The “key workers” list is for a different purpose AFAICT. It entitles special privileges e.g. your kids can go to school.
Today’s measures state that you should not go to work if you can work from home. That’s fair enough and I reckon a lot of people were already doing that anyway. We implemented that this morning, though we are running two non overlapping shifts (1 person each 
) so the business doesn’t totally die.
Non essential retailing is shut as of tonight, but B2B isn’t.
This appears to be closing the places where people congregate. I’d say estate agents will be closing, yeah.
Terrible if you have a corner shop which is not on a corner
Peter wrote:
This one is multiplying much faster; that’s the problem
About 4,000 people died in the US of H1N1 in the first 6 months, 12,000 in the first 12 months. This one is at 517 in the first month, peaking at over a 100 deaths per day but based on the data now maybe starting to flatten. I think its too early to see how it will drop and therefore how the total number of fatalities may compare after a year – it could surely be higher than the H1N1 12,000 total, but not certainly. The number of fatalities in US traffic accidents in the same period will be 35-40,000, maybe at the low end of the range if people are driving less.
I find post 185 – Video purporting to be Scotland’s First Minister – offensive, particularly in this thread.
[ fair enough – removed. btw no mod can read everything and especially watch videos, so there is the Report button, which is almost never used ]
Peter
Interesting – you have missed a bit out – “but only where this is absolutely necessary” which I think is key. Absolutely necessary as far as I am aware is not defined. Perhaps you could read that if you cant do the work from home, then it becomes absolutely necessary to travel to work, even if the output of the business is not necessary. Then you have the issue of the H and S of the workforce, who will be concerned that they should not be there unless mixing with other staff can, in some way, be totally avoided, as well as cross contamination from tools etc being used.
How do you now show you are adequately protecting a work force of more than 2!
How do you demonstrate the business continuing to operate can be justifed?
From here, we see that the number of ”Coronavirus deaths” in the United States increasing by about 32% per day (545 total, of which 132 today), or one order of magnitude every two weeks. At that rate, it will overtake the H1N1 total death toll in about three weeks:
That much is probably in the pipeline, so whatever US citizens do from now will only affect the trend after 3 weeks.
If you look at that website after a couple of hours, you see that data is jumping around and is very different from one area to another. What I see is in those areas where it has been growing very quickly (e.g. New York, mostly in and around the City which now has about half the cases in the entire country) it appears to be flattening out – new cases down 5% today in New York after a meteoric rise.
I continue to think that sweeping shutdown of the economy by government over vast geographic areas is completely the wrong approach to maintain the balance that will produce the best outcome in say two years. Not a lot I’m going to be able to do to influence events 2000 miles away, except maybe work harder to pay for the horrendous bills that are coming to weigh down generations to come with interest payments on a debt that will never repaid.
Maybe people will finally learn from this that more people, high population density living, public transport and all the rest is not the answer for betterment of mankind’s situation. It’s a recipe for dissatisfaction and occasional disaster.
I’ll check back in three weeks and we’ll see. And again in a year.
This clarifies what business can stay open in the UK.
Cobalt wrote:
@Silvaire, what is the mechanism that makes this growth stop or flatten?
Fast, local, tactical action by the involved. Preferably I think on a county by county level. Not slow, plodding, dictatorial trillion dollar power grabs by the distant and uninvolved looking to create a precedent for future power grabs and further reduction of self determination.
Ted – I think that was yesterday, I think today’s measures go further?
