Coronavirus

Fat Freddy wrote:

Ironically enough, last I checked a rock/metal fest in Mexico scheduled for this weekend with the unfortunate name "Corona Hell and Heaven Fest" (sponsored by the beer company) supposedly went on as planned (though many of its international headliners have pulled out)...

Death Angel released this a couple of hours ago: We regret to inform that due to recent worldwide health concerns and half of our band / crew being sick, Death Angel will not be performing at Heaven and Hell Fest in Mexico City this weekend. We apologize to our fans and everyone involved with the festival and look forward to rock with you all in the future. Health and safety first. Thank you for understanding.

Sort of scary to hear their set of circumstances, as they just ended up winding down their tour with Testament and Exodus in Europe.

They just announced on tonight's local news that the two major 24-hour grocery chains here will only be open from 6am to 10pm or midnight to allow them to clean the stores every night and supposedly restock products.  That latter part won't mean squat until they start putting limits on how much of some crap you can buy.

Just got back from the store, and WOW, what a fucking joke. Canned goods gone. Fruits and most vegetables gone. Meat, gone. Tp, and all paper products, gone. I got one loaf of bread out of the three left so I can at least make my sandwiches for work this week. Didn't look at bottled water, but I'm sure it's gone.

This is without a doubt the most retarded fucking thing I've ever gone thru in my 49 years on this planet. They did have signs up in the aisles about limiting people to one item only for tp, medicine and vitamins, and essential items they listed. The world's gone insane.

I went to the store today and had no issues whatsoever. All shelves were stocked to the nines, except for toilet paper naturally. The shelves were empty, save for a Scott tissue, for some reason.

Walmart Nationwide closing at 11pm now... I guess my line of work is safe for now... I work at a paper mill. We don't make tissue paper but the paper business is booming!

Yeah that's what I was thinking; now is the time to buy stock in paper companies!

007 wrote:

I went to the store today and had no issues whatsoever. All shelves were stocked to the nines, except for toilet paper naturally. The shelves were empty, save for a Scott tissue, for some reason.

That's how it is here too; at least it was as of Friday when I went, as fast as this is changing who the hell knows now.  I did notice that when I went Friday there were still several boxes of various Kleenex tissues available so if worse comes to worst in about 2 months I could use that if it's still available by then. 

But I was pleasantly surprised that on Friday I could still get plenty of the non-paper staples.

tohostudios wrote:

Yeah that's what I was thinking; now is the time to buy stock in paper companies!

Really doesn't mean overall consumption is going up at all. People don't wipe their asses more because of the coronavirus.

People won't be buying much TP at all the rest of the year, considering they already have mountains of it at home.

Dear Wal-Mart shoppers, this is the Coronavirus, not the Cornholio virus.

Hadley wrote:

Dear Wal-Mart shoppers, this is the Coronavirus, not the Cornholio virus.

So true.

I've seen this described as "mimetic behavior"; people see other people buying a boatload of something like toilet paper and they figure that person must know something so they do the same thing even though there's no rational reason for it.

So basically we're just glorified monkeys at this point. 

Dumbasses.

Yeah, same here. I made a trip to the market just to get stuff for dinner for the rest of the week and the aisles are pretty wiped out. Thank God me and the wife buy a lot of frozen stuff. We both usually get in from work/ gym close to 8pm so it's easy to throw stuff on the grill or throw pasta/ tortellini/ ravioli on the stove while we take a quick shower. People were literally staring into empty sections of aisles and saying "this is fecking ridiculous" and similar statements. The markets here are shortening the hours too to do the restocking and cleaning routines. And, starting tomorrow, all food and beverage are only allowed to be open for take out and any retail can only allow 25 people at a time in the store. I tried to go to a local record shop today, as I had the day off and my kid was at the park with my parents, and they were closed to any walk in traffic.

I don't know. We didn't hoard TP or anything, but that one doesn't seem that crazy to me. If people are being told they should not or may not be able to leave the house for a long period of time, that's a pretty solid and reasonable purchase.

I'm torn on the media's response. Some of it clear clickbait fearmongering, and it doesn't help to have it on your TV for 24 hours. But at the same time, if news outlets didn't cover it...I mean a month ago or so, the first case in the US popped up, and look how fast it's spread.

