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MasterWinter

My Aunt back in CA, who lives in the San Jose area (last I knew she did), e-mailed me back finally.

As of last night, if this rumor is true (and she DID inform it was a rumor), Santa Clara went on a lock down last night at midnight. My aunt is also an employee of a private high school, and they have school cancelled for couple weeks. Not sure if their classes will be online or not, she didn't say I didn't ask.

So far my county here in GA where I live, has yet to do a lock down. But I am sure it will come soon enough. Most places are closing down, if they aren't an essential store, like grocery or drug store.
I am in Denmark and currently in 14-days quarantine due to the possibility that I may have covid-19. Due to the closing of public and private daycares, I began caring for four children to make up for my lost income. It turned out that their teacher is covid-19 positive, and might have passed that onto the children, who may have passed it on to me. I feel fine, but I've decided to stay put, until I can be tested and get my test results.

I still have both of my jobs, but since I am paid hourly and have no shifts, I only have my SU as an income.

Our schools are closed, and all education has gone online. People are encouraged to work from home, if possible, and emergency-daycare is established for parents who cannot work from home.
Gatherings of more than 1000 people (outdoors) are discouraged, and gatherings of more than 100 (indoors) are cancelled.

The government is covering up to 75% of employees salaries, to prevent mass lay-offs, and smaller/medium sized companies have been given the opportunity to postpone paying taxes until the economy is more stable.

Despite being part of Schengen, we have closed our boarders, and as good as closed all air-traffic. The Foreign Ministry is working on bringing Danes home from other countries.

Hoarding was bad last week, but it is not really a problem anymore. Hand sanitizer is hard to find, but rubbing alcohol in a spray bottle works too ;)

In case there are any Danes working in Sundhedsvæsnet or servicebranchen:
Tusind, tusind, tusind tak for alt det, du gør for os! I bliver simpelthen ikke rost nok for jeres indsats. Jeg håber, I alle sammen har det godt, når I nu gør så meget for os <3
Big virtual hugs to all of you!
MasterWinter

Santa Clara, CA is officially on lock down according to my aunt.

Quote from my e-mail with her: "Both your Uncle and I are working from home for the next 3 weeks. If all goes well, we can go back to work around April 7. SC county is on lock down. No unnecessary travel, stay inside etc. "

Even though it's hard to see, then one thing we need to remember is this (also quoted from my e-mail): "We will get through this, but right now it's just strange."
I'm currently okay, but my college in Virginia, USA has closed temporarily due to the virus. We're moving classes online starting this week. My family's doing fine, but there are a number of cases popping up in localities close to me daily. Hoping that my state gets its stuff together soon. Things have been crazy.

Any college seniors facing a cancelled graduation, I'm in the same boat and I feel your pain. It sucks, but hopefully things will get better soon. If not, it's better to know that people are social distancing and staying healthy rather than gathering for graduation and potentially endangering others.

EDIT: My graduation was officially cancelled of about an hour ago. I know it’s the best decision for public health and safety, but I’m still devastated. To be told I’m not going to get to celebrate my time, say goodbye to my friends, finish my last semester and all over email. It’s unreal.
LittleLilac wrote:
I am in Denmark and currently in 14-days quarantine due to the possibility that I may have covid-19. Due to the closing of public and private daycares, I began caring for four children to make up for my lost income. It turned out that their teacher is covid-19 positive, and might have passed that onto the children, who may have passed it on to me. I feel fine, but I've decided to stay put, until I can be tested and get my test results.

I still have both of my jobs, but since I am paid hourly and have no shifts, I only have my SU as an income.

Our schools are closed, and all education has gone online. People are encouraged to work from home, if possible, and emergency-daycare is established for parents who cannot work from home.
Gatherings of more than 1000 people (outdoors) are discouraged, and gatherings of more than 100 (indoors) are cancelled.

