As usual, the media is useless. Read the scientific/medical data. From the FAS website: Flu viruses, for example, are generally rendered harmless after nine hours on hard surfaces and four hours on soft surfaces. The Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), which is in the same virus family as COVID-19 virus, and lasts for two days on hard surfaces, and a recent study concluded that human coronaviruses can last on surfaces at room temperature for up to 9 days.
The World Health Organization’s early estimates suggest that COVID-19 virus “may persist on surfaces for a few hours or up to several days.” Surfaces can be cleaned with household disinfectants, and be sure to wash your hands.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website will update with definitive information about the survivability of COVID-19 outside the human body.
Here’s my summary–
No vaccine
Very preliminary data
Lack of resources for testing and potentially treatment
Variable degree of unbelief around the danger.
The virus lives a long time outside the body with possible airborne contagiousness.
Patients still contagious a month after infection.
Unknown if antibodies will protect you from reinfection.
You can underestimate this if you want. I’m not. It writes like a movie, and it wouldn’t be a comedy. A lot can change quickly, but right now, the more people contribute to the spread, by not being smart, the more we’ll pay for this.
And Fizbin–I hear you. This SUCKS for the small business owner. I would rather have that come out taxes than the small business owners’ pockets.
I’ll give you the flip side–a major academic hospital in Columbus has/had the policy that if healthcare workers got sick, they needed to use existing sick time. They also had to continue to work AFTER exposure until they are symptomatic. While it sounds less than wise, my guess is that they don’t have enough staff to provide that off time. I will bet that’s the policy everywhere. No testing until symptoms. That’s why it will continue to spread.
Although not ideal, if you are a small business, there are some options popping up on both the federal and local level related to funding during the downturn. If your business is affected, please search out some of the small business disaster funding options that have been popping up in different cities, as well as the federal SBA Disaster Assistance Loans for Small Businesses. Any comments related to experience with the current programs might also help others with small businesses on the forum.
Our grocery stores are decimated. I can’t even buy CAT LITTER…
They closed all schools for a month (looks like I’m going to be teaching 10th grade now as well as working) and they closed all campus housing at my sons college, RIT. We will head up this week to get his stuff since he’s on extended spring break. Not sure how they will handle mechanical engineering labs online.
I don’t know how my employees and I will handle school being closed. Some may have to go part time.
@Sneezy , Man, I feel for you. Yep, I never thought about all those folks (kids) in college, dorms, housing etc. What a cluster.
I thinking it will slowly just fizzle back to normal. Kinda like the .22LR ammo panic buying took a while to just fizzle and then got back to normal. Hopefully small businesses (Pizza joints, auto repair shops, dry cleaners, barbershops, independent grocery and hardware stores, donut shops, equipment rental, carpenters, plumbers, septic installers, well drillers,florists, I’m sure you can think of a whole host more) won’t have to shutter.
The G-man talked about SBA loans. I don’t want a d**n loan! I have no loans now. I have a fellow business owner who applied a few years back for an SBA loan and it was a nightmare of red tape and over a month before they told him to pound sand.
Good dashboard tracker (looks best on a larger screen, not mobile).
An interesting trend is China’s confirmed cases plateaued in February at 80K… and haven’t shown an increase since Doesn’t sound right for a country with 1 billion + citizens.
I am skeptical, but also hopeful. They took really drastic lockdown steps, basically a shelter-in-place and without dumb teenagers wanting to go on spring break. They werent playing around. It is possible that they halted the spread through people that werent showing symptoms. There may be a sprinkle or two of cases here and there, but for the most part theyve stamped it out.
It gives me hope that the precautions there, will translate to here. We (so far) dont have the same scale of outbreak, so our measures have been smaller, but if enough people do it we can also halt the spread. We will know in a few weeks if it has been effective…
Bruce and I are getting a new puppy Thursday. Ordered some puppy and dog food at Chewy.com and they are experiencing backlog on sending out orders due to high volume. Apparently people are also stocking up on pet food. One guy at grocery store had 2, 54lbs bags of dog food, plus giant box of treats. California is having police officers standing guard at their grocery store, No income and you need food, we’ll see what happens.
Yesterday I went to the bike store and got our 2 mountain bikes cleaned and uber tuned up. I also bought a new mountain bike so now there is one for each of us at home.
We may need them for transportation some day, (highly unlikely as if we are bugging out of where we are now it really would mean things are incredibly bad!) but mostly so we can all ride and exercise together.
Doesn’t sound right for a country with 1 billion + citizens.
