outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/ftse100-optimism-potential-coronavirus-drug-remdesivir#maincontent

This seems like good news?

― Matt DC, Friday, April 17, 2020 2:04 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

lots of talk about this on doctor twitter. this study had no control group and enrolled patients who weren’t very sick, so it’s hard to draw any conclusions about this one way or another

a lot of Trumpers keep citing the Remdesivir trials as evidence that we can open the country, and have been pointing to it for over a month.

definitely have to recognize that the study is being misrepresented

Some history.

Sentiment was so strong against the mask that several influential San Franciscans, including a few physicians as well as a member of the Board of Supervisors, formed “The Anti-Mask League” which held at least one public meeting to denounce the ordinance and to discuss ways to put an end to it. Over 2,000 people attended the event.

The epidemic brought nearly 45,000 cases of influenza to San Francisco and killed over 3,000 of its residents in the fall of 1918 and the winter of 1919. On numerous occasions throughout the fall of 1918 and winter of 1919, Hassler had made statements that San Francisco was the only large city in the entire world to check its epidemic so quickly. By mid-February 1919, however, when the United States Public Health Service released figures on the nation’s epidemic, it became clear that Hassler had been wrong: San Francisco was reported as having suffered the most of all major American cities, with a death rate approaching 30 deaths per 1,000 people.

interesting. with this epidemic London Breed was the first mayor in the country to issue a stay-at-home order

I’ve heard second-hand that SF will issue a face mask in public order like NY. don’t know if it’s true, hope it is

South Carolina is re-opening beaches and retail on Monday. Going first in 1860 went so well for them, they're gonna stick with it this time too.

There isn't a facemask order in SF? Hell, we even are required to wear face masks here in Texas. Today was the first time I went to the grocery and 100% of shoppers had masks.

no at least as of four days ago (the last time I ventured significantly outside) there was not, most people were wearing masks, mostly those who were not were young people, of which there a lot in SF

haven’t ever wanted to complain about all of the young people in SF, I think they have been a major good force in this city

The mask requirement went into effect at midnight early this morning:

https://sf.gov/information/masks-and-face-coverings-coronavirus-outbreak

You must wear a face covering when you are:

Waiting in line to go inside a store
Shopping at a store
On public transportation (or waiting for it)
In a taxi or rideshare vehicle
Seeking healthcare
Going into facilities allowed to stay open, like government buildings
Working an essential job that interacts with the public

good luck SC

No face mask order in the UK, people seem to think they're soft or something. Several people I have seen wearing them haven't bothered covering their noses, so maybe nationwide training is in order if the decree does come in.

i get how people have a difficult time consistently taking care of themselves (exercise, sleep, water, nutritious food) but holy shit about not even being able to wear a mask in public when there is an immediate health crisis.

we can't get them where I am and if you can get effective ones you're told they should go to healthcare workers instead. there is no set guidance on making masks that are actually effective.

Everyone is guessing and risk- assessing for themselves based on information that has been guessed and risk- assessed by other people, is my general experience of this whole thing. (what activity is acceptable etc)

As I said last week, on my trip to the local supermarket last week, I counted maybe 1 person in 8 wearing a mask or face covering - most of the supermarket staff weren't wearing anything either. I have no idea where in the UK anyone is getting proper masks from and the government are not advising the wearing masks either - and that includes the Scottish government.

I suspect they’re ordering them online? I’ve seen basic disposable masks for sale in a North London newsagents for £1.30 apiece and my nearest chemist is selling more complicated 3M ones for £7.99 each. I’ll stick with clean cotton or rayon scarves to wear over nose and mouth when I’m in an enclosed space. It’s still more crowded in Zone 2 London than here in the centre, more queues for shops etc.

I'm dubious about ordering anything online now, I no longer have any confidence in stuff get delivered. And I haven't been near a chemist for about a month, the last trip was so traumatic.

I've looked online and the only ones I could find were unaffordable (50 quid for 3 etc) or had dubious reviews about arriving dirty etc. I am not going out to multiple physical shops in surrounding towns to try and get them.

local chemist has been out of masks since before the lockdown

Ours are pretty good but they are also close to GOSH and the UCL Neurological Hospital. Queen’s Square is locked shut to protect patients in both hospitals.

I am fine with going out to get various provisions because I’m living alone but I am really not fine with ordering for delivery because I think it’s just loading risk onto a class of worker (and me not taking up a delivery slot frees it up for someone who can’t go out).

