[Cause]

Not sure if that’s misinformation but ideally you want 70 percent alcohol solution. Strangely 100 percent alcohol also not good

[Tsundoku]

Malankazooie, on 05 March 2020 - 11:05 PM, said:

when he had to drop the browns off at the super bowl.

You know, that's the best metaphor I've ever seen that accurately portrays American Handegg.

[Morgoth]

Gorefest, on 05 March 2020 - 03:35 PM, said:

It is a tad disturbing to find that I am actually leaning towards the Trump view on coronavirus. He says the current death rate is most likely overstated, as Mezla suggested previously as well, and you can tell that he has genuinely been listening to good medical practitioners on this from the way he explains it. Browny points for Trump.

This must be sarcasm, surely.

[Gorefest]

Cause, on 06 March 2020 - 07:22 AM, said:

Not sure if that's misinformation but ideally you want 70 percent alcohol solution. Strangely 100 percent alcohol also not good

100% ethanol 'seals' the bacteria (surface protein aggregation), but doesn't kill them. 70% kills them.

[Mentalist]

Welp, apparently a confirmed case used my commute line regularly.

So now my manager wants me to work from home for the next week "just in case"

[Abyss]

Malankazooie, on 06 March 2020 - 07:10 AM, said:

Misinformation going around that you can use vodka as a replacement for hand sanitizer. Screw that! I'm not going to sacrifice my evening wind down - club soda, vodka and lime - so I can DIY hand sanitizer. Good old workman's bar of Lava soap, hot running tap water from sink in utility room, and vigorous hand washing for me.

Apparently the water temp is irrelevant, it's the soap and water washing that makes the difference.
Temperature is only a factor if it prompts faster/less thorough hand washing.


And yah, who the fnck would waste booze if there's a sink and soap anywhere nearbye???? ...or, i dunno... sand.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Abyss, on 06 March 2020 - 05:47 PM, said:

Malankazooie, on 06 March 2020 - 07:10 AM, said:

Misinformation going around that you can use vodka as a replacement for hand sanitizer. Screw that! I'm not going to sacrifice my evening wind down - club soda, vodka and lime - so I can DIY hand sanitizer. Good old workman's bar of Lava soap, hot running tap water from sink in utility room, and vigorous hand washing for me.

Apparently the water temp is irrelevant, it's the soap and water washing that makes the difference.
Temperature is only a factor if it prompts faster/less thorough hand washing.


And yah, who the fnck would waste booze if there's a sink and soap anywhere nearbye???? ...or, i dunno... sand.

There should be some level of heat that will kill it. (Not that firebombing infected areas is a good idea....) Probably not safe to wash with without damaging your skin.

'"For hot water itself to kill a germ it would have to be boiling," McGee explained. "Warmer water helps the soap to disperse better."

'"Science is always warning us of some new weird death virus and when we're like, 'What's the plan?' They're like, 'Ahh wash your hands.' That's not a plan!" he said, adding that rigorous hand washing never halts a zombie apocalypse in movies."'

https://www.today.co...us-more-t172753

That Tesla flamethrower could come in handy... j/k.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 06 March 2020 - 06:02 PM

[Mezla PigDog]

Morgoth, on 06 March 2020 - 12:00 PM, said:

Gorefest, on 05 March 2020 - 03:35 PM, said:

It is a tad disturbing to find that I am actually leaning towards the Trump view on coronavirus. He says the current death rate is most likely overstated, as Mezla suggested previously as well, and you can tell that he has genuinely been listening to good medical practitioners on this from the way he explains it. Browny points for Trump.

This must be sarcasm, surely.

Hey you could just say you were agreeing with me and leave Trump out of it.

I'm not agreeing with Trump when he pulls values out of thin air - let's do this based on data and experience (I have some experience, not much but more than Trump). Although I'm pretty sure WHO disagrees with both me and Trump. So, what the fuck we gonna do with all those dead old folks?!

[Traveller]

It will certainly sort out the bed crisis, and the pensions too for that matter!

[Mezla PigDog]

In that case it will take out significant numbers of Brexit and/or Conservative voters too.

[Traveller]

I know! It's reducing air travel, solving the elderly care problem and freeing up houses.

Who's going to buy all those tins of evaporated milk and stop to talk about their ailments in shop doorways though?

