How concered are you about the spread of coronavirus?
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- By the end of 2026, how useful do you think agentic/multi-agent AI systems will actually be in your daily work or personal projects? Posted on March 11th, 2026 | 28 comments
Only Concerned About Fear (Score:4, Insightful)
Even in Wuhan itself, the virus has only infected around .07% of the population, and only about .01% of those actually had a serious case that warranted hospitalization. The chances of me or anybody I know getting the virus is quite small. However, the fear has already caused the stock market to drop and any number of knock on effects. No telling what people will do out of irrational fear.
Re:Only Concerned About Fear (Score:5, Interesting)
On the plus side, there may actually be some net benefits. A lot of people are currently getting to grips with remote working and probably making a success of it, which could be another nail in the "9-5 office hours" coffin (or whatever your typical local equivalent is), and there's probably a similar upswing in the use of teleconferencing as well. The end result of all that in China appears to be fairly substantial reduction in the consumption of carbon based fuels, which should add up to a substantial dip in global greenhouse gas emissions if similar measures start to happen elsewhere in volume. Who knows, if it does turn into a true pandemic, maybe the survivors will even find that "2C by 2050" target achievable again?
I just hope Ndemic are taking notes; the next version of Pandemic should be awesome!
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And as we all know, "this guy" on youtube is always correct.
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Re:Only Concerned About Fear (Score:5, Insightful)
The Chinese government isn't really known for panic and irrational fear. If they're willing to wreck their economy (even only temporarily) to stall the virus, people should definitely be concerned.
Re:Only Concerned About Fear (Score:5, Insightful)
What should really concern people is how slowly China's factories are coming back online.
The Chinese government isn't really known for panic and irrational fear. If they're willing to wreck their economy (even only temporarily) to stall the virus, people should definitely be concerned.
It won't just be wrecking their economy. The company I contract to has major projects both in China and for components manufactured in China for other locations around the world. They are already sending out official letters to clients saying that because of the situation in China that they can't make contractual obligations. We just haven't had the public statements similar to recently put out by Apple. Pretty well every large company around the world has some fingers in the China pie in some way or another - so what happens in China won't stay in China.
Re:Only Concerned About Fear (Score:4, Interesting)
It won't just be wrecking their economy. ... We just haven't had the public statements similar to recently put out by Apple. Pretty well every large company around the world has some fingers in the China pie in some way or another - so what happens in China won't stay in China.
Some of the analysts are starting to notice.
Word on the street is that even if everything went back to normal tomorrow we'd still be looking at major supply chain disruptions. And that we'll start seeing shortages of consumer goods (the big eye-opener to me was food packaging) in about six weeks.
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Re:Only Concerned About Fear (Score:5, Informative)
With a bit of luck, the containment effort will have slowed it down to the point where it skips this year's flu season and hopefully by next year we will have a vaccine.
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I thought there were 79,553 cases, not hospitalizations, and 2,628 deaths. That's a fatality rate of >3% of all cases.
https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis... [arcgis.com]
Don't have the link, but one expert said that it was transmitted like yearly influenza and 20 times more fatal. Last year, influenza infected 20-50 million in the US, and had 25-50,000 deaths (it's hard to calculate those numbers above the background deaths).
So if it came to the US, that would be 500,000-1 million deaths.
And there's no reason to think it w
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I thought there were 79,553 cases, not hospitalizations, and 2,628 deaths. That's a fatality rate of >3% of all cases.
Well, I think at the moment they are hospitalizing everyone whether or not they need it so it's probably close to the same. However, this is just the known cases there may be many many more cases where people are asymptomatic which, while it makes far harder to contain also means the fatality rate is a lot lower.
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I thought they were hospitalizing the worst cases and sending everyone else home.
They use different definitions for different purposes. Some cases are asymptomatic (at first). Some people are asymptomatic but positive on RNA testing, and in Wuhan Youtube videos, they send those people home to self-quarantine.
