outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

just heared talk on BBC WS that one early symptom you have become infected can be a complete loss of smell and taste, didn't catch the whole report but not heard that one before.

yep, discussed a bit upthread but thread moves fast

def worth noting

Not just early symptom, for many that may be the *only* symptom.

It means once the food's run out you can eat toilet paper instead.

probably much tastier than bark, soil or decaying human flesh - as long as it isn't 2nd hand!

has anyone else done testing on this scale before?

Are there more silent #COVIDー19 spreaders than we thought?

Iceland, which is able to test its entire population, found half of those who tested positive had no #coronavirus symptoms. More @business: https://t.co/ggejlSZKHL pic.twitter.com/jHrM7LCWct

— QuickTake by Bloomberg (@QuickTake) March 23, 2020

their population is about the same as confirmed cases worldwide...

The thing is, you can try to liberalize movement and economic activity in a few weeks in many regions if you have sufficient testing, surveillance, contact tracing, PPE, etc. But we don’t have that.

— Ed MD (@notdred) March 23, 2020

from the NYT:

The White House’s coronavirus response coordinator offered a grim assessment of the virus’s assault on the New York metropolitan area Monday evening: She said that nearly 1 in 1,000 people in the region have the virus, an “attack rate” five times that of other areas.

The coordinator, Dr. Deborah L. Birx, said at a White House briefing that the rate of infection showed that the virus has been spreading for weeks.

Dr. Birx added that 28 percent of tests for coronavirus in the region were coming up positive, while in the rest of the country the rate is less than 8 percent.

“To all of my friends and colleagues in New York, this is the group that needs to absolutely social distance and self-isolate at this time,” Dr. Birx said. “Clearly, the virus had been circulating there for a number of weeks to have this level of penetrance into the general community.”

“Penetrance”?

Apparently a term of art in the field of genetics, but certainly used wrongly here.

It was used just in case, you know.

xp: Because Iceland has 1000 years of geneological records, its long been a center for research on congenital diseases and genetic predispositions. I wouldn't be at all surprised if they tested everyone starting in January...

they stared on March 13th and had tested 9768 people as of March 21st

Unimportant question I think about anyway: how far in advance are commercial buys for television made? I find it very strange these days watching ads for a world that's not the same.

i even feel that way watching modern TV watching people going out and...doing...stuff!

Yes, very weird listening to otherworld Arches on Radio 4. No Corona but Phillip the builder is just about to be unmasked as a wrong-un since one of his slave boys blew up grey gables.

It's only the shows that are supposed to be realistic that feel really off. I was watching an old episode of Doctor Who, and a character dipped his hand in green goo, raked it over his face, and promptly turned into a monster. I was like, "welp, that's what you get for touching your face."

As I was typing that I felt something crawling on my face and promptly clapped a hand to my eye thinking it was a bug. Of course it was just my hair. Great job, me.

i've been charging up for my ilx special move for 3 days, and now i am ready to deploy. behold, an extended TPM quote:

At my hospital, it feels like the proverbial calm before the storm – we have not seen many COVID-19 cases yet, but the numbers are increasing and we are watching the news from Seattle and NYC with grim anticipation. All our effort is focused on preparation right now – sorting out testing challenges, developing diagnostic algorithms, building staffing models, and trying to calm the fears and anxieties of patients, families, staff, and colleagues.

We are doing all of this with the understanding that we must come up with a plan to care for the patients – and ourselves – without federal help. City and state leadership are doing what they can, but I think all of us have come to accept that the Trump administration will not intervene. None of us think that Trump will use his power to compel PPE or ventilator production, call for a nationwide shelter-in-place order, or do anything about the disgraceful lack of testing. Why? Because we didn’t vote for Trump. It’s as simple as that. Seattle, New York, and California aren’t Trump strongholds, so whatever happens here – even preventable deaths – is not his concern.

Trump’s plan going forward is clear. He will call for a return to “normal activity” by the end of the month, claiming he has evidence that the epidemic is slowing and the economic consequences are too great. Overwhelmed hospitals and increasing deaths in big cities will be written off as evidence that their (Democratic) mayors and governors are incompetent. If and when the epidemic spreads to Trump country, he and his minions will blame areas which suffered earlier (which, again, are conveniently all blue states) for not doing enough to stop the spread, with some way found to blame immigrants as well. And of course, all of the health care system problems that this epidemic is exposing will be ascribed to Obamacare.

It is a difficult time for health care professionals at all levels. We are doing our best and will always do so, because this is what we trained for. But the job is being made immeasurably more difficult because we know that we need the federal government’s help, and it will not be coming.

TV shows --

I remember after 9/11 watching an episode of the new "Outer Limits" - this one, as a matter of fact - about a time traveler who keeps coming back to 2001 to save the world from, ahem, a global virus.

And the establishing shot each time, that he was back in the past, was a skyline shot of New York City, complete with World Trade Center. Kinda brought it home to me there on the couch on 9/15 or whatever.

an extended TPM quote

There is no evidence that this is what will come to pass as Trump’s plan going forward, but it has the sad ring of truth to it. Our main hope is that even so rudimentary a plan as was outlined is beyond Trump's ability to envisage. If he figures that out on his own, he'll try it, no matter how many people die as a result. Because that's how he rolls.

