That makes sense, but in my personal mind, coffee and chocolate is much more of a necessity...esp if things are going to start going into lockdown. Mind you I have enough tp for a family of four for a while, but...still.. lol..

Psychology is always interesting...the human brain is a weird thing sometimes.

Thats a great meme xD Personally I'd have to stock up on rice and like...all the instant cocoa packets I can buy. Oh and probably tuna for spicy tuna sushi. We have chickens though so like,,, #eggz4dayz

OKAY.

My country thought, 'hey we should stock up on toilet paper rolls' so now the shelves are empty and people are getting charged for fighting for toilet paper.

Why Australia, just why. Honestly, we had about 58 cases last week and compared to Sars (where we didn't get the virus in Australia) we weren't stocking up on toilet paper, we were vibin'.

I guess the tp memes are okay, but the Covid-19 ones, in general, aren't funny.

FYI you're out of date already. Virginia just declared a SoE a few hours ago and DC is under one as well as of yesterday.

Also, could you provide some information on what a State of Emergency actually IS so that you don't cause people to panic unnecessarily? A SoE is simply a way for states to get around the normal bidding process when it comes to obtaining materials and services. It also qualifies them for certain monetary aid additional help from certain agencies. It doesn't mean that the world is ending.

Why was I ping? I get that it's important but I'm super anxiety-ridden and I go into freakout overload when seeing these numbers. If I did sign up and I just don't remember (very possible) please take me off the pinglist. Thanks!

Ah it was just a ping for friends, I won't ping you next time ^-^''

Thanks, I guess thats a good point, I'll include those details in my next update. I certainly would not hope that the world was ending xD

I'm gonna throw my two cents in here if you don't mind.

I'm a biology major currently going through and getting my degree. I mostly agree with what your say except for a few things. While it's true that in many ways can't compare this new novel virus and the flu. It's not because of the death rate. Influenza viruses and Corona viruses are two completely different families of viruses. Along with that you can't compare the statistical data of two things with different sample sizes, or at least you're not supposed to. We just don't have the raw data to be able compare them statistically. You just can't compare the numbers for a disease that we have known about for over a hundred years and something that's new and not yet fully understood.
(Plus you can't really compare all strains of influenza to one strain of Corona virus, but there are some strains of influenza that are significantly worse than covid-19. However, I digress)

My second point is that when I hear covid-19 being compared to the flu is comparing symptoms since they're practically identical. Which is what I would expect when looking at two mild respiratory diseases. Of course this could be because I practically live in a university science building and that's just how people discuss this in that circle.

My final point is that some people are trying stop mass panic. It is a given that if you throw scary sounding numbers at the general populace they have a tendency to panic and to be fair the media isn't helping with this. We've already seen people go into panic mode around the world. My college is closing down face to face classes for the foreseeable future and I can't get hand sanitizer in my town or in any of the neighboring towns. With many countries now getting their infection spikes people are starting to panic and make the situation worse.

In conclusion wash your hands, don't horde supplies, keep good personal hygiene, and DON'T PANIC.


(I'm sorry if this as been addressed already, but I really needed to comment on this.)

Yeah I've had many people point out my...fearmongering >.>

I really only have one thing to say about that to be honest, i'm just stating facts :/

Its interesting to hear from a biology major though-- its just...you know not everyone is a biology major xD

The problem is that there *are* people comparing these two things in like... a black and white point of view and it just doesn't work like that :/

Its hard to try and get a point across when there are so many sources and numbers and different arguments going around so... I just dumbed it down to one point: its not the flu, and we should treat it as something worst than the flu.

As for the schools shutting down, I understand its a huge inconvenience (not really I've been homeschooled for a large chunk of my life, but I have a very vivid imagination xD) but as Dr. John Campbell says "Proactivity not reactivity"

I understand. It's just that people trained or training in the sciences have a very different reaction to all of this. We're trained to have measured responses to things and to some people it might seem slow or insensitive. It's just that right now we truly don't have enough data to come to any conclusions about this virus, in fact I wouldn't he surprised if all the statistics for this virus radically change by the end of this.