outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

lol

that was my first good post for a couple of years. going to spark up a cohiba

President Fucko announced the new CDC recommendation to wear a mask in public by saying "It's voluntary... You don't have to do it..."

Once agin we are left wishing that stupidity only killed the stupid.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/ammon-bundy-pledges-physical-defense-for-those-who-defy-idahos-covid-19-order

oh please oh please oh please gather up at the bundy ranch, true believers

― let me be your friend on the other end! (Karl Malone), Friday, April 3, 2020 1:54 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

ranch covidians

― COVID and the Gang (jim in vancouver), Friday, April 3, 2020 5:16 PM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

put this in the fuckin louvre

jim in vancouver, that was exquisite. A+

awesome

flag post... for greatness

Amazing.

jim just leaked the title of the next Boards of Canada LP.

balaclava arrived a day early. yay masks.

this revolution will not be televised

https://i.ibb.co/mcqSFG4/rsz-1rsz-screencapture-facebook-slayerrob-posts-10157443615707981-2020-04-03-20-12-12.png

i disagree w/ the "risk of their lives" argument. they're taking precautions and most essential workers are not at-risk groups. most wfh are staying home to protect vulnerable people, not to protect their own lives.

most essential workers are not at-risk groups

This statement shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the facts. Everyone is at risk. What differs is degree of risk, not presence or absence of risk.

Very sad about this:

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/apr/04/medics-in-brazil-fear-official-coronavirus-tally-ignores-a-mountain-of-deaths

similarly: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-indonesia-funerals/exclusive-jump-in-jakarta-funerals-raises-fears-of-unreported-coronavirus-deaths-idUSKBN21L2XU

I don't think this is true:

"Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next."

https://amp.ft.com/content/10d8f5e8-74eb-11ea-95fe-fcd274e920ca?

But it is a good piece.

I found this one, by John Gray, interesting:

http://www.newstatesman.com/america/2020/04/why-crisis-turning-point-history

Much of that article seems well-grounded, as when he speaks in generalities, or about past pandemics or immediate necessities; he's ok when he makes short flights from these to nearby speculations. But when he turns full-bore futurist it falls flat, as with:

There will be celebrations as the pandemic recedes, but there may be no clear point when the threat of infection is over. Many people may migrate to online environments like those in Second Life, a virtual world where people meet, trade and interact in bodies and worlds of their choosing. Other adaptations may be uncomfortable for moralists. Online pornography will likely boom, and much internet dating may consist of erotic exchanges that never end in a meeting of bodies. Augmented reality technology may be used to simulate fleshly encounters and virtual sex could soon be normalised. Whether this is a move towards the good life may not be the most useful question to ask.

Fortunately, very little of the article suffers from this desire to be clairvoyant.

narrator: people kept fucking

Many people may migrate to online environments like those in Second Life, a virtual world where people meet, trade and interact in bodies and worlds of their choosing.

i always lol whenever contemporary people think that Second Life is still the best example of this kind of thing. it's very telling that the last time they checked in on this whole thing was 10 years ago

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ is posting testing rates now for nations where the info is available. Not just raw volume of tests, but per million people.

so while Americans are feeling confident that we're testing enough people now since we've tested 1.5 million and are the world leaders in that category, when it comes to tests conducted per million people, we're in 40th place.

Some of those nations aren't real good examples because nations with few known cases/tests might cause an outlying result, but...there are some fairly big nations out performing us here. Not to mention - symptomatic people nationally are still complaining that they can't get tested.

Take this for instance:

NOrway is testing 19,528 people per million. Switzerland is testing 17,729 people per million. Australia is testing 11,203 people per million. Germany is testing 10,962 per million. Italy is testing 10,870 per mill. South Korea is testing 8,875 per mill. Canada is testing 8,021 per million citizens. Spain at 7,593.

The US is testing 4,648 per million.

My diabetic uncle has fever, dry cough and lost his sense of taste and smell and hasn't been tested. His doctor told him to stay home and call 911 if his fever spikes. It's possible there's not much point in testing if it's clear someone has it but it does make me think that the worldometer numbers are drastically below the number of people who have it and are symptomatic, even leaving aside the hordes of us who probably already have it and aren't being affected.

