Coronavirus

[Rommie]

Hah, well the guys paying for it might cancel my plane ticket is the trouble... and just got a note from my Virginia conference in late April that they're considering doing the same thing too. Lame.

And yeah, it was funny how yesterday there were prospective PhD students visiting, and no one shook anyone's hand. It does make me wonder if we get long-term societal effects out of it all- I heard a lot of companies are scrambling to give their workers more ways to work at home, for example, so I wonder if that's going to get more popular in the long run (because once the infrastructure is in place, why not work from home a few days a week?).

[geonuc]

I would not mind if this led to a shift in our culture away from shaking hands as a greeting. That's always bothered me. I'm going to stop doing it myself, just offer a wave if anyone extends their hand.

You get some weird looks on the golf course, I can tell you that. It's awkward having to explain why you don't want to shake hands.

[Rommie]

So F and I went to a few open houses this weekend (virus or not, we might be homebuyers y'all, have you SEEN that mortgage rate) and no one shook my hand! Like pumpkinpi, I totally approve of the new style. That or we can become Japanese and bow at each other.

Harvard announced on Friday that all international travel is banned, and most domestic travel, and gatherings over 100 people, to April 30. Personal international travel is not yet banned however, so I can still go pick up my PhD assuming Leiden hasn't done similar (though talking to my adviser, I think he will ask me to work at home two weeks after- fair enough). Fingers are super crossed on this because geez guys do I want to get that diploma- canceled conferences kind of suck, but rescheduling a life event is FAR more stressful for me, and enough to risk flying/ working from home a bit.

Strange times, guys.

[SciFiFisher]

So F and I went to a few open houses this weekend (virus or not, we might be homebuyers y'all, have you SEEN that mortgage rate) and no one shook my hand! Like pumpkinpi, I totally approve of the new style. That or we can become Japanese and bow at each other.

Harvard announced on Friday that all international travel is banned, and most domestic travel, and gatherings over 100 people, to April 30. Personal international travel is not yet banned however, so I can still go pick up my PhD assuming Leiden hasn't done similar (though talking to my adviser, I think he will ask me to work at home two weeks after- fair enough). Fingers are super crossed on this because geez guys do I want to get that diploma- canceled conferences kind of suck, but rescheduling a life event is FAR more stressful for me, and enough to risk flying/ working from home a bit.

Strange times, guys.

Frankly, I can see why you want to pick it up in person. You EARNED that damn thing. You actually had to defeat a FREAKING enemy to win this.

[Rommie]

So F and I went to a few open houses this weekend (virus or not, we might be homebuyers y'all, have you SEEN that mortgage rate) and no one shook my hand! Like pumpkinpi, I totally approve of the new style. That or we can become Japanese and bow at each other.

Harvard announced on Friday that all international travel is banned, and most domestic travel, and gatherings over 100 people, to April 30. Personal international travel is not yet banned however, so I can still go pick up my PhD assuming Leiden hasn't done similar (though talking to my adviser, I think he will ask me to work at home two weeks after- fair enough). Fingers are super crossed on this because geez guys do I want to get that diploma- canceled conferences kind of suck, but rescheduling a life event is FAR more stressful for me, and enough to risk flying/ working from home a bit.

Strange times, guys.

Frankly, I can see why you want to pick it up in person. You EARNED that damn thing. You actually had to defeat a FREAKING enemy to win this.

You don't understand- there is literally no way for me to not pick it up, because there is a ceremonial defense involved too. It's not like in every other country on Earth where they can send it to me in the mail. If I don't do it next month, I just have to do it in God knows how many more months. Lord knows what Leiden did during the Plague, but the point is it's a system still set up assuming all the Dutch PhDs hang out a day's journey from the university when they finish.

My department btw just canceled all visits and seminars etc from non-institute people. We are now joking about whether a Harvard person from another department will have to cancel or not. I also find it dumb bc right now even MIT people are excluded, and we literally live in the same city.

