I was hoping this was a game

Now it has to be a game.

This has to be the soundtrack

https://soundcloud.com/v-dt/awrite

I drive to the city, sit in my office all day without seeing anyone, then after work walk around downtown without seeing anyone. Just like every day - without watching the news I'd not have known about it. (I work remotely, and Columbus, OH is a no-pedestrians city.)

Even the supermarkets here are empty, and we've only had a handful of cases, all of which were people who had been overseas and they've all been put into isolation.

Fear is the mind-killer.

Yes. I've started calling it "the flu", because it's not far off.

Hell yeah, now we have a mascot.

Heh, same here.

Hey, if anyone goes ahead and uses the time to make a game, be sure to display this during startup:

{"name":"612376","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/0\/f\/0f49ad9606b23943ec2f75f27d93871d.jpg","w":3456,"h":3456,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/0\/f\/0f49ad9606b23943ec2f75f27d93871d"}

Public transit has taken hit here, they cut back on service. I'll have to change my morning routine. And if that isn't bad enough, Tom Brady is leaving the Patriots.

State of emergency declared in Ontario.. My wife is always off for March Break, but her job is shut down for at least 2 extra weeks afterward. I am working from home. My employer is being great about it so far. Extending paid sick leave for anyone that needs it.

We're social distancing at home. Which is easy for me. That's my natural state. This is like my dream existance. Haha. It is driving my wife crazy though. She doesn't like to sit around at home. She takes every opportunity she gets to go out, but nevertheless is feeling depressed after only a couple of days... Mind you, she's also a little sick, but it doesn't appear to be COVID-19 (I hope).

So far so good. I'm feeling pretty good... But that can change in a hurry...

Last Friday my wife called me just as I was leaving work (with the company workstation to work from home), and said that one of her clients at work had been infected with the virus and visited her work on Thursday and they were talking closely and she was annoyed that he wasn't isolating and didn't warn them...

At that point I think we both started to panic a little bit. It seemed inevitable that we were likely infected. It took a few more conversations with her to clarify that this client was out of town at the same convention as somebody confirmed to have the virus.. The client that she had direct contact with is in isolation now, apparently, but has NOT been confirmed to have the virus...

Nevertheless, the next day we were both starting to feel like crap. The mind is a powerful thing. My symptoms didn't get any worse though. I pretty much feel fine again.

That said, my wife goes stir crazy so she's always trying to find a reason to go shopping. She went out today to try to find toilet paper, but the entire city is out of stock still... Every time a store gets stock the same people must be going to get more. All that I know is if I ever have to meet in a dark alley to pay $200 for a roll of toilet paper I'm bringing a baseball bat and it's going to be free.

Neil, once again you are sadly misinformed and mistaken. Italy has been reporting 300 deaths per day from Covid-19. That's 10,000 deaths a month. And it's just getting started.

There is a lot of flu deaths though for sure. For the four flu seasons from 2013/14 up to 2016/17 Italy had an estimated 7027, 20259, 15801 and 24981 deaths according to some old study I found in Google. ^[1] So for the 2016/17 one that would be about 100 a day during the flu months - just to give a number to compare to the current Covid-19 deaths there.

That was the worst of those flu outbreaks in Italy of course and is still less deadly than Covid-19. But it's at least in the same order of magnitude. Not really sure myself what to take away from it, except I guess we could be in a lot worse situation if Covid-19 actually were significantly more deadly than the flu. And all our health systems seem to be in bad shape when the only way to deal with a rather mild outbreak like this one is to shut everything down - but I don't really see an alternative to doing so either.

Holy shit, the forums are still running and the usual suspects are still posting.

For something on topic to the thread, shit's just hitting the fan where I live. Still no restrictions beyond "no gatherings with more than 500 people", but cases have started doubling ~every two days here in the county.
When the shit really hits the fan we are so screwed though. There are ~500 ICU slots with ventilators in the entire country, and they normally run at around 80% occupancy. And people don't stop almost dying from other causes just because there's a new virus on the block.

Oh, and people are panic buying toilet paper here as well, because they are idiots. Like... paper is one of our major industries. Just [i]one[/i] of the factories of [i]one[/i] of our toilet paper manufacturers can supply the entire country with toilet paper and still have left over to export - and they have 4 more factories around the country.