SilentWorld

I guess it was just Ottawa that extended it that long. It looks like most other municipalities and regions only extend two weeks at a time. I haven't heard much talk about opening things up any time soon, but like I said I could just be out of the loop. 

I'll say this, it's going to be a fucking disaster if we open things up too early and too rapidly. And this should all be obvious just looking at China's example of starting to open up, and then pulling back when the numbers started to rise.

But, oh yeah, "cHiNa iS lYiNg." So what's happening over there bears no consideration, and instead we should do the exact opposite of them. Open things up. And when the infections inevitably start to rise, we'll wait. Wait until it becomes undeniably obvious that the lock downs need to be reinstated. And wait longer. Because that's what we fucking do. And wait longer still, before we finally do reinstate the lockdown. And when that happens, and the numbers continue to be low in China because they're not fucking stupid, we should once again repeat to each other how they are certainly lying. Because if we can't handle this, surely the god damn Chinese can't either.

I mean who could possibly know that an extremely contagious illness could continue to be contagious? If only those god damn Chinese didn't lie to us about that! 

Edit: I tried finding any articles about opening things up but most of what I found was from March 23ish, when Trump said he wanted things open by Easter and it was obvious that was a bad idea. All I found was this article which, if anything, seems to suggest this will likely be a prolonged shutdown: 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/business/economy/coronavirus-economy.html 

One of the points they raise in the article is even if you do open businesses up, the economy is not likely to recover until people feel comfortable and safe to go out and have fun. I definitely agree with this. I was just saying earlier to a friend that even if there was some miracle and we opened things up before June, and even though I really need a haircut already, I'm not going anywhere near a barber until at least middle of June, because it would be a fucking disaster for me if I got sick before then. After that it wouldn't be ideal but assuming I didn't die it'd be manageable for me to take a couple weeks off. 

I don't know what the other countries are doing but I thought recently the closures in some places in Canada were extended until the end of June? Maybe I'm wrong. 

2 hours ago, CitizenVectron said:

Looks like all Canadian provinces have the daily growth rate under 10%.

 

 

Wow. Maybe this nightmare will be over sooner than I thought (at least in Canada). 

I knew you guys had elections for judges (thank you Fresh Prince for giving me that knowledge), but I had no idea you had elections for state Supreme Court judges. Do many states operate that way?

6 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

Trump is a moron:

 

And I don't think any of us would be surprised if this turns out to be the case:

 

 

I have a friend in Japan -- she's not in Tokyo though but some city more inland (she got really scared of the ocean after Fukushima) and she's really pushing back against me anytime I suggest the numbers may be under-reporting things. 

Her points that she raises is that Japan is a more socially distant culture, wrt to bowing rather than shaking hands or hugging, people live somewhat more isolated lives in Japan, many Japanese people wore masks in public even before COVID and as soon as news came out about COVID everyone was wearing masks, and Japan did take steps like shutting down schools earlier. And I'm like yeah, ok that all sounds good but man those subways. 

Film: Die Welle (The Wave) 

Book: The Last Astronaut by D.F. Marrs

Turns out the authors name has two r's and that's why I couldn't find him! 

https://www.amazon.com/Last-Astronaut-Don-Marrs/dp/0988354616

Song: Got to leave Louisiana by Jimmy Rankin

34 minutes ago, thewhyteboar said:

They've been airing intra-squad scrimmages on youtube! See this account for more: https://twitter.com/MyKBO

hell yeah 

21 minutes ago, marioandsonic said:

Oh god please no, not my cat...I only got him back in November.

 

He's one of the few things that has kept me sane during this whole crisis.

There should be a hug reaction for posts like this. I’d do the heart except I don’t wanna “like” this. I hope your cat stays healthy. 

5 hours ago, marioandsonic said:

I have less than half a tank, and I haven't refilled in about a month.

 

Doesn't gas go bad after a month or so?  Should I just use it up somehow?

As @CitizenVectron said it takes closer to a year. In my experience it’s a much bigger issue on carbureted engines (the fuel in the carburetor likes to gum up). There‘a a product in Canada (I assume it exists in the USA as well) called sea foam that is good for keeping fuel from going bad but I wouldn’t worry about it unless you’re planning on parking your car for months (or if your car is 30+ years old and isn’t fuel injected). I’ve had a bunch of carbureted equipment get gummed up with old fuel when I forgot to use sea foam but I’ve never had a fuel injected engine have the fuel go bad (although I’m sure it can happen given enough time). 

4 hours ago, PaladinSolo said:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/chinese-families-should-be-sweeping-graves-now-but-thousands-still-havent-buried-their-dead/2020/04/03/5a6daa50-7234-11ea-ad9b-254ec99993bc_story.html

 

Using photos posted online, social media sleuths have estimated that Wuhan funeral homes had returned 3,500 urns a day since March 23. That would imply a death toll in Wuhan of about 42,000 — or 16 times the official number. Another widely shared calculation, based on Wuhan’s 84 furnaces running nonstop and each cremation taking an hour, put the death toll at 46,800.