[Swift]

I'm back from vacation, photos posted on Facebook.

My employer has also banned international travel for work and has pretty close to banned domestic travel. Anyone who is ill is supposed to work from home.

Meanwhile, I have a little sniffle and some post nasal drip... I'm pretty convinced it is just that the pollen count is now solidly "medium" for my worst (maple), but decide to be a good boy and email my boss should I come into work tomorrow (my scheduled first day back). The answer is "no", not with my sniffle. My allergies could last for months. And while most people like to work from home, I hate it; I don't get anything done. I feel like I'm being punished.

[Rommie]

It's amazing how quickly it became socially unacceptable to cough in public too- quite the feat considering it's cold season now that it's getting warm. My personal one is I'm never sick, but do need to blow my nose after going outside when it's cold pretty much every time (apparently it's condensation?) and people give me the death look now for that. Whatever.

Harvard has now told all the students to not come back after spring break next week, and they will be moving to online classes. That and now we are banned to all gatherings over 25 people, and "highly encouraged" to work from home. I have a Chandra proposal due for March 17, so gonna power through that, but after we might just be decamping to New Hampshire to watch the ice melt as there's just no point of being here other than a disease vector. (All the other postdocs are looking up warm weather destinations because apparently it's like $200 right now to fly to California. To be fair, if I was from Cali, I'd probably go there a month too!)

Last night we just barely got our Astronomy on Tap event through under the wire, aka we were capped at 70 people so decided to go ahead. I was one of the speakers and always enjoy giving my talk, but made sure to enjoy it extra this time as I'm sure it's going to be the last public talk for awhile. And it was interesting how you could just tell everyone was a little uncomfortable sitting close to others.

[geonuc]

I'm back from vacation, photos posted on Facebook.

My employer has also banned international travel for work and has pretty close to banned domestic travel. Anyone who is ill is supposed to work from home.

Meanwhile, I have a little sniffle and some post nasal drip... I'm pretty convinced it is just that the pollen count is now solidly "medium" for my worst (maple), but decide to be a good boy and email my boss should I come into work tomorrow (my scheduled first day back). The answer is "no", not with my sniffle. My allergies could last for months. And while most people like to work from home, I hate it; I don't get anything done. I feel like I'm being punished.

I saw a chart from the CDC on facebook this morning (but now can't find it because FB's algorithms and searchability suck) that compared cold, flu and COVID-19 symptoms. The coronavirus seems not to cause runny of stuffy nose.

Edit: it was on the March For Science Facebook page and apparently isn't a chart from CDC or WHO but one that purports to compile symptom info from those sources. So, maybe not accurate.

[Rommie]

That was weird- just got off the phone with a Boston Globe reporter who wanted to know more about the coronavirus effects at Harvard. I think he was mainly interested in effects on teaching, so couldn't help much there, but sent him on to the institute director.

[SciFiFisher]

In New York (near the city) they have deployed the national guard to help with a mile radius quarantine of New Rochelle. If this were a zombie outbreak movie this is the part where everything goes to shit.

[Rommie]

Well, I sure didn't expect when I started this thread ~2 weeks ago that it would come to this, but I told F to come after work so we could grab my monitors and plants and this is my last day working from the office for the foreseeable future. I mean, no one likes the crabby old lady astronomer who works the office next to mine except me, but I don't want to get her or any of the other elderly literal geniuses around here sick, and we have space at home.

It's weird though, I understand why and know it's not a "goodbye" but a "so long," but I'm still a little sad about seeing everything around me shutting down. It's also a strange contrast with those first beautiful days of spring- I think this will be a spring to remember for sure. And yes, I know I'm lucky and I can still do my science from home and all that, but... doesn't mean this extrovert can't be a little bummed out.

