it’s a nasty disease. it’s incredibly dangerous. i am seriously in a spin about this casual talk of heading back to “normal”. what has changed? we’ve made the number of deaths level off through an unprecedented effort of policy and will. it’s been shambolic but distancing has has an effect. but thousands of people are still dying of this every day! that’s.... not good!! and we’re ready to turn up the volume on that number?? i just have no words really
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, 29 April 2020 20:05 (four years ago) link
Get your White House gift shop Covid-19 commemorative coin. Regularly $125, but now at a low low price of $100.
― speaking moistly (Sanpaku), Wednesday, 29 April 2020 20:06 (four years ago) link
Are they insinuating that he is saying homeless people themselves are disgusting? It kind of seems like that, and it also seems clear that’s not what he meant.
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, April 29, 2020 1:03 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink
@Tracer yeah he means the people are disgusting. I wouldn't believe him to think otherwise.
― Its big ball chunky time (Jimmy The Mod Awaits The Return Of His Beloved), Wednesday, 29 April 2020 20:09 (four years ago) link
keep in mind they were talking about snake trains w/o doors between cars for a while there before everyone pointed out that without doors the whole train becomes to poop car
― Its big ball chunky time (Jimmy The Mod Awaits The Return Of His Beloved), Wednesday, 29 April 2020 20:10 (four years ago) link
snake train! open ended cars you mean? i kinda like em
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, 29 April 2020 20:14 (four years ago) link
yeah i mean it makes sense until you have the poop car
― Its big ball chunky time (Jimmy The Mod Awaits The Return Of His Beloved), Wednesday, 29 April 2020 20:17 (four years ago) link
xps: The thing that worries me about coronavirus vaccines is the issues faced testing vaccine candidates for 2003 SARS and MERS. Vaccine efforts paused/halted because the vaccine candidates tried caused vaccine-associated hypersensitivity, and in animal models, lung pathology when challenged by live virus. In a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine context, vaccine-associated hypersensitivity could mean the majority of infections that otherwise were mild or asymptomatic have a higher likelyhood of outright acute respiratory syndromes.
I've read that some 90 vaccine candidates are currently in development. We may need that many to find one that confers immunity without hypersensitivity. All praise to those volunteering for early human trials, they're braver than me.
― speaking moistly (Sanpaku), Wednesday, 29 April 2020 20:17 (four years ago) link
One of the nice things about the fact that pharmaceutical companies are largely all owned by the same three index funds is that it's not in the interests of the index funds for the pharmaceutical companies to makes swingeing profits if that would cripple every other company the index funds invest in (IE every other company) - there's already been a lot of co-operation between them and I'd be amazed if whichever of them comes up with the cure tries for Shrekli-size gouging.
― Andrew Farrell, Wednesday, 29 April 2020 20:18 (four years ago) link
xps:
The traditional method of disposing human waste from trains is to deposit the waste onto the tracks or, more often, onto nearby ground using what is known as a hopper toilet.
― speaking moistly (Sanpaku), Wednesday, 29 April 2020 20:37 (four years ago) link
Trying to price gouge on a vaccine or drug treatment that could end or control this global pandemic would only be effective as a way of committing corporate suicide. The full weight of the world's governments and people would crush your corporation like a bug.
― A is for (Aimless), Wednesday, 29 April 2020 20:57 (four years ago) link
is shortage of ventilators still an issue in NY?
― akm, Wednesday, 29 April 2020 22:28 (four years ago) link
no, because the peak number of infections was far lower than expected (20k vs. 120k expected) thanks to social distancing... hopefully.
― Nhex, Wednesday, 29 April 2020 23:34 (four years ago) link
Hotspots are prisons and jails.
Sad but predictable.
― Ira Einhorn (dandydonweiner), Wednesday, 29 April 2020 23:49 (four years ago) link
the official projections are ridiculous. At this rate we’ll reach 74,000 dead by next week, not August
― Dan S, Thursday, 30 April 2020 00:19 (four years ago) link
Yep. Most of the models/projections I've seen assume a normal distribution (perhaps why the Trump administration thinks this is just going to go away as fast as it showed up).
The current distribution shows that it's significantly right-skewed and could have a pretty long tail.
― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Thursday, 30 April 2020 01:11 (four years ago) link
On March 27, as emergency rooms in New York and across the country began filling with coronavirus patients struggling to breathe, President Donald Trump posted on Twitter to urge Ford and General Motors to “START MAKING VENTILATORS, NOW!”One of the thousands of replies that the tweet attracted struck an equally urgent tone: “We can supply ICU Ventilators, invasive and noninvasive. Have someone call me URGENT.”Its author was Yaron Oren-Pines, an electrical engineer in Silicon Valley. A specialist in mobile phone technology, he currently has just 75 followers on Twitter and no apparent experience in government contracting or medical devices.But three days later, New York state paid Oren-Pines $69.1 million. The payment was for 1,450 ventilators — at an astonishing $47,656 per ventilator, at least triple the standard retail price of high-end models.Not a single ventilator ever arrived.
One of the thousands of replies that the tweet attracted struck an equally urgent tone: “We can supply ICU Ventilators, invasive and noninvasive. Have someone call me URGENT.”
Its author was Yaron Oren-Pines, an electrical engineer in Silicon Valley. A specialist in mobile phone technology, he currently has just 75 followers on Twitter and no apparent experience in government contracting or medical devices.
But three days later, New York state paid Oren-Pines $69.1 million. The payment was for 1,450 ventilators — at an astonishing $47,656 per ventilator, at least triple the standard retail price of high-end models.
Not a single ventilator ever arrived.
― let me be your friend on the other end! (Karl Malone), Thursday, 30 April 2020 01:22 (four years ago) link
nice
― mookieproof, Thursday, 30 April 2020 01:45 (four years ago) link
we are already at 61,000+ deaths and losing 2000+ more each day. assuming a normal distribution at this point is gaslighting
― Dan S, Thursday, 30 April 2020 02:08 (four years ago) link
the amount of newly printed money going to places that have no reason to get exponentially richer during this...sigh. I can blame people but it's just accepted at this point. No one cares.
― Yerac, Thursday, 30 April 2020 02:23 (four years ago) link
am i wrong in thinking that ventilators are beginning to be acknowledged as not the best option for severe COVID patients unless it's that or death?
― Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Thursday, 30 April 2020 03:24 (four years ago) link
i think it's more now they are more prepared and have more time to start better therapies before it gets to ventilator level.
― Yerac, Thursday, 30 April 2020 03:33 (four years ago) link
i feel like governments are looking at the flattening curve and going 'Wow! I guess the virus is getting... less deadly!'
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 30 April 2020 09:02 (four years ago) link
It's fucked up. Israel is now also deconfining precipitously, while Germany is already seeing the virus rise up again after their dumb deconfinement.
― Joey Corona (Euler), Thursday, 30 April 2020 09:07 (four years ago) link
The death rate isn't especially relevant to the question of easing lockdown, it's the *infection* rate that matters. Unfortunately most governments don't have anywhere near reliable enough data about the infection rate, whereas they do have a pretty good grasp on how many people are dying. The infection rate needs to be down way below the level it was in early March and that's a gigantic challenge that most governments aren't even close to solving right now.
― Matt DC, Thursday, 30 April 2020 12:00 (four years ago) link
But see Matt, I stopped drinking and my life improved, so things are better now, which means I can start drinking again.
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 30 April 2020 12:13 (four years ago) link
I might start making plans for things - in the future - once I had a chart in front of me that looked like this:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EW0GLuPUMAAuUt2?format=jpg&name=large
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 30 April 2020 13:48 (four years ago) link
China: We discovered a new virus.America: So what?China: It's DangerousAmerica: It's only a FluChina: Wear a MaskAmerica: Don't wear a Mask... pic.twitter.com/Qxugv8z73J— China Xinhua News (@XHNews) April 30, 2020
make sure to watch the video as well
"the world is laughing at us" was one of trump's catchphrases during his 2016 campaign
― let me be your friend on the other end! (Karl Malone), Thursday, 30 April 2020 15:55 (four years ago) link
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/3a8xpn/what-we-know-about-remdesivir-the-antiviral-drug-dr-fauci-says-can-block-this-virus
The stats don't sound that great for late-stage patients. Is the reason that Fauci is excited about this due to its efficacy for early-stage treatment?
― DJI, Thursday, 30 April 2020 16:26 (four years ago) link
I think antivirals commonly help most as an early stage intervention and their efficacy drops the later they are introduced. They also are not 'cures', so much as they reduce severity of symptoms and shorten the length of recovery. But that's still worth being excited about.
― A is for (Aimless), Thursday, 30 April 2020 18:14 (four years ago) link
that 'bay area CEO' who took 69 million to build these ventilators appears to be a total grifter from my two minute cursory look at his linkedin profile; there's no 'company' he's CEO of, that's the name of his own consulting practice which has nowt to do with ventilators. No idea how he conned NY into paying him; maybe he said he had arrangements to have things manufactured.
