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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

 
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  • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday March 11 2020, @09:01PM (27 children)

    by DeathMonkey (1380) on Wednesday March 11 2020, @09:01PM (#969825) Journal

    0.006 lol!

    about a million dead folks...

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Wednesday March 11 2020, @09:05PM (26 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 11 2020, @09:05PM (#969827) Journal

    It's more than a million dead folks.

    It's the fear and panic that comes with it as it happens. The businesses that don't survive. (corporations are people too!) People who lose their jobs. People who lose their homes.

    There is much more suffering than just the cold numbers of the loss of life.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday March 11 2020, @09:09PM (25 children)

      by DeathMonkey (1380) on Wednesday March 11 2020, @09:09PM (#969831) Journal

      A raise I was supposed to get in April has been postponed until further notice.

      At my wife's work, a charter contract that was going to earn them $100k just got cancelled.

      This is definitely going to kick us square in the economy. Which was only hanging on because of massive deficit spending anyway...

      • (Score: 5, Touché) by DannyB on Wednesday March 11 2020, @09:21PM (14 children)

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 11 2020, @09:21PM (#969839) Journal

        No matter how badly things get for most people, we must not tax the wealthiest 3 men in the country who own more than the bottom 50 % put together.

        --
        People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
        • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @09:57PM (7 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @09:57PM (#969867)

          Though your sentiment is praise worthy, your it is misdirected. We need corporate regulation more than anything else. Specifically, corporations who do business internationally. These are the entities that are stealing the wealth of real prople and causing societal unrest. If these corporations have so much extra profit that buying legislation can be rolled into the cost of doing business then they are pretty obviously not paying back into.the community, and are in fact provably detrimental to the average person. The super wealthy are just along for the ride and act as convenient lightning rods for degenerative rhetoric. Bust the trusts!

          • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @10:10PM (6 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @10:10PM (#969872)

            Unfortunately, the only way to really combat this at the top level is some kind of global governance, and I don think anybody that loves diversity or growth would like that very much. Money has no real borders, but people do.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @10:14PM (5 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @10:14PM (#969875)

              Bullshit. Countries can use diplomacy to structure economics without destroying cultures.

              • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @10:16PM (4 children)

                by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @10:16PM (#969879)

                Not while the same people that are making the money are signing the bills

                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @10:18PM (3 children)

                  by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @10:18PM (#969882)

                  So what, you want human nature to suddenly not apply? People are going to do what benefits themselves, see all of human history.

                  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @10:24PM (2 children)

                    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @10:24PM (#969887)

                    I think that there are plenty of examples of selflessness scattered throughout history. But to your point, hauling out a trope doesn't absolve people who make decisions from responsibility, even if the types of decisions they made to get to where they are are the ones that are detrimental to society as a whole. There must be better out there for us to implement, or else what's the point? Might as well just nuke it from orbit if that's the case.

                    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @10:30PM (1 child)

                      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @10:30PM (#969893)

                      Yeah, checks and balances. Welcome to the eighteenth century

                      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @10:32PM

                        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @10:32PM (#969895)

                        Welcome to the circle jerk we call civilization schmucklehead

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @10:17PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @10:17PM (#969880)

          No matter how badly things get for most people, we must not tax the wealthiest 30 people in the country who own more than the bottom 50 % put together.

          FTFY.

          Let's be accurate here. [soylentnews.org] It certainly doesn't change the value of your point.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 12 2020, @02:47AM (3 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 12 2020, @02:47AM (#970040)

          Bloomberg, Trump and Tom Steyer?

          Democracy, ftw.

          • (Score: 4, Informative) by captain normal on Thursday March 12 2020, @04:31AM (1 child)

            by captain normal (2205) on Thursday March 12 2020, @04:31AM (#970096)

            At least Bloomberg and Steyer can put together a coherent sentence.

