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17 minutes ago, Continental said:

I asked the people who control the Hubble Space Telescope where the center of the universe is.

Their response is interesting in that the top 10 answers they provided didn't include any of the usual posters on DCP.

You don’t know where they all live, though.  

Curiously, Garfield’s IP address is 137,000 characters long.  

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15 minutes ago, HockeyDad said:

Well, in that case, I’m screwed. 

Ditto:  pushing 76 - 2 OHS's - 1 kidney - could go on but I already fit the Over the Hill Gang category.  The difference is you have all those years of "Fifth Ouarter"  experience that should serve you well.  Did some YouTube this weekend (if I have the right person) found out you can fly,  quite the showman.  We got this one,  just exercise  recommended precautions, watch your "6"  and  "Thanks for the Memories". 

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4 hours ago, skevinp said:

I think they are doing their best to provide helpful information as the situation unfolds in real time.

I strongly disbelieve that everyone in authority has consistently been doing this. And as Jim says, admitting this doesn't have to be read as a political comment. People have great capacity to be both incompetent and malicious, and government officials are no different in that respect than anyone else. And it's usually incompetence rather than malice -- or a preference to remain ignorant if the facts might be disturbing.

The town council in Amity didn't want people to be eaten by a great white shark, but the evidence wasn't conclusive, so why interrupt business by closing the beaches?

Or as Upton Sinclair put it: "It is impossible to get a man to understand something if his livelihood depends on him not understanding."

If the government of China hadn't covered up what was going on there, this dangerous disease might never have left that country--or at least other countries would have had better information sooner with which to respond. And the governments in Iran and Italy both apparently weren't aggressive enough, and now both countries are in a pretty bad way. In the case of Iran, the screw-up reached comical levels, with the deputy health minister coughing and visibly fever-sweating his way through a public statement in which Iranians were assured that everything was under control.

Nobody here says I'm being political for criticizing Xi Jinping, or Ali Khamenei, or Giuseppe Conte, the leaders of those three countries.

But because almost everyone here is American, this forum's rules, for the sake of comity, strictly restrict our ability to to criticize specific Americans. That said, we shouldn't kid ourselves that nothing like that could possibly have happened in this country. And we should at least have our eyes open for that possibility, so that we can act accordingly. Even if we can't talk about it here.

 

4 hours ago, Terri Schehr said:

It may be. Likewise in South Korea, the number of new cases seems to be slowing down:

ESv-ZImX0AA-asQ?format=png&name=900x900

But in both countries (and in China only after the government, to put it charitably, mishandled the problem for six weeks), that's because of extraordinary efforts. In China, they imposed draconian quarantine measures that are only now being partially lifted even far from the epicenter. Yesterday I read a report from someone living in Shanghai, more than 500 miles from Wuhan, who is not infected, and he described how he's been confined to his apartment building for a month, and only now is allowed out for a few hours each day. Also, as noted at your link, they built large makeshift hospitals.

In South Korea, they've tested close to 200,000 people and meticulously worked to trace as many connections as possible to identify and isolate the infected.

In northern Italy, on the other hand, the public apparently took the attitude of, "Eh, it's just another flu" and apparently they ran out of hospital beds in Lombardy. And now the whole country has travel restrictions, and all schools and universities are closed, and all events are cancelled, and all restaurants and bars close at 6 p.m. each day.

We can beat this thing, but it may take enormous and very disruptive measures. Surveys find that roughly half of Americans say they're not making any adjustments (not even washing their hands more!) in response to the coronavirus. One of the most important steps now is encouraging people to take those basic steps.

I will note that one of the first posts in this long thread is by George Dixon. George has generally been skeptical about the seriousness of this outbreak. But to his great credit, in that early post, almost two weeks ago, he noted that the large company he works for was updating its emergency preparedness plans and taking other active steps to reduce risk.

More of that, please!

 

3 hours ago, hostrauser said:

This will be a marathon, not a sprint. Don't panic, but be concerned, and take the necessary precaution

Well said. (The whole post, not just that part.)

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Anyway, right now I am confronted by these facts: one of the three local cases of COVID-19 announced yesterday was a man who traveled to and from Washington for AIPAC (March 1-3), apparently on the same bus as a number of students from seven local schools. Those students are apparently all asymptomatic but self-quarantining through March 17. (Nobody knows yet whether the disease is spread by people who don't exhibit symptoms.) The schools aren't closing but are being extra thorough with their cleaning, and they have advised parents of unaffected students that if they choose to take their kids out as a precautionary measure, the schools will help them make up their lessons. Among our staff are parents of children in those schools. We have a longstanding family-friendly policy that allows parents to bring their kids to the office when they can't make other arrangements and put them in a room we set aside for that purpose. Now we have to decide what the implications of the new situation are for that policy.

