Since this is the more serious Corona Virus thread… this is a line for the food bank in Los Angeles
just…wow.
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Glad to hear you’re doing alright.
I’m not sure if this extended global quarantine is going to rubberband and everyone is gonna get super touchy and friendly after this has been dealt with, or everyone is gonna give everyone else major personal space bubbles at all times
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After all of this ends, sneezing and coughing is just not going to be socially acceptable 
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Erm … maybe for a while. But collective memory spawn of human kind is like 10 seconds so we will stop washing our hands and cough into each other faces again in notime.
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it would be nice if the world would spring into action regarding starvation, malaria, and unclean drinking water the way they did for corona though, wouldnt it?
It’s a bit weird how those millions and millions and millions of ppl somehow don’t matter
(I know we’re at 120,000 and counting right now for corona, but still, we’re doing all this to prevent millions of deaths while millions of millions of millions die of easily preventable deaths every single season, and had the governments [and the societies governed by them] sprung into action just once all together like they have now, those issues could have been handled easily decades ago)
(I know some might want to debate the abortion thing; im not going to do that nor even address it; it’s just part of this info which i didnt put together myself)
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I think it’s pretty simple.
A) Corona is threatening developed world which “matters” more.
B) Fighting cancer,smoking or other ’ first world ’ problems requires actually changing lifestyles and reworking whole industries which is not going to fly. Corona simply requires a bit of semi-pause.
People are lazy and unwilling to change.
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I get what you’re saying, but it’s also debatable. Some ppl are actually arguing that the resulting economic crisis and poverty from this pause will actually end up costing more lives (also in the developed world actually) than the coronavirus itself.
I’m not saying that’s correct. I honestly would have no idea and am not knowledgeable enough to know or analyze for myself whether that’s actually plausible or not.
(at the very least, we can see what it is causing in the food bank video in Los Angeles a couple of posts above; that’s quite chilling)
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While I don’t necessary disagree, currently, the world “springing to action” is basically closing up shop and creating an economic crisis. Would it take that much to fix the problems? I don’t know. Groups and people have been working on trying to fix the starvation and unclean drinking water problems. A lot of the ones I hear about are volunteer based or so. Could more be done? Yes. I just don’t think it’s completely a simple solution.
As for the coronavirus itself. I’ve been hearing, well it’s not as bad as “x”. That’s the point. We don’t want it as bad as “x”. If you want to remind yourself how bad it can get, take a look at Italy’s first couple of weeks. That wasn’t the entire country and their death rate was up in the 10% range. It’s going to look like we completely overreacted, and that probably means it worked.
In my personal opinion, if we just let the coronavirus do it’s thing, the economy would have taken a gigantic hit anyway. The going hospitalization rate according to John Hopkins University in the US is approximately 20% or so now of confirmed cases. 20%. Now it’s not all at once nor all the people that have the virus, but even 1% of the population needing hospitalization at one time in the US would be 3 million people. That’s insane. People should remember that hospitalization with the coronavirus, at least to my knowledge, is longer than a week ordeal. I think it’s in the range of a couple weeks. The result of that would be a spike in not only Coronavirus deaths, but ALSO preventable deaths for things people need or can get treatment for already. I mean, even in the US right now we are having issues with PPE and ventilators, if I’m to believe what I read. It would get even worse with more people needing hospitalization.
I understand people are comparing this to MERS, the flu, SARS 1, and various other things. Coronavirus (SARS 2) is extremely contagious from what I’m gathering from how it’s spread. Add on to it that the information we got from China about the start of this thing was questionable at best. You’ve got a contagion that you know very little about except it’s apparent kill rate is roughly 2-3%. You finally get some real idea of what your dealing with when Italy starts reporting the crapfest that was going on there. Within two weeks it’s basically across the globe. What do you do? How do you stop your country from going through the same thing as Italy? How do you prevent this from becoming the next pandemic where a lot of people died? You try to limit the spread. The best way to do that is to keep people away from each other when you don’t have good data on the spread. People tend to ignore or downplay the severity of problems when it doesn’t directly affect them, because if they don’t see it, then it can’t be that big of a problem right? Which plays right back into the whole starvation, malaria, and water problem and not fixing those.
