Btw, there WAS media frenzy in 2009 during the swine flu epidemic

[Roland99]

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/swine-flu-is-bad-but-panic-is-dangerous/#

A deadly virus is quietly killing about 3,500 Americans a month, and there's nothing that modern medicine can do about it.

That virus appears every year during the influenza season and causes more than 200,000 hospitalizations in the United States and about 41,000 deaths.

By comparison, swine flu has caused one confirmed death in the United States - in the case of a toddler visiting from Mexico, and seven confirmed deaths south of the border. Mexican Health Secretary Jose Cordova says he believes the situation is stabilizing, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports the need for hospitalization in the U.S. is rare.

Yet Web sites selling N95 respirator masks crashed on Monday due to a deluge of orders, Purell hand sanitizer is out of stock at Drugstore.com, and Amazon.com. Cable TV hosts - in a flurry of alarmism ably captured by Jon Stewart on the Daily Show - have pressed the panic button. Repeatedly.

[BumRushDaShow]

1. Yup but this is incredibly more amplified in terms of response

than anything in my lifetime (almost 6 decades).

It's more like what happens ahead of a hurricane or blizzard.

[Zing Zing Zingbah]

3. I agree too.

The H1N1 thing was mostly the news freaking out. With this one, they are closing down colleges. I've never seen that before. We only have one case in Maine so far, but local schools are making plans for shut down. Hopefully, it won't come to that.

[BumRushDaShow]

5. Here in Philly as I was drifting off to sleep with the radio on

(tuned to our local news radio station), they suddenly announced - at 10:30 pm EDT - that because 11% of our school teachers and staff live in Montgomery County (rim county to Philly), which the governor had "shut down" Thursday (every school, entertainment venue, and "non-essential" retail establishment), they were closing 63 Philadelphia public schools due to the impact of staffing those city schools. In addition, one of the major Charter school chains (that took over a bunch of Philly public schools here) also announced they were closing their 24 schools today. That means almost 90 city schools are closed... not counting other independent public Charters that might have closed for the same reason - probably bringing it upwards of 100 city schools.

Thursday afternoon during the mayor's presser (with the city health officials and school Superintendent) they ruled out closing any city schools for various reasons - lack of childcare, lack of meals for low-income students, etc.

Well it HAPPENED.

NEVER say NEVER.

[Zing Zing Zingbah]

7. They were thinking about having the high school

kids do online work if they do shut down, but I don't know if all the teachers are prepared for that. I heard some of the colleges have converted their classes to online work for the remainder of the the spring semester. Might not even do graduation in May. I hope it doesn't get that crazy around here in terms of the public schools. My oldest son is graduating from high school in June. I think that would suck to not have the graduation ceremony.

[BumRushDaShow]

8. Thousands of kids here in the city don't have that type of access and schools don't even have enough

regular books for kids let alone computers in the schools, and forget any to be able to be taken home for "online" instruction (my suburban nieces and nephews do have such)...and they know it.

They put up a map of the school closures (about 1/3rd of the total) -



And this is just the very beginning of the crises.

Comcast decided to offer their "Internet Essentials" service for "free" for low-income residents in impacted cities - https://www.pennlive.com/news/2020/03/comcast-offers-2-months-of-free-internet-to-low-income-customers.html

(this assumes the household even has some type of computer at home and many don't - about the closest might be a smartphone "to get on the internet" )

[Zing Zing Zingbah]

9. The schools here give the kids chromebooks

All the high school kids and middle school kids can have one to take home. There might be some without internet access at home, but that's pretty rare now.

[BumRushDaShow]

10. One of my nieces has one from her Montco middle school

In fact, last week they actually sent out a blast email to parents (my sis showed me hers) with a permission slip for the child to bring the chromebook home each day just in case. Of course with the shutdown of their County, the "just in case" is now a reality.

Am thinking at this point, that they may have to implement whatever they did in the past during some of the longer teacher strikes - maybe even setup "satellite schools" with limited-number student areas (for "distancing" ) with internet for those who have no access - or even set something like that up at the libraries. I know that is why they were reluctant to shut down schools here (or in any big city) but it's something that needs to be part of a contingency.

When we had that blizzard back in 1996 with 30+" of snow in a day, the schools were closed for the week and many businesses were also closed (and there was no mail delivery either). So there have been some past circumstances where things came to a halt. But this appears that it may go on for an extended time if they can't get it under control.

[Roland99]

4. Just posting to use as fuel to fire back at RWers who claim there wasnt

I’ve run into many revisers of history

[BumRushDaShow]

6. Well you could bring up an even more recent event

Remember this?



https://abcnews.go.com/Health/ebola-nurse-kaci-hickox-understand-quarantine-jersey-governor/story?id=26479917

[Zing Zing Zingbah]

2. Yeah, I remember that very well

because my youngest child was just a newborn back then. Makes you worry a little bit more about them when the news is talking non-stop about a pandemic. My sister-in-law is due to have her first child mid April. I suppose the recent news makes her a bit nervous.