outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

which is why that POS David Katz, the sole 'expert' suggesting "herd immunity" by intentionally exposing everybody to it, needs to be dropkicked off of the Empire State Building

lord that line of argument makes me crazy. like, the CFR or IFR or whatever the fuck could be ZERO with proper care and we would still be looking at a bloodbath if we all get it at once

― Larry Elleison (rogermexico.), Thursday, April 23, 2020 6:08 PM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

There's also the concrete fact that for covid to only have a mortality rate of the flu in New York based on deaths there so far everyone in New York would have to have covid

googled CFR, IFR, not sure what you’re talking about tbh

Coronavirus Fatality Rate, Infection-to-Fatality Ratio

also, Piece of Shit btw

after a quick tour of international news sites, i am stunned that none are leading with 'moron american president suggests injecting disinfectant'

CFR stands for case fatality rate. the number of people with a positive test who die divided by the number of people with a positive test. this is a number that is grounded in actual data but currently is overestimated because the denominator is limited by the number of tests available. (the numerator is closer to accurate because sicker people are the people being tested.)

IFR stands for infection fatality rate, or the number of people with the disease who die divided by the number of people with the disease. this can only be modeled because we don’t know the true prevalence of disease. models can be biased in one direction or another (ie if only people with symptoms are screened, or if you screen people, say, at a grocery store, who by virtue of not being in their house are more likely to have/have had the disease, this will increase the modeled denominator and make the disease look less deadly)

tbf, physicians inject regulated doses of poisons into humans in the name of curing or abating many serious lethal diseases, such as cancer. but to be even more fair, Trump is a moron who clearly doesn't understand the first thing about medicine.

Disturbing hostage-like situation unfolds as science guy tries to get off stage while President speculates about irradiating people's or injecting them with bleach. pic.twitter.com/qBhb8VVVxu

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) April 23, 2020

I think he's doing a Fred Willard bit.

what is your first reaction to this news from today:

Starting Friday, all 25,000 United Airlines flight attendants will be required to wear masks while on duty, the airline said. United is the first major U.S. airline to mandate masks. The union that represents flight attendants there and at more than a dozen other airlines separately asked the Transportation Department and Health and Human Services Department to mandate the same industrywide.

because mine is just bewilderment that no US airline has mandated it yet, or that the FAA or OSHA or CDC or some state didn't mandate it yet, or at least strongly recommend it? wtf, i have no idea why anyone would be on a flight right now unless it was an emergency, so for the sake of both the workers and the people going through emergencies on planes, wear the fucking masks! jfc

(no airline other than United, earlier today, i mean)

The predicted famine of biblical proportion is going to come right after all this food dumping. Because famines have very little to do with how much food there is. https://t.co/VWUl5ibmmM

— libcom.org (@libcomorg) April 24, 2020

i've got a question. i live in london and my aged parents live in the US. if one of them - or both - gets covid i will want to go visit them. can i?? feels weird. i'm a US citizen.

after a quick tour of international news sites, i am stunned that none are leading with 'moron american president suggests injecting disinfectant'

No-one outside the US pays any attention to what Trump says, he's your problem.

As a US citizen you can return to the US, and there are a few flights still going. However I’ve no idea what happens when you get there, it may well well vary state to state.

(For reference Australia sends every returnees into hotel jail for 14 days unless they are a billionaire)

so they're estimating 21% of NYC is/was infected

haven’t mets fans been through enough

No-one outside the US pays any attention to what Trump says, he's your problem.

let me tell you about that little site called ilx that disproves yr notion here

Fred and Comrade Alphabet are standing in for the rest of the world are they?

You know, we kind of have our own worries at the moment, outside the USA.

i swear every time i complain about ukilxors on the us politics thread pom or someone is there to say "you know US politic affects the rest of the world you can't expect us not to follow it"

Who, apart from the Comrade, posts on US politics threads?

And he's only doing it because he's bored of UK politics.

