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  • Originally posted by astralis View Post
    it's too bad that it'll take hundreds of deaths and billions of dollars lost to educate Americans why electing pig-ignorant con-men to the Presidency is a bad idea.
    And literally millions of Trump followers will refuse to believe that he has any of those consequences on his hands.
    “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

    Comment


    • not only that, Trump botched -what was on paper-.

      so it was a poorly written speech with proposals unvetted by public health experts, and THEN it got screwed up even further by POTUS ad-libbing. it was so bad even Trump knew he screwed up, and asked Kushner to fix his mistakes!
      There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."- Isaac Asimov

      Comment


      • "Ignorance is bliss."

        Comment


        • Originally posted by snapper View Post
          Only 1 reported case here so far - but that is almost certainly BS - and am thinking of retreating to my yacht (with a small arms cache to repel boarders) and casting off for the mid Atlantic.
          Most notable case is your commander of the Army is infected

          If he got infected in Germany then there is community spread already occurring in Germany. That means even if Germany closes borders like Italy there will still be contagion unless they lock things down further.

          They will have to by the looks of it. The only good news about Germany is their fatality rate is very low. They may have a highly infectious but less virulent strain of the virus.

          UK, France don't look good. And Washington state could become the next Hubei. Which is sad given how much Bill Gates has tried to raise awareness around the world for years about just this issue.

          Poland has been quite proactive. Romania too. These two have things under control so containment might be feasible.

          Poland declares state of epidemic emergency as first coronavirus death announced | Notes from Poland | Mar 12 2020

          Health minister, Szumowski appealed to young people, asking that they stay at home. “This is not leisure time, a time to party, to have fun in clubs,” he warned.
          Straight up!

          The Catholic church continues to refuse to cancel masses, although it has issued exemptions for certain vulnerable categories of people.
          Given Easter is a month away this will be a problem. Just one woman in Korea ended up infecting several hundred in her church sending the Koreans straight up the cliff.

          There has been a death already.

          The announcement of a state of emergency followed news of the first person diagnosed with coronavirus to die in Poland. The victim, a 57-year-old woman with pre-existing medical conditions, had been in serious condition at a hospital in Poznań.

          She was diagnosed with the virus after coming into contact with someone who had returned from Italy. Her husband and daughter have also both been confirmed as having the virus and remain under medical care, reportedly in good condition. The husband is a steward at a church in the village of Czapury, and on Sunday gave out communion during mass. His wife was hospitalised the same day.
          This is what i mean. how many did the husband now infect at the church ?

          There is a model to predict infected on the basis of deaths.

          By the time you have one death, there are potentially 800 infected. Depends where that death occurred though. If contact tracing with quarantine can be effectively done then there will be less infected cases.

          This morning, the health minister announced 16 new confirmed cases of the virus, an almost 50% increase in the total, which rose to 47. Szumowski said that the jump in diagnoses was “expected and relatively controlled”. He added that the figure was likely to reach 100 soon and 1,000 within a week or so, reported Puls Biznesu.
          Last edited by Double Edge; 13 Mar 20,, 22:10.

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          • Good God, people. Get a grip.

            This is not zero hour of the zombie outbreak. 80% of the infected require no professional medical treatment other than rest and over the counter sympton medication. If you're sick, stay home and don't call mom to make chicken soup. The best thing you can do is to stay healthy and if you do catch this thing, don't freaking panic. Let your body do its job. If you body can't handle it, then call for help. You have better odds of surviving this thing than line infantry.
            Chimo

            Comment


            • Originally posted by WABs_OOE View Post
              Good God, people. Get a grip.

              This is not zero hour of the zombie outbreak. 80% of the infected require no professional medical treatment other than rest and over the counter sympton medication. If you're sick, stay home and don't call mom to make chicken soup. The best thing you can do is to stay healthy and if you do catch this thing, don't freaking panic. Let your body do its job. If you body can't handle it, then call for help. You have better odds of surviving this thing than line infantry.
              Sir, we're not worried about the disease itself.

              We're worried about/how people in general are reacting to it and the U.S. government's incredibly idiotic response to it. It's these two things that will make a bad situation absolutely horrific. I've seen how the masses react with absolute idiocy to incoming hurricanes on at least a dozen occasions. That was merely localized panic. This is planetwide, and it's obvious that the richest, most influential, most asset and resource-rich nation on the planet is being led and advised by fools, charlatans, Neanderthals and not-terribly-bright illiterate children.

