outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

This is a nice read from Edmund White:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/06/1980s-aids-pandemic-coronavirus-gay-community-survive

'Screwed?' Yes. Higher education is spectacularly screwed.

However, I'm involved in primary/secondary education and I think the loss for minor students is more deleterious than for college and university students. A lot of the non-quantifiable skills that ECE and primary education imparts (pro-social, work orientation, academic habits) are grievously compromised by school interruption (in non-covid times), and now we're facing of entire classes of students who will be lacking foundational learning and critical socializing And yes, eventually, some of these kids will go to college w/ skill deficits. But to my eyes, a college student who never encounters de Man and Cixous is probably okay, a high school sophomore who misses the rise of fascism and the entirety of the Spanish Civil War is in a bit of trouble, and a first grader who misses essential phonics is fuuuuuucked.

The Times article raises some good points, but dances around the point that inequities within individual classrooms are being magnified more than than between districts, where the usual issues of fair access, funding, and quality are going to be laid bare.

i have a first grader and basically we've decided to ignore the stay at home "curriculum" and are basically just working on reading + phonetics with her for the reason you gave. such a critical skill if she can gain it while at home it won't be a total loss.

I agree with all that, soda. I'm thinking less of the education that students in higher education are missing during this time, and more about the university closures that will follow, and the consequences of that. that's to say, this is kinda inside baseball that may as well go on a higher education thread, so I'll take it there.

The government of Barbados is charging that shipment of 20 ventilators it had ordered and already paid for were seized by US authorities and prevented from reaching Barbados. Minister of Health and Wellness Jeffrey Bostic told reporters at a press conference “They were seized in the United States. Paid for, but seized, so we are trying to see exactly what is going to transpire there.”

To date, the epidemic appears limited in Barbados. But cases have grown rapidly in recent days. The country has 48 ventilators but only 3 of the 56 Barbadians who have tested positive are currently on ventilator support. The country has just under 300,000 residents.

??

wtf is going on?

don't worry, jared is in charge. or azar. or birx. or the admiral.

i thought Pence was “leading the response”

I think the US is going out of its way to make itself the target of everyone who survives this pandemic despite our best efforts to stymie their survival, is wtf is going on.

fitting that the only area in which the us federal government shows any kind of efficiency is theft

For sure, Euler. I realize my post has kind of a 'hey, you think things are bad for YOU?' tone, when I was just lamenting the whole enterprise of education rn.

My heart aches for kids and adolescents who are going through this as a formative experience.

??

wtf is going on?

The short version is that there's an international shortage of a ventilators and PPE - and the US is currently trying to ensure that anything that does become available goes to them. The interpretation of the Defense Procurement Act they seem to be using means that all US manufacturers have to send any available masks, respirators, etc, to the government. Even if they're producing them overseas, as long as the company is registered in the US, they have to ship back there. It also happened with 200k respirators masks that were meant to go to the German police.

The other side is non-US companies who are finding people turning up at airports with boxes of cash and asking to divert shipments to the states, offering several times the face value of the goods. France apparently lost 600m masks ready to ship from China that way. You've got allied national governments accusing the US of 'modern piracy'.

Um, I have questions about the accountability of people who are carrying "boxes of cash."

At various points in my professional life I have seen actual boxes of cash, and my confidence in the people likely carrying them is... low. Somehow the amount of cash in the box keeps changing.

Ok please expand on this experience

just once, i would like to have a box of cash

I have been checking, most places are out of these now

Plenty of boxes of ash tho

:(

Um, I have questions about the accountability of people who are carrying "boxes of cash."

One for the ages:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/feb/08/usa.iraq1

i didn't realize that de blasio ALSO did not realize it could be spread by asymptomatic people until, like, a couple days ago

Bill de Blasio Rejects Claim U.S. Knew Asymptomatic People Could Spread the Virus: Only Learned That 'In the Last 48 Hours’ https://t.co/ohj74tr594 via @mediaite

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) April 4, 2020

wtf

or, i suppose, to be more charitable, he thought it was only confirmed a few days ago, even though there were "suspicion" - “There was suspicion, but there was not evidence.”

he's been fucking terrible

he's gonna go down as the worst mayor in nyc history and it's not gonna be close

surprising that he hasn't eminent domained the park slope Y for his own private use

Not just ventilators and PPE.

Guardian (yesterday): Hertfordshire hospital forced to consider who should be refused oxygen

Vox: You can’t use ventilators without sedatives. Now the US is running out of those, too.

