Coronavirus

[TheGreenWizard]

I think a bulletin board is a great idea. Do you have a librarian? This strikes me as a great chance for some information literacy as well as science literacy, and about how news gets reported, and what sources to pay the most attention to.

(I'm in camp 'for people not near an outbreak, the flu is currently more dangerous, take the sensible precautions including a flu shot if you haven't already and can, and it's never a bad idea to learn more about how to avoid passing things on. I have to do cross-country plane flights for a work trip in mid-March, and have chronic health stuff that makes me a lot more at risk of lung problems, so I am personally also in camp 'let us have gotten a grip on this by then, please')

Hey Jenett - we do have a librarian at our school, but she's out on maternity leave until... May I think. I'll double check with her. Hopefully she's open to the idea if I have the majority of the work done by then.

Also - I wish you safe travels and good fortune on your work trip!

[Hariti]

Regarding the true mortality rate; I suspect it's much higher than 20%. I have anecdotal reasons for suspecting that:
I actually knew someone who recently passed away due to Covid-19.

Without giving away any identifying info; she was in her early 30s and in good health, with no prior respiratory issues, and was fairly affluent and didn't do hard labor. She had a single child, which might have weakened her body, but was in otherwise good physical condition. 

[Sefiru]

I've had to deal with kids joking about the Coronavirus in various forms (you can get it from drinking a Corona)

Honestly that sounds like a comparatively healthy response to the tension of the topic ... but that's another thread, I believe.

[Hariti]

Honestly that sounds like a comparatively healthy response to the tension of the topic ... but that's another thread, I believe.

Yeah. I honestly don't see the joking as healthy myself—but it's indeed a different thread.

[Allaya]

Regarding the true mortality rate; I suspect it's much higher than 20%. I have anecdotal reasons for suspecting that:
I actually knew someone who recently passed away due to Covid-19.

Without giving away any identifying info; she was in her early 30s and in good health, with no prior respiratory issues, and was fairly affluent and didn't do hard labor. She had a single child, which might have weakened her body, but was in otherwise good physical condition.

Part of the trouble with the official numbers coming out of China is that COVID-19 seems to create openings for serious secondary infections (like pneumonia, f'ex) that work in tandem to overwhelm the patient. I seem to recall that was also how SARS did its thing.

Anyways, that makes it VERY easy to just write "Pneumonia" on the death certificate and thereby fudge the numbers. There's reasonably credible reports (by healthcare workers) of that exact thing being done to keep the official numbers down. Which is, more or less, business as usual over yonder.

[PerditaPickle]

Someone at work stole my anti-viral hand foam off my desk when I wasn't looking, can you believe it?

[Altair]

Regarding the true mortality rate; I suspect it's much higher than 20%. I have anecdotal reasons for suspecting that:
I actually knew someone who recently passed away due to Covid-19.

My condolences, Hariti.

Without giving away any identifying info; she was in her early 30s and in good health, with no prior respiratory issues, and was fairly affluent and didn't do hard labor. She had a single child, which might have weakened her body, but was in otherwise good physical condition.

And that right there is unnerving. The take in the media is that it fells mostly the elderly and already chronically ill. This would seem to undercut that.

[Hariti]

And that right there is unnerving. The take in the media is that it fells mostly the elderly and already chronically ill. This would seem to undercut that.

She had no underlying chronic illness that she ever disclosed to me or her close friends. She was quite active online, without giving any identifiable info, and her husband has shared substantial credible evidence that it was Covid-19 on her social media accounts since her passing. Several of her friends have also corroborated this.

[Jainarayan]

Some of these official sources should mention that the common cold is a bloody coronavirus, this isn't some sort of Alien Disease We've Never Heard Of Before.

But that doesn't make for good news ratings.

[Allaya]

But that doesn't make for good news ratings.

Indeed. The media are slaves to the modern 24-hour news cycle. However, I'm not keen on the argument that the media is being negligent by not emphasizing that the common cold is a coronavirus.

The problem I have with that is due to the way that brains experiencing decision fatigue tend to process information. I spend a lot of time thinking about the topic of decision fatigue and how it affects social behavior so that I can occasionally give talks about "Why Americans Be Like They Do", so it's something I'm familiar with.

