huxley – back to the telecommuting – there’s a paragraph in this post about that, among other things.
Good advice to anyone here still employed or employeeing (there seem to be an awful lot of retired folks in Neo’s Salon, but maybe you still have kids and grandkids in the workforce).

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelbernick/2020/03/09/the-workplace-in-the-time-of–coronavirus-part-i-legal-guidelines-for-navigating-the-upheaval/#acdbb586f117

h/t PowerLine yesterday.

https://nypost.com/2020/03/04/coronavirus-patient-ignored-self-isolation-order-to-go-to-business-event/

I have no doubt that government leaders are being advised by competent infectious disease professionals to halt the spread by taking these actions. I am encouraged that Chinese imports have been cut by 95%. Good. Stop it at the border.

Sadly for those people who are already infected, let the virus run its course. COVID-19 will join the infamous ranks of H1N1 and others. We will learn from this so as to better combat the next outbreak. It will be a brighter day soon.

AesopFan on March 9, 2020 at 11:51 pm said:

A few other people who are not responding in the best spirit of compassion for others.

Did anyone really expect that there would not be significant numbers of people who just didn’t care if they infected others, or who may even do so out of malicious glee?

Have we forgotten the stories on the San Fran bathhouses? Forgotten the bi-guys who deliberately or indifferently infected their wives? The pervert dentist who infected some?

If the lengthy and often repeated social issue discussions related here and elsewhere have proven one thing, they have proven that the craving for identification and inclusion varies wildly in the human population, and seems even to manifest to some degree in political stances. And in addition, the desire of some to “punish” innocent others for, or to spread the misery of, some misfortune they have experienced is not particularly uncommon, if the very definition of moral evil.

Read this as well as the comments there.

To get true death rates for an illness, you have to include everyone infected. For the most part, we are missing the majority of cases, which are mild. So the statistics are skewed towards the more serious. That is true of nearly every illness in the early stages of reporting.

Also, I believe the best statistics so far are the ones from the Diamond Princess cruise ship. See this post for my discussion of that.

Incidentally I’d have thought death rates would be better worked out comparing recovered people vs fatalities, ie people through which the virus has run its course?

In any event it is either as bad as alarmists fear, or governments are behaving very strangely for a common cold. Neither case makes me sleep easy.

I have heard reports that 95% of imports have ceased coming from China. Strikes me as ominous.

The evidence is the rarity of talking-heads talking sense.

https://twitchy.com/samj-3930/2020/03/09/and-this-is-how-its-done-brit-hume-makes-panic-inducing-media-look-even-worse-with-1-sentence-coronavirus-tweet/

While the rest of the media are out and about telling Americans they’re all GOING TO DIE (MSNBC had an ‘expert’ on claiming the mortality rate would be 15-20% … not even joking), Brit Hume took a more measured and rational route and shared something actually useful.

Sure, it’s not quite as click/tap-worthy as ‘THE END OF TIMES AND IT’S TRUMP’S FAULT’, but it’s a piece that everyone would benefit from reading.

Crazy, right?

See this about what’s going on in Italy.

As for China, I personally think the statistics there represent the usual change from early reports of a novel virus and the percentage of deaths (usually high) to later reports (lower). The reason is pretty simple, which is that early reports are only about the cases that come to the attention of medical authorities. Mild cases don’t, and are missed in the early statistics.

I’m not saying the Chinese are fonts of truth-telling. But I see no reason to think at this point that the basic trend they are describing is false. The Chinese, like the Italians, don’t want this to get any bigger, though, for obvious reasons that are at least partly economic. And the Chinese are used to telling their population what to do, and monitoring them for compliance, so this isn’t all that much of a stretch for them.