I'm amazed by some of the logical things they did. Fixing mask prices to 17cents, increasing production capacity to 10million/day (from a different article), paid leave if you're diagnosed and sick and a population that took it seriously. Taiwan behaved like... a rational govt... I wish I could say that about more than one of them.

Maybe I should make plans to take a long vacation in Taiwan with the next outbreak...

They indeed are amazing and really put to shame all those incompetent we know who dragging their feet and not even taking basic measures. There was a bit of panic at first when it was found out that a cruise ship that had been allowed to dock in January as it turned out had infected passengers, but here too they were quick to react and communicate with the population. Anyone capable of using their brain will know that communication in everything is key, and I'll add that it never pays to try and hide from People what will eventually come out, let alone playing people for idiots they are far from being.

Rats leaving a sinking ship? o.O

Do we have reporting on this?

My local grocery store, Shoprite, limited sales of household essentials like toilet paper to 4 items per customer. The result? I went in last night and there was tons of all that stuff, no issues. All stores need to do is limit purchases.

Some graphs about the evolution of COVID-19 in Italy (updated 14 March).

It's about time. Every country should be rationing by now, including health care.

Currently in Norway
theres a lot of complaining from local municipality,s with few
year round residents
the complaints are about cottage owners who usally are in municipality once or twice a year usally because of vacation or hollidays.

The low population municipality,s are aperantly afraid to have their their health care overworked/overstressed because
too many cottage owners have taken the trip to the cottages to Isolate themself or get away from the city
so they have gone wide and far and even used papers/media to ask people to go back home intead of going to their vacation cottages.

Of course . what the most of the news articles dont mention is that the cottage owners contribibute alot of property tax
this is in addititon its the local municipality/goverment that gives out buildings permit and regulates the local estate market.

This is maybe only me
But, maybe, and just maybe
it had been an idea to not give out that many building permits to people that wish to build cottages
in case there is a crisis and more people than usual need to use the health care and other essential services.
But, nooo, you incompetent local politicians had to give out more building permits than your local health care can ever cope with... All in the name of greed.

Ps. There is a few norwegians that have pointed out the fact that alot of smaller municipality recives millions in property tax and it isnt unreasnobal for the cottage owners to expect something back for paid taxes
The reply from a local politician was : Haters gonna hate and alot of other political corect mumbo jumbo.

The reasons of limiting the free movement, except going to work, or for buying supplies or for important causes, closing pubs, museus, schools, parks, etc is to "flat the graph" of new contagium cases. That`s the way you can protect the old people and risky groups. So you do not colapse the health care services of each country, because they are not only treating coronavirus patients.

Then, past experience and speed are essential in a biological mundial crisis like this to flat the graph. The experience of China is the key in both.

Indeed, Taiwan has done greatly. South Korea has done greatly, too. Their use of technology and the attitude of the people have helped. Notice how they managed to flatten the curve from march the sixth, which means they harvested the results of work done at least an infection period before: +15 days. They reacted fast and well.

https://covid19graph.work/

Most countries have great technical personnel calling the shots, or better laying out options for those taking the decisions. This means that the disposition of the population in each country will have a definite weight in considering which measures could be actually implemented by all echelons of the civil service and authorities, and by every single citizen. If you are to take decisions, will people comply? will your political rivals support you or try to undermine you every step of the way? Do local cultural mores help or hinder the difussion of the virus? Will there be any untimely leaks?


As the people in Spain begin a lockdown that might be long, good luck and make the effort count.

Well, it seems that panicky stockpiling has taken an absurdist twist in this area.

When I went to one of the groceries today, the usual suspect sections were empty (toilet paper, sanitizer, face masks, etc - leaving aside the pointlessness of people buying six months supplies of those things).

There were plenty of other strange aspects to the empty sections. (All of the frozen pizzas that were on sale were completely gone. The ones in the same freezers that weren't on sale were all still there.)

No, the crown jewel of absurdity was the produce section, which had been completely cleaned out.

...except for the eggplant. That bin was still full.

This morning from German news site Spiegel Online:

"In the meantime, there are apparently disputes between Germany and the USA about a Tübingen-based company that is working on a coronavirus vaccine. According to a report in the newspaper "Welt am Sonntag", US President Donald Trump is trying to lure German scientists to America with large financial contributions or to secure the drug exclusively for his country, the newspaper said, citing government circles in Berlin."
https://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/donald-trump-test-auf-coronavirus-negativ-ausgefallen-a-04fd8425-d9ca-417c-a677-aa74e4b4b022

Uhm. Yeah. So.

Original Source can be found here: (Google translate should help most)
https://www.welt.de/wirtschaft/article206555143/Corona-USA-will-Zugriff-auf-deutsche-Impfstoff-Firma.html

Yesterday in the nearby store there was plenty of stuff on the shelves. Plenty of fresh food, bread, what have you. The only shelves that were emptier than normally were:

- Milk that is packaged so that it lasts longer in room temperatures, the shelves were empty of that. There was lots of normal milk (that you keep in the refrigerator) though.

- Liquid hand soap (there were still some so I bought a couple; I also have several bars of soap that I've bought a long time ago).

- Toilet paper. However, there was a pile of big packages without any printing, apparently a Finnish paper factory has been manufacturing toilet paper overtime now and delivering them ASAP (without any printing on the packaging) to stores. The price seemed a bit high but whatever. When stores can make extra profit with toilet paper, I guess the end is near.

Both me and my wife felt a bit sick and tired yesterday so of course my wife was panicking that now we have the corona virus. However, our main symptom is sneezing and a runny nose, which I believe is not a sign of the corona virus but common cold or flu. It would be cool to have corona already now though, I could stay home playing video games for a couple of weeks and report it live to my audience like Tom Hanks.

With my two local colleagues we already made an arrangement that only one of us at a time goes to the office. Next week I will go on Monday and Friday, and Tue-Thu I will work from home. Not sure how much this will help to prevent the spreading of the virus between the three of us (ie. we visit the same office, but on different days), but I guess it lessens the risk somewhat, in case one of us gets it.