The upside to coronovirus!

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Travel to the USA from Europe is banned for 30 days. Cargo may be next
 
Coronavirus fears have now impacted one of my game sessions. One player got cold feet, but instead of cancelling it looks like we're going to try gaming remotely.

Now, I have to figure out how to run Cepheus Engine/Hostile over Discord, effectively...
 
We were talking about this at work today before this latest round of cancellations happened and said it’s only the tip of the iceberg. Also, once it was labeled a pandemic people started to panic even more, buying up all the toiletries in sight. My wife said Wal-Mart had no toilet paper when she went tonight. The prepping is fully underway! Other things to sell out include Spam, Chef Boyardee and powdered milk.
 
I'm staying home. I like home and most the people I want to game with these days live in different states or countries so pretty much same as before.
 
Endless Flight said:
We were talking about this at work today before this latest round of cancellations happened and said it’s only the tip of the iceberg. Also, once it was labeled a pandemic people started to panic even more, buying up all the toiletries in sight. My wife said Wal-Mart had no toilet paper when she went tonight. The prepping is fully underway! Other things to sell out include Spam, Chef Boyardee and powdered milk.
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Dumarest said:
That's ridiculous. Cargo is a really good LP. Mankcam Mankcam, you talk to your ambassador and I'll talk to mine. This cannot happen!
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"Crikey
Things have gotten real crook, real quick. What are those drongos doing?
But we can sort this mess of a dingo's dinner out before our beer gets warm"
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"Just come here Down Under, and I'm sure we can get anyone across that Pacific Pond"
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"You want to avoid USA Imperial entanglements?
Well,...now that's the trick, ain't it!"
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There is a lot of discussion on panic buying of masks, but as a lapsed LARPer I fortunately have this well covered...

Day wear:
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Formal wear:
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If it gets really bad:
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Do you think they will keep the virus away? Or just keep people away? :devil:
 
503 cases, 5 deaths.

The people at my work are really bad at filtering information so lunch breaks are filled with rumor-based bullshit statements that I don't even bother reacting to... I do basically low-skilled work so yeah, this is to be expected. (No offence intended.) I don't think telling them to stick to one reliable news source, the RIVM site, will have any effect.
 
FWIW, a smart, educated Italian friend of mine posted this on a mutual's Facebook feed:
 

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Gringnr said:
FWIW, a smart, educated Italian friend of mine posted this on a mutual's Facebook feed:
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Someone here claimed to have heared one sick person can only infect 3 other people. That seems... unlikely.
 
3rik said:
Someone here claimed to have heared one sick person can only infect 3 other people. That seems... unlikely.
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I don't think that's as unlikely as you may suspect. We're seeing exponential growth here. Look at the growth you have been posting 188 Saturday to 614 on Thursday. Now that's not a true picture because not everyone is tested but it grows quickly if not contained. You're heading to a lockdown. Id get ready for it.
 
It may fit the evidence, but it is still magical thinking. Where as the reality is that people probably spot that they are ill by the time they have infected three others.

And that would still be a fairly shocking rate of growth if left unchecked across the entire populace of most countries!
 
Wife is a nurse at the county public health district in infectious diseases. As you can imagine, our house is the 24 hour COVID channel.

my gaming group meets Friday, but we have discussed doing Roll20. We have also discussed the amount of alcohol Ingestion required to kill it. nothing shall stop gaming!
 
One of my classmates has a sister in the CDC. She is having a "fun" time right now working on Covid-19.
On the note of misinformation I overheard a fellow in one of my classes say that it's "been confirmed" that it's an escaped bio-weapon, my CDC classmate and I were quick to shut that line of delusional down.
 