The government is covering up to 75% of employees salaries, to prevent mass lay-offs, and smaller/medium sized companies have been given the opportunity to postpone paying taxes until the economy is more stable.

Despite being part of Schengen, we have closed our boarders, and as good as closed all air-traffic. The Foreign Ministry is working on bringing Danes home from other countries.

Hoarding was bad last week, but it is not really a problem anymore. Hand sanitizer is hard to find, but rubbing alcohol in a spray bottle works too ;)

In case there are any Danes working in Sundhedsvæsnet or servicebranchen:
Tusind, tusind, tusind tak for alt det, du gør for os! I bliver simpelthen ikke rost nok for jeres indsats. Jeg håber, I alle sammen har det godt, når I nu gør så meget for os <3


Update: As of today 18/03-2020, public gatherings of more than 10 are prohibited. Private gatherings of more than 10 is heavily discouraged. All stores but the grocery stores are required to close down, and the government is working on covering/making up for lost income. Churches are closed as well, meaning that weddings and confirmations are postponed until after Whitsun.
So far, these new rules are until Monday 30th March.

Update 19/03-2020:
The government has presented their ‘compensation-plans’ for businesses and the self-employed who will be affected by the quarantine. There’s still some details that have to fall into place, but as of now there’s talk of full coverage of all monthly expenses, and an undisclosed percentage of lost income covered.
A silver lining - the Danish parliament has rarely agreed and collaborated this much!
I live in Alabama, and 39 cases have been reported here already. (The irony is that the first reported case was on Friday the 13th.) Schools are shutting down until April, and my Walmart is working from 7am-11pm during this crisis. Not much else on the news front, but things are going south from what I could tell at the store yesterday.

The egg shelves were completely empty. Even the pre-cooked hard-boiled eggs were gone. The toilet paper crisis has spread here too, but they also ran out of chicken thighs when I ordered my food the day before. (They made up for that by overstocking them the next day when I came in.) The person who drove me to Wal-Mart even heard someone with a huge pickup order say that she was coming back tomorrow for another order.

Sad part is, I was starting to enjoy walking outside more often to get some exercise. Now I have to stay in like I did before? For someone who's working on reaching out to people more often and leaving their house to be social, it's kinda heartbreaking.

But I hope this blows over soon: not for my sake, but for everyone's. It's a scary time, so stay safe, okay?
Alecia wrote:
I have a high risk (over 10%, probably more) of dying from the virus so I ended up buying enough food and stuff to be able to stay home for the next month or two. I did my panic shopping during the past 4 weeks and ended up finishing it a week ago. Now, it turns out that I’m getting in a bad mood from being at home (I work from home as well), so I’ve just bought some flowering plants and cheery essential oils, but that’s it - I’m going to go out for walks (while staying several meters away from others), but no more shopping in person.

This is one of the biggest risks that we have faced in the past few decades, so I’m VERY VERY glad for all the media coverage and the steps my government is taking. I might live to see summer and so might my family (also high risk), so yay!

It’s important to note that carriers can take up to weeks to actualy show signs of the illness, that it’s very contagious and that it’s a multiplicative process. The number of seriously ill can grow at an incredible rate, and if the healthcare system is overwhelmed people will start dying from treatable things. Just look at Italy right now, and it’s not at its worst yet.

Anyway, everyone is responsible for their own decisionmaking and has their own opinions. I’m not looking to start a discussion of this as it would likely grow into a flame war, so I’m not going to watch this topic or post further replies. But I can’t not mention that comparing it to other, “normal” illnesses, does not take into account some very important facts that we now know.

Edited / update 1: So apparently people keep hanging out with one another, this is extremely bad news. And they’re doing it outside in groups, which makes it difficult to go for a safe walk (one without coming too close to someone else - ideally 3 meters should be kept between people if they are sneezing, and about 1,5 m under normal circumstances). There are crowds in shops but due to lack of face masks for even doctors, nobody is wearing them because almost nobody has them.

