3 hours ago, TheHoosh said:

.What people should be more bothered about is why did we not try to stop the spread from China 3+ months ago. We waited till it is on every continent and virtually every country before doing large efforts to contain the disease.

This is just not the case.

Covid-19 is effectivly asymptomatic, or sufficiently common-cold-like but contagious for around 5 days before it gets serious enough to warrant healthcare intervention.

What that means is that when you first identify a patient, you're already too late to stop it spreading.

Toss in global travel, for tourism and commerce, and you realise, "If only we'd shut off China sooner." is not the lesson we need to learn.

Instead, we need to learn from SARS, MERS, even the Chinese experience with Covid-19 since January, etc. During the "contain" stage we need to be as ruthless as Japan, or Malaysia have been. China is nationally down to a handful of new cases each day. In that sense, I think Western nations have been really slow - testing was inadequate, internal travel restrictions too late in coming, etc.

At this stage, it looks as if the goal has to be to slow progression towards the most vulnerable groups - older people with preexisting health problems - to buy time for more adequate treatments to be developed, and to hope our health services don't get stomped as hard as Italy's is right now.

All of which is to say, cancelling Adepticon is totally the right thing to do .

Well this thread went down hill quickly.

4 minutes ago, Crawfskeezen said:

Well this thread went down hill quickly.

This is just the tip of the iceberg

1 hour ago, TheHoosh said:

Or you may have many cases not ever confirmed because they were mild enough. In King County, Washington State (location of Seattle) they won't even test us unless symptoms are severe enough.

Exactly, however this affects the figures in only 2 ways, it reduces the mortality rate due to underreporting but it increases the transmission rate. So going on that the amount of people Getting the virus is significantly more. End result of an amount of people living in a area x catch the virus and need hospital treatmemt, y die from it if however if x is great enough the hospitals cannot cope (which happened in Ifaly) then x increases. AFAIK even the two worst flu strains in the last 20 years didn't cause as much of a problem (swine and avian).

On the grand scale of things , it's far from being a global killer that the media makes it out to be, but it's not prudent to just ignore it and say it's just another virus, or a government conspiracy theory, one in which China, USA , Italy, Korea all set up , knowing it will destabilise the world economy on a grand scale.

I'm currently not worried about it from a personal pov but I'm worried for many people who I know couldnt cover with it if they do catch it.

2 minutes ago, syrath said:

Exactly, however this affects the figures in only 2 ways, it reduces the mortality rate due to underreporting but it increases the transmission rate. So going on that the amount of people Getting the virus is significantly more. End result of an amount of people living in a area x catch the virus and need hospital treatmemt, y die from it if however if x is great enough the hospitals cannot cope (which happened in Ifaly) then x increases. AFAIK even the two worst flu strains in the last 20 years didn't cause as much of a problem (swine and avian).

On the grand scale of things , it's far from being a global killer that the media makes it out to be, but it's not prudent to just ignore it and say it's just another virus, or a government conspiracy theory, one in which China, USA , Italy, Korea all set up , knowing it will destabilise the world economy on a grand scale.

I'm currently not worried about it from a personal pov but I'm worried for many people who I know couldnt cover with it if they do catch it.

Yes, I think you are having the same response as me, people need to calm down and act rationally, everyone rushing to costco to doomsday prep is only spreading the disease, but also it shouldn't be ignored.

51 minutes ago, TheHoosh said:

everyone rushing to costco to doomsday prep is only spreading the disease, but also it shouldn't be ignored.

So last night I had to gas up my car and I was like "oh I'll grab a few things while I'm out". It was crazy. There was no parking at the grocery store so I went to Target. Things there seemed normal till I started shopping and realized they were sold out of normal food staples.

Regardless of timing I don’t think warm weather in and itself is going to fix this cause it’s spreading into some pretty hot places.

1 hour ago, TauntaunScout said:

Regardless of timing I don’t think warm weather in and itself is going to fix this cause it’s spreading into some pretty hot places.