A clinical definition is generic flu symptoms plus pneumonia in a susceptible geographic region. Positive RNA test confirms it.
The main risk of COV-19 is pneumonia, confirmed on CT scan. The clinical in
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79,553 cases are of people with symptoms.
It's believed (eg from people getting out of those cruise ships) that MANY people who were infected are completely asymptomatic - which means that we actually have no idea of the number of people who get the virus but never show so much as a sniffle.
So 3% is the HIGHEST the fatality rate could be - maybe it's a hell of a lot less. Remember, in just a regular flu season, between 12,000 and 60,000 people die in the US alone.
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You're definitely wrong, and should ask your doctor to adjust your meds, or at least your tinfoil hat.
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Be sensible (Score:2)
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Re: Only Concerned About Fear (Score:4, Insightful)
Why not watch Italy's instead. There will be lots of deaths, mostly among the boomers.
If you're young, you should be afraid for your parents. 60% of cases requiring respiration are fatal. (I'm not going to link citations - don't trust me, go look for yourself.)
This virus will be known as the Boomer Killer. Some people will say it's justified for how they neglected our planet and our youth. It's already the attitude in Europe.
But this will affect everyone.
Please tell your parents you love them.
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If I put on my Doctor Evil hat for a moment.. Best way to kill two birds with one viral stone? Weaponize a virus that will kill the vast majority of people over, say, the age of 60, who are 'dead weight' anyway: a drain on the economy and on limited resources. Now all the money, housing, and pharma-medical resources being used by them can be used on young strong people who contribute to the economy. Meanwhile, the vast majority of older, experienced, wise people are
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Weaponize a virus that will kill the vast majority of people over, say, the age of 60, who are 'dead weight' anyway: a drain on the economy and on limited resources.
Dead weight??? Are you kidding. Its the over 60 crowd that has all the money. If they all keel off at once, it would collapse the economy; they're the consumer group with the most money to spend. As much as the Dr Evils like to twiddle their fingers sinisterly, capitalism can't function without consumers.
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To know why it's probably already too late to contain COVID-19 https://www.theatlantic.com/he... [theatlantic.com] is worth a read, but mostly I think you're MUCH too trusting of what Xi is saying. Short summary is that this is probably already a new endemic disease and I strongly suspect there are at least 10 times more infections than the Chinese have acknowledged so far.
Fortunately COVID-19 is rather similar to a nasty cold and a lot of people show only minor symptoms. That optimism is why I didn't pick the top option eve
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Actually you reminded me of an old story about how the Russians learned to understand the news in Soviet days. If there was news about plane crashes elsewhere in the world, it REALLY meant that there had been a plane crash "back in the USSR".
As it applies now, I think Xi has decided to downplay things until there's more bad news in the rest of the world. I think they know how bad it is, but they aren't telling anyone. They are just ignoring LOTS of sick people and working on the cover-up to come, mostly alo
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Yes, I've seen many reports about the virus lab near the first appearance of the disease, but I'm still hard-pressed to believe the worst rumors. Some clumsy researcher managed to throw a contaminated tissue in the regular garbage?
It's a shitty chinese knockoff of a BSL-4 lab (the Harvard professor who leaked how to build it was imprisoned for that leak.) It has a logo that's itself a shitty chinese knockoff of the Umbrella corp from the Resident Evil series. It's no doubt a shitty chinese knockoff of a bioweapon (thus the extremely low mortality rate and tard-tier genetic engineering of "let's cross the common cold with the shell of hiv.") You'd be pretty foolish to assume their shitty chinese biolab didn't have a leak (no proced
If you believe China has no secret labs ... (Score:2)
... you're insane.
This is the only OFFICIAL lab.
And having it pop up there, of all places, is waay too obvious.
This is like the "moon landing was a hoax" theory: If it had really be a hoax, the Russians wouls have *screamed* foul!
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Re: Only Concerned About Fear (Score:2)
They stopped the spread in wuhan by implementing complete lockdown with threat of imprisonment. If they stop the lockdown then the virus could spread like wildfire.