I guess if I would do a TL:DR, it would be this:
The point is to not have it as bad as all those other problems, that’s why were doing this.
That’s probably more of an issue of the lack of a good safety net for people and the government not being prepared to handle this.
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That mess of links I posted earlier. Someone sorted it out and explained it better!
And the most boring news man that doesn’t do sensationalism, Bret Baier, put up some very interesting information.
Some tidbits.
U.S. Embassy officials warned in January 2018 about inadequate safety at the Wuhan Institute of Virology lab and passed on information about scientists conducting risky research on coronavirus from bats
Sources point to the structure of the virus, in saying the genome mapping specifically shows it was not genetically altered.
There were doctors and journalists who were “disappeared” warning of the spread of the virus and its contagious nature and human to human transmission.
China moved quickly to shut down travel domestically from Wuhan to the rest of China, but did not stop international flights from Wuhan.
In the six days after top Chinese officials secretly determined they likely were facing a pandemic from a new coronavirus, the city of Wuhan at the epicenter of the disease hosted a mass banquet for tens of thousands of people; millions began traveling through for Lunar New Year celebrations.
Some information I knew. Some I didn’t.
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I’m glad people are using this time to get creative and try new things. I’ve seen people recreate shops, pubs, clubs, recipes from food shops and all sorts. Picking up a new hobby is something that a lot of people are doing. And people are finding ways to keep fit even indoors.
Hopefully not too offtopic (idk what existing thread dis will fit). But i’ve been up to much random stuffs during this time. Been learning some guitar. Taking walks (allowed 1 each day here). Reading. Drawing stuff.
Also playing lotsa new games. Including some stuff on the switch like okami and just dance. And many others on pc.
I’ve been watching random youtubers like those on dogs and making cakes and that.
And ordering food while its a pain it is kinda fun. Got some fruit boxes and so i made handmade smoothies using some yoghurt as well.
On the other hand I really hope this ends soon or gets some how a little better. The uk has an exit strategy in mind but it almost is like dis will be the new normal for a while.
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a second brexit if you will 
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Haha ye I keep thinking that
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Some of the opinions didn’t age well, some assume China’s numbers are accurate, some have good arguments in regard to testing, some I didn’t read (I stopped after a while). Many are fairly outdated in that, in my opinion, 1 week for this pandemic is outdated. Stuff just changes so fast. Anyway, they might get to see what happens unchecked if the US lifts lockdown.
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There’s no need to look at the US since there’s no lockdown at all in Sweden, so you can just look at that. On the other hand, when you look at Belgium, which had a very fast and very sever lockdown, the number of casualties are through the roof, 5000+ in a country of just 11 million, far exceeding many other countries which have populations many multiples of that.
In fact, Belgium and Sweden are similar in population size, and the country with the super severe lockdown has 3x more deaths than the one with zero lockdown, and it is also interesting to know that most of the casualties in that country with zero lockdown take place in resting homes, not among the general population.
Also, seasonal flu has killed 50,000-60,000 ppl/season several times in the US alone, and if you combine with that the fact that as some of these doctors explain, though some of the ppl who have corona indeed die, it is often not from corona that they die, and they would’ve died had they caught the regular flu or pneumonia as well, or whatever else would have caused the heart failure they died from
once u consider that, u realize that corona deaths seem to be heavily inflated, especially since whoever seems to die while having the virus just seems to be added to corona casualties regardless of whether corona was the actual cause of death
an even better example is Japan, a country which was among the very first to have cases of corona, a country with probably the highest population density in the world, and perhaps the oldest population. Until 3 days ago, they had zero lockdown there, and even now, there is no enforced lockdown, it is voluntary. Total number of corona casualties so far: 236
I’m 100% convinced that what causes these huge differences among some of these countries is simply the fact that if you happen to die while you have the virus in many countries, you are just thrown in the corona death statistics even though you didn’t die from corona at all. You just happened to have the virus in you at that same time.
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There’s this weird myth going on online that Sweden is doing nothing, everything’s just business as usual. This has been another big lie perpetuated by China and it is simply not true, yes we do not have full lock down or stay at home orders.
