Coronavirus

Shellhead wrote: Coma Ward is just a re-themed Betrayal at House on the Hill, and yet somehow the errata for the basic rule book (not the scenarios) is longer than the original rules.

Ah, the MegaTraveller Effect.

My company said I won't be back on campus until end of June 2021 at the earliest. My company is working on a vaccine, so I would put some credence on their sense of timing for how things are shaking out. That's the earliest point at which they would consider having non-essential staff report back to distanced/cleaned work environment.

Our school system is still 100% virtual, except for Needs kids, they got to go back a couple of weeks ago. If/when we phase in, it will be cohorts and K-2, then 3-5, &c.

For tertiary exposure (e.g., one kid was at a distanced event where the parent of another attendee tested positive a couple days after it), we use a six day rule to check for symptoms. Symptoms should develop within six days, after that you should be ok. That said, our family group is tested weekly by my wife's being an essential worker, so you might want to be even more cautious.

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I have to admit, I am sick in my heart about people that insist this is "no big deal" and that the "shutdown isn't worth it" and start jabbering at me with flu numbers and car accidents. It IS a big deal. The excess deaths are huge, the non-death casualties are enormous and the amount of grief and mental health issues caused by these mountains of dead parents and grandparents (and adults, and teens, and children) is compounding. And the guilt some feel for knowing their stupid motorcycle rally or pumpkin picking line or restauranting caused their aunt/gramma/neighbor to maybe get sick all the moreso. It's a PREVENTABLE DISEASE. The R0 is less than 1 if you don't act like a selfish asshole, and some people just can't help it. They need to get out there and asshole it up and yell about how it's no big deal while the rest of us bury the dead.

A discussion with the head of IT at my facility is indicating that they have a significant cost savings from everyone working remotely. They have perhaps 10% of staff coming in total (both IT and otherwise) and they're pleased with the productivity.

Long story short -- managers have been scared for two or three decades to let their people work remotely for extended periods of time, but now that they've actually done it they've discovered that it's manageable and cost-effective.

So I think there may be a lot of us only going in for occasional all-hands meetings even after all of this settles out. When that will be is anybody's guess, but in theory this won't last forever.

Tomorrow would be a nice day to work from home, because the forecast calls for a 100% chance of 5 to 8 inches of snow. We are just getting our first snow of the season today, and it's just a trace amount. But I am totally not ready for tomorrow's onslaught. Late October is when I normally do a trial start of my ancient snow blower, and take it in to the hardware store for a tune-up if necessary. Anyway, I need to make the usual long commute to work tomorrow because recent IT issues make remote connectivity unreliable, and I need to do payroll for 120 employees.

In a way, the snow helps me get over another issue. Halloween has always been my favorite holiday, and October is usually a very social month for me. Halloween even falls on a Saturday this year, but of course all plans have been ruined by COVID-19, especially with a record surge in new cases in Minnesota lately. But this early, heavy snow (to be followed by lesser quantities of snow in the coming days) makes it feel like late November instead, making it easier to overlook the loss of Halloween this year.

My new plan for Halloween is designed for a party of one. Saturday morning cartoons (episodes of Batman: the Animated Series). For lunch (and dinner), I will cook chili and grill some brautwurst, for some chili dogs. In the afternoon, I will play solitaire games of Camp Grizzly and Arkham Horror. Early evening, I will hand out candy if any trick-or-treaters show up. After that, a double feature of scary movies.

The loss of Halloween does indeed suck. I will be celebrating with my sons by playing through the video game Little Hope, which gets released on the 30th. We had a great time playing the previous title, Man of Medan.

Numbers in Germany are going up with 11k+ infections per day. It is getting harder to trace back all infections and there are talks about a lockdown, when we reach 20k per day, although it won't be a national lockdown, but rather depending on regional numbers. Overall the situation is geographically pretty diverse, with the bulk of infections occuring in the south-west of Germany and in big cities like Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, etc. Politicians want schools and kindergartens to stay open as long as possible, but the reality makes it really difficult to keep everybody safe, especially as temperatures drop. The number of deaths is growing again, from single digits over last summer to now around 50 deaths per day.

To make things worse, I tested positive for Corona yesterday. :/
Last weekend I developed a low fever, a splitting headache (my whole body was aching actually), combined with a sinusitis, plus I felt super exhausted. I used masks whenever necessary, did not go out and - due to having a week off - never met with friends for football or drinks, what I would have done normally. So I'm not sure where and how I contracted it. To make things worse I went to my (old) parents before I showed symptoms. And even though I complied with protocoll, we only met shortly and they haven't developed symptoms yet (we met a week ago), I would never forgive myself, if they caught it and get seriously ill.

