The Walls Come Down: No Travel Betwen US and Europe for 30 Days

[MKSheppard]

Massive quantities of firearms are being transferred:

Pennsylvania has it's own background check run by the state police.

PICS in PA processed 5,000+ yesterday. Same number last year was about 1,300.

And this is with intermittent outages of PICS.

[chimericoncogene]

The American healthcare system had four weeks of serious warning through February. Production ramp-up (not all that good, I know) and conservation of personal protective equipment (e.g. 1-2 masks per day per medical worker, audits and inventories, crackdowns on misappropriation) should have begun at least six weeks ago...

[The Romulan Republic]

Ontario is looking at equipping auto manufacturers to instead produce ventilators:

https://globalnews.ca/news/6697273/onta ... ntilators/

[mr friendly guy]

You know those doomsday cultist in movies, who want to spread a virus. Someone came close.

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/healt ... 4ba1a2b670

A Japanese man, accused of “terrorism” after he went to a Filipino pub earlier this month saying he wanted to spread the deadly coronavirus he was infected with, has died at a hospital in central Japan.

News of the man’s death came after Japan reported 39 new COVID-19 infections on Wednesday, taking its total to 876 cases.

The 57-year-old man from Gamigori, who sources told the South China Morning Post also had serious pre-existing conditions, tested positive with the pneumonia-causing virus on March 4.

Despite a request from health officials to isolate himself at home until a specialist medical facility could accept him the following day, the man went to the pub in the city that evening by taxi, telling his parents before leaving that he wanted to “spread the virus”.

Local authorities said at the time they did not have the power to prohibit him from going out.

But social media users were quick to condemn his actions, which included spending time at an izakaya – a Japanese drinking establishment – and singing karaoke at the Filipino pub, where he came into physical contact with multiple employees.

“He should be arrested for endangering the public. Point blank,” one angry reader on the Japan Today website.

“The degree of selfishness in some people astounds me,” wrote another on Tokyo Reporter.

[mr friendly guy]

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/healt ... e7fbe78569

Just to update, Wuhan now reports no new cases yesterday. New cases in China now coming from international arrivals.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-19/ ... s/12069180

China is saying they may lift the lockdown in Wuhan if no new local cases reported for 14 days straight. So don't expect the lockdown to end until April at the earliest. What has been reported though, is that some medical teams sent to Hubei from other parts of China are now returning to their home provinces, so I guess hospitals are normalising. Just don't equate that with ending the lockdown just yet.

[Zaune]

You know those doomsday cultist in movies, who want to spread a virus. Someone came close.

Same mindset as those people who react to becoming HIV-positive by going out and having as much bareback sex as they can get away with out of spite, I guess.

[The Romulan Republic]

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/healt ... e7fbe78569

Just to update, Wuhan now reports no new cases yesterday. New cases in China now coming from international arrivals.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-19/ ... s/12069180

China is saying they may lift the lockdown in Wuhan if no new local cases reported for 14 days straight. So don't expect the lockdown to end until April at the earliest. What has been reported though, is that some medical teams sent to Hubei from other parts of China are now returning to their home provinces, so I guess hospitals are normalising. Just don't equate that with ending the lockdown just yet.

Well, that's some excellent news.

[J]

Trump, worryingly, has begun characterizing the US as "on a war footing" and himself as a "wartime President", which makes me wonder what other traditional wartime powers (like mass surveilance, or detention without due process) he might try to claim.

Obviously, I have no objection to using federal authority to expedite the production of masks and ventilators. Indeed, we should have done this a long time ago. But having "Trump" and "emergency powers" anywhere near one another makes me twitchy. We all know what he ultimately wants, and the fact that this is a genuine crisis, not a manufactured one, will only make it easier to get, both in terms of the law and in terms of muting dissent.

I'm sure some people will think that I am overreacting, as usual. But anyone who remembers 9/11 and its aftermath should remember America's dangerous tendency to "rally around the President" in times of crisis, even when the President is unworthy of such loyalty, and to uncritically sacrifice freedom in the name of security. Stay vigilant, and make sure Trump doesn't try to waltz over the line between appropriate public safety measures and a power-grab while everyone's too focussed on the virus to notice or care.

Something something horses something something barn doors. North America and most of the world missed the boat, if we'd taken the same actions which Taiwan and a few other Asian countries did a couple months ago we wouldn't be in this mess. But we didn't, and we are. We spent the past month & half twiddling our thumbs and pretending everything was going to be fine and that it's "a China problem" which could obviously never happen here because ummm...because we're not them.

We had a chance to contain it without taking draconian measure and we blew it. The cases have breached the threshold and gone exponential, our only choices now are bad and worse. And we're choosing worse; ineffective containment plus wholesale economic destruction. This is how you destroy faith & trust in government and set the table for a revolution.

[bilateralrope]

New Zealand's borders are closing tonight. So far we have had 28 confirmed cases in the country and no detected community transmission.

