That's where we're leaning. These kids are like brothers and sisters, going to be hard

Just cancelled our gameday tomorrow

Mrs Starmast has lost the plot. we already have at least a month of food in the house. On the way home from work she buys more food. And when I help her unload, I pull out a box that says "Ghirardelli Double Chocolate brownies" and I raise an eyebrow to her. She says "Look, if I have to self quarantine with you for two weeks, I am gonna need some comfort food/dessert ... right?" I'd say she took that one game, set and match! 8^D

Hahahahaha

@NautArch And you know she'll make me bake them. X^D

The Duncan Hines is better :)

@NautArch Here's the silver lining: if we have to self quarantine for two weeks, I can get her hooked on D&D or 13th Age or Golden Sky stories or some other RPG. It is an ill wind that blows nobody any good! :-)

@KorvinStarmast I also bought Ghirardelli last week--tell her she's in good company =)

@nitsua60 OK, that provides me with some comfort ... food. :-)

goodwife5 and I started watching Derry Girls on Netflix.

I can't believe I bought flour, butter, and sugar...but no chocolate

@nitsua60 A buddy at work went to visit Mexico last week. He called in: nobody in the family is ill, but he discussed with our boss and he's self quar for the next two weeks. He calls it "an abundance of caution"

@NautArch Is there a chocolate shortage at stores? We have a half a dozen choc bars in the cupboard ... email me if you hit emergency status on chocolate ...

I didn't even look to see :(

My wife put it on the list.

@NautArch I'll hit CVS; bakers chocolate or just bar choc?

@KorvinStarmast yes, please

we tend to get various bars of dark choc, 70% plus. Wife says it's health food and I do not argue.

@KorvinStarmast left to my own devices, I buy the 85%+ dark stuff

My wife says it's inedible, but like "oh no.... more for me, I guess"

that dense chocolate is mostly edible with stuff like orange peels

@goodguy5 That's my wife's preference, I am more of a 70-75% taste ...

OK off to store, for critical choc back up supplies. brb

watch those letters so you don't end up buying a dozen of crocs

@KorvinStarmast I bought 100% + nibs once and my wife could barely look at it.

AHHHHHH... I only have one bar of chocolate!!

[redacted]

@NautArch Ok, the Naut Back Up choc stash is now in place. If things get dire, you know my email, I know a guy at Fedex. One less thing for you to worry about. 8^)

XD

@goodguy5 Pro Tip: I know a few folks who fly for fedex and ups. They don't fly pax, just boxes. The betting money is on them mostly maintaining their routes and deliveries.

Disclaimer: I am not a stock broker, and I do not offer investment advice.

I'm trying to figure out if we can hitch a ride on the market recovery.....

And also trying not to think about my 401k (but I'm still young)

@goodguy5 do not think about it. It'll be way up when you need it in a few decades

And I doubt it's done bottoming out

But until it does, if you can buy it isn't a bad idea

mumble mumble dollar-cost averaging...

We've been having much fewer confirmed cases during the last few days, although it's probably because of testing strategy changes.

hgis.uw.edu/virus

npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/03/12/814522489/…

> "And I don't understand it," he says incredulously. "I still don't understand why we don't have extensive testing. Vietnam! Vietnam has tested more people than America has." (He's citing data from earlier this week. The U.S. has since started testing more widely, although exact figures still aren't available at a national level.)

Interesting one today: going out to get stuff was stressy - there are less people on the streets but a lot of those that are far too relaxed about it - couples taking up the entire width of the footpath etc. The bakery is suddenly very popular and had totally sold out of bread quite early

Timeline of flattening the curve explained

@NautArch Sorry, what that reddit page is saying is that 50-75% of those with covid are asymptomatic but contagious, not that 60-70% have it in the first place - where do you get the number of 60-70%?

from trump :P

@Mithrandir24601 oh man, i totally misread that! I'll delete and rewrite.

> President Trump told Americans on Monday to prepare to stay home until July or August

@NautArch Hahaha!

That'll explain it, I was panicking for a moment there :P

@Mithrandir24601 argh, can't delete it

But this shows the importance of linking to sources so that others can vet

@Mithrandir24601 You could correct the message with NautArch's permission, being a mod?

@kviiri I didn't realize @Mithrandir24601 was a mod/room owner. I just flagged myself :P

@kviiri I can do this but I'd like to know whether @NautArch would rather me edit or delete it

@Mithrandir24601 edit works for me

@NautArch ... Oops

Sorry

it's still interesting, but have it say "majority of the those who tested positive (50-70%) were contagious and asymptomatic."

