Octopus Overlords

Daehawk wrote: Sat Mar 21, 2020 11:29 pm

If I was an authority figure, I'd want a wide range of the public tested, so I'd know what I'm dealing with.

Also what if there are people resistant to this and either dont get it or dont get very sick. Carriers too. How would we ever know without thorough testing?

Obviously they'd the gold standard. But we don't have the amount of tests required and so we have to allocate resources accordingly.

naednek wrote: Sat Mar 21, 2020 11:15 pm Does your vest connect to a machine that has air pockets and shakes you? Ethan did the cough assist when he was in the hospital last. That was his first time. Kinda weird.

Yes. We call it the shaky vest, and I'm guessing you're familiar with it as it's more common for CF than it is for kids in my son's situation. He has really low tone in his trunk, though, and has trouble clearing gunk that might go to his lungs. Three times a day he gets a shake followed by cough assist and then suction. (We also do a cough assist before bed and suction throughout the day as needed.)

Based on the public sentiments of medical workers reported in New York, their medical system is getting close or already beyond overload. I'm reading reports that there are gripes among the nurses and whatnot that they're starting to get sick from overwork and possible reuse of stuff. But it's no surprise as they got like almost half the confirmed cases in US so far. And it's not sure if they have the equipment to handle everything, even if the governor called out the national and state guards and any mobile hospitals from the military. I'd say the governor should call in help NOW before Monday, but I'm not in charge.

NOLA is hitting critical too.

It’s crazy how localized the actual impacts seem to be. Not the impacts of our efforts to fight this (social distancing, closures, shelter in place orders, etc), but the actual health impacts. I read about the dire situation in hospitals in NYC and other parts of the country, but when I reach out to my sister who’s an ER doc in Jacksonville, FL, I get this response this morning:

Work is v chill the only storm here is the self made panic storm. Most hospitals right now are empty we’re sending people home right and left because there’s no patients They are all scared to come to the hospital.

Hope that lasts down there.

Kurth wrote: Sun Mar 22, 2020 1:07 am It’s crazy how localized the actual impacts seem to be. Not the impacts of our efforts to fight this (social distancing, closures, shelter in place orders, etc), but the actual health impacts. I read about the dire situation in hospitals in NYC and other parts of the country, but when I reach out to my sister who’s an ER doc in Jacksonville, FL, I get this response this morning:

Work is v chill the only storm here is the self made panic storm. Most hospitals right now are empty we’re sending people home right and left because there’s no patients They are all scared to come to the hospital.

Hope that lasts down there.

It's a disaster for revenue though. Waiting in an empty hospital costs millions a day. So either you're overwhelmed and money doesn't matter or you're waiting to be overwhelmed and going broke.

Daehawk wrote: Sat Mar 21, 2020 11:29 pm

If I was an authority figure, I'd want a wide range of the public tested, so I'd know what I'm dealing with.

Also what if there are people resistant to this and either dont get it or dont get very sick. Carriers too. How would we ever know without thorough testing?

I read The Stand too. The only two ways you'd know you had someone with built in immunity is if everyone got very sick from it except the immunes, that's not happening with this virus. With this virus you could have someone who was sick with it standing next to an immune and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference since some people are only mildly affected. Or you could inject them with the virus and observe them. If they still test negative then they're naturally immune. Now what? It's a big assumption that being able to study someone who is naturally immune would be helpful in any practical sense. A vaccine is still going to need to be tested and have clinical trials and all that. By the time that happens millions, possibly billions, will have been exposed to the virus.

Some good information here about disinfectants https://thesurvivalmom.com/truth-about-disinfectants/ In hand sanitizers Purell is specifically recommended

ANSWER: I would recommend just using Purell. They did a study that found all sanitizers actually go down in efficacy the more you use them. Purell actually goes up in efficacy

At the alarm monitoring call center, we now have around 10 people self-isolating. General absences are up across the board. Some of these situations I know are completely legitimate. One employee's mother who works in health care has a positive diagnosis. Someone else returned from a trip abroad. Another has suffered lung collapse, etc. in the past and ordered by his doctor to stay put. But some of the others, I question. This culminated in all of one shift's supervision walking off the job one day last week. In another key position, 75% of staff are isolating or refusing to come into work until a work-from-home option is available. They believe management isn't doing enough, or acting quickly enough. They're 100% correct. but this isn't the right way to respond. We literally have elderly customers whose medical alarms may not be responded to because of this. So far, we've managed to hang on... if we can't reach someone, an ambulance gets dispatched, even if it's late. (As if that's an appropriate use of the health care system right now.)

