outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

with the strikes in public hospitals right now, the epidemic is going to make things delicate.

don't most average people go through, at max, one roll of toilet paper per person a week?

I’m used to doing most of my pooping at the office so we def will need more around here

josh, are you staying in an apt or hotel? I think there is only one person infected in o'ahu and they were on that cruise ship.

men use 4 a day iirc

depends how often they are planning to masturbate

nothing comes out of my butt when i masturbate.

omg

xpost new board des......wait, nah

i bet everyone in the usa wishes they had japanese toilet seats now.

been wishing for that for a while tbh

also I have been led to believe americans throw it over each others front gardens for some reason

um, it's called "Greeting the Moon"

I think there are 6 cases now in chile, all from people who traveled to e asia, mostly italy. It's hot as shit here right now and very dry so I wonder how that will affect transmission. everyone is still out protesting.

We're staying in an airbnb, so not packed with tourists.

This is full of all sorts of handy stuff:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

My bathtub is 1 ft from my toilet. And I hate half measures. I maybe go through a roll every two months.

wait, what does your bathtub being in proximity to your toilet have to do with how much toilet paper you use

yeah i think we go through one normal (non-plushy) roll for 2 people here a week usually. I think some people have toilet paper insecurity though? is that a thing?

xp I don't think we want to know that.

About a roll a month for me. Portable bidet, people.

Don't use more than 1 square of toilet paper to dry off when you get out of the tub

My tub is right by the toilet as well and was thinking, not so seriously but actually it would mean there were options if there was no paper. That would be TMI but it's only hypothetical.

bideting is totally fine.

i left a full kirkland package (30 rolls) at my apt when I moved and my friends moved in (2M). I came back to visit like 4 months later and went looking for toilet paper in the closet and noticed new charmin instead. I asked oh, did you not like that toilet paper brand or something." THEY HAD USED IT ALL ALREADY. I think some people just very much like to make an oven mitt whenever they wipe their butt.

Many of the squat toilets in much of Asia have spray hoses nearby. It all depends on one's standard of cleanliness.

bidet is better

i feel like squat toilets were really beneficial in having older asians maintain a lot more mobility than western counterparts. I am trying to look this up but it looks like no one has really been able to research it with a control group--- why certain ethnicities can hold deep squats longer/more easily.

it was only a matter of time before someone involved waffle stomping doctrine itt

xp crut:

I find that offensive. Rick Santelli here is perpetuating the lie that "it's just another flu". I've been pushing the opposite line here and elsewhere since epidemiology stats came out in early Feb. Given containment is no longer possible, if mitigation measures are successful, we can get US CFR under 0.6% (for 30% attack rate, ~ 600k dead), much lower if some effective antivirals prove effective). If everyone in the US got it now, all who require critical care, and most who require serious care, would die. 3% of the population (10 M dead). Santelli's call is one of the most irresponsible things I've seen from any broadcast journalist, ever. Santelli should lose his job over this.

There's been a run on toilet paper at a lot of Costco locations, apparently. But Costco also carries bidet attachments you can buy for a conventional toilet. Then again, if you are so paranoid you're also stocking up on bottled water, clearly you have no faith in our plumbing system, anyway, so bidet attachments are out. But what good is all that toilet paper if you don't think we're going to have running water?

I assume the people stocking up on bottled water don't drink tap water in the first place.

My figures above aren't that outlandish.

James Lawler, MD, MPH, U Nebraska
https://i.insider.com/5e62a449fee23d58c83a9e62?width=800&format=jpeg

It's not the flu.

why certain ethnicities can hold deep squats longer/more easily.

lol it has nothing to do with ethnicity, and it's not just for using the toilet in Asia, Russia, all over the world.

xpost It's definitely not the flu. But even if the flu is not as deadly, that doesn't discount the thousands of people who die from the flu every year without dominating the headlines the same way. If there is one good thing that comes out of this it will be reaffirming for the millionth time the importance of washing your hands.

ohhhh, what do you think it is. I was trying to figure out if it was some physiology thing. This was the first article that popped up for me. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2018/03/can-you-do-the-asian-squat/555716/

xpost

I was out last night, and I'm stuck in a mall for a while right now, and I have yet to see anybody who seemed even the bit concerned. I don't know if that in and of itself should be concerning.

It's not the flu.

The world's public health officials only freak out about the flu when especially uncommon and virulent strains appear. Their universally high levels of public warnings and unusually drastic interventions should be an excellent clue to people that this is not "just like the flu".

like the article says, it's practice. in some cultures it's just done a lot more.

I'm too lazy to find and embed but GIS yourself some Slav Squat

xxp

xpost Point being, even if it were "just like the flu," the flu is pretty deadly!

oh yeah, that is kind of what I was trying to say, obviously not successfully.

I am always very cautious about drawing conclusions based even on a significant number of reader reports. But having reviewed numerous accounts and combined those with many more from other published accounts, the following is clear: a substantial number of people are seeking medical care for respiratory illnesses (usually not severe) and being presumptively diagnosed with COVID-19 but sent home to take care of themselves and not being recorded in any registry or being contact-traced in any way.