"Are you now or have you ever been a poster on the the politics threads of the United States"

i don't think one has to regularly pay attention to trump to relish the spectacle of a major world leader saying something so impossibly stupid

in any case, it is currently the lead story on bbc dot com slash news

in the middle of the NYT rolling coverage is this little 5 paragraph piece, titled "Isolating at home has become dangerous for many Italians."

Before everyone else in the West, Italians received and largely obeyed an order to stay at home. “I’m staying home” became a hashtag, then the name of a national ordinance and then a motto hung from balconies and windows.

But while staying home has worked, reducing the rate of infections, bringing down the daily toll of the dead and creating breathing room for hospitals, home has become a dangerous place for many Italians.

Italian households now represent “the biggest reservoir of infections,” said Massimo Galli, the director of the infectious diseases department at Luigi Sacco University Hospital in Milan. He called the cases “the possible restarting point of the epidemic in case of a reopening.”

The family acts as a multiplier, said Andrea Crisanti, the top scientific consultant on the virus in the Veneto region. “This is a ticking time bomb,” he said.

The predicament of home infections is emerging not just in Italy but in hot spots across the globe, in Queens and the Paris suburbs, as well as the working-class neighborhoods of Rome and Milan. It is also a problem that local officials and epidemiologists say is getting too little attention, particularly as the government has announced tentative steps toward reopening in early May.

that's it. uh, care to expand on that?! i think i know what they're saying? is it that most italians have been quarantined at home with their families, and some of those households have coronavirus whether they realize it or not, so there are these little cluster households that all have it and would quickly spread it to others when they start going outside and being near other people again?

or is that wrong? what a strangely empty, frightening little series of paragraphs

oops! i didn't see that it was just a teaser article, and it linked to the full piece here: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/24/world/europe/italy-coronavirus-home-isolation.html

The UK broadcast media, particularly the BBC, is slavishly devoted to US politics, which viewers complain about endlessly... and just switch over. I used to post on the US politics threads occasionally until I realized nothing was ever going to happen to Trump and he was probably going to win again.

(sorry for multiple posts; trying to clear up the confusion i caused)

ah, i see. it's about the fact that a lot of people who are diagnosed are then sent home to "quarantine" at home - with their families, who then also get sick. that seems obvious. i would also like to highlight this fun quote:

“As a doctor I would say let’s put tanks in the streets and let’s do a police state,” said Guido Marinoni, the president of the Bergamo doctors’ association. “But the Western world has different realities.”

it Italy i believe the word is “quarantino”

love too do a police state

Do the Police State. Possible song title there.

what's the dance tho

Goosestep natch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4wb-4sxE84

illinois extends stay-at-home order through May, this time with the requirement that people wear masks in public indoor spaces

also re-opens golf courses so that wealthy men can have locker room talk outside with the boys

my workplace has now changed from perpetually moving our “go back to the office” date and it’s now indefinite, with the caveat they will tell us the date two weeks in advance

downstate state senator suing IL gov over the order, cuz TYRANNY. good luck with that, buddy.

no problem with forcing 18 yr olds to go die in war, but you won't let me have my weekly bowling night?!? Sic semper tyrannis!!

my office in SF told everyone to WFH through Labor Day if they want (assuming it's a choice by then). they also made us take fridays off (and deducted it from our PTO in order to balance the liability at the end of the year) which everyone was mad about at first but now it's like I can't imagine working 5 days a week, in an office, fuck that.

German firms started doing that like 15 years ago iirc

Slack just announced their office will be closed until September.

hearing the summer already foreclosed in many areas makes me wonder if I should just be induced into a medical coma for a year

not enough hospital beds for us to all do that :(

so I guess the US is about to divide into "free states" and "lockdown states" (I wonder if the Compromise of 1850 is imminent)

So the poll is unscientific, but it’s still striking - almost 1 in 5 people who’ve answered said they plan to leave lockdown states for free states as early as June 1. I don’t think that’s realistic for people with families - more of a wish - but it shows the depth of the anger. pic.twitter.com/7bTRGY4cFR

— Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) April 23, 2020

should have gone with one of the dozen tweets clowning how ridiculous that one is

KNEW THAT WAS COMING