Here is something to put the Corona Virus into perspective, at least for Americans.

The low end of the World Health Organization's corona virus death projection in the U.S. is more than double the combined U.S. death toll from World War Two plus the Vietnam conflict.

Vietnam. Deaths.:. 58,220
WW-Two Deaths: 416,800
WHO Estimate: 1,000,000 --- 2,000,000

tanstaafl.

Some numbers with some citations are here: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/us/coronavirus-deaths-estimate.html (admittedly these are still estimates based on a lot of guesswork).

And, as always, make sure to double check information. Snopes is trying to keep on top of misinformation about coronavirus: https://www.snopes.com/collections/

Let's hope that enough people are able to isolate themselves, so that we don't reach those numbers before a vaccine is available.

By the way, for sites which like to cover their page with popup boxes when you're trying to read the articles, I've been happy with a Chrome plugin called Just Read. Doesn't work for every site, but it works for enough of them to make me happy.

I'm not trying to minimize those numbers and it's terrible, but also remember the US population during WWII was about 40% of what it is now.

This web site provides great charts, so you can see how different countries, or different states in the U.S., are doing relative to one another at containing the virus. A particularly interesting set of charts here are "normalized by population".

Facts of note:
- The U.S. average growth rate is 1.35x per day (!)
- Texas is growing at 1.41x per day, although we're nowhere near as bad as many other states.

Also, it's important to know that any change the states introduce to reduce the growth rate won't show up in these numbers until two weeks later, since that's (supposedly) the incubation period for the virus.

In short, until we get this growth number below 1.0, then we're not going to be able to get the virus under control. And even then, to *keep* it under 1.0, our daily life routines, post-isolation (whenever that happens), will be quite different, at least until we have proven vaccines. And that, unfortunately, is not happening any time soon.

Lastly, an important note: these data represent a lower bound on the actual infection rates. Until testing becomes much more widespread, we won't know the actual infection rate.

http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization

Excellent resource. The curves for China and South Korea are very promising to look at, seeing them go flat after they implemented their measures.

Also, for China & South Korea, you know they've got (relatively) good testing. For many other countries, it's best to treat these data as a lower bound. The real numbers could be much higher, meaning that fitting a straight line and deriving a growth rate might be inaccurate.

These are absolutely a lower bound, especially with regards to the US.

My county public health administrations response to people showing symptoms isn't "come get tested", it's "stay home unless you're sick enough you think you need medical attention."

i.e. stay home, unless it's really bad.

One of the biggest hospital labs in the tri-county area only got supplies to perform testing about 5 days ago. And only enough for 3000 tests, with verbal agreements from vendors to make best efforts to continue supplies.

I am currently at home in the guest bedroom. I've had a cough, fever, headaches, etc since Friday. The clinic I called literally told me "stay home unless you're dying." So I may be one of those uncounted numbers (we had a fellow in the office from France, up through the 17th). Or I could just have inappropriately timed flu. But I don't think so. At least the symptoms have been super mild, so far, and don't seem to have been progressing.

Sounds silly to ask but after so many years in this place... how's everyone doing?

Just checking-in from Rome, Italy.

As you know, we've been in lock-down for a while now.

Wishing you all all the best. This'll be over, sooner or later. Keep your spirits high.

Thanks! I'm in the Washington, DC, area. We've been at home the last couple weeks, barring a couple shopping trips and walking the dog. We're doing OK, just a little stir crazy and anxious as I imagine everyone is.

I've been doing a lot of spring yard work. My wife works for the US Senate - she had nine 15-hour days in a row getting the relief package together (from home, fortunately). My 16yo son is doing the tele-friend thing and his best to stress test our wifi (it's holding up fine, fortunately).

Since we're doing capital cities.. Hey Claudio! All okay here in semi-locked-down Ottawa, Canada. We've been reading the news from Italy regularly, and hoping for the best.

(new)SWMBO and I have been starting tomatos, peppers, etc.. from seed, and wishing for a couple of sunny days so we can open up the greenhouse.

Keep well everyone!

At the moment, I and my family are OK.

We've set up a small decontamination station in the yard next to the door into the kitchen. Nothing (people, packages, etc.) goes through that door without being sanitized.

My frustration isn't about being voluntarily confined. I am frustrated because despite all my Henny Penny the Sky is Falling rants of doom and destruction, so many people are still not taking this seriously.

