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[ChairmanPoo]

Welp, starting tomorrow a nation wide curfew is in effect. Probably gonna have to get a permit from your workplace to be able to leave the house outside those hours. There's also talk (very unconfirmed) that they'll be shutting down the roads leading into/out of the city, which, considering my place of work is outside it is gonna be fun and probably another permit or straight up not being allowed to move :S

Also Croatia is in for a fun time, number of confirmed cases doubled today to nearly 200 total. You'd think people would have learned from Italy but it seems nobody was taking the quarantine too seriously and most folks were treating it like a holiday of sorts. Luckily the government was somewhat more prepared in that they started work on emergency hospitals in various big cities around the country. If that will be enough remains to be seen tho.

Nobody takes it seriously until it happens. It's happening all the world over, country after country. I think it's such an out of context problem that it's very hard to think it will really happen. Noone in the west has seen this happen in living memory.

One thing that surprises me a lot is that the Spanish lockdown for all it's flaws seems significatively tighter than the ones elsewhere in Europe. And really, I think it should probably be even harder. So I don't get why everyone is going for softer lockdowns, let alone voluntary ones. If this crisis has proved anything is that you cannot expect the general population to behave responsibly to the extent they need during this crisis. Waaay too many people don't grasp how bad it is and try to wiggle their way around the quarantine.

For instance, last thursday an incredible number of people in Spain tried to take the road to go on holidays to the beach. I shit you not. And yes, this includes Madrid, which so far has more than half of all the detected cases (so common sense suggests it also has the majority of the undetected ones). They were  all stopped and all got hefty fines (really, this lockdown is serious. If you try to leave your city or town it's very unlikely you'll get far without being stopped by the police or the army).  Also clandestine parties, etc, etc...
All those things happen, yes, but the problem is that if you make this whole thing voluntary and don't enforce it they make it even more. At least this way the ones who do it (who are being systematically reported by neighbours) are cracked down on by the police.

[Max™]

Spring break is a thing still, how many kids had it and passed it to others, how many brought it home and shared it, literally nobody knows.

As for belts or straps, around the neck is a step too far for me, downstairs can be fun with safe knots AND SATIN ONLY, don't be the guy calling the an ambulance because his thing turned blue after putting a rubber band or shrinking fabric loop around it... especially not in a pandemic!

[Reelya]

I heard a novel conspiracy theory today.

Mind you this was just from the random local guy who runs the fish and chip shop near my house.

The guy was downplaying the virus, and he somehow linked it to the vaping deaths that happened a year or two ago. His theory is that these deaths are really vaping deaths, and they're disguising them as coronavirus deaths, and then he just trailed off, as if the rest doesn't need to be said. "It all makes sense now" basically.

Firstly, the vaping deaths aren't even a thing anymore since they worked out what was causing that (a specific cutting agent marketed for THC vapes, and the guys selling it closed shop as soon as the articles came out linking it to deaths). Second, why in hell would they want to hide vaping deaths of all things as a super-contagious virus, knowing full well the panic would destroy the economy, probably including vape sales as well.

[misko27]

Crossposting from Ameripo: Politico has a useful tracker of the virus in the US not only showing you the positive results, but also how many people they've tested. Which is almost as important! And the ratio between those two numbers. As of writing, Alabama: 152 tested:124 cases, which is I think the worst in the country, very closely followed by New Jersey with a staggering 1,661/1,327. Ohio and Maryland are also doing pretty bad.

Louisiana's in a rough spot: they have 585 cases to Texas' 304 (and 16 deaths to 2), but they've tested half as many people as Texas has.

[Reelya]

The good news for the USA is that the number of new cases detected on Saturday was less than on Friday.

However, the flipside there is that there was also a sort of plateau last weekend. Maybe they're just more likely to run the tests on the Friday vs the weekend?

[wierd]

I would be wary of trying to extrapolate from those numbers though. It's possible that the diagnostic process is just very effective prior to clinical testing for verification.  If there is a bias to send sick people's samples, and another bias to only send "high priority" samples, then your sample pool is not randomized.

That should be taken into account.

[Frumple]

Eh, backlog is getting caught up to, more or less, I think. They were expecting a major spike because labs were just starting to clear out testing queues, or something like that, followed by continuing but lesser increases.