Barcelona, for example. I live here, right now it is about 20·c (70·F) and right now Catalonia is confined, my family is confined, my child can't go to school and of course they can't go to see their grandparents (I don't want my kids to infect them, as they are old and covid could potentially do enough damage to kill them). My wife Works in a residential care facility for kids, so she HAS to be there, since that kids also will not be able to go to school and someone has to be with them. The city seems frozen, no people on the streets. Catalonia is confined. I work in a broadcast television so i need to work more than ever, information is vital. But the inconveniences are for good: we hope everything is going to be ok if we do exactly what we are told to do. I don't know who will be in charge of my own kids this monday, but well, we'll have to improvise. There is no choice other than keep them at home. It is not for their safety, but for everyone's safety.

It is not a matter of "cold weather". Unfortunately climate change has made our average temperature raise 3 or 4 grades since 10 years ago, so our winter seems spring... and we're ****** anyway.

On 3/13/2020 at 3:27 AM, Mep said:

Coronavirus season will be over in a few weeks when all these quarantine efforts will magically start working and people will be labeled heroes for stopping a virus that structurally doesn't work in warmer temperatures. At that time people will forget all about the cold until next winter and all the later conventions will happen so people can get their convention cough from some other virus and all the cancelled events will be rescheduled to the later cons.

Good luck with that. Look at the virus spread in hot countries.

13 hours ago, syrath said:

You do realise that the mortality rate of a virus is extremely hard to track while the spread is in progress. The problem is that the figures everyone is quoting which is 1 -2% mortality. The problem is that the percentage calculated by most people is the current amount of deaths with the current amount of reported infection.

This is flawed in itself as the people who are currently dying of the virus were infected at least 10-14 days ago, where the infection rate was much much lower, if you compare the death rates with this figure all of a sudden it's not 1-2% any more. Italy's medical system went from 0 to overwhelmed very suddenly. This also factors into the death rate.

While this also factors into it, this is why the UK is or was trying to delay the onset of the virus so that the hospitals can take on-board the amount of cases. While it's true that influenza as a whole kills more people, if you look at the scale of influenza infection in the areas worst hit with co-vid, then you get a much truer representation, and let me say what you see now is just the tip of the iceberg, for every one who is diagnosed you may have another 10 waiting in the wings that will get diagnosed in the next week.

The UK government is in fact doing exactly the *opposite* of trying to delay the onset of the virus. That is what adopting the WHO-recommended containment and distancing methods would do, as shown by China & South Korea. The UK is instead taking the approach Italy took until recently, ie doing knob-all, and we know how that turned out. Why? Because whether due to pressure from the PM's advisors or them just being genuine morons, the UK government's chief science & medical advisors are insisting the best way to deal with the outbreak is a "managed epidemic" with the objective of herd immunity before next winter.

The problem with that being there are two ways to achieve herd immunity - vaccination, and naturally acquired antibodies in survivors of the contagion. Well, there is no vaccine and won't be for at least a year, and there are two teeny-weeny little issues with the latter; firstly there's no firm evidence that survivors are developing antibodies & even if they do even a small mutation in the virus could render them re-infectable regardless, and secondly allowing it to "move through the population" without stringent attempts at control will not only cause great big spikes of demand that the NHS isn't capable of dealing with, but will also cause anywhere up to 3 million deaths the vast majority of which could have been prevented.

But hey, most of the people dying will be the vulnerable poor, the disabled & sick, and the elderly, and what's a few more dead plebbos to the Tories? 😠

18 minutes ago, Yodhrin said:

The UK government is in fact doing exactly the *opposite* of trying to delay the onset of the virus. That is what adopting the WHO-recommended containment and distancing methods would do, as shown by China & South Korea. The UK is instead taking the approach Italy took until recently, ie doing knob-all, and we know how that turned out. Why? Because whether due to pressure from the PM's advisors or them just being genuine morons, the UK government's chief science & medical advisors are insisting the best way to deal with the outbreak is a "managed epidemic" with the objective of herd immunity before next winter.

