How Is Covid-19 Impacting Life in Your City?
 

I am starting this thread here in City Discussions because I think it would be interesting and informative to learn about the impact of the corona-virus threat on a local level as the disease makes its way across the globe. How are folks reacting on a local level? What is the impact on daily life where you live?

Here in Austin there have been no reported cases yet. Two days ago it was announced that one possible case was being investigated, but there has been media silence since those initial reports.

The big news is that as of today the SXSW tech conferences, film, and music festival is still likely to happen. Major corporate sponsors and participants, including several tech giants, have pulled out, and a petition with over 30,000 signatures has been circulating asking the festival management to cancel the event, which draws in tens of thousands of attendees (overall attendance including music events is in the hundreds of thousands over 10 days) from around the country and the world in a normal year. Several newspapers, including the Houston Chronicle, have also editorialized in favor cancelling. The economic hit to Austin would be huge with a revenue loss of at least a third of a billion dollars estimated. SXSW officials and local politicians are cautiously optimistic and say the show will go on.

Meanwhile, life around here is happening as usual. A few germaphobes (mostly seniors like me) are taking precautions, but most people seem pretty convinced that they won't be impacted. I suspect that is likely to change a bit once we get our first few local cases. I was planning an April trip to NYC. Now I am not so sure that I want to go.

Anyway, hopefully others will jump in and post about what's going on in their neck of the woods as we head into uncharged territory with this scary bug. What are the medical, social, and economic implications in your home town?

The Ultra electronic music fest was just cancelled.

Restaurants in Manhattan are definitely slowing down. It’s not a collapse (yet), but it’s visibly less busy than 2 weeks ago, even though the weather is beautiful now. You hardly see any face masks, but whereas a week ago I would go the whole day without seeing even one mask, or maybe just a few, these last few days I definitely see people wearing masks here and there.

For now the biggest impacts are in big convention center area

Orlando, Vegas etc. I would guess Seattle is looking pretty dead out there right now as the cases there keep ballooning.

Luckily the spread in the USA is quite limited still but I'd guess it will go up significantly in coming weeks.

Phoenix was one of the first cities to get a case but it was a Chinese national and we dont appear to have gotten any transmissions from him so there was no panic here.

yet.

People are buying hand sanitizer and people who aren't buying hand sanitizer are joking about buying hand sanitizer. The director of the county health department, and the food writer for the local newspaper both recommended stocking up on a couple weeks' worth of food, and the paper published a handy guide.

Otherwise, rumors. The hospital is putting new screening procedures in place for all visitors, but rumors were going around yesterday that it had been confirmed there. Because the hospital was recently bought by a for-profit corporation that is busily driving it into the ground, people are genuinely scared to go there for treatment and are talking about going to Greenville, SC for care. The flu is still rampant here, and allergy season is getting ready to explode when the pollen does so I expect a lot more chaos within a month.

But it's fairly calm at the moment.

There aren't any face masks because you can't find them anywhere, lol.

Considering that the CDC has barely tested anyone, I have a feeling we've already been living with this virus in the U.S. for a while. All of these quarantines might be a futile effort.

We had our first case this week but the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo is going on as planned and not sure if less people are going. It usually draws in a couple million people.

SXSW will only go on so they dont have to pay anybody back their money, next to nobody is going to show up though.

Seattle seems like it's being hit hard.

There have been videos of Asians being assaulted or cursed at for wearing masks in NYC, circulating in the various Asian communities here. You actually saw a lot of masks right after that lady in the CDC said we should all panic (this was about 1 week ago? Or maybe 2? I forgot). Then the masks came off. And now you see some people wearing them. Lots of Asian people for example keep masks. If you work in a hospital you can get them too I guess.

On the transit side for the tristate area, NJ Transit along with MTA and Amtrak lines are encouraging cleaning protocols. Sanitizing the trains, NYC is cleaning the subway. Even buses as well, every 3 days.

423 cases and 7 deaths here in France so far.

It makes much more noise than it should do all over the place, like some wimps get paranoid out here.
They're talking about canceling any event that would gather over 5k people indoor, things along these lines.