Being in the high risk category (75 years, recent pneumonia) I take this a bit more personally than some. I gave up responding to one lady with rose-colored glasses who castigated me (on another website) for spreading fear and uncertainty ("You're not being helpful!") when I posted WHO numbers, current infection rates, the observed mortality rate, and the magic of exponential growth.

The irony is, my post on that website was only peripherally concerned with Covid-19. A year from now we're going to look back on these recent weeks as the Good Old Days when our biggest concern was dying from some damn virus. The economic apocalypse is at hand. Deutsche Bank will likely be the first domino, and then...

The sky really is falling.

But that's a topic for another time. Nobody will listen anyway,I know how Cassandra must have felt. At least nearly all of my assets are in tangible, useful things.

tanstaafl.

Better than most. I think I'm probably the person in my family who is best suited to an extended stay at home. I have tons of projects to do around the house, my funds can probably last through the quarantine, and I don't get stir crazy very easily. It's the rest of my family that I worry about, since we have two small kids with boundless energy. Fortunately they're not really begging to go out and do the things we usually do, but I just wish I had a better way to entertain them. Again, we're more fortunate than most, with a yard and a play set. But they've been doing that on every sunny day we have, so it's bound to lose its luster soon.

My wife and I have also been dealing with horrible allergies that have turned into eye/nasal infections. That's been a blast! And it's great to have coughing fits and worry that you have a deadly virus that might kill you or a loved one. So far, we're ok, but it goes without saying that things really suck right now.

Doing fine in Houston. Normally I go on bike rides with a group of 10-20 people. Now it's just me and one friend, keeping our distance.

We’re both fine here in Essex. Confined to the house except for food shopping and one bit of exercise a day, like the rest of the UK.

We’re desperately missing our kayaking/canoeing though, especially me. I broke my ankle last November, so I was bed bound for months. I was just starting to get out and about again when the virus arrived.

Still virus free in our household here in Columbus, OH (state capital of Ohio...does that count?). For side income, we run an AirBnB in our basement that used to be occupied about 25 days a month. We've lost literally every reservation from March 10 or so through the end of May so far, except one traveling nurse who has shifts at the hospital not far from our house. That said, I work for a State agency that is fully funded by the Feds, and our funding is already intact for this fiscal year. So my primary job is safe so far, and I can work from home. I can't imagine what it's like for AirBnB hosts that depend on properties for their primary income. My son with cerebral palsy has a bit of elevated risk because he can't cough efficiently, so we're trying to go out as little as possible. However, we're realizing that we're absolute rubbish at shopping for a couple weeks at a time and remembering everything to make complete meals. This is leading to some strange meal combinations.

Doing fine here in London. I've been working from home for the last 6.5 years, so that part's not bothering me. Having the wife (working from home) and kids (school's closed) in the house will take some getting used to.

We're fortunate to have a relatively large garden (for London) and a park nearby, so we can at least get the kids some exercise. My personal trainer's started offering sessions over Facetime, and Jen's Kempo class is doing twice-weekly sessions over Zoom, so at least we're getting exercise. I've also been out on my bicycle once last week and will probably do that again. Oddly, the roads are quieter than the canal towpath (Grand Union from Park Royal to Paddington Basin) that I would normally use.

What's bothering me is the indefinable sense of difference. I'm used to being indoors all day, but the idea that I can't go out as easily just sits awkwardly. Needing to actually plan lunches, because I can't just nip out for a sandwich, for example.

I shouldn't complain though. None of us are ill; we don't know anyone close who's ill. We do have a couple of at-risk friends and relatives (asthma, immunosuppressed, age, etc.), but they're all physically OK right now. One friend is an ICU nurse, so she's obviously at high-risk, but the last time we spoke, she was coping.

Welp, my state (Virginia) just issued a stay at home order, with potential misdemeanor charges for violating it. Only allowed to leave the house for medical or grocery needs. Not sure what that means for my house wiring jobs, which I was still taking because I can try to be the only one on site.

I can't complain because everyone we know is healthy. The primary bummer we have is that we had booked a trip for the kids' first trip to Disney World at the beginning of May. We also made the mistake of telling them about it (before this virus stuff hit), and now every time they watch a Disney movie my 2 year old daughter gets all excited about how they're going to see the castle. Ugh.

So great to hear from people here.
I guess I want to tell you how things are here, then, in Rome, as I asked, but I have not told.

