Coronavirus vs AW Community

[Haswell 294]

I think this thread has been way too late in the making. Hope everyone is staying safe and hunkered down at home!

My city just imposed a ban on public gathering. McDonalds are closed, bars are closed, people being asked to stay at home as much as possible. Despite all that we've only partially closed our borders earlier this week, and we're facing a second wave outbreak due to everyone arriving from last minute flights before the border closure.

2020 is awful.

[TeyKey1 119]

Here in Switzerland we're in the same situation since two weeks now.

Doing my studies at home now with virtual classrooms and stuff like that. Feels very uncommon. But a good thing is that lots of people are caring and try to make good and reasonable trade-offs in this regard.

Let's see where this goes but so far I'm not enjoying 2020 either.

[BumbaX 8]

In my country, Italy, everyone is compelled to stay at home unless he has very good reasons to do other way, like going out for buying food, and all the schools are closed as well as many not essential factories and shops, and it is so since a couple of weeks.

I think that many countries had underestimated the problem, at least until it become evident with the contagion beginning to spread among the population. They thought that it was some one else problem while the virus ignores borders and citizenship and the earlier measures to limit or at least delay its spreading are adopted the better it is.

Stay safe, avoid every not necessary contact with other people, do what you can to boost your immune system, maybe adopting an healthier diet. It seems that a person below 60 years that is not already suffering of some pathologies has a very little chance to die for that virus, but anyway he can be a vehicle for it even if he will survive. 

I hope that at least what is happening will make the humanity rethink about many things, like how the more globalized is the system the more the problems of one becomes also the problems of everybody else, that is time for humanity to see lately the human species as a whole going beyond nationalism and a too selfish and greedy attitude. But probably it is only a dream of mine and as soon as the emergency will be over everything will continue as in ever was...

[Haswell 294]

My city (Hong Kong) had the benefit of being aware of the outbreak back in January, the general public had enough sense to immediately ramp up hygiene and mask usage. I don't have data right now, but I reckon our public awareness played a huge role in keeping HK in relatively good shape compared to other countries, despite our total lack of social distancing and border restrictions until recently.

The biggest issue so far has been the Chinese government downplaying the severity of the outbreak and misleading everyone into thinking it's not serious until earlier this month, when the initial epidemic blew into a full blown pandemic due to the lack of travel restrictions. And now we're here.

 

[HalldorKG 0]

Here in Finland things are slowly ramping up, one region has been made a restricted zone so no travel to from it without proper reasons. I live way up north in the arctic region so less impact here yet. I also live out in the middle of nowhere so crowding is usually not a thing except going to the store but that is managable.

Stay safe everyone!

[Pedestrian 4]

I'm staying in HCMC, VN and we just went into a soft lockdown. Heck 2020 went into effect with a bang. I wonder what April trailer and gameplay gonna be for the world.

[Haswell 294]

I do want to ask, how are everyone doing in terms of supplies and groceries? Social media and news tend to exaggerate the out-of-stock and panic buying situations, but I want to hear some firsthand accounts to know what is actually happening for people.

I'm still confused why people were panic buying toilet paper when there are so many other more important things, like disinfectant and cleaning supplies and face masks.

[BumbaX 8]

Probably they eat the toilet paper i suppose...

Even if i was born in the "civilized" half of the world that uses the toilet paper, and walks around with dirty butts (who would ever eat from a dish that was dirty with poop after only scrubbing it with some paper? water and soap is the proper way to clean poop) my parents thought me to wash myself instead of using the t.p. But yes, for some strange reason i can not understand toilet paper seems to be a real priority for most of the people, strange as it is.

Here, in a little village in the italian alps, with only 3 food shops and no supermarket, for now there is no shortage of food. But yesterday i could not find my favorite brand of flour, with high protein content, good to make pizza. And i like to make pizza very often. It seems that in Italy in this quarantine days everybody is cooking pizza and I that do it almost on a regular basis, pay the consequences. Still i can make pizza with good results with a more ordinary flour, so i am not worried, the only thing is that in this local mountain shops everything is much more costly then in the supermarkets, i spend almost twice to buy the same things. I used to go to the nearest town roughly once in a week for the big shopping and to buy locally only few things, but at now it is no more possible as i can leave my village only in cases of proved necessity, and to get a better deal buying food is not so. 

