How One Singapore Sales Conference Spread Coronavirus Around the World (wsj.com) 139
Last month, 109 people gathered in a Singapore hotel for an international sales conference held by a U.K.-based company that makes products to analyze gas. When the attendees flew home, some unwittingly took the coronavirus with them [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled]. From a report: The virus had a 10-day head start on health authorities who, after belatedly learning a 41-year-old Malaysian participant was infected, began a desperate effort to track the infection through countries including South Korea, England and France. Health investigators have found at least 20 people in six Asian and European countries who were sickened, some who attended the conference and others who came in contact with participants. A globalized economy, one that's far more integrated than in the early 2000s when the SARS virus broke out, is complicating the task of responding to epidemics.
After this one conference alone, 94 participants left Singapore, authorities determined. Some joined Lunar New Year dinners. Others went on vacation, one to an Alpine ski town. They had eaten, taken car rides and shared a roof with others who then boarded more planes to places the virus hadn't yet reached. Health officials used international communications channels to share names of the potentially infected and relied on self-reporting by sickened conference-goers, creating "activity maps" that detailed their movement. They checked flight manifests and called passengers. French authorities closed down schools in sparsely populated towns. U.K. public-health officials isolated health-care workers who got the illness and searched for patients with whom they came in contact.
After this one conference alone, 94 participants left Singapore, authorities determined. Some joined Lunar New Year dinners. Others went on vacation, one to an Alpine ski town. They had eaten, taken car rides and shared a roof with others who then boarded more planes to places the virus hadn't yet reached. Health officials used international communications channels to share names of the potentially infected and relied on self-reporting by sickened conference-goers, creating "activity maps" that detailed their movement. They checked flight manifests and called passengers. French authorities closed down schools in sparsely populated towns. U.K. public-health officials isolated health-care workers who got the illness and searched for patients with whom they came in contact.
Sounds like a Sci-Fi apocalypse movie (Score:1)
But isn't this pretty much how everything spreads?
Clickbait.
Re:Sounds like a Sci-Fi apocalypse movie (Score:4, Funny)
But isn't this pretty much how everything spreads?
Clickbait.
No, the Sci-Fi apocalypse movies usually end with hoards of zombies roaming the streets. The only thing in the world at present which has achieved that coveted goal are smartphone manufacturers.
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Re: Sounds like a Sci-Fi apocalypse movie (Score:1)
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Being a sales conference.
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That depends on how many COVID-19 carriers are there.
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Re: Sounds like a Sci-Fi apocalypse movie (Score:5, Funny)
We will need to pass new laws, and forge new international agreements, to require all international conferences to actually be webinars.
That will just be one small step towards our inevitable future. Disease-spreading is caused whenever humans interact with one another directly in meatspace. So, eventually, we will all live in iso-pods and have robots grow, harvest, and deliver our food to us. All human interaction will be done via VR. Except mating, of course. We will physically mate with robotic avatars of our partners. The offspring will be grown in a lab somewhere.
Personally, I can't wait.
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Oh yeah? Well, fuck your robotic avatars!
I can't wait! 3D anime waifus, here we come!
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Reckless endangerment.
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Sue them for the crime of possibly having deep pockets. They may or may not be guilty, and suing them is a surest way to find out.
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If you really want that result, just use social media targetted advertising to single out old people into taking walks, and tell them it is heart healthy to do so with their arms stretched out in front of them. Not that hard, really.
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If you really want that result, just use social media targetted advertising to single out old people into taking walks, and tell them it is heart healthy to do so with their arms stretched out in front of them. Not that hard, really.
Hmmm, online connected social media enabled street advertising signs with built in face recognition and full audio capability yelling at old people about haemorrhoid cream wherever they go, now there's an interesting scenario. However, the fun only really begins when one of those things brings up the jewellery some guy bought that he gave to somebody other than his wife.
Re: Sounds like a Sci-Fi apocalypse movie (Score:2)
Fortunately North America isn't a common international stopover destination, owing to its geography.
Re: Sounds like a Sci-Fi apocalypse movie (Score:1)
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Geography and the fact that passing through the US on a trip between two other countries is a royal pain in the arse compared to passing though other countries.
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That might be true to sale conference.
The most recent out break in Korea involves churchgoers.
Over 100+ identified cases could be traced back from a single person
who carry the virus.
