outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

4/5

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/c_scale,f_auto,fl_progressive,q_80,w_1600/k56uryal1yejdimkk8mf.jpg

I mean... it depends what you're talking about. If you win an election with 80% of the vote, yes, it's a vast majority. If you're talking about rates of severe illness requiring hospitalization, in a population where a lot of people are going to get the virus, 20% of illnesses being severe seems pretty significant.

I know everyone here is taking this seriously, I'm just getting really frustrated with being in Seattle and having people around me downplay this.

I feel like the prediction (mentioned by someone way upthread) that this will eventually become like the flu, sort of an ongoing and omnipresent risk that many people get at some point in life (but that we develop reliable treatments and periodically-administered vaccines for), is probably sound.

My thinking also.

Maybe washing my hands with habanero seeds would be effective aversion training. BRB.

Its weird, I'd started to get myself into the "wash hands often, especially just after public transport use, and STOP TIOUCHING YR FACE" like a year ago, because I was tired of getting colds - and it worked pretty well too, so I'm already in good habits but now I also have severe eczema on my hands :(

Guessing we'll see a lot fewer "Kiss Me - I'm Irish" t-shirts at St. Patty's Day parades this year.

"Kiss Me; I'm Virus Free."

"Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me; Your Tongue's Like Poison"

Oh shit, have you ever touched hot peppers with your bare hands? It hurts! Ironically enough, one of the few things to make it feel better is rubbing alcohol, so not only will you not touch your eyes or face (more than once), you'll be constantly disinfecting your paws.

Public Health Seattle & King County has issued guidance that all employees should work from home if they are able.

xp. umm, no it doesn't hurt?

unless you have cuts on your hand or like eczema or something

i used to be obsessed with putting fresh hot peppers on everything. I had to stop because I wear contacts and you also can't get busy as often.

Thanks, silby, I sent that to my housemates. Maybe this will help persuade the holdouts to start taking it seriously.

It totally hurts! Not, like, handling them whole, but cutting them? Absolutely!

pepper empathy

poor little guys

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/all-we-can-eat/post/should-you-wear-gloves-while-handling-hot-peppers/2012/10/30/de6134b2-22d7-11e2-ac85-e669876c6a24_blog.html

Coon said she once had students helping her harvest super-hot peppers, including the Bhut Jolokia (or ghost pepper) and the hottest of all chilies, the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion, which averages 1.2 million Scoville heat units. They were all wearing surgical latex gloves.

“Within 20 minutes, everyone’s hands were burning,” she says. “It was a little miserable harvesting that stuff.”

Coon’s story supports some online anecdotes that make the same claim: Wearing latex gloves while handling super-hot peppers is not enough. The capsaicin will burn right through the latex. This About.com writer suggests wearing rubber dishwashing gloves, which might protect your hands but, I suspect, would make handling peppers akin to trying to deal blackjack with astronaut’s gloves on. A gardening forum suggests nitrile gloves, the kind used for medical examinations and oil changes.

wait it doesn't "burn right through the latex"

also. the eventual plan is to put that shit in your mouth, right?

Yeah, and when you do it hurts! But imo the burn I got on my hands from habeneros felt more like a, well, burn.

Anybody else visually creeped out by the coronavirus "avatar"? I just did a double-take at a dragonfruit display at Whole Foods.

yeah, it's too much work to wear gloves if it's just one pepper at a time. but you really feel it later when you accidentally scratch or stick your finger in your eye.

or take a pee

I have a great story about making ghost pepper salsa I should share sometime

I use nitrile gloves to cut anything hotter than a jalapeño now

I can imagine that ghost peppers are a whole different story. I was thinking about chopping up say scotch bonnet or something never burned my hands.

have had some very bad experiences with chili tainted hands, which belong in ILTMI

we might've had a case in clinic today

i watched a cbs news clip on youtube about this poor guy in new rochelle who spread it to his family and neighbors and they put his name and photo in the story? wtf. i'm beginning to accept i'm just going to get it. i'm reading the internet too much. i work with numerous diverse members of the public every day, and by the time they close my job for the emergency it'll be too late. my bf does too, even worse. he's not gonna know he has it and he'll give it to me. good luck usa

also can you guys believe it's been 12 years since lj posted "good luck usa" on an election thread for barack obama and i'm still saying it? what a disaster

i'm also pretty resigned to getting it, tbh. i work in healthcare (granted, not the sector of it most at risk to exposure, but still) and spend all day with strangers.

Just talked to my five housemates here in Seattle, now that King County is advising that people work from home and avoid large gatherings. Of the five, three are now going to be working from home/working alone and limiting time in public, and one can't work from home but insists he's being very careful. I had a brief moment of relief after talking to them, and then I talked to housemate #5. He basically was like, "yeah, I don't think this is important enough that I should let it interfere with my life." He works for a company that will let him work from home, but he's going to work anyway. He goes to group dance classes four nights a week, he goes to the gym, he traveled last weekend and is traveling again next weekend, and he eats all his meals out. So I guess there goes my faint hope of battening down the hatches and avoiding this thing.

I will never stop getting busy with fresh hot peppers

was good luck USA not started by specific user such as imago

Yeah as harbl says

Altho I think it may have been the 2012 election? (Citation needed)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9YirNgAzXI

Altho I think it may have been the 2012 election? (Citation needed)

Googling indicates harbl is right re 2008.

ahhh sorry read ‘I’ not ‘lj’

can’t believe it’s been 12 years since that slag slammed good luck USA into an american election. still freaks my nut out to this day

I went to an awards ceremony last night in Central London and the woman I was sitting next to (a colleague) now has a fever. Sitting on her other side? Zoe Ball! Let's see how breakfast goes on Radio 2....

Trump calls it “corona flu” and suggests it’s ok to go to work if you catch it

Here is the President of the United States telling the country it's okay to go to work with Coronavirus.

I'm not kidding. pic.twitter.com/Tz4kKbyear

— Matt Rogers 🎙 (@Politidope) March 5, 2020

he doesn't actually say that though

Trump is speaking at HIMSS 2020 in Orlando next week (the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society conference). The attendance list is an endless parade of awful people: https://www.himssconference.org

More on it:
https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/innovation/coronavirus-wont-knock-out-himss-20-trump-speak

Companies are cancelling from it:
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/03/amazon-intel-cisco-salesforce-back-out-of-himss-due-to-coronavirus.html

I think all the tech companies have wussed out of SXSW. Amazon, Apple, Netflix, TikTok (lol), Facebook, Twitter ...

talk to me when universal and warner back out lol

Has anyone else been making a mental list of a-list older people who might not be in the best of health?

Trump
Biden
Sanders
The Queen
Prince Phil
Rupert Murdoch

and so on

because if there's a decent chance one or more will succumb then this will be an even bigger deal