Hope everyone in NG-land is staying healthy! We’re at the start of what will be at least a two week lockdown here in PA, with no school, gym, events, retail etc. Good thing there’s still the Internet!

Site-wise we have several updates coming this week, not to mention all the great stuff on the front page RIGHT NOW! You should have plenty of time this week to watch all those animations, play all the games and listen to all the music while browsing art. Remember, on any page with music you can click the thumbnail next to a song and it will play the entire list in-page.

What are YOUR plans this week? Are you staying home? Do you feel prepared?

can't really say I have a bunch of stuff to say outside of my life, but I will be back to posting on newgrounds soon enough.

other than that, I am staying healthy. stay safe out there fellow people

I am hoping I would get the NG sticker from the 2004 store thats still up.

This would be a good year to start selling toilet paper again...

On a more serious note, we'll get through this, together. The gyms here in England are still open (for now) but I take comfort from knowing that nothing can shut NG down (barring some major power outage).

Be safe, lads.

I will be going to work unless my immediate boss or an executive tells me not to. As someone who works in a public agency that ultimately reports to the mayor and provides childcare for those who need it, I feel a sense of helplessness and hopelessness unlike anything else.

I can see how you can work from home. My agency requires special software I do not have to carry out primary functions.

Tough times. They will get worse before they get better.

I'm in the same boat, work in the public sector and our locked down software means I'm on public transport every day since I can't do the majority of my job from home.

Figure I'm doomed, just want to catch it ASAP and get it over with before the health service gets overwhelmed.

I still have to go to work the whole week (as far as I know) I asked for a day off to attend a wedding this friday, but today I heard the party is off. I feel very bad for the wedding couple. As a matter of fact I feel very bad for every wedding couple and all of the people who can't attend important social gatherings like parties and funerals right now. My heart goes out as well to all those who are ill, dying, or those who have lost people to COVID-19.

I planned to go to the gym every night the coming 2 months because I'm in a bulking phase and I wanted to gain some muscle, but unfortunately the gym announced today they're closing for the time being, so I'm off to a bad start. That means I'll have some spare time in the evenings. If I'll have to stay home from work, I'll have even more spare time.

My family and gf are pretty healthy and we are okay when it comes to our groceries fortunatley. We were able to get what we needed before our jobs told us we had to stay home. Me and a few other teachers who don't work directly with the ISD's are off without any pay and we're super worried. Me and a few other friends have been posting our stpres everywhewre since some bills aren't frozen yet. It's not te virus to be worried about, everyone here is worried about the $$$. Hope everyone stays safe though.

Sure would be nice if we had some Newgrounds toilet paper in these trying times.

Supposedly im gonna be stuck at home for 4 months so I started a new NG project today. I guess I have the time lmao.

I don't have to work during these times and wisely I have been saving up for times like these.

Might still hustle and give someone my wise relationship advice remotely but I expect at these times the demand for this to be low as people focus on survival and staying isolated.

Well stacked on toilet paper, food and other necessities I am ready to do almost nothing but play games and watch movies for the next month until quarantine ends.

NG traffic finna reach some new peaks the coming weeks...

As for me it's work as usual, though commuter trains are emptier than usual so hopefully less risk. People spread out as much as possible. If all keeps going the way it's going though maybe it'll be work from home next week...

Is it really that bad over there though? No hope they'll be able to contain it/slow down the spread?

They don't plan to.

There's a certain logic to the UK strategy, which is to accept that everyone is going to be infected and to focus on slowing down and spreading out that infection so that the health service never gets overwhelmed and to push it as far away from the winter flu season as possible so the two don't overlap.

If you just focus on preventing people getting infected by locking down the country or closing borders, what do you do next? You don't get the herd immunity you get from mass infection, so do you then have to go into lockdown every time another outbreak happens? It's a short term solution, not a long term one.

Heh, you know when stuff is getting real when the NG Front Page says "COVID-19"

Otherwise, an update from New Jersey, the virus has apparently been slowly spreading further and further south but has yet to reach so far down as Salem County. Schools are closing, and plans that have been made over the past few weeks for online schooling are now going to be in effect.

Updates from the FIRST and SkillsUSA communities:

FIRST robotics championships have been cancelled

All regional FIRST tournaments have been postponed

SkillsUSA states have been postponed

But quoting one of our advisors, "unless the United States government shuts us down, SkillsUSA Nationals are still on"

For that last one, they're supposed to have some sort of meeting tomorrow about that I believe.

I'm going to get back into drawing soon, I have more time with all of my competitions being canceled and a break from robotics being put in place from my team, but hey, I get to some stuff I don't usually.

So, for everyone, use common sense. The Coronavirus just spreads like a normal cold. So, from the plague doctor here: WASH YOUR DARN HANDS

Holy shit. :O I thought I had a pretty impressive routine going myself but you put that to shame! Currently going with some precautionary daily doses of:

• 1-3 g C-Vitamin (regular kind - liposomal sold out everywhere here)
• 5000 IE D-Vitamin, with a little K2 for better absorption
• 1-2 tablets with combined but small doses of zinc, B6, B12, selenium and other immune-boosting stuff
• Occasional drops of oregano and/or lemon oil, herbal tea, all that stuff

Are you taking all of that stuff you listed on the daily though? Or more so ready to get started on first sign of symptoms?

That makes sense, though it sounds like they do plan to slow it down, at least? It seems like the main risk is the health service getting overwhelmed, as you say. And to slow down the curve seems to require some form of containment.

