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Osaka27178 Posts
This thread is a place for you to share the ways the coronavirus is affecting your life. This isn't a thread for fear mongering or speculation.
I live in Osaka, Japan. As of February 28th, a few things have changed. Large gatherings like my end-of-year work party have been canceled. Other events like graduations are either being scaled way down, or scrapped altogether. Pro sports are being canceled or played in empty stadiums.
Yesterday the Prime Minister announced that schools would close Monday, extending into the spring break. In Japan, the new school year stars in April so this is essentially a month long spring break. Abe said that businesses would be compensated if their workers had to take time off, but that is only lip service, and nothing will change in Japan's work culture. Nursery schools for the very young will stay open.
I am fortunate that my wife stays home, so she can watch the kids. Some of my friends are in much more difficult situations with elementary school aged kids. I, of course, still have to go to work because the hamster wheel can never stop spinning.
As for supplies, masks are impossible to find anywhere. I have a bit of stock at home but I doubt their effectiveness anyway. I keep a supply of bottled water at home in case of earthquakes and typhoons, and my farming means I always have food, but depending on how things develop over the next week, I might go stock up some more.
The system of tracking people in Japan is pretty good, and my confidence in local government remains high. The next big question is the Olympics, which would be a brutal punch to an already weakening economy in Japan.
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No impact yet here in USA, but remains to be seen. Biggest concern is whether or not hospitals will be adequately prepared to handle a potential surge of patients, which seems unlikely as even flu season tends to create major issues with having beds available.
In terms of personal stuff, I have quite a bit of canned fish on stock, enough to last a few months if things were really wild, and just for the heck of it I bought a 50lb bag of rice and some beans as well. Enough that if something totally insane happened I'd be fine.
Sounds like behind the scenes many places are preparing to close down if more transmission is seen, so it's a possibility we could see a mid semester shutdown on campus.
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We got our first confirmed case here is Brazil today (a guy who just returned from Italy). Every news program is talking about it and masks have already run out in São Paulo, but overall no big changes yet.
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United States/Indiana
Financial hit with the stock market that likely won't make much impact for me, as I still have 30 or so years until retirement.
Annoyance due to customer's constantly requesting letters in regards to our supply chain and what inputs may be originating from China.
Needing to rush through a qualification of a new process additive, as supply of one of my current ones is due to run dry around May.
Other than those, I haven't experienced any real impacts. I have quite a bit of business travel coming up in the next month though, so may start to feel some impact?
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Germany / USA16648 Posts
I currently live in the US working for a big automotive supplier.
At work thus far it has just been exchanging some emails with suppliers to see if and yes how their supply chain might end up being affected. Nothing so far, but we do get material from Northern Italy out of all places, so this could eventually become an issue.
The group of companies my employer belongs to does have plants all over the world including China. Travel ban to China for everyone unless it's considered "business critical" (whatever that means) since like 4 weeks ago. A lot of other travel has been cut where possible.
Personally I'm scheduled to fly to Germany in a few weeks for some time off, at this point I'd go through with it. Depending on how things develop I can just rebook my flights to a later date though.
Keep a little stock of food and water at home since this is tornado-country (already had a tornado warning with all the sirens going off once in January and no power for a few hours, nothing major though).
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California here. Nothing has impacted me personally but the Governor announcing they are monitoring some 8400 people up north does have me pretty concerned.
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Montreal here. No sign of stuff, but if the virus does get here, our hospitals will be fucked. No way we'll have the space to deal with a large influx of patients.
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our italians are coming back for their vacation so there's some panic here. the local airport has a quarantine place for people coming from known zones with infection(Italia, China mostly) so the authorities keep them there until they get superficially screened/tested).
- masks are nowhere to be found, people are stockpiling food.
- TV news, shows, talks are directly or indirectly scaring the fuck out of the people continuously talking about the virus/possible victims/probable ways of infections ... etc.
economically, things look normal: no extra vacation times, breaks from work/school; the imports from/exports to China started picking back up since they lifted their quarantine there.
there's only one confirmed case in the whole country.
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Personally, I've seen nothing tangible other than a general sense of unease. Streets and restaurants are weirdly quiet, people are on edge. It's a bit silly when our few cases have been well contained and managed so far, but in an international area of a major city I guess everyone feels more exposed. The virus starting to spread outside China changed a lot.
Economically, of course, it looks pretty dire already. Australia is export-driven and ridiculously dependent on China, and even our other export markets seem likely to fall over as it spreads. The entire tertiary education sector is propped up by international students who can't get here, and that house of cards looks like it will come down around our ears quite soon.
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Poland - Łódź
I work for large multinational and the first impact was that our sites - first in Wuhan and later in Korea closed and switched to remote work only. Since people i work with are constantly traveling to different parts of the world we are really at risk and corporation put some measures in place. One tourist from my city which has been to Thailand tested positive in 1/3 of her tests for coronovirus and she travled to city by train and by bus to hospital so there is a risk it is already out there. A collegue from work bought 500kg of rice and is bracing for long quarantinne. I planned to go to concert in philharmony with friends today, hope they wont cancel.