Management has now said they'll have 95% of staff WFH by midweek. I don't see how that's possible. Maybe if I.T. doesn't sleep. The monitoring industry in many cases requires staff work from a secure central site, so there was no contingency plan for this. Much of our infrastructure is out of date. We didn't have hardware prepared to permit a staff of 60+ to work offsite. Some employees don't even have home computers to allow them to connect. Not to mention staff will be considerably less efficient from home, owing to network limitations, less screen real estate, and distractions. And of course, the staff who continue to report in the meantime are doing the jobs of sometimes several other people, and burning out quickly. It's not possible to answer more than one phone call at a time. I myself have worked about 103 hours over the past 10 days.

Blackhawk wrote: Thu Mar 19, 2020 7:08 pm

Zaxxon wrote: Thu Mar 19, 2020 6:27 pm https://www.polygon.com/2020/3/19/21187 ... s-shutdown

Ok, then, GameStop.

I mean, I get why they are taking this position--their business was doomed anyway, and riding the slow decline to closing. The COVID shutdown just greatly accelerates that, so they literally have nothing to lose by staying open, other than sullying GameStop's good na---eh, I can't even finish that sentence.

I feel doubly sorry for the employees, who now in addition to working in a doomed job are also now at higher-than-needed health risk.

In business, out of business. Doesn't matter. They've lost my business.

Not that I gave them much anymore anyway.

"Temporarily" closing all retail locations now:

GameStop Corp. (GME), a video game, consumer electronics and gaming merchandise retailer, said that it will temporarily close all its US-based retail locations, and process orders on a digital only basis, starting on 22nd March, as a result of the continued spread of the coronavirus or COVID-19. The move comes after intense criticism of the company's plan to keep stores open as an "essential business."

Meanwhile, the company said it will continue to offer its products online at GameStop.com and on the GameStop app for customers to have their products shipped directly to their homes.

In addition, the company noted that it will pay all U.S. employees whose hours have been eliminated an additional two weeks at their regular pay rate based on the average hours worked in the last 10 weeks. The company will reimburse all benefit eligible U.S. employees, one month of the employee portion of benefit expenses.

That is likely the end of GameStop, and they know it.

I feel bad for the guy that just delivered my Amazon package. The courier service uses gig workers for delivery, and it looks like they'll get kicked to the curb if they get sick.

Any employee or delivery associates experiencing symptoms associated with the flu or diagnosed as a case of COVID-19 will cease its activities with Intelcom for the period of recovery or non-contagion.

On the plus side, they are waiving any requirement for a signature on delivery, so the service is pretty much fully contactless, which should help to protect the drivers as well as the customers.

Blackhawk wrote:That is likely the end of GameStop, and they know it.

But they were able to book that sweet, sweet Animal Crossing and Doom revenue, which was probably their last-ditch goal all along.

Gamestop isn't quite dead just yet. They're still operating the online portion of the business, so they might survive in that form for a while.

So anyone thinking about The Naked Sun?

Also William Gibson calls today's internet 'banal' https://www.npr.org/2020/03/19/81057087 ... envisioned

Daehawk wrote: Sun Mar 22, 2020 2:57 pm So anything thinking about The Naked Sun?

Also William Gibson calls today's internet 'banal' https://www.npr.org/2020/03/19/81057087 ... envisioned

He was expecting black ice and he got cat memes.

LawBeefaroni wrote: Sat Mar 21, 2020 11:20 am One of our medical directors moved out of he house so as not to put her husband and daughter at risk every night when she came home. If she even bothered to go home after an 18 hour day, that is.