Decision-fatigued brains tend to aggressively generalize as a self-protection mechanism. Thus, repeatedly underscoring that the common cold is a coronavirus (as would be done in a 24 hour news cycle) would be generalized into Common Cold = Coronavirus...which is not exactly wrong.

However, it's a dangerous generalization to make. Why? Because the reverse IS NOT TRUE. A = B and B = A is normally a fine assumption and so we treat is as universally true. In this case, it is not. Having Coronavirus = Common Cold wedged into one's brain is a recipe for disaster.

We're already seeing some of the results of that kind of generalization. You know, the DEMOCRAT HOAX GONNA TRYNA TEAR DOWN TEH PREDISENT! Because, you know...it's just a different kind of common cold.

[SunflowerP]

However, it's a dangerous generalization to make. Why? Because the reverse IS NOT TRUE. A = B and B = A is normally a fine assumption and so we treat is as universally true. In this case, it is not. Having Coronavirus = Common Cold wedged into one's brain is a recipe for disaster.

We're already seeing some of the results of that kind of generalization. You know, the DEMOCRAT HOAX GONNA TRYNA TEAR DOWN TEH PREDISENT! Because, you know...it's just a different kind of common cold.

Yep, I've seen that On The Tweeters - well, mostly I've seen rebuttals, but I can see the tweets they're rebutting. When the brain into which that false equivalence has become wedged is that of President Pumpkinhead (and it evidently has), that's a recipe for US-national, if not international, disaster.

Sunflower

[Eastling]

Anyone else?

Checking in from just off the US outbreak epicenter.

I checked out maybe a third of the customers I usually do in my shift today. The store was dead. The streets were sparsely-populated. The other cashier and I wore latex gloves, although I really only did it to reassure the customers. When I went to the food bank after work, it was absolutely empty--unsurprising, considering how many usual guests are older and/or disabled people.

Current reported statistics from the WHO are showing fatalities as roughly 3.15% of all reported cases, with deaths barely exceeding 3,000 worldwide despite almost 95,000 reported infections and many more unreported ones for sure (skewing that 3.15% figure downwards). I have heard nothing about secret mass cremations in China, but I don't deny that it sure has been a rough cold and flu season. It looks like, based on the projections of epidemiologists, that in the future we will be talking about "cold, flu, and COVID-19 season."

I am worried for many of the people around me--the chronically ill, the elderly, the homeless in particular, given that situation here. I worry about hostile sentiment among the public towards the homeless as well, and also appalling racism towards Asians. But I'm still going to work.

[Anon100]

Checking in from just off the US outbreak epicenter.

I checked out maybe a third of the customers I usually do in my shift today. The store was dead. The streets were sparsely-populated. The other cashier and I wore latex gloves, although I really only did it to reassure the customers. When I went to the food bank after work, it was absolutely empty--unsurprising, considering how many usual guests are older and/or disabled people.

I'm sure we all know this but, as they mentioned it on the news the other night and it's easy to forget the obvious. Wearing gloves can stop you getting skin contact with the virus but only so long as you take them off to do such things as adjust your glasses or wipe your eyes.

[Jenett]

Checking in from just off the US outbreak epicenter.

Massachusetts, still pretty calm. My theoretical trip to outside of Portland, OR, they're deciding about late next week, but my meeting yesterday they made it very clear that if anyone decides they don't want to travel, that is fine, and they'll sort out reimbursements as needed. I'm waiting for more data before I decide.

I did another round of grocery shopping last night, and (thanks to my current apartment having a side by side fridge and freezer, aka more freezer space than I've had in my adult life), I have about a month of food not counting some fresh vegetables that I'll be eating this week.

I am inclined to think that when cases start hitting Massachusetts in numbers, I will end up having some work at home time, because I work in the middle of a building with medically fragile kids.

[Eastling]

I'm sure we all know this but, as they mentioned it on the news the other night and it's easy to forget the obvious. Wearing gloves can stop you getting skin contact with the virus but only so long as you take them off to do such things as adjust your glasses or wipe your eyes.

I actually find that the awkwardness of wearing gloves encourages me to touch my face less to begin with, so that helps.

Of course, as I said, I wasn't wearing them for myself--I give it pretty good odds I've contracted the thing already and am borderline-asymptomatic, considering how quickly it's spreading around Seattle, my general health, and my very minor cold symptoms lately. Mind you, it could be a totally different, less novel cold virus. There's lots of those still out there too!