outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

maybe we can convince the President and his Cabinet to get the virus to own the libs

which would be better for containment: the kids staying at home and only being in close contact with immediate family, or the kids going to school every day and effectively being in close contact with all of the other kids + their immediate families?

Exactly. Leaving aside the risk to teachers, the risk is that you'll start with a few families having the virus, the kids will take it to school where it will circulate, and then a lot of families will have the virus. Kids have to get the virus to spread it; if they're not at school, the risk that they'll get it in the first place is lower.

I take Josh's point, though; there are a lot of jobs that can be done from home if employers cooperate, but a lot more jobs that can't. And remember that study about how many people don't have an extra $400 to cover emergencies? You can't, practically speaking, tell everyone to just stay home and not earn money.

Pay people to stay home tbh

As someone hinted at upthread, there are also quite a few jobs where the technology easily exists for the work to be done remotely, but the managers, often out of some misguided belief in "team unity" or "productivity", flat out refuse to allow it.

the pence task force, i mean, the task force led by pence but actually chaired by azar, who is leading it in conjunction with pence, is what i heard, or something - is off to a good coordinated start

Who’s in charge of the Trump administration’s coronavirus response? During the White House press briefing Wednesday night, it was difficult to tell.

President Donald Trump had announced minutes into the press briefing that Vice President Mike Pence would lead the administration’s response to the outbreak. “I’m going to be announcing exactly right now” that Pence would lead the administration on the matter, Trump said. “Mike will report back to me.”

That “blindsided” the man who had been leading the government’s response, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, The Washington Post reported Wednesday citing five unnamed people familiar with the situation. Politico reported, citing four unnamed people familiar with the matter, that Pence’s appointment was a “shock” to Azar and his team.

“That doesn’t speak well to a joined-up process,” Joshua Busby, an associate professor of public affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, told TPM.

Azar chairs the White House task force on coronavirus, which was announced in late January. But Pence is expected to lead the task force’s meeting Thursday, the Post and Politico reported. At a congressional hearing Thursday morning, Azar described himself as “chairman of the President’s coronavirus task force and working in conjunction with the administration’s lead for the virus, Vice President Pence.”

Wednesday night, after the President had stopped taking questions on his administration’s approach to the outbreak — clashing with public health officials but acknowledging the White House would spend more than initially planned to fight the virus — the health secretary appeared to be digesting the news in real time.

“Mr. President, do you still have confidence in Sec. Azar, given the Pence move?” a reporter asked the President. Azar’s eyebrows arched dramatically.

“I have great confidence,” Trump said before Azar interjected.

“If I could just clarify, I think you’re not getting the point here of this. I’m still chairman of the task force,” he said. Pence’s involvement, Azar said, “gives me the biggest stick one could have in the government on this whole-of-government approach.”

“When the President — when this was mentioned to me, I was delighted that I get to have the vice president helping in this way,” Azar said, as Trump slipped out the door to the briefing room.

lol

don't worry, azar - you'll suddenly be in charge again when it comes time to fire someone over this

pence is now taking time out of his busy coordination schedule to address cpac

have we decided whether or not this is being overblown by a callous and cynical media or is in fact a good deal more serious than is being suppressed or handwaved away by the new world order yet

or is it just a reason to be snappy at each other either way like

Seems likeliest to me that school closures will happen, so as to slow down the spread. It will spread regardless, but a slower spread would reduce the strain on the medical system in treating those with the most severe symptoms, who may only be a limited subset of those who are infected, but who will require urgent care.

What health authorities are hoping to accomplish is to lower the height of the local spike in symptomatic (sick) people and spread it out over a longer time so it will not overstrain facilities and lessen the immediate disruption to society. They have no hope of preventing everyone from getting exposed to it. They just want to slow it down and spread it out as the best-case scenario.

Ugh

https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/484942-japan-confirms-first-case-of-person-reinfected

This poor fellow tells journalists he doesn't have coronavirus, and then... pic.twitter.com/pxn3EGlZbc

— Peter Liakhov (@peterliakhov) February 27, 2020

(Can't vouch for accuracy, but it's disturbingly amusing.)

http://www.welovetheiraqiinformationminister.com/images/07-minister.jpg

Government health officials and scientists will have to clear statements about the coronavirus outbreak with the office of Vice President Mike Pence, in an effort to tighten the White House’s control of messaging about the virushttps://t.co/gD393dnJ50

— The New York Times (@nytimes) February 27, 2020

https://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/rush/images/books/prog-02.2016/prog-02.2016-2-s.jpg

I don't know much about Gavin Newsom, but watching his presser right now and it still, even after all this time, remains striking what a lucid, intelligent person sounds like compared to President Lunkhead.

