Hey there, folks!

That's it, are you guys and your families OK? I know many in here (most active ones) are in the UK, and as far I know it's okay there so far but other countries like Italy, France, Spain and so on, the emergency seems to keep growing up.

Down here in Colombia the things are okay for now, it seems like we have 13 confirmed cases so far, and I really hope they control it (we live in the third world yet, our inmune system is kinda strong).

This thing eventually could affect out liberty to go outside, work, and even fly.

I hope you're okay.

I live in the Azores, it's an autonomous region of Portugal.

Being autonomous some mesures were taken by the regional government, meaning: ports, airports, schools and children daycares were closed! Government workers are allowed to stay at home taking care of their children until 1st of April.
An specific phone line was created and it's not allowed (if you have symptoms) to go to the Hospital, we are supposed to call the line and they schedule a visit to get a bio sample of us and test for COVID19.

In the company I work with, yesterday and today I went to purchase alcohol, glycerin and aloe vera gel to make ourselfs some hand disinfectant. Teams are divided into groups that should never meet each other, that means that they can only come to the warehouse in specific schedules with precautions taken accordingly.

At the stores there's almost no more stock of disinfectant and prices of it have jumped trough the roof. What before was 5€ I've seen today at 20€.

If someone has a reason to come to the Azores they are obliged to report they're arrival and stay in quarantine, with or without symptoms, if they don't it's considered dangerous to the society and treated as a crime.

All this and at this exact hour there is no confirmed case, we are expecting another press release from the regional government this afternoon where rumor is that the first confirmed case will be announced. Only rumor though.

I live in King County Seattle Washington. We were ground zero for the first confirmed case in the United States. All our schools are closed and every store is sold out of toilet paper hand sanitizer as well as isopropyl alcohol. We are told to social distance ourselves from other people. My family has pretty much been inside (Seattle = rain) except for the days we went out for hikes. I’ve been the only one venturing out to the grocery stores to stock up on food and supplies. Trying to limit our exposure. We are pretty freaked out. My wife is a nurse at the University of Washington hospital. She tested negative for the virus. I am studying electronics at North Seattle College and our classes are all cancelled two weeks from finals. It’s a very strange feeling to feel like the plague is everywhere and you can’t see it. I’ve been re-building a 5inch quad and keeping up on the simulator to keep sane. So far it’s working but I don’t know how long this is going to last.

I live in the US and the worst state for covid 19 which is Washington. Doing just fine but large groups, travel within the state, etc are being severely limited. Drones are a new hobby for me and it's not being affected but all of my other hobbies are. I am an avid triathlete, runner and gravel biker and races I signed up for last year are being cancelled or delayed. It's a real bummer as I have paid for travel and lodging to events in places like Iceland that is not refundable.

Everyone stay safe, wash your hands and all that good stuff!

I am in a really tiny plane right now going back home and I feel like anyone could have this virus but our government isn't taking the extreme caution of locking everyone at their places. I kinda wish everybody stays at home and let this happen without spreading the problem.

I work in the capital city, but on Fridays I work from home. Our company has been putting all the preparations in place for the past couple of weeks to allow the whole company to work remotely in case that scenario arose. Then out of the blue this afternoon my whole department got an email from the head saying that to limit any spread they had taken the decision that no-one should come into the office for the next 2 weeks and that everyone should work from home using the company's remote working capabilities. They will then assess the situation again in 2 weeks time and decide if they need to extend that further.

Last week when we went shopping there was not a single dispenser of hand wash or pack of toilet roll left on the shelf, and dried pasta seems to be in short supply too. Unfortunately that needless situation is just being caused by brainless selfish morons who are panic buying for no good reason. If I felt the need to stock pile something then I think there are other things that would be higher up my priority list TBH.

Our government's chief scientific adviser also released a statement today saying the 60% of the population need to become infected in order to build "herd immunity"...

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-m...y-11956793

I work in NYC dead center of Time Sq. All Broadway show are cancelled.

All the hubbub over this virus is a bunch of hooey.  Not sure what the true motivator for all the freaking out really is, but I'm 100% sure it has little or nothing to do with the virus.

We are doing fine in Southern California. My doctor started watching things when it was still "a Chinese thing" and he has said this is NOT THE FLU and that it is something that you do not want to contract As for freaking out, not happening here except by those who are ill prepared rushing the stores in desperation. We have a lot of empty space on the local market shelves...it will calm down eventually and this is typical behaviour in the US when people get spooked.

Our household has been prepared to shelter in place for years and we are ready to stay sequestered for about a month if the need arises. My employer is a large international firm and they have shut down international travelling between our US, Asian and European offices and plants as a precaution. Other than that, nothing has really changed.

One thing that will come of this, meetings we have travelled for in the past will likely be exposed as total wastes of resources. I would not be surprised if these precautions lead to some cost savings for firms.

