Coronavirus

@ubarose- yeah, we are getting everything refunded...I was worried that some of the reservations we made would be lost but all the museums/attractions are being decent about it. Except the Vatican, haven’t heard from them yet!

I heard that at GAMA yesterday the keynote speaker had everyone blow up a balloon and then let it go to represent how all the things they learned at GAMA could be lost. So there were balloons filled with potential contagions flying all around the room. I just shook my head and said “gamers...”

Yeah, cons should be canceled full stop. There is no justifiable reason for a con right now. You would think people would have more sense than that. What’s bothering me a lot is this sense ofQmerican exceptionalism that is going around...that it’s just a little thing, that we can still carry on...that and the notion that somehow the stock market is a barometer of well-being. Fuck the stock market.

ChristopherMD wrote: I wonder when the Pandemic expansion for this will be announced.

What do you think "Red" is?

ChristopherMD wrote: I wonder when the Pandemic expansion for this will be announced.

www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/02/16/...tm_source=reddit.com

On a lighter side …

We have one six presumptive cases of the virus in Jefferson Parish. I'm surprised, given that the Port of New Orleans has heavy international traffic, that we haven't gotten any cases sooner.

We're waiting for our admin to shut the university down after the final classes before spring break like Harvard did. Or at least I hope they will, I think it's most prudent. We're being told we have to somehow put all classes online and finish the semester.

I can't complain too much. I'm salaried and I'll keep working. If you work a wage you can't just go home and not get paid.

I work from home anyways so its just business as usual.

Maryland government is being pro-active as hell and we'll have a dry-run of 100% telecommute tomorrow night. We've moved to level two of a three-level scale, so full prep for remote work.

This is with seven Confirmed cases in the state, but the office I was in this morning had a customer bail halfway through their transaction because they got a call from the Maryland Department of Health -- "you've been exposed, self-quarantine right away." He hung up and left! I think the Department of Health is tracking more that haven't been tested. My epidemiologist coworkers aren't returning messages, likely working.

Towson University has suspended all classes, UMBC is shutting down Thursday. I think we're going to see a lot of precautionary actions in the next 72 hours. Not doomsday, just good business, good leadership. Conventions look plain absurd at the moment. But by May this could all be behind us. Don't know.

Don't go out to places with a lot of people. Time to get your free two week trial of a lot of streaming channels and hang out at home!

Definitely interesting experiencing this while living in Asia. The Philippines has had a number of cases, including at least one or two in the part of Manila where we live. Frankly I'm impressed it's not much worse, because there are a whole lot of people living in this city, and a lot of them are essentially off the grid, just living in slums without any good way to account for them. We are somewhat unique among a lot of Asian countries too, because the government here is both highly decentralized and not very authoritarian in practice.

That said, we have seen more masks than usual in use, and upon entering most public spaces in Manila they take your temperature, give you an alcohol spray on your hands, or both. I haven't yet seen a big run on any particular supplies, but it is acknowledged that our shopping habits are pretty different from a lot of Filipinos in several ways. Our kids did miss a day of school, but they are back at it now. (So far this school year, they have missed days for typhoons, volcanic ashfall, and now coronavirus.)

Should we be being more careful? Perhaps, though we are now approaching the time of year when it is just nightmarishly hot, so being confined to the house would be a fresh kind of hell. We are supposed to go up north to a mountainous region in a few days, and so far we are still following through with that.

This whole situation has definitely put a pinch on the rest of the region. Some are a little worried about China because as outsiders we aren't totally sure what's happening there. Other friends I have living in places like Thailand or Japan have much more overt public anxiety. I'm not sure if there's more or less actual danger there though. I did travel to Australia two weeks ago, and I was told I couldn't go if I had been to China in the last fourteen days. (No problem there.) We've had a number of events in our organization that have been cancelled over travel concerns, including one my wife and I were supposed to attend later this month in Thailand.

Anyway, we are all safe and life is mostly normal right now for us. But everyone here is definitely monitoring the situation. I'm supposed to be back in the US for the summer starting in a couple of months, and I'm starting to wonder how this will affect that. Already we've had some people with our organization displaced by the whole thing, and a lot is very ambiguous right now.

Sag! Where are you in Maryland?

My school's President just fired off the e-mail two hours ago; we're moving into online instruction starting Monday. Apparently, we're part of a larger Maryland cohort in this venture.

Adepticon is still scheduled for the end of March. IDK what to think.

Davidsonville. Anne Arundel County.

UC Santa Cruz is now in all-online mode. All of IT has been asked to work from home. I'm surprised it took this long, considering our proximity to Santa Clara and 2 cases in Santa Cruz county itself.

I live in Greensboro, NC. This weekend and next weekend the ACC tournament is happening here. I'm more than a little worried about it.