This post has been edited by Traveller: 06 March 2020 - 08:53 PM

[Malankazooie]

Okay I just, unfortunately, watched that video of Michael Bloomberg licking his fingers after pulling apart a slice of pizza and then touching a drink dispenser. That had to be one of the grossest things I've watched. And there is more to it .... it just seems...off, is the best way I can describe it. Like there is something about his personality that is noticeably odd in how he does it and how he carries himself. He has the social IQ commensurate with an hyena. Could you imagine making the rounds at a social event and coming across a personality like him?.... awkwaaaaaaard! I'd pull out my phone and be all like "oh crap, I have to give this immediate attention, nice meeting you, byeeeeee."

[Macros]

 89356309_133379381521268_7051620986113753088_n.jpg (26.78K)
Number of downloads: 0

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Mezla PigDog, on 06 March 2020 - 06:13 PM, said:

Morgoth, on 06 March 2020 - 12:00 PM, said:

Gorefest, on 05 March 2020 - 03:35 PM, said:

It is a tad disturbing to find that I am actually leaning towards the Trump view on coronavirus. He says the current death rate is most likely overstated, as Mezla suggested previously as well, and you can tell that he has genuinely been listening to good medical practitioners on this from the way he explains it. Browny points for Trump.

This must be sarcasm, surely.

Hey you could just say you were agreeing with me and leave Trump out of it.

I'm not agreeing with Trump when he pulls values out of thin air - let's do this based on data and experience (I have some experience, not much but more than Trump). Although I'm pretty sure WHO disagrees with both me and Trump. So, what the fuck we gonna do with all those dead old folks?!

'[Trump] is…maybe trying to make the same point as Faust was, arguing that there are "easy cases" that don't go to the hospital or report to their doctors, which is why the denominator is likely largely than we currently think. I mean, he sounds frighteningly incoherent, but you can kind of see it if you squint.

The real problem with his argument is that, terrifyingly as always, Donald Trump is the guy who is in charge of mobilizing the forces to figure this stuff out, to calculate the real size of the denominator. He is the guy who could make sure the government is getting tests out to everyone who needs them so that we can actually understand how many people have the coronavirus. He is the guy who could have worked to staff the relevant departments of his government with people who could deal with this and resources so that they weren't caught in the position they've been caught in.

He's not doing these things. Instead, he is going on television saying things like this:

"AZAR tries to explain that more tests are coming, but Trump waves him off to jump in.

TRUMP: 'Anybody that needs a test gets a test…. the tests are all perfect like the letter was perfect. The transcription [of his telephone conversation with Zelensky] was perfect. Right? This was not as perfect as that but pretty good.'"

"'I like the numbers being where they are. I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship' -- Trump explains that he doesn't want to let people off the Grand Princess cruise ship because he doesn't want the number of coronavirus cases in the country to go up"

[...] "Answering question about coronavirus response, Trump detours into discussing Fox News town hall ratings."

[...] "Trump muses that he could've become a research scientist instead of president.

TRUMP: I like this stuff. I really get it… every one of these doctors said, 'how do you know so much about this?' Maybe I have a natural ability."

https://slate.com/ne...oronavirus.html

'Trump's Contempt for Expertise Is Guiding His Coronavirus Response

This would be startling if it didn't match how he always purges unwelcome news from within his administration and from his reality.


Pence is the opposite of qualified for such a post: When he was governor of Indiana, he facilitated an HIV epidemic by vetoing a needle-sharing program among drug addicts, saying it would only encourage drug use.

Not only that, but the members of this task force include Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow—which reinforces suspicions that Trump's main concern is the news of the virus and its effect on the stock market, not the virus itself and its effect on human life. In a tweet on Monday, after claiming that the virus "is very much under control in the USA," Trump added, "Stock market starting to look very good to me!"

Making matters worse, Trump has forbidden any health officials, including the CDC scientists monitoring the pandemic, from making any public statements [without approval from Pence]. Instead, they are to report exclusively to the Pence panel, which will be the government's sole spokesman on the subject. [He seems to have relaxed this requirement, since CDC scientists apparently have been appearing on tv shows.]'

https://slate.com/ne...e-contempt.html

TL;DR while the mortality rate probably is substantially lower, you're giving Trump far too much credit....