Re: Sounds like a Sci-Fi apocalypse movie (Score:2)
Well, sometimes fiction gets things some details right. The danger is that this leads some people to trust fiction over science. Fiction has one killer advantage over sci, belief-wise: it is always constructed to sound credible.
Damn Sales Departments (Score:4, Insightful)
Products to analyze gas? (Score:2)
I already got one it's called a nose.
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A nose? Good luck detecting the faulty valve on that water heater's carbon monoxide vent before it kills you, then...
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Good, maybe you can use it do identify the virus-laden aerosol plumes:
However, study of the Amoy Gardens outbreak in Hong Kong implicated airborne transmission of SARS-CoV particles possibly spread by virus-laden aerosol plumes generated by flushing the toilets at the high rise apartment complex.
https://ncov.pub/coronaviruses... [ncov.pub]
Quarantine failed (Score:2)
Re:Quarantine failed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Some drugs might cure better than the other. But when it hits, it is spreading fast.
The quarantine area in China right now is about the size of California.
Re:Quarantine failed (Score:4, Informative)
770m people in China are under quarantine right now. That's pretty staggering, Austria quarantined 50k people after 150 tested positive and shut down rail traffic with Italy. Spreading fast would be an understatement, and to be honest considering you can have the infection for upwards of 20 days before showing any signs of symptoms it pretty much means that not quarantining China back in early January means that a massive swath of the world population is going to get it.
It's going to be interesting here in Canada, because our idiot federal government up until yesterday was bobbing it's head and telling everyone that the chances of getting it were pretty much zero. While admonishing provincial health authorities and threatening them if they implemented policies to prevent the spread. This along with the "it's racist to want a quarantine! So let's throw gigantic parties in areas where large populations of Chinese-Canadians live!" Never mind that it was the ex-pat Chinese and HK'ers who wanted mandatory quarintines for anyone coming back from China - also still racist according to all our media. That was before the half dozen suspected cases and two new confirmed cases had spent time in an airplane flying from western canada(BC) to eastern canada(quebec).
Number for austria are 2 not 150 (Score:2)
That is a bit formulated in a way to make people misunderstand the sentence IMO. Italy had a lot of cases in north/milan. Austria has only 2. Source : https://www.zeit.de/wissen/ges... [www.zeit.de] basically stating what I jsut said and further sources : "Bisher durchgeführte Testungen in Ã-sterreich (tÃgliche Aktualisierung des Ist-Standes, von Mo-FR um 10:00 Uhr): 218 BestÃtigte ErkrankungsfÃlle: 2" https://www.sozialministerium.. [sozialministerium.at]
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If that's true, then one should reconsider the pikes direction.
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At least you could have tried to be coherent. But that writing style does paint you as my favorite "fake canadian" claimer, that likes to follow me around. How far you've fallen in your garbage.
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Got any actual links to back that up, or is that just Facebook Forwards from Grandma as a source again?
Sure, why don't you try globe and mail, CTV, or the national post. When you do, you can use myspace to forward it to all your little friends.
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mRNA-1273 is a vaccine, not a drug, and approvals would take up to a year.
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mRNA-1273 is a vaccine, not a drug, and approvals would take up to a year.
Then, IF it’s successful (a big if), you would be looking at another year to ramp up production to get the billion doses we would need. It’s years out best case.
Re:Quarantine failed (Score:4, Informative)
Every drug treatment like this does some good and some bad. You can't really know what the balance of good and bad would be in widespread usage until you've done long and painstaking testing.
Deploying something like that *this year* would be an act of desperation.
Even if we were that desperate, I don't think we're well-enough organized to get this produced and distributed this year. I had a front row seat for the whole bioterrorism scare post 9/11. It was a lobbyist's bonanza. What people who were working in relevant agencies needed was small, steady infusion of new cash. What they got were money bombs packaged so that the only thing they could do with them was pass them off to a politically connected vendor.
The rate at which science is responding to this thing is breathtaking. Government bureaucrats and scientists can be counted on too to do their jobs. They're a common whipping boy for complaints about the government, but the real source of those problems is politicians. Dysfunction isn't so much a problem for American politicians as it's a business model.
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I think it's clear CDC / WHO failed - initially recommending it was no big deal for weeks.
It seemed like a big deal , they kept saying it wasn't. Countries trying to ban flights were ridiculed. Seems like the biggest failing here.
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I think it is more the pols that failed by leaning on the CDC / WHO to whistle Dixie and stare meaningfully into the distance during press conferences hoping that stare passes for thoughtful contemplation of a question while they are really just trying to think of an answer that won't cause the pols to fire them.