Now banned in China:

https://www.ndemiccreations.com/en/22-plague-inc

Pence: 'How about instead of saying that 30 more people have died from the virus in the US, we say there are now 30 fewer cases of the virus in the US. Think positively, guys!'

shouldn't we be reframing this as the number of christian pilgrims who are now on their way to their final eternal home?

Get ya mkat out pic.twitter.com/eph9WeQYGK

— nis (@nisateexx) February 26, 2020

don't worry folks, the great m-cat revival is going to save us!

For a second there I thought you were suggesting people were suddenly heading to medical school.

there was quite a rage in the UK for mephedrone when it wasn't yet a class b banned substance, you had to be there!

There's a case in Northern Ireland now.

Mephedrone can't be worse than the live info overdose I'm experiencing as we speak.

I've stopped going to the swimming baths as a precaution, it probably wouldn't kill me but I'm not allowed to be ill.

What you need is a license to ill. It's your right!

You are completely correct but I've got two disabled dependants in my home, one with autism and one with MS who might be very vulnerable to coronavirus. I can't complain though it is probably still a better situation than people who don't get paid by their employer when folowing correct self-isolation instructions.

Japan hasn’t closed its schools as much as it has brought forward the start of spring break by a couple of weeks.

Australia launch its pandemic response plan yesterday. Given the government is dealing with a major bribery scandal and coming up with new ways to be disingenuous about not dealing with the climate crisis. Launching and taking ownership a plan made over several years (and several admin) by career civil servants and doctors is a timely distraction.

Having read what’s in it I’m saying bring on my caseof the corona virus. Get it now and you get a couple of weeks in hospital care for by spacemen. Once we all get it down to the MCG for quarantine camp between the goalposts.

I’ve got a friend coming from Hiroshima in a week, maybe I get lucky and she can be my vector.

I'm wondering at what point it makes sense to change my daily routines - stop going to the gym, stop going to my dance class, avoid public transportation, etc. I don't want to overreact and hibernate unnecessarily (not to mention that it won't do me personally much good unless the other people in my shared house do the same thing, which they won't), but at the same time, if everyone hibernated a bit more, presumably the virus would spread more slowly.

Or fewer people would build immunity. I dunno, I think if there's no outbreak nearby or even lone patients in your area, avoiding other people seems like (for lack of a better word) overkill. Though I was just talking a few weeks back with my wife how I sometimes think going to the gym makes me more prone to illness, just being around all those people breathing hard through their mouths while grasping machines ...

"Specifically, if 60% rather than 20% of air travelers maintained clean hands, it could slow down the spread of infections by almost 70%, according to the researchers."

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/why-hand-washing-really-could-slow-down-an-epidemic

I'm not allowed to be ill.

100% understand that. You're the lynchpin.

So I'm starting to get targeted ads for both Corona Light and Corona Seltzer.

xxpost The gross thing about that is 60% is the ambitious high number, rather than, you know, 100%.

What worries me is the lack of testing. A couple weeks ago my housemate came back from Hawaii with a cough and a fever. She called her doctor to ask if she should be tested for coronavirus, and was told that they wouldn't test her unless she developed pneumonia symptoms. So far, two more of the people in my house (there are six of us) have gotten whatever it is. It seems like it was horrible and has left them with a lingering cough but otherwise didn't last too long. (We're all under 40 and healthy nonsmokers, for context.) Now, was that flu, or was it a mild coronavirus? Probably flu, but there must be tons of other cases just like it where people could have been tested but weren't, and some of them are going to turn out to be the coronavirus.

^bingo!

How long did it last? The thing about the flu is that it knocks you out for days, often as long as 10 to 14. A lot of people who avoid flu shots think that they've had the flu and it is no big deal when in fact they just had bad colds or some other 4-5 day bug or virus. And then if they get the flu they remember, oh yeah, this is what it likes, it really sucks. Coughs tend to linger, regardless.