The delivery services have started being overwhelmed. Some online stores are closing down temporarily due to high numbers of orders and low supplies. I imagine delivery services will become very strained very soon.

Edit / update 2: It turns out that my flatmate doesn’t wash her hands before handling groceries and touching a lot of things in the flat when coming from the outside from the store where she was among lots of mask-less people. Then she still doesn’t wash her hands properly but sort of rinses them for three seconds. She insists on going out to shop every day. This is knowing that there is a highly contageous disease about that could easily kill me. On top of my other issues, I very recently recovered from a serious case of flu. Therefore, I’m pretty much screwed.

OTOH, no need to worry about only having stocked enough food to last a month’s quarantine, I guess?

5 days later:
  • I’m coughing and having issues breathing, but due to my not having temperature over 37C (which would be very rare for me, even when I’m very ill), and due to not having been abroad, nobody is testing me. There are too few tests even for people who have been to risk regions and are showing stronger signs. If it gets much worse, I hope hospitals will still have some available capacity in case I need oxygen or ventilation.
  • Delivery services are overloaded. Still getting things delivered but not as reliably.
  • Delivery guys are often using no protection. So I would say delivery services will start lacking people soon.
  • We have extra quarantined villages and towns where there is additional quarantine because people were ignoring the instructions to socially distance themselves from others, so they have disproportionately high numbers of cases. These are completely closed down. No mail or deliveries and the access to food is not at 100%
  • We have enough food overall but starting to have an issue with not enough people to sell it.

Take care, stay safe, stay home if possible. The more people keep going out the more services will get disrupted, including hospital care a few weeks to a month from now.
DeliriumAngel wrote:
I'm currently okay, but my college in Virginia, USA has closed temporarily due to the virus. We're moving classes online starting this week. My family's doing fine, but there are a number of cases popping up in localities close to me daily. Hoping that my state gets its stuff together soon. Things have been crazy.

Any college seniors facing a cancelled graduation, I'm in the same boat and I feel your pain. It sucks, but hopefully things will get better soon. If not, it's better to know that people are social distancing and staying healthy rather than gathering for graduation and potentially endangering others.

EDIT: My graduation was officially cancelled of about an hour ago. I know it’s the best decision for public health and safety, but I’m still devastated. To be told I’m not going to get to celebrate my time, say goodbye to my friends, finish my last semester and all over email. It’s unreal.

I'm sorry about your graduation. Are you doing ok?
becky wrote:
It's gonna be a wild ride on this rock for a while.

If anyone is interested, Johns Hopkins has a live tracker here:

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

And the situation report from today from the WHO:

https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200313-sitrep-53-covid-19.pdf?sfvrsn=adb3f72_2

Today at work we received a mandate where we have to stand six feet away from anyone, and to not congregate in the office. So I kept my tape measure at my desk and made sure to measure the distance between a few of my coworkers when they approached me. I hope nobody at work secretly hates me.

A gun range I go to said they've had more sales since March 13th than they did the last year and a half. They are rationing the amount of ammo you can purchase (one pack per round, per person per day). Another I stopped at had gouged prices ($37 for a $20 pack of ammo). And while a background check generally takes maybe 15 to 20 minutes to process, it took about an hour.

Retail stores have been asked to close down, colleges are closed, and bars and restaurants are closed or offering to-go orders only. We have a few local markets in our area and the businesses inside have to be shut down. My company had all of it's construction contracts suspended for a minimum of two weeks. Our job site alone has around 75 people on the job every day; many jobs have into the triple digits. The state is allowing unemployment benefits to begin right away. The Turnpike is not making people stop to take a ticket; the message boards read "Do not stop at toll booth. We will send you a bill in the mail." Our licensing centers are all closed down.

