The upside to coronovirus!

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One of my classmates was planning a trip to Italy for spring-break with his girlfriend. He was going on and on about how he was going to propose to her in Venice on a gondola and got reservations for an opera. He just cancelled the flight and ate the costs for all his other reservations.
 
Giganotosaurus said:
One of my classmates was planning a trip to Italy for spring-break with his girlfriend. He was going on and on about how he was going to propose to her in Venice on a gondola and got reservations for an opera. He just cancelled the flight and ate the costs for all his other reservations.
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Well, I cancelled two trips to Japan last year because of the democracy protests (I live in Hong Kong), or to be precise because of the police response thereto. So if I have to cancel any more because of pandemic panic, at least I'll be used to it.
 
Seeing the 'blueholme' tag above reminded me that I've been meaning to mention in some random thread here that I just picked up a hard copy of the latest edition of Blueholme and I'm really enjoying it. Of course all reproductions of 70's era D&D have core things in common, but this one is unusually pleasing for several reasons: The spell, monster and item lists are exceptionally good, both in general and particularly given the brief page count of the core book; the suggested 'hack' on Fighter abilities (added damage as you level up) is arguably the smartest hack I've seen in an official publication for addressing D&D's 'linear fighter' problem. Add one column to one table and you've fixed it (compare with the Rules Cyclopedia's baroque and probably un playtested weapon mastery system). The look and feel of the game is spot on the vibe of Holmes. Perhaps the nicest thing is that it now has the scope and structure of a fully playable edition of the game, but remains sufficient boiled down that it feels completely appropriate to bolt on several pages of your own house rules to make the game your own. In my experience this was the way all groups approached D&D in the 70's, but the length and density of most editions published today makes the process feel overwhelming - you are stripping back and tacking on a lot of complicated, interconnected things and it feels like it is easy to go astray. Blueholme feels sort of like a starter batch of yeast for your dough, or a fruit tree that is all prepped for you to splice on a healthy graft. Anyway, the thing is great. Include it in your Cornovirus 'go bag'!
 
Bunch said:
I forgot to ask what the ammo was for? If it's pistol ammo I'm not that interested.
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Only for my .40 carry and .308 Remington 700. I sold off the 5.56 a while ago for moving money and haven't really been in the market for any since as I've stopped frequenting the local rifle leagues.
 
Moonglum said:
Seeing the 'blueholme' tag above reminded me that I've been meaning to mention in some random thread here that I just picked up a hard copy of the latest edition of Blueholme and I'm really enjoying it. Of course all reproductions of 70's era D&D have core things in common, but this one is unusually pleasing for several reasons: The spell, monster and item lists are exceptionally good, both in general and particularly given the brief page count of the core book; the suggested 'hack' on Fighter abilities (added damage as you level up) is arguably the smartest hack I've seen in an official publication for addressing D&D's 'linear fighter' problem. Add one column to one table and you've fixed it (compare with the Rules Cyclopedia's baroque and probably un playtested weapon mastery system). The look and feel of the game is spot on the vibe of Holmes. Perhaps the nicest thing is that it now has the scope and structure of a fully playable edition of the game, but remains sufficient boiled down that it feels completely appropriate to bolt on several pages of your own house rules to make the game your own. In my experience this was the way all groups approached D&D in the 70's, but the length and density of most editions published today makes the process feel overwhelming - you are stripping back and tacking on a lot of complicated, interconnected things and it feels like it is easy to go astray. Blueholme feels sort of like a starter batch of yeast for your dough, or a fruit tree that is all prepped for you to splice on a healthy graft. Anyway, the thing is great. Include it in your Cornovirus 'go bag'!
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Thanks, Moonglum, that's pretty much what I was going for when I wrote it (and I suspect what Holmes was going for when he wrote his original basic book). I have my own "Known World" setting for it, but the book is meant to be as open to house-ruling and setting-importation as possible.
 
CRKrueger said:
We’re lucky in that SARS-2 doesn’t seem to be as deadly as SARS or MERS and so far is killing people with underlying conditions mainly.