The virus has now spread to 30+ countries.
Iran has not brought the disease under control.
On average each person infects 2.6 other people.
The disease is spread by moisture in breath.
About 5% of people with covid19 have organ failure, about 2-3% die.
World health organisation is pretty much about to call this a pandemic.
The very least that will hap
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Look how well quarantining the cruise ships worked. Lockdowns just don't work unless you can pump all air through a MERV 13 or better filter, and sterilize anything that comes out of the lockdown.
This is a bad flu. Like a bad flu, if you're already old and sick, you're at risk. It doesn't even seem to be hitting children very hard, which is actually better than the flu.
There's a very good chance that you'll get COVID-19, as will most of the people you know. And just about everyone will be sick for a bit, th
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It's more like the Spanish flu, the death rate is currently about 3% and it's not just old people who are dying from this, a Chinese doctor aged 29 just died from it. If covid-19 starts infecting a sizeable percentage of any countries population no health service could cope, 10% of people become severely ill, 5% of people have organ failure.
China is throwing it's population to the wolves, it has decided it doesn't want to take a big economic hit from locking everything down. The result will be tens of milli
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Young healthy people die from the flu every year. See, e.g.:
https://www.dallasnews.com/new... [dallasnews.com]
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Put it this way, if you have 200 facebook friends who all caught this, about 10 of them would have multiple organ failure and 5 of them would die.
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The flu already kills millions every year. It's only if this is vastly more deadly that it will have the sort of impact that the Spanish flu had. And even if it does kill a whole lot of people, how many of those people would have succumbed to the regular flu or pneumonia instead anyway? And if it's spread over several years, will that even be noticeable?
Picking anecdotes and wild-ass guesses doesn't strengthen your position. Anything is possible. Sensible people talk about what's probable.
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There's no comparison with common flu, common flu doesn't make 10% of people critically ill, no countries health service could cope with covid-19 becoming wide-scale.
I haven't picked anecdotes, I've been paying close attention to how this has been playing out across the world. And I haven't been making wild-ass guesses. You comparing this to ordinary flu shows you don't know much about it.
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a Chinese doctor aged 29 just died from it.
I haven't picked anecdotes...
Do you even know what that word means?
There's no comparison with common flu, common flu doesn't make 10% of people critically ill....
Not at all. I mean, only 9%-10% of people over 65 are hospitalized with the flu every year.
I get that you want to spread FUD, but damn man. Could you at least do a better job of it? Go listen to some Fox News, I'm sure they're spinning up the FUD machine with all sorts of good talking points.
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How about rather than attacking me, you go read the news, see what WHO is saying about this, do some maths based on WHOs numbers. The shit is about to hit the fan, it's simply a matter of time.
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> only 9%-10% of people over 65 are hospitalized with the flu every year.
The issue here is that for those under 65, both the mortality rate and the hospitalisation rate is much much lower for flu — particularly because many cases of flu in the under 65s simply never get recorded, because for that age range simple/common flu is no big deal.
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While I think the cruise ship is intrinsically a terrible place for a quarantine, I think they might have done better if they could have reversed the air circulation system to continuously suck air out of the cabins. Not strong vacuum, but just keep the air moving out of the ship. Not sure what to do with the contaminated air, however. Maybe pump it deep into the water and let it get filtered on its way to the surface?
Having said that, I think that getting the passengers off of the ship and into a proper qu
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Not sure what to do with the contaminated air, however. Maybe pump it deep into the water and let it get filtered on its way to the surface?