Interesting, and scary. Are symptomatic people still more contagious (due to eg. sneezing)?

majority of the those who tested positive in an italian city(50-70%) were contagious and asymptomatic.

There we go :)

thanks

instead of this being a Coronavirus Chat Zone how about a Coronavirus Newsroom, or would that attract too many trolls?

This room was intended to be a vent for COVID-19 chat from the RPG.SE main chat and its offtopic room, Not A Bar.

So I'm going to stick to the original purpose: this is what you would say at Not A Bar, except you say it here instead so Not A Bar can be free of the virus.

ok, i didn't know the original intention

Hmm, maybe it should be in the room description

so my building has some sewer line issues. And they've moved forward with shutting off the water for 2/3 of the building floors (including mine) to fix it.

room topic changed to Coronavirus Chat Zone: RPG.SE's offtopic room for COVID-19 related discussion. May be frank/stark; see also chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/105612/pandemic-positivity for just the joyful notes. (no tags)

thanks

congrats @NautArch

but i hope this room doesn't stay active for too long

@skillpatrol thanks? :D but yeah, me too. Although based on my link above from TPM, it seems like it will.

yeah, not to mention trump's announcement on Monday

Also, for those wanting COVID info, Talking Points Memo has moved that content outside of their paywall.

I've been reading their stuff without subscription for years, but that move got me to pay them.

did you see my link from npr?

@skillpatrol yeah. Not new info, but still frustrating to read it.

the comparison to Vietnam was surprising to me

What to do in CONVID-19 Isolation?

John Abm says - republicworld.com/entertainment-news/bollywood-news/…

@Mithrandir24601 60% of adults (eventually, not all at once) getting it is what epidemiologists from Harvard's T.H.Chan School of Public Health were saying four weeks ago.

(cc: @NautArch)

@nitsua60 Yeah, it sounds like they're expecting 60-80% total in the UK

but all at once would be a whole other level of disaster

@nitsua60 And if 60% aren't symptomatic, that's going to increase spread becuse folks think they're not sick

Oh My God!

But if >50% who get it are asymptomatic, even everyone getting it would be better than 60% getting it with everyone being symptomatic (assuming the same distribution of infections)

@NautArch Yeah--that podcast from a month ago is when I totally shifted my mindset. Because I can do math, and 60% of adults, 50% asymptomatic, 2%-5% requiring serious intervention... those numbers always looked scary.

@nitsua60 I am most worried about the folks who know how to run the water treatment plants getting sick.

I've got a lot of food, but lack of water? Yeah, i've got nothing there.

@Mithrandir24601 Not sure I'm following your thinking, there. I'm hearing epidemiologists say that the reason SARS and MERS were so much "easier" to contain is because they were generally symptomatic.

No, that's not right. It's that people with those two weren't shedding unless they were symptomatic. Carry on!

Bad day for indian cab drivers

@AbhasKumarSinha Gonna be a bad year for it. I tipped two Uber drivers 100% last week.

@nitsua60 We have Ola in our city and my father always tip them atleast 50% everytime, after CONVID-19 outbreak.

“When we conduct a sample survey over a large population, the sample-size required to ensure that the accuracy of a result lies within a certain confidence interval does not vary much as the population increases beyond a certain point. For instance, in a town of 100,000 people, to attain a 95 per cent confidence interval, one just needs 383 respondents to a survey. If the town has 500,000 or 1,000,000 people, just 384 respondents are required,”

The reason why testing is very limited here.

Proof: sciencedirect.com/topics/mathematics/weak-law-of-large-number

@AbhasKumarSinha you're behind the US? woof.

@NautArch far behind in numbers of infected people.

@AbhasKumarSinha ah. But lack of testing leads to lack of accurate numbers of infected people.

@NautArch Lack of testing? We have done more testing than 10x of US.

Only 10% of it is used.

@AbhasKumarSinha I meant here in the US.

@NautArch I guess USA also have done pretty accurate number of testing.

That's a mathematical proof.

Instead of doing mindlessly testing, it's better to test upto reasonable numbers.

Here's the article - swarajyamag.com/ideas/… (cited from it)

@AbhasKumarSinha it's not true that the US hasn't done a lot of testing?

@NautArch didn't get what you said.

ah, no worries.

USA has around 300 Mn Population and they don't need to cover 100% population.

