How long do you think the shutdowns will end up being?

While 6 weeks sound like a veeeeeeery long stretch, I do hope that once we reach Aril 24, everything can go back to normal.

Wow. I know things won’t be completely over snd back to normal but really hoping to see a lot of improvement in the next month.

Our community college district is closing next week through June 1st. Universities that sent students home across the country and internationally are not going to bring them back.

I'm thinking it could be a long haul before this reaches its peak, and then quite a while more before we're back to normal. I hope I'm wrong.

I’m hopeful that we’ll be past the very worst of it by mid-May. When you look at what is happening in China as well as in Italy, that seems to be the time frame. I don't think it was caught and acted upon early enough here to warrant a shorter time frame.

My entire country is on lockdown for to weeks. Not only schools, but many businesses are closed as well. I think this will continue at least a couple of months.

It's going to be far longer than we ( general we) at this time, think it will. No one has any idea how many people have it already without showing  symptoms yet. People can walk around feeling as fit as a fiddle today and bang, they come out with all  the symptoms tomorrow. 
Example A comes out with symptoms today - they have infected say 5 people during their incubation period. Those 5 people can take an estimated 14 days to show symptoms. In the meantime they have infected 10/15 more who can then  also take 14 days to show symptoms and on and on it goes.
I don't doubt that it will be months rather than weeks.

Mike Osterholm, an epidemiologist and infection disease expert at the university of Minnesota says we should plan for 6 months.

He has been saying for years we are not prepared for a pandemic. He also said weeks ago that this would affect our daily lives.

Ha, neither am I   I don't think anyone actually does to be honest, they're all guessing as this virus is unknown. There an argument for both I think. Some have shown symptoms earlier than others with who they've traced contact with. I think 14 days is probably a safety thing, just to make sure. It could even be longer for all we know. Some that catch it sooner after contact than others does make a bit of sense as far as individual immune systems go. Some have stronger immune systems to try and fight things off than others even in normal healthy people.


ETA From that article. Median is the average. So we shouldn't use that time frame as gospel.


The median incubation period was estimated to be 5.1 days (95% CI, 4.5 to 5.8 days), and 97.5% of those who develop symptoms will do so within 11.5 days (CI, 8.2 to 15.6 days) of infection. These estimates imply that, under conservative assumptions, 101 out of every 10 000 cases (99th percentile, 482) will develop symptoms after 14 days of active monitoring or quarantine.

The Scottish first minister made a long announcement yesterday. We are not at the point of shutting schools etc yet as they want it to have maximum effect when we are on the upward trajectory of the pandemic curve but she said closures will be months not weeks. The aim is to push the unavoidable big peak of infection nearer to the summer months when the NHS will be better able to cope and that peak is anticipated to be 9-12 weeks a way. We are in for at least 6 months of severe disruption with years of economic effects to follow.

What did you think of Boris yesterday? I think when he stops all the Boris-buffoonery, he can be very eloquent. I thought the press event with him, the CSO and the CMO was measured and well delivered. I though our Scottish FM did really well too. What a nightmare to be in a position of power in these times.

Our schools got shut down for 3 weeks but I am skeptical that things are going to be improved by then. They are only testing here if you have traveled internationally so I am afraid more people have it than we realize.

Agree with this! If our National response had been quicker I think we could have been ahead of the game.  But, since it was a hoax for the longest time, I think we're going to follow the path of China and Italy and it'll be May before things can take a turn.

I talked to a customer yesterday who made a snarky comment about "your over reactionary Governor caused all this panic across the entire US".  I let it go (since, customer and all) but all I could think was at least someone is trying to do SOMETHING.  The Federal Government is doing NOTHING but spinning their wheels here.

We have plans to head to Orlando at the end of May. I'm really hoping we'll be able to actually go and that both sets of parks down there are open.