No, just release it into the air, and keep people about a football field away from the ship. People have this ignorant notion that a virus can travel miles through the air before being breathed in. No, the virus will most likely be destroyed by UV sunlight. This coronavirus isn't really airborne; its transmitted by contact/spittle from humans. If you're in the same room, there's a great chance of contracting the virus. If you're at opposite ends of a gym/auditorium, there's almost no chance of contract
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I don't think we can yet be certain about the "robustness" of the coronovirus, though I am inclined to agree with what you wrote. I think the real experts in the transmission mechanisms are in China, and it is making me extremely nervous that they have stopped talking about the spread of Covid-19. Maybe Xi just wants us not to know how bad it is? I would not be a bit surprised if they suddenly said "80,000 cases? Whoops, we should have said 800,000." Actually, I think it is within their power to hide 8 mill
Jesus, fuck, are you braonwashed shitless. (Score:2)
Fuck-all os really happening.
Some people got sick. Big deal. A higher ratio of people die from the flu. Literally.
This is just fearmogering and 99% media view counts and profit craze.
And I'm rooting for the Corona virus, mind you! (Humanity is the world's worst planetary pathogen ever.)
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The very least that will happen is complete lockdown which will wreck the global economy, more likely 100 million will die.
I'm thinking the lockdown will be worse than the disease itself.
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Were you paid to spread that tripe? Now that it's hit South America, it's clearly time to declare the pandemic or move to Antarctica. Or both.
On a more optimistic note:
Maybe #COVID19 is the wrath of gawd sent to earth to stop the Trumpenberg Rallies where he spreads Trump Derangement Syndrome to his deranged followers?
Can you imagine a Trump rally with masks and red hats?
But can you imagine Trump canceling a rally just to protect the fools' health?
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It also perplexes me how otherwise smart people can only look at the results of something and ignore how those results were achieved.
"The virus has infected only .07% of the population..."- Yes- that's true, but maybe it has something to do with shutting the entire country down, canceling all public gatherings, and people wearing masks and washing their hands constantly?
Rather than just hand wave the problem away maybe we should look at actual facts?
"...only about .01% of those actually had a serious case t
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>>.01% of those actually had a serious case that warranted hospitalization
Please explain the established 2% mortality rate for those infected
Perhaps you are confused, or just lying
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The infection rate in Wuhan was based on mass quarantine of the entire city, so not very useful information.
Re: Only Concerned About Fear (Score:2)
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yes, this.
The virus will spread. Resistance is likely futile at this point.
This will become part of our viral lexicon for many years to come. Likely not as bad as many of the bugs already out there - ie norovirus, influenza.
If anything good comes of the current fear, perhaps early investment toward vaccine research. Then we can start irrationally fearing the vaccine - that's a much more comfortable fear that we are quite good at.
not enough ICU capacity (Score:2)
This might completely overload intensive care in developed countries.
Slightly (Score:5, Insightful)
My mum's in her 80's and there's no vaccine at the moment so I'm a bit worried about that, as I would be if she missed her flu jab. I'm not worried about getting it myself.
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You should be. You could give it to your mother, and thus kill her.
misinformation (Score:2)
The averag American ... (Score:2)
... has an IQ *well* below 90, by the standards of (mentally) developed countries.
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That would explain the behavior of most fox news watchers
I'm retired (Score:2)
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I work at a major university, in an engineering department with several Chinese faculty and a lot of Chinese grad students - many of whom regularly travel to China.
I’m not particularly worried, really, but I am definitely aware I’m probably at higher risk of exposure than the majority of other Americans. But, fortunately, this isn’t exactly Ebola.
Multiple answers apply. (Score:2)
The virus is not currently in my area, so no worries about infection today.
The relatively high mortality rate coupled with the relatively easy transmission cause some concerns.
The continued spread, and the general fear that the disease will enter the global population as an unstoppable infection, like the annual influenza season but with roughly 4x the death rate, triggers great concern.
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Then you have the American problem. Americans value their freedom more than they value the public good, and then you have the goodly portion of them that will go out sick and spread it around just because this is my Murican Freedom.
You forget that Americans are expected to work even when they're ill. You call that "freedom"?
Re: Multiple answers apply. (Score:2)
Without freedom, there can be no public good, only obedience to the state.
I think you are confusing freedom and responsibility.
