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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday March 24 2020, @04:54AM   Printer-friendly
from the lock-em-down dept.

Politicians won't admit it yet, but it's time to prepare—physically and psychologically—for a sudden stop to all life outside your home.

[...] Whether you are reading this in your living room in Vancouver, office in London, or on a subway in New York City, you need to think hard, and fast, about two crucial questions: Where, and with whom, do you want to spend the next six to 12 weeks of your life, hunkered down for the epidemic duration? And what can you do to make that place as safe as possible for yourself and those around you?

Your time to answer those questions is very short—a few days, at most. Airports will close, trains will shut down, gasoline supplies may dwindle, and roadblocks may be set up. Nations are closing their borders, and as the numbers of sick rise, towns, suburbs, even entire counties will try to shut the virus out by blocking travel. Wherever you decide to settle down this week is likely to be the place in which you will be stuck for the duration of your epidemic.

To appreciate what lies ahead for the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the United Kingdom, pay heed to Italy, France, and Germany. The United States, for example, is currently tracking exactly where Italy was about 10 days ago. France and Germany, which track two to five days ahead of the United States, are now revving up measures akin to those taken by Italy, including lockdowns on movement and social activity. In a matter of days, the United States will follow suit.

[...] Once tough location decisions have been made, the household must be readied for a long siege. While panic-buying has led to stockpiles of toilet paper and hand sanitizer, getting through eight months of confinement with others will require a great deal more, both physically and psychologically. This is especially true for households that span generations.

Long-term confinement that includes children undergoing remote schooling and adults trying to work requires designated spaces for each individual, a powerful Internet signal and Wi-Fi router, and a great deal of shared patience. Everybody in the household must understand how the coronavirus is spread, and what steps each should follow to eliminate their personal risk of passing infection to others in the home.

The virus is transmitted by droplets and fomites[*]—it isn't like measles, capable of drifting about in the air for hours. It dehydrates quickly if not inside water, mucus, or fomite droplets. The size of the droplets may be far below what the human eye can see, but they are gravity-sensitive, and will fall from an individual's mouth down, eventually, to the nearest lower surface—table, desk, floor. You do not need to clean upward.

However, a newly published study, backed by the National Institutes of Health, found that the virus survives in "aerosols for up to three hours, up to four hours on copper, up to 24 hours on cardboard and up to two to three days on plastic and stainless steel." This means an uncleaned surface can pose a risk to members of the household for a very long time—a doorknob, tabletop, kitchen counter or stainless steel utensil.

[*] Wikipedia entry on fomites:

any inanimate object that, when contaminated with or exposed to infectious agents (such as pathogenic bacteria, viruses or fungi), can transfer disease to a new host.

[...] In addition to objects in hospital settings, other common fomites for humans are cups, spoons, pencils, bath faucet handles, toilet flush levers, door knobs, light switches, handrails, elevator buttons, television remote controls, pens, touch screens, common-use phones, keyboards, and computer mice, coffeepot handles, countertops, and any other items that may be frequently touched by different people and infrequently cleaned.

Researchers have discovered that smooth (non-porous) surfaces like door knobs transmit bacteria and viruses better than porous materials like paper money because porous, especially fibrous, materials absorb and trap the contagion, making it harder to contract through simple touch. Nonetheless, fomites may include soiled clothes, towels, linens, handkerchiefs, and surgical dressings


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @08:03AM (34 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @08:03AM (#974842)

    Yeah, well, blame it all on Trump

    You know, FUCK YOU. This is ALL on Trump. Any other sane president would have listened to the scientists that the disease is coming. That you need to prepare tests, fast and get shit ready. But what did we get from Trump??

    https://www.snopes.com/tachyon/2020/03/trump-statements.jpeg [snopes.com]
    https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/timeline-trump-covid19-responses/ [snopes.com]

    China gave US and rest of the world 2 MONTHS to prepare. Only few places actually prepared and US definitely dropped the ball on everything. Now US has more sick people than anywhere in the world. Correction, Italy has more known sick, but who needs testing?? Just give US a few days to be #1 !! YAY!

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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by driverless on Tuesday March 24 2020, @11:03AM (3 children)

    by driverless (4770) on Tuesday March 24 2020, @11:03AM (#974895)

    Just give US a few days to be #1 !! YAY!

    If you look at the curves, even places like Italy are slowly, slowly starting to flatten. The US is still a straight line on a log-scale graph. "We’re going to win so much, you’re going to be so sick and tired of winning" has never been more true, the only change is that there should be a comma after "sick".

