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[mko]

Yes, as this paper mentions (and hopefully that part was not bungled) flu is affected. It seems likely that this is true, but paper with review that failed to notice missing images is not very useful.

[Bralbaard]

Yeah, I wrote that I hoped warm weather would have an effect, but in the back of my mind I kind of already know the answer will be "no".

Actually, from what folks have pieced together from available data, warm weather does seem to have an effect. Iirc it's something like a third of a percent reduction in spread per infected (R number) per Celsius increase, and about a fifth of a percent per percent increase in relative humidity, going by information collected in china. So if humidity jacks up about 80% and/or the temperature spikes about 40 or so degrees C, and stays that way, you'd probably see a pretty significant reduction in the rate of transmission.

But, y'know, the R value for crow plague is somewhere over 2, so, uh. It's no silver bullet.

E: Source, incidentally. It's not necessarily super great data or 100% generalizable, but there's apparent suggestion warm and humid weather does have some degree of mitigation effect on transmission.

Hmm. I'm not quite sure what increased humidity would do. maybe droplets with virus would not travel as far under those circumstances?
Increased heat would indeed lead to faster denaturation but I think the effect would only be marginal as DNA/RNA should be stable at those temperatures. But droplets with virus would dry out much faster and that could have an effect. I guess other factors like increased solar iradiation (more UV light) would help out as well. And people spend much more time outside in good weather. The virus spreads more easily in confined spaces, compared to open air. 

Let's hope the low numbers from Africa are due to these effects, and not underreporting. They have enough nasty tropical diseases that we never have to worry about, it would be fair if they get a pass for this one.

[martinuzz]

Our health experts are pondering now if complete lockdown is maybe a bad idea.
We eventually want 60% or more of our population to have been infected, to achieve group immunity.
Total lockdown could slow the infection rate too much, resulting in the virus coming back every cold season for years on.
Need to find a balance between getting enough people infected (and immune after that) and overcrowding hospitals.

EDIT: ah, apparently the english term for group immunity is herd immunity.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

It's not the greatest idea to gamble on an unknown immunity period, but I also don't see any other option. If the immunity is only a short period or flat-out doesn't exist, we're kind of fucked regardless of what is done. At that point I guess they'd have to massively overfund antiviral therapies and wait for the vaccine, for who knows how long.

[Cthulhu]

Overloading hospitals is virtually inevitable at any level of mitigation below total shutdown.  The british did projections and found the best outcomes as far as mortality goes are rolling shutdowns to keep r0 down until a vaccine or good treatment is available.  Herd immunity strategies were looking at 250,000+ deaths in the UK and over 2 million in the US

[Yoink]

Gods, I guess I kinda picked a good time to be stuck in a semi-rural area far, far away from any any friends or stomping grounds.   

Not because I'm worried about catching the virus, oh no, rather because this situation (where I am, that is) would normally be really upsetting what with the whole missing out on gigs and parties and just my usual social life in general. This time, basically everything's been cancelled anyway.   
I probably wouldn't even have sufficient paper to wipe my arse with by now, if I were still living in the city.   

[Bralbaard]

Our health experts are pondering now if complete lockdown is maybe a bad idea.
We eventually want 60% or more of our population to have been infected, to achieve group immunity.
Total lockdown could slow the infection rate too much, resulting in the virus coming back every cold season for years on.
Need to find a balance between getting enough people infected (and immune after that) and overcrowding hospitals.

EDIT: ah, apparently the english term for group immunity is herd immunity.

Reaching group immunity by relaxing containtment of the virus would come at a terrible, terrible cost. You would have to accept that 1-4% of those 60% of people are going to die, and that probably 10% of the patients if not more would need intensive medical care.
China managed to bring new cases to almost zero by strict measures, it would be interesting to see if they can restart their economy while keeping it contained. If they can that would be the way to go.

[Frumple]

Let's hope the low numbers from Africa are due to these effects, and not underreporting. They have enough nasty tropical diseases that we never have to worry about, it would be fair if they get a pass for this one.

Crow plague's just kinda' global at this point, and meaningfully infectious even in warmer areas. If you're seeing low reported numbers it's almost certainly due to the nation in question just not goddamn testing. The closest to exception there is basically china and south korea at this point, and that seeming to be because they're about the only thing of meaningful size not fucking up response super hard.