              Speaking for myself, the disease itself is the least of my worries.
              “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

              Comment


              • What was the hold up with testing. Looking at it from the operations level

                Key Missteps at the CDC Have Set Back Its Ability to Detect the Potential Spread of Coronavirus | Pro Publica | Feb 28 2020

                The federal agency shunned the World Health Organization test guidelines used by other countries and set out to create a more complicated test of its own that could identify a range of similar viruses. But when it was sent to labs across the country in the first week of February, it didn’t work as expected. The CDC test correctly identified COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. But in all but a handful of state labs, it falsely flagged the presence of the other viruses in harmless samples.
                That appears to be the first misstep. Reject an international std in favour of rolling your own. Pro's & Cons for both. It's just that the cons with DIY outweighed the pros as time went on.

                As a result, until Wednesday the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration only allowed those state labs to use the test — a decision with potentially significant consequences. The lack of a reliable test prevented local officials from taking a crucial first step in coping with a possible outbreak — “surveillance testing” of hundreds of people in possible hotspots. Epidemiologists in other countries have used this sort of testing to track the spread of the disease before large numbers of people turn up at hospitals.
                It’s unclear who in the government originally made the decision to design a more complicated test, or to depart from the WHO guidance.
                So this matters. Until answers for those two critical questions are given we end up with this food fight with the opposition making up all sorts of nonsense.

                What I see the US govt being accused of (by the opposition) is exactly the same charges leveled at the CCP (by China sluggers) over a month ago

                - Took too long to get going or get the word out.
                - Trying to underplay and understate numbers for political reasons
                - Leader of the govt is incompetent and should resign

                because the CDC declared the virus a public health emergency, it triggered a set of federal rules that raises the bar for all tests, including those devised by local hospitals.

                So now, hospitals must validate their tests with the FDA — even if they copied the CDC protocol exactly. Hospital lab directors say the FDA validation process is onerous and is wasting precious time when they could be testing in their local communities.

                Alexander Greninger, an assistant professor in laboratory medicine at the University of Washington Medical Center, said after he submitted his COVID-19 test, which copies the CDC protocol, to the FDA, a reviewer asked him to prove that his test would not show a positive result for someone infected with the SARS coronavirus or the MERS coronavirus — an almost ridiculous challenge.

                The SARS virus, which appeared in November 2002, affected 26 countries, disappeared in mid-2003 and hasn’t been seen since. The MERS coronavirus primarily affects the Middle East, and the only two cases that have been recorded in the U.S., in 2014, were both imported.
                Don't know how you get around this one. The rules are there for a reason. To then say said rules are onerous and wasting time is playing with fire.

                Greninger said the FDA was treating labs as if they were trying to make a commercially distributed product. “I think it makes sense to have this regulation,’’ he said, when “you’re going to sell 100,000 widgets across the U.S. That’s not who we are.”
                It would take enormous vision & risk taking to waive existing rules. To make them up on the fly, in effect wing it.
                Last edited by Double Edge; 13 Mar 20,, 23:26.

                Comment


                • Originally posted by WABs_OOE View Post
                  Good God, people. Get a grip.

                  This is not zero hour of the zombie outbreak. 80% of the infected require no professional medical treatment other than rest and over the counter sympton medication. If you're sick, stay home and don't call mom to make chicken soup. The best thing you can do is to stay healthy and if you do catch this thing, don't freaking panic. Let your body do its job. If you body can't handle it, then call for help. You have better odds of surviving this thing than line infantry.
                  If 80% of the people don't require medical treatment, that means 20% of the people DO require medical treatment. There is no medical system on Earth that can handle that kind of burden, if we continue to let it progress unimpeded. The point where we run out of hospital beds and medical personnel is the point where the fatality rates jumps substantially, not just for coronavirus, but for other medical maladies.

                  We are not far from that point and some aggressive-but-reasonable options can likely delay that point, or entirely eliminate it as a possibility. Either option gives us time to build up herd immunity or develop a vaccine. Our culture is NOT a culture of cleanliness, so it is CRUCIALLY important that people understand that they need to make MAJOR life changes to slow the spread of this virus.

                  I would rather have zero hour of the zombie outbreak. You can shoot zombies. You cannot shoot a virus.
                  "The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood"-Otto Von Bismarck

                  Comment


                  • Originally posted by Oracle View Post
                    Alright. How did organising into groups and buying products make prices go down?
                    I don't know more than I said but generally the reason to do group buys is it brings down the per person price. And i expect the CCP would crack down on online profiteering quite easily.