When I say presumptively diagnosed let me be clear what I mean: patient presents with COVID-19 type symptoms, tests negative for the flu and other possible infections and may or may not have travel or contact histories that indicate a risk. Certainly many of these will be other things beside COVID-19. These are by definition not confirmed. But they aren’t just ‘seems sick and isn’t the flu.’ In many of these cases I’m talking to frontline clinicians who say based on experience, differential diagnoses, etc that they think these are likely COVID-19 cases. The issue is there are no tests. Where there are tests they’re being (understandably) rationed for people at high risk, presenting with severe disease, coming up in contact trace investigations etc.

In most cases these people are being told they might have it, how to self-treat at home and to self-isolate. In cases that appear to be mild that is likely the best medical and public health advice. But many of these people are not able to skip work. And again, critically, these presumptive diagnoses are not being reported on any registries.

Again, to be clear, they can’t and shouldn’t be reported as COVID-19 cases since they’re not confirmed. They haven’t been tested. My point is that there’s a significant population of these people and probably a substantial number of them have the disease. At least a non-trivial number do not have the financial ability to miss work, especially without proof that they have the illness.

It’s a really bad situation when the illness seems to be spreading over a broad geographic scope within the country. The continuing lack of testing capacity is a huge, huge problem.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-unreported-cases

The most significant difference I see between COVID19 and 'the flu' is that the more common strains of influenza must spread within populations where a good percentage has acquired some immunity to it, either through previous exposure or vaccination, slowing its transmission and limiting the number of people who are violently ill at any one time. The medical system sees influenza every year and it is well-adapted to it through long experience and systems that have been in place for decades.

This stuff has no barriers to transmission. Verified cases have now appeared in 99 countries. It is only getting started. We're going to be coping with this outbreak for many months to come. When the CDC recommended everyone be prepared for "disruptions" they were thinking not just about those who will become ill, but also the widespread repercussions of quarantines, school closures, whole industries (travel, entertainment) being gutted as people stop congregating - the sorts of stuff that's already happening.

This will only intensify in March. I'm hoping it stabilizes somewhat by mid-April and people get a handle on what daily life will look like while the world rides this out.

Apologies if I've missed upthread but has anyone here tested for it or know anyone who's tested for it?

Two of my colleagues went down heavy with something on Friday (different office) and are getting tested next week

xpost And despite all those immunities, and all that medical care, and all of everything, thousands of people die of the flu each year and multiples of that are hospitalized. Always a good reminder to always be vigilant about this stuff, since taking care of yourself annually to prevent the boring old flu is also a big step toward preventing the kind of things we are dealing with now.

To that end I just witnessed a bunch of above average hand washing at the mall. So: baby steps!

you seem really determined to make coronavirus equivalent to the flu

That's not what I'm saying or trying to say at all. I'm just hoping this sparks some self-care consistency on the part of people.

you keep doing that! (sorry, it's just irking me) you keep bringing up the flu, and then diverting to advocacy for hygiene consistency in general. like a cycle of "you know, the flu also kills lots of people and it's not a huge deal every year, just saying. but as long as it leads to more people washing their hands in general, flu or coronavirus, that's a good thing. i'm not saying it's like the flu!"

ok. sorry to irk.

it's ok, i'm sorry to be especially irkable. i think i'm sensitive to deja vu/loop feelings, recently, feeling locked into things. there's definitely a weird psychological effect of outbreak scares like this, quarantines, self-quarantines, unknown rates of infection, lack of testing, uncertainty, dystopia political administration and media, internet. internet. internet...so i'm just being weird. sorry josh.

np!

to balance things out, here's yet another quote from TPM, but this time a view from someone is listening to ITEOTWAWKI(AIFF) on headphones:

I found the updates on the perspectives, risks and the “Eerie Silence” from Covid19 to be very interesting to follow. As a TPM prime subscriber of an American living in Singapore I thought I could share a few perspectives of how we have been dealing being a top 5 Covid19 country for the past month. Singapore is a small city state that on a per capita basis has been at the top of the list of countries dealing with Covid19. In early February, I think the fear around Covid19 was really sinking in. Flights from China were cancelled, grocery stores were emptied by people stocking up for the apocalypse, shopping malls were empty, restaurants were empty and companies were implementing travel bans and splitting up working teams. By the end of February, the Covid19 outbreak continues – we still get new cases every day. But the fear has subsided. I think everyone is still afraid of it, but it is perceived a bit more as a flu plus plus. It has become one of those risks in life we just have to live with. Grocery stores are back to normal, shopping malls are full, restaurants are full again. Another anecdote – on the MRT (our Subway), at the start of Feb, it was typical to see the train cars only half full and more than 50% of those people were wearing face mask. Now, even though we get new cases every day, I look around and in a full train car of 100s of people, I only see 2 or 3 masks.

I think you received some blowback when you published some statistics to put things in perspective. It’s a tricky balance, but I think those perspectives are realistic and will sink in over time. It is not that Covid19 isn’t dangerous – it is a terrible development. But the flu data is pretty astounding if you really wanted to focus on it. Every year 300k to 600k people around the world die of the seasonal flu. The US CDC reports that there are over 20mn cases of flue this season alone (season starts in October) with 19 thousand deaths. I just read on the CDC website that 20 infants died last week from the seasonal flu. If Covid19 killed 20 babies last week we would all be horrified, but there are some risks in life we just get used to. I’m sure if we looked up traffic accidents and other stats that it would be pretty obvious that even if the Covid19 outbreak becomes as large as what happened in China, the average American is still more at risk of dying from driving home from work than from Covid19. If Singapore is anything to go by, the acceptance happened surprisingly quickly and within a month we are getting back to normal even though the outbreak continues.