Not too crazy here in SoCal yet, but starting Monday all the amusement parks except Seaworld have announced closures until the end of the month. Some school districts and Universities are closing or considering closing. Governor of California has banned all public gatherings of 250 or more people. Government has been holding cruise ships from coming to port until everyone is checked out. Some of them get quarantined at or pass through Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, which bugs my wife since we work in the area.

Take care everyone!

(13-Mar-2020, 11:13 PM)Krohsis Wrote: All the hubbub over this virus is a bunch of hooey.  Not sure what the true motivator for all the freaking out really is, but I'm 100% sure it has little or nothing to do with the virus.

Yes I think everyone in general is overreacting buying up decades supply of toilet paper. But my wife always did go through toilet paper like they grew on tree....mmmh.

But I think the overall reaction of shutting down everything is actually not overreacting. What we don't want is for the infection rate to exponentially grow like it did in China or Italy. If it did happen here in the States, we don't have the resources to treat everyone. If we got infection like China or Italy, the nation will be face with hospital beds shortage of 1 bed for 6 infected persons. In California, they are saying it could be 1 bed for 20 persons. Californian, we are screwed.

The period for containment has passed for the US. Our government messed that up. So here is the grim reality.

A recent analysis of the situation is as followed.
- 50-70% of the US population will likely be infected in the next 12-18 months.
- The US population is 300 million. At a morbidity rate of 1%, 1.5 million people will die in the next 12-18 months. Most of the death will be the elder population.

Of course there are a lot of unknown.

Here in Northern California, a lot of city has shut down all the school. Banned large meeting. Tell everyone to work at home.

Personally, I am still going about my days as normal. I do take a few more cautious, but not much more than usual.

I'm from Italy (Southtyrol the northernmost part of Italy).

We have permission to go to work and shop, but only with a personal declaration. If its possible, we must work from home.
We are not allowed to meet friends, all events have been cancelled, the construction sites are closed.
Only grocery stores, pharmacies, newspaper kiosks, tobacconists, gas stations, electronics stores and banks are still open.

We have to stay in our own communities and are only allowed to go out for a short walk. So no flying at the moment...
My last flight was 3 days ago, when everything was a little more relaxed.

I'd prefer to be considered a bit paranoid, rather than to become a vector of a disease with no cure or vaccine. Doing the normal preventative stuff - hand washing, social distancing, avoiding crowds as much as possible - at least until more is known. I'm retired and have plenty to keep me occupied in the meantime. Mainly trying to avoid becoming part of the problem for my family and for others that I *do* come in contact with. Since I am in the "high risk" group, I really appreciate it when others do likewise.

(14-Mar-2020, 05:04 AM)voodoo614 Wrote: Yes I think everyone in general is overreacting buying up decades supply of toilet paper. But my wife always did go through toilet paper like they grew on tree....mmmh.

But I think the overall reaction of shutting down everything is actually not overreacting. What we don't want is for the infection rate to exponentially grow like it did in China or Italy. If it did happen here in the States, we don't have the resources to treat everyone. If we got infection like China or Italy, the nation will be face with hospital beds shortage of 1 bed for 6 infected persons. In California, they are saying it could be 1 bed for 20 persons. Californian, we are screwed.

The period for containment has passed for the US. Our government messed that up. So here is the grim reality.

A recent analysis of the situation is as followed.
- 50-70% of the US population will likely be infected in the next 12-18 months.
- The US population is 300 million. At a morbidity rate of 1%, 1.5 million people will die in the next 12-18 months. Most of the death will be the elder population.

Of course there are a lot of unknown.

Here in Northern California, a lot of city has shut down all the school. Banned large meeting. Tell everyone to work at home.

Personally, I am still going about my days as normal. I do take a few more cautious, but not much more than usual.

The most affected groups with Covid-19 are the same groups with virus' of this type.  The Spanish Flu, Swine Flu, even our annual flu.  So really nothing new as to the most threatened groups.  As for the fatality rate, those figures are based on China.  China were unprepared, we are not.  China handled the event very poorly, we are doing better.  And other countries are doing even better than the US .  Italy is the only anomaly outside China,  probably because of their more senior population.  If you take China and Italy out of the mix, the faltalty rate drops closer to the annual flu rates.  

I'm very disappointed in my fellow Americans that have been so compliant over the loss of their civil rights.  All governments have learned a lot from this event.  What they have learn could be used nefariously in the future.  But of course our governments would never do that.

We order our weekly shopping online and have it delivered. This is to save us a couple of hours walking round the supermarket and for convenience because we're generally quite busy people. My wife just tried to place this week's order to be told there are NO delivery slots available until a week on Monday. Option 2 is to go and collect your shopping from the supermarket which has already been picked and packed by someone. There are NO slots available for that either. So it looks like we are going to have to brave it by going out into the wild and getting this weeks shopping manually ourselves.