Bon, it's easy to be careless when you're healthy and you know it wouldn't kill you. You'd recover from it if you were healthy anyway.
In most cases, you wouldn't even realize whether you were infected or not. Your antibodies and whole immune system would just do the job for yourself, then you wouldn't even be aware.

That said, we are concerned about elders, 'cause that nasty thing that is likely to have come from a bat in Wuhan, China would likely be to kill a lot of them.
Who the hell eats bats by the way? I'm wondering. Especially when actually cooking it would've most definitely killed the virus messing up the world right now.

The very first person to be infected would have eaten a bat that wasn't even cooked enough!
:yuck: Good Lord, that's disgusting! It is unbearable just to think about it.

Who wants some uncooked bat for dinner on here? Hey, uncooked bat for sale in my French luxury restaurant! Want some?

California has a lot of cases, but it’s not affecting my daily activities.

I think you'd have to be irrational to cancel your travel plans because of this virus at the moment. The chances of you contracting it at the moment in the US
(considering 100 cases and the US pop) are 1:3,270,000. Death 1:32,700,000
At least in 2014 the likelihood of dying with HIV was 1:50,000
As well there is a 1:2,672,000 Chance of getting mauled to death by an animal.

Not much here in Flagstaff, AZ. The only thing Ive noticed are the supermarkets and drug stores limiting the purchase of hand sanitizer and masks to five per person.

I flew into Phoenix from Cincinnati on Monday. People in masks walking around both airports. Our flight to Phoenix was only half full.

My partner and I were gonna go to the Nowruz (Iranian New Year) Festival at UCLA this coming Sunday, but it was canceled "due to the evolving risk associated with the COVID-19 outbreak." We're so disappointed; it's always a fun event.

I really haven't notice much change in Chicago, and I live and work downtown. A friend of mine is going to New York for the weekend and doesn't seem concerned.

My brother who lives in the suburbs of Seattle, on the other hand, says his office is moving toward fully working from home.

My office has discussed what we'd do if one of us came down with the virus or if the building closed, but it was a pretty basic discussion, not panic-driven, mostly just driven because we're in the financial services industry, so part of our planning has to do with reacting to the market's extreme volatility last week and this.

I have a small supply of masks at home but never wear them. The CEO has had a couple people buy hand sanitize and bring it in. An event our company is hosting in Miami today and tomorrow is going on and I haven't heard of any significant cancellations related to it.

A couple major conventions in Chicago have been cancelled, but day to day life is the same. Lots of people in masks. I'd say it comes up in conversation pretty disproportionatly, too.

it's hard for anything to break out of the 24-hour news cycle these days and really cross into the zeitgeist, so this feels like a bigger deal to a lot of people than it actually is (so far)

You're basing your math on the reported numbers. The actual numbers are many many many times more. No one is being tested.

In LA, you notice things are a bit quieter, more people wearing masks, but life going on. Just got to Vegas and it's the quietest I've seen it in a long time

It hasn't had much effect here yet, though I am eating a lot fewer raw bats these days.

Well, the number of cases in the US is off by at least a factor of 20 if not more. The reason for the low number is simply because they are not testing, not because people are not getting sick. Even as we speak, there are people currently in hospitals, who exhibit all of the symptoms, who tested negative for flu and strep, and they are STILL not getting tested. This is the case in NYC. The number of deaths is also underestimated, as they just put "cause of death: pneumonia" without testing for covid-19 for 99.99% of cases. For people who can recover on their own, the doctors flat out say it to your face "We have ruled out everything else, I am 99% sure you have it, but we can't test you, so just self-quarantine yourself for a couple of weeks in your own house".
Also, I don't know about you, but if HIV spread via air I'd be freaking out....

^^^^This!! Thank you, Gantz. I don't want to start a flame over the severity of Covid 19, but the research out of China suggests that 20% of the known cases are considered "severe" enough to require hospitalization. Probably 10% of the hospitalized patients die. Most of the deaths are patients over 50 with additional health factors, but other hospitalized patients are often gravely ill for a period of two to four weeks. Even the less severe cases that don't require hospitalization can be quite incapacitating with high fever and severe bronchial symptoms that last around two weeks. Keep in mind that even "low risk" infected persons such as children require a minimum 14 day quarantine (usually at home) with minimal exposure to other persons. People that want to compare this to a flu epidemic are whistling in the dark.