[HalldorKG 0]

There has been some panic buying here in Rovaniemi, Finland. Heard about similar from other parts of the country as well.

People bulk buying toilet paper(and then kitchen paper), canned/dry goods and baking ingredients.

My guess on the whole toilet paper thing is that a large portion of people cough with their asses...or are just being panicking idiots.

Some people have also been buying up medical supplies and getting way more prescription meds than they would need for a quarantine(most insane case i heard of was people buying 3 years worth of their prescription meds).
GF comes home every day with new stories of people being idiots(she is a pharmacist).

My prediction is that it may get worse before it gets better(in terms of human behaviour), these pandemics should be teaching us how we need to change how we do so many things.
But many just want to stick to the old routines no matter what...

[Haswell 294]

Another 50+ infected today to add to the numbers.

HK has enacted health ordinances to mandate restaurants to have no more than 4 seats per table, and tables must be at least 1.5m apart from each other. My gut says it wouldn't help too much, but I'm hoping I'm wrong.

[Bolgani 0]

At this writing things aren't TOO bad here in Central Texas - we don't (yet) have the numbers of infected we've seen in New York City, probably because we're not as crowded and don't rely on crowded subway trains and buses to get around. Restaurants are closed except for drive-through and takeout, schools are closed, most non-essential businesses are closed. People have been "ordered" to stay home and shelter in place except for things like medical appointments, groceries, and patronizing "essential" businesses. Banks are open to drive-up customers, but their lobbies are closed except by appointment. (Some people may need to deal personally with a banker or access their safety deposit box.)

There are spot shortages of some items in the grocery stores - isopropanol, disinfecting wipes, bleach, laundry soap, many paper goods, and some staples like flour are frequently sold out. Quantities are being limited in many cases (for example, 1 package of toilet paper to a customer). The big local grocery store chain is pre-sanitizing the shopping carts as well as limiting the number of people in the store - it's a big store, so there are seldom lines to get in.

Produce appears to be in good supply, and things like cereal, salad dressing, bottled water, soda, meat, eggs, bread, and poultry are readily available, although you may not get your favorite brand or type of some ordinarily common item.

So far, all the shoppers and shopkeepers seem to be taking this in stride, and I have not witnessed or heard about any disorderly conduct on the part of customers.

One bright spot: Gasoline prices have dropped - today I paid $1.75/gallon to fill up my tank.

[Haswell 294]

Everyone still alive?

School and university closures are now extended until next month, which means most students will effectively lose the entire semester and quite possibly miss out on exams, depending on how the contingencies are organized. This is especially hard on university students where lots of them are expected to graduate into medschool and the like, but now nobody knows what will happen yet.

From my friends in other places, they tell me the panic buying seem to be dying down a bit as stores started imposing purchase limits on most essential items like cleaning supplies and groceries. The biggest concern I have right now are that the essential workers (factory workers, delivery folks, storekeepers, etc) are still braving the epidemic to keep everyone else well-supplied, if they fall sick or otherwise can't go to work the shortages might get worse. Kudos to them for holding up the rest of society for as long as they can.

[Travlla 5]

Australia is in partial lock down, states have closed borders ,  has been stressful owning a business , but government announced a package today that should see us thru this, stay safe and healthy everyone 

 

 

[Schlock 11]

Here in Croatia we are pretty much completely locked down. No public transport, everything non-essential is closed, you aren't allowed to leave your place of residence unless you have a special permit and so on. Life isn't really pretty. In addition to everything, a week ago my city got hit by a quite significant earthquake and a lot of people lost their homes. Then, day after the earthquake, we got a snowstorm. In late march. Someone upstairs really, really hates us.

On the other hand, all that hard lockdown is probably worth it, we just went over 1000 confirmed cases and 7 dead, and while that number will most certainly rise, it's still not as apocalyptic as it is in Italy, Spain or USA.

I'm not having fun at all.

Stay strong.