Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Wednesday March 11 2020, @08:09PM   Printer-friendly
from the maybe-it-is-not-such-a-bad-time-to-be-living-alone-in-someone's-basement dept.

[Editor's note: We had been gathering together COVID-19 stories for eventual release as a round-up story. I lack time at the moment to personally gather all those together with this most recent submission. We will run the next round-up in the next few days. But given the significance of this submission, I wished not to delay it from being immediately released to the community. --martyb]

World Health Organization declares the coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic:

The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on Wednesday as the new coronavirus, which was unknown to world health officials just three months ago, has rapidly spread to more than 121,000 people from Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the United States.

“In the past two weeks the number of cases outside China has increased thirteenfold and the number of affected countries has tripled,” WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference at the organization’s headquarters in Geneva. “In the days and weeks ahead, we expect to see the number of cases, the number of deaths and the number of affected countries to climb even higher.”

Tedros said several countries have demonstrated the ability to suppress and control the outbreak, but he scolded other world leaders for failing to act quickly enough or drastically enough to contain the spread.

“We’re deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction,” he said, just before declaring the pandemic. “We have rung the alarm bell loud and clear.”

[Ed. addition follows.]

Also at Ars Technica and cnet.

For those who might not be aware of the distinction, Wikipedia helpfully provides these summaries:

An epidemic (what we have had up to now with COVID-19):

An epidemic (from Greek ἐπί epi "upon or above" and δῆμος demos "people") is the rapid spread of infectious disease to a large number of people in a given population within a short period of time, usually two weeks or less.

[...]An epidemic may be restricted to one location; however, if it spreads to other countries or continents and affects a substantial number of people, it may be termed a pandemic.[1] The declaration of an epidemic usually requires a good understanding of a baseline rate of incidence; epidemics for certain diseases, such as influenza, are defined as reaching some defined increase in incidence above this baseline.[2] A few cases of a very rare disease may be classified as an epidemic, while many cases of a common disease (such as the common cold) would not.

By comparison, a pandemic (which has just now been announced for COVID-19):

A pandemic (from Greek πᾶν pan "all" and δῆμος demos "people") is an epidemic of disease that has spread across a large region; for instance multiple continents, or worldwide. A widespread endemic disease that is stable in terms of how many people are getting sick from it is not a pandemic. Further, flu pandemics generally exclude recurrences of seasonal flu. Throughout history, there have been a number of pandemics, such as smallpox and tuberculosis. One of the most devastating pandemics was the Black Death, which killed an estimated 75–200 million people in the 14th century. The current pandemics are HIV/AIDS and Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).[1][2] Other recent pandemics are the 1918 influenza pandemic (Spanish flu), and the 2009 flu pandemic (H1N1).


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 12 2020, @01:20AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 12 2020, @01:20AM (#969975)

    As for lab classes, there are a couple of options here:

    1) Complete any labs or field work prior to the university closing. Faculty at Nebraska have received this advice.

    2) The lab or field work component of a class could end when the university closes, with students being graded on that component until the time that the university closes. If a class is entirely based on lab or field work, the class would probably be completed at that point, with no further work required. This might not be a bad deal for students because it would be one fewer class to stress them out at the end of the semester. When I teach, I try to give the last few assignments in a single batch a few weeks before the end of the semester, then allow students to turn them in whenever they want through the end of dead week or even finals week. Students who want to get the work out of the way early can do so and have more time to focus on other classes. Students with big projects in other classes can focus on those and worry about smaller assignments in my class later. I let students decide what's best for them at the end of the semester and they've generally appreciated it. It would give students more time to focus on other classes.

    3) Some universities are suggesting they'll reopen after a two week shutdown. I'm skeptical that they will actually reopen this semester, but if they did, lab work could be completed before the end of the semester. I don't like this option because it could cram the same amount of work into a shorter period of time. That's not something students like and I don't blame them.