Are you worried about the Coronavirus?

Are you worried about the Corona Virus

  • Yes

    Votes: 13 54.2%

  • No

    Votes: 8 33.3%

  • Undecided

    Votes: 3 12.5%
  • Total voters
    24
pete_c said:
Very impressive stuff!!! Will have to check it out.  Just recently showed mom (90) how to use the Alexa Show to call / drop in on family.  Alexa speaks French in her home today.  It seems to understand her better than me speaking French to it.
 
Personally the last video game console I purchased was the Atari 2600 in the early 1980's.  Did purchase a video headset in the early 2000's.  Showing it to my neighbor one day his daughter (~6 YO) started to play with it while we were playing cards one night and busted the device in half. 
 
Never purchased another one.  
 
My son is in to that stuff and game consoles and personally when he was younger did purchase game consoles for him. (in his room on his TV).
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The systems come in various levels of sensing. The Oculus Go at $200 CAD has only 3 sensors and is basically a sit down environment. This means the scenary moves withyour head up and down and rotational sideways but not if you walk around the room.
That is fine for us older folks.
 
My kids like to play the aerobic games where you stand up, dodge objects, fight with swords, throw kicks etc.. This take 6 or more sensors in the headset with ankle sensors or wall cams that look back at you. That will run you $500 CAD and up to about $4-5K with a high powered PC.
 
The newer tendency is to create wirefree headsets with 6 cameras looking outward. It takes a scan of the walls and calculates your head angle and room position by comparing cam pictures to the original scans. You need good lighting to work properly. 
 
Wireless works well but you see some pausing while new game selections take time to load into the 32/64 or 128GB memory. None support SD cards yet.
 
In the last week each night at 7:30 PM we meet up with the S-I-L and we sit on a deck with red waves from the sunset and chat. At times I drop into a large theatre lobby and chat with randomw people from Australia, England, multiple US states and various headsets. You can see different controller images and learn to determine who has what. The different accents are entertaining as well as hearing people's views of the virus outbreak and how it is affecting them. Occasionally you get into some punkie type that wants to pummel you with tomatoes so you find another room. C'est la vie.
 
The Oculus Go only shows up one controller that looks like a controller most places. Other systems show up with two hands where you can control every finger, grab things, hold swords, pickup and throw pop-corn, do high-fives, etc.. Has a sensor so you just put it on your head and it turns itself on/off automatically. Good senior/senora toy.
 
My s-I-l, about 64 yoa never seemed techie but in the last week of owning one has gone nuts. Living alone she loves it and is thinking about getting an expensive unit, maybe for Christmas. Same with us. I see tech jumps coming so got the cheapest model I could get and sent the more expensive unit back. The virus isolation is really pushing the enrolment, I am sure. amazon has models in and then out of stock about three times in the last two weeks. Try to buy a new router? WoW!
 
pete_c said:
I am seeing the numbers go up on the poll of worried folks.
 
Checked out the delivery options with Amazon and a number of big box and local grocery chains last week.  Very low on the WAF relating to product choice and prices.
 
I have seen that Amazon (in general) now have up to 1 month delivery times on all products ordered locally except for the grocery stuff. That and a number of Amazon warehouses have been closed due Covid-19 outbreaks which would not entice me to use their grocery store.
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I order a lot through Amazon, and results are missed. Most things are taking a week to a month, but there are surprises. The other day I ordered a fry pan at maybe 2pm last Sunday.  It was here about 9pm that day.  I have seen SOME price gouging at Amazon. 
 
Bought a puzzle for my wife that got here in two weeks. Many items are taking 5 to 7 days, but some "non-essentials" are taking a month.
 
Next I use Costco. Maybe 70% of their stuff is "out of stock" but some stuff is still shipping. I ordered about 12 things from them last week. They shipped about half, each as an individual UPS shipment. They have go to be paying more for shipping than some of this stuff costs. I think shipping is free over $65.
 
Two local companies here are life saver. One delivers full meals. You pick the meat and two vegetables. Just microwave and your done. They even have breakfasts with eggs, meat and two sides. Really reasonable. Another local company delivers fruits, vegetables and meats.  Both these companies deliver locally once per week.
 
We looked at grocery store and Walmart pickup, but they were both really overloaded. We did try Walmart, which worked OK but it was three days before we could pick it up, and 30% wasn't in stock after ordering.
 