Wuhan residents say the activities belie the official statistics. “It can’t be right . . . because the incinerators have been working round the clock, so how can so few people have died?” a man, identified only by his surname of Zhang, told Radio Free Asia.

16 times higher? People still die of other causes even during a pandemic. And in a city of 10 million people you'd expect roughly 20,000 people to die in the two months under normal circumstances. And that's just if we're talking about the urban area (if we include the metro area, the expected mortality rises to roughly 40,000, but I'm not sure if there'd be more funeral homes servicing the metro area than what they refer to). 

Sure the number of deaths from corona are almost certainly higher than what China has said, but I don't think they're necessarily lying. When this first started, China was limited on the tests they could produce and conduct just like everyone else was (and most still are). Italy isn't counting people that die at home but I don't see anyone saying Italy is lying, for example. 

EDIT: Oh absolutsurgen already covered this. 

11 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

  

 

I hate that people in general (not you) think that crises destroy alliances or nations - they don't. Crises merely expose the rot that existed from neglect and corruption. The EU has been on a downward trajectory for years, which is very unfortunate, but this crisis only illuminates it, it does not create it. Same thing for the US.

 

 

To play devil's advocate, most of those red areas on the map aren't in any greater danger due to travelling longer distances if the people are using cars (which they likely are). Travelling 10 mi by car is safer (for the virus) than 1 mi by public transit. I mean we all know there are other reasons those areas are fucked, but this isn't it, I think.

The map on the right shows percentage of people who have no supermarket within 1 mile AND don’t have a car.

2 hours ago, sblfilms said:

I know what the chart is. They are claiming close to no new cases.

They’ve been reporting close to 100 new cases a day but the line looks flat because it's a log chart. 

3 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

It’s a cumulative numbers chart. So an almost flat line is close to no new cases.

Look at the labels on the y axis. It’s a cumulative numbers log chart. China had close to 100 new cases yesterday, but it’s going to be hard to see that on a log chart where the sum of cases is nearly 100,000. Compare that to South Korea that is reporting a slightly higher amount of new cases a day (140 yesterday I think) but it’s much more noticeable because their sum total is <10,000. 

China’s behaviour seems, to me, consistent with the thesis that they have largely gotten over the first wave of infections but I could be naive. I find it hard to believe that they’d shut down their make shift hospitals and send doctors to other countries if things hadn’t calmed down.

32 minutes ago, sblfilms said:

Yes. There is nothing about China’s behavior in the last month that suggests the numbers more or less just stopped, while mounting evidence that the death totals are significantly higher.

Well, that’s a log chart. The numbers aren’t stopped they’ve just slowed down significantly. 

3 hours ago, sblfilms said:

That China line is LOL. They aren’t even trying to make their tomfoolery unclear...

Is it unreasonable? Any more than South Korea's? 

FIFTY FOUR miles per gallon?!?! 

damn why does boeing suck at everything these days 

How long until the military starts digging mass graves? 

6 hours ago, marioandsonic said:

So how soon until Trump brags about the stock market doing well?

6 hours ago, SlipperySlope said:

1pm eastern

You were right! 

29 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

I just had to run out to the grocery store and pharmacy, first time I've left the house in 4 days. I went to a higher-end grocery (Save On Foods, for Canadians) which is usually less busy. Held true this time, maybe 10-20 customers in the store. They had big signs everywhere saying stay at least 2m (6') from all other customers, and had yellow tape markings near the registers to mark where you should stand. Everyone was very respectful and minded their distance from others. I ended up using the self-checkout since I only needed to touch the screen twice to start and finish (and had alcohol hand sanitizer on me), and I am only use TAP now (contactless credit/debit card payment). The only things that were out of stock was toilet paper and flour. Canned soup was low, but was marked as a limit of a few cans per customer.

 

So overall not too bad, and the streets were quite empty.

Good to know! I’ve spent the past week without going out in public and I’m running low on some groceries. I’ll probably go to save on foods in the next couple days. 

1 hour ago, SFLUFAN said:

Italian Doctors Are Coming Out of Retirement to Treat Coronavirus — and Dying

 

My mom is a retired RN and she said she's thinking about coming out of retirement, and it's articles like this that make me hope she doesn't. 

22 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

Yeah it seems that in most of Canada the infection has been slowed to at least linear growth, which is a good thing.

According to reddit, we’re limited on the tests we can do. 

53 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

 

What the fuck why is everything is terrible can’t there be some good news for once I am freaking out here 

I wonder how this will effect agriculture. If a shortage of inputs/parts prevents me from being able to seed in May, that would pretty much bankrupt me.