outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

Did cases blow up after election day?

Ohio to reopen, somehow, May 1st.

or begin to reopen I guess

Also, can't discount the fact that over 20M people suddenly lost their jobs. That's a whole lot of pissed off people that probably want things sorted out sooner than later.

― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles),Thursday, 16 April 2020 17:14 (two hours ago) link

People who have the disease "want things sorted out sooner than later" too, but sometimes things just don't work that way. There is no "let's reopen the economy and change our ideas about the acceptable level of death." Even if you wanted to accept that kind of grim calculation, it wouldn't work. The economy would not just go back to functioning normally.

i do not take any reopening announcements or dates seriously

except for the ones that are like "maaaybe 2022?!" agreed

more seriously, I think the idea that we'll cycle in and out of quarantines makes sense to me

yeah agreed, it's gonna be a slow and painful process

'reopening the economy' is complete propaganda. the government has the money to spend, they just don't want to give it to people who aren't corporations.

I'll believe in 'reopening the economy' when I see everyone who wants tested getting tested, with very low rates of false positives and false negatives, followed soon after by effective contact tracing.

like, the market has been rallying for weeks now based upon this optimism of a future where things are not that much different except stuff will be pricier and large companies were given millions/billions to get them to that future point. and normal people will let any kind of real change slip away because they want to go back to a normal that was pretty unsustainable anyway.

It's not just red hatters and greedy corporate overlords who want to end the quarantine. I know plenty of parents of young kids who are fucking tearing their hair out right now. I can't wait for this shit to end so I can play some music with friends and go to a restaurant.

But yeah, Aimless' approach seems reasonable.

I've heard that Cisco is planning to keep everyone WFH until there is a vaccine, but that was second-hand info.

i think "reopening the economy" will look a lot like how Sweden never "closed" their economy. their movie theater sales are at 1% compared to last year at this time, for example. like a lot of things trump stamps his name on, "reopening the economy" might be something that sounds legit and is enough to fool people who don't look into it

a popular brunch/breakfast spot a few blocks away hasn't technically closed - they're doing delivery and pick-up orders and have 6-ft social distancing lines going down the sidewalk around the corner. but walking by it, i haven't seen anyone there, ever, and the delivery car is always sitting out front in the same parking spot. trump can say that chicago is open for business, but i don't think it's going to make a difference for that shop

I know plenty of parents of young kids who are fucking tearing their hair out right now.

TBF, I think this was a major factor in one of my friends' seemingly losing her mind after weeks of very cogent analysis of the situation.

yeah, i was making no comment on that one because I don't like the idea of schools and teachers being used as childcare when that is unfortunately reality.

I'm tearing my hair out not because I can't care for my child but because he's badly missing the mental stimulation, socialising and physicality of being at school while I am also caring for a toddler. Not being able to go out runs against nearly everything you know as a parent about having fun with your kids.

I honestly don't know how I can keep going working from home and doing homeschooling at the same time

it's super fucking hard. there is no way to do a full day.

how old is/are your kid/s?

note: when I say childcare I didn't mean to imply anyone here specifically can't care for their children. But I probably did. Sorry.

Yeah it's ok, I didn't take it like that. There are lots of 'hilarious' memes about people suddenly having to spend time with their kids and its terrible, but this is not the actual problem.

i think there's some rationale for allowing certain non-essential businesses to open as long as they follow certain, rigorous protocols. a local bike shop here is still open (deemed essential) but only by appointment, and all transactions actually take place outside. a local liquor store was only allowing three customers at a time into its very large space, and even tho it is now closed by law i'm going to go ahead and say that the risk of transmission in that setting was quite low. social distancing, masks, hand-washing, no mass gatherings, etc, are clearly effective, and should continue, but as iatee suggested there's going to be a point where a slight relaxation will be needed in the absence of massive government support (which we all know is not coming). maintenance of strict quarantine measures will be politically and practically impossible, at least in the dumb ol USA

kinder they're 11 and 8, both boys. left on their own they beat the shit out of each other multiple times a day and cause all kinds of mayhem.

Senator Schatz (D-HI) on USA failure to provide testing over the short- and long-term:

On March 6 they promised 4 million tests by the end of that week. It is April 16, 41 days later, and Trump is announcing 3.5 million tests completed. And they are not even really ramping up. Last weeks number of tests was roughly the same as the week before.

— Brian Schatz (@brianschatz) April 16, 2020

the tests really were ramping up for the first several weeks. it's true that they've been pretty much even the last week or so, though.

brian schatz is solid. i used to read his column in the honolulu weekly and it was always on point. he also tweeted like a month ago that lack of testing should be the #1 story until it isn't, and i think he's probably right.

we gave up on homeschooling our son (finishing 8th grade, US); district lagged with any distance learning and now they've finally got it kind of going, we've just told him "you know where to look for the work, make sure you do it" and it appears that he kind of is. though his science work this week was to 'look at the moon' and draw it; apparently they didn't bother to check to see when moonrise is, but it's at 3:30AM or so we learned after two nights of going out and saying "WTF how is the moon gone?" I broke down and downloaded an app and immediately felt like a dummy.

https://www.france24.com/en/20200417-recovery-from-coronavirus-may-not-confer-immunity-warn-experts

The link title makes the point. It may even be worse:

"It is possible that the antibodies that someone develops against the virus could actually increase the risk of the disease becoming worse," [Frederic Tangy] said, noting that the most serious symptoms come later, after the patient had formed antibodies.

