Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19) (SARS-CoV-2) [2020]

(Ohio) My niece said they dont return to school until April 15th, so that's a 4 week duration because their Spring Break is in April.

 

We've extended March break 2 extra weeks here in Ontario.

 

A local large state university here has told students that classes will be conducted online after Spring Break. Unlike Harvard, dormitories, cafeteria's and other university services will still be open unlike with Harvard. This means that students with no other living arrangements (like foreign students) won't be stuck.

No date for when physical classes will resume. Basically classes will be online only until the university has determined that Covid-19 is no longer a significant health issue in either the state or the US as a whole. So, could lasts months or more if needed.

I imagine more universities in the US will implement something similar to keep students safe and still allow them access to the education that they've paid for.

Regards,
SB

 

The push to cover Coronavirus testing for all Americans.​

 

It’s Interesting that Denmark, Norway and Sweden have extremely similar infection numbers up until now. Beginning next week, Denmark and Norway start taking stronger action, whereas Sweden take no such action and are limiting testing to severe cases. (Not testing for instance family to known corona victims if they start showing symptoms of their own. Thus clearly underreporting the number of confirmed cases.)

We’ll see how that plays out. Will be a case study in the future.

 

In reality, this is what will happen eventually. Thinking that we will somehow contain the virus within a small population of infected until it dies out is past ridiculous. It has already spread into communities around the globe.

 

So, most professional sports in the US have paused their seasons.

The NCAA has also cancelled all spring collegiate sports. While I was looking forward to the NCAA basketball tournament (my team was going to be a 1 seed), I think it's the right thing to do.

Regards,
SB

 

It’s interesting indeed how different countries respond. We are keeping our schools open but universities etc should give online courses as much as possible, everyone should work from home as much as possible, events over 100 are all canceled etc while in Belgium now schools are closed, restaurants are closed etc.

Particularly this difference between keeping schools open and not is interesting.

 

We have had a sudden rise in infection numbers because lots of people returned from skiing in Italy (and Tirol i Austria). Sweden and Norwegians don't need to go abroad to enjoy winter sports. We have roughly twice the number of infected vs Sweden, per capita it is closer to 3x

My oldest daughter (1st grade) has to do math puzzles online, has to read at least half an hour a day and must keep a handwritten diary.

Cheers

 

In France all nurseries, schools and universities will be closed for minimum 15 days starting from next monday.

Gatherings (>1000 people) are also forbidden, but there are exceptions allowed to this rule.

 

The lack of (good) snow this ’winter’ is a problem though. Atleast for most of the country, Åre has snow but many small ski resorts have had no snow for the whole of winter. Wonder if the absence of snow has an impact on people deciding to go out of country ski resorts.

 

Situation in Italy....

. ...

 

https://www.newsweek.com/young-unaf...d-you-now-stop-killing-people-opinion-1491797

 

It has been a shitty winter indeed.

But how many swedes and norwegians spontaneously go to the alps to ski if they can't do it at home? It's already a pretty long drive from DK.

Cheers

 

As far as I can see the scandinavian countries are less than a day apart in diagnosed cases. Although, as you point out, Sweden has a somewhat larger total population. And they may differ significantly in the future as to how (or if) they diagnose cases. As I wrote, Sweden no longer spends resources on testing anyone unless they are severely sick meaning that the majority who has moderate symptoms are never diagnosed or counted at all.

 

I presume they will test patients only when relevant for their treatment. Those that can just get well on their own in home isolation will no longer be tested. This is mainly due to lack of testing resources ... more countries have this problem.

 

They do the same in Denmark, I expect it works the same. Instead of testing and waiting for a test result, anyone with even mild symptons are considered infected and quarantined. It's to lower response time and to lower the pressure on caring resources.

Cheers

 

Yup. So it’s not as if the motivation is the governments covering things up, but the consequence is still that you give up on trying to track total cases.

 

True, i don't ski (even though living next to a resort), so dunno but for most of us swedes Åre is rather far, maybe some take the plane to the alps instead of the car to more northerly parts here. I can imagine that for the time of the year it has been rather warm even up north. It sure is not a 2009/2010

 

Here's a different and sensible sounding view:

If one person can infect tens or hundreds, closing large gatherings makes sense. But if one person will realistically only infect a couple depending on conditions, lots of smaller gatherings could be more damaging. The concern with big events is spreading the virus wider, as someone catching it could come from any geographical location relative to the infector, whereas local meet-ups would keep the infection in a more local territory.

TBH, no-one will know the right thing until this is all over and the difference approaches can be compared. Early, rigorous moves by some countries may keep infection growth low, but that may be unsustainable in the long run, unless they move early enough to quash the infection and aggressively prevent it reentering the country.