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[martinuzz]

Russia's prime minister Michaïl Misjoestin has placed himself in home quarantaine with corona infection.  He is said to have very high fever.
Misjoestin is one of the leading figures appointed to the corona crisis team by Putin.

[Starver]

I don't think we can undervalue such a hand's on dedicated politician. Some who sticks close to his brief does the job they're supposed to. Obviously they have infectious great enthusiasm for the task. In the modern world of politicos merely taking on positions as stepping stones to the more influential and lucrative bastions of power, it's not to be sneezed at admirable.


(In UK news, the (now) centenarian fundraiser-for-things-I-really-wish-didn't-need-fundraising-for Tom Moore has been made an Honourary Colonel. Handily skipping him from Captain way past the rank of Major, so nothing funny in that at all.)

[nenjin]

Well, my town, which up until now has seemed super responsible about measures to contain the spread.....is opening the mall tomorrow.

The fucking Mall. Like, of all the shit people want to do and buy, frivolous shopping at clothing stores and boutiques is what's important? JFC.

If I had to guess, this is someone leaning on city government to reopen shit because they're tired of losing money, not because it was a reasoned policy decision. This shit makes me mad. I'd have felt better if they'd just reopened everything. This feels like special treatment for literally the last thing on fucking earth that matters to the average person's life right now.

[misko27]

You know I'm speaking for myself here but I'm not going to any of these fucking things that reopen. Not even to get my desperately needed haircut, which is 4 months late

Nah man, I choose life.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Malls are definitely going to push for the earliest and most reckless possible reopen, they're in one of the worst financial situations. The mall itself only makes money charging rent to the stores and has very expensive overhead to maintain such a building. The stores are fragile since they're nearly all franchises and don't want to pay rent when the mall isn't even open. So both charging or withholding rent leads to different but equally bad death spirals. And malls have pretty poor futures to begin with, and are also pits of disease.

[Frumple]

You know I'm speaking for myself here but I'm not going to any of these fucking things that reopen. Not even to get my desperately needed haircut, which is 4 months late

Nah man, I choose life.

Just do what I do, I haven't had a haircut in like fifteen years. Need is relative when you have hair ties or somethin'.

Though yeah, panama city here in florida is apparently opening up their beaches again next week. I think I'm just going to not go anywhere near that city for a few more weeks.

Though that said, local area's looking to open stuff like libraries and whatnot back up in the next week or two, too. On one hand it's sorta' desperately needed cause we're a rural shithole and a fair amount of folks like, don't have internet access, and without it are having serious trouble getting, y'know, help. On the other hand, fucking crow plague.

[Reelya]

What would be ironic but entirely predictable is if the early-reopeners fare badly, because people are scared to go out and there are lingering high infection rates, whereas the places that lockdown until it's more or less under control see people happier to flock back to the retail outlets since they feel more confident that it's safe.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I think it's going to be all of the worst outcomes at once. The places that open will get flooded by plague boomers while the rest of their customers stay away, both spreading the infection to their employees and leaving them bankrupt. The places that stay closed once there's no legal requirement will get rent-spiked to death, or even the ones where there is a legal requirement depending.

And then regardless the second wave will rise up, possibly just in time for flu in the fall.

[ChairmanPoo]

You know I'm speaking for myself here but I'm not going to any of these fucking things that reopen. Not even to get my desperately needed haircut, which is 4 months late

Nah man, I choose life.

I'm doing buzzcuts for the foreseesble future

[martinuzz]

Trump just stated that he has seen ' convincing evidence' that the corona virus escaped from a Chinese laboratory in Wuhan.

"It is something horrible that has happened.... Maybe they made a mistake... Or it started with a single mistake and they made another one... Or maybe someone did something on purpose?"


He also said that in light of the evidence, he is almost certain that a laboratory in Wuhan is the source of the outbreak.
He refused to give any details about the evidence that makes him believe that.

Yet the US intelligence services have concluded that the virus cannot have been man-made.  They publicly announced so yesterday.

They are further investigating the matter, and will try to find out if the outbreak resulted from human contact with infected wildlife, or that it was due to a mishap at the Wuhan laboratory.


Trump threatened to impose new import tariffs on Chinese wares

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Trump just stated that he has seen ' convincing evidence' that the corona virus escaped from a Chinese laboratory in Wuhan.

"It is something horrible that has happened.... Maybe they made a mistake... Or it started with a single mistake and they made another one... Or maybe someone did something on purpose?"


He also said that in light of the evidence, he is almost certain that a laboratory in Wuhan is the source of the outbreak.
He refused to give any details about the evidence that makes him believe that.

Fucking great. I can't wait to get drafted to be a human torpedo operator in the tenth year of the Great Chinese Virus War.

[delphonso]

I'm going to vent a little frustration here about the health monitoring in China as it seems the most reasonable place to put it. Generally, I've been really happy with the people tracking in China - codes to scan basically in and out of every city, attached to your phone number, so in the case you get confirmed, your movement can be back-tracked and others can be warned.

The issue is that they've introduced an additional layer in some cities (Hefei, to be exact) - some sort of redundancy - which is tied directly to your Chinese ID. It was required to gain access to shopping malls, some supermarkets, and flights out of the city. Meaning foreigners can't do it. It even had an option for passports in the app, and when I put in my passport number it told me that it meant only Chinese passports. This is frustrating as it's a waste of time and is confusing for the staff who have no idea how to handle that situation, and were just told to make sure everyone scans. Everywhere that I couldn't scan eventually let me in - which means the whole thing is a bit pointless.

[coalboat]

Metro in Shenzhen doesn't require phone scanning now. But in Beijing even going to some parks require showing ID.

[scriver]

So I saw a reportage yesterday about American quarantine protesters using Sweden of an example of what to do.

So I thought I'd pop by to clarify that despite the rumours, Sweden is not not closed down. We're just less closed down. We just don't have police running around and fining everybody who goes outside (in fact they want people to go outside, they just don't want them to be around other people). Lots of businesses are closed down and workers no-work-to-do-on-noticed. Everyone who's even the slightest bit ill is to remain at home (which wouldn't be possible in the US because sick leave isn't the same) -- that's why I was home the other week for just the tiniest of cold syndromes. The health inspections are warning and shutting down venues that don't follow the recommendations regarding spacing and services. Things that are capable of going online/from the home is being made so.

The whole Swedish response hinges on the idea that we can be responsible and change how we behave, not just going on as normal.

[martinuzz]

In Michigan, heavily armed protestors managed to force entry to the parliament building in Lansing, in an attempt to force the government to lift the lockdown.
Most were stopped by the police, but some even managed to reach the senators.
Some senators responded by putting on bulletproof vests.
The Governor, Gretchen Whitmer, refused to be intimidated by machineguns and declared another 4 weeks of lockdown.

EDIT: Heh, looking at the photo that comes with the news article... Those heavily armed protestors look not much older than 16-17.
You're lucky it didn't turn into a bloodbath.
Guns + people of an age where the part of the brain that oversees consequences is not fully developed = a recipe for disaster