This is what bothers me about my employer's unwillingness to deem me a WFH person (for fuck's sake, I manage IT infrastructure for 20 plants and office in 4 states, if my presence was essential, then the fact I've never set foot in most of those locations wouldn't be true). Not that I'm especially worried about catching it a work since, while the plant I'm normally at has hundreds of workers, I'm in an secluded office area and rarely get within socially unacceptable distance with anyone, but should that happen, it takes my wife out of action too and at the moment her job is WAY more important since she's a nurse on the front lines working at a nursing home. It's been shown already how devastating an outbreak at nursing home can be. I don't like that there's a chance I could be an unwilling vector to a terrible outbreak in such a place.

Just had 'The Talk' with Michelle's mother. She's 75, diabetic, and has a history of respiratory problems. She also lives to blocks away and relies on us for errands, shopping, etc. It was an hour long, and it was surprisingly fruitful. She's getting her news from the right sources, knew what was actually going on (and where the blame falls), and was telling me about the proper way to wash hands, pushing elevator buttons with knuckles, and that she won't even ride in the small elevator with someone else for now. I only had to fill in a few of the missing details and work out a proper plan with her for the contingency that anyone of us gets sick and we can't support her for several weeks. She's drawing up supply lists now that we'll fill for her, drop her every-other-day shopping down to once per week, and so forth. As I was leaving she told me that her grandmother had died from the Spanish Flu. I told her it was time to break a family tradition.

If a 75-year-old midwest grandmother can get it right, there may be hope after all.

Watched a news story on a 90 year old lady who had this and beat it.

648 cases in SF Bay Area, 84 in San Francisco

A testing center in Hayward (East Bay) will be open Monday, and does NOT need a referral. However, they can only test 350 people a day, so only people who look sick, first responders, and so on will likely get tested. Results can be had within 24 hours, often in 6 hours.

Coronavirus: McDonald's to close all UK restaurants

McDonald's will close all 1,270 of its restaurants in the UK by the end of Monday, as fears over the spread of coronavirus escalate.

It says the UK package kicks in in a few days and will pay 80% of workers salaries. So do 20% of their bills just disappear??

CIVILIZATION UPDATE:

Sir Patrick Stewart is online reading Shakespeare sonnets in a Gillian Welch t-shirt...

https://twitter.com/SirPatStew/status/1 ... 93536?s=20

Love Stewart hate Shakespeare.

400 US deaths now. I was watching a live tracker this morn when it jumped from 300 or so to another 4 or 5. Now a full 100 almost.

Daehawk wrote: Sun Mar 22, 2020 8:20 pm Love Stewart hate Shakespeare.

Can't do both.

Daehawk wrote: Sun Mar 22, 2020 4:07 pm Watched a news story on a 90 year old lady who had this and beat it.

"100-year-old Chinese man the world's oldest coronavirus survivor"
https://www.jpost.com/International/100 ... vor-620344

18 doctors in Italy have died.

I guess I am going to work as usual on Monday. Our HQ is in Illinois which got shut down so not sure how the network will work. I expect the Governor of MN will shut it down in the next day or two which will make it all moot. We were recently purchased by a private equity firm (are they total dipshits) so interested if we will be furloughed, layed off, or just terminated. It would be nice to collect unemployment at least.

Daehawk wrote: Sun Mar 22, 2020 8:05 pm
It says the UK package kicks in in a few days and will pay 80% of workers salaries. So do 20% of their bills just disappear??

Their discretionary spending money goes away, but there's nothing to spend it on anyway.

A mile from my house stands what was a tired old Chinese restaurant, a big place with lots of seating that only ever sold takeout. I don't eat Chinese food so IDK how good or bad it was. It finally gave up the ghost a couple of years ago -- I just checked, and the first news story announcing "Tiki Palace to be replaced by Lychee Bistro & Lounge" is dated 3/29/18. For many months, nothing happened. Then it started gradually transforming, and I do mean gradually. Maybe six months ago it looked from the outside like maybe it was getting ready to open. Three months ago they finally put up a fancy new sign. A month ago they hung a "Now hiring" banner.