The problem with that being there are two ways to achieve herd immunity - vaccination, and naturally acquired antibodies in survivors of the contagion. Well, there is no vaccine and won't be for at least a year, and there are two teeny-weeny little issues with the latter; firstly there's no firm evidence that survivors are developing antibodies & even if they do even a small mutation in the virus could render them re-infectable regardless, and secondly allowing it to "move through the population" without stringent attempts at control will not only cause great big spikes of demand that the NHS isn't capable of dealing with, but will also cause anywhere up to 3 million deaths the vast majority of which could have been prevented.

But hey, most of the people dying will be the vulnerable poor, the disabled & sick, and the elderly, and what's a few more dead plebbos to the Tories? 😠

The UK strategy is not ideologically driven - and its shameful to suggest so.

The CMO, CSO, and just about every leading epidemiology expert in the UK, know that we are not in a position to stop Covid-19 in its tracks. We haven't been as tooled up as say Japan or Malaysia, after learning lots of lessons from SARS.

There's a good expert's outline of the UK strategy in this twitter thread. Expert opinion seems to be heard immunity is as good a strategy as any, if you have the tools to manage it. Its high risk, but failed containment strategies as lethal.

https://mobile.twitter.com/iandonald_psych/status/1238518371651649538

Interestingly, Prof. Donald's view is that the moves to now restrict larger gatherings are the ones bring politically motivated, because the current expert-led strategy isn't popular enough.

Why doesn’t FFG do a Tabletop Simulator tournament?

I guess that would legitimize TTS’s version of Legion, so I won’t hold my breath, but it’s not like FFG doesn’t know it exists.

28 minutes ago, JediPartisan said:

Why doesn’t FFG do a Tabletop Simulator tournament?

I guess that would legitimize TTS’s version of Legion, so I won’t hold my breath, but it’s not like FFG doesn’t know it exists.

FFG can't acknowledge TTS exists. Digital media is a totally separate license with the Mouse.

2 hours ago, Jedirev said:

The UK strategy is not ideologically driven - and its shameful to suggest so.

The CMO, CSO, and just about every leading epidemiology expert in the UK, know that we are not in a position to stop Covid-19 in its tracks. We haven't been as tooled up as say Japan or Malaysia, after learning lots of lessons from SARS.

There's a good expert's outline of the UK strategy in this twitter thread. Expert opinion seems to be heard immunity is as good a strategy as any, if you have the tools to manage it. Its high risk, but failed containment strategies as lethal.

https://mobile.twitter.com/iandonald_psych/status/1238518371651649538

Interestingly, Prof. Donald's view is that the moves to now restrict larger gatherings are the ones bring politically motivated, because the current expert-led strategy isn't popular enough.

It is absolutely not shameful to suggest so, what is shameful is this government and its defenders being willing to sacrifice the lives of potentially millions of their fellows either for economic & political advantage, out of some misplaced sense of British Exceptionalism, or both. What is shameful is the fact the UK government's grotesque so-called strategy is putting people like my 92 year old grandad at extreme and unnecessary risk.

Prof. Donald is a Behavioural Psychologist, not an epidemiologist, and I trust you will be able to back up your claim that "just about every leading epidemiology expert in the UK" is behind the CMO & CSO, given I've seen several journalists on twitter stating they haven't been able to find one single independent medical expert willing to back them on the record. Meanwhile my "shameful" argument is backed by the current head of the WHO, all the WHO's experts, the former head of the WHO Anthony Costello(who details the problems with the government's approach here ), the former Director of Public Health John Ashton, the national science and medical advisors of literally every other nation dealing with this virus who are all adopting the WHO's strategy of severe short-term containment by banning large gatherings, social distancing, school closures, mass-testing, and stringent contact tracing, and even the private advice being received by the people disingenuously defending the PM's eugenics experiment in public(for example the Mail and Telegraph, who will "back Boris" on their front pages while in private send their staff to work from home because, to quote a leaked internal memo from the Mail, "official government advice is no longer adequate to safeguard our staff").

The UK government's approach is driven by either ideology or incompetence, and I can only hope enough people and private organisations recognise that and take action on their own that the government's hand is forced before too many preventable deaths occur.