We haven't closed our borders either, but surely you're doing something more than that? Apart from just public announcements on the importance of hygiene and common sense?

Plan on animating this FF7 cartoon every day so I can meet the deadline and catching up on a bunch of movies and video games I haven't had the time to play/watch. oh and uh, 'study' for school

Ey, something to look forward to!

Thanks Tom I can always count on you for motivation

Lucky enough to be working from home! It's been great to not have to commute; been spending my extra time getting back into Unity! Little bit of shader work, C#, animation, you name it. It's fun to get back in the mix.

Nope, just the hygiene announcements so far.

Scotland (which has its own devolved government and can make decisions for itself separate from the wider UK) has banned gatherings of over 500 people, but they've said that is to free up emergency service staff to deal with anyone infected as events over that size require an ambulance on standby for them.

As for the UK as a whole it's still just wash your hands and self isolate if you feel ill. They're not even testing people for it anymore, if you think you have it you self isolate, and only see a doctor if you're seriously ill.

There's talk that over 70s may be forced to remain in their homes, which I suppose makes sense. If the plan is for the majority of the country to be infected you need to do something about those most at risk. It's just been floated as an idea though, nothing has been done yet.

Hmm that'd probably be a smart move, though difficult with families of varying ages living together... similar to the dilema of how closing schools would force parents to stay at home with their kids, and of course no one wants to kill the economy completely. I believe we have the same 500 person ban on gathering as Scotland btw. Maybe it's a common recommendation. Maybe we just copied them...

How's everyone handling things otherwise? Individual companies imposing their own restrictions in regard to sanitation/security? Concerts and similar events getting canceled?

Im taking it every day since I felt sick. I had a lil cold for a few days so im basically taking everything preventatively for a month. COVID manifests as cold-like symptoms for 3 weeks before going full blown organ failure in the final week.

Just keeping the meat sack inoculated until that time has passed !

I'm currently doing game development and animation from home anyway so nothing really changes. I didn't hoard many supplies though sooo I may have to crawl out from under my blanket in a few days.

Germany has good health care and didn't get hit that hard, but I feel bad for the less fortunate parts of the world and hope we'll see some positive development soon (and that exclusive access to vaccines isn't auctioned off to certain politicians).

This is the important thing. Anyone that's reading this isn't going to be in any serious risk of harm from the virus itself, it's not that bad from what we can tell - the point is that it appears to spread like a motherfucker, and if it continues to explode exponentially then even decent health care systems will quickly be overloaded by those who can't handle the virus, which can very easily be friends and relatives of yourselves who'd otherwise be unaffected. That, and if you happen to have some unrelated incident happen in the next few months that requires critical medical attention, then you're fucked as well. Stay safe kids, and just be happy you're not in a country run by a game show host...

Similar here. My school (and all others in the country) went full online/distance learning mode this week and will stay that way for at least a month, so I guess it's the best time to work on some unfinished projects and spend some time on NG…

Well, it's just a different approach with a similar goal in mind. My country went on lockdown today, but I don't think anybody seriously thinks that's an effective measure of stopping the virus, as that simply can't be done anymore. It's a short term approach to make the long term effects less severe.

The goal is the same – to slow down the spread. Because if everybody got infected at the same time, hospitals couldn't handle all patients and would be forced to choose who gets to be treated and who doesn't.

It's currently expected that a sizeable chunk of the population will eventually get infected, but since mass gatherings of people (cultural events, schools, factories…) got cancelled/closed, it won't spread instantly across the entire country in large numbers, which is the point, and we'll have time to prepare.

At least that's what our national crisis management team thinks and I'm not going to pretend that I know better if it's too drastic or appropriate, and say what they should do instead.

Our prime minister, for example, really didn't want to do anything which could negatively impact the economy, until virtually every country around us started doing it.

Yes, that's quite a problem. Here they're even asking for volunteers to watch the children of medical personnel, so they can go to work, and pedagogical students might eventually have to do it mandatorily. And now they also for volunteers to fix computers, because our second largest hospital got hit by a massive cyberattack just before the weekend…

I'm just really surprised to see the word SkillsUSA because my mom used to manage the program at the school she taught at before retirement. She got to go to Kansas City every year.

COVID-wise, my side of PA is mostly business as usual. I was at the mall for lunch Friday and Saturday and the attitude was basically "meh" other than additional precautions being taken. Hell, yesterday the Strip District was absolutely packed, as it normally is. Nobody really cared.

One thing I DID notice, however, was the craft, Lego, and GameStop stores were packed (I didn't go to any of them). It's people trying to get activities for their kids while school is off for two weeks.

Lo and behold, it turns out my mom actually may have had coronavirus after returning from a trip to Vegas in January.

She was fine for a week until suddenly she started feeling really sick, like she had the flu. But the thing was, she couldn’t go up the stairs in the house without having to stop and catch her breath for a few minutes. She had all the other symptoms on the list.

She was really sick for three weeks and never left the house; not because she felt an obligation to self-isolate, but simply because she didn’t feel well.

Then after three weeks were up, she was perfectly fine.

The doctor said she may have had it but there’s no way of knowing now.

Most stuff in the DC area is closing till the end of the month, but didn't really start kicking off till like earlier in the week. it will be interesting to see what ends up closing. Unfortunately i doubt my work will close down, and if it does I'd probably be still the one who has to go in (pet store).

Stay safe and stop licking escalator rails you simps.