Also, on a random note, after discussion we agreed to still go down to Florida this weekend, as my sister is too, and this is probably the last time everyone will still see each other/ easy to self isolate there, so should be fine as long as we Purell at the airport. However, months ago F bought tickets Sunday night to the Dropkick Murphys in Boston Sunday evening, so we were gonna take the morning flight back that day. BUT we of course decided this is probably not the best time to go hang out in a crowded room with a few thousand drunken Bostonians, and not like Dropkick Murphy's won't be back, so we agreed to skip the concert. So hey, time to check the change fee on that morning flight... still $250 pp. Check the flight back for a one way on the evening flight, and guess what I see?

THIRTY EIGHT DOLLARS RIGHT NOW FORT MYERS TO BOSTON ON SUNDAY. Incredible. I wonder how many airlines will go bankrupt before this is all over.

[SciFiFisher]

And we are officially in a recession although no one is really calling it. Trump banning all travel from Europe for 30 days did not help the airlines I am thinking. Just remember... the last person on the board should turn off the lights and lock the doors.

[lady_*nix]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... s-covid-19

TL;DR the US is fumbling this and we'll be lucky if we "only" do as badly as the PRC is doing.

Related, I just want to throw this in: remember how emergency rooms in the US are almost always overfull, people waiting for hours, people having to go elsewhere? Just as a completely normal thing? Now imagine how that will work with a 3% lethal flu running rampant. Our medical system is already barely able to keep up with the demands on it.

I just can't stop thinking about how many people I know are going to die.

[Swift]

I was rather bummed initially about being forced to work from home, but I'm getting used to it, and maybe it is a good thing. Things are getting a little scary around here.
Ohio has only a few cases so far, but they have now closed all the schools starting Monday for 3 weeks, all the parks, museums, concerts, shows (including a train show I was going to go to this weekend) etc. are shutdown, all the cities and counties around here are declaring states of emergency (though pointing out it is mostly so they can buy things without bidding), etc., etc.

[lady_*nix]

Notes from Mass General Hospital's grand rounds, via an acquaintance who said people were free to share this:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vo9 ... gra7E/edit

Got an email forwarded from a physician in Lombardi (Italy; 10-14 days ahead of us) saying hospitals were at 200% capacity -- stopped all surgery -- sending people with strokes home -- all surgical suites converted into ICU facilities -- people above a certain age not even being given access to ventilators -- they have similar facilities to us -- still haven’t hit the peak there yet -- healthcare workers completely overwhelmed; even opthamalogists and pathologists are managing ventilators

Also, this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/CoronavirusUK/ ... s_disease/

We in the US are currently where at where Italy was a week ago. We see nothing to say we will be substantially different. 40-70% of the US population will be infected over the next 12-18 months. After that level you can start to get herd immunity. Unlike flu this is entirely novel to humans, so there is no latent immunity in the global population.[We used their numbers to work out a guesstimate of deaths— indicating about 1.5 million Americans may die. The panelists did not disagree with our estimate. This compares to seasonal flu’s average of 50K Americans per year. Assume 50% of US population, that’s 160M people infected. With 1% mortality rate that's 1.6M Americans die over the next 12-18 months.]

This is going to get extremely, extremely bad. More so with supply chain disruptions, people with other conditions not being able to get care, seeking care for other conditions becoming itself risky as hospitals get flooded with contagious patients. This virus also just lasts; it takes 2-3 weeks of severe flu-like symptoms to fully run its course even in healthy people who survive. Which means big chunks of society will be knocked out of commission at any given time, fucking up and slowing down everything.

TBH my brain is kind of blanking on just what level of horror scenario this is.

Edit: also this might give the Trump administration a handy excuse to suspend elections. Assuming Cheeto doesn't catch the bug himself, which he very well might: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/liv ... ve-updates

[SciFiFisher]

It's highly unlikely that any scenario other than the complete collapse of the U.S. would allow the fat orange Cheeto to suspend elections. Sadly, the coronavirus may actually bring down this administration when nothing else could. It remains to be seen of course. I have hopes that the actual mortality rate will be much lower than projected. Of course we may not know that also. The reason I say that is there are( probably) a considerable number of people who are going to or have caught the virus but will never be tested and they will never become ill enough to get treatment.