Edit: And now six caregivers at the hospital where these three cases were being treated are themselves self-quarantining and awaiting test results.

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Edit: Here's the lede of a new article on the local paper's website:

"To minimize the spread of the coronavirus, health experts have recommended canceling in-person college classes, banning spectators from sporting events and concerts, and temporarily keeping away visitors to Ohio prisons, among other measures, Gov. Mike DeWine announced Tuesday.

DeWine said it’s now a 'critical time' for responding to the virus, which so far has infected nearly 117,000 people worldwide, including three Ohioans. 'The next several weeks will really determine how many lives are going to be lost in Ohio,' the governor said."

Speaking as someone who didn't vote for the guy: I think he's saying and doing the right things.

Edited by N.E. Brigand
"Disbelieve" not "disagree".
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50 minutes ago, skevinp said:

I don’t think anyone is (or many people are) suggesting we not use precautions.  Some people are concerned that panic could do more harm than the virus itself.  

 

To be clear never had problems with what you post. With some it sounds like “it’s overblown because that’s what you see on the news all day”. My question would be “why are you watching news all day?”.

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1 hour ago, DCVNVET said:

Ditto:  pushing 76 - 2 OHS's - 1 kidney - could go on but I already fit the Over the Hill Gang category.  The difference is you have all those years of "Fifth Ouarter"  experience that should serve you well.  Did some YouTube this weekend (if I have the right person) found out you can fly,  quite the showman.  We got this one,  just exercise  recommended precautions, watch your "6"  and  "Thanks for the Memories". 

You omitted one thing:  eat a rock

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29 minutes ago, N.E. Brigand said:

I strongly disagree that everyone in authority has consistently been doing this. 

I never said that.  This is the second time recently you have gone off on a diatribe arguing with something I was not saying.  Please just stop.

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3 hours ago, skevinp said:

I never said that.  This is the second time recently you have gone off on a diatribe arguing with something I was not saying.  Please just stop.

OK, breaking my self-imposed one-post-per-day rule to note that I'm changing the word "disagree" to the word "disbelieve", so that the comment doesn't appear to be a rebuttal of anything you said but a general comment about government response. And I apologize for suggesting otherwise.

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Edit: But since I made the post, I'll use it to add some more information on coronavirus that may be of interest to others. Here's a Wall Street Journal interview with a vice principal from Rhode Island who nearly died from the disease after chaperoning a trip to Italy:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-patient-recounts-coming-one-inch-from-death-11583866316

He's 48, and he did have an underlying health condition: asthma.

Here's another case: a 32-year-old physician's assistant who was the first person diagnosed in New Jersey. His condition is worsening and he's probably going to need to be put on a ventilator:

https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/85338

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This is very preliminary, but tentative findings suggest that community spread of COVID-19 may be limited by weather conditions. Unfortunately, as you can see, that leaves plenty of the U.S. at risk:

ESm9RTRXQAACFGP?format=png&name=900x900

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Meanwhile, the number of reported cases in the U.S. doubled in the past 36 hours.

Does that mean the actual number of cases doubled in that time?

No, it means that the U.S. is finally starting to really test for the virus.

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And in northern Italy, they're running out of resources and having to prioritize saving younger patients over older ones:

https://www.politico.eu/article/coronavirus-italy-doctors-tough-calls-survival/

Edited by N.E. Brigand
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33 minutes ago, N.E. Brigand said:

 

In northern Italy, on the other hand, the public apparently took the attitude of, "Eh, it's just another flu" and apparently they ran out of hospital bed in Lombardy. And now the whole country has travel restrictions, and all schools and universities are closed, and all events are cancelled, and all restaurants and bars close at 6 p.m. each day.

 

As someone who was just in Italy for the past 2 months studying abroad, it was insane to see just how fast this virus spread in the course of a week. But I can attest the attitude from most people over there was very "we're fine no need to worry" and still is.

Insane to see Ohio State and Kent State closing campus but good they're being proactive?

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16 minutes ago, HockeyDad said:

You omitted one thing:  eat a rock

Gotcha!  Plenty here in the desert. Was really impressed.  No Drum Corps influences in your program.  Elsa's for Seniors,  wish the sound was better, and the Bobby McGhee skit were favorites.  Again Thanks for the Memories, listening and viewing made my day.    

Edited by DCVNVET
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Let’s all take twenty seconds to take a deep breath and wash our hands. Considering it a hoax will not make it go away. We all share different views of what’s going on here but there is one thing we all can do to get us ALL past this. Listen to and follow the recommendations of scientists who study this sort of thing. The precautions they suggest just might save lives.

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