It calls to mind a snippet of an interview on television with a Trump voter before the 2016 election. The forty-something white male said as near, as I can paraphrase him, "I figure Trump will either be one of the best presidents we've ever had, or one of the worst, and I'm willing to take a chance on him."

About 50 guests gathered on March 5 at a home in the stately suburb of Westport, Connecticut, to toast the hostess on her 40th birthday and greet old friends, including one visiting from South Africa. They shared reminiscences, a lavish buffet and, unknown to anyone, the coronavirus.

Then they scattered.

The Westport soirée — Party Zero in southwestern Connecticut and beyond — is a story of how, in the Gilded Age of money, social connectedness and air travel, a pandemic has spread at lightning speed. The partygoers — more than half of whom are now infected — left that evening for Johannesburg, New York City, and other parts of Connecticut and the United States, all seeding infections on the way.

Westport, a town of 28,000 on the Long Island Sound, did not have a single known case of the coronavirus on the day of the party. It had 85 on Monday, up 40-fold in 11 days....

https://www.courant.com/coronavirus/ct-nw-nyt-coronavirus-connecticut-super-spreader-20200323-akznc44v4zhhzpajkmb7w6kftq-story.html

So we're doing The Trolley Problem but the most important thing is to save the trolley

— Mark Agee (@MarkAgee) March 24, 2020

Although the Iceland data is a small sample to date, mass testing has to be the global objective now.

"A high proportion of asymptomatic infections could partially explain the high attack rate among cruise ship passengers and crew. SARS-CoV-2 RNA was identified on a variety of surfaces in cabins of both symptomatic and asymptomatic infected passengers up to 17 days after cabins were vacated on the Diamond Princess but before disinfection procedures had been conducted (Takuya Yamagishi, National Institute of Infectious Diseases, personal communication, 2020). Although these data cannot be used to determine whether transmission occurred from contaminated surfaces, further study of fomite transmission of SARS-CoV-2 aboard cruise ships is warranted."

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e3.htm

That doesn't mean the active virus was present (I learned a couple of hours ago).

Ah, I did not know that.

The worldometer chart I check obsessively added a new column today: total deaths/million population (Italy, 101).

So how about that Hantavirus eh

yes make sure you socially distance yourself from rats

i ain't changing my life for no virus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWzGoIs2KE0

Unimportant question I think about anyway: how far in advance are commercial buys for television made? I find it very strange these days watching ads for a world that's not the same.

Just talked to my wife, who is in advertising, and she told me some interesting stuff I never considered. For one, right now there is literally *no* production of commercials going on. Nada. Anything being made is all being cobbled together from stock footage or being farmed out to, like, popular youtubers or whatever. But more interesting to me was her observation that because of that, there are millions and millions of budget-dollars not being spent right now. No sports means no ads, no ads means all that money that would have been spent on ads is just sitting there. Looking ahead, an even bigger challenge (for advertising) is that should this resolve by, say, fall (possible/likely), that's election season, so that even when advertisers are ready to spend again, a lot of the airwaves will be taken up by political ads. Her guess is that companies will spend that time and money in the interim shoring up their businesses for when, well, business resumes.

I've seen this extremely ill-timed spot a couple of times now, legit shocked that it doesn't seem to have been pulled yet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYuyS1Oq8gY

this is from today's toronto star. i've written and backspaced four different jokes about it but honestly maybe it doesn't need any. pic.twitter.com/GjgkUjzNsa

— raina douris (@RahRahRaina) March 24, 2020

But it was... in the stars to crowd together! #fallsfrombelief

we can see into the wrong future

galaxy brane

need help contextualizing this nyc attack rate thing for my partner who thinks this means it's going to be as bad as italy here

Some testimony from an intensive care doctor at my local hospital who's recovering from it:

His symptoms started "innocuously", he said, with a "burning sensation" in his nose and a loss of the sense of taste.

He did not develop a cough – one of the two most typical symptoms of the virus (along with a fever).

But this was followed by "a week of just feeling absolutely terrible – aching muscles, aching bones, unable to get out of bed and sleeping 16-18 hours a day", he said.

would take that right now if offered tbf

NEW DELHI (AP) — India’s prime minister decrees lockdown of country of 1.3 billion for 21 days.

— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) March 24, 2020

Has he blamed Muslims for coronavirus yet?

Sleeping 16-18 hours a day sounds better then being fully present in the moment for most of it, frankly.

jfc, lockdown of 1.3 billion people by a single decree

these are crazy fucking times

xpost But did he develop a fever? It drives me nuts when these accounts leave out useful information, or elide over important facts. I keep seeing stuff like "At first I felt fine, no warning at all except a lingering fever that ... " The fever is the warning! It means you are not fine!

define 'lockdown' imo

i.e. london is supposedly in 'lockdown' but the Tube is packed and people are copulating in front of B&Q using coronavirus for lubricant

wut abt indias economy

apparently the brokerages are making sure their outsourced back offices there are allowed to go to work lol

The last 2 days have been sobering after showing some promise over the weekend:

https://i.imgur.com/vwdP6Wa.png