I'm lucky to have the one shop that's open for the few hours a week I can go without taking the kids, so I'm trying to go there to get everything and/or get friends to get stuff and vice versa, yet still go as infrequently as possible. I don't know how even more rural people, or single parents, do it - they just have to bring children I guess.

I've mentioned the one small grocery store I go to a few times in this thread. Found out last night that the only death we've had in town--a man in his '60s a couple of weeks ago--was the owner of that store. I found an article online; didn't recognize him from the photo, so, even though I've only been here since November, my guess is he wasn't in the store all that often.

well there goes the Grifter's theory

https://www.jpost.com/HEALTH-SCIENCE/Coronavirus-can-survive-prolonged-exposure-to-high-temperatures-study-625118

“Two semi-trailer trucks, cleverly marked as food-service vehicles, met us at the warehouse. When fully loaded, the trucks would take two distinct routes back to Massachusetts to minimize the chances that their contents would be detained or redirected.” #COVID19

— NEJM (@NEJM) April 18, 2020

We got a box of n95 masks in from China at my work; no idea how they swung that, I guess somebody has a connect? I nabbed a couple which I put in ziplock bags & will reuse. We are used to wearing particulate respirators for operating mills so know how to wear them, this one feels like a much better fit than those (for my face at least) and I feel way more secure wearing this - certainly more than with my homemade effort

I do feel bad that I have one while my cousin who is a nurse is posting that they are about to run out and my dad works in a supermarket and has nothing (except that perspex screen they put up I guess, big whoop) and I’m gonna get it anyway from rubbing my eye or whatever, but I tell myself I’m doing my part to stop it spreading by wearing one

that's the real to look at it really. if you have them, you can use them to stop spread

really not feeling mega confident after I had to go to a Walmart to get a bathroom commode and just about everybody there wasn't wearing masks, was ignoring the arrows (which clearly said on them SHOP THIS WAY on one side, and DO NOT ENTER on the other), and weren't about to give me no six feet.

xp: The paper Morbs pointed to. It's mostly geared to labs that want to conduct SARS-CoV-2 rtPCR testing with only BSL-2 biosafety protocols (hoods+ordinary PPE+lim. access), who want to inactivate the virus in tubes before handling them. In solution, 92°C-15min reduced viral counts more than 1 million fold (below detection limits) but damaged the RNA; 56°C-30min and 60°C-60min reduced counts about 100,000 fold. Solutions with guanidinium thiocyanate inactivated the virus but didn't damage the RNA.

It's perhaps not so relevant for either mask disinfection (where repiratory droplets/aerosols would become dessicated) or for Trump's idea that summer heat will end the pandemic. The crazy wave 2 Singapore is experiencing in their foreign worker dorms pretty much nixes the latter idea.

The Danish Government has just become the 1st to announce that companies that are registered in tax havens won’t be eligible for bailout. 👍https://t.co/BlAd6ZUE1b pic.twitter.com/gqPyUXaNFM

— Economics in Bricks (@econinbricks) April 19, 2020

Way to go, Fred!

that’s my shit

antibody "test" clusterfuck

The Food and Drug Administration has allowed about 90 companies, many based in China, to sell tests that have not gotten government vetting, saying the pandemic warrants an urgent response. But the agency has since warned that some of those businesses are making false claims about their products; health officials, like their counterparts overseas, have found others deeply flawed.

Tests of “frankly dubious quality” have flooded the American market, said Scott Becker, executive director of the Association of Public Health Laboratories. Many of them, akin to home pregnancy tests, are easy to take and promise rapid results.

And the federal guidance that does exist is so confusing that health care providers are administering certain tests unaware that they may not be authorized to do so. Some are misusing antibody test results to diagnose the disease, not realizing that they can miss the early stages of infection.

“People don’t understand how dangerous this test is,” said Michael T. Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota. “We sacrificed quality for speed, and in the end, when it’s people’s lives that are hanging in the balance, safety has to take precedence over speed.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/19/us/coronavirus-antibody-tests.html

Some test only for a transient antibody that spikes while the body is in the throes of an active infection. An antibody that peaks about four weeks after infection and marks longer-term immunity is a separate target. There are tests that look for both antibodies; others also look for a third involved in respiratory infections.

The most reliable ones involve a laboratory technique called Elisa that can indicate the amount of antibodies a person may have. Higher levels generally mean a stronger physiological response, but it is unclear what levels are needed for immunity to the new coronavirus — or how long it would last.

“We’re really far from that,” Dr. Osterholm said. “We’re not even in the second inning of a nine-inning game at this point.”