And even if you are young and fit, odds are you interact with people who aren't. Do you want to kill them with your virus? My in-laws who generally watch my kids a lot are over 70 and one has a compromised immune system due to cancer treatments. They would be pretty much goners if I brought that virus around them.

There are absolutely way more people infected than is officially being reported. They had to retroactively update someone's cause of death in either Oregon or Washington because they realized it was COVID-19 after the fact. But the person died before they even suspected that there were people in the country who were infected other than those people evacuated from China and Japan.

Someone also posted a story on NYC Reddit about having flu-like symptoms after coming back from Japan in February, but the hospital was not authorized to test him for it by the CDC since Japan wasn't considered an outbreak zone at the time. They did rule out the flu and some other stuff, then released him. He said the hospital told him he could use public transit to go home, even though covid-19 was still a possibility. The day after he went to the hospital, Japan because one of the outbreak countries. His story was verified by the local news media.

And in early February I had a cough for about a week that I think was a mild case of bronchitis, which I've never had before. But the other day I was reading a summary of a mild covid-19 case that was observed on the Japanese cruise ship, and the symptoms were extremely similar to what I experienced. My symptoms were extremely mild so I didn't think much of it at the time. But, considering I've never had bronchitis before, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that I had a mild case of it.

Anecdotally, my girlfriend has been sick this week and went to the doctor. She has basic cold/flu symptoms (sinus problems, sneezing, general malaise). The doctor didn't suggest testing for coronavirus. I don't know if that is based on her professional medical opinion or a larger issue with the frequency and/or availability of testing, but it did seem odd that it wouldn't just be an automatic thing to test anyone who comes in reporting cold/flu symptoms.

Houston now has two confirmed Coronavirus cases and a third one in suburban Fort Bend County. A dozen or so people are in voluntary quarantine in Fort Bend County.

Minimal impact thus far, though our media - like everywhere else - is all about it.

The Mayor has said thus far there hasn't been any impact in terms of importing goods (which is, basically everything except chicken, turnip, potatoes, and seafood) to the island.

The Premier (equivalent of Governor, if you're American) has said the province is prepared should coronavirus be detected here. The most likely ways that could happen, for us, are unscheduled landings of international flights (Come From Away is set here, but it's a weekly occurrence with at least one or two planes), or via the ferry from Canada. There are detection and isolation measures in place at both.

There are almost no face masks left on the island so the health authorities are begging the public not to buy them and let healthcare professionals use them instead.

Lots of local seafood is no longer being purchased by China, and a major seafood expo in Boston (our most important one of the year) has been delayed. That's actually devastating, but mostly for rural communities, it's not a major deal in the capital city.

Oil dropping is lethal for us. We're very near bankruptcy anyway, and our budget for 2020 is oil at $63/barrel. It's currently barely above $50. Every dollar difference is about $25 million less to our government.

No students at local schools applied for exchange programs in China. This has caused a bit of a diplomatic incident because usually we send lots, China has still sent lots to us, and they've asked our government what's up.

Certain things are delayed. For example, we can't get monthly public transit passes in April because they're made in China and that factory is shut down.

There has been some racism towards Asians at the city's university campus, enough that the President of the university had to go to the media to tell people to go fuck themselves and grow up.

My wife was sick with a really bad respiratory infection a few weeks ago, and so did my 3 year old son. It was so bad that when she try and stand up she had problems breathing. I took her to the doctor and basically didn’t do anything but gave her a prescription. I personally think the virus has been here for a while undetected because the medical community has not done any widespread testing. My wife and her mom are convinced they had it simply by the symptoms they had. I can’t say for sure if’s that was the case but who know really unless they been tested.

everyone in my office got a delivery of purell today, which was nice I guess. No fewer people on the bus in the morning or anything like that though...

