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Daily coronavirus-related chat, questions, and minor updates - April 5
This thread is posted daily, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!
I'm a little numb as an old friend died late yesterday of COVID-19, in the Detroit area. He was in his 60's, struggling with a bone infection and already hospitalized, but had been expected to recover. He developed the sudden oxygen starvation that's characteristic of severe COVID cases and passed away within a few hours. His widow and daughter are contending with both their grief at the loss, and the near-certainty that they're infected. I'm trying hard to hold onto memories of his vast hugs, humor, wisdom, and generosity in life.
This is just such a shitty, shitty time, and my heart goes out to everyone else who's missing friends and loved ones they may never see again.
It really is pretty shitty. I do not know you, and you do not know me, but I live relatively close by in Ypsi, so here's a virtual hug which is all I can really offer at the moment. 🤗
I talked to my mom today, who lives in a different state with the rest of my family. There shittiest thing about this is if anything where to happen I probably would not be able to travel to be near family.
Thank you - I've been really down about this today and it helps.
RKI daily sitreps report a peak in onset of symptoms further and further back. 2 weeks ago, the peak was 10 days before then-present, a week ago it climbed to 13 days ago, currently 18 days ago. A lot of the current reports must be for cases that started further and further back.
Dilemma: Is more reporting of older cases a) due to a increase in testing lag due to increasing case numbers or b) due to a cleanup of the backlog due to decreasing case numbers?
The quota of cases with "onset of symptoms unknown" or "no symptoms" (lumped together sadly) dropped from 0.43 (7311 in 16662) to 0.4 (33990 in 85778). I suspect this is due to the disease spreading to the higher-risk (older) population, rather than a decrease in quality of the statistics.
Oh how I wish I could play around with the raw data RKI has.
City of Dortmund wants a popular lake to only be walked clockwise, to avoid unnecessary encounters. Such a simple thing, but it might just prevent a few cases. It's a most beautiful day here - sunny and warm - so I'm expecting a lot of outdoor activities.
Our house is across the street from a city-owned park, and the city's shelter-in-place order means the park is closed as of last Thursday. My 2-year-old son is very very upset about this. It's just sitting there every day taunting him.
Is there any good reason for parks to be closed? I get people use them as areas of congregation, but the focus here in New Zealand has been more focused on specifically closing areas with public surfaces—like playgrounds—that multiple people can touch. Parks are general areas that don't have much of that.
Parks are being kept open specifically so people can take a walk in their local area and get some fresh air; and if people are congregating, police will intervene and tell people to go home/issue fines/arrest as needed.
It's a question I've thought about a lot. Let me paint a picture for you first. There is nothing realistically stopping anyone from going to this park across the street. All they’ve done is put caution tape around the public seating areas at each end (a total of 2x4 connected mini pavilions with tables) and orange sandwich board road barricades at the technical entrances to the park (i.e. the wheelchair ramps). The park is 0.5x1 city blocks in area and surrounded only by sidewalks, no fences that force entry at certain access points. The barricades are symbolic but do say "Park Closed".
However, I have only seen people pass through to walk their dogs while hanging out in my own front yard since all that went up, and the formal closing seems to have deterred people from lingering and gathering. This is a place where you might see a family using the charcoal barbecues on a nice spring Saturday like we just had. Or a handful of neighborhood kids riding scooters, kicking a soccer ball, etc. In two years of living here, I've never seen more than maybe 12-15 people in the park at the absolute most at any given time outside of scheduled events they put on (like the spring concert series RIP).
I’ve gone back and forth on this. The park is a natural place to congregate. I never thought it was over crowded at any point so far during the quarantine, but this park seems to be a casualty of the city order that is meant especially for our big, popular, centrally-located parks downtown rather than a small (albeit urban) neighborhood park that doesn't get nearly as much traffic. That said, it definitely has cut down on the number of interactions people are having with those outside their household. People were already respecting social distancing before it closed though, and some but not all were avoiding the public seating/surfaces anyway.
So I think it comes down to public areas and seating. If police rolled by and saw people walking like they would on any other sidewalk in the neighborhood either for exercise or to take their dog out, they'd probably say nothing. If they saw a group blatantly disobeying the caution tape to hang out at the pavilions, they'd probably break it up. I wish this were made more clear in the city order though rather than being a blanket closure of parks, but I have to say that the order is working and respected even while folks bend the rule in harmless ways by passing through briefly.
The Queen made a televised address to the UK today.
This is only the fifth time she's ever made a non-Christmas address:
Good. I don't doubt it's hygienically possible to have a match. 50-ish players and referees in close-enough contact and then a few camera guys by the sidelines. Worth it if it keeps millions glued to the TVs. Besides, IF something happens, it'll probably be a public outbreak among popular players, so that'll hopefully help with motivating people to stay the course.
I was just thinking about the viability of soccer as I watched my kiddo kick his ball around this morning. And your point about an outbreak among players motivating the public is something I hadn't even considered! I think I hope league play can move forward.