Wuhan Coronavirus - are you prepared?

[Unventor]

47 minutes ago, atdlzpae said:

@Unventor Is "out queue" a code word for layoffs? If not I didn't understand you.

 

British Prime Minister (Boris Johnson) is on oxygen.

I don't have a correct word for it in English. But it is a short term layoff but you still have your job. You are sent "home" as you have a day off/holiday. Since you don't work you would normally take a hit on your pay slip hour to hour you are sent home. 

But these are special circumstances so government have installed aid packages to business to help with salaries to avoid permanent job losses. 

So you can see companies using this from two angels. Either there is nothing/to little to do. Or economics are bad and company must make cost saving to maintain liquidity to pay bills.

At my company we have taken a big sale hit so income is not matching costs. But since I work with aftersale support we still have lots to do, since customers now have time to ask us and have nothing better to (sometimes 😉) due being home most of the time. 

[tenofnine]

2 hours ago, Unventor said:

I don't have a correct word for it in English. But it is a short term layoff but you still have your job. You are sent "home" as you have a day off/holiday. Since you don't work you would normally take a hit on your pay slip hour to hour you are sent home. 

But these are special circumstances so government have installed aid packages to business to help with salaries to avoid permanent job losses. 

So you can see companies using this from two angels. Either there is nothing/to little to do. Or economics are bad and company must make cost saving to maintain liquidity to pay bills.

At my company we have taken a big sale hit so income is not matching costs. But since I work with aftersale support we still have lots to do, since customers now have time to ask us and have nothing better to (sometimes 😉) due being home most of the time. 

They call this a "furlough" here in the US but that is definitely a borrowed term and it usually applies to government/military workforce. Kind of like a suggested temporary leave of absence without pay.

[Unventor]

2 hours ago, tenofnine said:

They call this a "furlough" here in the US but that is definitely a borrowed term and it usually applies to government/military workforce. Kind of like a suggested temporary leave of absence without pay.

Thanks. 

Anyway took my day off for the week today. Surpposely the best weather for the week. 

And guess what....

https://euc.world/tour/585300618673278

At 17C, sunny  and slight winds  7m/s, I just had to take advantage of this today. 

[Unventor]

I just saw on out local news that deathtolls in the US have passed 10k+ to covid-19. I know it is a big country but still you had time to prepared compared to China. Also you have seen the results in countries that got hit hard here in Europe too.

I can only hope it comes under control and that your government take this seriously. 

It really makes me sad to read that kind of news. Especially since the warnings were so clear from us in Europe. 

And I don't think Mr. Trump can solve this in his usual manners, blaming fake news or fire someone. 

[RockyTop]

I don’t see how it could be stopped, only slowed.  Even with closed boarders the US is more open to travel. Each state could be viewed as a country. 
Advanced countries are going to have a larger number of older people. And some countries are less healthy. ( US vs Netherlands) The Netherlands are more healthy because of their lifestyles. The technology and higher standards of life keep the people that are on the edge alive. ....until now.  
Many of the numbers were set in stone before any of this even started. 
I am waiting to see how many people in the US die because of the lack of hospital beds and respirators. We hear two stories. One is that New York needs  30,000 more respirators.  The other is that they are using less than 4,000 in New York and have 1,500 sitting by not being used or needed.... yet. 
You be the judge. 

[Gasmantle]

The latest news is Boris Johnson the UK prime minister is now in intensive care.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-52192604

 

[mike_bike_kite]

5 hours ago, RockyTop said:

We hear two stories. One is that New York needs  30,000 more respirators.  The other is that they are using less than 4,000 in New York and have 1,500 sitting by not being used or needed.... yet.

You be the judge.   

The "yet" bit is obviously the real important bit. The virus tends to infect double the number of people every few days. Faster if you haven't isolated people from each other. It will probably be less than a fortnight before those extra 30,000 respirators might start to look useful. It's mostly the old and those with any underlying health issues that die. Sadly it tends to be the stupid ones that ignore the isolation advice that infect them. 

[Rehab1]

I just received a reply from my bank, One step closer. 

 

[Bob Eisenman]

2 hours ago, Rehab1 said:

just received a reply from my bank

I received this in late March from a landlord regarding a lease renewal offer. Mine is 'DocuSign.com' though.🙄😕🤫

https://i.ibb.co/cyk1bTS/Screenshot-20200406-225053.png

 

[tenofnine]

9 hours ago, Unventor said:

I just saw on out local news that deathtolls in the US have passed 10k+ to covid-19. I know it is a big country but still you had time to prepared compared to China. Also you have seen the results in countries that got hit hard here in Europe too.

I can only hope it comes under control and that your government take this seriously. 

It really makes me sad to read that kind of news. Especially since the warnings were so clear from us in Europe. 

