Coronavirus

[Eoin McLove]

I just popped down to the shop to grab brekkie stuff expecting to drive through a ghost town and end up fighting someone for a loaf of bread.  Thankfully it seems completely normal.  The shop was well stocked,  there was a normal amount of non- hysterical people buying ordinary quantities of stuff and there were even people out and about walking in the pleasant spring sunshine.  This is all probably anathema to some people but the lack of hysteria works for me.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Prudence is the way to go. Heading out for a walk to the park ourselves now.

[astfgyl]

I find it strange that once the locking down started, everybody started going to the shops in massive numbers, worse than christmas eve. Is that not the best possible way to spread it even quicker? I work in a pharmacy, and the place was packed to the rafters the last few days with people pushing against each other buying up everything they could get their hands on and yesterday with the schools closed, the place was riddled with kids which also sort of seems to defeat the purpose of closing the schools in the first place.

Like even if people don't take the risk of this seriously, do they not want to at least play ball and try have this quarantine situation lifted as soon as possible?

Also, and this has surely been said a lot, but much more worrying than any other element of this virus is the mass hysteria associated with it. Can you imagine something with say a 50% death rate getting out? it would be worse than any disaster movie.

And lastly, back in 2008 when the banking sector began to collapse, the people were forced to bail them out. What are the chances of the banking sector helping or being forced to bail the people out this time?

[Pedrito]

Nobody should be panicking. I'm relaxing here reading a book. But, for once I'm prepared to listen to the scientists. Spain's Coronavirus cases have increased 10 fold since Sunday. 1500 new cases overnight. A video is going round of bars in Benidorm, in the middle of the day with thousands of people stuffed into bars. All English and Irish taking the blasé approach while the locals are trying to follow guidelines, their kids aee at home, not congreagating etc etc. We take the prudent approach or we simply say it's all an elaborate hoax..are we seriously saying that? Whole countries shut down, sporting events, the economy in nosedive..these things aren't done without some thought put into them.

[astfgyl]

I'm stuck at home with four kids and I'm trying to keep us isolated here but everywhere I look, people are acting as if it is an early easter holiday with extra shopping, and the pubs are still doing well from what I hear.  If I do go out, I'll be going for a spot of hillwalking or some other non-contact activity, but even at that trying to get used to the prospect of not going out except for work. It also shows the sheer selfishness/stupidity of people with the attitude of "Sure if I get it, I'll be grand" and not taking into account all of the people who won't be grand. Same with all the knobs who went to Cheltenham.

I've never craved normality as I do right now, and this is only the beginning.

[Caomhaoin]

Precisely. A bit of common sense and calm. I'm cooking, reading and watching films to pass the time and when the grub is running low, we'll drive out to the supermarket, in and out ASAP and back home. Wash the paws and wait it out.

Amazingly the day of the bar ban I saw a group of about 15 people outside the pub on the corner outside, drinking and having the craic. Hard to understand being that blasé about it. 

[Ducky]

The worst thing is when the shit hits the fan for one of these people (whether themselves or a loved one) they'll take their story to The Mirror or Daily Mail and have a moan about how about how they were just living their best life and no one sat them down and made a crayon drawing for them explaining what to do.

Personally I have some nice grub in, a few beers, a book, a game and a few albums lined up. Sound weekend in my view.

[astfgyl]

Yeah I'm approaching it in much the same way as yourself. Got the last book of ASOIAF to take into, having blazed through the rest in record time, and a recently-found appreciation for Peter Gabriel to keep me interested. Not a bad line up at all.

I honestly believe that if everybody calms down a little (some a lot!) we will get through this situation a lot more quickly. I came on here today having been off forums in general for a while, as I find a lot of the discussion to be at the more rational end of the scale and I needed to get away from the hype because it was wrecking my head. A self imposed ban on the constant updates has eased my mind a lot, too as well as the day out of work.

Imagine how spooked we would all be if we were updated every time somebody was very ill with the winter flu, and had a running tally rammed down our throats constantly on every media source. I know this is different and more serious, but I'm attempting to take the rational approach to what I feed my mind with.

