outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

One of the effects of not having any vaccine for COVID19, as there is each year for flu, is that medical professionals universally get vaccinated for flu and thus do not require extraordinary protection measures when treating most flu patients in order no to become infected themselves. Properly treating COVID19 patients includes much more protective gear to isolate the caregivers from the patients. Not only is testing woefully inadequate so far, but the stockpiles of protective gear may not be adequate to the need, exposing doctors, nurses and other workers to infection, so they may become vectors themselves. The emerging shortage of gear is also starting to be felt locally and showing up in news accounts.

This sort of situation is why the CDC is desperate to slow down transmission via social measures, like urging more hand washing and voluntarily limiting one's exposure to other people, especially in crowds. These measures alone will only slow the spread somewhat, but it buys time to start ramping up the response to levels more nearly able to cope once the infection really gets rolling.

I hope other ilxors are talking to their family and friends about taking this seriously. Not in a panic, but with extreme respect for the amount of social wreckage it could do in a very short time frame.

given the absolute horror of the outbreak at the nursing facility in Kirkland, I'd strongly recommend ilxors with loved ones in elder care facilities (1) call up and ask detailed questions about their preparedness to screen visitors or outright stop visits and to prevent transmission from staff to residents (2) purchase a two-way telepresence device of some kind for them (if they're with-it enough to tolerate it) so you can maintain your visit schedule without going in, if you're satisfied with their answers to the first question (3) figure out a way to quarantine them in your own home, if you aren't satisfied.

Italy set to make it illegal to enter or leave Lombardy.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/07/italy-set-to

Yup.

This is a serious development and would, as far as this draft suggests, mean an effective quarantine of over 10 million people https://t.co/OYVxC5FNTo

— Jamie Mackay (@JacMackay) March 7, 2020

can we do this with slack

In locked down Wuhan, teachers use an app called DingTalk to set homework. Kids realised if it got enough one-star reviews it would be removed from App Store. Thousands of reviews flooded in, and DingTalk’s rating fell from 4.9 to 1.4 overnight. Legends. https://t.co/HGjZhVfgUa

— Mike Bird (@Birdyword) March 7, 2020

if sports events start turning into televised empty crowd events, the surreality will jump up a notch

STEELE: ...And in just about every league, they're really following these developments closely. Late last night, the NBA sent a memo to teams to be prepared to play games with just their essential staff, so no fans. It doesn't mean that they'll do it, but just to be ready. What I'm hearing is that the next two weeks are going to be really critical.

SIMON: Will the NCAA consider canceling March Madness or making the kind of accommodation that we mentioned? I mean, no fans means no or limited income, doesn't it?

STEELE: Of course. Yeah, ticket sales are really important. But, of course, the TV deal dwarfs whatever they're going to do on the ticket side.

Finally an explanation for the CDC testing fiasco:

Quillette: Don’t Test, Don’t Tell: The Bureaucratic Bungling of COVID-19 Tests

Now that doesn’t mean that you can’t screw up the coronavirus test if you really set your mind to it. And in fact, that’s exactly what the CDC did in January, when they rejected the World Health Organization’s proposed test panel for SARS-CoV-2 (the official name for this particular novel coronavirus which causes the disease COVID-19) in favor of a gold-plated test panel of the CDC’s own design. After all, why just test for SARS-CoV-2 when you could also test for other SARS and MERS viruses? Unfortunately, with complexity came error, and these initial CDC triple-test kits had a flaw in one of the multiple tests, ruining the entire test. Now the CDC is producing a solo test for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, but this fiasco set us back weeks in test-kit supply.

Don’t link to fucking Quilette you credulous boob

Jesus

Really taking the mask of your wannabe ecofascism lately dude

I don't know a single thing about Quillette. I'd never heard of them prior to 10 minutes ago. I just know that this is a plausible reason for the issues with the testing, and it was posted by Chris Martinson, who I've followed for 13 years. He's also been on top of Covid19 since late January.

As for ecofascism, I've been following collapse related issues for around 22 years or so. Is Jared Diamond an ecofascist? Greta Thunberg?

is there a magazine

collapse monthly

What’s COVID’s VORP?