And I don't think Mr. Trump can solve this in his usual manners, blaming fake news or fire someone. 

You've got to remember to think of the US as a continent pretty much and each state as it's own country. And the US is a massive hub for int'l travel and immigration.

Those deaths are highly concentrated in a few states, while some have deaths in the single digits still. So in these high concentrate areas they are running out of room to aid people while other places see almost no strain.

We unfortunately are still getting people flying from other countries and continents, so really it's all the traffic from foreign areas that are rapidly increasing the numbers. People are taking it serious from where I'm at, but the problem is in high int'l travel states and cities they can't just block people from returning/moving from outside countries (though they should be for now).

When the final numbers come out I have no reason to believe that they sill be any higher than other places. Also the US doesn't tend to lie or cover up numbers concerning a pandemic such as this (something we've already seen form many other nations)

Edited April 7, 2020 by tenofnine

[Scatcat]

6 hours ago, Rehab1 said:

I just received a reply from my bank, One step closer. 

 

My already high esteem for you has been going up further. Your reasoning seem akin to my own bosses, the dedication to do right by your people.

Cudos!

[Rehab1]

6 hours ago, Bob Eisenman said:

I received this in late March from a landlord regarding a lease renewal offer. Mine is 'DocuSign.com' though.🙄😕🤫

https://i.ibb.co/cyk1bTS/Screenshot-20200406-225053.png

 

Docusign was used with throughout the document exchange process with my bank

 

1 hour ago, Scatcat said:

My already high esteem for you has been going up further. Your reasoning seem akin to my own bosses, the dedication to do right by your people.

Cudos!

Thank you kindly. Challenging times indeed.

Unfortunately there are older mom pop companies out there applying for SBA loans that are ill prepared when it comes to gathering all of the necessary documentation and converting to electronic form. Hopefully family and friends can provide them with assistance but with the social distancing mandates it may prove difficult. 

[LanghamP]

11 hours ago, tenofnine said:

We unfortunately are still getting people flying from other countries and continents, so really it's all the traffic from foreign areas that are rapidly increasing the numbers. People are taking it serious from where I'm at, but the problem is in high int'l travel states and cities they can't just block people from returning/moving from outside countries (though they should be for now).

Dunno how you can stop the wealthy from traveling/fleeing. They have lots of resources and are very evasive.

<Quote>

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/coronavirus-covid-cities-second-homes-rural-small-towns

“Wealth is the vector.” That’s what sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom tweeted last week, in reference to the spread of COVID-19 across both the globe and the United States. Wealth is not the cause of every concentrated outbreak dotting the United States. But it’s the common denominator of so much of its spread outside of major urban areas. It’s the reason why so many of the coronavirus hot spots in the Mountain West — Sun Valley, Idaho; Gunnison County, Colorado; Summit County, Utah; Gallatin County, Montana — overlap with winter playgrounds for the wealthy. The virus travels via people, and the people who travel the most, both domestically and internationally, are rich people.

“People come here from all over the world,” Russell told the Idaho Statesman. “Especially this time of year. When I’m in the ER, I get people from New York, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Seattle. Every week there’s people from those places. Most likely someone from an urban area or multiple people from urban areas came here and they just set it off.”

All over the United States, people are fleeing urban areas with high infection rates for the perceived safety and natural beauty of rural areas. Some of them own second homes in those areas; others are paying upwards of $10,000 a month, depending on the area, for temporary housing. The common denominator among those populations is, again, wealth — either their own or their families’. They can flee the city because their jobs can be done remotely, or they don’t work at all. They either had a vacation house already, or they can afford to fork over what amounts to a second rent, or second mortgage.

Edited April 7, 2020 by LanghamP

[RockyTop]

It seem that the more dense a city is the harder it gets hit. Our hospitals locally are empty and  laying people off. The hospitals are ghost towns with half the light turn off. They sent all the patients they could home a few weeks ago. With a metro area of about half a million we have, last count, 25 hospitalized with COVID, down from 36 last week. More than half of our 1,000 hospital beds are empty and they are adding 500- 1,000 new beds at the convention center as I type. 
Every week for the last three they say we are going to get hit hard next week but things stay the same. Don’t get me wrong, That’s a good thing! I don’t want things here to be like New York.

[travsformation]

16 hours ago, tenofnine said:

You've got to remember to think of the US as a continent pretty much and each state as it's own country. And the US is a massive hub for int'l travel and immigration.
We unfortunately are still getting people flying from other countries and continents, so really it's all the traffic from foreign areas that are rapidly increasing the numbers.

Sadly, once the virus reached the US, incoming international flights are no longer the main/only issue, domestic flights pose just as much risk.