We won't have a vaccine this year. (Score:4, Informative)
I think it is clear by now that quarantine failed to contain coronavirus. Do we know if we have a vaccine yet?
We won't have a vaccine this year, or probably until late next year (after another "corona virus 'uncommon cold' season") at the earliest. We have some candidates but testing and approval - even under accelerated procedures.
We also don't have a drug for what kills those who have the severe form: Cytokine storm. We have one new drug candidate,
but again don't expect that to be ready this year, even via "right to try". There is also a treatment that helps - but it consists of hooking the patient up to a filter that removes the cytokines from the blood. That's not something you can use at scale, even in the US, when, say, more than half the population has the bug and 16% of them are in intensive care.
We are doomed, doomed (Score:2)
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And it's a lot of scare mongering, because there's already a virus that has killed more Americans (just Americans) than COVID-19 has. And this virus already has vaccines available (of which this year is extremely effective).
It's already infected around 10% of the US population, and killed about 0.1%. And these are underestimates since most people just "take the day off". It's also highly infectious.
It's called "Influenza".
The only good thing is that people with flu-like symptoms are getting themselves scre
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Just today the CDC is admitting that this isn’t going away, that it is “a new kind of flu” that could be here to stay permanently. The mortality is something on the or
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As soon as the amount of infected is on par with the influenza you will realize it is not fear mongering and that you are an idiot.
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Find out soon just how accurate the numbers are, since S.Korea's count just cross 1k infected. Which means Iran is probably somewhere around 5k-20k already. I seem to remember that the entire 'pandemic response chain of command' were pencil pushers without a medical degree among them.
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When 1:5 infections result in hospitalization, basing the CFR on "otherwise healthy" is a poor decision to make your point. Remember, the flu is around 1:25 or so.
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going by the ye olde standard CFR(you know the stuff they taught in high school biology)
When going by the CFR you indicate is standard and simple, the rate of hospitalization is irrelevant. Do you need someone to explain it to you so you understand?
Hospitalizations were "High" in china because that sounded better than "concentration camp for sickies", but was mainly a quarantine and isolation ward, and not a full hospital experience. They are hospitalized at a higher rate outside China for the same reason.
"otherwise healthy" is the best metric, because the total fatality rate depends more
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Do you need me to explain to you why the rate of hospitalization is the trend you want to watch to see how many people are dropping dead?
If you were watching what was leaking out of China, the only people they were putting into those hospitals were people who were falling down faint, or unable to breath. The rest were being locked in their apt. buildings...until it became obvious due to the cross-contaminated nature of them, that the virus was being transmitted through the building ventilation system.
The f
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The flu, chickenpox, mumps, measles, polio, and so on aren't calculated based on "otherwise healthy" for their death rate either.
Yes, they are. They are measured with multiple measures. The "overall" isn't "otherwise healthy", but they break it down for various groups for everything. I can't tell if you really are that stupid, or are simply lying to push your agenda.
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Jokes on you moron. Chinese buildings don't have ventilation systems fuckwit. They have self contained AC.
Jokes on you moron. Before information was dead out of Hubei they quarantined an entire 25 story apt building in Wuhan where the transmission vector was through the bathroom venting system. Similar case in Hong Kong, and in Japan too.
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So you abuse people for not using your preferred method of counting, while you change measure every post.
That's not my preferred method of counting it's theirs, if you're having problems reading and understanding I've been consistent on the measure rate. That's not my problem.
Yes, they are. They are measured with multiple measures. The "overall" isn't "otherwise healthy", but they break it down for various groups for everything. I can't tell if you really are that stupid, or are simply lying to push your agenda.
I can't tell if you're stupid, or simply don't know what you're talking about, because the only metric that matters is the number hospitalized from an infection requiring stay. People who are "otherwise healthy" don't drop dead from a secondary infection because of the initial infection. Because "otherwise healthy" doesn't fall into the
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Don't worry slowpoke. You can even find it being reported in the various chicom papers, maybe you can try a non-google search engine. FYI +770m in China are under lockdown right now, maybe you should try to read about some of the panic going on there.
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I wouldn't trust any numbers generated in China or Iran. And I am not all that keen on S. Korean honesty either.