Situation is so unreal because of the horrible news we hear on TV every day, and... we're all OK. I don't happen to know directly anyone who was directly hit by Covid19, which is supposedly quite something in the country that was hit first and hardest in Eu. But still...
Certainly Rome does not have many cases overall, and it is quite far from the places in the country that were hit worst.

I live in the metropolitan area of Rome. Rome is a city of 5 Million people, quite large physically, and plagued with quite bad traffic, in general. For years I've been telling my wife that it'd be a really amazing city if it only had 1/3 of its average traffic, and less pollution, and noise.
Fate loves irony.

Rome is quiet. Feels strange to even type and read it back.
It feels as if it is covered by a blanket of eerie beauty. I live in a mostly residential area in the north of the city, and my street is mostly desert, with the notable exception of delivery trucks. UPS, DHL, BRT, Poste, seem to be the only signs that a civilization is actually still operating, under that blanket of silence.

My wife and I both work from home. She had done it in the past, for years, so she's OK. I never did that in my life, and it is weird. We're lucky that our apartment is relatively big. And, we have a balcony. We step out, look around at the desert city. People sometimes waive their hands at you from their balconies and windows, which is nice.

We managed to buy food on-line, mostly, but we had to go to the local supermarket three times, because in one case our grocery could be delivered only after 3 weeks (!) since the order was placed.

And the birds. I never heard so many birds chirping and singing in the city, and I live near a fairly large city park. Nature does seem to slowly take over the city, and it would be beautiful if we did not know the reason for that.

I suppose the idea a lot of the world has of Italy, these days, is much worse than it actually is for most people, that is the many lucky ones like us who are not in the most heavily hit parts of the country.

I too have a small "decontamination" area in my apt. entrance. We try to clean and sanitize anything that makes it into our home, for what it is worth.

Our spirits are high, all considered. I suppose we appreciate how lucky we are, even though I think we both still feel the all situation is so unreal, so fiction-like. Maybe, by the time we fully realize and integrate what is happening, we may start to slowly go back to normal. I hope.

Funny thing, I have a group of college friends I used to meet, back in the day - 20 years ago, more or less -, for great LAN parties. Two of them were even Empeg owners!

We loved StarCraft.

It's 5 of us, and we live in 5 different parts of the country, all of us doing different jobs.

We kept in touch though the years, and we've had a Telegram chat for few years now. Following one of our trips on memory lane, in these Covid19 days, joking about the college times, we decided we should play StarCraft again, while confined, in the name of the old days.

And so we did. Three times! We laughed a lot. We eventually spent the $10 needed to upgrade to the remastered version of StarCraft 1, just to enjoy modern better monitors and graphics. And it was good to realize we never really fully grew up.
Don't tell them, they positively think they're responsible adults, haha.

AZ goes into shelter at home today (Tuesday) at 5pm. Not sure it will do much good, since the list of essential businesses include things like spas, nail salons, golf courses, etc. That order will stay in effect until 30 APR.

I've been working from home since 11 MAR. It isn't a big deal for me, I've worked from home a couple days a week for years. As late as Friday the 13th, work was telling people they were monitoring the situation. By Monday they were telling everybody that could work remote to work remote, if you could but don't have the equipment, get it from IT and work remote. The only people on site at any of the facilities are there because they can't do their job from home (manufacturing, classified, facilities, etc).

One of my friends that moved to Rome a while ago sent a text talking about their situation. They were told that they would have to start using PTO to cover days their plant is closed, and to prepare for as much as a 50% reduction in pay for up to 18 months.

Interesting times, for sure. Maybe now I'll get around to rewiring my front room's entertainment setup.

Trying reeeeeeally hard to not be cynical about that little exception that seems to be the case in most places. I get that you're not near other people most of the time, but you're touching a lot of the same stuff and requiring staff to be there. I hate this so much.

Spas don't make sense, but barber shops would. My kids needed haircuts before this all started, and now they're looking quite shaggy!


I think we're until June 10th here. That's nuts. *edit* (I don't mean nuts as in "we shouldn't be doing that" I mean it in the sense of "holy crap what is this world we're living in?") */edit*

No one needs a haircut.

(says the man who has been cutting his own hair at home for 20 years)

I knew I should've gotten a Flowbie.

I've already warned my wife that I'm looking at Wahl hair clippers...

