outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

While we are talking Portland, I drove past Voodoo Donuts last weekend and there was a line of about 60 people, elbow to elbow. Only a few were wearing masks.

They’re not even good donuts

seriously... of all things put yourself at risk for

Clay, too, I think. I know he grew up in LO.

― A is for (Aimless)

yah and that's where i've been since just before this started, caring for an older relative, hi everybody!

if you're standing elbow to elbow then masks probably aren't effective anyway

what is the percentage of actual covid related deaths we think are accurately being reported in the US? 60%? 70%?

About 60% is the norm in the developed world. NYC did considerably better, closer to 80%.

And Mexico appears to be reporting only 40% of their covid deaths. Reuters: Mexican funeral homes face 'horrific' unseen coronavirus toll

Based on information from 13 funerals homes in the capital belonging to Mexico’s two biggest chains, the excess mortality rate in the first week of May could be at least 2.5 times higher than the government’s official coronavirus tally during that period, according to Reuters calculations.

this is pretty fucking raw
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/19/nyregion/ny-coronavirus-hospital-morgue-worker.html

Ms. Sander has not been sleeping well. She thinks about the silhouette of a stomach under the body bag, the jiggling of skin on a dead body.

Her lower back aches. Lifting a body from the lowest shelf in the trailer is grueling. When she pushes a stretcher through winding hallways and on steep ramps, she often bumps into the wall, causing a twinge in her back.

She carries a thin, older woman whose body is still warm. The feeling reminds her of hugging her grandmother, who died earlier this year.

She calls her mother — “just sort of to talk to someone,” she says, “to confirm that yes, this is really happening, that my life hasn’t just become a strange dream in which I work in a morgue and the only people I touch are the dead.”

Also: recent CDC guidance updated to suggest contact with surfaces is an unlikely vector:
https://www.nydailynews.com/coronavirus/ny-cdc-coronavirus-does-not-spread-easily-on-contaminated-surfaces-20200521-qew7vcei25bedftqv6v3ov67py-story.html

Feel like she was signing onto some gruesome sights when she decided to work in a NYC morgue whether or not it was during a pandemic.

xp I'm not listening to anything coming out of this CDC until (if) it is rehabilitated in January

i guess? that article (and everything else i've read) suggests this is like doing that work during wartime.
I'm still spending four or five day a week at the brooklyn cemetery. Whenever I get up near the front, the main building is constantly belching smoke. it's intense.

oof

this op-ed by jonathan safran foer is one of best pieces on this topic that i've seen:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/21/opinion/coronavirus-meat-vegetarianism.html

excerpts for those without subscriptions to the failing nyt:

Most everyone has been doing more cooking these days, more documenting of the cooking, and more thinking about food in general. The combination of meat shortages and President Trump’s decision to order slaughterhouses open despite the protestations of endangered workers has inspired many Americans to consider just how essential meat is.

Is it more essential than the lives of the working poor who labor to produce it? It seems so. An astonishing six out of 10 counties that the White House itself identified as coronavirus hot spots are home to the very slaughterhouses the president ordered open.

In Sioux Falls, S.D., the Smithfield pork plant, which produces some 5 percent of the country’s pork, is one of the largest hot spots in the nation. A Tyson plant in Perry, Iowa, had 730 cases of the coronavirus — nearly 60 percent of its employees. At another Tyson plant, in Waterloo, Iowa, there were 1,031 reported cases among about 2,800 workers.

....

Animal agriculture is now recognized as a leading cause of global warming. According to The Economist, a quarter of Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 say they are vegetarians or vegans, which is perhaps one reason sales of plant-based “meats” have skyrocketed, with Impossible and Beyond Burgers available everywhere from Whole Foods to White Castle.

Our hand has been reaching for the doorknob for the last few years. Covid-19 has kicked open the door.

At the very least it has forced us to look. When it comes to a subject as inconvenient as meat, it is tempting to pretend unambiguous science is advocacy, to find solace in exceptions that could never be scaled and to speak about our world as if it were theoretical.

Some of the most thoughtful people I know find ways not to give the problems of animal agriculture any thought, just as I find ways to avoid thinking about climate change and income inequality, not to mention the paradoxes in my own eating life. One of the unexpected side effects of these months of sheltering in place is that it’s hard not to think about the things that are essential to who we are.