I have the impression that I might be the last in a family of 4 that caught it, but I was the only one that got tested. As I didn't develop any coughing, sore throat or loss of taste I thought I had a normal infection, like you get every other autumn. Only because I met my parents I wanted to be super sure that it is not Corona. I called the local hotline and was 167th in line (87 minutes of waiting time, which was when I gave up). I got through another time, when I only had to wait for 15 minutes. They only told me to call my doctor (imagine hearing that after you waited for 87 minutes...), which I had to call 18 times before getting an appointment for a test. Then I got to do the test the next day and one day later I got the positive result. I could have gone to a testing station but that would have meant traveling through Berlin and I was still under the impression that I didn't have Corona. Anyway, now we have to quarantine for two weeks, although I'm feeling ok now (would have gone to work probably, if it had been a normal infection) and everybody else in the family probably already got it and/or shows no symptoms (anymore). Due to the health authorities being overwhelmed by all the new cases there is probably no chance to get a test in between to get out early either. So now we'll just have to ride this out and hope we're at least through with this shitty disease.

Heh, all that chart tells me is that rural people know their neighbors

jason10mm wrote: Heh, all that chart tells me is that rural people know their neighbors

Been to Vermont have you?

Sagrilarus wrote:

jason10mm wrote: Heh, all that chart tells me is that rural people know their neighbors

Been to Vermont have you?

I think I did once, actually. But almost no one else has. That state was pretty lucky in covid positive cases. But look at the total % by state, it ranges from .3% for vermont (the lowest) to 4.5% for the Dakotas. So not a huge jump across the entire country, but a good order of magnitude or so. You can see it here. isabelcastillo.com/states-coronavirus-percent

I'd like to see how they got that graph. What criteria determined "knowing someone with COVID" and "wearing a mask in public mostly or all the time". If I live on a farm with my family and basically that's it, when would I wear a mask? Versus almost 100% urban living like DC?

It is a cute graph but I suspect it falls under the "lies, damn lies, and then there is statistics" paradigm. Because if you look at who is DYING, a lot of the states flip and a place like DC is actually kinda high. ( isabelcastillo.com/states-coronavirus-deaths ). There you have a similar magnitude difference between the lowest (Alaska at .008%) and the highest (New Jersey at .18%). So would you say New Jersey catastrophically handled their covid cases leading to excess death versus Alaska? Or suggest there is nuance in the numbers not easily reflected on a chart?

Vermont is lucky, South Dakota is not lucky. Huh.

Death Rate -- you'd need to look at the % beneath the poverty line for that answer. Death is as much a function of health and availability of health care. Infection is a function of behavior. Behavior can literally be changed overnight. That change in behavior would make a dramatic difference in about 21 days.

This is a national IQ test.

Sagrilarus wrote:
This is a national IQ test.

I agree, to a point. I have a lot of ignorant friends, but I have just as many folks kicking at the goads at this, because they don't want to admit that they are a paycheck away from poverty.

I think it's a national means test for a lot of people - can you afford to stay home? Can you afford to get treatment? Will they even seek treatment because of how they have been conditioned to avoid the doctor unless they are dieing because that office visit is $200 out of their 2k/mo budget.

I'm 2 years into a new business - Luckily I work in a field where I can do 96% of what I do locked in my office, but if it were otherwise, I don't know what I would do....My wife and I are more afraid of contracting CoVID because like many Americans, I have healthcare that will make sure that we don't have to declare bankruptcy if we get sick, but would probably set us back another 2 years after (at minimum.) And I consider us blessed. A lot of my tenants don't have the option of not going to work, nor could they financially recover if they got sick and wracked up more than $5k in med bills.

Valid point, but the behavior that both that graph and Sag were referencing is the wearing of masks, not questioning whether people should go into work or not. In every other nation on earth, the wearing of masks has shown a positive effect on the spread of the virus, whether people are working or not. Our daughter works in a coffee shop. They wear masks every moment and disinfect things like the door handles on the regular. That's the basic behavior we're talking about here. It's not a question of whether someone should or shouldn't work (assuming their job hasn't been lost to the pandemic in the first place.) It's a question of whether people are willing to alter their behavior in the most innocuous way possible (wearing a mask) to protect OTHER PEOPLE. But the idiots (or the disingenuous, non-epidemiologists like at the link posted above) have turned this into a politico-social issue that manifests moreso in the US than anywhere else for a variety of factors (American individualism, greater participation in religious activity, the dire state of the American educational system, etc.)

You're absolutely right that asking people to make a choice between getting evicted and going to work is no choice at all. You're also right that the insanity of the American medical system, systematically bankrupting people for the profit of a few, is another issue that the pandemic has brought into sharp focus. But that's not what that graph was displaying. All it was displaying was the sharp difference in behavior between regions of the country that are also often sharply divided in terms of many, many other social factors (like education.)

% who know someone with Covid is a pretty terrible dependent variable. Using non-self report medical data would be better — Covid diagnosis, hospitalizations, and death, for instance

It's an excellent measure from a political perspective.