I'm just outside of Boston living on a former Army military installation, so we're fortunate to have a a lot of space for walks and the streets are safe for our two kids to explore on their bikes. My 12yr old is coping just fine, she has a school issued iPad and is very self motivated, so she is keeping herself busy - and also getting a D&D campaign going with some school mates. My 9yr old isn't handling the change in routine at all well, but in the big picture is coping just fine. He'd be much happier if we left him alone to Minecraft.
My wife is a stay at home mom, and has stepped up her game to insure we all stay somewhat sane. I'm fortunate that I can do my job from home, and have a quiet space to do it from - the 9yr old needs to bounce out energy a lot (noise cancelling headphones also help). I'm fortunate to have an understanding boss and team mates, I suppose it helps that we're all in the same boat, some with kids some without, but all in some sort of lockdown.

At some point this will come to en end, but I fear the economic hangover that is coming and it's ripple effects down the road.

Lol, true. It's more that I worry for the stylists and their lost income. I've been going to the same lady for almost 30 years, and frankly I'm only going to her until she retires at which point I'll just buzz my own hair

But my kids need a little more expert help. They don't sit for us, but she has a calming presence for them and they tend to listen to other people more than their parents

On the same general topic, I'm getting really fed up with the "Will covid 19 kill the X industry ?" headlines.

Replace X with an industry that will be required/wanted by society again after this is all over.

No, it won't kill the restaurant industry, oil industry etc

Lots of current players in those markets will go out of business. But restaurants open and go bust all the time, people will fill the gaps. And the oil will still be in the ground and people will still want to burn it, if in less vast amounts to start with.

It's hard to really wrap our heads around the macroeconomic impacts of this, especially in countries like the U.S. with no meaningful social safety net. A substantial fraction of people in the U.S. live literally paycheck-to-paycheck and have no ability to absorb unpaid leave.

So, yeah, some businesses might fail, but their employees are the real damage.

Right.
No "industry" will be killed by Covid19, for sure.

On a case-by-case basis, some companies may be. The longer the shut-down, the more may die.

It's going to be harsh for some (always too many) people, of course.

Rather than the lock-down, it is uncertainty that will cause most damage, I think. If, ideally, we knew when/how we'll resume business as usual, proper planning would be so much easier. But we do not know.

Just now Gov't in Italy stated that lock-down has been extended from April 3rd to April 13th. And, they'll move from there depending on how pandemic is going.

Let's just hope for the best.

I figure lock down here is until at least August, maybe longer.

I suppose it pretty much has to continue until either half the population gets/recovers/dies from the virus, or until a vaccine is widely deployed.

I am hoping mid-May here.

August is going to be really tough.

On the other hand, "lock-down" means different things in different countries, at different times into the crisis.

Industries will have no problems.

Small businesses will fail.

Employees will go even deeper into debt, which is what the big banks want anyway, so hooray for capitalism!

For example, I'm currently very relieved that I'm not the breadwinner in my household. My wife has her government job and she's not going to lose that.

But I work for myself, and my job is mostly on-site technical support. That, of course, is completely impossible at the moment. I wouldn't want to do it anyway, as even in the best of times it's not pleasant to touch some of my customers' keyboards/mice (seriously, some of these people are disgusting).

I've been attempting to shift my work more to low voltage wiring for small businesses and home builds, and it was looking like the best avenue for me going forward, but I haven't gotten enough of that work to switch to it full-time.

As a result, I'm basically unemployed at the moment. I've had two remote support sessions this week, so I've barely made enough money to cover my rare run to the grocery store.

I'm currently weighing the risk of attempting to do the wiring jobs I have slated. I don't want to leave the house and I want to follow the guidelines, but I don't think we're going to qualify for the stimulus package because of my wife's income. So I'm thinking of ways to reduce my risk but also do my work. Things like coordinating with general contractors to see if I can be the only person on site when I'm there. There's an office wiring job that I might end up doing in the middle of the night to avoid contact, but I'd still have to touch doorknobs and handles and that worries me. The virus can live for days on those surfaces.

This. Sucks.

In your circumstance, the only gigs that would seem to be clearly or mostly safe are gigs where you're working on a home or office that's not yet occupied. You do have to worry about the other workers, but around here, where home construction seems to still be ongoing, I've seen all the workers wearing masks.

I agree that I wouldn't want to enter an existing home. You just don't know what you're getting into.

It's a bit more of an interesting question if you're asked to do a gig for an existing business office. If the building is largely unoccupied, because they're all working from home, then you're probably quite safe, since the dwell time of the virus on most surfaces is at most a few days.