You are free to behave irresponsibly. You are also likely to be judged by a jury of your peers.
Somewhat (Score:2)
I work in Medicine (Score:5, Informative)
I used to work on infectious disease research, and have access to a lot of scientific research and papers.
I am extremely concerned.
A. You're not funding it. Nobody cares why, that's a statement of fact.
B. You're doing it wrong. Top officials are lying and pretending it's not a concern, when it is, and then some of those people are then infected and die themselves. Stop lying.
C. The most effective thing most people can do is very very simple: wash your hands with bar soap and water. Do not use anti-bacterial soap. Don't use dish soap. Virii are not affected by anti-bacterial, and that just spreads other infections, so just stop with the anti-bacterial stuff.
D. The second most effective thing you can do is wear gloves. Not fancy gloves, just normal ones. DO NOT WIPE or touch your face while wearing them. Do NOT spray things with anti-bacterial gels they don't work. Seriously, stop with the spraying and coating, you have no idea what you're doing.
E. If you are infected, phone the hospital, do not take a taxi, follow their advice. You can also check your County Health website or the Hospital (Urgent Care) website. Follow their advice.
Oh, and panic is useless, just like those face masks you're buying are useless. They won't stop it. So stop buying them.
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You seem informed on this, with an appropriate background, so I was hoping you might be able to address a couple of questions I've been pondering:
- Obviously antibacterial soaps are not help in this situation, as it is a virus, but what about alcohol-based "hand sanitizers"? Are those effective against viruses like COVID-19 at all, or should we focus on soap and water? And you specifically mentioned bar soaps... are liquid soaps not as effective or something?
- Are there any necessary characteristics to glov
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In a pinch, if you don't have bar soap and water handy, the alcohol based hand sanitizers work. But bar soap and water are far more effective.
Liquid soaps can be a vector.
Gloves - well, lace gloves probably won't help much at all, nor fingerless gloves. But the average men's or women's or sports gloves will provide more protection than most. The main thing is don't touch your face - or if you do, use the back of the hand (since you touch with the palm and fingers.
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The main thing is don't touch your face - or if you do, use the back of the hand (since you touch with the palm and fingers.
Yeah. Pretend you're at the local public gym working out. Doesn't matter how much 'cleaning' they do, nothing will sterilize everything to the point where you won't get infected by the germs left behind by That Guy who insists on going to the gym when they're sick. :p
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Can you provide a source for your bar soap over liquid soap?
Most experts seem to be recommending liquid soap because bar soap can become contaminated.
"Wash your laundry with hot water, use liquid soap as opposed to a bar, and dry your hands with paper towels, not cloth towels, to avoid spreading microorganisms around."
- Dr Charles Gerber, Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Arizona
https://www.huffpost.com/entry... [huffpost.com]
"Many public places provide liquid soap because it’s easier and
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Around here, we don't have contaminated water. You should always follow your local county health information, as they'll be aware of local conditions.
Most of your bottled water actually comes from the river that Seattle uses, actually. Kind of bizarre, but where do you think Kirkland Brand at Costco gets the water?
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No, the masks aren't useless, in at least two ways.
First, the majority of the face-covering masks won't block the virus when it's airborne. That's a given.
But they're not intended to. The masks aren't for YOUR protection. They're to prevent you from coughing or sneezing directly on other people!
And for that, they are useful, to a significant degree. The more you can prevent projectile sneezing and coughing, the more you will help prevent it spreading.
As for point #2: N
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Good advice. Especially regarding gloves and bar soap. I am buying a couple of pairs of washable gloves right now for my commute.
I think that face masks can help in two ways: They can stop you from touching your face and nose. They can stop you from coughing or sneezing into the air.
IIRC the size of viruses means that for the mask to filter out virus from the air, you would need a proper ventilator.
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In actual practice, we don't see people touching their face less while wearing a mask, unless they've been trained.
The only use of a mask for a civilian is if you already are contagious. Even then, it won't last more than an hour or two.
