Visiting audio stores?


This is probably the last concern on many people's minds, so I'm raising this just in case anyone feels like relaying their experience.

I've become pretty cautious about where I go and why. So, for me, I'm not going to any audio stores to listen to gear, out of caution about the virus. I do feel concern for these stores and how it will impact them. Are folks going? Anyone running an audio store who wants to comment? How are you coping? Are you changing any policies or running any more sales online? Changes in trial periods to help more people try out gear remotely?

Again, this is a minor concern given the larger dimensions of this virus situation, but I thought I'd reach out with a question.
128x128hilde45
While travel bans may mitigate the situation temporarily they cannot stop the inevitable, their sole purpose is to improve the optics.

https://globalnews.ca/news/6546569/china-coronavirus-flights-canada/
While travel bans may mitigate the situation temporarily they cannot stop the inevitable, their sole purpose is to improve the optics.
I've been trying to avoid this thread and any others that deal with the outbreak, and will probably regret stepping in, but...

The month old article you referenced might as well be 100 years old.  Things have been changing at a dizzying pace, and we still don't know what we don't know.

It's not an "optics" problem.  It's a math problem. 

If the spread of the disease isn't slowed down there will be more sick people than there are ventilators and providers.  Our healthcare system runs at close to capacity as it is.  The virus is going to spread until a vaccine is developed, but if it spreads slower, hopefully we won't be putting healthcare professionals in the position of having to make decisions about who gets treatment and who gets left to die in their home.
If the spread of the disease isn't slowed down there will be more sick people than there are ventilators and providers.

This is baked in. Do the math.

Infections increase ten fold every 2 weeks. 1k becomes 100k in one month, 10M in two. Symptoms run about two weeks behind infections, intubation/death another two weeks behind that. The death count, in other words, lags infections by a month. A month in which infections increase by 100 times.

Let's say the case fatality rate is the low 1% that some claim. Its not but let's assume for the moment it is only 1%.

So what this means, by the time you get to 1k dead, it means you had 100k infected. Not now, but a month ago. In the month it took for the 1% to get sick and die the 100k infected grew to 10M.

Then in just two more weeks its 100M. Essentially everyone in the country susceptible to infection will have been infected. This is the nature of exponential growth.

Changing the numbers around, all it really does is shift the date we run out of hospitals and beds by a few days or weeks. It does not change the outcome. Nothing now can change the outcome.

The time for that was two full months ago. Back when I posted my PSA.

Hey mc, your math is all hosed up. Try to keep up with the discussion. For one thing the correct term is mortality rate, not fatality rate. The mortality rate for any country can be easily calculated on the fly, as I have done the past couple weeks, since the number of confirmed cases and deaths are kept up to date on the Johns Hopkins database. As I posted this morning the mortality rate in the US is falling and is currently about 5 times less than Italy, which probably has the highest mortality rate, or maybe Iran. Spain is not far behind if I recall correctly. 
Your right big_greg it IS about the math which is why instituting a travel ban and then claiming “mission accomplished accomplished” was such a huge blunder. Instead we should have readying our medical infrastructure and testing on a mass scale to mitigate the spread. This administration was warned repeatedly that the country was not ready to handle a pandemic and that travel bans are not effective.  But as I said they are only worried about the optics....which aren’t too good I might add.

Oh well I’m at a 3500 acre hunting ranch with stockpiles of provisions to last more than a year. Hope the rest of you had the foresight to see this coming further than a month ago.