Winnie the Flu

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

STING: Don't stand
Don't stand so
Don't stand so close to me
CDC: Now you're talkin

— Deborah Roseman (@roseperson) February 28, 2020

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by specious_reasons

They closed a high school in our district today, because a staffer was potentially exposed. They did it for "an abundance of caution" - that's almost an understatement. I'm also wondering how a one day closure will prevent infection from spreading - it makes me wonder if they will close it for Friday, too.

Not denying it might just be stupid, but if they were waiting until the test came back and if negative they'd reopen the school, that wouldn't quite as stupid.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

[JoeP]

[JoeP]

via, who else, curses

[JoeP]

I just received a call from @VP Mike Pence, thanking Washington state for our efforts to combat the coronavirus.

I told him our work would be more successful if the Trump administration stuck to the science and told the truth.

— Jay Inslee (@JayInslee) February 28, 2020

[JoeP]

Coronavirus: Nasa images show China pollution clear amid slowdown - BBC News

[JoeP]

(I found this as a response to a claim that people are not taking covid-19 seriously enough. For those not familiar with the meme format [are there any?] it's "This is fine")

[lisarea]

My brother was going to be in town today for the American Physical Society conference, but they just cancelled it because of the virus. Poor me.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Chinese foot handshake a lot smoother than Iran...

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Thrad

[1] I live, work, & run a biz in the Eastside suburbs of Seattle which are ground zero for SARS-CoV-2 aka #CoronaVirusSeattle. Here are the things not being talked about enough:

1) Local hospital isolation rooms are full of COVID-19 patients who haven’t yet been reported.

— Darcy Burner (@DarcyBurner) March 3, 2020

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Above may be rumours.

[JoeP]

This is an exponential growth problem. Roughly every 6 days, we get another generation of infections that’s more than 2x times the size of the last generation. So 1k->2k->4k->8k->16k->32k->64k->128k->256k by sometime in April. 20% of those people need hospitalization.

8 generations at 6 days each, about a month and a half.

Another 8 generations - sometime in June - 65 million cases. Unless contained.

[Stephen Maturin]

"What's the proper response to COVID-19 according the Trump administration," you ask? "Thanks Obama," of course.

[JoeP]

Schrödinger's epidemic: simultaneously non-existent, and the previous administration's fault, and the greatest success of this administration.

[specious_reasons]

King County, Washington health officials are recommending people work remotely until the end of March. My group is planning for this.

[JoeP]

The House of Chocolate has issued directives not to travel internationally unless essential (but they are tight on their budgets so that was already mostly the rule), not to attend industry events (as if us IT guys ever get to), and some other things, but hasn't mandated remote working.

However I work remotely most days so nbd.

[Miisa]

Did they tell you to not mingle with foreigners?

[lisarea]

Grocery stockpiling is most severe near coronavirus clusters--then there's Colorado

LOLorado.

We're fine as far as having the stuff we'd need if we had to quarantine ourselves or something, but apparently, the stores are running out of tons of stuff already, so I am going to go do some panic buying in response to everyone else panic buying.

Happily, we already have plenty of toilet paper because that's always the first thing they run out of whenever there's a snowstorm or something. People like to get all their pooping done while they're stuck at home.

[Ensign Steve]

is it canceled yet?

The one on that list I'm most affected by is GDC, although I wasn't planning to attend, it does affect my work and those that I work with a lot.

We have suspended all non-essential international travel, and since we print money that was not already mostly the rule. That's non-essential business travel, of course. Cthulhu willing, our vacation to the British Isles is still a go. So lots of handshakes and hugs for Jope and Miisa. I know she's a big fan.

There's a conference in Phoenix that I was planning to attend, which would be currently at status uh oh were it not too obscure to be on the isitcancelledyet website. That's not international for us, but it is for our international partners, so we shall see.

Finally, they have threatened to do a pop-quiz fire-drill type exercise where they will just tell us all "hey, nobody come in, everybody work from home today" so we are to make sure that we have our remoting-in methods all hooked up, and "remember to take your laptop home everyday" which, ugh. I don't usually do that. Why do bad things always happen to me?

Post-finally,
Did you notice that the microbe emoji on Apple looks exactly like coronavirus? How do it know?!
Microbe Emoji

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by Miisa

Did they tell you to not mingle with foreigners?

THEY CAN'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!

[Stephen Maturin]

Originally Posted by Miisa

Did they tell you to not mingle with foreigners?

That's excellent advice in any event.

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by Ensign Steve

Cthulhu willing, our vacation to the British Isles is still a go.

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by Ensign Steve

is it canceled yet?

google reader
yes

Exactly.

[JoeP]

Meanwhile, virus-in-chief continues practising what he accuses others of

Trump calls WHO's global death rate from coronavirus 'a false number' | World news | The Guardian

He then plucked his own surmising of a likely death rate out of the air.

“You know, all of a sudden it seems like 3 or 4%, which is a very high number, as opposed to a fraction of 1%,” he said