    • (Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @12:11PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @12:11PM (#974917)

      Congratulations [twitter.com] - the US will surpass Chinese reported figures by early next week. [youtube.com]

      Perhaps you should instead be asking why China and the WHO, in mid January, were insisting there was no human to human transmission or requirement for travel restrictions.

      • (Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday March 24 2020, @02:53PM

        by PiMuNu (3823) on Tuesday March 24 2020, @02:53PM (#974997)

        > why China and the WHO, in mid January, were insisting there was no human to human transmission

        Indeed, even in February - how long did it take before WHO declared pandemic? *Everyone* knew it was a pandemic, yet WHO dragged its heels for about a week while infections were kicking off in Italy, Korea and Iran.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @08:24PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @08:24PM (#975177)

      If you look at the curves, even places like Italy are slowly, slowly starting to flatten.

      Yes, now, more than 4 weeks after their initial lockdowns [wikipedia.org] and, hey, right on schedule 2 weeks after the nation-wide lockdown. Italy's curve is flattening because they did something about it. More than the US is doing.

  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by bobmorning on Tuesday March 24 2020, @12:17PM (5 children)

    by bobmorning (6045) on Tuesday March 24 2020, @12:17PM (#974920)

    Wow, anger management classes for you. Get over it, he won, you lost. MAGA 2020 baby!

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Gaaark on Tuesday March 24 2020, @03:15PM

      by Gaaark (41) on Tuesday March 24 2020, @03:15PM (#975016) Journal

      Wow...seems more like you ALL lost.

      --
      --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @03:35PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @03:35PM (#975029)

      Even now you maga idiots still support that shitty fucking human. There is no har low enough, no fuckup he can make to get reality through that thick skull.

      He is an incompetent self-centered corrupt douchebag and that has nothing to do with whether I wanted someone else in the White House. I would have preferred literally any other candidate now that we know just how bad Trump is. Seriously, any other person would have to.try to suck as hard as Trump does naturally.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 25 2020, @11:52AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 25 2020, @11:52AM (#975408)

        What's your point? Somehow you guys think Trump is the source of all evil. He's just one person. No matter who the President was, there would still be a bunch of people partying on the beach. A bunch of people hosting virus parties so they can get their infections over with and then ignore everything else. What about all the doctors writing fraudulent prescriptions for themselves and their families? Etc... Trump doesn't directly control everything in the country. There's plenty of people screwing up for various reasons. What I see is people in leadership positions tossing the blame around and all finger pointing at Trump, completely ignoring that they're in charge of their organizations/areas and could have easily made their own preparations or changes. Instead of anyone stepping up, it's all throw your hands up and stick your head in your ass (maybe that's why people need so much TP?) because I don't have any personal responsibility because I see the man in charge (of foreign policy and the military, not of law making) as God even though I hate him.

        When you find someone who's an incompetent self-centered corrupt douchebag you ignore him. You guys are doing the opposite and saying you can't do anything because you're spending so much time focused on him. Wake up.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2020, @04:50PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 26 2020, @04:50PM (#975970)
          There's a lot that he could have done to help, but instead every move he's made has basically made things worse. He removed a pandemic-preparedness office in the National Security Council despite pleas to have it restored, and as a result hamstrung the administration's response to the crisis. He cut funding for the CDC. He is still arguably treating COVID-19 as a partisan political issue rather than a major international crisis. He's given the public mixed messages, with his officials saying one thing and him saying the opposite. This probably has contributed significantly to the climate of apathy over the crisis in the country that results in more idiots partying at the beach than not. People like Anthony Fauci can't just ignore the president and push on with their work, because the president can and has interfered with their work. And he's not just in charge of foreign policy and the military. He's very much in charge of domestic policy too, and his domestic policy so far has been very helpful to SARS-CoV-2.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 25 2020, @01:00AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 25 2020, @01:00AM (#975277)

      Can we still get Hillary to run the death panels?

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 24 2020, @01:50PM (13 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday March 24 2020, @01:50PM (#974957)

    Any other sane president would have...

    Not gutted the CDC and other evidence based federal institutions.

    Not been the star of his own reality TV series where he flaunted his managerial incompetency and narcissistic personality disorders.

    Not demonstrated total incompetency at use of a teleprompter.

    We get the leadership we vote for, most of us don't vote, so...

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by dwilson on Tuesday March 24 2020, @04:29PM (3 children)

      by dwilson (2599) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 24 2020, @04:29PM (#975074) Journal

      Might be offtopic, but which would actually be worse? Getting trump because most of you didn't vote, or getting him because most of you did?