So far one thing we do know is that it is less contagious than the flu. Which is fortunate because they think it *might* be slightly more fatal than the flu. Part of what makes it so scary is that currently there is no herd immunity. I.e. Humans have not previously dealt with this virus and we don't have any specific immunity.

The good news is that we don't seem to be headed for an extinction level event like the bubonic plague was. The bad news is that even one death is tragic. A million or more is a huge tragedy.

[lady_*nix]

@Fisher

I... kind of don't think that's the case, re complete collapse of the US. Both the institutions of government and people's faith in them have been hugely weakened over the last couple of decades even before Cheeto got into office, and regardless, all it takes is enough people saying "Eh fuck it whatever" and letting it happen. So far a lot of people have been willing to do that, though thankfully not as many as during the first rise of fascism.

Though I'm getting the weird feeling that faith in institutions and civil servants is increasing again a bit, now that people are being forced to confront head-on why they need a working state and working social services. But IDK that might not be an accurate perspective.

Re: contagion. Yeah, the MGH notes talk about the herd immunity aspect. Case mortality is probably much lower than the 3.5% figure WHO's been giving, but even if it's like 0.5% that puts it in the territory of illnesses like malaria, especially considering the long duration of symptoms. And even if we flatten the curve a whole bunch, this pandemic is going to last a while barring unforeseen medical breakthroughs, since herd immunity only starts being a thing once more than 40% of the population have had it and developed resistance. And that's also assuming new strains that bypass said resistance don't develop, that effective immune resistance is actually possible, that immune system recognition of it doesn't provoke a lethal cytokine storm even more reliably, etc.

Panicking is stupid, but only because panicking is always stupid. Fear and caution seem pretty reasonable to me.

[lady_*nix]

https://twitter.com/ronaldklain/status/ ... 5465324545

Sleepy Joe Biden was in charge of the H1N1 Swine Flu epidemic which killed thousands of people. The response was one of the worst on record. Our response is one of the best, with fast action of border closings & a 78% Approval Rating, the highest on record. His was lowest!

Dude makes Nicholas Maduro sound grounded and on point.

[SciFiFisher]

@Fisher

I... kind of don't think that's the case, re complete collapse of the US. Both the institutions of government and people's faith in them have been hugely weakened over the last couple of decades even before Cheeto got into office, and regardless, all it takes is enough people saying "Eh fuck it whatever" and letting it happen. So far a lot of people have been willing to do that, though thankfully not as many as during the first rise of fascism.

Though I'm getting the weird feeling that faith in institutions and civil servants is increasing again a bit, now that people are being forced to confront head-on why they need a working state and working social services. But IDK that might not be an accurate perspective.

Re: contagion. Yeah, the MGH notes talk about the herd immunity aspect. Case mortality is probably much lower than the 3.5% figure WHO's been giving, but even if it's like 0.5% that puts it in the territory of illnesses like malaria, especially considering the long duration of symptoms. And even if we flatten the curve a whole bunch, this pandemic is going to last a while barring unforeseen medical breakthroughs, since herd immunity only starts being a thing once more than 40% of the population have had it and developed resistance. And that's also assuming new strains that bypass said resistance don't develop, that effective immune resistance is actually possible, that immune system recognition of it doesn't provoke a lethal cytokine storm even more reliably, etc.

Panicking is stupid, but only because panicking is always stupid. Fear and caution seem pretty reasonable to me.

Yes, it's amazing how many people will tell you how worthless the government is until they really need it. One of the things that is at least reassuring is that in the absence of any real leadership from the OC and his administration a lot of leaders at the local and state level are stepping up and making the calls. School districts are closing, almost all the sports venues are going without fans, New York, California, Washington, and some other states have enacted emergency measures and are guaranteeing basic services and income for people who might have to stay homesick. It helps that California already had a sick leave law and system set up through the unemployment process.