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I don't trust China or Iran's numbers either, but it does give you something to work with. Though if one keeps a measure on "how" both countries are restricting the flow of information, it tells you just how bad or good it is. China is likely far worse. S.Korea on the other hand has a more pressing need not to save face, considering they just finished pissing off Japan and Singapore.
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Well, if you only count direct deaths. If enough people got infected that 2% of the population died, there would be indirect effects, especially if people in the prime of life were getting struck down.
For all but a handful of modern humans, we rely upon the stability of our society for survival. Unless you can grow your own food and build your own shelter, without aid or supplies from the outside, your survival depends on the system. If the the truck drivers who bring food to your town are afraid to come,
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Death rate amoung the known cases is ~10%, not 2%.
80990 sick at the moment.
2760 dead, 30000 recovered.
2760 / (30000 + 2760) = 8.4% at the moment (yesterday it was over 10%).
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This is bad math and the fact that the resulting number changes so rapidly is evidence of that. If you had done this "calculation" early on in the epidemic you would have arrived at an infinite% death rate because nobody had had time to recover from it yet but a few people had died. This will only be a valid formula once everybody in the world is either recovered or dead.
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i count everyone for whom the sickness is over.
And calculate what percentage died.
I doubt there is another reasonable way.
The only caveat is: for many people there are only very mild symptoms, they probably don't visit a doctor and don't get diagnosed. Those would be counted as recovered when diagnosed and hence make the death rate lower.
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Presumably, if you went to maths classes or med school, you failed.
You are looking at a moving target which is close to an exponential rise.
The people who died are a percentage of the people who were infected approx 20 days ago - t1. (Its easy to know they are dead if you are a medic).
The people who survived are a percentage of the people who were infected 32 days ago t0. (Because they have to by symptom-free for a good while before you know they recovered).
numb
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The people who died are a percentage of the people who were infected approx 20 days ago - t1. (Its easy to know they are dead if you are a medic).
That is basically what I said, so no fail, dumbass.
And in med school such stuff is not taught.
I'm a computer scientist, I do not need to be perfect, just tell me the formula and I put into your tool ... in case you are really not able to do that.
a very high percentage of the sick are not sick enough to visit a doctor That is exactly what I said again ...
especiall
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Is that you, Boober Fraggle?
Wasteful, Unnecessary, and now Dangerous (Score:3, Insightful)
Business travel is an outdated luxury. Unless you need to get your hands on some equipment and turn wrenches, there is no modern reason to do this other than social or travel pleasure.
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Hold on a minute... If middle-managers stop going to remote conferences and demos, they'll be in the office 5 days a week, all year round. It'll soon be clear to everyone that they don't add anything of value to the organization, and they'll all be summarily fired. Without marketable skills, these people will all end up on their countries' long-term welfare programs.
This will create a huge tax burden on the lower and middle classes around the globe (given the rich pay relatively little in taxes). Those indi
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Ouch, maybe not. Free travel and drinks with little umbrellas for all of them!
This is karma for that Escort wagon I considered buying but passed on, right?
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This is karma for that Escort wagon I considered buying but passed on, right?
Yeah. I really could've used that $1.75.
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Not sure this deserves the Funny mod, but I just reread The Caves of Steel a few days ago. I'm sure I had read it previously, but my records only go back to when I was 16...
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I want to hear the breathing of the guy telling me he is not going to screw me on this deal to know if he lying or not. Ultimately sales comes down to reading body language . Difficult to do over webex.
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Um, in the context of "sales", isn't everyone always lying?
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No. Once you get everyone drunk enough the truth comes out. In Vino Veritas.
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Interesting. I just reread your book last week...
However the "modern reason" is bandwidth. Minor reason is paying for the bits for alternatives such as video conferencing on smartphones. (Minor solution approach would be to eliminate data caps during this crisis, but I haven't heard any of our "leaders" suggesting anything along such lines.)
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Get ready (Score:2, Troll)
When it hits. The first thing to do is to go out the buy the face mask.
It will be the first thing sold out in the coming month. Every drug store in the
neighborhood put out the sign, SOLD OUT.
Next, stock about 1 litre of rubbing alcohol for each person in the house.
Rubbing alcohol is the next item sold out.
Next buy the 30ml spray bottle. These tiny bottle was everywhere, then when
the day came, it was found nowhere in sight. SOLD OUT again.
Anything touched by the patient will have some virus. The hand rail
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>clean the keyboard if it might be used by others
No one touches my keyboard.
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It is airborne - clean the air before you breathe it. Except it can also enter your body via the eyes - so keep them shut too!
