situation where most new cases won't be traced from existing ones.
Strict restrictions on overseas travel accompanied by mandatory quarantine upon returning. Other than that more panic-buying, price-gouging, and an end to public gatherings.
Strict restrictions on overseas travel accompanied by mandatory quarantine upon returning. Other than that more panic-buying, price-gouging, and an end to public gatherings.
Restricting overseas travel will do nothing considering the virus is already running wild here.
They will have to appear to do *something* and that is an easy one to pick.
In the meantime, schools, universities, and businesses can convert to virtual meetings/classes--all you need is a host with a camera, the link to the meeting, and an acces code; text-based materials which need to be distributed may be scanned to .pdf then e-mailed to all participants. Can we all start wearing hazmat suits? Do they come in colors other than white, yellow, or light blue?
Comments
By the way... did I ever mention that I live in Frankfurt? Feels like I rolled a natural 1 somewhere.
Things are starting to get heated everywhere.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/09/italys-quarantine-provokes-panic-italian-stocks-plunge.html
@JuliusBorisov
I said something similar and got ignored.
TR
Actually there is a article I didn't post about a woman charged for assault over toilet paper doing all this. Honestly toilet paper being the first thing to go I didn't see coming hand sanitizer definitely (stores near me have been raised of both hand sanitizer and rubbing alcohol), water packs, every time I went to Walmart everyone seem to be buying water jugs or bottle water (even got myself some.)
Food, most definitely but not toilet paper.
https://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/2762808/incubation-period-coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19-from-publicly-reported
Not yet peer-reviewed. But nevertheless very important.
TR
So its been impossible to find hand sanitizer anywhere for about a week now. To those with litres of soap and disinfectant at home: To slow the spread of COVID-19, you need as many other people to be able to wash and sanitize their hands as possible. Having all the sanitizer and soap in the world will not keep other people from being able to spread it to YOU. You are not actually protecting yourself. This is not a rant or anger post. Just a friendly attempt to educate. Thank you, and stay safe.
Note that my version is far nicer.
People are acting as if hand sanitizer and soap form some kind of imperious shield to the virus. I don't even know where to start with this. Sure, it is VERY important for everyone to be washing their hands multiple times a day right now, but this is JUST as much a precaution to prevent you from spreading it to other people as to prevent yourself from getting it. The only thing that is going to stop the spread is if people who have the virus (showing symptoms and outwardly sick or not) isolate themselves for the necessary period of time. But we have no idea how many people have it, because we are only doing a FRACTION of the testing that places like South Korea is (where the numbers are actually going DOWN, not up). Since we have no earthly idea how many people are actually carriers, there is no real way to gauge how badly hospitals are going to get hit. When the hospitals get hit, they won't be able to test anyone, because they don't have the supplies. In other countries, they are literally doing swabs in drive-throughs. Here, we can't even get the CDC to approve tests for people who are showing symptoms who doctors are requesting them for.
This is American arrogance at it's most profound. And it's going to expose a half a dozen other fault-lines in our society. The lack of universal medical care. The lack of paid sick leave for 25-30% of workers forcing them to go to work when the shouldn't. The closing of schools will reveal that scores of kids only get full meals AT school. The horrendous conditions in many of our nursing homes. We could go on all day. It's going to lay bare how greedy and morally bankrupt we are as a society.
Airlines and trains will recover because the people on them aren't really on them for all that long and they get regular disinfectant cleanings. Cruise ships...*yeesh* I will never get on one of those floating petri dishes, where you spend a week swimming around in all the bacteria and viruses left by the two previous groups of passengers. Gross.
1.) I'll be fine
2.) It'll be gone by summer.
1. Our family doctor has always been amazing, so I trust them.
2. The one person took the issue seriously and went in simply because they had traveled recently. She was watched for a month before symptoms even started. So my son wouldn't have caught it from her.
Fingers crossed he didn't get anything from an unknown carrier. We've had him under partial quarantine for about a week, and we're keeping a very close eye on him.
TR
President Pence...
TR
The President would have to be incapacitated to transfer decision-making abilities to the Vice President. Barring that, only him temporarily signing over authority (never happen with this guy) or dying would do so. Trump is absolutely part of the at-risk age pool (73). Pence is much younger (60). Neither of them simply HAVING the virus would mean anything unless they reached critical condition. The chances both of them would contract it and die seems very remote. But if that DID happen, the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, becomes President. She is 80. Next in line is the President pro tempore of the majority party in the Senate, which I believe is the longest serving member.
Meanwhile, the US is set to become the new largest reservoir for the disease. To date they've only tested around 3,000 people (exact numbers are uncertain as no figures are published) and identified over 1,000 cases. That high hit rate certainly means that there are large numbers of unidentified cases out there which will result in major growth in the coming days and weeks.
Compare that with the UK where more than 25,000 people have been tested, with 382 positive diagnoses. Successfully identifying most cases at an early stage means the UK is still in the containment phase of the disease.
Edit: UK cases up to 456 today, confirming that the virus is starting to get a hold. Plans are in place to increase testing from the recent 1,500 - 2,000 a day up to 10,000 a day in order to more accurately track progress in a situation where most new cases won't be traced from existing ones.
Restricting overseas travel will do nothing considering the virus is already running wild here.
In the meantime, schools, universities, and businesses can convert to virtual meetings/classes--all you need is a host with a camera, the link to the meeting, and an acces code; text-based materials which need to be distributed may be scanned to .pdf then e-mailed to all participants. Can we all start wearing hazmat suits? Do they come in colors other than white, yellow, or light blue?