We cannot protect our environment while continuing to eat meat regularly. This is not a refutable perspective, but a banal truism. Whether they become Whoppers or boutique grass-fed steaks, cows produce an enormous amount of greenhouse gas. If cows were a country, they would be the third-largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world.

...

We cannot protect against pandemics while continuing to eat meat regularly. Much attention has been paid to wet markets, but factory farms, specifically poultry farms, are a more important breeding ground for pandemics. Further, the C.D.C. reports that three out of four new or emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic — the result of our broken relationship with animals.

yeah that was very good I thought

It's interesting to look back and try to pinpoint the pivot from "wash your damn hands" to "wear a damn mask" was, seems like months ago in this current time warp.

It probably happened during a bathroom break the speed at which news developed

i wish i could find this article i read a while back (that iirc was credible but if i can't remember where i read it...) about how there are super meat eaters in the US who consume a major % of all meat consumed despite being a small minority. my memory says it's something like 30% of ppl eat like 70% of meat? i'm totally making those numbers up but some extreme discrepancy like that - maybe someone knows what i'm referring to? i tried google-fu'ing it the other day but couldn't find it.

Much attention has been paid to wet markets, but factory farms, specifically poultry farms, are a more important breeding ground for pandemics. Further, the C.D.C. reports that three out of four new or emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic — the result of our broken relationship with animals.

Zoonotic disease was not better avoided when the great majority of people lived and worked on farms in daily close contact with animals. Much bigger factors in the spread of modern pandemics would be the fact that billions of people now live crowded together in urban metropolises, and the prevalence and speed of long distance travel, especially by airplane. Covid-19 spread to every place on earth, remote islands included, in a matter of months.

Veg isn’t necessarily safer with the e-coli issues that have been coming up recent years. Time to develop a taste for insect protein? joy.

afaics, all food processing that requires workers standing at a conveyor belt performing hand-processing will present the same problems as pork or poultry processing plants. Here in Oregon, one frozen food plant that processes field-harvested vegetables, and a seafood plant that processes ocean-harvested seafood have been hot spots, cited for unsafe working conditions, but no meat-processing plants. Many non-food manufacturing plants have not become hot spots for the simple reason their assembly lines are shut.

I'm in tune with citing meat consumption as a major problem in global warming. Factory farming is often cruel, too. But trying to use the current pandemic to indict meat-eating by playing on the fact that covid-19 is zoonotic is very special pleading that would never originate from an epidemiologist, because the causal link being flogged here is far too weak to support the argument.

afaics, all food processing that requires workers standing at a conveyor belt performing hand-processing will present the same problems as pork or poultry processing plants. Here in Oregon, one frozen food plant that processes field-harvested vegetables, and a seafood plant that processes ocean-harvested seafood have been hot spots, cited for unsafe working conditions, but no meat-processing plants. Many non-food manufacturing plants have not become hot spots for the simple reason their assembly lines are shut.

if i understand what you're saying, you think that meat processing plants are no more dangerous to workers than non-meat processing plants?

i honestly can't respond to that with certainty. i know for certain what factory farm meat processing facilities look like, and i understand why they're dangerous. i tried to look up, just now, what it looks like inside of food processing plants that don't involve meat. as you might expect, it seems to vary widely depending on the product.

all i know is that in all of the coverage about how nationwide, meat processing plants have been popping up as hotspots, it's almost always emphasized that it's meat. if the conditions in meat and non-meat processing facilities are the same, it would be very odd for this pattern of covid19 infections to emerge in just the meat facilities:

Case numbers spike in meatpacking cities
Across the country, production at meatpacking plants and other food processing centers has slowed or stopped because of large outbreaks, including one at a Smithfield facility in South Dakota that sickened more than 1,000 people and three at Tyson facilities in Iowa that sickened hundreds of people.

The Times has identified more than 100 food processing facilities across the country with coronavirus outbreaks. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said at least 4,900 meat and poultry processing workers had been infected across 19 states, and at least 20 had died. Though outbreaks have been reported in every region of the country, the rural Midwest and South have been especially hard hit.