My own employer, a large university, tends to normally put off rewiring and AV upgrades until the summers, when fewer people are around and the classrooms aren't booked solid. I guess now would be a great time if they wanted to do that sort of work. I imagine that our IT people are mostly over the initial panic of the switch to online instruction, and now can ponder such things.

I have been gathering info for applying for the SBA Paycheck Protection Program this week. For small businesses, applications open tomorrow and I'm currently waiting for a webinar regarding the application process with Chase to begin.

However, self-employed and independent contractors will be able to apply starting April 10th. So, you should start getting some info together regarding your own compensation for 2019. This is one of the Youtube videos I found to be more informative. However, all is not known yet and a lot of fine details are open to interpretation.

As a small business, the main bits of info we need is date started, average monthly payroll cost for 2019, and annual revenue. The sample form can be found here, but I'm sure the one you fill out will be customized by your financial institution.

The contractor I work with most often just sent out an email to all of his subs that they would only be allowing a single trade/company on a job site at a time with 4 people max, and his two project managers will be scheduling subs and nobody is allowed to be on site unannounced. I'm happy to see the precaution.

It's those new homes I'm least concerned about. I'm working up in the ceiling joists most of the time, and I'm rarely touching any surfaces that other people have touched.

With offices, I'm mostly worried about the other trade people who have been coming and going. I don't know where they've been.

Thanks, Rob, I'll look into that.

Hello everyone. It's been a while. We seem to be coping up here in Manchester.

I've gone from being in the house all day by myself to being in the house all day with the family. Other than a few walks and the weekly trip to the shop, we're staying at home. The only real change is that I can't go swimming every day.

I had a feeling things were starting to 'tits up' around the middle/end of Feb. So I started to restrict my business travel. I also stocked up on the essentials (plasterboard, insulation, timber) so I could carry on converting my loft without needing to visit the builders merchants. Which turned out to be the right thing to do as my preferred supplier shut their doors towards the end of March.

As someone who had Asthma as a kid but seem to have largely grown out of it, I'm still a little worried about what might happen. I still keep my inhalers topped up. But haven't used the 'preventer' one for over 20 years.

I'm assuming we won't be sending the kids back to school until September at the earliest and we won't see even a mild relaxation of the lockdown until well into the summer. Even then, it won't be back to normal for a long, long time. If ever... I see a lot more permanent working from home and more online/home delivery type shopping. A friend of mine is convinced this is the end of the high street.


Me too, we have a national cycle route that passes right by the side of the house, and I swear it's gone from 1-2 people every 10-15 mins to being like Oxford Circus at rush hour. The main road, on the other hand, is now super quiet. Plus it's a 20 zone, so what little traffic there is, isn't going very fast.

^^^ This 100%. That's exactly how I feel about it. Although I've lost a stone and a half by not 'nipping out' for something unhealthy.

Just did my own for the first time ever. No need to listen to barber's small talk, yay!

Wife has it, probably at least two weeks now but not too bad. My nephew's a doc on a coronavirus ward so she's got a good source of guidance.

Not missing the office at all, but yeah it's very strange. I guess the strangest thing is not knowing what business we'll be going back to. We're primarily a commercial landlord nowadays and pretty much no one is paying rent. I guess a lot of our tenants (mostly SMEs) will go out of business due to CV19.

Interesting times ahead for sure.

As a high street landlord, I'm afraid he's probably right.

Hopefully she'll shrug it off as most people do!

So far, so good here. A friend's teen daughter has some symptoms, but not diagnosed yet. Everyone else I know is okay, for now.

Well she's up and about, was out cutting grass today till the tractor overheated! Have to say the UK response is looking more and more inadequate especially as countries like Denmark and Germany are already partially lifting their restrictions.

Late to the party, and the last one to leave, most likely.

I'm still amazed we're just waving people through at the airports, no checks at all. Herd immunity by stealth.

I guess they've managed to avoid the disastrous peak as they were trying to. Quite a few people I know have been told by their employers that they'll likely be working from home till the end of the year.

I've just found it really hard to motivate myself, so many other things to do...

My modest yard is looking fabulous, and we haven't killed each other here yet.

Catching up on movies that have been on my list forever.

You want to see a bad response? USA #1! Woo...hoo...

