How Has the Coronavirus Affected You?

I work in a major hospital ER and we have dealt with it already. A lot of the statistics and articles about death rates and young and healthy people dying are false. I have to work . No option to stay home.

Things are escalating a bit now. My son is in a competitive sport and the league has cancelled all the competitions until the end of April.

Honestly, I don't understand how people are NOT concerned.

The numbers at the beginning of an epidemic are just that: the beginning.

The only way to tell where things might go is looking at things like how contagious the disease is, how is spreads, what it does, etc... And then look at how it's affecting other countries.

It is so bad that an entire country is in lock down [EDIT: two countries, now]. And one of their - Italy's - healthcare system was rated 2nd in the world, by WHO (well, out of 191, anyway). They are not some poverty stricken country that was using chickens, strings, and prayers for their main form of healthcare. They are an industrialized nation, with modern medicine and modern hospitals, and this sucker has stomped them flat.

In addition, South Korea is considered to have done so well in containing the virus because they figured out how it was brought into the country and tested and contained that crap HARD.

Italy couldn't find the original patient bringing it in, and so they had to scramble to try and find cases, and it spread unchecked for a while. Just two weeks ago, they were about at the level the USA is today. Italians were saying the same things many Americans are saying now: it's not likely to be a big deal. The gov't is exaggerating. We don't need to take any major precautions.

And in the USA, we already know that the virus is spreading unchecked, because we have community spread, with no chance of locking it down, in multiple states. We have a somewhat crap healthcare system, when it comes to protecting a society as opposed to one person (37th, in that same WHO rating - dead last for industrialized nations). So in my country, we have a similar situation as Italy had, but with a much worse health care system to care for it. And a population that is over 5 times the population of Italy.

I find it difficult to NOT be concerned with this going on. I find it hard not to feel that the USA is going to be a big exporter of this virus to OTHER countries, within a couple of weeks (we already have some patients turning up who caught it in other states).

Oh, and one other aspect of this that's concerning - it's a new virus. We still don't know how it works. And something that came up just today shows it may be even MORE alarming that first thought. In China, they've been reporting people who had the virus, recovered, and then a couple weeks later, seem to be reinfected again and start getting sick again. Japan just had their first case of the same thing. Speculation is that for some people, the virus might go dormant and then something triggers and it is again active and you have symptoms again (and might be contagious, as well?).

They don't know though, because again, it's new.

I am not panicking, honestly. That does no one any good at all. But I'm taking this very, very seriously at this point. And I'm taking precautions because I have so many vulnerable, high risk people in my family.

EDIT: the article on the new information about the virus, for those interested: https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/484942-japan-confirms-first-case-of-person-reinfected

It ate a big hole in my retirement funds. Coronavirus apparently also consumes toilet paper based on the supplies at the grocery store. I also found out I was an expert at social distancing - been doing it for years, who knew? I also used to cough to cover the sound of a fart. I now fart to cover the sound of a cough.

i been packing camping/doomsday/bugout bags all afternoon and sorting out all my pills and medicines and stuff for each and then my new neighbors moved in next door and i was debating on spying on them to see how much TP they brought in... y'know, just in case.

A friend had trouble finding baby formula but eventually was able to get four cans.

I couldn’t find flour. Eggs were wiped out but I wasn’t going to buy any anyway. And of course the t.p. aisle.

The local college has gone to online classes which will likely affect my co-parent’s job security. and my children’s school is closed indefinitely which means I might have to quit my job to be home with them.

I am actually worried about running out of toilet paper amongst other things.

But we are alive and well