Presumably the DEA has collected millions of doses of fentanyl and carfentanil. Not a bad time for expedient dilutions....

this looks legit - a family friend just sent to me. a breathing technique that opens up the base of your lungs and keeps oxygen flowing in there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwLzAdriec0

Some talk of that in the famous people with covid thread (cause jk Rowling has the ‘vid and shared the vid)

How are you? Are you trying this?

that video originated on Reddit iirc. There were a couple of self-described physicians arguing about whether it was good advice or not but amazingly the argument devolved into petty name-calling with no real evaluation of the advice given.

amazingly the argument devolved into petty name-calling

And yet you say this happened on Reddit? Does not compute.

ikr

I'm good. I'm coming out the other side. My lungs definitely feel diminished. I am doing this (ok not the 10 minutes lying on my front, which I guess I probably should)

woke up at 3 in the morning with constricted airways, been that way since. No fever, no exhaustion. I think it's a mix of pollen, stress and a sinus infection that's been hanging out for a month or two so I got flonase and amoxycillin. Hopefully I will be better in a day or two but it's a bad moment to feel this way.

Good to hear you're on the mend, Tracer.

Great news. The one huge change since the early days of this is learning, after thinking "Well, if I get it, I'm young enough at 58 that it's no big deal," how wrong that is. I've encountered so many stories, including your posts, that make it clear how awful it can be for the duration.

I can relate to your fears ulysses

I NEED THIS CHEERING BULLSHIT TO FUCKING STOP

STOP MAKING NOISE

FOR FUCK'S SAKE THIS IS REAL LIFE NOT INSTAGRAM

be QUIET

outliers attempting to counter global consensus around this pandemic with amateur reporting or unverified sourcing are not collecting data. breaking news stories that only relay initial findings of an event are not collecting data. we have to be careful in our media consumption

— Steak-umm (@steak_umm) April 7, 2020

2020 is here

that tweet is very abstract

wow that is weird.
kinda of appreciate that clearly someone human is behind the account but also wish they would use more capitalization

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/30/las-vegas-parking-lot-homeless-shelter

Just wild.

Gov @GovPritzker confirms that the federal ‘Air Bridge’ flights from China, organized by the White House taskforce, are bringing PPE back from China which are then turned over to private companies. The states then have to bid against each other to purchase from those companies. pic.twitter.com/QG62dWtQuc

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) April 7, 2020

India has bowed to pressure / threats from the US and lifted its ban on the export of hydroxychloroquine.

The US is now forcing its own companies to sell medical supplies domestically and forcing other countries to not follow suit.

My neighbour sent me a link to a David icke video about 5g, smh

The whole "5G created coronavirus!" is such... a thing of this time period we're in

5G creating modern malaise and chaos has been a going tinfoil hat concern for a few years now.

Even intellectual giants like Naomi “death recorded” Wolf are susceptible I’m told

Ahhh, to experience the calm, peaceful splendor of [checks notes] 1970's Belfast. pic.twitter.com/8xfXFHAbIo

— Staymas Insidely (@shockproofbeats) April 5, 2020

This is interesting:

https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2020/04/04/1586015208000/Imperial-s-Neil-Ferguson---We-don-t-have-a-clear-exit-strategy-/

Trying to get to grips with the UK government’s real strategy is problematic, despite the fact that a great deal of virtual ink has been spilt in trying to “explain” it. Indeed it hasn’t seemed totally clear to us whether they are deliberately not giving us the full picture, or whether the government does not actually know what the strategy is beyond this initial curve-flattening stage.

Which probably goes for most western governments.

...implies the government was aware of the potential death toll – or the one being projected by the scientists on their advisory committee, anyway – but had not considered a drastic lockdown strategy until it became clear that the likely number of deaths from any other strategy would not be seen as politically acceptable. It seems, therefore, that the paper was published at that time partly to help justify a change in the messaging. A “U-turn” doesn’t seem like quite the right term, therefore, for what happened.

And when we suggested to Ferguson that some in government might be pursuing some kind of watered-down version of herd immunity, or at least might be considering it a back-up option (in case a vaccine is not found in 18 months), he didn’t totally dismiss the idea.

Instead, Ferguson noted that there was actually no definite exit strategy in place at this point, though testing and contact-tracing might help.

It doesn’t seem clear to us, though, that we can rule out the idea that at least some in government are still pursuing the idea of herd immunity in the background, even if it is just a fall-back plan.