Our political leaders are abysmal and our people are even worse. We have armed militias storming state houses because they're mad they can't go to Applebee's for a baked potato. Meanwhile over 2K people a day are dying from it in the US, and that's probably under-reported. And now my wife, the federal employee, is being told they might be sent back to work soon.

Everything sucks and now the US has murder hornets...

Oh, and I had to go to the hardware store yesterday (a support post for our front porch has rotted and I don't want it to fall on anyone), and only about half of the people (including me) were wearing masks. And what's with people not wearing them on their noses? I get that it's uncomfortable, but come on, people.

I also overheard a couple people talking about how "I think that eventually we're just all going to have to get it and that's the only way it'll end." NO YOU MORONS THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS!!!

I really can't understand the armed militia bit, I think we all respect freedom but the freedom to get infected and infect others seems to be a bit extreme

Well... to be fair, that is a valid (though pessimistic) outlook -- herd immunity is a thing, and is largely (IIRC) how the Spanish Flu pandemic ended. I'd certainly hope that 100 years on, our medical knowledge has advanced enough to where our response doesn't require it, though (certain politicians aside). I'd gladly take a yearly vaccination over this.

Here is a screenshot of an Excel spreadsheet I wrote using data from WHO. The WHO data contains about 13,000 rows of daily data for each country where data is available. My spreadsheet has all this data, but summarizes it as shown in the screenshot.

If there are any Excel Geeks reading this, I have also attached a copy of the .xlsx file that you can play with. The main thing you need to know is to look up the two-letter country code in column Z to choose the country you are interested in. Paste that code into a cell in column N and it will display the summary for that country.

Note: The number for USA Deaths Today is suspect for this date. For some reason WHO's data for May 4 was prefaced with a minus sign. Unless they disinterred 1696 dead people and resuscitated them, it seems unlikely. Also, based on trends 1696 is too low a number. I made a probably invalid assumption and just deleted the minus sign, but keep in mind that yesterday's deaths were an even 5,000.

Note: The countries shown in the screenshot were arbitrarily chosen, mostly because I had heard of them before. Download the whole spreadsheet and you can choose up to 30 of your own countries. I won't go into how the first seven countries chosen got moved to the top of the daily data (not shown in the screenshot) but if you're a true Excel Geek you'll figure out how to do it. (Hint: Look at column I)

tanstaafl.

According to the data we're twice as bad as the US for mortality. I guess at least part of this will be down to population density, maybe mobility too.

Potential flaw in the spreadsheet's methodology:

The "Average Mortality Today" column is not meaningful, because it compares confirmed infections in a single day compared to confirmed deaths on the same single day. People confirmed with infections do not necessarily die on the same day they they are confirmed to be infected, so this column can never be accurate. France looks very weird in that column, and I think that might be the reason.

However, the "average mortality overall" column should be more accurate, and yet France is still an unexpected outlier even there. That might indicate a problem where France doesn't have enough early testing, and confirms many of their cases only after they're dead.

Curious: Where did you get the WHO data from, and, is the spreadsheet programmed to obtain the latest version of that data automatically?

There are websites that give much of this information and don't need manual updating

e.g. (my preferred)
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

or
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

Not quite the same but easy to bookmark

I agree, but it does give you some idea of mortality rate comparisons country to country. Column "U" is better methodology as you pointed out, but none of the numbers in columns K, L, T, U, and V with the red asterisks in the description are worth anything other than comparisons because... cell Z1.

tanstaafl.

https://covid19.who.int/

Look underneath the map and there is a link in small blue type "Download Map Data". It will give you a 13,000 row CSV spreadsheet.

Programming the spreadsheet to update automatically is beyond my Excel capabilities. i may be an Excel God among some of my less techie friends because I can do complex formulas, VLookups, conditional formatting etc. (all of which are used in this spreadsheet BTW) but compared to a lot of people (yes, you, Christian!) I'm not even in the rank amateur category.

However, it takes me less than 15 seconds to update the spreadsheet once I have downloaded the CSV file. Open the file, copy it to the clipboard, paste it into cell A3 of the spreadsheet to overwrite the existing data, and its done.

tanstaafl.

Sigh... Just when I was starting to be proud because I had created this world-class spreadsheet that I was sure nobody else had thought of doing, you show me that mine is pure amateur.

I really like the columns yours shows for testing. About my only claim to fame is I can display just the countries I am interested in for country-to-country comparison.