[Airneanach]

A lovely few posts to read, chaps.

As a semi hypochondriac, overly empathic little snowflake with years and years of generalised anxiety issues, this has been doing my nut in despite the relatively non existent physical threat such a virus poses to my twenty nine year old bag of bones.  I've been going around as a vociferous enough part of the "This will all blow over in a few weeks and we'll be laughing" brigade more to convince myself than anyone else, so it's been a tough bit of realisation for me over the past few days that we're living in a changed world of the sort that's going to be a little tougher and a little darker for a wee bit.

It's ultimately better now, though, that a clearer image is emerging of where we're all likely to stand with this thing until at least the summer. I'm thankful for how connected we all are, and appreciative more than ever of the kind of escapism you can get through music, books, entertainment.

Until the grid goes down, of course, at which point the books are subject to being kindle. Might start with the Rain Wild Chronicles. I'm on the last book in the Realm of the Elderlings series, but those dragon ones can get to fuck. Had to skip them.

But no, it's class reading all the more pragmatic, cozy posts about how we're all going to spend this period. This is proper surreal.

[Kunt 4 Life]

Just saw a story on the BBC website that Arlene foster saying that if schools close it will be for 16 weeks. If that does happen I imagine that will include nurseries.
That would fuck a lot of people up, myself included. Also would that mean all exams are off? Nobody goes to university this year?
Sorry to bring it back to doom and gloom again.

[Airneanach]

The UK approach as a whole seems quite radical. The current idea seems to be a fairly benign approach to social isolation, let the virus get on with things but stretch out the peak period into summer so as to take the burden off the NHS a bit.

If you want to get a bit more tin foil hat, and I'm not even sure it's that crazy to suggest, it looks like they're going for a herd immunity scenario. Which would lead to far more fatalities in the short term, I'd imagine.

I know flights to London are like taxis for some people, but  we'd seriously want to consider a travel ban for anything other than supply chains to and from the UK.  Ireland's response to this is drastically different and their own policies would seem to contravene ours. We're going more and more for total self isolation in order to limit the number of up and about vectors, so as to protect our sick and elderly.

And that's without getting into the trouble with the north.

[Alphonsus]

The UK seems willing to make a gamble with the whole thing on what is basically a future prediction that is something that may possibly happen. As far I understand it herd immunity only works with a vaccine a society as a whole is protected only because of a immune majority. I think there are more than a few eyebrows being raised over the UK approach even if it is understandable that they don't want to shut things down for what could be a long period. Still it took the Welsh Rugby authority to cancel the match this weekend the government would have let it go ahead.

[mickO)))]

people pushing against each other buying up everything they could get their hands on and yesterday with the schools closed, the place was riddled with kids which also sort of seems to defeat the purpose of closing the schools in the first place.

I agree that people are overacting over this I saw two old women fighting over a pack of toilet roll a few hours ago that was on sale and the price of toilet paper here has almost tripled in the last week the dirty cunts taking advantage of the situation. I think it's the fact that each day something unexpected is happening and people are panicking because of that. With the way things are going who knows what way things will even be by this time next weekend it could be 100 times worse. I also suspect as I would say a lot of others do that things are even currently much worse then what we are being told but they are holding back info to keep people from panicking even more.

Governments all over the world are to blame for the extremely slow response to this who knows maybe it was even on purpose. Canada has literally done nothing so far except give bullshit advisories that nobody heeds and  suspend parliament so Trudeau and has buddies get to stay in the safety of their own homes with full pay while rest of us are still forced to commute to work on overcrowded buses and subways. It's going to blow up here any day and when you have a mentally unstable man child charge who has run for the hills at the first sight of trouble it doesn't' fill me with a lot of confidence. 

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

France is holding elections tomorrow. As in, hasn't cancelled them. Mooks.

[DeletedUsermNqGIiIuGy]

Complete shower of LEGENDS going out for 'fuck the coronavirus' pints

SHUR THERES NO QUEUE AT THE BAR LADS

#livintheirbestlives