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The Worldwide C0VlD-19 Coronavirus Pandemic Discussion Thread...

Bearcorp

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ChickenHawk

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I went to Target this morning around 10 a.m. In passing the cashier told me they were out of hand sanitizer. I said, "Wow, when will you get more in?" She said, "No. I mean we're completely out. The truck came today, and there was no hand-sanitizer on it, so we can't restock."

Interesting times...
 

Xeon

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Walter Hay

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There are runs on toilet paper all over the world. :shit:

Walter
 
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Timmy C

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How about -- it's a scared person who will be your customer to buy your masks???? Scared people do a lot of irrational stuff that is against their best interests. Most, who sell to these scared people, do their deal as quickly as possible. Those sellers then tightly grasp their money and run like hell to make their exit before they are found out. Obviously, that's not my idea of a sustainable business model. Is it yours?


Can't believe I'm wasting my energy even writing to you but here I am wasting my time.

Donno and don't care what got you so fired up. It's retail arbitrage of course it's not sustainable, but if you wanna increase the bankroll for your fastlane ventures it's an option available to anyone.

How about -- it's a scared person who will be your customer to buy your masks????
You can moralize me all you want, I didn't even say that was my thoughts I was quoting someone else's words in a conversation I was having.
Next time read what I write properly.
 

Dariok

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I live in Italy near the biggest Coronavirus outbreak in Europe.
These days more than ever I can see how media has the power and the ability to indoctrinate people.
We passed some days with the most absurd and catastrophic news from the journalists and the social media, the objective of everything was always to come first and not tell the truth.

People started to do panic buying to supermarkets and groceries store because scared by any kind of news. WTF even in Wuan people can go shopping every three days!
From the other country's point of view, north Italy seemed like a war zone. I have an aunt in the UK that, after seeing the images of the empty shelves in the supermarket, was worried we were running out of food.
Truth is that the groceries as been perfectly fulfilled the day after! And no media reported that...

Just think about it: Cina reported that the virus was spread around the country at the beginning of January, and probably the government didn't admit the problem before that date. This means that the virus was around the country at least from December.
Coronavirus has an incubation period of 15 days when an infected person can infect others even without any symptoms, and from China there are more than 500 flight departures a day only from Beijing.

This means that there is a high chance that coronavirus is already all around the globe from weeks by now.

I leave a video that explains what I think at the moment about this situation
View: https://youtu.be/KrE1ZvldiFE
 

Walter Hay

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With toilet paper not yet available in Britain in the 16th Century, Mary Queen of Scots used Spagnum Moss. Her upstairs Loo at Jedburgh Castle had a hole in the floor (known as the Long Drop) and a recess in the wall where for her convenience her servants daily placed a fresh supply of moss. (Nobody wants to use dried out moss.)

So all you entrepreneurs - there's an opportunity for you. Get out into the countryside and search for moss. That's my idea for free, the rest is up to you.

Walter
 
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LightningHelix

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Make friends with a farmer.

I fully intend on going back to my parents place on the farm if this get crazy. Think about it you pretty much have everything you need. We have our own well for water. A place to raise animals and crops if needed. We're far away from society and human contact.

Only thing left is to stock up on guns and ammo for potential looters.

If this shit goes full zombie apocalypse, I know what I'm doing.
 
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WJK

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Can't believe I'm wasting my energy even writing to you but here I am wasting my time.

Donno and don't care what got you so fired up. It's retail arbitrage of course it's not sustainable, but if you wanna increase the bankroll for your fastlane ventures it's an option available to anyone.


You can moralize me all you want, I didn't even say that was my thoughts I was quoting someone else's words in a conversation I was having.
Next time read what I write properly.
I reread your post. I understood you and your high price for the masks perfectly. From your reply, there's nothing anyone can say or do to change your mindset. Too bad, so sad...
 

WJK

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Make friends with a farmer.

I fully intend on going back to my parents place on the farm if this get crazy. Think about it you pretty much have everything you need. We have our own well for water. A place to raise animals and crops if needed. We're far away from society and human contact.

