outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

The @voxdotcom article is a perfect example of doing what @BillHanage and I wrote in Feb. would cause trouble with COVID-19: conflating "x is possible" with "x is common." https://t.co/LXkKF6CNYX. Most would expect some reinfections: q is how often, how severe, how contagious? https://t.co/PVCorruQp7

— Marc Lipsitch (@mlipsitch) July 13, 2020

Btw, saw this bit of mask advice.

Got emailed this by my work in anticipation of restarting.

Are there any people really unaware of how to wear a mask? I don't think so. People who aren't wearing masks correctly now are doing it because they want to due to discomfort or because they're an asshole.

Well, there's people who've never worn a mask, for a start.

bit strong. don't think a lot of this stuff is overly intuitive

There's an infographic version here too about how to wear one, how not to wear one. This is good! pic.twitter.com/oMs4b3dvqc

— Daniel Howdon (@danielhowdon) July 13, 2020

xp

Is more widespread helpful information a bad thing?

re: testing availability and delays, i think this TPM post is useful. Also, i wasn't aware of the story behind keisha bottoms' testing, but it seems very instructive on the practical consequences of the delays:

...On its face this may seem simply a matter of frustration and needless anxiety for people waiting for their test results. But it is actually much more than that. Individual patient care is one thing. But at the societal level a core focus of testing is containment and mitigation. The faster you get results the faster you get positive people quarantined and the quicker you can contract trace. If you get a test and then don’t know whether you’re positive for 7 or 10 days you’ve likely infected other people you wouldn’t have if you’d been quarantined. If you’ve quarantined for 10 days when you didn’t have COVID that’s needless disruption for you personally and at scale in the whole society.

The Post includes the telling anecdote of the case of Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. The Bottoms family took precautionary tests after attending a funeral. Tens days later they still hadn’t gotten their results. By then her husband had COVID symptoms. They went for speedier tests at Emory University (possibly available since she’s the Mayor). At that point wife, husband and one son were all positive. Then the original tests came back. Those showed only the son positive.

There can be a lag between infection and positivity. So we can’t know for sure. But it seems at least very possible that if the Mayor’s family had gotten their results within a day they would have quarantined their child and neither parent would have been infected at all.

The speed of test results is a big, big deal.

Put simply, succeeding at mitigation and stamping the virus out (or down to trivial levels) means getting tests back quickly so you can clear those without infections and isolate and contract trace those who are infected. Time is of the essence. If you have these long delays one of the two or three biggest tools for success isn’t even being used.

Why is this happening? Once again it seems like the result of a largely absent federal government, no superintending national authority which can oversee and organize the production and distribution of critical supplies, maintain and expand testing capacity beyond state level and more. It’s just not there. As cases mount, of course, the problem will only get worse.

as I've been around a new roommate this week and had unintentional contact with people, I'm doing an antibody test and two COVID tests spread days apart to rule out false negatives (I'm doing them at places that are free and open so as not to take a slot from someone who is sick).

but yeah, if you aren't quarantining while you wait for test results, that helps nothing. supposed to assume "positive" and live that way until you get "negative"...and even then, right about now, nobody in highly affected areas should be using a negative to do anything cos it's a past data point by that point.

in conclusion, everybody in the US will be inside until 2028, by then Liverpool will have won 4 more Premierships, and no American sport will have played a full season

Got my negative test result the day after I sent my swab off with the courier.

is this real? it's really quite something

Here is a high res version of the Cuomo pandemic poster he unveiled today. pic.twitter.com/3LlcewnuOV

— Nick Reisman (@NickReisman) July 13, 2020

oh it's real

i rarely saw any of cuomo's briefings, but i tuned in a couple weeks and he was pointing to a big mountain which i think i had a name? i didn't think much of it at the time, but i see there's a whole lexicon here

How...how is that real? Did someone spill their Mr. Pibb into the simulation server?

honestly i appreciate putting "111 days of hell" right in the middle. the whole thing looks like a tin-poisoned alchemist's lab assistant trying to document a local plague

but so they're saying the end state is the river/economy falling into the "sea of division"?

i remain unclear about the boyfriend cliff

TS: octopus vs. Captain

it's a good to touch to have the dog as the anchor of the tug-of-war team, while trump sits watching on a moon and says "it's just the flu" above

xp clearly Captain. Captain is anchoring the tug-of-war team, that is the most important position

I love that the artist who worked on previous Weird Cuomo posters is tweeting he didn’t do this.