Sweden worked very hard with tracking incoming infections the first few months of this which helped curtailing the open societal spread. From the time of first recorded infection at 4th of Feb until about mid march the only infections we had were people who got it outside of Sweden and came back home, primarily from Italy and Iran.
Testing was focused on arrivals and this kept the virus from getting a foothold in the general population and although we are now seeing societal spread it is still keeping a fairly linear curve and does not appear to be entering that dangerous exponential climb we see in most other places not in lock down.
We do have security measures in place, elder care facilities are closed to the public, health care facilities are locked up and they only allow those actually seeking care to enter for example. There’s strong recommendations for people to keep their distance being spread everywhere, though that’s barely necessary as personal space is something we prefer naturally. Not going to claim that all Swedish people are behaving sensibly and properly but we’re a pretty calm and collected people and Sweden is a lot larger than it looks on most maps pop/km2 is low which helps prevent spread. The greater Stockholm area and it’s neighboring provinces which are pretty densely populated is where the infection is primarily spreading. A full lock down of the entirety of Sweden wouldn’t make that much sense.
Comparing us to Belgium is kind of pointless, that’s a tiny country and even if our populations are comparably 10 to 11 mil, Belgiums pop density is 376/km2 while Sweden’s is 23/km2 that’s a VAST difference. Again it’s only really Stockholm and the big dense cities that are having a problem here.
If you’re interested in Swedish official stats kept by our center for disease control you can find all collected data here. Though keep in mind that this is only for tested and confirmed cases, meaning people like me who’ve just been sitting at home feeling shitty for 3 weeks don’t show up.
https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa
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good thing i mentioned Japan though, as their pop density is close to that of Belgium
I also wasn’t trying to say Sweden wasn’t doing anything at all (also not saying you said i was).
My main point is the one about how they make these death statistics.
I also want to make clear I don’t have a specific message here. I mainly think it’s very important to also sometimes look at things other than what the news is wanting to have us believe 24/7, which is the main reason i posted those links. At the very least, we should be aware things are not always exactly as we’re being told they are, or at least it can’t hurt to look at a different opinion once in a while.
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Japan might have a comparable pop density but they also are generally the healthiest people in the world. Their health care is probably top of the class with almost mandated twice yearly checkups and they are very concerned about people staying thin and active. One thing we know about Corona is that the majority of people who die are those who already have other underlying issues everything from smoking to being overweight seems to contribute greatly to it’s lethality.
They also have pretty strict border control and low international travel rates which also helps prevent infection to reach. Although they do have massively large population clusters where millions of people move in tight spaces they also have an obsession with hygiene and wearing face masks to protect others from your illness has been a thing there far before this. Which leads to another big factor that counts in Japan’s favour is that they are a very collectivist people, they follow orders and act for the sake of “greater good” to an almost eerie level. I don’t know about Belgians but they don’t strike me as particularly concerned about personal health or social responsibility.
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New York City (Hardest hit to my knowledge)
Population (2010)
• Total 8,175,133
• Estimate (2018) 8,398,748
• Rank 1st in the U.S.
• Density 27,751/sq mi (10,715/km2)
We’re going to be approximately in that range even with the lockdown - which has started to curtail infections.
To my knowledge, COVID-19 causes Bilateral Interstitial Pneumonia as the fatality. To be recorded as the death in the US I would believe, they would need to be in the hospital for COVID-19 already which I believe means they basically need oxygen. So while they may have had something else and virus was “the straw the broke the camel’s back”, I would say that technically speaking, COVID-19 was the cause. I can see the argument that this shouldn’t be included, but 1. we’re not exactly going to be able to change that decision and 2. I don’t think we’re going to resolve this argument of inclusion.
I 100% convinced this isn’t a simple problem with a simple answer and that there is a lot of variables that play into what happens including but not limited to: testing capacity, start of testing, societal norms, population density, average age, number of “bad actors”, etc.
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I just want to toss in the fact that while in Japan staying at home is voluntary, the culture of the country is such that the vast majority of people obey the recommendation. From what my friend in Tokyo tells me, the streets have been nigh empty since early March. Awareness of the recommendation is also high, as it is broadcast daily via the community PA systems. Schools and most workplaces are closed. There’s no official lockdown beyond that because the vast majority of people are staying home anyway.
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