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[Reelya]

Trying to get some rough projections for Australia. On Feb 27 they were reporting 23 cases here, it's now at 249 cases. So, about 16% daily growth. Also note, we had 16% daily increase over the first two weeks of Autumn here, so the hopes that the onset of spring will kill it seem misplaced. We're getting consistently increasing cases and it's not even flu season here.

Hopefully the health authorities have enough time to prepare here for the full onset of winter. More or less, if Australia can make it through the winter months without everyone getting infected then we can avoid the worst of it. Worst-case scenario is that everyone here catches it around winter and we have upwards of a quarter of a million casualties (1% of population).

[Toady One]

(removed some posts.  three of you should refamiliarize yourself with the forum guidelines.)

[Reelya]

Well, shoppageddon is getting worse, even compared to 2 days ago. I'm guessing the weekend is prime locust feeding time.

Recent news was that whitegoods seller have all run out of freezers, so all the locusts bought additional freezer space. and you know what that means? renewed space to panic-buy even more categories of stuff.

Things I could get until a few days ago, but now those sections are plundered, or 80% empty

- meat (I mean, there was literally no meat and they put shutters on all the fridge displays. People got every last scrap of meat, even the weird stuff)

- eggs (the whole egg fridgerated display area of the supermarket had shutters down)

- cheese - they only had those fake-cheese plastic-wrapped slices now. It's surreal - every size of every type of every brand of cheese 100% sold out since Friday, when it was fully stocked. And that includes cream cheese, cottage cheese, shredded cheese, block cheese, sliced cheese etc etc.

- cordial (area was full on friday, noticeably more empty today)

- cereal (down to some weird brands)

- biscuits / crackers - pretty much all major brands completely gone now

And I'm sure I missed a bunch of other things. There's still stuff in the freezer section but I'm betting that next weekend the same locusts will swarm in and start picking up categories they missed on the last swarming.

Canned goods, rice, pasta, bottled water, paper towels/tissue, toilet paper are still non-existent but the main locust swarm has moved on to new categories.

The stores here are starting to resemble Russian supermarkets ala 1976, which were emptied for a similar demand-side reason - there was absolutely no drop in supply, the Russians were produce just as much through their 1970s shopping crisis as ever. What happened was that (likely due to the OPEC oil price shock) the the price of Russian oil rose, and the country became flush with money. This lead to inflation, but rather than increase production, they used price controls to combat the inflation.

This lead to shortages, which lead to hoarding and black market price-gouging. When that failed, they turned to rationing - the famous bread-lines were to buy bread at the subsidized price. Which is actually all in line with socialist thought - why should you increase production of bread or raise the price, when the nation is already making enough bread for everyone, and the price is reasonable? The problem is that this "only make what you need and price it reasonably" thing fails to account for people wanting more than they actually need. So then you have to resort to rationing, which is very inefficient.

[coalboat]

bean + water = bean sprout = fresh vegetable

[ChairmanPoo]

If the data from Korea is extrapolable we might have a lot of typhoid Maries around

https://mobile.twitter.com/jhall/status/1238946029829001217?fbclid=iwar0sqrvubwqbc8qi-zhfsivvzhd46eqaywsp-a1imzi-xtg0wfjd1s23gte

Meanwhile the outbreak in Italy keeps getting more grim. One thing in which we are not following the italians (yet at least. Maybe never I hope) is that their rate of severe cases is much worse than anywhere else, and nobody really knows why. Could be some weird selection bias I guess?

At least their curve *is* beginning to drop 😒

[Quarque]

Well, shoppageddon is getting worse, even compared to 2 days ago.

Local anecdote. On my expedition to the supermarket I witness two older ladies stuffing three kilograms of sugar into their already bulging shopping cart. I canīt stop myself and blurt out: "If I were you I'd get five more kilos, just in case." In response they complain they can't, because there is no sugar left.

One thing in which we are not following the italians (yet at least. Maybe never I hope) is that their rate of severe cases is much worse than anywhere else, and nobody really knows why. Could be some weird selection bias I guess?

Not surprising at all. They're reserving their test capacity for people with severe symptoms.

Yes, that means the reported number of cases is fiction.

[Ulfarr]

Not surprising at all. They're reserving their test capacity for people with severe symptoms.

From whatever info I could gather, we are doing the same:
Mild symptoms -> self quarrantine
Serious symptoms -> General test for coronavirus relations
Severe symptoms or confirmed case of coronavirus -> Specific test for COVID-19

[Lidku]

I've already before. The reason why Italy is much more "severe" is because they don't have corrupt institutions (atleast relatively) like the CCP and even Iran. They aren't hiding the death count/fibbing numbers to save face. Whats happening in Italy happened in Wuhan already. We should've heeded what was happening in China since the beginning. I feel very scared for Italy. They should've never been caught up in all this. 

[martinuzz]

Meanwhile in the UK, people of age 70+ are ordered to stay indoors until the government says they can go outside again.
Hotels will be turned into emergency hospitals.
The army will be deployed to guard supermarkets.
The army will build emergency hospitals.
Privatized hospitals will be forced to treat patients for free.
Production companies will be forced to produce goods for the healthcare services if so required.
Dominic Cummings is trying to persuade Uber and deliveroo to deliver food to sick and elderly.

The minister of Health says this will be the greatest mobilization the country has seen since WW2.

[Reelya]

Well just had a phone call from my mum, and the virus is confirmed in the town next to the town she lives in, and she's in a high-risk age group. A number of the social events she does in her town have been cancelled.

[martinuzz]

In our Southwestern province of Zeeland, a town has locked down to stop the massive influx of Belgians.
In Belgium, all pubs are closed now, so the Belgians flock to our border towns to come grab a drink.

[McTraveller]

We have known positive cases at a place where people from my office eat lunch.  I was with a friend recently who has a known positive case at their workplace.

Basically this means this virus is "everywhere."

I still don't understand the extremity of emotion and response - if it's really this "everywhere" that tells me two things: the official cases are way lower than the actual cases, and by induction the overall severity is much less than people fear.  If you have that many "unknown" or "mild" cases - how can the probability of severity be at the high end of the estimates?

I've also not seen any data that satisfies my curiosity and data integrity about how much of the hospital load is people with mild cases just going to the hospitals out of fear and clogging up the system to get tested.  I mean in my family, my wife and I are like "unless we can't breathe, there is no point to going to the doctor; otherwise we'll just do the same stuff we do for the flu / severe cold."  Which incidentally we do have in my house - runny noses, phlegm, etc.

[Frumple]

I mean, give it another week or two? This thing can have a long incubation period, and seems to just recently-ish be really kicking off stateside. Bit more of a ramp up and the shit really hits the fan, given how limited the US's ICU et al coverage is. Maybe we get lucky and it actually isn't as dangerous as it seems to be basically everywhere it's seriously hitting, but I'm not sure I'd be betting on that. No one worth note in the frontline medical field seems to be.

[dragdeler]

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[mko]

I still don't understand the extremity of emotion and response - if it's really this "everywhere" that tells me two things: the official cases are way lower than the actual cases, and by induction the overall severity is much less than people fear.  If you have that many "unknown" or "mild" cases - how can the probability of severity be at the high end of the estimates?

See Italy. The main fear is that within week or two many people at the same time will need medical attention, more than is available.

And if it's really this "everywhere", it does not mean that everyone is ill. But it soon may happen (OK, not everyone but say 50% of population).