Coronavirus **personal experiences** thread

It is related.

Our friends in China may not be free to post about what is truly happening there at the risk of government retaliation. Internet in China is highly censored. Big brother is watching.

On the Dutch TV-news was an item that suggests China also applies compartmentalization. People who want to go to work after the prolonged CNY holiday must go in quarantine for 14 days before they can enter their work place. That implies that the practical CNY holiday is extented with another 14 days. Till the end of the month.

I ordered from Simon (Convoy) on 02/04/2020, still pending shipping…

Has anyone seen the estimates of how much this has cost China financially, so far, and which portion of that or the amount that they have spent to date in dealing with this?

There are major layoff right now.

many of my contacts cannot go to their offices in the cities - but they started teleworking...

and some of the big warehouses are outside the shut down areas - they are operational as well and shipping items.

I have some orders from ebay placed on january and still not shipped. Some seller even dont respond messages

Small order from Kaidomain on 01/23/2020, processed 02/10/2020, that’s all.

I have an order that was shipped out on 01/27/2020 - for the second time - (FT03S) - should arrive today

Order 30.1 Tracking assigned 31.1 Still not shipped.
2020-01-31 15:00 Logistics orders created (quick-selling platform)

Message from a Chinese Store in Shopee. Order placed Jan 25. Message date Feb 10...

"Dear Customer,welcome to our store!But due to Wuhan Virus ,Our holiday will last until February 15,but the shop is not closed,you can order normal,after receiving the orders, we will send them it out atfer February 15.And our government is activily taking many measure to deal with it.I believe it will be restored soon. We are so sorry for the inconvenient.
Hope you can understand.Thank you so much!.."

I decided to just wait and did not cancel. It's just a couple of Convoy flashlight holsters.

Ordered the IF25 from sofirnlight.com.. guess I shouldn'ta.

While I understand the current inconvenience to a community like ours who relies on Chinese products, I just want to politely mention that any of us well off and blessed enough in life to be buying non essential items and participating in such a hobby/community should really take time to consider what an affected person/family in China would feel during this time. If I have to wait months for a package from China right now, I’m not going to feel sorry for myself in the least.

Some European countries are right now in transition to new import rules with added vat for the whole orders value. Since Aliexpress does not accrue vat when placing the order, there will also be added considerably extra handling fees. In this worst case scenario, it seems likely the orders will delayed so long, that the new tax regimen will be valid by then. This will for me result in $330 extra payment for all the orders. That’s the reason I cancelled all of them.

already happened

We may all be grieving about flashlights that might turn up late or never.

But … do you know that the affected region in China produces over 95% of the basic materials for antibiotics sold in the US? And that the medicine industry, like the automotive industry, is very “last minute” driven. The manufacturers of the end product avoid stockpiling, so the major part of the stocks needed to manufacture antibiotics is now in quarantine.

EU officials are urging to reverse/block the outsourcing policies of the major antibiotics companies.

One of my programmer friends commented on how he’s seeing evidence of a lot more buggy software since big US companies like Boeing outsourced their coding.
Now that’s scary.

“Thank you! Come again!”

Not just materials, finished products. More than 90% of the ibuprofen and hydrocortisone that the U.S. imports originates from China. A large percentage of acetaminophen and penicillin as well.

If China really wanted to squeeze the U.S. in the trade war, it could bring pharma into the equation. People might be able to get by without a new gadget, or a new flashlight, but they need drugs to survive.

Strange 15k jump in reported cases… ArcGIS Dashboards

Certain metals like silver, titanium dioxide, etc have anti-microbial properties. Some topical applications are mentioned. The question is what effect do they have when ingested.

It’s worth reading the paper linked above, or at least the Toxicity section:

The devil is in the details.

Just because something is a disinfectant externally, doesn’t mean it would necessarily work similarly inside the body. Lots of interactions to watch out for.

Plus, the same substance can have different properties depending on many characteristics such as size, shape, impurities… and then even for chemically identical molecules: chirality! Sedative thalidomide is one famous example where one chirality was effective while the other was toxic, causing birth defects and deaths.

It’s one thing to notice an interesting material property. It’s quite another to harness that property effectively and safely in a given system.

Bottom line is it’s not so simple. Better safe than sorry. Talking to biochemists can be enlightening.