Always throw away your kleenex (or dispose of properly). If you're infected, you will get more detailed instructions, but most people have colds, hay fever, allergies, and other flus.
Re:I work in Medicine (Score:4, Interesting)
I didn't say I was an expert. I'm just somebody with experience.
You can easily verify everything I've said.
So, sorry if your friend's mask grift isn't selling like hotcakes ...
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Thank you for agreeing that you can easily verify everything I said.
You're welcome!
Not travelling for now (Score:2)
My father died last Tuesday. I live in New Zealand and my parents are in Scotland.
When my mother called to tell me she asked if I was returning for the funeral, which was today.
I said, no. 2 reasons. 1) My father told me not to come to the funeral, when he died, a couple of years back. 2) Corona virus.
I felt really bad saying that to her but she has my brother there and plenty of family support.
I have 4 kids in the 10 and under age range.
After watching the live streaming of the funeral service from Scotland
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A major plague is long overdue (Score:2)
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Also fuck you.
Somewhat, for various reasons (Score:2)
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I doubt this is going to lead to the collapse (Score:2)
I have elderly parrents (Score:2)
Not worried (Score:2)
Madagascar hasn't shut down everything yet.
Get real (Score:2)
I'm a fat pampered westerner who's had innoculations since they were a month old. I'm not saying I won't catch it, but I'm realtively healthy, eat a good diet and so if I get it I'll end up in bed for a week like normal flu, then go back to work.
Yes it's killing people but this is mostly the media blowing this out of all proportion. Normal flu kills people every year, calm the f**k down, wash your hands and cover your mouth when you yawn, cough or sneeze.
I’ll Admit That I Haven’t Followed It (Score:2)
But the last time I read about it, it didn’t seem appreciably worse than the common flu. I think the media just can’t contain itself and of course the government isn’t going to pass it up since scared citizens are controllable citizens.
Either way, I quit my job about a month ago, so unless you can catch the virus by eating frozen pizza, playing video games, and obsessively whacking off to Internet porn, I don’t have anything to worry about.
Low-quality information (Score:2)
The virus itself is a minor concern to me. I'm robustly healthy and have no chronic health issues.
My real concern is the low quality of information and the hysteria that it's creating. Is it that bad? Hard to tell: the media keep telling us not to be racist, rather than telling us what symptoms we should watch for.
...laura
The supply chain issues are real (Score:3)
the martial law lockdown is real.
I live 'there' or here. whatever.
The virus doesn't even matter, what does matter is that the CCP basically shut down my livelihood. Now I just watch people going crazy buying up all the paper goods, and other stuff.
It's an unmitigated disaster.
What are the metrics of a successful poll? (Score:2)
A few possible questions:
How many people answer the poll's question?
How does the rate of response change over time?
How many people are sufficiently interested in the topic to comment?
How have these metrics changed over the years on Slashdot?
I suspect that the current poll is a "loser" by most or all of these metrics...
Gauss (Score:2)
This type of surveys is always boring
100 million deaths if not contained (Score:2)
If this virus is not extermitated, at 1-2% mortality rate (as reported by China), there will be at least 0.1 milliard deaths worldwide. This is more than those died in the last World War.
It kills mostly older people. My spouse's mother, in her 70s, has a 7% chance to die from it.
I, 45, have a 0.5% chance to die.
Someone you know, perhaps your friend or family, will die from it.
There will be no vaccine for 1-2 years. That's enough time to infect everybody.
Why are the fucking borders still open? The way to dea
Good news (Score:2)
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The overreaction? How about the absolute ignorance combined with it?
The title of this poll is, "How concered are you about the spread of coronavirus?"
We've already got plenty of coronaviruses. We've had outbreaks of specific ones before. Millions if not billions of people harbor them currently. When the news media can't even get the basic facts of the disease right like its name, how can we have any hope? The massive overreaction to it is just icing on the cake.
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Sux2BU.
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As for the "No credible research" bit, none has been done yet. There has simply not been enough time for it.