Live updates: Coronavirus fears reverberate as Iran shuts 60,000 mosques; U.S. officials widen states of emergency

Washington Post ^ | Today | Adam Taylor and Teo Armus

[cba123]

The knock-on effects of the novel coronavirus continued around the world on Friday, with new signs of diplomatic fallout over prevention measures in East Asia, widespread disruption for religious travelers in the Middle East, a new cruise ship quarantined off the coast of California, and more blows to financials markets.

(Article then shuts off looking for a donation - nope.)

[COBOL2Java]

Novel=new. This is a new virus- never seen before. It is a member of the corona virus family. The common cold is also a corona virus.

We haven’t any built-in immunity to this virus.

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So who will be the first to publish a novel about this virus?

[Leep]

How will they receive their satanic messages?

[Slainte]

I heard it only affects novelists... Or something like that...

[Leep]

Pronounced NOE-VELL?

[Blue Highway]

If it wipes out the planet in year, our will be a short Noe-vell-a. Get it?

[wbarmy]

Right out of Koontz novel.

I was actually thinking more along the lines of Tom Clancy's "Executive Orders" but Koontz works too.

[Leep]

Yes, unfortunately i do. :)

[GulfMan]

At this point I believe the 40% to 70% world wide infection rate with millions and millions of deaths, possibly 10’s of millions. I had hoped this was going to pass, but we’re what will be remembered as the beginning of the beginning. I feel like I am living in the last month or two or what I will remember as the time before COVID-19. Nothing is going to be the same after this. Really a little depressing honestly. Still hopeful but that is waning.

[Vermont Lt]

Are they still open for licking?

[ryderann]

I remember when polio shut down all public gatherings...churches, movie theaters, etc. in the summertime. Parents in the South sent their kids to summer camp up North.

[Vermont Lt]

Go read The Stand. This whole thing is right out of Part I.

[mdmathis6]

I have to wonder what Dean Koontz is thinking right now about the coincidences between his book and the current situation, almost right down to the year. That’s why sometimes I think some a-hole read his book and was in a position to make the book come true like some snarky gaslighting middle finger waved at the entire world!

Yet I must be careful since God(whom I don’t wish to offend) may have begun to act against the sins of our world....Christ said in the latter days pestilences would occur in many places; of course he didn’t say God would actually cause them directly. It might just be that man would be given over to our folly in terms of the evil we do to each other. Play with virii of dangerous infectious ability and we get burned.

The Bible is specific about what God does directly but it also talks about things that will simply happen in the latter days, mostly traceable to our own corruption as a species and not necessarily by God’s own hand. God may become suddenly “hands off” taking away protective hedges to let chips fall as they may, as he knows they will fall.

[cornfedcowboy]

Does anyone still believe this wasn’t released on purpose to disrupt PDJT’S re-election?

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If you truly believe this, you should think about something other than politics. This talk is serious and it has nothing to do with elections. Just stop it please.

[SE Mom]

Non-fiction authors will be relieved:)

[existentially_kuffer]

Something stronger than Allah. Inshcorona!

[Sooth2222]

They should lock up all their goats and sheep.

Also, maybe halt direct flights between Iran and PRC? That seems fairly basic.

[9YearLurker]

Bravo on another exceptionally clear and succinct post here, sharing your medical expertise and thinking.

[hal ogen]

Won’t this cause a shortage of religious things to lick in iran?

[Rebelbase]

Trying to prevent fart transmission of COVID-19.

[MD Expat in PA]

Bravo on another exceptionally clear and succinct post here, sharing your medical expertise and thinking.

I just saw your ping. Thanks!

But for your and everyone’s clarification, I am not a doctor (see my tagline) nor do I have any formal “medical expertise” nor do I pretend to have any.

I am however keenly interested and rather well read as an “amateur” in both history and science.

I became interested in the Black Death while taking an advanced placement course in European history in my senior of HS and its impact - politically, socially and economically which also dovetailed nicely with the advanced placement Political Thought class I was also taking that year. I later became interested in the history of the Spanish Flu for similar reasons.

From my earliest childhood memories of being asked what I wanted to be when I grew up and up until my junior of HS, I had my heart set on becoming a veterinarian and perhaps that can be blamed in part on my older brother taking me to see the movie Thomasina when I was four and watching Wild Kingdom with my dad - LOL. That didn’t happen although for I time I thought of becoming an RN. I instead took up my mother’s advice to go into bookkeeping and accounting and ended up as a payroll manager. Bless her heart but I probably shouldn’t have listened to her : (

FWIW I had conversations with doctors especially when my mom and a year and a half later my dad was in the ICU at Johns Hopkins who thought because of the questions I asked and terminology I used, assumed I was myself a doctor or a nurse or in the medical field. But asking good questions and understanding the basics and using the correct terminology doesn’t make me an “expert”. And as far as a career change, at 59 I’m a bit long in the tooth to make one now.