                    Might want to replace those with Jameson/Famous_Grouse or Glenfiddich. Those are the only essentials in life without a women and zombies trying to sneak into my house. I always keep stock of smokes. I also have booze in stock. But I'm thinking of cutting down on alcohol.
                    I don't see booze or smokes having any shortage. You get a shortage if people think those items will be in short supply. Why would they be ? Neither of these items offers any protection from this disease.

                    If anything the price may come down slightly as people aren't partying as much as usual.

                    As an Indian, I've not seen anyone stocking up on food, that would last them for say 6 months. It's the psychological thing I guess, to buy fresh and eat fresh. Canned foods are not very popular in India.
                    These things are due to the current environment. The mom and pop shops got together early and lobbied govt not to allow the hypermarkets, likes of Carrefour & Walmart to set up shop in India. When you do not have such options you will not stock up. The only option is cash & carry where you have to show you own a business and buy two of everything. Not exactly something many families can do.

                    Now, what if disaster strikes? What would we do then?
                    We've had disasters before. The 1918 influenza pandemic ended up killing 20 million in India alone. And that one went for young adults not the older people like this one. Plague outbreak in Surat in 1994. Tsunami of 2004. We will come together and deal with it like every other country.

                    So far testing is low, around 5k. All passengers entering the country get screened which means thermal so if they find your temperature high they keep a record of you. All foreigners in the country are in the surveillance network. That network is the key. If there is an uptick then you quarantine the area. If the surveillance network does not work then you end up like Italy.

                    I've found the opposite reaction from some people i discuss this with. Yet another massively hyped up scare that will go away by years end. We lose more people per month to TB, cholera, H1N1, dengue, acute diarrhea, malaria per month already bla bla bla. So what is the big deal ?

                    If people are complacent the govt is not. They've been in monitoring mode. The visas issued got cancelled early. How much exposure do we have with China. Are they loads of people from China here like with other countries. No. That means our exposure is lower than Pakistan.

                    We already cull birds regularly over the last couple of decades whenever there is an outbreak of bird flu. Latest was in Kerela a week ago.

                    What if the next COVID-19 originates from India. We're not China, we can't order a lockdown that easily, for example Shaheen Bagh protests, and people don't stockpile food. Makes me really scared.
                    Yeah Jim O'Neill of Chatham said this. See how the BJP guy rebuts

                    Democracy and the free flow of information acts as a catalyst in such unfortunate eventualities. Transparency, public trust and government accountability ensures effective response to such critical situations.
                    See, i'm not quite seeing that in some western countries that have all of the above.

                    Reason i've been observing China is i fear the same as well. Because like the western countries we lack the experience of those countries that went through SARS. Can our leaders take the hard decisions in time to flatten the demand curve. This remains to be seen.

                    Flatten the curve means spread out the demand on the health care system rather than hitting it from all sides in one go. No health system can handle that.

                    Can't we order a lock down ? what was that line....what's happening in j&K now will soon happen to you : )

                    We produce 75% of the worlds generics. Since all we have is treatment for supporting ailments, i'm sure we can treat 90% of the infected.

                    What i would like to see is work on vaccines stepped up so we can deal with this more effectively. Race is on : )

                    Partner with the Americans so we have some joint plan to address this in the future, one idea i heard is a bio-wall because this will come back again and again.

                    Notice the various viruses that come up at least twice a decade. SARS, H1N1 etc. We've spent enough on nukes, time to realise that health security means national security.

                    Comment


                    • Originally posted by GVChamp View Post
                      If 80% of the people don't require medical treatment, that means 20% of the people DO require medical treatment. There is no medical system on Earth that can handle that kind of burden, if we continue to let it progress unimpeded. The point where we run out of hospital beds and medical personnel is the point where the fatality rates jumps substantially, not just for coronavirus, but for other medical maladies.

                      We are not far from that point and some aggressive-but-reasonable options can likely delay that point, or entirely eliminate it as a possibility. Either option gives us time to build up herd immunity or develop a vaccine. Our culture is NOT a culture of cleanliness, so it is CRUCIALLY important that people understand that they need to make MAJOR life changes to slow the spread of this virus.