This isn't even the beginning. A coworker stopped coming to work last week and he said he got tested Monday, but won't hear back for a few more days. So it means he was at least showing symptoms; I called my doctor to ask about getting it tested and they said they're only administering tests if you're showing serious symptoms. On the 17th we had 96 confirmed cases, and 879 negatives. On the 18th, we have 133 positives and 1187 negatives.

I'm glad my state is taking precautions. We haven't deployed the National Guard, but we have the second largest National Guard in the country. I know some states have rolled theirs out.
Update on treatment - one antiviral was found to (probably) work for Covid-19: https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/18/japanese-flu-drug-appears-effective-in-coronavirus-treatment-in-chinese-clinical-trials
The article is from yesterday. Presumably it will take a long time to make enough of it, plus I have no idea how expensive it’s going to end up being. This underscores the importance of staying healthy for as long as possible until testing and drugs are more widely available. Self-isolate if possible, and stay safe.
MasterWinter

First people madly stock up on TP now they do so with guns and ammo? What the fudge?

It just boggles my mind the nutness of this whole thing, that makes people go: OMG! I need to by a sh*t ton of this stuff!

My grandpa cannot even find groundbeef in stores, he went to two different ones yesterday, everyone's out of stock till who knows when.

Good God Odin. People need to seriously stop panic buying.
Winters_Fury wrote:
First people madly stock up on TP now they do so with guns and ammo? What the fudge?

It just boggles my mind the nutness of this whole thing, that makes people go: OMG! I need to by a sh*t ton of this stuff!

My grandpa cannot even find groundbeef in stores, he went to two different ones yesterday, everyone's out of stock till who knows when.

Good God Odin. People need to seriously stop panic buying.[/quot

Agree
I'm doing well so far. I've moved home and am attending classes online. I've been getting groceries and things necessary for my parents who still have to work. Luckily it seems we're all healthy, so hopefully we'll stay that way even as things start to get worse. I'm luckier than some it seems. I hope everyone else is staying healthy.
becky wrote:
DeliriumAngel wrote:
I'm currently okay, but my college in Virginia, USA has closed temporarily due to the virus. We're moving classes online starting this week. My family's doing fine, but there are a number of cases popping up in localities close to me daily. Hoping that my state gets its stuff together soon. Things have been crazy.

Any college seniors facing a cancelled graduation, I'm in the same boat and I feel your pain. It sucks, but hopefully things will get better soon. If not, it's better to know that people are social distancing and staying healthy rather than gathering for graduation and potentially endangering others.

EDIT: My graduation was officially cancelled of about an hour ago. I know it’s the best decision for public health and safety, but I’m still devastated. To be told I’m not going to get to celebrate my time, say goodbye to my friends, finish my last semester and all over email. It’s unreal.

I'm sorry about your graduation. Are you doing ok?
The waiting time for getting through to an operator on the emergency medical care hotline (similar to 911, but only for ambulance) is now about 15 minutes due to the number of people calling about Covid-19. Many of these people are untested and since they are being refused testing, they at least make youtube videos.

So, the current situation where I am is such that anyone needing an ambulance will have to wait about 15 minutes before reaching someone who can help in any way. And the hospitals are not even full yet, but maybe that’s because they only accept people who call in with serious breathing issues.
nightmqre

I've only just been affected.

Theyve cancelled everything at school, and today was my last day. They're talking about staying shut down until September which is gonna be the biggest impact for me. I'm gonna miss half a year of valuable time which I desperately need. Work experience got cancelled, so I missed out on that. :_:
Today I woke up to work informing me of more cuts. They're dropping an entire cleaning shift and rescheduling to balance the remaining two for best effect (honestly, we're still the cleanest spot in the airport, everywhere else either shares cleaning teams that have to make big rounds or just has their regular employees clean, and we've got few patrons right now). Those remaining two shifts are being divided up. Once again, sounds like I'll be least affected - I normally work 3 days a week, and they're trying to keep me on 2 days rather than drop me to 1. The shift's also been shortened by another hour, down to 6, minus another half hour if I take lunch. (If keep my documented time under the 6 hour mark, even just a little, I can technically skip lunch, though doing this repeatedly might get me scolded.) once I see my schedule tomorrow (they haven't given me final word yet), I'll probably go ahead and put in an unemployment application, since it's supposed to work for underemployment too.

