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emwearz wrote:So three states, mine included, in Australia have closed all 'non-essential' businesses for the next 6 months.

Six months sounds like an extreme overreaction, and I expect your government to walk that back in a month or so. Essentially shutting down the economy for six months is almost undoubtedly worse for the country then letting the virus run unchecked.

MrPopo wrote:

emwearz wrote:So three states, mine included, in Australia have closed all 'non-essential' businesses for the next 6 months.

Six months sounds like an extreme overreaction, and I expect your government to walk that back in a month or so. Essentially shutting down the economy for six months is almost undoubtedly worse for the country then letting the virus run unchecked.

The general view of the public is this. They have set a worse case scenario and will scale back when needed.

NZ now on lockdown, so I'm working at home starting tomorrow for a month or so. Crazy crazy times

It's Monday morning and we still have to show up for work. I don't have a private office; it's cubicle space here. So if I have the virus and don't know it, I could potentially infect my coworkers in the neighboring cubicles. We all completed our mandatory work-from-home training and documentation the week before last. On Friday, my supervisor asked the boss from corporate if they were going to send us home or not. Corporate boss told him that unless the governor or the president orders that we shut down, we will continue coming into work. That same supervisor also "furloughed indefinitely" later that day.

I haven't heard any update on my ex. I'm going to take that as "no news is good news" because if she had died over the weekend I would have caught word about it.

Remember y'all: The real numbers are higher than the confirmed cases. There simply aren't enough testing kits to go around.

UK heading for a full lockdown. A big announcement is happening tonight.

Hopefully at some point some sane person will realise the economic and societal impact of these extreme measures, not to mention the effect on family relationships, mental health and the isolation of vulnerable people, far outweighs the impact of the virus.

samsonlonghair wrote:Remember y'all: The real numbers are higher than the confirmed cases. There simply aren't enough testing kits to go around.

That's actually a good thing though. Well not that they aren't testing - they should be! But it means the mortality rate and hospitalisation rate is FAR lower than what the 'official' stats imply. It's one of the theories why Germany's mortality rate is far lower than other countries, because they are testing as many people as they can. Some countries are also attributing coronavirus to people's deaths when the cause isn't actually clear or confirmed (e.g. people with underlying health conditions).

My entire province is under lockdown now too. I think my job is still essential, but tbh it's probably only a matter of time until they use disposable plates and utensils for safety. I just hope if that happens it'll happen in April so I'll potentially have coverage instead of losing income.

Trudeau seems to be more stern, and implied that the emergencies act might happen, which kind of seems like martial law. If that happens that will be interesting...

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Reprise wrote:UK heading for a full lockdown. A big announcement is happening tonight.

Hopefully at some point some sane person will realize the economic and societal impact of these extreme measures, not to mention the effect on family relationships, mental health and the isolation of vulnerable people, far outweighs the impact of the virus.

I don't know about that, it's a difficult balancing act.

Compare the approaches of Italy vs. South Korea. South Korea took strong measures early and have managed to keep their healthcare need under capacity. Italy did not and is now forced to face quarantines anyway on top of having its medical capacity overwhelmed. It's not really a trade off between the disease and the economy, if we do nothing we may eventually face the worst of both anyway.

Your ultimate goal is you want to be 1918 St. Louis (700 deaths), not 1918 Philadelphia (11,000 deaths). People are going to get sick regardless, but the slower they get sick the better it will be. It's not just COVID-19 victims' lives at stake. An overwhelmed healthcare system will cause many unrelated deaths due to lack of emergency care doctors and hospital beds. As someone with chronic and severe health issues myself I face the very real risk of not getting the care I need should something happen, but so does everyone else from anything ranging from a sudden heart attack to a car accident, etc. Right now we're way under capacity in most areas, and that's great and needs to stay that way, though if you live in places like New York City the system is already stretched.

Yeah, the costs suck, the impact sucks, but we've learned from history what we should do in these type of situations as to not repeat the disastrous mistakes of past epidemics. There's no room to get complacent about it yet especially with the current exponential curves we're seeing, but hopefully things will look more optimistic soon and we can start scaling back some of the more extreme measures. If we do it too soon though, we just move the curve's time table and the worst will still happen.

An old coworker just posted on his Facebook that cops are stopping people on the street here to question them.