Qatar Coronavirus Update -- Daily Cases Dramatically Climbing

As for the coronavirus unfortunately the number of cases in Qatar is growing rapidly. Yesterday saw a record 392 cases but today smashed that at 560 cases! The total number of cases in the country is now 4,663, which is about 1,665 per million people, similar to the UK. The Government has been testing people who were close to or in contact with known cases so I suspect that most of the cases are in worker dormitories and other crowded housing where the virus could spread easily. The Government has reiterated that everyone should stay home as much as possible.

I'm on Day 29 of staying home. The trend in cases is quite worrying so it looks like I'll be sitting in my apartment for a lot longer. I still have plenty of food (I underestimated just how much I stocked up on since January, I figured I had 3-4 weeks of food but it turned out to be more). I'm starting to run low on some key things yet every time I decided that I will go out to the grocery store in the next couple of days the case count grows so I get nervous and put it off. I can hold out another week or so but after that I will need to stock up on some essentials. Better to wait as long as possible, the longer people wait the greater the chance that treatments will be develop that can help lessen the symptoms and thus give you a better chance if you do become ill. Treatments using blood plasma with antibodies in it looks promising and I know that Qatar is trying that out in hospitals here. I also read some articles today that said an anti-viral drug called remdesivir is showing promising results in initial studies on people, and numerous other drugs are also being tested around the world. So the longer people wait before risking getting the virus the better the chance of surviving it if they do catch it.

Stay home everyone.


Today's distraction: on Youtube look up 'epicurious price points'. This is a set of videos where an expert is given samples of things they specialize in and they have to guess which one is more expensive. The expert explains their analysis and how they concluded which was more expensive and it was actually very informative. They have videos for things like cheese, coffee, chocolate, meats, wine, tea, ice cream and so forth. Give it a watch if you have time on your hands, it will help you be able to tell the difference between good and lower quality products.