Different countries are reacting at different speeds. Yesterday New Zealand announced that every single person who arrives must go into 14 day self isolation (the means they have to go home and stay there, having food or whatever else delivered). There are no exceptions, ie: it includes New Zealand citizens returning from vacations or business trips etc.
Tonight here in Australia they have just done the same thing. They (the government) have announced that people who have been put into self isolation face a $13,000 fine if they are found to have left their homes. The govt further claims that police will be doing random spot checks (turning up on your doorstep) to ensure that you are home. How realistic this is I don't know - it is likely more a "scare tactic" to try and get people to take the self isolation seriously. I have to admit when it was announced it created something of a "big brother / martial law" type feeling. I don't like the idea of being told what to do or controlled, be it by government or a police force or a military force. I understand the goal is to slow the rate of infection, and I have already taken measures to do that (limited social contact, etc), but it does create a feeling of unease. What happens next? What new rules are brought into place and what kind of controls are put on us? I guess what I'm trying to say is: how far is a govt prepared to go to act in what they believe are the best interests of it's citizens, and to enforce those rules, etc? It worries me a little.
I would ignore the Chinese data. I think you have to do because you simply cannot trust them to be transparent and honest. They continue to claim only about 50 people per day are newly infected and that almost everybody there has now recovered. That just doesn't make sense to me.
It is now ramping up in Spain and cases are increasing by about 20 to 25 percent per day in the U.S. The recovery rate in Italy is still very low and their cases continue to go up by about 15 percent a day. I will be very interested to watch over the next couple of weeks the rate of recovery in places like Italy, Spain and the U.S (and other countries where the cases start to climb quickly), because this will really provide us with more accurate data.
It hasn't even taken hold in places like Africa, India or the Middle East yet. Things could get really scary in those places.
Unfortunately all of this just makes me believe pretty strongly (and with great sadness) that this is it for hockey and pretty much all other sports, for the next few months. There is a really crappy irony to it all: we are being told to stay home and it would be the ideal time to enjoy sport as a way of escaping from all of the doom and gloom. We can't even do that.