:-)

@AbhasKumarSinha ... This works great in many circumstances. When the outcomes of the test are the opposite of random isn't one of them :/ If you give it enough time to to spread fairly well round the country (which is what you're trying to avoid), then yeah, sure, if done well, it should give you a reasonable estimate of the number of people with covid. It won't tell you who has it, which is surely half the reason you're testing in the first place :/

@Mithrandir24601 Ofc, no country in the world does sampling to know who has it or is there any?

@AbhasKumarSinha Singapore, South Korea, China, possibly Hong Kong all test as much as possible so they can isolate every case

@AbhasKumarSinha this is statistically true (assuming independence of measurements, which for an infectious disease, is an absurd assumption to make), but not the point. Sampling and extrapolation will, yes, tell us how many we expect have it. Which could help inform policy decisions like whether to stand up new hospitals or not. But it doesn't tell you who has it, which is necessary to know if we're to reduce transmission rate and avoid overwhelming critical capacities.

Singapore are astounding. They started off third worst hit and now they only have 200 cases and (last I checked) no deaths. And these countries just constantly test in some way - you go anywhere public, you get your temperature checked. If your temperature is in any way above normal, you go for further tests. If those further tests are returned negative, you get tested for covid

@Mithrandir24601 Isolation here doesn't make any sense in this case if you've read the first point of the article, we've stopped all possible chances of getting CONVID-19 in our country which other countries you mentioned didn't. So, we don't need to isolate all the people we find them, we just need the reasonable ones who have come in contacts with the infected ones. If you know who are infected ones in india (italian tourists -around 15), so our approach is based on finding them.

@nitsua60 The first point of the article, I've cited clearly says that there no one one who has that, the first cases were Italian tourists, around 15 and the trick is to find all the possible interactions of the people from the airport to Quarantine house. So, no one has that

@Mithrandir24601 And those "further tests" are performed in isolation/protective area and are returned rapidly.

@Mithrandir24601 Portuguese too, still no deaths.

@nitsua60 returned rapidly ? means?

@AbhasKumarSinha hours not days.

@nitsua60 A test for CONVID-19 is of around 30 min...

Not sure, but that happened in Iran.

I don't know how they are done.

@AbhasKumarSinha Glad to hear it. Here you're lucky to have a turnaround on CoViD of days, if you even get to have a test. But Mith and I weren't talking about CoViD tests there, talking about the tests for everything else. (CT of lungs, bacterial pneumonia, flu, maybe others?)

@nitsua60 I don't exactly know about them... Sorry...

@Mithrandir24601 Yeah--I've heard rumbling that drastically reducing new cases can be achieved with a lot less than Hubei-style intervention, but I haven't followed the news out of east Asia closely enough to have a real handle on what's being done where.

Alright--off to lunch and some play-time with kids. Be well, everybody!

(wipes down room as he leaves)

I've heard that China'a Alibama has made some AI that tests within seconds

@AbhasKumarSinha Ahh, that might be the case but it also might not be the case - over 50% of people coming from China originally were asymptomatic and this is how it spread in other countries. Singapore also implemented similar measures at the border (literally everyone gets at least thermally screened) and they still get little batches of infections in the community. This is possibly the mistake that every other country made

- 'if you haven't been in contact with a known carrier, there's no way you have it', which is sadly false as over half the carriers (at the start anyway) were unknown. It is possible that India quarantined every foreigner and everyone who came into contact with said foreigner etc., in which case, I'd gladly start believing such claims. This is a global pandemic though, so assuming 'we're fine' isn't a good idea regardless of whether you are or aren't

@nitsua60 Yeah, these. Thermal screening is seconds, everything else takes a few hours

@nitsua60 Yeah, what I've heard is that Hubei-style lockdown just made all the stuff that helps eliminate the virus easier - in essence, lockdown isn't needed to relentlessly test everyone constantly, it just means that there are less people around so you can detect those with a high temperature quicker and easier, then get them to the testing facility

@Mithrandir24601 No question of asymptomatic cases as we've blocked all Chinese visas in the month of Jan, much before than any other country. No, I'm pretty sure they were doing other tests too, takes about 30 min, something related to nucleus , I dun know what was that. No question of saying we are fine, there is a group of dedicated experts here working 24*7 here keeping an eye on every single situation and government is using an AI based system to get rid of any disaster beforehand.

@Mithrandir24601 You don't see these statements from WHO representative about a country very often - twitter.com/ANI/status/1239779904134066177?s=20 or see it?

