Thanks everyone. Yes the chances I have got it are low. None of the risk areas accept traveling on crowded trains. It would have to be that it is spreading so far undetected if I were to catch it from my daily commute.
Just checked the govt website and all it says is to call ahead if you want to go to the doctor. and a couple of hotlines you can ring for info about covid-19
Whatever I have is very mild. I'll work from home, my daughter is also showing cold symptoms so will keep her back from school as well.
Tony.
Just checked the govt website and all it says is to call ahead if you want to go to the doctor. and a couple of hotlines you can ring for info about covid-19
Whatever I have is very mild. I'll work from home, my daughter is also showing cold symptoms so will keep her back from school as well.
Tony.
My hypothesis is that your Welsh Dragon is fending it off. 🙂
I envy you your national flag - easily my favourite of all the national flags in the world that I'm aware of.
-Gnobuddy
If the supply chain fades away slowly over a period of years, then there is at least a chance to adapt; farmers might start to grow more of our food in our country, politicians might finally wake up to the new reality, new factories might rise where old ones were shut down when we handed all our manufacturing over to China, et cetera.
But "collapse" implies rapidity. If the supply chain collapses rapidly, we will be caught flat-footed, with no time to adapt. Life will not be very pleasant for quite a while if that happens.
The idea of shipping one-dollar plastic toys and two-dollar toothbrushes halfway around the world in container ships, burning increasingly expensive, and increasingly scarce, fossil fuels to do so, is absurd on the face of it. And yet, that's exactly what we're doing at present - just take a trip to the nearest dollar store if you doubt it.
It doesn't take a crystal ball to see that this cannot continue indefinitely. For years I've anticipated the possibility that as fuel costs continue to rise (and shipping costs with it), one day it will cost too much to ship inexpensive everyday consumer items halfway around the world in container ships. When that day comes, the choices are for those of us not living in China to go without, or to re-start local manufacture, rebuilding factories and industries we shut down when China took over manufacturing for the world. At best, this will be a protracted, difficult, and incredibly expensive task.
This had already started to happen for some industries in North America immediately prior to the economic collapse of 2008. Several shut-down steel mills reopened, as the cost of shipping construction steel from China became too high to be competitive. The collapse dropped the cost of fuel, so I don't know how this particular story has played out since then.
What is the typical fuel bill to power a 70,000 kW (94,000 hp) engine from China to North America, I wonder?
That engine stands taller than a five-storey building, by the way: World's Largest Containership Also Sets Record for Largest Engine Ever – gCaptain
Some shipping lines are already moving to natural gas to power their engines, largely because liquid natural gas is currently less expensive than the crude fuel oil they used to burn.
-Gnobuddy
Attachments
As of today, 603 cases of the novel Coronavirus in the USA, 66 in Canada (according to Johns Hopkins University: Operations Dashboard for ArcGIS )
That's about the same 10:1 ratio as the populations of the USA and Canada respectively, so the prevalence rate seems to be about the same in both countries at the moment.
Given the shared border, and constant road, rail, and air traffic back and forth, this is not very surprising.
-Gnobuddy
That's about the same 10:1 ratio as the populations of the USA and Canada respectively, so the prevalence rate seems to be about the same in both countries at the moment.
Given the shared border, and constant road, rail, and air traffic back and forth, this is not very surprising.
-Gnobuddy
The CDC has said over and over that we don't have enough testing kits. We don't know how many cases there are since we can't test for them, and if it wasn't tested for they won't report it based of symptoms.
On the news here they said that US CDC will have 2 million test kits by today and 4 million by the end of the week.
Good point. Sloppy wording on my part. I should have said 603 officially reported cases.
There's nothing quite as much fun as heading into a probable pandemic blind, deaf, and with a dumb dude in charge, no? 🙂
-Gnobuddy
How many have we already missed?
4 million?
They need to send 2 million kits to Seattle and announce that anyone that doesn't feel good should go to a doc in the box and get tested for free. Then follow up with who shows up at the ER with server symptoms, and do a correlation between the two to see how many people are really catching it and how many end up seriously sick.
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Wow, you got us. It's 2020, I doubt we'll ever have a leader who won't walk in a Pride parade again.
Easily figured. Engines burn 0.4 pounds of fuel per horsepower-hour. How far from China to me? Say 400 hours. Say engine cruise power is 50,000HP. 50,000*400*0.4 is 8,000,000 pounds. (High? These ships displace 380MegaPounds, and fuel at 2% of total weight is maybe small.)
Bunker fuel runs $300 to $480/mt, say $400/mt, which is apparently a ton. 8 MegaPounds is 3.6 MegaKG, so $1,454,545 each way.
Actually these really BIG engines have exceptional efficiency (you see why), and such a ship may be able to negotiate a price or carry fuel from a cheaper source
AHHH! Price of fuel should be like $600. All port prices started slumping Jan 9. So in normal times, over 2 million bucks.
Rotterdam Bunker Prices - Ship & Bunker
I just heard that some ships are switching to LNG because its cheaper? I don't know how easy such a change would be.
Seattle now has a drive through test facility on the top of a parking garage.
Seattle now has a drive through test facility on the top of a parking garage.