Influenza viruses seem to have waves, where the first wave isn’t bad, but that’s frequently followed by a second wave that hits harder once the virus mutates a bit. I don’t know if the coronaviruses have that tendency or not. I kind of hope that if I’m going to get it, I get it early.
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Last weekend we visited friends and he is a public health inspector here in the UK, so he had some interesting insight into viruses and so on.

Viruses typically don’t wan’t to kill their direct host, as they rely on hosts passing them on to other victims. If they are too virulent they die out as they kill people before the hosts get the chance to pass them on. It’s an evolutionary own-goal.

Where it gets tricky is when a virus jumps species very quickly. In that kind of scenario a virus that is fine-tuned to make birds ill but not die could cause havoc in a very different species like humans. Virus transmission from more similar creatures are typically less random due to more similar biology. This is one of the reasons why they are very keen to understand what type of animal patient-zero caught it off.

The big panic over Covid-19 is simply that no one knows how deadly it really is. It could just be a wave of nasty colds, or it could be like the Spanish Flu.
 
For me it's losing its humor as it's now causing conflicts between family members on how to handle it. I have older relatives doing nothing about it and saying "I lived through polio and Scarlet fever" which I can't argue with. Then I have others who are locked down. Each is 100% sure the other is acting irrationally. I'm as usual in between seeing reasons to be cautious while still living life. This massive personal choice difference keeps rearing it's head and I'm tired of it. I have four small irrational people to manage I'd really like it if the adults could adult.
 
Apparently there are already cases of COVID-19 in Maidstone, which is not quite just up the road, but not all that far away from Tonbridge. My dodgy ticker puts me in a high risk group if I do actually catch it, plus two pre-school children, so I guess we can't be totally blase about it.

Because Indonesian we actually have a 10kg bag of rice in the house already. I gave in and ordered some long-shelf-life stuff that can be eaten with the rice, plus some snacks for the spawn and various other things that don't have to be kept in the fridge - which is already pretty full anyway. Unless the zombie apocalypse arrives before the Ocado van we should have enough to handle a week or two in quarantine, which is apparently the likely worst case. Oh, my first world problems.

In unrelated news the trains are stalled at Cannon St. because something caught fire on the tracks so I'm waiting a couple of hours at work for it to all blow over.

In further unrelated news, a friend on another forum I frequent commented that the most disturbing thing about COVID-19 is how much it sounds like a Jira ticket.
 
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We're currently officially at 82 cases with 1 case in the town where I live. I see no signs of hysteria yet. We're going to the cinema and a Dim Sum restaurant in Utrecht (6 corona cases) tomorrow to celebrate my wife's birthday. One of the stops of the train we take there will be Houten (9 cases).

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dbm said:
Viruses typically don’t wan’t to kill their direct host, as they rely on hosts passing them on to other victims. If they are too virulent they die out as they kill people before the hosts get the chance to pass them on. It’s an evolutionary own-goal.
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I've stopped trying to get this across to people at my work... Some people just lack, I dunno, something, to follow a perfectly clear and logical line of reasoning.
 
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We're now at 188 cases, 1 death. Utrecht now has 11, Houten has 13.

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Still no signs of panic. The Dutch do seem to have a reputation of being somewhat unfazeable, and if there's any truth to this it's certainly helpful in situations like this one.
 
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265 sick, 3 deaths. Utrecht and Houten are now both at 13 cases.
 
3rik said:
265 sick, 3 deaths. Utrecht and Houten are now both at 13 cases.
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Have they had any concerns about lack of test kits?
 
I was thinking the other day about what would happen if there was an actual apocalypse with the way people behave under the current conditions. The other day a fellow who works in one of the stores I visit said that two ladies spent ten minutes fighting over a container of wipes.
 
Endless Flight said:
I was thinking the other day about what would happen if there was an actual apocalypse with the way people behave under the current conditions. The other day a fellow who works in one of the stores I visit said that two ladies spent ten minutes fighting over a container of wipes.
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I'm viewing this as a nice dry run. I'm learning things about how I could handle some of the disruption to supply etc. Social needs and the like. I have to say being a gamer who likes some very old unplayed games means I'm already setup with a social outlet for an isolated life. Others I know are super stressed out.
 