Some companies, including Smithfield, have refused to answer even basic questions about the size of their outbreaks. And in some places, state and local health officials have also been silent. In Kansas, state officials said there were more than 2,100 meatpacking-related cases and six deaths spread across 10 clusters, but they refused to name those facilities. In Nebraska, where the National Guard has helped with the mass-testing of meatpacking workers, state and local officials have often refused to provide details. Officials in Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina, among other places, have also not provided that information.

Small counties with large meatpacking industries have reported some of the country’s highest numbers of cases per capita. In Nobles County, Minn., 631 workers at a pork processing plant have tested positive. In Cass County, Ind., where at least 900 Tyson workers tested positive, the number of known cases surged from roughly 50 to more than 1,400 over three weeks. And in Dakota County, Neb., which has the second-highest per capita infection rate of any American county, roughly one of every 13 residents has tested positive.

The outbreaks have proved devastating to the immigrant communities that often supply much of the labor at those plants, as well as to the farmers who depend on the facilities for their livelihoods.

Mr. Trump recently declared the meatpacking plants to be critical infrastructure, part of an effort to keep the facilities open. But restaurants have already reported meat shortages, many grocery stores have imposed quotas on meat purchases and some farmers have euthanized animals they could not take to market. In central Nebraska, the mayor of Grand Island called for federal help testing employees of his city’s hard-hit JBS USA beef processing plant. And in Illinois, where there have been multiple meatpacking outbreaks, Attorney General Kwame Raoul called for federal action to keep workers safe.

“This executive order lacks meaningful safety measures and puts workers at processing plants at risk,” said Mr. Raoul, a Democrat.

(yes, i know that article refers to "other food processing centers" as well. but in almost all the specific examples that have emerged, at least that i've seen it's a meatpacking plant)

you think that meat processing plants are no more dangerous to workers than non-meat processing plants?

When you speak of "dangerous" I will presume you are speaking of the danger of spreading covid-19, not the dangers of wielding razor sharp knives or being spattered by fecal matter. In which case, I would expect a major difference in the danger of contracting covid-19 between the Oregon frozen vegetable processing plant and the Smithfield or Tyson plants would be sheer size and number of workers crammed together.

a Smithfield facility in South Dakota that sickened more than 1,000 people and three at Tyson facilities in Iowa that sickened hundreds of people.

The Oregon processors could not begin to duplicate those kinds of numbers, if only because nowhere near those numbers were employed there. Much like the super spreader in the Korean mega-church, one highly infectious person is going to spread the virus more widely in a factory employing 5000 workers than in one employing 80. It's still just one infectious person, but the opportunities are far greater.

lol

After Coronavirus, Office Workers Might Face Unexpected Health Threats

Stagnant plumbing systems in emptied commercial buildings could put returning employees at risk of Legionnaires’ and other illnesses.

I'm in tune with citing meat consumption as a major problem in global warming. Factory farming is often cruel, too. But trying to use the current pandemic to indict meat-eating by playing on the fact that covid-19 is zoonotic is very special pleading that would never originate from an epidemiologist, because the causal link being flogged here is far too weak to support the argument.

― A is for (Aimless), Thursday, May 21, 2020 10:57 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

although we don't have any reason to think that covid originated from factory farming it was the likely source of H1N1 (overcrowded pigs in Mexico).

there's a book called "big farms make big flu" which I had in my hold queue at the library before the libraries were shut by covid - which argues that factory farming not only makes pandemics more likely but in fact inextricably leads to virus evolution

xp to aimless

the full op-ed is behind a paywall so i understand if you haven't read it, but i guess i'd just say that the "zoonotic origins" mention was not a major component of his argument against eating meat

Stagnant plumbing systems in emptied commercial buildings could put returning employees at risk of Legionnaires’ and other illnesses

Soooo fucking glad I'm not office bound

i'd just say that the "zoonotic origins" mention was not a major component of his argument against eating meat

there are many good arguments against eating meat, especially as a daily part of one's diet, but the zoonotic origins of pandemics is very weak and given how many good arguments can be made, totally unnecessary to raise at all.

factory farming it was the likely source of H1N1 (overcrowded pigs in Mexico)

if, by "source" you mean a reservoir of infection from which the H1N1 jumped to the human population, that seems reasonable. if by "source" you mean that H1N1 did not exist until it originated among those pigs, that would be incorrect.

as for virus evolution, crowding can be a factor that allows a new viral variant to easily spread within a local population, by ensuring a continuous chain of transmission. Bats seem to be a perfect model for this, too, but bats don't interact with humans as much as domesticated animals do.