Both of those sites are really good. Much better than my efforts. But I did have a lot of fun putting mine together, and learned a few things in the process.

tanstaafl.

Given the truly pathetic response by the POTUS, here's a solid suggestion on how to use excess death rather than any particular covid-19 specific metrics - many of which are quite suspect here.

I'm sorry to hear that. I imagined the DC area would be a bit more cautious considering the population density and relative closeness to other hot spots.

I'm in a suburb of NYC and during the first couple weeks of the shutdown, the streets were eerily empty. I was the only person coming in to the office to receive incoming shipments and mail, so I have been out and about every day since. For sure, people around here are becoming too comfortable with the situation. Of course, that is only my opinion.

People are still wearing masks in stores. I have seen some people with it not covering their nose, but it's rare. The two big grocery stores (Shoprite and Stop & Shop) are requiring masks and controlling how many people are inside the store at once. While waiting on line outside to enter, people still have their masks on and are careful to remain 6ft apart. I will give credit to the population up here. They really seem to get it. But, there are WAY more cars on the road than a few weeks ago. Some parks are opening up for exercise (playgrounds still closed), but almost every business that was closed in mid-March is still supposed to be closed.

I want to see an end to this as much as anyone, but I'm guessing we're going to see a second wave of COVID and it will possibly be worse than the first. Only because people have had enough of being isolated, not working, missing family, etc. My wife and kid haven't left the grounds of our development in almost two months now, so I am witness to the frustration first-hand.

That is a super useful piece of information. The example graph that they give there is amazing, showing how prior years are surprisingly stable numbers, and how stark and obvious the difference is since the pandemic hit. Wow.

I had to visit one of our building sites daytime today, traffic was almost normal for midday. Definitely more people about than last week, easier to get into the supermarket though.

Happy May, everyone!

I trust you hadn't planted yet! Yikes...

Just peas, arugula, cress, some spinach, kale, etc.. All moderately frost tolerant, though they don't like being buried under too much snow.

It was all gone and sunny by afternoon, though still frigid here for this time of year.

The greenhouse is full of more tender stuff, and lots of now mature greens in shallow trays. This gives us fresh salad every day without leaving the house. One less reason to risk it at the shops.

Cheers

Wish we had time for a veg plot. Used to love it, just too busy with everything else. 2 days sewing up the cherry net, 2 days opening up the orchard rows so that my wife could get her tractor through, just goes on and on.

Is the greenhouse just single glazed? I am tempted to go for a solar greenhouse, we can build into a slope for thermal mass.

This 8'x16' one is attached to the South face of the house, with double-glazed glass on the sides/door, and 7-layer corrugated polycarbonate on the roof (to protect from ice/snow falling off the house roof).

The foundation is concrete and brick, no insulation except under the floor below a couple of feet of sand. There are three large steel barrels, painted black and filled with water for extra heat ballast.

There are two automatic roof vents, but I wish we had also thought to specify a side vent on the far wall from the photograph above, so it could get cross ventilation with the exterior door (behind the camera).

No heat source other than the Sun, or when we leave the glass door open between it and the home. It is usable for starting/growing things here from early March through June, and from September through the end of November. In the main summer months it can be used for large pots of chillis and other HEAT loving things, but it does get very hot even with the door pinned wide open.

Cheers

We used to have one of these:

https://www.kedergreenhouse.co.uk/smallholder-prod/4m-wide

4 x 8 mtrs with a sliding door one end and automatic "windows" on both long sides, you do need cross ventilation especially on a sunny S facing plot and the auto vents. Much better insulated than a glass greenhouse.

That's pretty cool, especially if (as you say) it has decent insulation.

I'm thinking of perhaps getting a couple of 8x12 glass houses, with doors at each end, to cover two of the main veg garden beds at some point. Or maybe just a much cheaper poly tunnel!

An extended growing season would be quite useful here, especially this year, where we're still getting -C temperatures every night.

Cheers

It's by no means super insulated but all the metalwork is inside and the material is like supersized bupplewrap so it used to lose heat in the evenings much more slowly than a traditional greenhouse or polytunnel. We'd still be harvesting chillies in November but obviously are winters are nothing like yours.

Way better ventilation than a polytunnel could ever have.

tanstaafl.

I've had a clearout in my office during lockdown, unearthed loads of Norton/Symantec CDs. Used to love the animated GIF of the Doc inspecting mt HDD

Wow. It's actually chilly here too, so...