[TamerVirus]

We eventually want 60% or more of our population to have been infected, to achieve group immunity.

The UK strategy? They backed off on that when they realized thousands upon thousands of people would die

[Iduno]

We've shut down most businesses in town, which means a lot of people are out of work, and can't afford rent. To offset that, my city is offering money to the landlords and business owners. They're also doing more to punish our suddenly growing homeless population.

martinuzz has highlighted the following:

It is voluntary.
They get paid.

Slave labour is not voluntary, frequently unpaid, and requires the use of slaves - those who are legally the possessions of another person.

I'll add that I don't see much wrong with using prisoners as cheap labour, though it being voluntary is perhaps an essential criteria. They are, after all, being punished. If they choose to relieve their boredom by doing community service work, why not?

Right. This is indentured servitude.

It's really not harmless, undercutting jobs that might actually meaningfully support a family just as a start. We should really not fucking incentivize corps to figure out how to wrangle paying their workers fuckall by reason of them being currently incarcerated, and that's just the tip of the iceberg so far as issues with penal labor goes. Either pay the work what it's due or fuck off, and 80 cents per hour isn't the due for goddamn anything anymore.

This is Holland you're talking about. They don't have a profit-driven penal system, so that incentive doesn't exist. Furthermore, it's voluntary, since you can't be forced to work if you haven't been sentenced to labour.
You guys are really trying to find a hole in this.

They do now. They found a way to get suckers to support manufacturing for 30 cents/hour.

[Naturegirl1999]

Denatured, not very likely. If the virus thrives in a fevered body, it can also thrive in outside temperatures in that range.More likely, less humidity. Microdroplets evaporating faster in warmer weather so travel distance for the virus decreases.

thanks, I was guessing because I know higher temperatures denatures proteins, I wasn’t thinking about evaporation, unfortunately

[ChairmanPoo]

Overloading hospitals is virtually inevitable at any level of mitigation below total shutdown.  The british did projections and found the best outcomes as far as mortality goes are rolling shutdowns to keep r0 down until a vaccine or good treatment is available.  Herd immunity strategies were looking at 250,000+ deaths in the UK and over 2 million in the US

Our health experts are pondering now if complete lockdown is maybe a bad idea.
We eventually want 60% or more of our population to have been infected, to achieve group immunity.
Total lockdown could slow the infection rate too much, resulting in the virus coming back every cold season for years on.
Need to find a balance between getting enough people infected (and immune after that) and overcrowding hospitals.

EDIT: ah, apparently the english term for group immunity is herd immunity.

See, in the last couple of days I'm thinking about this more and more:

My suspicion is that the reason EVERY COUNTRY IN THE WEST is doing so poorly is because all of them thought at first as the British goverment. That is: First they thought "no way! I'm not stopping the country for a couple of months!" and they deferred. Then they were told the dead toll if they didnt and panicked.

I think the only difference is that Boris Johnson announced it publically while the rest kept it quiet.

It would explain many things about the odd contradictory things they've been saying.

[Cthulhu]

Denatured, not very likely. If the virus thrives in a fevered body, it can also thrive in outside temperatures in that range.More likely, less humidity. Microdroplets evaporating faster in warmer weather so travel distance for the virus decreases.

thanks, I was guessing because I know higher temperatures denatures proteins, I wasn’t thinking about evaporation, unfortunately

As far as I know even enveloped viruses survive longer in dry weather, at least when it's cold.  UV light is a big one, high UVC reduces corona infectiveness on a surface to below detectable levels in like fifteen minutes; they should really be deploying UVC lamps in high-traffic areas and stores.  Also cold dry weather leads to dry mucus membranes, which don't shed foreign particles as easily.

[TamerVirus]

they should really be deploying UVC lamps in high-traffic areas and stores.

Artificial UVC will burn skin and the eyes so, uh, that's not gonna work right now.
Human safe UVC is being developed but we're not fully there yet

[McTraveller]

thousands upon thousands of people would die

So like any other day of the week?

I'm not even being sarcastic.  I mean hell, worldometer says there have been 65k deaths already today, 2.7M deaths so far this year (15k so far today, which I suspect includes COVID) from all communicable diseases.  Apparently there have even been about 47k abortions today so far!  So why the flying f*** are we holing ourselves up over this thing?

I mean we as society kill more people per day in car crashes (~1500 so far today).