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Netherlands45349 Posts
The client I work for in the tourism industry is a tad wary, there are plenty of Chinese tourists who won't come to the Netherlands this year.
Overall most of the effect here has been racism towards East-Asian looking people more then anything, haven't gotten much myself personally though a famous radio DJ made a Corona Virus song about avoiding Chinese people that was a bit meh.
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On February 28 2020 15:07 Belisarius wrote:
Personally, I've seen nothing tangible other than a general sense of unease. Streets and restaurants are weirdly quiet, people are on edge. It's a bit silly when our few cases have been well contained and managed so far, but in an international area of a major city I guess everyone feels more exposed. The virus starting to spread outside China changed a lot.
Economically, of course, it looks pretty dire already. Australia is export-driven and ridiculously dependent on China, and even our other export markets seem likely to fall over as it spreads. The entire tertiary education sector is propped up by international students who can't get here, and that house of cards looks like it will come down around our ears quite soon.
I hear ya. I work at eDreams, a large Online Travel Agency. We're already noticing a drop in travel and it could really impact our business. If they have to start firing people, I think my head is at the top of the list: I am new, quite well paid and in Data Science, a department that doesn't immediately impact business (or often we do, but it's just really hard to demonstrate). Luckily, the company looks very healthy financially and should be able to take a short term hit without having to resort to drastic measures. But if there are economic knock on effects from this and Europe drops back into recession, it could very well mean trouble.
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I live in Spain. Nothing personally, but a colleague had a good 3 weeks of work in Hong Kong cancelled, and all tours to Asia are in dire straights.
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Southern Germany here,
so far I've only heard from people buying masks and disifectant but I haven't seen anyone wearing a mask. Most people seem to be conerned with how things will develop in the near future but so far no panic buying in my area. Around here I'd say it's pretty much busniess as usual.
I'm not worried for myself (since I'd consider myself to be in pretty good shape) however I'm worried for my father since he's in his mid 60s and as of today there was another case of corona right where my parents live. So fingers crossed.
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I live in Belgium, 0 confirmed cases so far.
But yesterday it was Ghent - Roma in the Europe League so 100s of Italians visited our country lmao, not optimistic about remaining corona-free.
The first case in The Netherlands was found yesterday as well, and it was only 8km from our border.
Only a matter of time before it hits our country.
The benefit of being one of the later countries to get infected is of course that we SHOULD be prepared.
I have a business trip to Slovenia end of May and a 3 week holiday in Africa in September, those being cancelled are my main concerns atm, but that's about to change real soon I imagine.
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not much affected here in India as our direct trade is nearly non existent with nearby Asian countries (lucky foreign policy )
so outbreak has not started here , 4 patients everyone coming from wuhan was quarantined and has stopped travel since then , further more precautions are being taken but daily life is not much effected aside from the raw material supply for medicinal purpose . For the time being we are going to be cut off from majority of the Asia. There is no travel ban but coming back from any affected country warrants you through a 2 weeks of testing and quarantine , not worth it .
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UK here
Lots of fear, nothing else in the news...
By now impacting work a good bit as well, we have several clients who are having stock issues.
Last night one of our clients mentioned they are considering pulling out of the UK for the time being (several reasons, so not just Corona. Brexit etc. being big too).
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Went out on saturday, then got the flu, presumably. Thought I had covid initially so I called the hotline, after 10 minutes of queue, they said to call my doc and not go out. Doc then said to go to him regardless, showed up in a crappy anti-dust mask I got for some farm part-time work a while back (like n95 but without respirator) and was the only guy with it, so felt slightly stupid.
He said if I wanted to be corona-tested I had to ease 150 bucks. No thanks. Just do a blood analysis then. He took my temperature with his bare hand, then looked at the quick blood analysis and said it's viral, bye. Offered to give me subscription for antipyretics and candies against sore throat. I said no thanks knowing he'd get paid for that.
Situation there: No one with face masks, no soap in the toilet, doctor who endangers everyone by inviting them to come against the governments advice, waiting room where patient chairs all face each other. I bet this guy wouldn't get through med school nowadays, and felt very much like I was in a third world country.
I think we should have learned from Asia a while ago and made a habit of wearing face-masks, not to protect ourselves, but mostly to protect others when we are sick.
Oh and I stocked up on food for a few months, but two weeks ago already. I don't take chances. Apparently this virus can reinfect you, meaning it's either a chronic disease or you can't develop immunity.
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Czech Republic12134 Posts
Nothing in here(CZE), the corporation closed one office as one person is sick there(with confirmed covid), the irony is that it's not in any of the bigger outbreaks. While our China office is fully closed by government but everyone reports being fine on weekly calls.
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Chile (nothing here)
I'm the country distributor for the Schwinn/Nautilius Brand
Our US distributor has already told us the chinese factories are all delayed, and I worry if we order with them products will not be available and our money will get stuck abroad; we still can order US stock but it is a bit pricier.
Our currency, which lost a lot of value due to local events since october, now is plumetting even harder, making our imports more expensive to the point we are not brining anything new and hoping it improves a bit.
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EPT