                      I would rather have zero hour of the zombie outbreak. You can shoot zombies. You cannot shoot a virus.
                      None of this means you put your life on hold and lock yourself away in a cabin with you manning a sniper post ready to shoot your nearest neighbour. All this means is that you don't do anything stupid. I know that is a tall leap for a lot of people but for you, you individually. You have a choice, Lock yourself away behind a minefield and man your machine gun nest ... or go about your day and be alert for dirty surfaces and wash your hands. This is not the Black Death.
                      Chimo

                      Comment


                      • Originally posted by WABs_OOE View Post
                        None of this means you put your life on hold and lock yourself away in a cabin with you manning a sniper post ready to shoot your nearest neighbour. All this means is that you don't do anything stupid. I know that is a tall leap for a lot of people but for you, you individually. You have a choice, Lock yourself away behind a minefield and man your machine gun nest ... or go about your day and be alert for dirty surfaces and wash your hands. This is not the Black Death.
                        Once again Sir, it's not about the disease. It's about our fellow human beings and the utter disgrace sitting in the Oval Office. They're scarier than any disease.
                        “He was the most prodigious personification of all human inferiorities. He was an utterly incapable, unadapted, irresponsible, psychopathic personality, full of empty, infantile fantasies, but cursed with the keen intuition of a rat or a guttersnipe. He represented the shadow, the inferior part of everybody’s personality, in an overwhelming degree, and this was another reason why they fell for him.”

                        Comment


                        • No machine gun nest on my yacht but a good idea.

                          Comment


                          • I'd read before that brass has self-disinfecting properties, turns out it's more than just anti-bacterial. It has anti-viral properties as well. Maybe we ought to be using more brass in all the things people touch. Norovirus is supposed to be one of the tougher viruses to kill, completely resistant to alcohol.

                            I found this study, from which I'll post an excerpt.
                            https://aem.asm.org/content/81/3/1085

                            Norovirus is one of the most common causes of acute viral gastroenteritis. The virus is spread via the fecal-oral route, most commonly from infected food and water, but several outbreaks have originated from contamination of surfaces with infectious virus. In this study, a close surrogate of human norovirus causing gastrointestinal disease in mice, murine norovirus type 1 (MNV-1), retained infectivity for more than 2 weeks following contact with a range of surface materials, including Teflon (polytetrafluoroethylene [PTFE]), polyvinyl chloride (PVC), ceramic tiles, glass, silicone rubber, and stainless steel. Persistence was slightly prolonged on ceramic surfaces. A previous study in our laboratory observed that dry copper and copper alloy surfaces rapidly inactivated MNV-1 and destroyed the viral genome. In this new study, we have observed that a relatively small change in the percentage of copper, between 70 and 80% in copper nickels and 60 and 70% in brasses, had a significant influence on the ability of the alloy to inactivate norovirus. Nickel alone did not affect virus, but zinc did have some antiviral effect, which was synergistic with copper and resulted in an increased efficacy of brasses with lower percentages of copper. Electron microscopy of purified MNV-1 that had been exposed to copper and stainless steel surfaces suggested that a massive breakdown of the viral capsid had occurred on copper. In addition, MNV-1 that had been exposed to copper and treated with RNase demonstrated a reduction in viral gene copy number. This suggests that capsid integrity is compromised upon contact with copper, allowing copper ion access to the viral genome.
                            "Every man has his weakness. Mine was always just cigarettes."

                            Comment


                            • Originally posted by WABs_OOE View Post
                              None of this means you put your life on hold and lock yourself away in a cabin with you manning a sniper post ready to shoot your nearest neighbour. All this means is that you don't do anything stupid. I know that is a tall leap for a lot of people but for you, you individually. You have a choice, Lock yourself away behind a minefield and man your machine gun nest ... or go about your day and be alert for dirty surfaces and wash your hands. This is not the Black Death.
                              The problem is, if you tell people not to do anything stupid, we will continue to do stupid things, because we do not have a culture that takes influenza-type illnesses seriously. We don't wash our hands, we don't stay home when we're sick, we don't sanitize, and we are very touchy. We are now changing and hopefully it will be enough, but part of that means real sacrifice: our factory had a baby shower for an employee yesterday with 80+ people in close proximity, we had a Pi Day with 30+ people, and then we had a leadership meeting that ended up in a happy hour. All of that needs to stop for the time being because we let this get out of control.