12 minutes ago, Yodhrin said:

It is absolutely not shameful to suggest so, what is shameful is this government and its defenders being willing to sacrifice the lives of potentially millions of their fellows either for economic & political advantage, out of some misplaced sense of British Exceptionalism, or both. What is shameful is the fact the UK government's grotesque so-called strategy is putting people like my 92 year old grandad at extreme and unnecessary risk.

Prof. Donald is a Behavioural Psychologist, not an epidemiologist, and I trust you will be able to back up your claim that "just about every leading epidemiology expert in the UK" is behind the CMO & CSO, given I've seen several journalists on twitter stating they haven't been able to find one single independent medical expert willing to back them on the record. Meanwhile my "shameful" argument is backed by the current head of the WHO, all the WHO's experts, the former head of the WHO Anthony Costello(who details the problems with the government's approach here ), the former Director of Public Health John Ashton, the national science and medical advisors of literally every other nation dealing with this virus who are all adopting the WHO's strategy of severe short-term containment by banning large gatherings, social distancing, school closures, mass-testing, and stringent contact tracing, and even the private advice being received by the people disingenuously defending the PM's eugenics experiment in public(for example the Mail and Telegraph, who will "back Boris" on their front pages while in private send their staff to work from home because, to quote a leaked internal memo from the Mail, "official government advice is no longer adequate to safeguard our staff").

The UK government's approach is driven by either ideology or incompetence, and I can only hope enough people and private organisations recognise that and take action on their own that the government's hand is forced before too many preventable deaths occur.

What's shameful is the divisive politics of the UK, and the way we seem to think now is the time for debate and twist reasonable comments (e.g. you disputing my point that there aren't any leading epidemiologists saying we can stop Covid-19 in its tracks in the UK.)

So I'm going to bow out.

On 3/14/2020 at 11:59 AM, Jedirev said:

What's shameful is the divisive politics of the UK, and the way we seem to think now is the time for debate and twist reasonable comments (e.g. you disputing my point that there aren't any leading epidemiologists saying we can stop Covid-19 in its tracks in the UK.)

So I'm going to bow out.

Yes you do that, it's the decent thing to do when you can't actually address the gigantic gaping holes in your argument, although you probably should have done it prior to your utterly transparent attempt to move the goalposts about your claims - not speaking out against something is not the same thing as supporting it. Oh, and shockaroonie, today we have news that the super-duper-best-evar-totes-more-accurate-than-everyone-else's modelling on which the government's ridiculous and murderous policy is based has drastically underestimated the infection rates for Covid-19 in the UK. Which of course even then might be an under-estimate given the genuinely abysmal rate of testing here. But sure, literally every other country dealing with this is wrong, only we have experts that really know what they're doing.

Another fun bit of news is claims an Israeli firm may be able to "tweak" a SARS vaccine they've been working on for years to be effective against Covid-19, which would radically improve the timetable for a deployable vaccine to potentially a matter of months, thus rendering the entire already flimsy logical basis for the government's plan - that we should let lots of people die now because lots of people *might* die later come winter time - completely irrelevant. We sure will look clever if that bears out.

On 3/13/2020 at 9:28 AM, Ralgon said:

You leave anti vaxxers out of this, in the next few years they are going to become the solution to human population sustainability...

They have a demo version of a world without vaccines 😂

On 3/13/2020 at 10:18 PM, syrath said:

On the grand scale of things , it's far from being a global killer that the media makes it out to be, but it's not prudent to just ignore it and say it's just another virus, or a government conspiracy theory, one in which China, USA , Italy, Korea all set up , knowing it will destabilise the world economy on a grand scale.

Oh, it is.

It is estimated that 20-70% of the world population will catch it, which gives us 1.5 - 5 billion people. With an expected mortality rate of 2%, we end up with 30-100 milion casualties.

3 hours ago, costi said:

Oh, it is.

It is estimated that 20-70% of the world population will catch it, which gives us 1.5 - 5 billion people. With an expected mortality rate of 2%, we end up with 30-100 milion casualties.

That isn't a global killer though , Spanish flu managed to 5% of the world population, never mind a 5% mortality rate, and this was in a world with no air transport. Panicking at this point is not going to help though, and the media aren't exactly helping. I went to the supermarket a few days ago and no dried pasta was on the shelves.