Only thing left is to stock up on guns and ammo for potential looters.

If this shit goes full zombie apocalypse, I know what I'm doing.
Interesting. We too are in a position to go the long haul. We don't think this situation is going to even close to that -- but we live our lives with that possibility out there.
 

Rivoli

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Screencap this:

This virus is a nothing burger and will be gone in a few months. Once summer comes it will start to disappear.
 
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Bekit

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The 9-5 worker by comparison KNOWS they WILL get sick if it hits. It's unavailable. They have to go into work to get paid and keep their jobs. They can't just choose not to come into the office for a few months while they wait and see how the infection spreads. Every day they have to ask the question "is today the day I get sick?". This means that prepping is a very negative and stressful event because they aren't prepping to avoid the disease - they are prepping for when they get sick.
Totally agree.

I used to work in a place where they had an open office layout with 500 people working on the same floor. Every illness would sweep through the whole building.

Every winter, everyone would keep count of the "rounds" that we had been through.

"What are we at, plague 3.0 now?"

"No, we're up to 4.0."

It felt frustratingly inevitable. For me, it was especially frustrating, because while my work could be done just as well from home or the office, I HAD to come in to the office.

I can't imagine how much worse it would be in this context to walk into work every day with that dread of "is today the day I get sick"?

Now, I have the option to choose the day I begin any precautions such as self-isolation.

Screencap this:

This virus is a nothing burger and will be gone in a few months. Once summer comes it will start to disappear.

If it's a nothing burger, do you also think the following facts will have no effect on your life?
  • Various auto makers have shut down production due to inability to get parts (since the parts come from China). This could lead to higher auto prices worldwide.
  • Many electronics manufacturers, including Apple, have had to shut down production. This could lead to scarcity of devices and higher prices worldwide.
  • Chinese livestock farms have been unable to get shipments of feed in or of meat out, forcing some of them to make the decision to slaughter and bury their stock. This could lead to meat shortages and higher meat prices worldwide.
  • A lot of people are out of work:
    • Quarantined people
    • Airline employees
    • Factory workers
    • School teachers and staff
    • Anyone whose employer already went bankrupt
There is an irrecoverable loss of productivity between Feb 10 (when Chinese New Year ended) and the present. You can't just "press pause" on a nation's productivity and then pick up again as if nothing happened.

We now live in a world where people (and employers) are a little bit poorer, and everyday products are a little bit more expensive.

Let's imagine that this nothing burger disappeared tomorrow. Ask yourself if all the people and companies already implicated in this situation could afford to make only 11/12th's of what they expected to make this year, or if there will be a ripple effect of lower purchasing power and more bankruptcies and all the effects that has on an economy.

There will be repercussions. And we will feel them.

Maybe it's just going to be trivial stuff, like "I can't buy my favorite Old Navy flip-flops because they were made in China and I have to wait a couple of months before they're available."

Or maybe it's going to be life-shattering stuff, like someone I love can't get a simple penicillin prescription filled, so they die of a treatable illness.

Or maybe it's going to be world-altering stuff, like people rioting in the streets because they don't have food.

Right now, it's all speculation. I'll leave the actual forecasting to the experts.

But no matter what level of impact we feel, what do you think will be the response of most sidewalkers who have lived cushy lives up to this point? How much resilience and creativity will they be able to muster up in the face of this situation? They'll be practically howling for someone to rescue them.
 

NovaAria

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The WHO are in is a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario.

If they don't tell people to be cautious and ask governments to quarantine towns and shut down schools and universities, they might end up with a wide-spread pandemic that hits hundreds of millions all over the globe.
If they do, and the virus barely manages to infect anyone, people will look at the panic and the economic losses and compare them to the handful of cases and say "See? It was a nothingburger!"

