Trump fired Obama's Global Pandemic Response Team whose job it was to be on the
look out for exactly what we are going through right now with C-19.

Somebody or somebodies stopped the funding for a coronavirus vaccine (SARs) in 2018.

In late Jan./early Feb. of 2020 the Seattle Dept. of Health and the University of Washington found a case
of C-19 and reported it to the Trump run CDC and they were told to stop testing.

Trump turned down the W.H.O. C-19 test kits which were critically needed. The rumor is that he wanted
to make money by selling his own C-19 test kits.

Trump, Fox, and the republicans told us time after time that C-19 was a hoax. And then did nothing to
prepare America and the world for the coming wave of illness and death.

That seems over the top and it's a good way to drive people over the edge. Exercise is one thing we should keep doing. It's good for our moods and brains. It also significantly lowers stress levels and blood pressure while boosting immune response, and has a million other benefits.

impractical ones are now being taken. Of course, some people want a
police state for everyone else.

surprised to read this from article:

Supermarkets, pharmacies, post offices and banks will remain open and public transport will continue to run

I think Italy needs to limit the transportation only to essential personnel - no one else should be allowed on the trains/buses until there curve has flattened.

Because when you make it so people rely on public transit, they rely on public transit for food and medicine and (in-person) banking.

Then "essential personnel" will be the ones delivering the food and meds to the population.

so be it. They just have to take necessary safety precautions. We can’t allow ppl to starve.

like, yep, no one leave the house. They got away with that in China but don't think it would fly in Italy nor the US but it may be the only way.

the exponential growth in these societies will continue

I heard this on "The Daily" on NPR, Thursday 3/12/20. This is how I remember hearing it --

China - they measure everyone's temperature -- when you enter a building, when you get home (a committee of the apartment complex takes your temperature), and so on. If you have a fever, you are separated, and then dealt with by medical people dressed head-to-toe in protective gear. If they have a flu test available, they administer that. They do a white blood cell count. They ask questions about symptoms. If you are still a coronavirus suspect, they do a CT scan on you -- these are portable CT scanners that do about 200 scans a day, not like the big ones in hospitals that take 30 minutes or so. If you are still a suspect, you end up in some portable hospital. There is no home quarantine -- they found that didn't work as they found that about 90% of new cases were in family clusters. In other words people who were home quarantined infected household members at a high rate

You really need to be close to somebody for a while to have a large chance of picking up SARS-CoV-2 from them.

Relatively few cases were from casual contact. Confined in a bus, in an office, at home. But not so much on the street or passing in the store.

China had one approach--brutal, but it worked.

South Korea had another. Different situation, but it worked.

Japan's been touted here as a model, but their approach worked for a while and it seems to have broken down a bit. Same for Singapore (which had low numbers and a bit of a break out a week ago, haven't looked to see how that's gone).

Taiwan's worked, but theirs required data-keeping that few countries have access to.

Note that home quarantine isn't something that won't work--it's just something that's likely to produce a bit of a bump before the effect kicks in.

It can remain airborne for at least 3 hours (the study that determined this only ran for 3 hours, then cut off). There was a case in China they were able to track down the etiology for, and multiple people who rode a bus that an asymptomatic guy was on (no coughing, no sneezing, no talking, just breathing) got sick even though they were seated at the other end of the bus. And *on the next run the bus had*. Is that the bus you were referring to? Because the duration of the bus ride was not reported, nor was it reported whether the windows were open or closed. We need to not make assumptions about the contagiousness of this virus, particularly downplaying the contagiousness.

I have been immersed in reading the lab, clinical and epidemiological research for many hours every day because someone I love is at high risk and I have a background in this stuff. This virus is a hell of a lot more contagious, and for much longer, than we are being told. And we are not testing for it adequately when we do test. That is just the tip of the iceberg.

We need to be careful not to assume the truth of what CDC and WHO are relaying to us, because it is not accurate. They only just this week suggested it *might* be airborne though the research has already been out there, as just one example. This is critically important info and it’s being screened.

However, someone should tell BBC that Italian word don't end it "y". The region is Lombardia.

It's "Great Britain" and not Gran Bretagna. And Ἑ??ά?? (or Hellada) not Greece (or Grecia, as some uncouth imperialists would have it).

Then there's Deutschland (only idjits would call it "Germany" or "Germania", I guess.) And Rossiia. Using the LOC transliteration. I prefer Rossija, but that's the "linguistic" system. Perhaps we should insist on orthography and call it Россия. Regardless of alphabet of the text it's embedded in. Same for Polska. And Česko. Nobody'll like Hrvatska, not with that syllabic r. Not sure what to do with Zhōngguó in Mandarin--is it okay use say it in Cantonese, Zung1 gwok3?

My favorite is Włochy (Polish for "Italy"--it's like Wallachia, just a generic Wanderwort that meant "foreigner" and got picked up and applied to various groups--Italians, Wallachians, Welsh. Yes, you have to bar the l for the Polish word.) Supposed we should use Cymru to avoid being offensive.

It gets real silly real quick. We have our names for places. They have theirs. Others have their own for us and them. Pays not to stress out over such differences and accept linguistic diversity as a thing, if not as a good thing.

Not talking about altering the language. Not that hard to do I, not y, and add an a.
I'm not interested in justifying doing it wrong 'cuz foreigners.