My elderly Dad is also remarkably calm. Mostly because he’s completely ignorant of the risks and stubborn as a mule.
My sister is an RN at a local hospital. According to her, so far their sole preparation is being told to wash their hands more frequently. She said there are no plans being put in place to identify and segregate incoming patients. No ramp up in available supplies. No rescheduling of elective surgeries that can be done later.
And she thinks I’m nuts for asking about this stuff. Exact words, “wash your hands this is going to blow right over”.
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My parents cancelled their trip to come visit their grandkids. I called to suggest they rethink their trip and they had already decided to cancel earlier in the day. My dad, especially, is at risk, because he has kidney failure (dialysis probably starting this year).
I told them to just keep taking precautions in every day life and they are well aware. They aren’t barricading themselves in the house, but they aren’t being stupid, either.
We’ll probably help Skype’s usage numbers.
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So in a lot of ways one of the reasons this is going to be so bad is that everyone freaked out for SARS, MERS, H1N1, and Ebola… and then they didn’t blow up the world and were contained. Now obviously in retrospect a lot of the reason those bugs were contained is that the world freaked out… but it has created a situation where it’s astoundingly easy for the general population to be pretty unworried about this.
They are going to be really really pissed when their expectations (this is nothing!) aren’t met. This is going to be completely insane in a day or two.
None of those registered with me or anyone I knew at the time as any significant threat. Maybe they should have. I recall hearing about them but for the most part the immediate risk always seemed very low.
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Yes BS is completely wrong about that.
The reason this is going to be worse than SARS, MERS etc is because this virus is closer to the sweet spot of infection rate vs mortality rate, and because some governments aren’t taking it seriously enough.
It’s sort of a Catch-22.
Either we do a China style shut down and somehow contain this thing, in which case they get upset that we took these measures for nothing.
Or we tell people to just wash their hands, etc. but still go about their normal lives, in which case it explodes, and people get upset because the government didn’t do enough.
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20 minutes away from me.
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Every time a hurricane doesn’t lay civilization to waste, people complain about fear mongering and vow to ride the next one out, but then Katrina hits and everyone laments the ineptitude of government for not being well enough prepared.
I’m not sure how to handle this cultural quirk, but I suspect the correct answer isn’t to do nothing. It is definitely weird how a huge swath of the population views preparedness and precaution negatively.
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H1N1 alone killed 10,000 people.
NBC news reporting Congress may do a two week emergency recess to prevent Congresspersons from getting it and bringing it home.
Congress running to hide should quell the panic.
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I’m sure it will be treated as unpaid time off.
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FYP
Surprisingly, waking up at 4AM and watching Contagion didn’t make me feel any better.
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Stock markets hit circuit breaker within 2 minutes of open. S&P down 7 percent. Dow down 1800 points. Trading halted for 15 minutes.
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