Finally, they got *this close* to realizing their dream, when BAM -- all restaurants closed indefinitely. I'd guess that a family was doing the work whenever a little extra money allowed. They must not have been paying rent for those two years, but they must be paying property taxes. That's the story my mind made up, anyway. Maybe if they'd opened a month earlier they'd be doing OK with takeout right now. Instead, I wonder if it will ever open.

It looks to me like somebody's dream just died a public death. But who knows? They hung in there for two years already; what's another year?

Checked all the stores I could online for my town and area...toilet paper, paper towels, hand sanitizer...all out of stock everywhere. One store..Home Depot....let me click check stores nearby. I did and it tells me there is no toilet paper or anything for at least 100 miles.

In our little nothing of a town, we actually do have a Chinese restaurant, and a pretty good one at that. They were the best takeout restaurant in town, and it was a good chunk of their business. When all of the restaurants in the state got their dine-in closed, I figured they'd be the most popular options. Instead, they shut down both their dine-in and their take-out, too. I just found out why: it was because they were getting multiple death threats.

Why?

Because they are Chinese in rural Indiana.

Kraken wrote: Sun Mar 22, 2020 9:56 pm

Daehawk wrote: Sun Mar 22, 2020 8:05 pm
It says the UK package kicks in in a few days and will pay 80% of workers salaries. So do 20% of their bills just disappear??

Their discretionary spending money goes away, but there's nothing to spend it on anyway.

Plus, almost anyone can save money if they have to. There is spending normally, and there is spending to survive. The latter is less pleasant, but almost always far cheaper.

Daehawk wrote: Mon Mar 23, 2020 12:53 am Checked all the stores I could online for my town and area...toilet paper, paper towels, hand sanitizer...all out of stock everywhere. One store..Home Depot....let me click check stores nearby. I did and it tells me there is no toilet paper or anything for at least 100 miles.

Since you are on disability, it may behoove you to reach out for assistance with obtaining what you need:

Tennessee Disability Pathfinder wrote:Disaster Relief & Coronavirus Resources
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Less than two miles from me, a nursing home just reported 23 residents and 6 staff are positive. That is going to be brutal.

As I was driving to work today I had a happy thought and wondered if the 17º F temps last night might have killed the coronavirus on surfaces left outside, like my car or steering wheel.

Nope. A little research tells me these types of bugs can survive up to 2 years in deep freeze.

Then a new thought came into my head. Can this be transmitted by mosquitoes? No one knows yet.

They updated the JHU map to now show more detailed infection locations. The US looks even more sick than it did before. I hit this site a few times a day, just to see where things are going. It was discouraging to watch it last night as the US slid solidly into 3rd place globally.

Where is Remus? I just read that Michigan is not allowing any of the e-learning to count toward the 180 days of school. What are they supposed to do then?

stessier wrote: Mon Mar 23, 2020 8:46 am Where is Remus? I just read that Michigan is not allowing any of the e-learning to count toward the 180 days of school. What are they supposed to do then?

Seriously ??!
Honestly, I’m not clear on why the schools would bother with it, if they are getting no credit for it at all.
What a waste of MI state tax dollars.

Unagi wrote: Mon Mar 23, 2020 9:30 am

stessier wrote: Mon Mar 23, 2020 8:46 am Where is Remus? I just read that Michigan is not allowing any of the e-learning to count toward the 180 days of school. What are they supposed to do then?

Seriously ??!
Honestly, I’m not clear on why the schools would bother with it, if they are getting no credit for it at all.
What a waste of MI state tax dollars.

It appears they don't think it is real learning.

They want to go from June 3-end of month, three weeks off, then 4 weeks from July-August to finish up 19/20. Then start Sept for 20/21 and end at the end of June. Reportedly teachers are not happy because why are they putting in effort for e-learning plans if they are meaningless and the Governor is mad as it came out of the Education Department without him knowing somehow.

So there is still time to fix it, sounds like. But man what a crazy plan.

stessier wrote: Mon Mar 23, 2020 8:46 am Where is Remus? I just read that Michigan is not allowing any of the e-learning to count toward the 180 days of school. What are they supposed to do then?

In Illinois they've declared this an act of God so they're not worrying about days of school at this point. E-learning stuff can help a student's grades, but cannot be counted against their grades.