Supply chains are not going to be affected (yet) so people buying months supply worth of pasta is only hurting the people who buy week to week, IE the richer people now have a year's stock of dried pasta and toilet roll, and the poor may now have to do without until stocks are back in (probably in a week).

I’m going to ignore the bulk of the discussion about the politics and intricacies of the whole situation and just observe you better expect this to never go away. Not unless we can get the pathogen to a point where it can’t reach any new hosts when it expires. Hot weather won’t solve it. It will still be here for GenCon. It will still be here for Worlds.

I would plan on basically doing nothing for all of this year, and possibly not much early 2021 either. The Spanish flu picked up again that fall after the warmer months.

Am I scared of the virus? No not really: very low mortality rate and eventually it’ll work its way as far as it’s going to make. Am I scared of how society reacts to the lockdown/containment measures combined with the excessive fear being pumped up by the media? ****, I’m terrified. Of the people, not the disease.

20 hours ago, ScummyRebel said:

I’m going to ignore the bulk of the discussion about the politics and intricacies of the whole situation and just observe you better expect this to never go away. Not unless we can get the pathogen to a point where it can’t reach any new hosts when it expires. Hot weather won’t solve it. It will still be here for GenCon. It will still be here for Worlds.

I would plan on basically doing nothing for all of this year, and possibly not much early 2021 either. The Spanish flu picked up again that fall after the warmer months.

Since you have absolutely no facts to support anything you're saying, I wouldn't just throw out random opinions.

I get that everyone wants to have a take on this, but you are part of the problem. Stop.

51 minutes ago, Sekac said:

Since you have absolutely no facts to support anything you're saying, I wouldn't just throw out random opinions.

I get that everyone wants to have a take on this, but you are part of the problem. Stop.

Actually it's not uncommon for a pandemic to have a second spike of cases. It's not a given , but it has happened.

My high school buddie's in-laws, in this delightful anecdote, kinda sum up why I left my home area. The names have been changed. We'll call my friend "Steve" and his wife "Jane". Steve sent me this email.

So. Jane went to visit her family this weekend because her sister is getting married and the bridal shower was this weekend. One of the bridesmaids literally said she was “offended” that Jane suggested postponing. After all, they had spent, collectively, $150 on food for this thing. So she went, and they followed none of the protocols for distancing despite there being 40 people there with half of them over 60. There was a lady at the bridal shower in her 90’s. Jane’s family complained non-stop about how all this caution was stupid, and the media was stupid, and watching the news, I kid you not, “lets the [bad luck] in”. Not just the old people but the bridesmaids were all “putting it on [fate]”. I do not understand what is so difficult about staying at home for a little bit. Obviously if your income is disrupted by not working, of course that’s bad. But they all went to a greasy diner this morning cuz they’re "not gonna let the stupid virus stop them".

Now my question is, WHY THE HECK DID JANE GO? She knew better.

2 hours ago, Sekac said:

Since you have absolutely no facts to support anything you're saying, I wouldn't just throw out random opinions.

I get that everyone wants to have a take on this, but you are part of the problem. Stop.

I have past pandemics as a historical trend. While it’s not a 100% guarantee to the point I’d bet my life on it, I am rather sure because while our ability to treat people and reduce death has gone up, the ability to prevent spread is pretty abysmal. And it won’t change because of the reality of life.

23 hours ago, syrath said:

That isn't a global killer though , Spanish flu managed to 5% of the world population, never mind a 5% mortality rate, and this was in a world with no air transport. Panicking at this point is not going to help though, and the media aren't exactly helping. I went to the supermarket a few days ago and no dried pasta was on the shelves.

Supply chains are not going to be affected (yet) so people buying months supply worth of pasta is only hurting the people who buy week to week, IE the richer people now have a year's stock of dried pasta and toilet roll, and the poor may now have to do without until stocks are back in (probably in a week).

You didn't factor in the additional deaths due to an overwhelmed health system not being able to treat other sick people. We are already cancelling non emergency surgery in the UK.