― akm, Thursday, 30 April 2020 18:17 (four years ago) link
“He's always a go-getter. Anytime there's opportunity, he's always been out there trying to help and make a buck,” said Ritter (his former supervisor at Google).
― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Thursday, 30 April 2020 18:36 (four years ago) link
Of interest to those using cough syrup for symptom relief:
A seventh compound – an ingredient commonly found in cough suppressants, called dextromethorphan – does the opposite: Its presence helps the virus. When our partners tested infected cells with this compound, the virus was able to replicate more easily, and more cells died. This is potentially a very important finding, but, and I cannot stress this enough, more tests are needed to determine if cough syrup with this ingredient should be avoided by someone who has COVID-19.
― speaking moistly (Sanpaku), Thursday, 30 April 2020 22:34 (four years ago) link
The base is galvanizing the virus
― genital giant (Neanderthal), Thursday, 30 April 2020 22:41 (four years ago) link
If anyone needs a detailed/well-referenced guide to just how much this administration fucked up the response to the pandemic, this is a good guide:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/04/trump-coronavirus-timeline/
― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Thursday, 30 April 2020 23:35 (four years ago) link
I don't think I will want to know about that for 30 years or so, give me time to get over it.
― silby, Thursday, 30 April 2020 23:45 (four years ago) link
there's another one of these articles every day now, does this one have any revelations?
― akm, Friday, 1 May 2020 00:55 (four years ago) link
more than 30,000 new cases today in the US, with again more than 2,000 deaths, now almost 1,000,000 active cases
― Dan S, Friday, 1 May 2020 02:12 (four years ago) link
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/agriculture/2020/04/29/trump-order-reopen-meat-packing-plants-create-anxiety-waterloo-farmers-who-face-destroying-pigs/3047760001/
i know this is kind of an obvious point, but people who eat meat should consider eating less meat right now
― let me be your friend on the other end! (Karl Malone), Friday, 1 May 2020 06:30 (four years ago) link
if you're eating meat, on top of all the other stuff i'm biting my tongue on, you're asking people to risk their lives to perform an "essential service" that is not at at all essential
― let me be your friend on the other end! (Karl Malone), Friday, 1 May 2020 06:31 (four years ago) link
I have been thinking that.
― silby, Friday, 1 May 2020 14:41 (four years ago) link
idk how easy it will be for low income folk to drastically change their diet on a whim
― genital giant (Neanderthal), Friday, 1 May 2020 14:46 (four years ago) link
(but I don't want the plants to re-open)
― genital giant (Neanderthal), Friday, 1 May 2020 14:51 (four years ago) link
the people who usually pitch a fit about not being able to eat meat every meal are not usually the people who are most vulnerable.
― Yerac, Friday, 1 May 2020 14:57 (four years ago) link
yeah, i know everyone has their own situation and that it's more realistic for some than others, but i just mean maybe the 7-days-a-week meat eaters could consider cutting a few of those days out
― let me be your friend on the other end! (Karl Malone), Friday, 1 May 2020 15:02 (four years ago) link
yeah, i actually have very strong opinions about people who feel a psychological need to eat meat every meal, every day.
― Yerac, Friday, 1 May 2020 15:04 (four years ago) link
as long as the peanut butter plants stay open
― mookieproof, Friday, 1 May 2020 15:15 (four years ago) link
https://i2-prod.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/incoming/article7871269.ece/ALTERNATES/s1227b/JS47563228.jpg vs. https://thecounter.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/chicken_processing_speeds-e1505425687673.jpg
That locally crafted faux blue cheese I once bought was probably more labor intensive than meat products, but I can't think of any vegan food whose market economics demand hundreds in one room at close proximity...
― speaking moistly (Sanpaku), Friday, 1 May 2020 15:32 (four years ago) link
it's definitely more prevalent in meat-packing plants, but it's also becoming a problem at other food processing plants.
https://thefern.org/2020/04/mapping-covid-19-in-meat-and-food-processing-plants/
― genital giant (Neanderthal), Friday, 1 May 2020 15:44 (four years ago) link
the only motherfucking peanut butter I can find right now is motherfucking Skippy, that shitass american import. normally we get peanut butter that's intended for Africans and is waaaaaay better because waaaaay less sugar. think it comes from the netherlands, but we can't get it right now. sucks.
― Joey Corona (Euler), Friday, 1 May 2020 16:00 (four years ago) link
peanut butter is one of the things we always bring back from the US because of that sugar problem everywhere else.
― Yerac, Friday, 1 May 2020 16:05 (four years ago) link