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 07 March 2020 - 01:58 AM

[Brujah]

New confirmed case. Rather close. Less than 100 miles.

[Macros]

A bunch of people got the flu in my home town this week.
And every fucking where else in the world

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

'Don't Test, Don't Tell: The Bureaucratic Bungling of COVID-19 Tests

the doctors at UC Davis—who have treated other coronavirus cases—immediately suspected a coronavirus infection. But the US Center for Disease Control (CDC), the organization with the sole authority and ability to administer a coronavirus test, refused to test.[...] Do we know for sure that the UC Davis patient was either a) in mainland China within the past 14 days, or in close contact with another confirmed case? No? Well then by definition this UC Davis patient could not possibly have a coronavirus infection. No test for you! It's not that testing was not available. It's that testing was not allowed.

[...] So if it's not a difficult or expensive test to make, why are so many countries pursuing a policy of Don't Test, Don't Tell? The answer, of course: to maintain a political narrative of calm and competence.

Two weeks ago I wrote about the corrupt political response of China to COVID-19:

A city falls when its healthcare system is overwhelmed. A city falls when its national government fails to prepare and support its doctors and nurses. A city falls when its government is more concerned with maintaining some bullshit narrative of "Yay, Calm and Competent Control!" than in doing what is politically embarrassing but socially necessary.

The disaster that befell the citizens of Wuhan and so many other cities throughout China is not primarily a virus. The disaster is having a political regime that cares more about short-term public and economic concerns than it cares about saving the lives of its citizens.'

https://quillette.co...covid-19-tests/


'Taiwan reins in spread of coronavirus as other countries stumble

With some 850,000 Taiwanese living and working in China, Taiwan could have been one of the hardest hit when the coronavirus outbreak emerged in late December in Wuhan, a central Chinese city of 11 million people and the epicentre of the outbreak.

[...] But Taiwan, an island democracy with a population roughly the size of Australia, has kept cases at a minimum of 45 and one death, even as infection rates in China have topped 80,000 and the virus has mushroomed in places like South Korea, Japan, Iran and Italy.

"Taiwan was hard hit by SARS and with that hard and bitter lesson Taiwan came very prepared," said Chunhuei Chi, a professor in the College of Public Health and Human Sciences at Oregon State University.

"After the SARS epidemic, Taiwan established a central command centre for epidemics the following year, keeping it a few steps ahead of other places in Asia before coronavirus hit, Chi said.

The command centre made it easier for medical authorities to gather data, redistribute resources, investigate potential cases and follow up on their contact history, while they also were able to quickly isolate patients found to be carrying the virus.

Learning from SARS, Taiwan also quickly conducted health checks on passengers from Wuhan in early January, well before it was understood that the virus could pass between humans.'

https://www.aljazeer...Db3NSp3D2BFWWtg

[Assuming Taiwan is testing enough people and reporting the results accurately....]


'Coronavirus: nine reasons to be reassured

Yes, Covid-19 is serious, but context is key and the world is well placed to deal with it

[...] China's draconian quarantine and containment measures appear to be working. On Thursday 120 new cases were reported in Wuhan, the lowest figure for six weeks, and, for the first time since the start of the outbreak, none at all in the rest of Hubei province. Several Chinese provinces have had no new cases for a fortnight and more are reopening their schools. In many countries, infections are in defined clusters, which should allow them to be more readily contained.

[...] the mortality rate for the under-40s is about 0.2%. The rate rises in the over-65s, reaching nearly 15% in the over-80s, especially those with pre-existing heart or lung conditions. Calculating mortality rates during an ongoing epidemic is hard because it is not clear how many mild or asymptomatic cases have been tested for, but the best estimate we have for the coronavirus so far is 1.4%

[...] Vaccine prototypes exist. Commercial pharmaceutical and biotechnology labs [...] as well as academic groups such as one at the University of Queensland in Australia – many of which were already working on vaccines for similar Sars-related viruses – have preventive vaccine prototypes in development, some of which will soon be ready for human testing (although their efficacy and safety will of course take time to establish).'
https://www.theguard...BMXVAB6L4g7Ykxs


Surprisingly, multiple studies seem to confirm that N95 respirators are not statistically significantly more effective than surgical masks at preventing influenza in health care workers:

'[...] the ubiquitous surgical (or medical) mask, which costs about a dime, to a less commonly used respirator called an N95, which costs around $1. The study reported "no [statistically] significant difference in the effectiveness" of medical masks vs. N95 respirators for prevention of influenza or other viral respiratory illness.