The lack of testing resources has epidemiologists greatly concerned, too. At this point in the process they are working to clarify the situation as best they can, making broad assumptions, based on very limited data sets.

The bad part of it only seems to have lasted two or three days, but with a high fever for 1-2 of the days. Mostly cough, sore throat and body aches, no sniffles. So not a normal cold, but not a flu lasting weeks, either. I haven't gotten it yet. I think it's unlikely to be the coronavirus, but just in case I'm avoiding my parents for a few more days to make sure I'm not coming down with it.

I don't usually get really sick, but the last time I did it was pneumonia. This was several years back. High fever, cough, felt like shit. The tipping point was recognizing that even Advil or whatever only brought my temperature down to around 100. Even then I made it several days before I went to the doctor. I was functioning, as far as I was concerned, I just felt like shit. To my doctor's credit they suspected what was up pretty quickly, and a chest x-ray confirmed it. Point being I guess that sick and feeling bad can ultimately be pretty subjective, both fortunately and unfortunately, which makes it really tough to know if what you have is an emergency or just common.

I'm inviting "you" here generally, btw.

invoking!

Yeah, what's going around my house does not seem to be an emergency, just very unpleasant. My concern is that if, as they keep saying, a lot of coronavirus cases are mild, we or people like us could be infecting others and we would have no way of knowing.

How long did it last? The thing about the flu is that it knocks you out for days, often as long as 10 to 14. A lot of people who avoid flu shots think that they've had the flu and it is no big deal when in fact they just had bad colds or some other 4-5 day bug or virus. And then if they get the flu they remember, oh yeah, this is what it likes, it really sucks. Coughs tend to linger, regardless.

^^^This. Up until several years ago I was an idiot that didn't get a flu shot. I then got the flu and it took me almost a month to really feel better (I was 44 at the time). The major symptoms were gone in a week, but I still had general fatigue for a while. Then the cough lingered for almost three months, basically until the weather turned warm.

In regards to how severe this is, I've seen a lot of folk claim it's more likely to be fatal than the flu, but they arrive at that by comparing the global Coronavirus fatality rate with the US flu fatality rate, which is significantly lower than the worldwide fatality rate.

Isn't it difficult to say what the fatality rate will be in the US vs globally since we don't have a large enough sample size of the infected vs the deceased here yet?

What is the 2019 global mortality rate for the seasonal flu? I can't find it.

Think we all agree it's serious, but worldwide impacts hard to define ...yet

https://www-health-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.health.com/condition/infectious-diseases/coronavirus-worse-than-flu?

xp:

The CDC has been a mess here. Inbound non-citizens from China blocked, but no such restrictions for Italy, South Korea or other hotspots. South Korea is on target to have tested 87,000 people by Friday, while the US will have tested under 500.

Mind, this doesn't need to be an expensive test. Throat swab, labeled sterile tube, return envelope is all clinicians need on hand. At most molecular biology labs, the main additional element required would be PCR primers specific to SARS CoV-2. Then the other reagents required for any RT-PCR are added (all automated in better funded labs), samples loaded into a 96+ well block heater, and cycle them for 30 minutes. Drop in a fluorescent probe for dsDNA and get a reading. Once routine, results turnaround could be under 24 hours. Even if the test is imperfect, even if it gives out too many false positives and negatives, its still valuable in identifying individuals that should self-quarantine, and clearing individuals that were exposed.

Should add above that while most molecular biology labs do RT-PCR routinely, I'd restrict US testing to labs with biosafety level 3 and above. I'd suspect there's still several dozen that would qualify.

this thread, jesus Christ how does this admin manage to fuck up everything in the worst way possible

So here's what appears to be chain of events:

The Trump administration repatriated infected Americans over the objections of the CDC.

HHS then sent federal workers to interact with the infected population without adequate training or protection

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) February 27, 2020

As mentioned, our schools here in Vietnam have been closed since Lunar New Year and could be closed another month. The official decision is coming today I believe. The ministry of education has said that schools have to finish the school year by mid-summer so the current plan being floated is to allow some grade levels, the ones with important end of year exams, to resume school, in order to stagger students turning to school. The small test prep school I work for has pivoted hard to online lessons to stay running

it's odd to me -- trump is such a germophobe (remember his comments about the ebola doctor?) i figured he'd lock the infected americans out. but i guess he's worried about panicking the markets . . . and also the infected americans were probably white