Chat about Novel Coronavirus - 2019-nCoV - COVID-19

Going to Ireland next week which I think should be fine, less sure of Canada in May though...

The US reporting of the pandemic is all being told through the prism of politics, which is really weird. There seems to be little cross party consensus on what is or isn't happening, once panic kicks in here, it's going to be fucking ridiculous.

https://www.thoughtco.com/countries-of-s­candinavia-1434588
This is on the internet, so it must be true.

Yeah for some reason the English-speaking world in particular often gets this wrong. Scandinavians are those who speak Germanic languages that descend from Norse. Finns, although Nordic, speak a Finno-Ugric language. Confusingly, the peninsula on which all these peoples live is called Fennoscandia. There is a gulf that splits Scandinavia and Finland but not much longer because of a very rapid rate of post-glacial land uplift. Another thing that adds to the confusion is that Finland is bilingual (Finnish, Swedish) because the Swedes were kind enough to look after us for half a millenium before losing the province to Russia in a war in the early 19th century.

It’s going to be really interesting to watch the US treat a pandemic as a culture war.

Stockpiling:- I've now enough stuff in should I have to self isolate for 14days. I'm 55 miles from family and I've likely infected or been infected by friends so will be struggling for local deliveries. Just being sensible.

I once heard a joke that, as the original Finno-Ugric-speaking tribes were schlepping West out of the steppes, they came to a sign saying "Go North." And everybody who could read, did. Fella that told me was Hungarian, as it happens.

In actual Scandinavian news, I have friends in Norway who work as senior nurses in the biggest hospital in their region. They've been told to make contingency plans assuming 40% sick leave among their staff.

Which is only really news that somebody is planning hard. And taking things very seriously.

Did you want to point them out?

No, I know where my towel is.

Yeah for some reason the English-speaking world in particular often gets this wrong. Scandinavians are those who speak Germanic languages that descend from Norse. Finns, although Nordic, speak a Finno-Ugric language. Confusingly, the peninsula on which all these peoples live is called Fennoscandia. There is a gulf that splits Scandinavia and Finland but not much longer because of a very rapid rate of post-glacial land uplift. Another thing that adds to the confusion is that Finland is bilingual (Finnish, Swedish) because the Swedes were kind enough to look after us for half a millenium before losing the province to Russia in a war in the early 19th century.

So is Iceland in Scandinavia or not?

I am now getting conufesd.

Dunno a lot of not rich people go skiing and definitely a lot of considerably not rich young people work at ski resorts and on cruise ships

Scandinavia is Norway, Denmark and Sweden.
Nordics are Greenland, Iceland, Faroe Islands, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland.

'Scandinavia' as a term has more to do with describing three countries with a very similar culture, plenty of shared history and (mostly) mutually intelligible languages. 'The Nordics' describes a geographic region in the sane way you would say, the Caribbean, Central Asia or the Iberian Peninsula.

What happens to the gulf due to the post -glacial land uplift ?

I once heard a joke that, as the original Finno-Ugric-speaking tribes were schlepping West out of the steppes, they came to a sign saying "Go North." And everybody who could read, did. Fella that told me was Hungarian, as it happens.

We (Finns) have a number of self-deprecating versions of that joke. One goes that reconnaissance parties reported the lush, fertile Danube valley in the southwest and a barren, cold granite rock in the northwest and that the mouth-breathers chose the latter. They schlepped from the steppe as well as from the Ural mountains though.

Odd. I thought you would at least have had the courtesy to respond the inaccuracies you spotted. I am genuinely curious what advice / information you considered to be dangerous.

"Of course we are continuing to take holy communion, she says,
because we have faith in God and everything is in His hands."

https://www.voanews.com/science-health/coronavirus-outbreak/coronavirus-sparks-church-state-controversy-greece

This makes sense to me , but I think you’d only end up in hospital if you were severely ill, and therefore quite possibly elderly or pre existing conditions.
So if you were in that category you’d probably want to avoid it in the first place.
But if the rest of us had a covid party , then there’s more chance of the susceptible being infected I guess.

Are you better off catching it now, then should you get complications, there may be a chance of an available IC bed. Because in a couple of weeks every bed will be taken.

It is said that despite its many glaring (and occasionally fatal) inaccuracies, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy itself has outsold the Encyclopedia Galactica because it is slightly cheaper, and because it has the words 'DON'T PANIC' in large, friendly letters on the cover.

It's Ars Technica; they knew they were making an HHGTG reference. Mildly amuses me when people do that in the title of an article about actually life-threatening things.

What happens to the gulf due to the post -glacial land uplift ?

It´s going to first split into two (the top half will become a lake) and eventually the bottom half will be cut off from the Baltic, too, and then finally the two lakes will dry up/drain. All this in a couple of thousand years, a blink of an eye in geological time.

So rapid is the rate that lots of fishing towns are now far inland. My mum went to uni in a city called Vaasa/Vasa. Her favourite beach when she was a student is now a wooded area. She´s in her sixties.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kvarken

https://www.maanmittauslaitos.fi/en/research/interesting-topics/land-uplift

https://www.vaasa.fi/en/living/freetime/naturevaasa/nature/land-uplift/

If there is one positive to come out of this it will be to realise how many non-esse trial/completely unnecessary airplane flights we take all the time.

good thread here:

https://twitter.com/mlipsitch/status/1237347774951305216

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-number-of-cases-in-england/coronavirus-covid-19-number-of-cases-in-england

Not sure if this localisation of cases will calm or fan the flames of panic...

5 cases in my area though (Ealing) which is...great..

Just waiting to push back, plane is close to empty.

The hospital my work is associated with just sent out an email warning people that as the Trust is scaling up the Covid-19 response, clinical staff should get ready to be redeployed into different roles at very short notice. Probably mostly nurses at first, but possibly also other clinical specialists.

Good to read as it seems some people at least are actually planning things behind the scenes.

I had to clear my cache to see that. Lucky I came back on the 8th then!

It's interesting what you should do, the advice changed as of the 9th, maybe those who aren't beyond 14 days should isolate for that period.
Someone at work has taken this approach.

Edit; looks like the Gov site has clarified the point.