Check out the live light data on flightradar24: It's scary to see the amount of air travel, particularly if you think of each aircraft as a virus transport container, carrying hundreds of passengers who could potentially be incubating (and thus infective) yet unaware of it, carrying the virus to every corner of the country...

(The link is for Oklahome City, zoom out to see the entirety of the U.S.: https://www.flightradar24.com/airport/okc )
 

Compare it to Europe (link is for Madrid, zoom out for the rest of the continent)...I'd never seen such low air traffic before:

https://www.flightradar24.com/airport/mad

Just in case, this isn't pro-Europe virtue signalling, but rather a "we waited too long, reacted too late, and look at the state Europe's in."

Air traffic is down now, but wasn't limited when it should have been. I only wish the U.S. weren't making the same mistakes that were made here, but the POTUS seems to think differently...  

Edited April 7, 2020 by travsformation

[travsformation]

Upon closer inspection, with NYC being the hottest COVID-19 spot in the country, 1,411 departures are scheduled from JFK in the next week, and the busiest route is domestic:

If you look at departures, albeit lots of cancellations, the vast majority are domestic flights; similar story with arrivals

[LanghamP]

Air pollution link tentatively explains the link between N. Italy's 12% mortality rate versus the more normal 4.5%. We are discovering how lethal air pollution is, when we stop manufacturing and transportation sectors.

[atdlzpae]

Interesting link: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-Europe-estimates-and-NPI-impact-30-03-2020.pdf

Their model estimates, that most of Europe has only (or as much as, depending on your viewpoint) 1-3% infected.
That would mean that we're nowhere near herd immunity (70-80% is required) and things can get 10 times worse than today.

[travsformation]

2 hours ago, atdlzpae said:

Their model estimates, that most of Europe has only (or as much as, depending on your viewpoint) 1-3% infected.
That would mean that we're nowhere near herd immunity (70-80% is required) and things can get 10 times worse than today.

Very interesting article, thanks for sharing!

Yeah, the fact Boris Johnson (now in ICU) was suggesting heard immunity back then there were just a handful of cases in the UK  always struck me as entirely nonsensical.

From the article: "Our estimates imply that the populations in Europe are not close to herd immunity (~50-75% if R0 is 2-4). Further, with Rt values dropping substantially, the rate of acquisition of herd immunity will slow down rapidly. This implies that the virus will be able to spread rapidly should interventions be lifted."

A few quotes that caught my attention from the article:

"We estimate that, across all 11 countries between 7 and 43 million individuals have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 up to 28th March, representing between 1.88%and 11.43%of the population."

"In all countries, we estimate there are orders of magnitude fewer infections detected than true infections, mostly  likely due to mild and asymptomatic infections as well as limited testing capacity. [...] The high level of under-ascertainment of infections that we estimate here is likely due to the focus on testing in hospital settings rather than in  the  community."

"In Italy,  our results suggest that, cumulatively, 5.9  [1.9-15.2] million people have been infected as of March 28th, giving an attack rate of 9.8% [3.2%-25%] of the population.  Spain has recently seen a large increase in the number of deaths, and given its smaller population, our model estimates that a higher proportion of the population, 15.0% (7.0 [1.8-19] million people) have been infected to date. Germany is estimated to have one of the lowest attack rates at 0.7% with 600,000 [240,000-1,500,000] people infected."

"We estimate large changes in 𝑅𝑡 in response to the combined non-pharmaceutical interventions. Our results, which are driven largely by countries with advanced epidemics and larger numbers of deaths (e.g.  Italy,  Spain),  suggest that these interventions have together had a substantial impact on transmission, as measured by changes in the estimated reproduction number 𝑅𝑡."

"With current interventions remaining in place to at least the end of March,  we estimate that interventions across all 11 countries will have averted 59,000 deaths up to 31 March."

The graphs are also very informative:

[atdlzpae]

2 hours ago, travsformation said:

The graphs are also very informative

Thanks for shortening it!

Damn, so a complete lockdown is required to keep R0 around 1? I don't even...

[Toshio Uemura]

On 4/7/2020 at 3:10 AM, Unventor said:

And I don't think Mr. Trump can solve this in his usual manners, blaming fake news or fire someone. 

He might solve it by firing himself ...  🤣 

[xorbe]

CDC [today] published estimated median R=5.7 (just throwing this info out there)

Edited April 8, 2020 by xorbe

[travsformation]

49 minutes ago, xorbe said:

CDC published estimated median R=5.7

Silver lining is that that's with no hard lock down...

[Toshio Uemura]

I found this rather interesting, but it might be propaganda. What do you guys think?

 

 

[mike_bike_kite]

That's almost an hour long! I'm bored at home but not that bored. Can we wait for the executive summary?