Fortunately, I have someone to rub alcohol on me - by all accounts, some of you might not be so lucky!
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When it hits. The first thing to do is to go out the buy the face mask. It will be the first thing sold out in the coming month. Every drug store in the neighborhood put out the sign, SOLD OUT.
The virus travels in droplets from breath, coughing, or sneezing, but your mouth and nose aren’t the only vectors. Your eyes are able to pick up these droplets and infect you making a mask of little use at best. In fact, the mask can get covered with virus and anything but careful decontamination or disposal could make it not effective at all. Washing your hands and not touching your eyes, nose, or mouth will be more effective.
Re:Get ready (Score:4, Insightful)
Buying a facemask would be an act of altruism. If *you* are infected, it reduces the chance you'll infect other people. It might help you a little -- if you take contamination precautions when you remove it, but you can still get it through your eyes, or hand-to-mouth/nose after you remove the mask.
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will singapore cut back on the open ward hospitals (Score:2)
will singapore cut back on the open ward hospitals down to more private room?
Multiply by 412. (Score:2)
Last month, 109 people gathered in a Singapore hotel for an international sales conference ... When the attendees flew home, some unwittingly took the coronavirus with them
Multiply that by 412 and you have the expected attendance (45,000) of the RSA conference, now in its second of five days at Moscone Center in San Francisco.
Some companies (such as AT&T) pulled out, so it might be a little lighter. But we're still talking a giant opportunity for disease spread worldwide - including leaving a lot of n
weaponized (Score:2)
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It's why countries try to weaponize bugs. "Create" a bug, with a LONG delay in symptoms, so that once released, it takes WEEKS before it really shows it's deadly potential. By that time, with air travel being what it is, it can be all over the world.
And back to your own country. Whoops...
Just keep a watchful eye out for any country vaccinating their entire population against a nonexistent disease for no reason. Grab a dose. Copy it and give it to yours too. (test it first obviously...)
What this place needs (Score:2)
* The Crow
Or a plague! Thin the herd a bit. When this hits Africa there are going to be mass graves. Lots of people with weakened immune systems (HIV and malnutrition) and a crappy almost non existent medical system, coupled with governments who can't or won't make a decision in less than six weeks aggravated by corruption and maladministration.
It's going to be
Ban Singapore sales conferences!!! (Score:2)
Just stop the Singapore sales conferences then - and as long as no other people ever move around or gather in groups, diseases will be stopped in their tracks!
stock up on canned beans and soup NOW (Score:1, Insightful)
Forget your catastrophic systemic defects with your for-profit medical system.
What's really going to spread this like wildfire is the army of service sector peons with no medical benefits, and no paid leave, living paycheck-to-paycheck who can't afford a three-week unpaid quarantine just because they have the sniffles. Capitalism is the worst disinfectant.
When this thing hits the US, stay away from restaurants. And Ubers, and Amazon warehouses, and schools and churches and sportsball
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I don't think the intersection between the tech guys and the prepper community is bigger than average, probably quite the opposite. Most of us are urban dwellers with high tech dependency, having a stock of dry goods for a pinch is probably what the more rural parts of the country call basic preparedness as for them all it takes is one mud slide or blizzard to block them off from civilization anyway. With a good throwing arm I could hit two grocery stores from my balcony, so I don't. Never mind speaking of
Re:stock up on canned beans and soup NOW (Score:4, Funny)
Not sure what's going to happen, but I'm stocking up on DVD-Rs, glossy photo paper and 10K through-hole resistors.
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Damn, I bought Froot Loops.
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Having supplies in your home to live for X days on isn't a bad idea in almost any circumstance. May as well use this as an excuse.
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Also, the 2.5% kill rate is the average, and it's probably more like 0.1% for healthy adults and 20% for elderly/infants/people with immune deficiencies (I'm making up numbers, it
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THat's why China was making a "flu-only" hospital, so that the patients wouldn't kill others. Not that they really needed special care beyond fluids and a coroner. Hopefully not the coroner.
Infants and children mostly unaffected (Score:3)
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It will hit the MidEast especially hard given all their internal problems. Too bad that butcher Assad probably won't do humanity a favor and catch it soon while on his way to his grave.
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If you paid attention you could have learned other things besides that. This is not the first virus seen on the planet, but every virus is different.
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Meanwhile communist America is lying about pretty much everything.
Luckily in America, communism only has it's adherents among the left.