I feel very bad for less tech-savy seniors that may have trouble getting food. Another problem is prescriptions. I take a few, and they are at Walmart. A few weeks ago you had to go inside to pick them up. No drive through. If they don't offer curb-side pickup, I'm moving my prescriptions to a place with drive-thu. 
 
Has anyone had good luck with an online food delivery company they can recommend?  
 
Can't get food delivery here wher I am in the semi-rural off a small town. Next town over I got a pizza delivery promise for $30. Not happening for a $10 pizza.
 
Major food chain stores have online order with pickup. Next time slot is between 10 to 14 days away, and then about 30% is missing. We watched the young adults picking up food there and they will not only reach right across your face mask to grab food out of the fridge shelf. They don't give a shit. 
 
I put a complaint into out Premier about fast food. Sure Subway uses gloves but the young assembler doesn't wear a mask when he wipes his nose on his gloves and then resumes making more submarine sandwiches. Much of this process is a joke because people just don't know how to perform these tasks and don't care anyway.
 
COVID-19 death and victim stats are still below any other year's flu yet. Somebody wanted to draw attention to this one. The public weren't even aware that 20,000-40,000 people already died in the USA this winter before COVID even started.
 
In the end the whole world is going to pay, and pay, and pay. My guess is the world's economic depression may last ten years and make the one in the 20s look like nothing.
 
LarrylLix said:
Can't get food delivery here wher I am in the semi-rural off a small town. Next town over I got a pizza delivery promise for $30. Not happening for a $10 pizza.
 
Major food chain stores have online order with pickup. Next time slot is between 10 to 14 days away, and then about 30% is missing. We watched the young adults picking up food there and they will not only reach right across your face mask to grab food out of the fridge shelf. They don't give a shit.
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What this certainly shows you is how unprepared companies are.  I'm not even talking pandemic, I'm talking normal services.
 
Last year, grocery stores and Walmart both rolled out what the fad was at the time, order online, then pickup your products/groceries in the special "curbside pickup" area of their parking lot.  The Walmart near us added 24 covered spots to pick up your stuff.  24 parking spots.  So that tells me, somebody thought, they could actually handle 24 customer orders at a time. 
 
So fast-forward to a week ago when we tried to actually use this service at Walmart. So we place our order one day, and we get a pickup slot 3 days later. OK I can live with that I guess. We'll our timeslot comes and goes and the app. says "delayed."  Two hours after our window, we get a text saying ready. The app. never worked. OK. So we go there, the phone app. is frozen, but we phone them that we are there. We get our stuff, or maybe 70%.  And the total number of cars at that moment they are servicing?  There was three.  They can't handle three, but they have 24 parking spaces. You can't handle three.
 
I guess this was much better than two weeks earlier. I tried Amazon Now, which is basically the same thing at Whole Foods. I ordered, then two days later went to pick it up at Whole Foods. I told the app. when I was leaving for Whole Food, and when I got there, it told me which space to park at.  Sounded encouraging. 
 
So 20 minutes later, a guy comes out asking our name. He goes in the store, and 10 minutes later comes out again. "We don't have your order".  OK, but "if you want, you can come in and try to find your order."  So I go into this room in the front of the store, filled floor to ceiling with grocery bags. Each ONLY has a barcode, NO NAME.  Long story short, their system was completely down, and they had no idea whose groceries were whose. We never found ours.  I complained to Amazon later, and eventually they sent me a Whole Foods gift card for $50 that maybe I'll be able to use some day. 
 
So what is the deal. Have they ever tested this stuff? I guess not. 
 
I hear those flu numbers thrown around a lot, but how many individual deaths from the flu do you hear about? Not many. 
 
If you look at these stats...
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr68/nvsr68_09-508.pdf
 
The rate at death from the flu is MUCH MUCH lower for the flu, and they have a shot for that.  PLUS here is something they never mention they include flu deaths with pneumonia deaths, so actual flu deaths MAY be much lower, and many might be pneumonia WITHOUT the flu. Pneumonia DOES KILL many people. Like ESPN's reporter Edward Aschoff died of pneumonia but really it was aggressive cancer in disguise. Covid-19 is definitely different. 
 
Stats aside for now.
Our logistics and supply chains, social politeness, perhaps society itself is more fragile than most believe. A thin veneer some call it.
This shall pass. Stay well friends!