I personally would rather take the economic hit than see hospitals dealing with hundreds of people in need of an intensive care. My country's hospitals can barely deal with the regular flow of people as is. If the virus causes complications for 5% of the infected, and it manages to infect 1 million because people don't take it seriously, that's still an influx of 50,000 patients to hospitals that can barely take care of the people they already have.

Edit: And I forgot to add.
Summer for you is winter on the other side of the globe. The biggest fear is that this becomes a yearly event. The yearly COVID vaccination might soon become mandatory or highly advised.
There is a reason why Biotech stocks started soaring the moment news of the virus hit.
 

Jon L

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I live in the Seattle area. We're in almost-full-panic mode here. At Walmart grocery store this morning, the bread aisle was almost completely bare, along with rice & beans, milk, hand sanitizer, etc. Other aisles were fine.

Traffic was almost non-existent as Microsoft (50,000 people locally), Amazon and others had their employees work from home.

This reminds me of the Year 2000 bug ... it ended up being no big deal because people spent billions of dollars fixing the problem. Had that investment not been made, life as we know it would have ground to a halt for a while.

I'm betting that a similar thing will happen with this virus. We'll curtail its spread with quarantines, and by summer, when warmer temperatures generally make viruses harder to transmit, the thing will go away for a while. That will give us some time to create, test and mass produce a vaccine.

Hopefully.

If not, we're all dead. Or something.
 
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Here

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I never heard of a nothing burger before. Thanks forum.

80 masks enough or should I hunt for more?
 

c_morris

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Here

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I just Googled "nothing burger." Top video: Trump supporters believe coronavirus could be a 'nothing burger'
 

rollerskates

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I don't worry about getting and dying from it but I worry about the effect. i.e. No toilet paper, and no hand sanitizer.

How come all of a sudden everyone is worried about germs? If everyone was this vigilant all the time, there would be a lot less illness.
 
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Xeon

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88175300_10213682576537113_7568768502052421632_n.jpg
 

loop101

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As I partially mentioned in James Fends thread, what I expect to happen is this:
  • There will be rolling outbreaks across America
  • Severe outbreaks will cause cities to self-quarantine
  • There has never been a vaccine for a corona-virus, one will be created
  • The US government will give extended unemployment benefits until this is over
  • Post-virus, tariffs will be used to force manufacturing of certain things to the US (medicines)
  • Post-virus, remote work will become normalized
  • Healthcare will be the next bubble
 
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sparechange

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This is a goldmine for people selling health supplements, (I've been buying vitamin C packs)
 

loop101

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ChickenHawk

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I still don't understand this stupidity with the masks.
What I don't get is why the hospitals, the CDC, and/or the appropriate federal/state agencies didn't stockpile masks when they were cheap and plentiful. At a minimum, they should've had a three-to-six month supply already on-hand for just such an emergency. It's not like they expire.

But planning, it seems, is a lost art.
 

Madame Peccato

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3296 sick people and 148 deaths so far here in Italy.

Schools are closed until the 15th, and this closure might be extended until the 4th of April. The same goes for sports events. Bars, cinemas, museums, restaurants, etc. are still open, but who knows for how long.

The authorities keep pointing out how only people who are 65+ have died so far and thus advise older people to avoid going outside.

Anyway, the virus has been circulating here in Italy since December, and it went undetected until after people realized the COVID exists, so I wonder if it's that dangerous. Maybe it can only become harmful if it mutates, which is the only thing I'd be worried about at the moment.

I've been having a slightly worse flu this year, was I infected? Maybe? Maybe not. I have recovered now, so I can't just call my hospital and tell them "hey I had flu that felt a little different from usual a month ago", and like me, the thousands of other people who have had the same illness don't count towards the data point.

That said, I'll still be careful, as I don't want to infect people and kill them (I live in a town with a lot of old folks). Plus, I'm not sure I want to risk being the first person to find out that the virus can be harmful to younger people too.

Anyway, I don't know what your media is saying, but the situation feels pretty tame here, and I live in Lombardy (though I am not very close to the center of the infection).

Guess this is the time I finally stop biting my nails :humph:
 

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