What's on your mind today?

[billy rubin]

the virus may be a plague for me.

oil is $32 per barrel

if this keeps up my employment is problematic

[Mr. B]

the virus may be a plague for me.

oil is $32 per barrel

if this keeps up my employment is problematic

I feel you. The factory I work at relies a lot of imported parts from China. We make heaters mostly and orders are already slowing down for the summer season. Every week for the past two months there have been voluntary furlough sheets posted on the bulletin board. The company already terminated a whole bunch of new hires last month and I heard today that the new batch of temps have been put on a hiring freeze, meaning they should at this point have been hired on permanently but the company wants to wait a little while longer just incase they need to let them go back to their temp agencies.

Things could get rough. They fired one of the team leads last week while I was off. He didn't take it too well. Made threats. They had extra security at the gate and local police as well at the gate everyday last week. I'm not worried about the virus itself. I'm worried about the fall out if too many people start panicking because of layoffs or shutdowns or mass quarantines.

[Magdalena]

Why are people taking all the toilet paper from the stores? I wanted to buy toilet paper today and there was no toilet paper.
This is crazy! 

[billy rubin]

[Magdalena]

^^^

[Dark Lightning]

Why are people taking all the toilet paper from the stores? I wanted to buy toilet paper today and there was no toilet paper.
This is crazy! 

I usually shop at CostCo for the savings. But this business with lines outside their stores for cheaper TP and some bottled water kept me away. I went to a Stater Brother's market and everything in the paper goods aisle was fully stocked. I didn't bother to check for hand sanitizer, though.

On a side note, why aren't we hearing about this disease in Russia? I find myself hard pressed to believe that they completely dodged this disease.

[Magdalena]

Why are people taking all the toilet paper from the stores? I wanted to buy toilet paper today and there was no toilet paper.
This is crazy! 

I usually shop at CostCo for the savings. But this business with lines outside their stores for cheaper TP and some bottled water kept me away. I went to a Stater Brother's market and everything in the paper goods aisle was fully stocked. I didn't bother to check for hand sanitizer, though.

On a side note, why aren't we hearing about this disease in Russia? I find myself hard pressed to believe that they completely dodged this disease.

I just went to Ralphs.

Yesterday all they had left was 4 rolls for .77¢. Today they didn't even have that! 
I bet someone who already has 10 packages of 30 ct rolls took the .77¢ ones as well. 

[Dark Lightning]

People are so stupid.

[xSilverPhinx]

People are so stupid.

I agree. Luckily where I live the toilet paper craze hasn't started...yet.

It's a matter of time before people start stockpiling the stuff in their homes like it's holy water or something. 

[Tom62]

People here are stockpiling pasta, toilet paper, canned food and other stuff. The corona virus is getting closer to home. In the northern regions of Italy the situation is completely out of control. We expect a major outbreak here in Germany within the next 2-3 weeks. There is no trust in the government at all that they could control the outbreak.

[billy rubin]

its interesting to me that toilet paper has taken on such a symbolic importance to people.

i don't have an indoor toilet at my house, so we use sawdust buckets and and two big compost piles out back to process our poop. lots of people consider that primitive, but its worked okay for going on twenty years.

if we run out of toilet paper, there is no shortage of large hay bales behind the house that would actually compost a lot better than the paper.

[xSilverPhinx]

People here are stockpiling pasta, toilet paper, canned food and other stuff. The corona virus is getting closer to home. In the northern regions of Italy the situation is completely out of control. We expect a major outbreak here in Germany within the next 2-3 weeks. There is no trust in the government at all that they could control the outbreak.

I think it's unrealistic to expect that any government is going to control the outbreak within their borders. There's just no controlling the spread of epidemics in today's global world (plus, it has already spread...). The best a government can hope for is to buy some time and not overburden their health services too much until more is understood about the virus and how to combat it.

Governments should not be giving people the impression that it's under control, I think. But I get that they're trying to keep people from panicking...not that people aren't panicking anyway, as seen in the toilet paper hoarding crisis.     

[Icarus]

Flu like symptoms do are not always accompanied by diarrhoea.  To the credit of the citizenry, they are planning ahead., just in case.  The citizens who have a bidet are not bothered by the run on TP.   Kimberly Clark and other TP manufacturers must be grinning like Cheshire cats.

P.S. you can make your own hand sanitizer with the ethyl alcohol contained in the 150 proof rum that you can get at your local booze store.  That stuff is high octane at least 75% alky.  Apply the solution liberally to your hands not to your gullet.

Both E Bay and Amazon have denied the listings for hand sanitizers.  It seems that there were some greedy bastards that were advertising three dollar bottles of sanitizers for $300.  ................Is there no limit to the greed that a few humans will display?   That reminds me of the unconscionable pig fucker, Martin Shkrelli....or whatever his name is.  He is the one who raised the price of a modestly priced, essential drug, 5000 percent.  I am pleased to observe that the miserable bastard is now in prison...........Sometimes justice prevails.

[Dark Lightning]

One of the unfortunate side effects of this new virus is that it has been found to involve other organs when it progresses, and diarrhea is possible in that case. There was a case in an apartment building in China where a woman progressed to that symptom and the neighbors got it from the floor drains...to which I will say, I don't understand how their drain systems work. I do know that we had floor drains in the restrooms where I used to work, and when they smelled badly I called facilities to remind them to remind the janitorial staff to fill the floor drain traps, because they obviously weren't doing it.  Talk about a disease vector! Fumes from the drains? Sounds like a Sci-Fi plot.

[Bad Penny II]

Sounds like a Sci-Fi plot.

Dr Norman Swan, I have a lot of time for him, for years he has been making sense of health related stuff in an excellent manner.
He doesn't think much of the USA approach, he says they should be categorised with Iran and Italy.

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/who-officially-declares-covid-19-a-pandemic/12048240