COVID-19 thread

[Jonlang]

Well.... I've just recovered from Covid-19 which was, without doubt, one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life - and I suffered liver failure in 2017. Luckily, I wasn't hospitalised for which I am very thankful. I was sure that, should I get Covid, I would suffer due to being asthmatic, but no! My main symptoms were fever (very high temperature, reaching almost 40ºC at one point), incredible aches and pains, unrelenting headache, vomiting, diarrhoea (only mild), fatigue, and stomach pains. It lasted for a week. Almost a week on and I'm still feeling slightly fatigued and get tired easily but every day I get a bit stronger and I'm due to return to work next week.

I would not wish this illness on anyone, and I never want it again. The problem is: viruses don't spread - people spread them! And, despite the UK being locked down again, people really do not take this seriously enough.

[Ares Land]

Well.... I've just recovered from Covid-19 which was, without doubt, one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life - and I suffered liver failure in 2017. Luckily, I wasn't hospitalised for which I am very thankful. I was sure that, should I get Covid, I would suffer due to being asthmatic, but no! My main symptoms were fever (very high temperature, reaching almost 40ºC at one point), incredible aches and pains, unrelenting headache, vomiting, diarrhoea (only mild), fatigue, and stomach pains. It lasted for a week. Almost a week on and I'm still feeling slightly fatigued and get tired easily but every day I get a bit stronger and I'm due to return to work next week.

I would not wish this illness on anyone, and I never want it again. The problem is: viruses don't spread - people spread them! And, despite the UK being locked down again, people really do not take this seriously enough.

Man. That sucks. I hope you'll make a very complete recovery soon; and yeah I wouldn't wish Covid on anyone. (I got a bad case of the flu a few years back and I'm not likely to forget the feeling of having been hit by a freight train at full speed...)

I must, I'm afraid, respectfully disagree on the idea that people do not take it seriously enough. This does not match my experience -- or maybe things are drastically different in the UK?
Really nothing against you, it's more of a general vibe I pick up mostly from the news, but my feeling is that the general public is being unfairly blamed for a pandemic they have very little control over (besides the obvious precautions, which most except a few nutters do take) and when, honestly, the restrictions are getting very difficult.

(In other news, the government spokesman had statements to make. So now we might have a tight lockdown after all. Or you know, maybe nothing will change at all. Seriously can't they make up their damn mind?)

[Vijay]

Ironically, despite living in one of the countries that has been spared the most during the pandemic, I am returning to the US soon, which means that I have to get tested for COVID and prove it at the airport! It is difficult to make arrangements for this all of a sudden.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

An account of an infection deserving of many virtual hugs and survival congratulations.

I hope you're back to yourself soon, and not in danger of long-term complications.

[Raphael]

Wishing Jonlang all the best!

[Travis B.]

Hope you feel (actually) better soon!

[Jonlang]

I must, I'm afraid, respectfully disagree on the idea that people do not take it seriously enough. This does not match my experience -- or maybe things are drastically different in the UK?
Really nothing against you, it's more of a general vibe I pick up mostly from the news, but my feeling is that the general public is being unfairly blamed for a pandemic they have very little control over (besides the obvious precautions, which most except a few nutters do take) and when, honestly, the restrictions are getting very difficult.

Of course, many people here are taking it seriously and are following lockdown rules - but there's also a significant amount of people who aren't. Current rules state that one may leave their home to exercise, but this must begin and end at your home. People seem to disregard the last part and think it's okay to drive 20 miles to exercise a beauty spot. The problem is: you then have hundreds of people massing in an area, each person complaining that they can be there but the rest can't - it's ridiculous! This is one of the reasons why this virus is spreading! I get that people are getting "lockdown fatigue" - this is the largest disruption to everyday life since WW2 and we're just not used to having to suffer these injustices, but the sooner people stop spreading it, the sooner it goes away. The death toll from this thing is horrendous and the public need to understand that it is their duty to stay at home - I don't give a fuck if you think going out to buy paint so you can redecorate your home during lockdown is important to you - it is not important enough to risk catching and spreading the virus. It may only be a trip to a shop, or a quick trip to a mountain trail, it doesn't matter. I bought a house with my girlfriend in December 2019 - just as the virus was discovered in Wuhan. By March 2020 we were in lockdown. I am sill waiting on furniture deliveries which I bought in January 2020, I'm still waiting to decorate, I'm still waiting to do some structural work to the house, I'm still waiting to be able to go out and buy other furniture we need.

Thanks for all the good-wishes, I'm sure I'll be fine in the long-run, unlike the many thousands who have died already.

[Ares Land]

Of course, many people here are taking it seriously and are following lockdown rules - but there's also a significant amount of people who aren't.

I agree with you here! I just think individual people are being blamed a lot, and policymakers aren't being blamed enough.

Let me reiterate the good wishes again, I hope this will soon be behind you.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

On this note, I go to a trail within walking distance fairly regularly (masked, dodging across the street along the way if possible to avoid humans). I have not, to my knowledge, contracted or spread the virus, and people are very good about being away from each-other. Of course, if any of that required me getting close to another human being (there are virtually no public things there, just trees and plants and the occasional human-made bridge, except for the marina at one end of it, which is just, to my understanding, kind-of there right now), I wouldn't do it.

[Ryusenshi]

I would not wish this illness on anyone, and I never want it again. The problem is: viruses don't spread - people spread them! And, despite the UK being locked down again, people really do not take this seriously enough.