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Yeah liking the instant video calling offered up by Amazon Show.   @LarryLix, will need to check out the VR headsets.
 
In the early 1960's my parent would take us to the Chicago Science and Industry museum and one of the displays that I really liked was the video calling apparatus configuration offered up by Bell labs at the time called the picture phone.  
 
The United States would not see its first public videophone booths until 1964, when AT&T installed their earliest commercial videophone units, the Picturephone "Mod I", in booths that were set up in New York's Grand Central Terminal, Washington D.C., and Chicago. The system was the result of decades of research and development at Bell Labs, its principal supplier, Western Electric, plus other researchers working under contract to the Bell Labs. However the use of reservation time slots and their cost of US$16 (Washington, D.C. to New York) to $27 (New York to Chicago) (equivalent to $118 to $200 in 2012 dollars) for a three-minute call at the public videophone booths greatly limited their appeal resulting in their closure by 1968.
 
 
 
From the postings above I see that we (CT users) adapting OK if not a bit frustrated which as things go is not that bad.   
 
 
 
It's nice to hear from you guys here on the Cocoontech forum.  
 
pete_c said:
Yeah liking the instant video calling offered up by Amazon Show.   @LarryLix, will need to check out the VR headsets.
 
In the early 1960's my parent would take us to the Chicago Science and Industry museum and one of the displays that I really liked was the video calling apparatus configuration offered up by Bell labs at the time called the picture phone.  
 
The United States would not see its first public videophone booths until 1964, when AT&T installed their earliest commercial videophone units, the Picturephone "Mod I", in booths that were set up in New York's Grand Central Terminal, Washington D.C., and Chicago. The system was the result of decades of research and development at Bell Labs, its principal supplier, Western Electric, plus other researchers working under contract to the Bell Labs. However the use of reservation time slots and their cost of US$16 (Washington, D.C. to New York) to $27 (New York to Chicago) (equivalent to $118 to $200 in 2012 dollars) for a three-minute call at the public videophone booths greatly limited their appeal resulting in their closure by 1968.
 
 
 
From the postings above I see that we (CT users) adapting OK if not a bit frustrated which as things go is not that bad.   
 
 
 
It's nice to hear from you guys here on the Cocoontech forum.  
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Oh how things have progressed in technology.
 
My father would tell me, when I was a young adult, how some day we would have TVs that were flat, and hung on the wall like pictures. What a dreamer!

On that note: it is funny to watch how Hollywood shows and movies became dated so quickly by the shape of the computer monitors on the desks.  Totally destroys that "high-tech, ahead of the public" look they try to portray from fancy police organisations.
 
BraveSirRobbin said:
Wow, just try buying a freezer now...everything is out of stock until July!
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or a better router or VR headset or any passtime toy!
 
Yeah they preach no hoarding but the hoarders were the smarter ones. You can't avoid going to the store more than once every week or two unless you hoard somewhat. Things could have gone differently.
 
BraveSirRobbin said:
Wow, just try buying a freezer now...everything is out of stock until July!
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Yup, even when China is making them again, they take months to get here. After company executives have spent years squeezing every cent out of their "just-in-time" supply-chains, now they are suffering, or at least their laid-off employees are. 
 
In one month, the USA went from 60 deaths to just short of 30,000.  But sure, keep talking about the flu.
 
If you were actually logical, you would realize just where the incessant doubling would have led.  Thankfully most people have enough brains to take this threat seriously.
 
Craig
 
I reserve the right to change my opinion as facts / data / conspiracy theories emerge and change.  That said...
 
In looking at the data right now, I'm in disbelief that China has plateaued around 80,000 cases and 4,500 deaths.  It's a lie.  Fortunately the US is smart enough to not trust China and will put our interests first.  No one should be basing their projections off China's numbers.  My *hope* is that most health experts with noble intentions not trust the CCP and will look elsewhere for data.  
 
The other datapoints that create confusion surround the difference in poor outcomes between men and women.   Men are more likely to have bad outcomes than women.  But the other 115 genders are somehow spared?  What gives?  
 
Anyway, I'm starting to become less concerned about the virus and more concerned about the response and the ramifications.  Wearing masks and gloves used to be a reason for arrest in many jurisdictions as that makes sense.  Now one can casually get suited up in PPE and take some time before committing a crime.  In fact, in some areas it would be a crime to not wear a mask right now!
 
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