Well, this is inevitable, wasn’t it? (I’ll admit, the bat costume was a cute touch.)
(And yes, this is of questionable taste as people are dying of COVID-19. But sometimes you gotta laugh, or else you’re just gonna stay in bed with the covers pulled over your head because of all the bad news…)
Well, here’s what that map from the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases dashboard looks like today:
A new case has popped up in Edmonton, Alberta, 1193 kilometers (741 miles) by airplane from where I am in Winnipeg, Manitoba. My brother and his family live just south of Edmonton, and I am extremely worried for their health and safety. I spent Friday and Saturday texting him reams of instructions on what to do, how to prepare, and what to buy. He assured me that he and his family are as prepared as they can be; the whole family was involved in Scouts Canada for many years, so they are better prepared than most.
By this point, everyone I contacted yesterday was already well aware of the danger of a pandemic, thanks to the excellent coverage of the outbreak by the Canadian news media. Even my unflappable, long-suffering best friend (with whom I have a $50 bet that there will be pandemic cases in Winnipeg), was up-to-speed on his hand-washing knowledge! I was suitably impressed.
Overnight, Italy has imposed quarantine on 16 million of its citizens:
Shortly after midnight, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte signed a decree affecting 16 million people in the country’s prosperous north, including the Lombardy region and at least 14 provinces in neighbouring regions, including the cities of Venice, Modena, Parma, and Rimini. The extraordinary measures will be in place until April 3.
The decree says people should “avoid any movement in and out” of those regions and also any trips within this area, barring journeys “for proven work needs or situations of necessity for health reasons.” Anyone in quarantine because they have coronavirus is forbidden from leaving home.
The decree does not mention the transport of goods in and out of these areas and does not say how the rules will be enforced. The fate of foreign visitors stuck in red zones in northern Italy was not immediately clear.
There was chaos and confusion in the hours before Conte signed the decree, as word leaked to the news media about the planned quarantine. Students at the University of Padua in northern Italy who had been out at bars on a Saturday night saw the rumours on their cellphones and rushed back to their apartments to grab their belongings and head to the train station.
Hundreds of passengers, some wearing face masks and rubber gloves, crammed onto the last local train leaving Padua at 11:30 p.m. Anxious students wrapped scarves around their heads, shared sanitizing gel, and sat on their suitcases in the aisles. No conductor came by to check tickets.
That train was stopped in Rome, and it is not yet clear how the Italian authorities will deal with all the escaping passengers on the train. This is an example of how people can start to act irrationally, and rebel against social distancing and quarantine measures. Other recent examples:
In addition, there have been reports of dozens of cancellations of conferences and events, as well as closures of gathering places:
I’m not going to repeat all the instructions I’ve posted so many times before on this blog. You can find them all here (including this one). If by now you are not convinced that there will be a pandemic that will severely disrupt both your everyday life and society around the world, then nothing I say will convince you until it’s too late. The United States is doing an extraordinarily piss-poor job of risk communication to its citizens, which means many people still don’t fully realize the implications of a pandemic the likes of which we have not seen in over a century.
For example, one person responded after I tweeted that the well-respected, experienced Dr. Richard Hatchett, who is leading U.K. efforts to develop a coronavirus vaccine, is saying that COVID-19 is “the most frightening disease I’ve ever encountered in my career”:
The person who doubted this expert said:
To which I would respond: you might not be worried about how sick you get, but what about the vulnerable people that you might infect? The elderly, and those with underlying health conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer, are particularly at risk of a severe, even life-threatening, response to the SARC-CoV-2 virus. Overwhelmed Italian doctors are already telling us that 10% of COVID-19 cases require treatment in the intensive care units of their hospitals. A 15-minute radio interview with the first Florida COVID-19 patient revealed that he was so ill that “Mentally, I begged God to take me home.”
And a public liaison at the Washington state nursing home that has reported numerous deaths said:
“Our experience with this so far has shown that the virus is volatile and unpredictable,” Killian said. “We’ve had patients who, within an hour’s time, show no symptoms to going to acute symptoms and being transferred to the hospital. And we’ve had patients die relatively quickly under those circumstances…We know very little about how fast this may act.”
This is also going to have all kinds of unexpected spin-off effects. For example, I’m quite sure that the coronavirus will complicate Linden Lab’s efforts to find another company to take over the Sansar project, at a time when dozens of tech firms are more focused on managing their responses to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and keeping their employees safe.
Fasten your seatbelts; we’re all in for a bumpy ride.
Dozens of real-world conferences and events are being postponed or cancelled because of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, but the upcoming IEEE VR 2020 virtual reality conference, which was to have taken place March 22nd to 26th in Atlanta, Georgia, has done something unprecedented.