People on social media that make the flu arguments...I mean, it's different. It's new. There's no treatment, no cure, it spreads fast as shit, I mean...I don't know, it seems weird to go in on people for panicking. Maybe it's not the best response, but it's human nature.

On the other hand, you have people acting like nothing is going on, the opposite. The schools here closed and then a big local playground has been swamped. That defeats the whole purpose!

The reason T.P is out of stock - people are sheeting themselves ! Lol.

It's weird to see the streets so empty, especially during "rush hour" as so many people are working from home and the schools and restaurants are closed to dine in customers. We were pretty dead at work today as people aren't out and about so they aren't taking out the money they usually do . And, majority of our customers are older and ain't coming out. Due to the outbreak, my branch went from being slightly understaffed to very overstaffed due to the lack of customers/

Watching the news. Scary. Who would have said you'd have the army in the streets of Paris? Empty shelves almost everywhere across the USA?

Citizens of big nations living in a state of lockdown, in fear. Never seen such a worldwide apocalyptic scenery.

God help us all.

Scariest news of all is the rate that healthcare workers are succumbing to this! Italy are reporting 8.3% of the national total already. If this thing goes into massive growth and infects the people trained to help us then we are truly fucked!

God help us all indeed.

Hasn't changed much for my life yet. I'm going to work normal, shops are open, I can get my beer and chips, but there's no hockey to watch. 

Kids stay home, wife is with them during days.

Lari wrote:

Hasn't changed much for my life yet. I'm going to work normal, shops are open, I can get my beer and chips, but there's no hockey to watch. 

Kids stay home, wife is with them during days.

It's similar here. I am still at work but they are closing the schools on Friday so I will lose a big percentage of my team soon. Shopping is weird but there is food in the shops, just maybe not the food that you went in for but no-one is going to starve.

However the death rate is getting really high over here which suggests that there are a lot more cases than reported, and the countries around us are going well into the rapid growth phase so we know what's coming

They should’ve done a better job of containing it in China. Globalization at it’s finest.

I wouldn’t rule out that this was allowed to happen to “thin the herd” and reduce some of the population. The whole thing was handled too sloppy and careless until it affected most of the world.

On Monday, my supervisor messaged me and told me there was no work that day. He said it was Coronavirus related.

Yesterday, I messaged him a little over two hours before work would start. He told me not to come to work until he messages me again, and they expect it to be weeks they're closed for, not days. I do get paid in the meantime, though.

The next few weeks are going to suuuuuuuck.

We got an email from the Board of Education today the schools were supposed to be closed thru Mar. 30 but that's now been extended thru April 9th.

My sons have online assignments to work on every day (all fairly simple busy-work kind of things -- watch a video and answer questions about it, do some math problems, read an article, write a paragraph about what you've just read, etc.), but it's been an absolute nightmare so far getting my 12 year old, who has ADHD, to sit still long enough to complete any of them.  

If it were up to me I'd tell him to forget it, go outside and go skateboarding so *I* can get MY work done!

Sounds like thing pretty much suck all over the world.

I'm still working but I had to create a query yesterday to pull reservations from the LA area for the next 4 weeks.  I think they're considering temporarily closing some rental branches.

Our local news is showing a story about a local small batch whiskey maker using the excess byproduct alcohol of their product and working with another business that makes various skin lotions to create hand sanitizer they're giving to the local first responders.

We all could do with hearing more stories like that amid all the doom and gloom.

tohostudios wrote:

Our local news is showing a story about a local small batch whiskey maker using the excess byproduct alcohol of their product and working with another business that makes various skin lotions to create hand sanitizer they're giving to the local first responders.

We all could do with hearing more stories like that amid all the doom and gloom.

This is also happening everywhere. We have car makers switching production to producing ventilators and the company that makes Dior and Givenchy perfume are making hand sanitizer for French hospitals.

The whole world seems to be on a war footing. I work for one of the largest healthcare companies in the world but our site focuses more on the health & beauty side of the business but I think that might change soon.

The entire world is falling apart. With the exception of North Korea where the corona infection is being carefully controlled and limited to one patient max .