            --
            When life isn't going right, go left.
            • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday March 12 2020, @11:59AM

              by Phoenix666 (552) on Thursday March 12 2020, @11:59AM (#970184) Journal

              I don't like the coherent sentences Bloomberg puts together. Somehow they all come through as, "Fuck off and die, dirty peons."

              --
              Washington DC delenda est.
          • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday March 12 2020, @05:15PM

            by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 12 2020, @05:15PM (#970295) Journal

            Bloomberg and Steyer have a positive net worth.

            --
            People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 12 2020, @04:28PM

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 12 2020, @04:28PM (#970277) Journal
          The wealth argument is stupid. Once again, it ignores future income. That's wealth. It ignores that a completely broke person would still be wealthier than a huge part of society due to debt. I don't know how much for the US, but it's 30% when you consider the whole world.

          Finally, those rich people are trying to be rich while most of the 50% aren't. And they pay plenty of taxes already.

          Guess I'm tired of all this windmill tilting.
      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday March 11 2020, @09:22PM (5 children)

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 11 2020, @09:22PM (#969840) Journal

        Oh, and I'm sorry to hear about the rough times. Hopefully it is not so bad as to destroy your life.

        --
        People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday March 11 2020, @09:29PM (4 children)

          by DeathMonkey (1380) on Wednesday March 11 2020, @09:29PM (#969847) Journal

          I'd rather my work wake the fuck up and allow working from home during this emergency that to get that raise. As of now it looks like I'll be getting neither!

          (We'll be fine though, thanks)

          • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday March 11 2020, @09:50PM (3 children)

            by Freeman (732) on Wednesday March 11 2020, @09:50PM (#969857) Journal

            Convenience can definitely be a good incentive. Too bad, you're getting the inconvenience, disregard for health, and no raise options all rolled into one.

            I'm still hopeful that it will be a lot less problematic than has been observed to this point. Lots more people actually having been infected, with a much lower death rate, similar to the existing flu troubles would be ideal. Assuming, we're stuck with it as a recurring virus. Even, if it's much more deadly for really old people. A much lower overall death rate would make it just another flu or a bad strain of the flu or something.

            --
            Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @09:54PM (2 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @09:54PM (#969863)

              Death rates, phooey! I have been reduced to wiping my ass with Presidential tax returns, because of all of the irrational panic buying and hoarding. Most of the harm is going to be self-inflicted, I see. It is kind of like Microsoft Windows, in that regard.

              • (Score: 3, Funny) by Aegis on Wednesday March 11 2020, @10:54PM (1 child)

                by Aegis (6714) on Wednesday March 11 2020, @10:54PM (#969908)

                Getting your hands on the president's tax returns, or toilet paper, would definitely be newsworthy!

                • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Thursday March 12 2020, @02:25AM

                  by MostCynical (2589) on Thursday March 12 2020, @02:25AM (#970024) Journal

                  Ebay has listings for alternatives [ebay.com.au]

                  --
                  "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
      • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @09:44PM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @09:44PM (#969856)

        Isn't that what you've been wishing for? A tanking economy to have a chance at getting president Biden?
        Glad you are materially affected too.

        • (Score: 5, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday March 11 2020, @09:50PM

          by DeathMonkey (1380) on Wednesday March 11 2020, @09:50PM (#969859) Journal

          Trump was eventually going to fail miserably at some disaster. A tanking economy would be the least terrible one he could make worse.

          But don't you worry. I make enough money to profit off the recovery. The Trump voters on the other hand, not so much...

        • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday March 12 2020, @12:56AM

          by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Thursday March 12 2020, @12:56AM (#969961) Journal

          Rot in hell, you ghoulish little troll.

          --
          I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
        • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 12 2020, @01:58AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 12 2020, @01:58AM (#970005)

          Wow, the Schdenfreude when Trumpers have no one else they can possibly blame but the prez. Lul, your dude is a shitty scam artist who knows jack shit about anything but running scams.

          Sorry bub, we liberals do not wish to harm ourselves just to keep "winning." That'd be you trumpettes.