[...] there are concerns health care workers might be less vigilant about wearing the N95 respirators since many perceive them to be less comfortable than medical masks, such as making it harder to breathe and being warmer on the wearer's face.

Earlier clinical studies comparing the masks and respirators yielded mixed results [...]

The new study was performed at multiple medical settings in seven cities around the country [...] Researchers collected data during four flu seasons between 2011 and 2015, examining the incidence of flu and acute respiratory illnesses in the almost 2,400 health care workers who completed the study.

[...] 207 laboratory-confirmed influenza infections occurred in the N95 groups versus 193 among medical mask wearers, according to the report. In addition, there were 2,734 cases of influenza-like symptoms, laboratory-confirmed respiratory illnesses, and acute or laboratory-detected respiratory infections (where the worker may not have felt ill) in the N95 groups, compared with 3,039 such events among medical mask wearers.'

https://www.scienced...90903134732.htm

[Unfortunately, as in previous studies, there was no no-mask control group....]
'While it may seem obvious that tight-fitting N95 respirators would be more protective, their proven efficacy against small particles may not be as critical for influenza droplets. [...] Influenza traditionally has been understood to be primarily transmitted through larger droplets that don't hang in the air a long time, so they are able to be largely caught in surgical isolation masks," she says. "The respirators really provide benefit for very small-particle aerosols."'

https://www.rtmagazi...s-nearly-as.../

'The work of Australian investigators provides further support for the value of the simple surgical mask. They estimate that in a home setting, wearing a surgical mask decreases a well person's risk of getting sick by 60 percent to 80 percent.

Unfortunately, most people fail to wear a mask faithfully enough to achieve this degree of protection'

https://www.nytimes....rLONxyHC48zlBZ4

[However, that study found 'household use of face masks is associated with low adherence'; so there's the issue of whether those who *did* wear the masks regularly we also better at following other instructions and precautionary measures.]

https://www.ncbi.nlm...pubmed/19193267

'Other studies found promising results outside of the household. For example, one such study was conducted by a team of researchers from the University of Michigan on more than 1,000 students living in residence halls. They assigned the student to groups: those who wore masks, those who wore masks and practiced hand hygiene, and those who did neither. The results showed that those who wore masks in residence halls and practiced good handwashing reduced their risk of flu-like illness by an astonishing 75 percent.

Still, the study found no reduction in symptoms for [surgical] mask use alone. This finding suggests that the use of masks should always be paired with regular handwashing.'

https://www.healthli...cold-flu/mask#3

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 07 March 2020 - 07:33 PM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

'Coronavirus control efforts linked to better China air quality

Outbreak forces closure of coal-fired power plants and industrial facilities, leading to a drop in pollution.

[...] With fewer factories running, cars and lorries on the roads, and planes in the air, the skies have become noticeably clearer.

Levels of nitrogen dioxide, a pollutant which comes primarily from the burning of fossil fuels, were down by as much as 30 percent, according to NASA.

The first image reveals large pockets of pollution over the big cities, including the capital, Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. The second image shows that most of that pollution has disappeared.

[...] "This is the first time I have seen such a dramatic drop-off over such a wide area for a specific event," said Fei Liu, an air quality researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.'

https://www.aljazeer...7093159042.html

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

'White House falsely claims the coronavirus has been "contained" in the US

Trump's top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, falsely claimed on Friday that the coronavirus "is contained" in the US. Another senior Trump official, counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway, made a similar though slightly less definitive claim, saying that the virus "is being contained."

Facts First: Experts say the US has not come close to containing the coronavirus. They also say the small number of tests conducted in the United States so far has prevented the government from getting an accurate picture of how widespread the virus truly is.

"In the US it is the opposite of contained," said Harvard University epidemiology professor Marc Lipsitch, director of Harvard's Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics. "It is spreading so efficiently in so many places that it may be difficult to stop."'

https://www.cnn.com/...G1ygpqJLLH2gJa8

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 07 March 2020 - 10:49 PM

[Cause]

Oh god! i told my roommate 'can you beleive trump asked if a flu vaccine would cure coronavirus' and he said it seemed like a good question.