                              Dirty surfaces and washing your hands is insufficient because this can spread via air droplets and no one has natural immunity. This will spread very quickly if we continue to act like nothing is wrong, and we are maybe 6 weeks away from deciding whether we want the Black Death for the nation's elderly, or if we want a nation-wide lockdown for 2 months, enforced by the military.
                              "The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood"-Otto Von Bismarck

                              Comment


                              • Originally posted by WABs_OOE View Post
                                Good God, people. Get a grip.

                                This is not zero hour of the zombie outbreak. 80% of the infected require no professional medical treatment other than rest and over the counter sympton medication. If you're sick, stay home and don't call mom to make chicken soup. The best thing you can do is to stay healthy and if you do catch this thing, don't freaking panic. Let your body do its job. If you body can't handle it, then call for help. You have better odds of surviving this thing than line infantry.
                                Hehehehehe.

                                Also, by the time Trump is gone, TH will probably suffer from high BP. He's so pissed at Trump, lol.

                                Originally posted by Double Edge View Post
                                I don't know more than I said but generally the reason to do group buys is it brings down the per person price. And i expect the CCP would crack down on online profiteering quite easily.
                                No crackdown in India. I'm paying more than the MRP for smokes. Every year starting Feb, millions like me do. Why do we need a F budget every year? They don't even do the job they were supposed to do decades earlier, and they make grand shitty plans every year.

                                I don't see booze or smokes having any shortage. You get a shortage if people think those items will be in short supply. Why would they be ? Neither of these items offers any protection from this disease.

                                If anything the price may come down slightly as people aren't partying as much as usual.
                                I was naming them from my POV that if I were to be in a lockdown, without a women, atleast I should have something that makes me unconscious from time to time.

                                These things are due to the current environment. The mom and pop shops got together early and lobbied govt not to allow the hypermarkets, likes of Carrefour & Walmart to set up shop in India. When you do not have such options you will not stock up. The only option is cash & carry where you have to show you own a business and buy two of everything. Not exactly something many families can do.
                                We need the likes of TESCO, ASDA. Canned foods too. We need to be prepared. I really need to learn how to age meat using heat from woodfire.

                                We've had disasters before. The 1918 influenza pandemic ended up killing 20 million in India alone. And that one went for young adults not the older people like this one. Plague outbreak in Surat in 1994. Tsunami of 2004. We will come together and deal with it like every other country.

                                So far testing is low, around 5k. All passengers entering the country get screened which means thermal so if they find your temperature high they keep a record of you. All foreigners in the country are in the surveillance network. That network is the key. If there is an uptick then you quarantine the area. If the surveillance network does not work then you end up like Italy.

                                I've found the opposite reaction from some people i discuss this with. Yet another massively hyped up scare that will go away by years end. We lose more people per month to TB, cholera, H1N1, dengue, acute diarrhea, malaria per month already bla bla bla. So what is the big deal ?

                                If people are complacent the govt is not. They've been in monitoring mode. The visas issued got cancelled early. How much exposure do we have with China. Are they loads of people from China here like with other countries. No. That means our exposure is lower than Pakistan.

                                We already cull birds regularly over the last couple of decades whenever there is an outbreak of bird flu. Latest was in Kerela a week ago.
                                Road accidents too.

                                Yeah Jim O'Neill of Chatham said this. See how the BJP guy rebuts
                                I get it when the Colonel copies me, what I don't get is Jim copying me. :D

                                See, i'm not quite seeing that in some western countries that have all of the above.

                                Reason i've been observing China is i fear the same as well. Because like the western countries we lack the experience of those countries that went through SARS. Can our leaders take the hard decisions in time to flatten the demand curve. This remains to be seen.

                                Flatten the curve means spread out the demand on the health care system rather than hitting it from all sides in one go. No health system can handle that.

                                Can't we order a lock down ? what was that line....what's happening in j&K now will soon happen to you : )

                                We produce 75% of the worlds generics. Since all we have is treatment for supporting ailments, i'm sure we can treat 90% of the infected.

                                What i would like to see is work on vaccines stepped up so we can deal with this more effectively. Race is on : )

                                Partner with the Americans so we have some joint plan to address this in the future, one idea i heard is a bio-wall because this will come back again and again.

                                Notice the various viruses that come up at least twice a decade. SARS, H1N1 etc. We've spent enough on nukes, time to realise that health security means national security.
                                Right. Overall agree. And yes, we should make healthcare a priority.
                                Politicians are elected to serve...far too many don't see it that way - Albany Rifles! || Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it - Mark Twain! || I am a far left millennial!

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