Has a little bit of a Crowded House vibe

https://fanart.tv/fanart/music/9854d99f-d954-4c0f-9ae5-58a0cdd885f5/albumcover/the-very-very-best-of-crowded-house-533fdbe647f3e.jpg

http://d24jnm9llkb1ub.cloudfront.net/icpn/00602537703845/00602537703845-cover-zoom.jpg

crowded houses generally to be avoided at this time

Hey now

i c what u did there

don't dream it's over

that's what he did there

o I am dumm

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/13/mick-mulvaney-next-stimulus-bill-should-deal-with-covid-19.html
fuck you, fuck your family.

Has a little bit of a Crowded House vibe

It's very Howard Finster.

Pareene wrote about the mountain

there's more than one answer to these questions

HORROR SHOW. All 366 detainees were tested for coronavirus at this private ICE prison. Only 19 people tested negative. https://t.co/6EOab8UXaw

— Noah Shachtman (@NoahShachtman) July 14, 2020

It speaks really poorly of huge swaths of mainstream media that Cuomo gets a pass for overseeing the worst COVID outbreak in America mostly because he sells a particular leadership aesthetic—tough-seeming, sardonic, numerate, good at explaining policy, hates Trump sufficiently. https://t.co/yYtUXsw4Vn

— Derek Thompson (@DKThomp) July 14, 2020

Not enjoying this round of historical revision on Cuomo. Yeah - he messed up early on for sure, and his budget cuts sure as shit didn't help, but we were all misled from the top down on so many issues, being first and unprepared, PPE shortages, etc. (and being the damn virus epicenter for the country). He ultimately did most things right during lockdown, and now we're doing a lot better than many other states right now.

seriously, you could all have the assfuck that Alfred and I have.

hmm

Cuomo tried to keep things business as usual much too long because capitalism, putting a lot of blood on his hands. That other governors have continued to punch themselves (and us) in the dick for much longer isn’t really a defense of him.

All governors fucked up the response, except for Inslee.

i appreciate the offer, but i'm good here with my high-class Pritzker

xp

Who I don’t like all that much but if Biden got the rona and had to step aside (God forbid), I’d be Team Inslee for the nomination.

The Trump administration has ordered hospitals to bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and, beginning on Wednesday, send all coronavirus patient information to a central database in Washington — a move that has alarmed public health experts who fear the data will be distorted for political gain.

"no new CORONAVIRUS INFECTIONS IN THE LAST THREE WEEKS"

there is no bottom

How long before the dead come back to life

acc to the rambam the first stage of redemption is entirely within the natural realm and only the second supernatural stage of redemption features wonders like resurrection of the dead

All governors fucked up the response, except for Inslee

Oregon's Kate Brown did quite well at first, until the very success of her initial response coupled with the Trump/FOX national disinformation campaign amped up the political pressure on her to reopen. Even then, she tried hard to put in a framework that could cope with the inevitable acceleration of cases. Since then, new cases have accelerated, just as expected.

Tony Evers did a decent job too

acc to the rambam the first stage of redemption is entirely within the natural realm

whoa black betty

lol Mordy

xps Aimless as I'm sure you're aware Brown has been cracking down again as of yesterday (masks will be required in public where distancing is not possible as of tomorrow, no gatherings of more than 10 indoors I think?), which I'd imagine we both eagerly welcome. I agree that she's done the best she could under the circumstances.