Corona virus

Well, our government has decided that '100 people indoors' is somehow the new threshold for okay. Who the fuck are they kidding?

Our Chief Medical Officer flat-out said,

“A short-term, two to four week shutdown of society is not recommended by any of our experts. It does not achieve anything."

I don't think our politicians realise you don't play chicken with a pandemic.

Meanwhile schools are not only still open, they're aggressively enforcing attendance, but have taken...measures to keep parents off school grounds? (!?!?!)

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The IOC found no reason to cancel or postpone the Olympics. I hope they go ahead. It'll be the funniest fucking thing we've seen all year. Out of shape athletes competing in front of virtually no one.

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Dr John did an incredible video explaining why a healthy adult shouldn't reduce their fever with either NSAIDs or paracetamol. You can find it if you're interested, no doubt.

His other, more regular video today had a letter from a nurse in Italy. You just don't want to know what it says. They are so fucked, and we're next.

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And somehow Facebook's algorithm shat itself overnight and started blocking legitimate news shares. Way to go Zuck.

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Facebook isn't working for the good guys.

I'm sorry about your country, Charan. Authoritarian science deniers should never be elected into positions of power.

I feel like this is the culmination of a handful of years of letting the wrong people steer the ship. You know what I'm talking about, so the point need not be laboured.

I'm genuinely shocked how quickly I've become anti-government. This isn't like me at all. I waver whenever I dwell on it. It's that much against my nature. But the evidence is too strong now. These idiots are ploughing the bus into a wall and the worst thing is they've watched other buses do it first.

Oh, 36.3c. Slight headache, but that's probably just stress/tension right now.

Had to arrange for a plumber just now -- hot water system leaking. The GF can deal with it, but she'll be wearing a mask if only to impress upon whoever attends the job that we are not taking this shit lightly. Anyone could be an asym.

Supermarkets are starting to arrange special 'at risk delivery hours' for seniors, immunosuppressed and other vulnerables. I've applied, but I don't think I provided anywhere near enough information. I hope they call my doctor for confirmation, or request a letter.

BTW My name's not Charan. Leave that to the people who don't care to know or understand me. Call me W.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/03/17/hello-italy-your-future-is-grimmer-than-you-think/

This all rings true. Even the banal stuff about how busy they are now with this new way of life. Self-quarantine is not the holiday it seems to be. Life goes on. Things have to be done. If anything, I'm busier now than I have been for ages. Keeping up with relatives, the news, friends, things we can do for further preparation.

It's weird. I'm both more disconnected from my local world and yet feel more connected with the larger one. I chat with people in Denmark, the Netherlands, USA, UK, Canada, Japan...people I haven't heard from in years but who read my updates check on me, and I on them. We discuss our countries' responses, our personal preparations.

I'm not saying I like it or that I feel this positive change outweighs everything else. It really doesn't. That article develops from 'our strange new life' to 'for god's sake please don't follow in our footsteps'. But I do like that in these rarest of events, we do come together as best we can despite oceans and timezones, rallied by nothing if not the collective disbelief at how poorly the powers that be have handled this.

Being surrounded by the netherlands and the UK is quite funny.

They both opted to go the herd-immunity route so that will be interesting to watch develop.

I have a good laugh with how many politicians are calling for "civic duty" now because the word "nationalism" is taboo over here, because apparently everybody's nationalism in europe is of german flavor, but everybody knows what is implied.

Also had a laugh today when the news interviewed some guy in his late 70's and the interviewer was asking "have you ever seen this kind of crisis before".
He looked at her funny and reminded her of europe's past while i was laughing my ass off at home.

He wasn't taking the situation lightly btw, just looked a bit dumb founded at the relatively young interviewer asking what is bassicaly a dumb question to a person who was alive around the build-up period post WWII.

All in all the solidarity is nice to see but the goverment still needed to declare official policy's to make it clear to some to deal with this appropriatly.
Mostly young people seem to ignore it at this stage which is normal, but that will probably shift in a day or two.

So far the goverment did everything at the pace i predicted to my mom a week and a half ago, missed the "lockdown" by a couple of hours but im fine with that.
She looked at me funny when i told her there will be 10 people death by the end of today, which was confirmed a few hours later in the evening news.
Amazing how numbers work i guess.

All in all if we get the young people to follow suit things look ok over here.

Peace,

-Boem-

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Italy's total number of cases rose 12.6 percent to 31,506 - the slowest rate of increase since the first cases were reported on February 21.

Looks like the lockdown is finally taking effect (or there are simply not that many people left for the virus to infect). France will hopefully show similar results looking at what they are doing.

My #1 way of losing a game of Plague, Inc was being too infectious, not lethal enough. I'd simply infect the whole world quietly, fail to kill enough of them, get detected, get cured.

Normally I'd view Covid-19 that way, as a highly infectious but ultimately ineffectual plague, but since I'd probably fall into the 'insufficient dead' category, it's serious enough for me. :)