outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

has anyone posted the out out damn spot vers. yet?

Gotta pick your poison, I’m a “this is the water, and this is the well” man

I was thinking that was William Burroughs at first (remembering the "Soul Killer" track from that Laswell Seven Souls album), and googling it just now I see it's Frank Herbert from Dune. Probably should watch Lynch's version at some point, or read it.

I still read it in Burroughs' voice, though.

ordered a Knoll chair to enhance my working-from-home ergonomics (currently terrible due to bad ikea chair)

On the recommendation in John Meyer's The Great Influenza, am now starting into Katherine Anne Porter's Pale Horse, Pale Rider (1936).

Meyer describes the novella as the only piece of great literature to arise from the 1918 pandemic. Robert Penn Warren describes it as "top level...of the world’s short novels". I'd never heard of it.

talk to me when universal and warner back out lol

FWIW,
https://variety.com/2020/biz/news/warnermedia-exits-sxsw-2020-coronavirus-1203524867/
https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/record-labels/9327781/record-labels-travel-coronavirus

coworker's young son admitted to the hospital with all the symptoms. could be just normal flu but i'm sure they are freaking out.

BREAKING: By a 20-point margin, Americans say Trump’s handling of the Coronavirus makes them less likely to vote for him.https://t.co/TCyz7frXKx

— Andy Slavitt (@ASlavitt) March 5, 2020

^too soon to make a real difference in November. just another pebble on the heap that will weigh against him.

by a 43-point margin, americans will completely forget about this in November unless it directly affects them and they get sick

incompetence makes that more likely:

I just got back from an international business trip. In the last two weeks my travels had me visiting Milan, Italy, Singapore, and Malaysia before ending in Dubai, from which I was banned to travel to either Bahrain or Saudi Arabia because of my recent travel history.

In each of those stops, except Dubai, I had my temperature screened before entering. I was explicitly asked whether I had been to China. The disease’s presence went from background to foreground as it ended up cutting my trip short when KSA and Bahrain denied entry.

I wondered what would happen when I returned to the USA? Yesterday I found out: nothing. I got off the plane and there were no thermal testing centers. Not one of the DHS officials were wearing masks or gloves, there were no signs up or announcements about disease concerns. I use GOES and that scans my picture page, asks me a perfunctory set of non-changing question that do not include anything about COVID-19, and then I hand the receipt to an ungloved, unmasked official who did not review the entry/exit visas in my passport.

I could have just as easily been coming back from a Disaster-Porn photoshoot of Wuhan and it wouldn’t have mattered one bit. Now I’m free to roam about the country. I’m healthy and I really doubt I’m a carrier, but do we know this is going to be the case of everyone coming in? If the government were more interested in actually doing their jobs rather than managing a good press image I’d feel better about the next few months ahead.

^too soon to make a real difference in November. just another pebble on the heap that will weigh against him.

― A is for (Aimless), Thursday, March 5, 2020 4:34 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

experts say the 'vid is gonna make a comeback in the fall.

if we're lucky and it goes away before then

What percentage of Americans hope Trump gets covid? 60%?

xps:
ATM, the scary convention is the Emerald City Comic Con, March 12-14 in Seattle. 2019's drew 98,000.

.@NationalNurses President Deborah Burger reads a public statement from one of our quarantined #nurses who works at a northern California Kaiser facility.

Full statement ➡️ https://t.co/YjTAvAXTRX#COVID19 @WorksafeCA pic.twitter.com/pSZ1ghCB2k

— Bonnie Castillo (@NNUBonnie) March 5, 2020

REading the replies to that tweet is startling. It seems like some americans are determined to treat this like a hoax or flat earth conspiracy wtf :/

this is the country where we're getting measles outbreaks because rich white parents don't want to vaccinate their children

no doubt there are tons of legit americans who believe that it's a hoax (that's what the president and fox is telling them).

there are probably also quite a few of trolls (either of the foreign interference variety or just the homegrown 4chan variety) that are just trying to create chaos

xp this is also the country where mike pence's ignorant fear of needle exchange programs directly led to 127 HIV infections in southern Indiana that could have been averted (out of a total outbreak of 215 cases)

btw, remember last week when trump named pence head of the response, to the surprise of Azar (who was the nominal head of the response until then), who then awkwardly took to the podium to say that he was still co-leading the project, as trump literally gave a thumbs up and walked out of the room?

There was a noticeable absence on stage Wednesday when members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force gave a press conference: Health Secretary Alexander Azar.