Portland-Dispatches from the hot zone!! So far the kahrona-cough appears to be less cataclysmic than we all thought. I don't doubt it's still serious but the PNW hasn't burned itself to the ground yet. Preppers cleaned out Costco of paper good and cleaner but they were still happy to paw over the free samples and there were MOUNDS of vegetables. People are still dining out but also must be working from home. Traffic is light and public spaces are a ghost town. I've been through a dengue fever outbreak in the jungle, a meningococcal disease outbreak in college and now this thing...weird times man. The conspiracy theorist in me is intrigued by all the fanfare but the pragmatist isn't impressed. 4000 dead on a planet of 7 billion??? I understand new is scary but 40,000 Americans die in car crashes every year and nobody gives a f#ck...

Aside from Ultra being cancelled (which brings 100s of thousands of visitors), local companies are feeling the hurt as well. Royal Caribbean Cruise lines has seen its stock drop 50% this month. Carnival Cruise lines stock lost about 50% as well. Local airline Spirit Air has seen its stock drop from 44.58 on 2/13 to 21.54 today. Basically every local tourism based business has flatlined.

I've seen one person with a mask (an older guy).

but if it's as virulent as "they" say, you didn't get sick...its still normal flu season too..

I’ve been working too hard to notice. Plan to swing by Borough Market tomorrow though so will see. Otherwise I haven’t been out and it’s seemed quiet, but the weather has been truly horrendous so that’s probably the main driver.

Quite a few upcoming conventions and trade shows in San Francisco have been cancelled. The hotel/tourist industry is being decimated. My best friend, who works at a major hotel, had his hours basically cut to zero and he is applying for unemployment. I suspect the unemployment office is going to be very busy. I'm not in the city right now but he tells me the major commercial streets are much emptier than usual and businesses are closed or have shortened hours.

Then of course, the news has reported the Grand Princess cruise ship being held off the coast but likely soon to dock in SF. I have not read what they are going to do with the passengers some of whom are going to test positive and others of whom may have been exposed but haven't yet developed a positive test. I doubt the US authorities will emulate the Japanese who have been widely criticized for keeping everybody aboard the Diamond Princess, leading to many additional exposures and some deaths. But the question becomes where will they quarantine the people. The nearest military base, Travis AFB, has already been used and I don't know if it has additional capacity.

You will soon be able to get them tested if they still want to be. The PCR test they will be able to get, though, will reveal current infection only, not past infection (you need a serology test which is under development but not yet ready for that). In fact, that's how they are determining now if people are safe to leave quarantine: A series of negative tests.

If she thought she had coronavirus, I hope she self-quarantined for 14 days. If she didn't, I hope she didn't really think she had "it" because she would have been exposing others as would anybody today who suspects they have coronavirus. And yes, the coronavirus illness apparently does last quite a while--typically 10-14 days (based on what Chinese patients are describing)--so if she was sick for only a couple of days that makes it very unlikely she had "it".

One virologist was on TV today saying he thought most Americans--in fact most people around the world--would eventually be exposed. In the US, with an overall mortality rate of even 1% (less than half what we are seeing in China which takes into account a large number of undiagnosed cases there and here and better average medical care here) and a population of 327 million, that's over 3 million deaths.

I am 74. I don't mind admitting I am pretty worried (and I'm a doctor--I am realistic about these things). At least one participant here has posted he is not bothered by the likelihood of millions of older people dying--we are an expense for social benefit systems. But the prospect isn't alluring.

Better average medical care or not, is the throughput of our medical system better than China? I have no idea...

I'm sure the government elite get medical care as good any in the world. There are many excellent Chinese doctors.

But we are talking about what's available for the average man on the street.

https://www.aetnainternational.com/e...-far-east.html

That's what I've read. China is nominally a Communist country so we assume the government provides health care. But as in the old Soviet Union, the government care for "regular" citizens, especially outside major cities, has been pretty rudimentary and middle class people often go to private clinics and hospitals and pay out of pocket. This is one reason China has a high savings rate--people budget for such expenses.