The announcement on the official conference website says:
VR 2020 – Venue Change due to COVID-19 Concerns
VR 2020 will now be an online event
Out of an abundance of caution surrounding COVID-19, the decision has been made to convert the in-person component of VR 2020 into an all-digital conference experience – VR 2020 will now be an online event. Therefore, VR 2020 will no longer take place in Atlanta, Georgia and will instead take place virtually. The conference dates remain the same – 22-26 March 2020.
We are excited to support many more attendees now that the conference is being held online, which will be provided free of charge for non-authors. More details will be available soon for online registration.
A survey for those who have already registered for the in-person conference states:
IEEE VR 2020 is moving to be exclusively online, and to a very different financial model to support the publication, presentation, and sharing of your research in light of the venue cancellation. The general chairs and steering committee have chosen to use a simplified model of a flat-fee per published contribution ($450). This is to support maximum attendance at the online event, allowing non-author registration to remain free of charge.
The purpose of this form is to let us know how you want to allocate your registration payments to your associated published research contributions (e.g. poster, paper, demo abstract), and to determine any refund that you are due. Note that refunds are not guaranteed until all fees are fully covered for your contributions. Each published contribution requires a fee of $450. Please work with any of your coauthors to determine who is going to pay these fees.
By the way, the organizers are actively looking for volunteers to help pull this off, so if you’re interested, here’s the form to volunteer. I’ve already signed up, and I hope to see you online for the conference!
Late this afternoon, Minnesota reported its first case of COVID-19:
The patient is an older Ramsey County [St. Paul, Minnesota] resident who had been on a cruise ship with a known COVID-19 case. The unidentified person sought health care yesterday after developing symptoms on Feb. 25, according to the Health Department, and is currently recovering at home in isolation. All of the patient’s identified contacts will be asked to quarantine themselves for two weeks and they will be monitored by public health officials for symptoms.
The state’s testing laboratory confirmed the presumptive case today and a sample will be sent to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for final testing.
And I tweeted:
With over 100,000 cases on six continents, and many countries (including most of the U.S. West coast and New York City) reporting person-to-person spread within communities, EVERYBODY KNOWS THIS IS A PANDEMIC. We don’t need the World Health Organization to tell us.
The world is facing a situation at least as serious as the 1918/1919 Spanish flu pandemic—and many countries are quite simply unprepared. The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic will severely disrupt everyday life and society in a way that we have not seen in over a century. What is happening in mainland China, and throughout Iran, and in northern Italy, and in South Korea is no longer somebody else’s problem, on the other side of the world.
It is our problem.
It is YOUR problem.
The question is: how are you going to prepare yourself for this?
I am going to repeat this information for those of you who have not been paying attention, who still think this will all blow over (it won’t):
Here, once again, is a reminder of what you should be doing to prepare: mentally, emotionally, and physically/logistically.
You will probably need to prepare to stay isolated in your homes for a period of several weeks, avoiding contact with as many other people as possible, as a wave of illness caused by the Wuhan coronavirus sweeps through your community, forcing schools, businesses, and public transportation and public gathering places like movie theatres and shopping malls to close (as we already seen in Wuhan and many other cities in China, as well as places such as South Korea, Iran, and northern Italy). The time to prepare for the imposition of quarantines and social distancing policies by local governments is NOW.
If you need lists of how to prepare and what to buy in order to get your household ready for a potential pandemic, here are seven suggestions to help you get started:
You will need to have on hand:
Other things that you should do:
There have been reports of panic shopping in various countries around the world, including in North American. In particular, hand sanitizer is in short supply, with many stores being sold out of stock. Fortunately, if you cannot find sanitizer to buy, you can make your own. Here’s the recipe:
Ingredients:
2/3-cup rubbing alcohol (99% isopropyl alcohol)
1/3-cup aloe vera gel (GEL, not liquid)
Directions: Add the alcohol to the aloe vera gel and stir. Using a funnel, pour the mixture into a pump bottle; you can use cleaned soap bottles for instance, or you can find inexpensive pump bottles at dollar stores. If you have empty store-bought hand sanitizer bottles, you can use those.
If you wish, you can add 8-10 drops of essentials oils. Lemongrass, eucalyptus, peppermint and orange oils, which have been shown to have some antibacterial properties (source), would be a good choice.
Here is my updated list of good, credible, authoritative resources to learn more about the Wuhan coronoavirus (formerly called 2019-nCoV and now officially called SARS-CoV-2; the disease the virus causes is now called COVID-19):
If you want a quick, up-to-date overview of the current situation, here are some good places to check:
Stay informed, get prepared, and stay healthy!