      --
      - D
      • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 24 2020, @04:45PM

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday March 24 2020, @04:45PM (#975090)

        It's like the people who don't try so they can't "really" fail...

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @07:37PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @07:37PM (#975160)

        The worst would be electing Biden and not teaching the DNC a lesson.

      • (Score: 2) by Common Joe on Wednesday March 25 2020, @03:07AM

        by Common Joe (33) <{common.joe.0101} {at} {gmail.com}> on Wednesday March 25 2020, @03:07AM (#975304) Journal

        Neither. No candidate from the top four parties deserved the presidency -- and only those four parties were on the ballot in all 50 states. Primaries are a joke. Things are so bad, we can't begin to answer the question you pose. (Which is unfortunate because we should be able to.)

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by sjames on Tuesday March 24 2020, @05:49PM (8 children)

      by sjames (2882) on Tuesday March 24 2020, @05:49PM (#975117) Journal

      The sad part is that Clinton actually got more of the popular vote than Trump, but the vagueries of the way we count votes gave Trump the win in the electoral college.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @06:05PM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @06:05PM (#975127)

        The sad part is that Clinton actually got more of the popular vote than Trump, but the vagueries of the way we count votes gave Trump the win in the electoral college.

        The sad part is that if you completed a high school education, you didn't learn enough civics to know how and why we've been electing presidents for the last 230 years.

        • (Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday March 24 2020, @08:00PM

          by sjames (2882) on Tuesday March 24 2020, @08:00PM (#975169) Journal

          I guess you skipped the whole reading comprehension thing...

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @09:57PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @09:57PM (#975219)

          Well, he also failed to learn the spelling of "vagary", so there's plenty of sad parts to go around.

          • (Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday March 25 2020, @08:58AM

            by sjames (2882) on Wednesday March 25 2020, @08:58AM (#975379) Journal

            When you nit-pick someone's spelling, it's really embarrassing to be wrong [yourdictionary.com].

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 24 2020, @06:26PM (3 children)

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday March 24 2020, @06:26PM (#975132)

        I'm O.K. with the national popular vote not deciding the election... the rules are the rules, and presidential elections have been gamed to optimize to those rules for decades - Trump is far from the first to win with a minority popular vote. Maybe we should change the rules, but until we do there's not really any point in complaining about them.

        What I believe we really should do is erase the barriers to voting. If you're eligible to vote, voting (once) should be as easy as possible. Florida does pretty well at this: early voting open for weeks at convenient locations. Other states have varying degrees of shockingly discriminatory practices that are clearly aimed at shaping the outcome of elections.

        I'd also be very much in favor of anti-gerrymandering legislation, something algorithmic which would allow any petitioner to complain that the boundaries are drawn with "nonsensical" skew, and if they can propose a new set of boundaries which are, say, 10% less skewed than the current boundaries (according to some well accepted clustering algorithm), the legislature would be required to redraw the boundaries within 1 year or less to either the petitioner's proposed boundaries or other boundaries such that the legislature decides which exceed the low-skew measure of the petitioner's proposal. Unfortunately, that's way too much math for your average bear, much less politician, but I think when people saw the proposed map boundaries they'd support it overwhelmingly (unless, of course, they want the gerrymander skewed election results...)

        Meanwhile, we've got to deal with what we've got - just like the crappy level of true information coming in around actual COVID-19 infection rates, silent carriers, etc.

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]
        • (Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday March 24 2020, @06:52PM (2 children)

          by sjames (2882) on Tuesday March 24 2020, @06:52PM (#975142) Journal

          The rules are the rules. I point it out to deflate claims of having "a mandate from the people". With a margin that small, there is no mandate. With the popular vote going the other way, there isn't really even a grudging acceptance.

          I agree on removing gerrymandering. Ideally I would like to see it determined based on objective criteria that could be processed with a 'blessed' piece of software (some sort of iterative optimizer most likely) based on a public database, but that's probably not going to happen.

          • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 24 2020, @10:37PM

            by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday March 24 2020, @10:37PM (#975230)

            I just about threw up on the TV when Bush W announced his "mandate from the people to continue the war in Iraq" based on his 52% victory.

            The problem with anti-gerrymandering software is that nobody would really trust/understand it. If there was a chance in hell of it passing politically, I'd try myself to work out an algorithm that both satisfies the math geeks and can be understood by at least 51% of the bears out there, it's possible, but pointless in the current political climate.

            --
            🌻🌻 [google.com]
          • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday March 25 2020, @12:30AM

            by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 25 2020, @12:30AM (#975267) Journal

            With a margin that small, there is no mandate.