That's just pure speculation, as the full article makes clear.

This - also speculation - would be quite devastating if true, given that current advice is that you can go back out to the shops after symptoms go away:

More likely, said Balloux, is that the virus never completely disappeared in the first place and remains -- dormant and asymptomatic -- as a "chronic infection", like herpes.

As tests for live virus and antibodies have not yet been perfected, it is also possible that these patients at some point tested "false negative" when in fact they had not rid themselves of the pathogen.

"That suggests that people remain infected for a long time -- several weeks," Balloux added.

I have to say this long period of infection does chime a bit with my experience. I still have a bad taste in my mouth. I still feel tired. I still have the ringing in the ears. But it's been more than a week since I had a fever and started feeling 'better'.

I thought about quoting that bit too. These speculations---by virologists!---are jarring because they make the gentle exits from the lockdown look like folly. I've been reading about "immunity passports" being touted by Germany, and those may be unworkable.

My sense is that the rush to reopen has gotten dangerous this week. My daughter's prépa announced today that they won't be holding classes even after May 11. I reckon my other kids' lycée/collège will weigh in next week (we've been in vacances this week). I suppose we'll have to watch what happens in Germany closely.

The lack of any authoritative info on this thing makes me wonder how the eff anyone is working on vaccines.

screamed at had a interesting discussion with my mom for *checks* 4 hours and 26 minutes last night.

have any of you considered the Fauci and Birx (F and Brix, as my mom calls them, for reasons) are not to be trusted, and are up to something "dark"?

Which do you think came first for your mom, the grievances or the media bubble?

Dktr Faustus & Brix

if it's fauci and your granny on bongos then it's NIAID

my mom was "skeptical" of coronavirus from day 1. her big thing right now is the fact that it was "unleashed" on the world by china, because she and my dad found a chemical factory near Wuhan on google maps. it must have come from there, in the lab. this aligns with everything that Tom Cotton and his ilk have been saying for months, but she claims to have no idea about that. instead, she says she thought of it herself, back in late January.

also she says she definitely got coronavirus in early january, after going to a chinese restaurant.

my ex-wife, who has been hardly leaving the house, hyper-aware and scared of covid, doesn't currently work, been giving me shit for how often I am out and about during this etc. got covid from someone she knows - a former service user from when she worked as a frontline support worker whose dog she sometimes takes care of - coughing on her last week :/

That's just pure speculation, as the full article makes clear.

This - also speculation - would be quite devastating if true, given that current advice is that you can go back out to the shops after symptoms go away:

More likely, said Balloux, is that the virus never completely disappeared in the first place and remains -- dormant and asymptomatic -- as a "chronic infection", like herpes.
As tests for live virus and antibodies have not yet been perfected, it is also possible that these patients at some point tested "false negative" when in fact they had not rid themselves of the pathogen.

"That suggests that people remain infected for a long time -- several weeks," Balloux added.

I have to say this long period of infection does chime a bit with my experience. I still have a bad taste in my mouth. I still feel tired. I still have the ringing in the ears. But it's been more than a week since I had a fever and started feeling 'better'.

― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Friday, April 17, 2020 8:57 AM (twenty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

there's this comic ahamed Weinberg who had on his insta story that he still tested positive for COVID a week (or weeks, I can't remember) after he no longer had symptoms

can someone help me out - do any of the rightwing stories about the chemical lab/supervirus have any basis in fact? apparently the "story" is really picking up steam the last few days, and i'm too exhausted to go to daily caller or whatever and see what they're saying.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/14/state-department-cables-warned-safety-issues-wuhan-lab-studying-bat-coronaviruses/

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/15/politics/us-intelligence-virus-started-chinese-lab/index.html

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52318539

I haven't read any right-wing press, but the mainstream French media has been reporting on the virus labs in Wuhan today (here) and on the HIV/Covid-19 conspiracy theory (here).

US intelligence and national security officials say the United States government is looking into the possibility that the novel coronavirus spread from a Chinese laboratory rather than a market, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter who caution it is premature to draw any conclusions.

america: the country where we throw caution to the wind

unfortunately in the trump administration, the fact that the government is looking into it could also mean that trump made people look into it to generate stories about how the government is looking into it, so that he can about those stories by fox or oann during press conferences and say that he is hearing many reports that it could be a thing, but the government will look into it

It's not just US intelligence, though. Maybe France, the UK, and the USA are just getting the WWII band back together, though?

The main virus lab in Wuhan, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, was built with the assistance of French engineers, so the media here is particularly attentive to these stories.

Chinese overseas dissident crowd (who are massively susceptible to conspiracy theories die to not being able to trust any information ever) are forever muttering about the virology lab in Wuhan, the jist is usually not that this is a plot by the Chinese government, more that it's an experiment which got out somehow, obviously take this with a very large pinch of salt.

"due to" - autocorrect in a morbid mood today

Can't we just put everyone in a Sneetches like machine that basically scrubbing bubbles your immune system every week

i know we're supposed to pretend like this isn't happening because he's looking for attention and he's too incompetent to implement fascism, but

https://i.imgur.com/3MMzgVz.png

for those not in the US or who can't read trumpspeak (it makes no sense), he's advising his followers to ignore the Stay-at-Home orders from the governors in those states (you know, the people that are actually authorized to impose or lift them), while also throwing in a nod that it would be a good idea to show off their guns while they do it