Here, one of the reasons people don't respect the rules is that some of the rules make no sense. Why this curfew at 6PM? Does the virus only spread at night? The result is to make everybody rush to the stores between 5PM and 6PM; and commuters get piled up in the bus or the subway, even worse than usual. In Toulouse, the curfew actively made things worse. There's also the weird restriction that you could go out for a jog... but only at a maximum distance of 1km. I'd rather go in the forest (where there's hardly anyone) than in the streets (where people still go to work and children still go to school), but with this stupid rule, I wasn't allowed to. The truth is that the virus spreads much more easily indoors than outdoors, unless it's really crowded; many outdoors activities present little risk.

Not to mention the clusterf*ck in schools and universities.

[Travis B.]

I personally agree that the curfews are utter nonsense, for the very reasons you state.

[Ares Land]

The current restrictions are, indeed, turning to farce.

Judges were caught in a clandestine restaurants. (And the personel of a police precinct was caught having a party, masks off)

One serious problem is public acceptance of the restriction. I think people accept restrictions with the understanding that they are temporary.

Right now the feeling is that there's no way out of the crisis, or no serious exit strategy.

Still, my feeling is that people are surprisingly good at following the rule; then again, I'm probably not in the best position to judge, since, you know, I practically never get out of the house.

[Linguoboy]

A friend of mine saw his hours slashed last year due to COVID. In November, he was laid off and by the start of this year he was beginning to worry about how he was going to make rent. So when he was called back to work a couple weeks ago, he was happy to go into the office again. Now he, along with more than half the workforce, has tested positive for COVID-19. It's unclear who introduced it and how it spread, but I think it's no coincidence that the owner of the business has been pretty vocal in her scepticism.

[Torco]

Still, my feeling is that people are surprisingly good at following the rule; then again, I'm probably not in the best position to judge, since, you know, I practically never get out of the house.

Honestly, I think the response to this worldwide pandemic has been quite excellent in light of a) people really can't be expected to be infinitely responsible and b) the historical record.

Back in the days of the spanish flu, the kind of thing a lot of governments have been accused of (playing the thing down and letting people needlessly die for the sake of the economy) was the unanimous response of the chilean authorities, for an exmaple, and I don't think a global quarantine effort of this size had ever been performed by the species. I expected for a lot of last year that the whole thing, at 3% mortality, would kill one or two hundred million people including indirect deaths. instead, it doesn't look like it'll reach ten million.

Here it's happening as you say: I've hypothetically and inside a videogame violated curfew liberally for months and almost never find myself alone on the road.

[KathTheDragon]

Honestly, I think the response to this worldwide pandemic has been quite excellent in light of a) people really can't be expected to be infinitely responsible and b) the historical record.

I'm here in England looking at New Zealand, and I can't help but get the impression that you're really very wrong.

[Ares Land]

I don't know about that. New Zealand went for a zero case strategy, but it looks like they decided on pretty much the same measures at more or less the same time less successful countries did.
The difference, I'm afraid, comes down to luck; in March, it had fewer cases.

By contrast, France was in lockdown longer, but couldn't bring the number of cases to zero.

Should we have tried a zero case strategy? Should we try one now? I really don't know. How long would it take? What would be the social and economic consequences? Honestly, I don't have the answers to any of these questions. Judging from the experience of last lockdown, it looks like we'd need at least six months; what are the consequences of that? I don't know about that but I can understand why government are hesitating.

What I think Torco is getting at, though, is that our response is unprecedented. The usual approach to that kind of pandemics was: people die.
The '69 Hong Kong flu barely made the news; TB and polio were common diseases when they were kids: the response was, basically, resignation. I assume the flu killed a lot back then, but apparently it barely registered. A few steps in the right direction were made during the Spanish Flu pandemic, in a few places in the US mostly. (In Western Europe it wasn't a priority as we were still very busy killing each other.)

To say nothing of identifying and tracking the epidemic in real time using genetic sequencing, and coming up with a vaccine in a year, which is basically science-fiction.

[Torco]

Honestly, I think the response to this worldwide pandemic has been quite excellent in light of a) people really can't be expected to be infinitely responsible and b) the historical record.

I'm here in England looking at New Zealand, and I can't help but get the impression that you're really very wrong.

well, what were you expecting. New zealand did very very well, no arguments here, but were you really predicting for britain to do that well? the PRC and Vietnam hit it out of the park, but they're sorta planned economies, they're good at this kind of thing. The most cosmopolitan city in the ancient empire that basically made 'fuck you got mine' its official ideology (not to mention brexit) was never going to do that well.

Also what monsieur Land said.

[doctor shark]

In "interesting" developments, a court order just struck down the curfew here in the Nether Regions as being "improperly enacted" and a "constitutional violation" of the right to freedom of movement, so, assuming no stay, the curfew is lifted with immediate effect.

[Ares Land]

The PRC and Vietnam hit it out of the park, but they're sorta planned economies, they're good at this kind of thing.

I have to disagree: they claim to have it under control.
It's a lot easier to fix a problem if anyone saying it isn't fixed fwhen you say it is faces jail time at best. The Chinese govvernment has a track record of trying to sweep the pandemic under the rug and being generally less than truthful. Why should we believe their numbers?

In the case of Vietnam, assuming their numbers are correct (kind of a big assumption already), there's a reason Western countries couldn't reproduce their strategy: Vietnam is an authoritarian country that can detail people at will and has no problem with surveillance and controlling the population.
It sure is very useful in controlling a pandemic, but do we really want the human rights track record that goes with it?

[Torco]

I don't know, man. everyone claims we can't trust the chinese or vietnamese numbers, but this seems to be to be mostly just "communism bad, therefore they lie". vietnam's a lot more open than china, and I've not seen any evidence that they might be lying o that their getting covid under control came at the cost of vast human rights violations.

it's like if a rich capitalist country has good numbers, they're amazing. if a poor communist country has good numbrs, it must be red lies. do you have like... things that may convince me that nam is lying ?