Most of the tests offered are rapid tests that can be assessed in a doctor’s office — or, eventually, even at home — and provide simple yes-or-no results. Makers of the tests have aggressively marketed them to businesses and doctors, and thousands of Americans have already taken them, costing a patient roughly $60 to $115.

Rapid tests are by far the easiest to administer. But they are also the most unreliable — so much so that the World Health Organization recommends against their use.

Murdoch turns on Boris:

There has been an extraordinary, almost unprecdented attack on Boris Johnson this morning in the Sunday Times, ie his own side: pic.twitter.com/vYqnnMF05O

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) April 19, 2020

Thanks Nixon

more on that in the uk politics thread

it's the uk equiv of the big nytimes article about trump's february. both of these guys were just MIA.

Hence the extensive coverage on the BBC... oh, hold on...

Sorry can’t search on phone. I assume the latest Ed Yong piece has been linked here? https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/pandemic-summer-coronavirus-reopening-back-normal/609940/

It’s very good on the facts (he always is) but the last section on resilience is particularly good imo.

Sort of settling in to the idea that even if certain activities resume there’s no good reason for me/anyone who can to stop working from home before a vaccine exists.

I will work my way thru that article after my chores. It looks excellent.

Meanwhile just want to share a post showing that anti-quarantine protests are centrally coordinated.

"There's an imperial ton of astroturfing going on, and it's quite visible in how those groups popped up literally overnight."

https://www.reddit.com/r/maryland/comments/g3niq3/i_simply_cannot_believe_that_people_are/fnstpyl/

Have any major outlets investigated this?

i'd love it if we could get those people arrested

That Ed Yong article is fucking grim. People who are already made anxious by the State of Modern Pod/Bunker Living are gonna flip the fuck out by the time we hit Months Six through Twelve. Me, I'm trying to figure out what kind of argument I can make for continuing to work remotely if my employer does ask people to start showing up again. Maybe I'll have to tell them I'm a diabetic (true) and therefore especially vulnerable.

I am deeply skeptical of these astroturf accusations, dummies on the right make these same accusations all the time when there's a protest they don't like—"it's George Soros!"

The really sad fact is that "astroturfing" isn't necessary. That's what's scary. They have the entire weight of FOX behind them, maniacal talk radio, the president cheering them on. The fact that people are making the same signs and circulating the same copy is meaningless—that's how these things unfold on FB Twitter etc., which also makes it very easy to coordinate things at teh drop of a hat.

A random chiropractor sparked the madness in Michigan.

It's just kind of stupid to think that the Koch Brothers or whatever must be financing and organizing these idiots. They're perfectly capable of being stupid on their own—they elected this asshole in the first place.

And it doesn't really matter anyway if news orgs are going to take them seriously either way

The DeVos and Koch families, et al, have ALWAYS worked by funding secret actions. It's so in character it's practically unnecessary to point it out. As usual, the right (mostly) falsely accuses the left of doing exactly what it, itself, is doing.

What a world we live in

Incredible images of two nurses who launched a counter protest by standing in front of a car parade of protestors in Denver (via Alyson McClaran) pic.twitter.com/PgR74Sj5QE

— Don Moynihan (@donmoyn) April 20, 2020

There's a mountain of evidence behind the astroturfing of the Tea Party, a reasonable start here (between the DeVos clan and the weirdo collecting open state X domain) - and zero evidence of Soros or anyone else fomenting BLM or Occupy. The closest thing to 'both sides do it' is some astroturfing against Medicare For All.

A cautionary tale from Singapore on relaxing lockdowns too soon as well as a lesson on how to treat migrant worker populations:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/18/asia/singapore-coronavirus-response-intl-hnk/index.html

Thanks, Roz. I was astonished to read about the migrant workers---how they live, how they are treated bureaucratically by the government---and it's spurred me to learn more about their situation (independently of the virus).

sadly, exploitation of migrant workers is common across all of Southeast Asia, not just in Singapore but also Malaysia and Brunei, as well as ME countries like Qatar and Saudi. The situation is the same everywhere - cramped, unhygienic living conditions, little to no access to health or medical services, extremely low pay, debt bondage, etc.

Thanks. Do you have texts you'd recommend for learning more about this, in English or in French? I suppose in some sense I've known about this for a while, having read about workers in Dubai, but I was triggered by the comment by the Singaporean lawyer who said that these workers were "indispensable", for that seems to code a lot. I'm interested in understanding better the working conditions of these workers; how these workers see their lives in relation to their home countries and to the countries in which they work; their bureaucratic situation with respect to both countries; and how citizens of the countries in which they work think about these workers, and their roles in this exploitation.