            Thank you. With a 60% majority, the winner might begin talking of mandates. Low to mid 50%? He sounds like a damned fool when he mentions mandates. Given a 75% win, the winning party actually has a pretty clear mandate.

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by TheRaven on Tuesday March 24 2020, @03:07PM (7 children)

    by TheRaven (270) on Tuesday March 24 2020, @03:07PM (#975008) Journal
    In the news this morning: Trump was also responsible for getting rid of the position of a US person embedded in the Chinese equivalent of the CDC, whose job it would have been to communicate on this outbreak when it was first discovered. It would have been a few months more warning if that person had still been in their job.
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    sudo mod me up
    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday March 24 2020, @03:28PM (6 children)

      Dude... Controlling diseases is in the bloody name of the CDC. It's not like they didn't notice it just because they didn't have someone with a very specific job title that sits around playing minesweeper the rest of the time.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
      • (Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @08:00PM (5 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2020, @08:00PM (#975170)

        You don't think it would have made a tiny bit of difference whether that person was playing minesweeper from his bedroom in sunny Cleveland, or from a government facility in Wuhan?

        • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday March 25 2020, @10:46AM (4 children)

          by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday March 25 2020, @10:46AM (#975392) Homepage Journal

          No, I don't. China would have released exactly the same information whether we had another useless bureaucratic position or not.

          --
          My rights don't end where your fear begins.
          • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Wednesday March 25 2020, @02:48PM (3 children)

            by TheRaven (270) on Wednesday March 25 2020, @02:48PM (#975472) Journal
            Yeah... no. The entire point of this kind of position is to stop governments from either actively covering up outbreaks or 'accidentally' forgetting to get around to notifying other countries for a few critical weeks.
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            sudo mod me up
            • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday March 25 2020, @03:55PM (2 children)

              by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday March 25 2020, @03:55PM (#975502) Homepage Journal

              Man, I dunno what world you're living in but in this one China controls information flow to and from China with an iron fist. Parking some bureaucrat with a fancy title in an embassy ain't gonna make a shit bit of difference to that.

              --
              My rights don't end where your fear begins.
              • (Score: 4, Interesting) by TheRaven on Wednesday March 25 2020, @05:29PM (1 child)

                by TheRaven (270) on Wednesday March 25 2020, @05:29PM (#975546) Journal
                Once again, you're misrepresenting what happened. This was not a bureaucrat in an embassy, this was an epidemiologist in the team responsible for responding to epidemics. It is not possible for China to hide the outbreak from such a person. It is possible for them to stop that person communicating, but then someone is going to start asking questions.
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                sudo mod me up
                • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday March 25 2020, @09:36PM

                  by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday March 25 2020, @09:36PM (#975610) Homepage Journal

                  Dude, it don't matter if it was Jesus and Mohammad riding naked on a unicorn, they wouldn't have been allowed within a hundred miles of anything interesting and they would have heard fuck-all about it. There is no free flow of information in China. Speaking, much less publishing, out of turn gets your ass imprisoned.

                  --
                  My rights don't end where your fear begins.
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday March 25 2020, @12:17PM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Wednesday March 25 2020, @12:17PM (#975417) Journal

    The president we despise is an abject failure who is personally responsible for killing everyone who dies in a pandemic.

    The president we like is not to blame because what can you do against a natural disaster except try to herd cats in a helpful direction?

    Does that about sum it up for you?

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Thursday March 26 2020, @02:01AM

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 26 2020, @02:01AM (#975676) Journal

    Be fair. Trump wasn't that much worse than several other "leader of their country" figures. Boris Johnson is only starting to acknowledge how serious it is.

    FWIW, COVID-19 spread all over the globe before anyone understood what it was. It had probably spread into the US in December, possibly with the Christmas holiday travelers. Remember, most cases are minor, and you won't even recognize the serious cases unless you know what to look for. Otherwise it just looks like pneumonia, and if you live through that a heart attack.

    What he *should* have done is prepare the health system for unexpected emergencies, and started focusing on being prepared for pandemic pneumonia in January. But most other countries didn't do that either. (That he did the direct opposite is an attempt to live up to his campaign promises. There were really stupid ideas, but enough states favored them that it helped give him the election, so cutting out parts of government that weren't currently being used is honest for him to do, if not reasonable.)

    I consider the promises he made incapable of being filled, and idiotic to attempt to fill, but when that's what people voted for you at least can't criticize him for dishonesty when he acts to fulfill them. I reserve that for his extortion of funds to his private purpose, and similar acts.

    --
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