Giganotosaurus said:
One of my classmates has a sister in the CDC. She is having a "fun" time right now working on Covid-19.
On the note of misinformation I overheard a fellow in one of my classes say that it's "been confirmed" that it's an escaped bio-weapon, my CDC classmate and I were quick to shut that line of delusional down.
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Yeah, the conspiracy marketers are in the process of establishing their conspiracy narrative. We'll probably see that fiction firm up over the next week or two. I'm more worried about how there hasn't been much about the anti-vaxxers. This is exactly their kind of thing. I imagine they're already finding sick people in their community, having them blow their nose into a napkin, and then sending it through the postal system to three other people.
 
Jetstream said:
Bless.

Your.

Heart.
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We try to be gentle with our moderation, but if this kind of foul language continues, a crackdown might be in order.

I may be Australian by birth, but I have Southern Yank relatives, so I know exactly what that means. :wink:
Endless Flight said:
We were talking about this at work today before this latest round of cancellations happened and said it’s only the tip of the iceberg. Also, once it was labeled a pandemic people started to panic even more, buying up all the toiletries in sight. My wife said Wal-Mart had no toilet paper when she went tonight. The prepping is fully underway! Other things to sell out include Spam, Chef Boyardee and powdered milk.
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I was at Costco yesterday, and hand soap was completely gone. There was an abundance of "body wash".

People do know that they are all just soap, right?
3rik said:
503 cases, 5 deaths.

The people at my work are really bad at filtering information so lunch breaks are filled with rumor-based bullshit statements that I don't even bother reacting to... I do basically low-skilled work so yeah, this is to be expected. (No offence intended.) I don't think telling them to stick to one reliable news source, the RIVM site, will have any effect.
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I was in a diner last week waiting to meet a friend, and I had to grit my teeth listening to the idiots at the next table.

I'll keep my recap a little vague to elide the political agendas, but they all began by agreeing that the virus was a complete hoax. Then they circled around to complete agreement that the virus was an escaped bioweapon and how China was suppressing the real numbers about how many people it had killed. Then back to talking about how it terrible how the media was scaring people about something that wasn't even real. Then onto talking about how China was boosting the numbers of infected people to tank the US economy.

They circled back and forth between it being a hoax to being a devastating weapon about 6 more times. At no point did the conversation approach rational, factual discussion of the virus.
 
Baulderstone said:
We try to be gentle with our moderation, but if this kind of foul language continues, a crackdown might be in order.

I may be Australian by birth, but I have Southern Yank relatives, so I know exactly what that means. :wink:

I was at Costco yesterday, and hand soap was completely gone. There was an abundance of "body wash".

People do know that they are all just soap, right?

I was in a diner last week waiting to meet a friend, and I had to grit my teeth listening to the idiots at the next table.

I'll keep my recap a little vague to elide the political agendas, but they all began by agreeing that the virus was a complete hoax. Then they circled around to complete agreement that the virus was an escaped bioweapon and how China was suppressing the real numbers about how many people it had killed. Then back to talking about how it terrible how the media was scaring people about something that wasn't even real. Then onto talking about how China was boosting the numbers of infected people to tank the US economy.

They circled back and forth between it being a hoax to being a devastating weapon about 6 more times. At no point did the conversation approach rational, factual discussion of the virus.
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I wish I could put this all on one or the other side of the political spectrum but I'm getting it from both sides. Mostly I'm hoping something is done for small businesses and people working. There can't be much of a recovery if they are bankrupt. Sure things like airlines, cruise companies may need bailouts to keep all their leveraged debt from freezing up the markets. That's fine do that too. Just do what has to be done so in 2-3 months we can get going again.
 
Baulderstone said:
People do know that they are all just soap, right?
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rational thought has largely left the building. this is the real problem with it. you need to remove the emotion from it to get them to think about what they are saying. too much unknown and they are running rampant. we have very little data on it, and that's just that. It doesn't mean it's worse or not, it means we don't know. there is a lot of good information from reputable sources out there, but it's not goign to help the fear that much because a lot of it requires an extra step in thought.
 