According to Politico, that wasn’t an accident: Vice President Mike Pence asked Azar not to attend the briefing. A spokesperson for Pence told Politico, in the publication’s words, that “officials wanted to make room on stage for Ben Carson,” the Housing secretary. A spokesperson for Azar said simply that the task force members would be “rotating through as necessary” in the group’s daily briefings.

At first, Azar was the top Trump administration official leading the White House’s task force. Then, at a press conference last week, Trump said Vice President Mike Pence would be leading the effort — reportedly to Azar’s surprise. Pence has since brought on Dr. Deborah Bixby, an AIDS expert, as another point person.

office_space_milton.jpg

Two days old, but India is restricting exports of some 26 pharmaceutical drugs, including paracetemol, acyclovir, and a bunch of antibiotics that are commonly used to prevent opportunist infections in hospital settings. Slowdown of Chinese production of drug precursors, noted last month, is probably responsible. Probably a matter of time before supply interruptions hit US healthcare.

Azar was not a 'Trump inner circle' guy. Trump wanted one there, not to run anything, but to look out for his interests, which mainly consist of deflecting blame for bad stuff away from Trump and claiming credit for Trump whenever there is good news. Also, he needed a mouthpiece who would spin everything properly, instead of a public health official who, if allowed, would just tell the truth without thinking first about how that might affect Trump.

Isn't Azar a Pence guy, from Indiana?

Katherine Anne Porter's Pale Horse, Pale Rider

Wonderful book. Great last paragraphs, emerging from illness into a weird world emptied of so many people.

Alex Michael Azar II (/ˈeɪzər/ born June 17, 1967) is an American attorney, politician, pharmaceutical lobbyist, and former drug company executive

he is also co-leader of the executive task force designated to lead the effort to provide suggestions to mike pence on coronavirus [disputed - citation needed]

we're in good, washed, hands

welp this has hit the SF school system - one of the big high schools (Lowell) has closed because one of the students is related to one of those idiots on the cruise ships

For your acquaintances still saying its just a flu:

news.com.au: Chinese doctors say coronavirus 'like a combination of SARS and AIDS'

the AIDS comparison seems p irresponsible

That whole article seems pretty irresponsible. Iirc none of the Chinese findings have been peer reviewed, and I'm not sure how down I am with "Communist Party mouthpiece the Global Times."

yeah a lot of garbage in there

i'm not going to mention it to my acquaintances. it doesn't even explain why AIDS. because clickbait.

This is a pretty cracking what-we-know summary https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus

2 unrelated mystery cases confirmed in SF. Authorities assume the virus is spreading in the city.

The comparison to AIDS:

Diao et al, 2020. Reduction and functional exhaustion of T cells in patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). medRxiv.

And yes it's 2 weeks old and not yet peer reviewed. There are about 4000 Scholar results to date, and very few have gone through the whole peer-review process. One has to look at the authors and whether they have a credible background. These guys do. There are definitely some who aren't.

Can you understand why “Chinese doctors say coronavirus ‘like a combination of SARS and AIDS” is still a bad headline?

one important way in which nCoV-2019 is very much unlike HIV is that the mutation rate is positively glacial by comparison:

the greatest divergence from reference known in nCoV is 10 nt point mutations in 4 months: https://nextstrain.org/ncov?m=div

HIV mutates more than that within an untreated host within weeks of infection. From a vaccination perspective, the chances nCoV will be more like HIV (herculean efforts over the course of decades have yet to produce a viable vaccine) than like the flu (pick some peptide variants and make a vaccine of them) are basically zero

comparisons to AIDS given the nature of HIV are deeply irresponsible and Sanpaku also lay off the doomsauce

News.com.au is an Australian news and entertainment website owned by News Corp Australia. 

like, the divergence of flu virus worldwide in 35 years is roughly comparable to the divergence of HIV in an untreated host in 9 months

it's straightforwardly ignorant to draw any comparison between this virus and HIV, or this disease and AIDS

like fuck off

silby dropping HIV science I was about to

like, just because something damages the immune system does *not* make it like AIDS or HIV

Even if they were similar in that way, it would still be an irresponsible headline

All headlines are irresponsible

FWIW news.com.au is a Murdoch paper/news source so approach with relevant caution (ie wipe on arse).

some kids at some diploma-mill university 2 blocks from my work (a non-diploma-mill university) got COVID. it's coming for me baby, woooo.