Okay, what’s the etymology of that? The stuffing of the cheek pouches?
The Hopkins tracker is way behind other trackers, even after a fresh update.
If I recall correctly, the word “hamster” comes from the German verb hamstern, “to hoard”.
Fill a hamster’s food dish and minutes later it will be empty. Rinse and repeat it will always be empty. Between stuffing their pouches and creating hidden hordes, that’s the hamster way of life.
A hint about where we might be headed (Reuters):
Trump is too invested in “ignore the problem and it will go away”. 
Plus he doesn’t have the power over elections that the PM has. Plus the picture will definitely look different by November.
The Chicago Archdiocese is closing all Catholic schools.
I am a former Catholic, so what really shocked me is that they are suspending all public Masses. In Lent.
Vaguely. A FOR ANDROMEDA sticks in my mind more. Let me check for spoilers. Oh yes, that one. Get antibodies from the outlier survivors of the alien plague. What will we call those who are drained for their COVID immunity? CoviDonors in bureaucratese.
“What did you give up for Lent?”
“Mass.”
We may see faith-healing rallies aka instant hoitspots. It’s a self-correcting event.
Czech has closed their border with Germany as well. Probably did it with everyone. How are you personally doing on supplies? If you need anything, please don’t hesitate to send me a message. I’m not far from you. I could mail you stuff if you’re experiencing a local shortage.
I was actually waiting for this happen. My wife and I were talking about this in the car today and I asked her – as she’s the active Catholic – has the Archdiocese cancelled masses yet? Well, a few hours later … yep. So I guess I also get to spend more time with my daughters next week, too, which is fine by me!
In Delaware, a major healthcare provider is providing free drivethrough tests today anyone who wants it (though it it is discouraging asymptomatic people).
WHOA! I hadn’t heard that yet. Thanks. :eek:
Thanks, I needed that!
I find it amazing that Canada is only showing 158 cases, and one happens to be the Premier’s wife. Are they just slow in testing like the US is?
Maybe I’ve missed it, but I haven’t yet seen a single expert in the articles posted here for news mentioning this or trying to prepare people for this. Nor I have I seen even the competent people in any level of government touch on this at all. That’s why I asked in the first place. Do Do people generally know this? Do parents and administrators generally realize they might have to think about this thing all over again? Small and large business owners? Will they be willing to cooperate if they did?
I assume that SOMEONE somewhere (Italy? China?) is thinking about how a repeated cycle like this would affect the economy at the least. I wonder what they’ve concluded.
Yeah, I don’t believe this for one second, and I doubt anyone else does, either. They’re probably being tested hourly.
The Johns Hopkins tracker is supposedly having technical issues. The blog associated with the tracker has a linked twitter feed that mentions this. I noticed this morning that some of the US deaths are no longer reported. We’ll see.
Riding along with my earlier post, I’m starting to get pretty confused. Like, are all these closures and WFH and cancellations worthwhile or are they not? Are they just delaying a possible spike so we’ll have our pants down and unprepared? Is Italy at risk of their recent troubles happening again?
Also, I’ve been avoiding the coronavirus subreddit that the platform has been advertising of late, on the assumption that with that many cooks in the kitchen, the odds of sensationalism and misinformation is very high, and I have no idea how well it’s moderated. Is there any one single source that I should trust that can answer questions like the above?
This whole thing is still too new for any of this to be known for sure. We don’t know if this will be seasonal. We don’t know if people have immunity after infection. We don’t know if children are having mild illness BUT transmitting the virus. We don’t know too many things to predict very much accurately.