Bunch said:
Have they had any concerns about lack of test kits?
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Not that I know. IIUC only people who are actually ill and have been in one of the risk areas or have been in contact with people who have are tested. For the southern province Noord-Brabant the RIVM recommends that anyone who feels under the weather because of flu- or cold-like symptoms, preventively stay at home. So yeah, they're not planning on testing everybody.
 
Bunch said:
T The Butcher how's Brazil? Any issues with it down there?
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Just a handful of confirmed cases in Rio and São Paulo, all with a history of recent travel to Italy. No documented contagion in Brazil yet. No deaths. Mild to moderate hysteria — alcohol gel is hard to find but everything else is still on the shelves.
 
During the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic - the so-called Mexican flu - they put anti-bacterial lotions next to all the sinks at my work. :trigger: Needless to say, this was not based on any advice from the RIVM. :grin:
 
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Just a friendly bit of advice. Feel free to share with family, friends, coworkers, enemies, whoever.

All the stockpiling in the world won't do you a iota of good if you do not WASH YOUR GOD DAMN HANDS ALL THE TIME.

Seriously. And see if you can keep the habit after the hysteria dies down.
 
The Butcher said:
Just a friendly bit of advice. Feel free to share with family, friends, coworkers, enemies, whoever.

All the stockpiling in the world won't do you a iota of good if you do not WASH YOUR GOD DAMN HANDS ALL THE TIME.

Seriously. And see if you can keep the habit after the hysteria dies down.
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Good advice.

Given your profession can I suggest you pick up some boxes of face masks you'd need to do your job. If it gets there like it is here your going to wish you had.
 
dbm said:
Italy had quarantined a quarter of their population...
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Yup. The positives and the total deaths continue to rise, despite the previous efforts (which a lot of people did not take seriously).

Lombardy's healthcare system edges ever closer to the point of collapse. There are approx. 8% of the infected who require hospitalization in ICUs. A little less than half of these end up dying anyway. There are some pretty harrowing reports from healthcare professionals in the affected zones, desperately working to contain the problem.

If the numbers do not slow down, we'll be forced to adopt even more drastic measures. It's either this, or hundreds of thousands of deaths, mostly among the elderly.
 
Bunch said:
Given your profession can I suggest you pick up some boxes of face masks you'd need to do your job. If it gets there like it is here your going to wish you had.
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All the medical advice says stop stockpiling surgical masks unless you're a hospital. They are meant to stop surgeons infecting patients. If an infected person coughs on you it won't help. The real advice is to keep washing your hands, learn to stop touching your face, and stay away from people.

That said, I'm effectively forced to wear them on campus just so the rest of the staff doesn't run away screaming. Don't need to worry about students, they're not allowed on campus. Don't ask me why the staff has to be here, I guess management likes to see us at our desks and attending endless crisis meetings where they relay government advice not to gather in groups ...
 
Vile said:
All the medical advice says stop stockpiling surgical masks unless you're a hospital. They are meant to stop surgeons infecting patients. If an infected person coughs on you it won't help. The real advice is to keep washing your hands, learn to stop touching your face, and stay away from people.

That said, I'm effectively forced to wear them on campus just so the rest of the staff doesn't run away screaming. Don't need to worry about students, they're not allowed on campus. Don't ask me why the staff has to be here, I guess management likes to see us at our desks and attending endless crisis meetings where they relay government advice not to gather in groups ...
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T The Butcher is a surgeon I believe. That's why I recommended he look into it.
 
Right, I understand. I hope it doesn't get to the point where surgeries are unable to suppy their staff with masks. I should note that all the shortages here (Hong Kong) are dying down now that everyone has oversupplied themselves with masks, handwash, rice, and toilet paper. Masks are still overpriced but becoming more available, toilet paper, rice, and handwash are on sale because shops are now overstocked.