[mr friendly guy]

Australia is also closing our borders. Just breaking news. Closed from tomorrow night.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-19/ ... a/12071640

No calls to lockdown yet, but I am already planning to minimise my activities and I know some of my facebook contacts are also advocating the same. So I guess its playing Steam games then.

[MKSheppard]

Flights en route to Las Vegas this morning (1 to 2 am) were turning around over Kansas.

Why? ATC tower at McCarran went hot and was being evacuated due to Corona, causing shutdown of McCarran controlled airspace

[Broomstick]

Yeah, that makes sense - night, map makes it look like there's some weather over that area.... better to divert than keep going. Good safety call.

[Col. Crackpot]

If paining this as being the fault of a foreign power is what it takes to get every Bubba, Cletus and Jim-Bob south of the Mason-Dixon to take this seriously and save lives then so be it.

The bank has been nuts lately. Really burning through cash. My colleagues at other institutions are all in the same boat. Also if you have to go to a store or a bank today please don’t be a dick. There is talk of shutting lobbies, farming out call center work to retail branches, appointment only client meetings and drive through/atm only transacting.

What a time to be alive

[Ralin]

If paining this as being the fault of a foreign power is what it takes to get every Bubba, Cletus and Jim-Bob south of the Mason-Dixon to take this seriously and save lives then so be it.

You do realize that helps encourage racism and violence towards Asian people, right?

[His Divine Shadow]

Euro is shitting itself, ECB is back to tossing billions of billions at stuff that doesn't work instead of just doing the sane thing and do helicopter money to everyone instead.

[Zaune]

You do realize that helps encourage racism and violence towards Asian people, right?

We might just have to live with that trade-off, sadly; if nothing else, outbreaks of that are easier to identify and contain with the resources that are currently available. Besides, if the dudebros are too scared of dying from the evil Chinese bioweapon to go outside there's a limit to how much trouble they can cause.

[Ralin]

We might just have to live with that trade-off, sadly; if nothing else, outbreaks of that are easier to identify and contain with the resources that are currently available. Besides, if the dudebros are too scared of dying from the evil Chinese bioweapon to go outside there's a limit to how much trouble they can cause.

People can always make time to be racist

[Col. Crackpot]

If paining this as being the fault of a foreign power is what it takes to get every Bubba, Cletus and Jim-Bob south of the Mason-Dixon to take this seriously and save lives then so be it.

You do realize that helps encourage racism and violence towards Asian people, right?

People can differentiate between “Asians” and the government of the People’s Republic of China. Also China is a global economic and military superpower with well over a billion people. They don’t get to play the poor oppressed minority card anymore.

[ray245]

People can differentiate between “Asians” and the government of the People’s Republic of China. Also China is a global economic and military superpower with well over a billion people. They don’t get to play the poor oppressed minority card anymore.

Tell that to the Singaporean that got beaten up in London.

[Ralin]

People can differentiate between “Asians” and the government of the People’s Republic of China. Also China is a global economic and military superpower with well over a billion people. They don’t get to play the poor oppressed minority card anymore.

Racist people do not differentiate between the two, and Chinese people and people of Chinese descent are absolutely a minority in the US which is subject to discrimination and violence.

I would love to see you tell Wong your theory that it's okay to get racist hicks fired up on anti-Chinese conspiracy theories if it gets them motivated to wash their hands more and not go out drinking or whatever. Would bring popcorn.

[mr friendly guy]

Just want to point out, people couldn't distinguish between Sikhs and Muslims after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Not holding out much hope that "people" can differentiate between Asians and the PRC government. Even anti PRC liberals are reporting racist attacks on them on twitter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRDXsH8 ... =emb_title

[Col. Crackpot]

People can differentiate between “Asians” and the government of the People’s Republic of China. Also China is a global economic and military superpower with well over a billion people. They don’t get to play the poor oppressed minority card anymore.

Racist people do not differentiate between the two, and Chinese people and people of Chinese descent are absolutely a minority in the US which is subject to discrimination and violence.

I would love to see you tell Wong your theory that it's okay to get racist hicks fired up on anti-Chinese conspiracy theories if it gets them motivated to wash their hands more and not go out drinking or whatever. Would bring popcorn.

I’m not advocating racist conspiracy. I’m saying that if pointing out the ineptitude of a peer level government’s failures saves lives then do it. Racism against individuals should be aggressively and swiftly put down.

[Ralin]

I’m not advocating racist conspiracy. I’m saying that if pointing out the ineptitude of a peer level government’s failures saves lives then do it.

Blahahahahahhahahhahahahhahahahhahahaha!

Okay, now you're just trolling.

[mr friendly guy]

I wonder if we should promote the American government created HIV conspiracy theory to get people to take their anti retroviral medications. Hey, worth a try. I mean its the same logic Crackpot is suggesting so....

[Zaune]

Let's face it, the sort of person who'd treat the implication that we're in the current mess because China wasn't sufficiently on the ball as a valid reason to go find the nearest vaguely Asian-looking person and beat the crap out of them was actively looking for an excuse anyway.