@Mithrandir24601 It certainly helps if you recently (last decade) had practice, twice, implementing such protocols against diseases that were (a) deadlier (so people really sat up and took notice) but (b) only communicable while symptomatic (so you could see the immediate effect of these interventions). And still had the institutional knowledge and infrastructure around to help.

@AbhasKumarSinha I hope that's all true, that India is doing everything perfectly and doesn't need to worry. Seriously: there's a billion that it'd be great not to be worried about. Good luck.

@nitsua60 I'm actually working very hard on COVID-19 India Hackathon, making an AI system for that... I'll soon publish and post the link here.

@AbhasKumarSinha As @nitsua60 said, this is great and you're certainly doing better than the likes of Spain but again, that doesn't mean that using sampling stats is a good idea - if you're still trying to contain the thing (which is great and can work really well), you need to know literally every single person who has it so you can isolate them, not proportions of the population, which is what the stats give. It's doing a better job than Europe or the US, that's pretty clear

Have a look at case 31 in South Korea - this one person caused hundreds, if not thousands to be infected, so I'm not kidding when I say that literally every case matters

@Mithrandir24601 Or in the case of my wife, who just got tested (showing minor symptoms) 5-7 days. :-/

(US)

And even if 99.999% of your population is clear, these laws of large numbers start becoming more complicated, as the error would need to be below 0.0001% and that's still a lot of people

@Rubiksmoose Arghh, that's horrible. Yelp. Can the US not just use the $5 WHO tests yet?

@Mithrandir24601 Listening to the conference now, and it seems 'no'. They (the admin) feels the tests are not good enough.

compared to the tests we're developing here.

@Mithrandir24601 Agree, there are chances that over a million of population will get it overnight by spreading, but chances are very slim (although not totally 0), so we need to be alert everytime for any disaster.

<grain of salt>

@Mithrandir24601 I have no idea, but if it makes sense we're probably not doing it.

(also, I know I sound critical of India here but I've been way more critical of the UK in the past few days, so I'm not trying to attack India, I'm just nitpicking every little thing :P )

@NautArch The idiots

@Mithrandir24601 At least they're starting to take it seriously.

I'll take that.

If they're going to make tests costs $3k each, they need to at least ensure that it's as easy to get tested with the $3k ones as with the $5 ones, at no cost

I cancelled out of my game night we had scheduled for tonight. Apparently, they were going to keep it up. But at least one of them told me privately he planned on simply not showing up.

@AbhasKumarSinha Yes, this, exactly :)

Two of the members still want to get together to board game.

@NautArch Do it virtually

I tried to recommend we move to roll20, but one guy pushed back with a hard no.

so i'm going to organize some non-main campaign roll20 gaming.

@Mithrandir24601 I just bought a mic so I could do my group remotely.

gotta keep playing :)

@Mithrandir24601 Cost? That's free...

@AbhasKumarSinha Not in the US... The WHO developed testing kits that cost $5 each to make. The US opted to not use these and instead develop their own. They're charging people $3k per test, if you can even get one done

k.

@Mithrandir24601 THe counter to the reasoning on 'quality' came up yesterday in the washington post. The key quote: "“What surprised me the most was to hear how much emphasis there is at CDC on quality control — to the point where, in my opinion, it really compromised surveillance.”"

@Mithrandir24601 So after panicking (I never even thought of the cost) it looks like those lucky enough to have insurance need not worry at least.

theverge.com/2020/3/10/21173970/…

@Rubiksmoose To be 'fair', I think you don't have to pay at all if the result is positive?

Small consolation, that is

@Mithrandir24601 No kidding. Just.. what a mess.

@Mithrandir24601 twitter.com/politvidchannel/status/1238151184340271104 but it could have been different.

Is anyone else still listening to this US press conference? Can we stop blaming where it started?

@NautArch So much for that quality control... Wasn't much use at the start, was it?

(that thing about inaccurate or misleading results or whatever the exact problem was)

ah, nothing like leaving with another partisan dig. Thanks leadership!

@NautArch "No. No, we cannot stop blaming others. Next question?"

@nitsua60 I finally had to turn it off.

How to sleep 12 hours in 6 hours a day...

TS;CR - no reason to think Ibuprofen makes COVID-19 worse, but stick to paracetamol (Tylenol?) anyway just incase... Unless you're already prescribed NSAIDs

@Mithrandir24601 There's some conflicting information on the WHO tests. Politico says that Trump rejected WHO tests. A later Politifact article reports that the WHO tests were not offered to the U.S., as they are intended for countries that lack the infrastructure to develop their own.