I was just reading the local news and came across the first article that said "Most people that get it don't need to be hospitalized". One of my teachers was expressing the other day, his frustration that the media isn't reporting on people getting better, so he has no idea on how long you'll be sick for if you get it.
 
it's a very difficult problem. it's one I've dealt with for a large part of my life - folks only hear the negative stuff. people are making very irrational decisions. "Don't go to seattle, you might get corona virus" - well, yes, you might, but it's here too, and you aren't likely to die. "don't eat at chinese restaurants. because coronavirus is chinese" - wut? i just can't even.

somewhat more positively, my wife and i can really get into a deep discussion about this because epidemiology and my work (computer security adjacent) have a lot of intersection at the. data level and how to interact with it. a lot of vectors and. infection rates and risk weighing and the like. we translate a bit back and forth between them but by and large the same math and analysis all works just the same.
 
The entire educational system was just shut down here, as well as cancelling all public events and closing cultural venues like galleries and museums. Most people I know are now working from home but it hasn't been made a national requirement yet.
 
Raleel said:
rational thought has largely left the building. this is the real problem with it. you need to remove the emotion from it to get them to think about what they are saying. too much unknown and they are running rampant. we have very little data on it, and that's just that. It doesn't mean it's worse or not, it means we don't know. there is a lot of good information from reputable sources out there, but it's not goign to help the fear that much because a lot of it requires an extra step in thought.
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It also doesn't help we've done a reasonably good job from all sides of the political spectrum to put distrust in the governments of the world local and national. It makes convincing anyone hard. Then add insufficient testing in the US so far and people will correctly say 'but that data is so incomplete we don't know!'.

Italy is demonstrating what happens if you let that statement keep you from doing anything for too long. I don't blame or judge them for it. This is the kind of Crisis you can almost only get wrong to some degree. Too early and businesses and economies decline unnecessarily and people are hurt/die from poverty. Too late and people die from the disease and overloaded hospitals.
 
Bunch said:
Then add insufficient testing in the US so far and people will correctly say 'but that data is so incomplete we don't know!'.
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and it's true, we don't know, but that doesn't mean we need to spend a lot of time on fear. that's really the tough part here. people fear the unknown and it is very hard to pull them off the ledge without more knowledge. it takes time and patience to walk people through it.
 
On the topic of rumors, I would like to go on the record as stating that there is no truth to the theory that the RPG Pub released the virus to distract people from engaging in a backlash over the logo change.
 
Gabriel said:
I'm more worried about how there hasn't been much about the anti-vaxxers. This is exactly their kind of thing. I imagine they're already finding sick people in their community, having them blow their nose into a napkin, and then sending it through the postal system to three other people.
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From what I've seen, most anti-vaxxers are apparently terrified that the government will use this as an excuse to force them to take vaccines.
 
Raleel said:
my gaming group meets Friday, but we have discussed doing Roll20. We have also discussed the amount of alcohol Ingestion required to kill it. nothing shall stop gaming!
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Our adult DCC group was skipping this Saturday evening anyways, as one of our players has other commitments that night, but apparently the Basic Fantasy game I run for some teens is still on for this Saturday afternoon. It seems most people around here aren't overly worried, at least at the moment, as they think it's mainly a problem 'elsewhere' (i.e. those big, evil cities with all those foreigners). That said, I'm going to start looking at some online options as a fallback.
 
Tulpa Girl said:
Our adult DCC group was skipping this Saturday evening anyways, as one of our players has other commitments that night, but apparently the Basic Fantasy game I run for some teens is still on for this Saturday afternoon. It seems most people around here aren't overly worried, at least at the moment, as they think it's mainly a problem 'elsewhere' (i.e. those big, evil cities with all those foreigners). That said, I'm going to start looking at some online options as a fallback.
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What are you playing again? I might be able talk to some people and get some help there.
 
Our state (Ohio) just shut down all schools in the state for a minimum of the next three weeks and banned gatherings of 100 or more people.
 
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