In other news, I'm actually seeing more people just around neighborhoods than usual. Jogging, mowing the lawn, walking... I'm sure it's partly the warming weather, but I'm guessing there's a lot of folks who don't know what else to do with themselves.
Claine Moderator



Here is a very informative and level headed video about the virus.
For people needing help due to Covid-19 in the US: try FindHelp.org to look for services in your area.
Update from the Lone Star State:

Like in Denmark -- Dallas, Texas has also limited the number of people who can gather together for social gatherings to 10. It went from 250, to 50, to 10.

They've closed bars and dine-in restaurants (except for drive through and delivery).

Popeye's is delivering chicken for free. 👍

Lots of restaurants are offering discounts because they must be losing a ton of money.

Schools across the state of Texas must be closed or fully online until at least April 3rd, if memory serves.

Different schools have reacted in different ways. My partner works at a charter school. They will do online classes, starting Monday.

Dallas ISD, the largest largest public school district, on the other hand, has announced that schools will be closed "indefinitely," and I don't think they're doing online classes.

Texas has canceled STAAR testing for this year, I believe.
~

The unprecedented nature of this situation still kind of boggles my mind. We've never lived through anything like this before.
~

In the United States, several states including New York and California are on "lockdown," but less sensationalist sources are calling it "shelter-in-place." Texas is not one of those states, yet.

I believe it involves fines for people who break the rules, and using law enforcement enforce to enforce the rules, but I'm not clear on what else that means. But New York and Cali are doing it. It sounds like it's a state by state decision, and the governors of New York and California felt it was necessary.

Hydroxychloroquine and one or two other preexisting medicines are being fast tracked and tested to see if they're safe and effective against Covid-19. I think that's good. The government put into effect an act that says the government can use factories to produce needed supplies, and so GM (I think) is going to be making respirators as quickly as possible.
~

I personally have gone from thinking the changes to daily lifestyle are an overreaction to being convinced that the changes to daily life are absolutely necessary and that wise people will heed them. This change in perspective has been facilitated by some of my close friends who work in the medical industry here. And articles I read about Italy right now. :( I hope we dodge that kind of crisis here.
~

Anyway, Dallas, Texas still has milk, eggs, canned goods, and paper towels, but I'm wondering if I should go buy 2 months worth of those things and freeze them all (well, except the paper towels), because I see how things are other states. Even without those items, though, we've got enough canned goods to last for a month so we'll be fine.
~

I'm really hoping my mom doesn't get this thing, so I'm really being careful about handwashing anytime I come back from shopping.
~

Also, like was mentioned for Denmark, in the United States, Congress is also working in a surprising and commendable bipartisan way to make sure a relief package gets passed.

The relief package will pay individuals and families some portion of their lost wages from staying at home. I am really impressed by this. It just goes to show you what they can do, if motivated by necessity.
~

Side tangent:

If there's something good to be taken from this, it's the knowledge of what governments can do, when they are sufficiently motivated. To me, being able to work from home and go to school from home should be something that's available to people even in normal times, and so with this, we see how quickly companies and laws can be adjusted to allow that to happen, at least temporarily. I think there's a lesson to be learned from that, about our potential to be innovative (and maybe we should carry that on after the crisis is over, too).
~


But aside from that, I think payments to individuals might be somewhere around $1000 dollars, or somewhere around there. Small business loans are being offered now in Texas to help keep small businesses afloat. Taxes are not due on April 15th anymore, it's been pushed forward to a date in June or July (I forget the exact date).

That's about it from the Lone Star State, home of the Cowboys.

May we all stay free of the virus and know that we're all in this together.

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