Idk is a guy who has a website called “peak prosperity” a disaster capitalist hmmmm hmmmmmmmmmmm hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Christ dude you’re the one who weeks ago was nodding approvingly at the Xi regime for having the required authority to lock up a whole province get a fucking grip

Am going to put the phone down and read a book instead of possibly libelling Jared Diamond

In a Daily Beast article, Alex Leo described Quillette as "a site that fancies itself intellectually contrarian but mostly publishes right-wing talking points couched in grievance politics".

Venice has been collapsing for centuries now. Then again, sometimes sinkhole opens in Florida and swallows four houses in as many hours. Collapse is a land of many contrasts.

While Martenson calls himself a scientist in the video’s titles, his claim to the label is, according to him, based on a 1994 PhD from Duke’s Department of Pathology where he specialized in toxicology. While he published scientific research in the ’90s, for at least the last decade Martenson has focused on predicting stagflation and other large shifts in financial markets.

lol

Sanpaku if you had more than a one track mind you might be aware of anything at all on the planet of earth other than your own pitiful survival.

Climate change is of the utmost importance, behind protecting his inheritance.

xp silby:

Absolutely. China, South Korea, and Singapore are about the only countries on the planet that are treating a novel disease with this R0 and this CFR with the requisite concern and national policy. Perhaps Taiwan as well, though they've been spared serious tests by local community transmission disease clusters.

I believe that by late April or early May, you'll have a practical understanding of why China's policy was a very good one when facing this bug.

did I forget to tell you to eat shit and fuck off forever

Nazi fucking freak

Silby, I'm not going away. I'm not going to spend my time insulting a stranger on the internet, either.

well pig let me tell you, it's pretty cathartic

whoa dude chill

about the fash pig swanning around like he's the prince of science? I won't

Uh I'm not Paku's biggest fan but you turned off U Dumb Street and went right down Godwin's Alley

Sanpaku is an ignorant petty authoritarian wannabe brownshirt with a fetish for disaster and an obvious weakness for pseuds and charlatans, it's shocking he hasn't already started a "race science? just asking questions!" thread, I'm sick of his bullshit

I've done PCR DNA amplification in the lab. Not rtPCR, which became prominent out after I left mol bio work. It's plausible to me that the higher complexity of a tripartite test for the three related coronaviruses would have more kinks than the single tube protocols that were published as early as 24 Jan and were endorsed by WHO.

To date, I hadn't seen a plausible explanation for CDC's issues getting a test out. A lab was contaminated? That would have been apparent during verification. I'm curious. I like other people that are curious and thought others might be interested.

Sanpaku I'm not reading the article published by the phrenology, anti-trans hate, and white supremacy blog

so go fuck yourself

By the way, I'm very much in Timothy Snyder's corner on the whole ecofascism question.

I'm not arguing with you, I'm telling you to fuck off

yes but what's your evidence

I'll show you evidence! *balls fists ineffectually*

Sanpaku I'm considering learning to fight so I can kick guys like you in the balls when they come for the Jews and trans kids, what martial art is the best for kicking you in the balls, as an expert in all human fucking knowledge

Ooookkkk

Silby is otm re Quillette. You might as well link a Jordan Peterson op-ed.

or the Protocols of the Elders of Zion

Is this yet another example of ILX taking bad faith interpretation of a user's behavior?

Ehh, probably

how much winking am I supposed to tolerate from this asshole

"Peak Prosperity" my fucking ass

Idc who does what, just saying Quillette is toxic and shouldn't be linked if it can be avoided

silby i fear i may have misgendered you upthread and if so i am really really sorry

Ok piece on Taiwan's response.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/07/coronavirus-outbreak-taipei-taiwan-china

I've done PCR DNA amplification in the lab

congrats? so have all my 10th graders

Quillette is trash.

just delurking to say that as a former employee of both the scripps institute of oceanography and the lawrence berkeley cyclotron, and as a current science teacher, i feel so much fucking shame and disappointment when i see ppl pay attention to sanpaku's puffed up credentials and jargon. it just means my profession has broadly failed to innoculate ppl against charlatanry.

Hey, look, if it's ever determined that a particular skull shape or jawline predisposes you to coronavirus, Quillette will 100% be first on the case. So why not give them, and those who link and quote their articles, the benefit of the doubt?