Coronavirus COVID-19

  On 2/26/2020 at 12:12 AM, Rubin Farr said:

China bans buying, selling and consumption of wild animals:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/china-just-banned-trade-consumption-190900992.html

as if that's going to work

This ought to be fun: https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/484602-san-francisco-declares-state-of-emergency-over-coronavirus

There are some people wearing masks around town, but nothing much has changed since it was discovered. Remember to wash your hands, everybody.

  On 2/25/2020 at 11:14 PM, Ginerpri said:

Here in Milan there's plenty of people wearing face masks. Also the subway is way way less crowded, like 1 fifth of the people normally using it, as a lot of people work from home this week. Also saw some videos of supermarkets with empty shelves on the food section

I was planning to go to Milan in a few weeks to meet my friend there.

The speculation has started if the Tokyo Olympics will be cancelled.

It would be interesting to see some estimates how much this has cut down the global CO2 emissions already.

  On 2/26/2020 at 10:01 AM, zkom said:

I was planning to go to Milan in a few weeks to meet my friend there.

The speculation has started if the Tokyo Olympics will be cancelled.

It would be interesting to see some estimates how much this has cut down the global CO2 emissions already.

Gas prices have plummeted here, which is a rough proxy for global demand/usage. It seems like a win initially but people are gonna double down in the spring. Kinda like how PornHub noted a huge spike in Hawaiian pornography usage after that flubbed nuclear missile warning was called off. 

Kinda related but;

A friend of mine flew from UK to Seattle earlier this month for a Microsoft conference.  He basically sat in on a bunch of powerpoint presentations and nailed loads of food / drinks on company expenses.  I said to him, "couldn't it just be done via webinars, like most other people?" and his reply was yes of course, but Microsoft paid for it. 

Pretty sure conferences like this will become a thing of the past if Coronavirus takes hold globally.  "Essential travel only" should help curb disease spread, and also really make a difference on CO2 emissions, as pointed out above.  Didn't Microsoft declare they would become Carbon Neutral / Negative? Cancelling stuff like this will go a long way to helping.

yeah they should spend that money on making a video conference system that actually works

  On 2/26/2020 at 10:01 AM, zkom said:

I was planning to go to Milan in a few weeks to meet my friend there.

rachel maddow is here to make you feel better. apparently trump had previously dropped, cut, fired, and forced out much of the apparatus that would handle this kind of thing. and now his administration is, yes, ineptly bungling things. the government doesn't even know what the chain of command is. they accidentally put 14 people infected with the virus onto buses with other americans, all about to be flown to the states. then they realized what they did, and, against cdc recommendation, the state department insisted they just fly those 14 people back to the states with the healthy people anyway. then trump publicly said it was the right thing to do, but then later publicly said he didn't know who did that and it was wrong.

mainly relevant to people in the states, although the US typically does play a consequential role in international efforts, in these situations. for example, obama's administration worked effectively to help contain and resolve the ebola situation.

The US seems to be run like an average Trump business. Good luck with that. 

Don't worry he's on top of it.

  On 2/26/2020 at 7:41 PM, Rubin Farr said:

Don't worry he's on top of it.

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pretty sure november election will be postponed until "we can figure out what's going on".  

MSDNC? Caronavirus? what the fuck is donnie talking about?

i think he's making a joke about MSNBC being very dem aka the DNC. 

4 dimensional chess

  On 2/26/2020 at 8:31 PM, ignatius said:

pretty sure november election will be postponed until "we can figure out what's going on".  

 

Heh, that's a pretty good idea (from Trump's perspective), and if the old and infirm candidates for president (aka Bernie and Joe) happen to catch COVID-19 and die... well, I guess the Trumpkin would just have to continue on as President for another term or at least until a new election can be held, right?

COVID-19 sounds like an Aphex Twin song.

In fact, they could suspend the election now for fears of the candidates catching it since they are all attending large public gatherings...

So the secondary school a few miles from us was shut down today with a suspected CV case. Deep clean and re-open Monday is current plan. A kid came back from family skiing trip in Italy at the weekend....

 I used to go to that school when I was a young un.

Its here! 

this is really fucking exciting

I hope we end up building a wall to stop this thing from getting us

trump picks pence to lead the coronavirus team from the whitehouse.. i guess that means he'll pray a lot for us. 

  On 2/26/2020 at 10:01 AM, zkom said:

It would be interesting to see some estimates how much this has cut down the global CO2 emissions already.

I was wondering the same. I've read that even a 30% decrease in global avg emissions for a few days could reduce the aerosol masking effect (the unintended 'plus-side' of all the greenhouse gases we've pumped into the atmosphere) to noticeably increase the Earth's surface temp in a short time :/

carona

Saudi Arabia bans pilgrims from entering, some work and tourist visas as well "temporarily"

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-51658061

Thanks Obama

Interesting read on the parallels between the coronavirus, and the Bubonic Plague spreading thru the Muslim world along pilgrimage routes:

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/irans-coronavirus-outbreak-bizarrely-reminiscent-110526479.html