I add a zero onto any figures, don't know how accurate that is

It's still important to test when someone appears to clearly have it.

Contact tracing and cluster detecting is more difficult when you're having to include every possible false positive. Obv you should treat a symptomatic unknown like they do have it but actually knowing which cases are legit through a test does help.

Trump has jokes: "The models show hundreds of thousands of people are going to die and you know what I want to do? I want to come way under the model. The professionals did the models and I was never involved in a model. At least this kind of a model." pic.twitter.com/vBeeWz1ayl

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 3, 2020

You did models too bruh, Enquirer killed the stories

that guy inspires some brute loathing in me that still surprises

The US is testing 4,648 per million.

and the UK is doing 2,543 per million.

Birds of a feather

The virus has been sonified

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/scientists-have-turned-structure-coronavirus-music#

Australia’s capacity for casual and careless cruelty never ceases to amaze me.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/05/hotel-quarantine-a-disaster-and-vulnerable-people-should-be-allowed-home-doctor-says

Why they picked the intercontinental and Hilton as quarantine hotels bemuses me. I’ve stayed in both on business trips No opening windows, small rooms. They may be 5 star but Sydney is full of extended stay type places with separate living and bedrooms, balconies, kichenettes etc. no doubt the franchise holders for the Hilton and intercontinental are liberal party donors. (A lot of the extended stay places are owned by Chinese real estate investment groups, so good old Australian racism is probably at play here as well)

See also the immigration detainees in cramped unsanitary conditions in motels in Brisbane.

USA fatalities:
3/01-3/31: 4,050
4/01-4/04: 4,399

the dude from Trapt tried to argue that nobody complained when 12k died under Obama, and it was easy to reply with "we'll probablybe there in 3-4 days" :(

and that's just a little over two months

xp if the implication there is that we've had a similar number of deaths in the past few days to the entire month of march then yes that's the defintion of exponential growth. it's not a US thing. it's true everywhere except places where the rate of transmission is falling.

#mathsplaining

The WaPo month-long investigation is worthy of some attention here:

Washington Post 2020-04-04: The U.S. was beset by denial and dysfunction as the coronavirus raged
From the Oval Office to the CDC, political and institutional failures cascaded through the system and opportunities to mitigate the pandemic were lost.

how does one get past WaPo paywall?

I thought all they'd lifted it for all their coronavirus coverage.

NYT has, but I am unable to read WP w/out subscribing

(xpost) If you're using Chrome, control-shift-n. Learned that here.

open it in incognito mode Morbs

ty

I understand c s n, not incognito

Crosby, Stills & Nash?

I'd cut and paste, but the article is huge. It's basically a "they saw it coming and did nothing" summary a la post 9/11, but a la 9/11 this is going to cost virtually no one in charge their jobs. Possibly not even the Incompetent/Incontinent-in-Chief.

Most paywalls will block you if you’re incognito but you can clear your cookies for the site instead

Re WaPo coronavirus coverage the news updates remain free, the "analysis" and opinion pieces less so.

still an asshole, bruh - you had tons of people downplaying this as a nothingburger thanks to your daily rants:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/celebrity/dr-drew-apologizes-was-wrong-about-coronavirus-threat/ar-BB12cbT1

The US surgeon general warned the country on Sunday that it will face a “Pearl Harbor moment” in the next week, with an unprecedented numbers of coronavirus deaths expected coast to coast.

“The next week is going to be our Pearl Harbor moment. It’s going to be our 9/11 moment,” Jerome Adams told NBC News’ Meet the Press.

“It’s going to be the hardest moment for many Americans in their entire lives, and we really need to understand that if we want to flatten that curve and get through to the other side, everyone needs to do their part.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/05/pearl-harbor-us-surgeon-general-coronavirus-deaths-donald-trump-white-house-briefing

Weird analogy imo. Suggests some big aggressive reaction.