[Swift]

Well panicking may be stupid, but that doesn't stop my brain and body. I am having panic attacks about this a couple of times a day; when I'm not busy with those I just go on with life.

My wife and I are both in multiple of the high-risk categories: multiple chronic medical problems, old, and she is immunosuppressed (Humira). We are avoiding crowds for the most part, though we went out for dinner last night (that wasn't a crowd, the restaurant was empty) and all that stuff. But there are also too many reports that eventually everyone is going to get this, so are we just delaying the inevitable? And we both have colds and/or allergies at the moment, so that's just complicating things.

Anyone ever read the book On The Beach? Excellent book, very well written, but really depressing. (spoiler alert) I feel like the Australians, just waiting for the end of the world.

And no, I don't really think it will be the end of the world, or the US, or anything that bad. But I'm really worried about me and mine.

[Swift]

Speaking of toilet paper....

So we went shopping yesterday, it was just time for our monthly "big" shopping. I expected the TP and the cleaning supplies to be empty, but there was almost no meat - no chicken, no turkey, very little beef (fair about of pork, I guess not good for hoarding?). Frozen veggies hit hard too, though there were still supplies. Went to a second store and did get the meats we needed.

[lady_*nix]

@Swift

offers safe virtual hugs, if wanted

Yeah. The way healthy people act like this is Just Not A Big Deal really makes me want to scream. Like, stay the fuck home y'all - a high percentage of cases in healthy young people have mild or no symptoms, and the virus is most contagious before symptoms show. Learn fucking social responsibility. arglbarglgrrr.

I'm not in a spectacularly high risk group myself (though still elevated, asthma + autoimmune shit yay), but like. Everyone knows someone who is at high risk. This shit is not okay.

Stay home. Wash your hands. Stay 6+ feet away from people. Use teleconferencing. It's not fucking hard. Touch starvation sucks, but it's better than friends and family and strangers winding up in mass graves.

[lady_*nix]

Meanwhile, Cheeto is aiming to get the US exclusive rights to the vaccine a German company is developing:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... us-vaccine

So the US can, you know, dictate which other countries have access. And probably so that access can be restricted internally. ("Oh you're trans? No vaccine for you, your dad should have killed you anyway trolololol.") Why carry out genocide with soldiers when disease and capitalism will do it for you?

If he pulls this off and history actually records it, Trump is going to be remembered in the same kinds of terms as Stalin or Mao Zedong. But that will be small comfort to the hundreds of millions who will die by his actions.

[Swift]

@Swift

offers safe virtual hugs, if wanted

Yeah. The way healthy people act like this is Just Not A Big Deal really makes me want to scream. Like, stay the fuck home y'all - a high percentage of cases in healthy young people have mild or no symptoms, and the virus is most contagious before symptoms show. Learn fucking social responsibility. arglbarglgrrr.

I'm not in a spectacularly high risk group myself (though still elevated, asthma + autoimmune shit yay), but like. Everyone knows someone who is at high risk. This shit is not okay.

Stay home. Wash your hands. Stay 6+ feet away from people. Use teleconferencing. It's not fucking hard. Touch starvation sucks, but it's better than friends and family and strangers winding up in mass graves.

Thanks for the hugs, but I actually haven't seen anyone acting like this isn't a big deal. If anything, people seem a little nicer at the moment.

[SciFiFisher]

On a more optimistic note. Not everyone will get it. I think the last ballpark number I have heard is that approximately half the population will contract some form of Covid 19. The social distancing and other steps are not really intended to prevent you from ever catching the virus. They are intended to slow down the spread and buy time. Time to give the medical system a chance to catch up. Time to treat people who currently have moderate to severe forms of the virus without overwhelming the medical system. Time to figure out effective treatments and a vaccine.

There are some good models and articles out there that show why this "flattening of the curve" is a good thing to do.

Meanwhile, even more leaders are taking it upon themselves to take steps. Mayors, county executives, and governors are placing moratoriums on various activities. The latest action is to ban dining in at restaurants.