Politifact includes a quote from a WHO spokesperson:

> "No discussions occurred between WHO and CDC about WHO providing COVID-19 tests to the United States," said WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris. "This is consistent with experience since the United States does not ordinarily rely on WHO for reagents or diagnostic tests because of sufficient domestic capacity."

@LShaver Interesting! I wonder what tests the US administration was referring to.

The politifact article explains it reasonably well. Essentially WHO evaluated a few different test protocols and recommend one developed by a German lab. The U.S. (and seemingly other countries as well) opted to develop their own.

The article also explains that the U.S. messed up in several key ways, but rejecting WHO tests was not one of them.

@LShaver We must have rejected some test by someone. OR maybe not (can't actually trust my administration)

@AncientSwordRage Paracetamol is Acetaminophen for all us yanks; i.e. - Tylenol.

Remote work is starting to make me a bit tense. On the bright side, I've stocked up with non-screen entertainment and pastimes too but still, ugh.

I knew this day would come, but I didn't know that for me, it would be Tuesday. (sorry for the bad reference lol)

I've prescribed myself an hour in the sauna and some piano to see if that gets my spirits back up

Not sure if this belongs in the corona room or not, but Congress is working on plans to send every american cash and soon. Interesting. I think they should also cancel student loan debt for anyone 5+ years in the workforce too, but that's a pipe dream. :p

← 1 message moved from RPG General Chat

@kviiri As long as the internet continues to work, I think we're all set.

I don't care about the internet, but heavens help if the sauna stops working

(okay, this is slightly exaggerating)

According to some the sauna might actually be really critical ...

There is an old Finnish saying: if sauna, tar and booze won't help, the disease will kill you.

(and sauna was supposed to be the most important one. Like "charity" in the Three Heavenly Virtues)

tar?

Yes, it was applied as medicine in various ways ages ago.

I am a bit of a sucker for ancient lore, sayings and all that jazz – but let's say that while I do believe in the health benefits of sauna, the old saying probably was more true back in the days when there was no proper medicinal science to go around ;)

with these words, I'm going back there.

Day 2 of quarantine: I have consumed all the Chex Mix in my house. The end is nigh.

what is beer but lubricant for my throat so i can eat more chex mix?

TIL I have a sauna, too!

(Unfortunately, someone keeps mistaking it for the outhouse.)

Just catching up on some things. XKCD from a few days back is so on-point that it hurts:

Unless I'm missing something, they're missing a huge opportunity here.

They being the US government.

If they're going to send us all something like a thousand bucks, they should tie it into the census. Once you're counted, you get the thousand bucks, here it is.

@Jolenealaska Also $1000 isn't actually all that much considering how long this could last for - that'll keep the average person going, what, less than a month?

Couple of weeks maybe?

Hopefully, they will keep it up as long as necessary. But tie the first payment to the census. Kill 2 birds, so to speak.

That will create a lot of opportunities for fraud, and also skew the results compared to the average census with no payment invovled.

*involved.

Yes. Making it necessarily need more oversight.

Which it needs anyway.

Assuming this "send checks to citizens" thing gets approved, I'm curious to see how quickly they can implement it.

Another idea would be to tie it to tax returns, which are (supposedly) due in about a month.

And NO citizenship question. And I know it doesn't have one, cuz I did mine last week.

@LShaver Not even close to everyone (including most SS recipients) file income tax

True... also lots of folks (myself included) have already filed.

wow, pandemics really bring the mods together, don't they? :)

just noticing that

@LShaver "due in about a month" You're still talking about the US still right? I got my tax return last month and from my understanding most people around here did

Yes... April 15 is historically "tax day" here in US, unless it falls on a weekend.

Around here everyone gets their taxes in February or March. And we're in the US

Tying it to taxes wouldn't work, but I think tying it to the census makes perfect sense.

It would even help get the homeless motivated to be counted.

And it would motivate the people who are motivated to help people who are not motivated to help themselves.

Let's keep this focused on the virus, folks. Getting into census/citizenship debate is not something I'd like to start up here

← 2 messages moved from RPG General Chat

@Yuuki have you tried the Bold flavor?

It's all right but I'm not a fan, tbh.

It's kinda overspiced.

Ohmab, I love it

I stick with Original because the other options are the various sweet/candy ones and Cheesy.

Which I am also not a fan of.