CoronaVirus

[bharath]

How is this affecting in your country and how many are praying to keep safe for all in the world. Is there any Chinese here?
Wuhan has gone under bad breathe and still have to control it in large methods, but we all have to help them.

 

[Romanos]

Many areas in the United States are worried about the cases that have shown up.

 

[Jason76]

It escaped from a Chinese military bio-lab. This is troubling.

 

[bharath]

It escaped from a Chinese military bio-lab. This is troubling.

This could be the biggest problem until world military kill it. Now it is more then 17k cases that need to be treated properly, but research should happen at the earliest to save the world.

 

[kiwimac]

So far the death rate is less than is the one from the annual flu season. Not worried yet. If it is a bio-weapon it is appallingly badly designed.

 

[Lamb]

There are people on a cruise ship that are forced to stay in their cabins (the interior rooms get to walk the corridors with masks briefly) while they're in quarantine.

How long could you stay on a ship in those conditions?

 

[NewCreation435]

I'm concerned about this but not alarmed. It looks much worse over in China and I wonder how the client I had a year ago in China is doing

 

[Spikey]

There are people on a cruise ship that are forced to stay in their cabins (the interior rooms get to walk the corridors with masks briefly) while they're in quarantine.

How long could you stay on a ship in those conditions?

I have a friend whose parents is actually on that cruise ship. We have been praying for them they should be cleared in a few days to go home

 

[Lamb]

I have a friend whose parents is actually on that cruise ship. We have been praying for them they should be cleared in a few days to go home

Yikes!! How are they holding up? Do they communicate by email or Facebook at all?

 

[Lamb]

I read this morning that a woman who had gotten over the virus came down with it again. That's a scary thing to happen!

 

[psalms 91]

Even more scary is the one in Cal that came down with it from no exposure. They are now saying it is when it spreads not if.

 

[psalms 91]

Even more scary is the one in Cal that came down with it from no exposure. They are now saying it is when it spreads not if.

 

[ImaginaryDay2]

I think reasonable caution is warranted, however panic responses are not. In Washington state it appears there had been cases that hadn't been found out about for a week or so that are coming to light now. What happened? An absolute shopping frenzy. Masks being sold out, bottled water (are the taps going to quit???), soap, and hand sanitizers being hoarded, people getting ready to be "quarantined" in their homes. And in the mass frenzy it leaves little resources for others. Reading MSN today, the loose masks that we often see people wearing in pictures are largely ineffective in protecting against viruses from others, but will help in preventing one being spread from ourselves to others. Also, these masks are needed by health care workers and those who might be immunocompromised. One man said his wife was feeling sick. They'd went to the doctor who assured them it was a case of a mild flu, not coronavirus. He was one of the shoppers who was buying everything he could because "you never know"
Just stop, be safe, take reasonable precautions. Are you sick? YES, buy/use a mask and see your doc. Stay home.
(btw, I've been sick for three days. There have been three presumptive cases of coronavirus in the same general geographic area as me. I'm staying home and taking care of myself).

 

[tango]

Agree entirely about the whole mask issue. A virus is easily small enough to pass through the cheap paper masks people have decided they want to wear to protect themselves. Along the way the panic buying makes life tedious for everyone else. I wanted to buy a new respirator for when I'm pulling down plaster walls but the one that used to cost $15 went to $65 before supplies dried up completely. The filters that were $7 went up to $40 before being marked as no longer available. Thankfully the one I have still mostly works, but the elastic in it is shot. Perhaps I can get some elastic and breathe new life into it.

ETA: Just checked and found you can get the respirators for $69.95, if you really want to pay that.

Having survived the global scares that were bird flu, SARS etc this one seems like another yawn-worthy issue. Chances are it will spread globally. Chance are the majority of people who get it will have unpleasant symptoms that go away after a few days or weeks. A relatively small percentage of people who catch it will die. So it's most likely going to be much like any other seasonal illness - people die of seasonal flu every year but nobody panics about it.

 

[Lamb]

Price gouging on hand sanitizers and cleaning wipes is rampant now...as well as being hard to find on the store shelves!

My husband works in IT and touches everyone's computers at some point as well as telephones, monitors, docking stations, so I told him to buy some gloves like doctors wear so he's more aware while touching things that he shouldn't touch his face.

 

[tango]

Price gouging on hand sanitizers and cleaning wipes is rampant now...as well as being hard to find on the store shelves!

My husband works in IT and touches everyone's computers at some point as well as telephones, monitors, docking stations, so I told him to buy some gloves like doctors wear so he's more aware while touching things that he shouldn't touch his face.

Price gouging seems like a bad thing on the face of it but actually helps more people get a chance of getting the item in question.

If the $3 pump of hand sanitiser stays at $3 the first person into the store who feels like stockpiling will just buy an entire box of the stuff, leaving a shortage for everyone else. Bump the price to $10 and that person is less likely to buy a whole box - maybe they'll figure that 3 or 4 pumps is enough. Nudge the price to $50 and they'll decide whether they need any at all and maybe only take one.

It stinks to pay way over the odds for something you really need, but at least you're more likely to have the option of getting one than if the first person to the store bought everything. It also makes it harder for people to buy everything in sight and sell it on to make a fat profit for themselves.

 

[Lamb]

As of January 2019, 34 states have laws against price-gouging.

 

[tango]

As of January 2019, 34 states have laws against price-gouging.

Maybe, they just aren't as helpful as people like to think. Unless you're the first in line and decide to buy industrial quantities of something you really don't need but, you know, just in case.

Do the laws define exactly what they mean by "price gouging", and do they differentiate it from responding to the basic concepts of supply and demand?

 

[psalms 91]

Price gouging is charging opver what the market price was prior to the panic setting in and personally I would like to see those doing this thrown in jail. It is immoral to profit on someones fears and misguided assumptions any more than what was the price prior to the outbreak. I think we can all see price gouging when it happens and dont need a definition unless of course we are to make an absurd argument that the exhorbitant price is justified

 

[tango]

Price gouging is charging opver what the market price was prior to the panic setting in and personally I would like to see those doing this thrown in jail. It is immoral to profit on someones fears and misguided assumptions any more than what was the price prior to the outbreak. I think we can all see price gouging when it happens and dont need a definition unless of course we are to make an absurd argument that the exhorbitant price is justified

The thing is that if you want to outlaw something you have to objectively define it. You can't say "I know it when I see it and it should be illegal" because the simple laws of supply and demand mean that, when demand spikes, the price rises. That's how things work. If anything is absurd it's the idea that people could be thrown in jail for something that doesn't even have a definition beyond a vague sense of personal opinion.

Would you propose some other means to discourage people from buying huge quantities of things like toilet paper, painkillers, hand sanitisers etc? It's sad that people feel the need to buy vast quantities of things just in case, but if you implement a law that stops suppliers from increasing the price in response to rising demand all you will achieve is making sure the supply disappears very fast. Just look at how well it worked in Zimbabwe when Robert Mugabe decided the rising price of bread was unacceptable and imposed a limit on how much a store was allowed to charge for bread.

If you'd like to actually address the argument that increasing the price means more people are likely to get a chance to get their hands on something - be it a bottle of hand sanitiser during a panic like the current one, or a hotel room during an evacuation - feel free to go ahead. Just saying it's absurd doesn't make it so, it suggests you don't have anything useful to say on the topic.