The irony is that everybody stocking up so they can stay home and self isolate was in fact travelling all over town every day looking for stuff to stock up on.
 
Vile said:
Right, I understand. I hope it doesn't get to the point where surgeries are unable to suppy their staff with masks. I should note that all the shortages here (Hong Kong) are dying down now that everyone has oversupplied themselves with masks, handwash, rice, and toilet paper. Masks are still overpriced but becoming more available, toilet paper, rice, and handwash are on sale because shops are now overstocked.

The irony is that everybody stocking up so they can stay home and self isolate was in fact travelling all over town every day looking for stuff to stock up on.
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That seems silly. We were doing our normal Friday Costco run but got an earlier start on it and just bought for a few more weeks and some items for making things from scratch. We have been a very much 4pm look in the freezer and put it in the cooking device family. This has all been a net positive for us so far minus the extended family differences in handling it. That parts sucked but everything else has been good. Even the weather has helped out. I think I'll end up saving money and be healthier after a few months of this. That would be nice.
 
The coronavirus has now affected our town. Somebody on the high school staff (not a teacher they said, like that matters much) had contact with somebody who has the virus so school is cancelled tomorrow until they figure out what to do.
 
Endless Flight said:
The coronavirus has now affected our town. Somebody on the high school staff (not a teacher they said, like that matters much) had contact with somebody who has the virus so school is cancelled tomorrow until they figure out what to do.
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Can you please type 2m away from your keyboard? I don't want to catch your cooties.
 
Endless Flight said:
I was thinking the other day about what would happen if there was an actual apocalypse with the way people behave under the current conditions. The other day a fellow who works in one of the stores I visit said that two ladies spent ten minutes fighting over a container of wipes.
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The couple of times I've been in actual disaster areas (a chemical plant explosion and a forest fire) things got ugly really fast. Even though a lot/most people remained calm, the folks who freaked out made things much worse than they had to be... putting many more people in danger.
 
The Butcher said:
Just a friendly bit of advice. Feel free to share with family, friends, coworkers, enemies, whoever.

All the stockpiling in the world won't do you a iota of good if you do not WASH YOUR GOD DAMN HANDS ALL THE TIME.

Seriously. And see if you can keep the habit after the hysteria dies down.
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Thank you:grin:!
So I'm no longer having a borderline-OCD-when-it-comes-to-handwashing, I'm just applying proper preventative care, right:tongue:?

For the record, I wash my hands even after touching my mobile phone while at home, which the wife considers insane:shade:.
 
3rik said:
We haven't departed from our normal shopping habits.
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Congrats!

Neither have we, though this might be a good moment to improve, as T The Butcher mentioned.

Simlasa said:
The couple of times I've been in actual disaster areas (a chemical plant explosion and a forest fire) things got ugly really fast. Even though a lot/most people remained calm, the folks who freaked out made things much worse than they had to be... putting many more people in danger.
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From my limited research, that seems like a consistent pattern:thumbsup:.
 
Here in France, things haven't changed much (notwithstanding the shortage of masks, of hand wipes, of honesty and decency in our political class, etc.) except people are not supposed to give one another pecks on the cheeks when meeting. We French love our pecks on the cheeks - this virus won't do at all, cher ami !

And our president said there should not be gatherings of more than a thousand people - I think (I don't listen to him anyway: he's an unsufferable little c...nt).
 
Simlasa said:
The couple of times I've been in actual disaster areas (a chemical plant explosion and a forest fire) things got ugly really fast. Even though a lot/most people remained calm, the folks who freaked out made things much worse than they had to be... putting many more people in danger.
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To bring this back around to gaming, kind of, that’s the real hallmark of the Post-Apocalyptic genre. Virus, meteor, zombie, vampire, aliens or prehistoric bats...it doesn’t matter what caused the apocalypse, the greatest danger is always the same...your fellow humans.

We’ve seen it time and time again. Civilization is the thinnest of veneers, wiped away the second people are without the Rule of Law.
 
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