Mind we're still massively fucking under testing the population, especially in a way to catch asymptomatic or mild cases, or folks that's got infected without anyone noticing and then hauled off somewhere else. Things are improving on that front (if far too goddamn slowly), but we're functionally still flying fucking blind as a nation.

Which is to say that's probably not good news. It's more a condemnation of our testing capacity and patterns than anything hopeful about the state of the spread.

And yeah, you can see the criteria some states or the CDC is using to recommend testing by, just go hopping around state health department websites or the CDC's stuff. Frankly, they're complete fucking shit for trying to find cases that have already escaped the stupidly goddamn anemic testing net.

[misko27]

Considering the tendency towards "Do not get tested unless you are sick" and, from what I understand, the tendencies towards either very non-severe or even asymptomatic carriers, I think the numbers are gonna be quite a bit higher.

I just wish we could estimate how much though. Feels like we're groping our way through this crisis blind.

[ArchAIngel]

Tapping in from Walmart: They handed down a policy about at the start of March that amounts to

"So we added a Covid 19 tab to calling out. You can use this WHENEVER. Even if you're just afraid. Yes, we say that specifically. No pay unless you provide proof of test, then pay until you have a doctor note saying you Not Sick. Also if you come in during that period, boot, no questions asked."


Also, store hours from 7AM to 8:30PM, PERIOD.


So my job's gotten... pretty slow, honestly? I'm a cart pusher/walking big thing lifter, and in Washington State. I'm honestly not that afraid. It's pretty chill, the weather's a nice comfortable 40 or so faren, and it's an "essential" job.


Bonus points, employees scheduled after 8:30 can still shop the store. Because the Walmart CEO's are really quite sensible people, it seems.


That, and supplies are doing fine. Only issue is stocking fast enough.

[Kagus]

Most pubs and restaurants in Norway have closed down due to the covid risk.

Most.


The problem here is that people have been flooding to the last remaining open ones and booking the places to full capacity because "everywhere else is closed!"

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Does this look like fucking social distancing to you?

[ChairmanPoo]

Most pubs and restaurants in Norway have closed down due to the covid risk.

Most.


The problem here is that people have been flooding to the last remaining open ones and booking the places to full capacity because "everywhere else is closed!"

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Does this look like fucking social distancing to you?

Shit.

Why are we collectively this bad at doing this thing?

[Trekkin]

Why are we collectively this bad at doing this thing?

Have you ever read "The Cold Equations"?

That's why.

We've spent millennia putting together an elaborate system of anthropocentric flimflammery to let people pretend that what really matters in life is so abstract anyone just might have it. Most folks can't properly imagine a problem they really can't charm, bluff, or incentivize their way past, so they just ignore it to hang on to their illusion of agency.

And since that illusion is all that gets most people out of bed in the morning, it's probably preferable to the alternative. We must imagine Sisyphus happy.

[Jopax]

Welp, Croatia is in for a fun time, had a nasty series of quakes in Zagreb this morning, lots of older buildings are fairly damaged, some injured, atleast one dead, but most importantly, a ton of people have been evacuated without a place to go really, the biggest of which was the entirety of the maternity ward with like a dozen newborns and their mothers. So lots of people out and about and a diminished healthcare infrastructure at a point where things started going downhill already.

[martinuzz]

Why are we collectively this bad at doing this thing?

The human being is a social animal. Most of us need to see other people every once in a while, or we get depressed or go crazy.
There's a reason that human rights conventions forbid forced social isolation for prolonged periods.
For example over here, it is forbidden to put a prisoner, or psychiatric patient in isolation for longer than 24h without human contact.
Doing so anyway is classified as torture.

That being said, crowding a bar like that in these times is just stupid.

[ChairmanPoo]

Why are we collectively this bad at doing this thing?

The human being is a social animal. Most of us need to see other people every once in a while, or we get depressed or go crazy.
There's a reason that human rights conventions forbid forced social isolation for prolonged periods.
For example over here, it is forbidden to put a prisoner, or psychiatric patient in isolation for longer than 24h without human contact.
Doing so anyway is classified as torture.

That being said, crowding a bar like that in these times is just stupid.

This is an exceptional situation. It's not only bar crowding. Its every single mistake that turns into a chain of mistakes.
We need a complete lockdown. And by "we" I mesn everyone