It's a fact that it messed with my suspension of disbelief for a bit. It would be better if it hadn't. I still like the story; it's just a minor flaw.

The club is now closed until further notice.

I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that the game went on last night as planned. The good news is that my parents won't be attending any more large games. The bad news is that there are still going to be more large games, at least one tonight. Although it's mostly the same population every time.

Previous versions of this question: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/11/open-thread-149-25/#comment-865412 https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/15/open-thread-149-5/#comment-865535

Everybody says that immunity to coronaviruses is not robust (although we don't know yet about this specific one).

1. Alcohol and bleach are both extremely common in our current environment, so if it's possible to create these superbugs, then we should already be doing it, although this could speed up the process. And quick Google searches tell me that nothing is evolving resistance to bleach; but we are indeed creating alcohol-resistant superbugs that are starting to infest hospitals. So those may get worse.

I thought that we were right about Y2K, people spent a lot of time preparing for it, and their hard work saved us all. Is that wrong? (I understand if you just link to somewhere else and don't clutter up your thread any further with this digression.)

Hi, I haven’t posted in a while, and I hope that people are still reading new comments in this thread, because I need an answer fast, and this is the best place that I know to get a good one. (Well, second best. I posted to SSC first.)

My parents, age 70, live in Lincoln NE (population 285 thousand, no reported cases of Covid-19 yet, 17 reported cases in the State, schools just closed and are preparing to go online). They pretty much run their bridge club, most of whose members are in their 70s but generally in good health. The club has an event planned for tonight (March 15 Sunday), at which 26 people are expected to show up and sit at card tables in close proximity, moving from table to table over the course of the evening. There will be hand sanitizer available at the tables.

Question: Should they cancel the event?

Please give reasons for your answer as if you’re trying to convince a stubborn Boomer (but not a Trump-supporter). You may assume that your audience is mathematically literate. If you know any data on age-related risks that controls for other risk factors, then that would be a big bonus. (Because since heart disease, diabetes, and lung disease are all risk factors for Covid-19, and since they’re also all more prevalent among older people, maybe age alone is not much of a risk factor all.)

Greg Egan (who, you may remember, started out in supernatural horror before he switched to hard science fiction) has now written (and published) a p-zombie horror story: https://www.tor.com/2018/07/19/the-nearest-greg-egan/

Eliezer never wrote an epilogue, and probably isn't going to, since Alexander Wales already wrote a better one.