Spock, what are the odds of getting a royal fizzbin?

My tricorder is giving a surprising result, Captain, I’m afraid I will need to consult with the ship’s computer.

copy that

readings are all over the place due to the ion fizzbin

Interesting read on how covid clusters and doesn't spread uniformly https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/why-do-some-covid-19-patients-infect-many-others-whereas-most-don-t-spread-virus-all#

What has Australia done that has worked so well? Anything different than the well-known strategies (stay at home, masks, etc.)? In early March, when I was tracking the Worldometer page closely, Canada and Australia were moving in lockstep for about a week. Canada has done a good job throughout this, but I noticed this morning that Australia has virtually eradicated COVID--almost nothing for the past month. Seems like this should be a huge story.

http://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/australia/

Australia is huge and doesn't have as many people in it? Just guessing here.

True, but that applies to Canada, too--it made sense to me early on that we would track similarly because our countries are so similar geographically.

Checked, and we're almost next to each other on the world's population density list: Canada's 187th, Australia 192nd. (We're ahead in raw population, 38M to 25M.)

Most Australians live in about six cities, irrespective of how large the land mass is.

The short answer seems to be early border closures and huge amounts of testing.

I have no science to back this up by the UV is brutal down here (and worse in New Zealand); does that kill more virus out in the environment?

Locked borders and mandatory quarantine for arrivals came in pretty early, but on the other hand we had a direct flight to Wuhan right through Chinese New Year and generally a lot of Chinese (and other) tourists through the summer Lockdown hasn’t been severe and people have been pretty shit at distancing, very few masks out there, but lockdown started early in terms of the curve.

Did we get exposed to a less virulent strain than the one that spread through Europe and the US?

Most Australians live in about six cities

We're a little bit like that, though probably not as extreme: our six biggest cities account for 40% of our population. (Toronto and Montreal account for about a quarter.)

Did we get exposed to a less virulent strain than the one that spread through Europe and the US?

I wonder if there's some validity to that.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52754280

UK scientists are to begin testing a treatment that it is hoped could counter the effects of Covid-19 in the most seriously ill patients.

It has been found those with the most severe form of the disease have extremely low numbers of an immune cell called a T-cell.

T-cells clear infection from the body.

The clinical trial will evaluate if a drug called interleukin 7, known to boost T-cell numbers, can aid patients' recovery.

It involves scientists from the Francis Crick Institute, King's College London and Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital.

They have looked at immune cells in the blood of 60 Covid-19 patients and found an apparent crash in the numbers of T-cells.

Prof Adrian Hayday from the Crick Institute said it was a "great surprise" to see what was happening with the immune cells.

"They're trying to protect us, but the virus seems to be doing something that's pulling the rug from under them, because their numbers have declined dramatically.

The researchers say these findings pave the way for them to develop a "fingerprint test" to check the levels of T-cells in the blood which could provide early indications of who might go on to develop more severe disease.

But it also provides the possibility for a specific treatment to reverse that immune cell decline.

Manu Shankar-Hari, a critical care consultant at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital, said that around 70% of patients that he sees in intensive care with Covid-19 arrive with between 400-800 lymphocytes per microlitre. "When they start to recover, their lymphocyte level also starts to go back up," he added.

We've been testing like crazy, that's the big thing. My state has had 1 case in the last 4 weeks, but they're still doing thousands of tests.

This would in theory explain the very broad range of reactions to the virus, I guess? (xpost)

We're a little bit like that, though probably not as extreme: our six biggest cities account for 40% of our population. (Toronto and Montreal account for about a quarter.)

40% of the Australian population live in Sydney or Melbourne. In all the top 6 cities account for two-thirds of the Australian population.

.. I feel like I had a similar conversation to this on here recently?

clearly the UK is controlled by Big Tea

And Big Tea is controlled by Jews or Muslims apparently:

https://www.newsweek.com/covid-19-conspiracy-theories-england-1505899

At least they've separated England out from the rest of the UK there.

Can't say I'm surprised:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/may/22/hydroxychloroquine-trumps-covid-19-cure-increases-deaths-global-study-finds