In this case the government has built prefab hospitals as we've seen and brought in thousands of "military doctors" to Wuhan and possibly other centers of illness. I'm putting that in quotes because I doubt China can have thousands of fully trained (by western standards) physicians to spare for this work and I'm equally sure they aren't going to strip their military of medical capability. I suspect these "military doctors" are much like we call "medics" in many cases--people with a few months of practical medical training (the Soviets also used such people). In the early days of this epidemic we all saw photos and video of people in waiting rooms and hallways with IVs running. The medical system, however good it may be in normal times, was clearly overwhelmed. Perhaps that has now been improved. Hard to know. And the US system is vulnerable to being overhelmed also if we get sick people in the numbers experienced in Wuhan. But that won't be the case for a while.

Finally, there's this:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/if-we-f...&page=1&pos=18

Reported cases of COVID-19 is like a cockroach. If you see even one in your house, you should just assume there are at least 20 more that are hiding about. I’m in Santa Clara, the epicenter of California’s outbreak. Nothing’s changed. The shelves at Safeway are still full.

I'd be careful in that Safeway even in normal times. I too am forced to shop in Safeway ('cause of the limited number of other options where I am right now) and more times than not I find overaged and expired items still on the shelf (not to mention the "pink slime" of a few years ago they were putting in their meat).

I don't know about my city, but my life has changed zero. I. Don't. Care.

Maybe that means I am depressed? I don't know.

I worked from home this week with a cold because I didn't want to freak anyone out in my office and my office isn't providing much guidance on what people should do otherwise.

I was sick too, but not as bad as the wife and my son. Somebody had to be strong and take care of the family. 💪

She was sick for about two weeks, she actually didn’t work the entire month of February. She had the worst cough I ever heard, it was non stop for hours. She never had a fever, and had back pain, and bad headaches. Not that this is fact or where she picked up what ever virus she had, we did visit The Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens in San Marino early February. There were many Chinese tourists, at least 50% of the visitors was of Chinese decent.

Why did that barbaric wild animal market have to exist? Like really, nobody needs to be eating bats and snakes. Maybe this could've been avoided if there had been more stringent hygiene standards in that market.

Anyway, I live in Koreatown in Los Angeles and I've noticed the restaurants definitely seem a lot more quiet. Unfortunately some false rumors were spreading about various Asian-descent owners being infected with Coronavirus while operating their restaurants, and their businesses have tanked the last few weeks--there have been plenty of articles in LA media citing this. I can't imagine how hard that is. Asian people definitely being stigmatized sadly. I also ride public transit daily and I'd say maybe 10%-15% of people are wearing masks. Can't say I'm thrilled to be packed like sardines on a bus, but I douse my hands with Purrell the minute I get off.

I'm really thankful I have no international trips planned anytime soon, and I'm definitely avoiding conferences, major events, really any major gatherings of people. Of course, it's probably a fruitless effort given that we have no choice but to interact with hundreds of people in any given day, but it gives me some fake sense of security I guess.

I really hope this comes to an end soon, but unfortunately like people say I think it's 100x more widespread than anyone can comprehend. I'm really dreading the next few months and how severe this is going to end up looking.

I personally have stopped drinking and vaping for the time being, to keep my immune system as strong as possible.

Kind of wonder if I might have had it early Feb...

Likely too early to catch it at that point still, it was mostly still in China.

Not too much of an impact here yet, more people wearing masks in public but generally nothing really. A large tech conference got cancelled today though because of it.

My stocks have dropped a lot because of it, if thats worth mentioning.. though everyones have.

I've been reading more and more that health leaders are reaching a consensus it was around long before initially realized.

another upcoming convention at chicago's convention center was just cancelled today due to corona virus fears. i think that's the 3rd one so far.

more cancellations are likely to follow, as no one wants to be accused of irresponsibility.

chicago's convention/hotel business (which is a BIG deal here) is gonna be hurting.

Hey, c'mon, don't tell people they'd have to be irrational (crazy?) to be afraid of something just because you aren't. This situation is changing by the moment, and I guarantee you it's only going to get worse. China completely shut down a city of 11 million people because of this virus. It IS something to be worried about.

Also, generalized numbers on a person's chances of dying from it are useless. Children don't seem to be affected, 15 out of a hundred octogenarians seem to be killed by it. I'm in my early 60s and have asthma and I do not want to risk it.