outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

I think the detail on the thread is to do with the incoherence of the approach, from Herd Immunity, and then when a lockdown was decided upon that there were guesses as to the length of it, lack of definition, the moralising park discourse and the like. That's otm to me.

TBH I think at this stage it's easy to lapse into that kind of thing, maybe not the'wake up idiots' tone of that account but more, idk, looking at the news and thinking 'only' 66 deaths today or whatever, the story becomes the decline rather than the 66 people who were loved by their families. A degree of callousness becomes unavoidable after a while.

That account is followed by four other people I follow, all of whom are economists or financial journalists, so I assume he's some kind of hedge fund data wonk and those guys are not always renowned for their high levels of empathy.

Faced with the swelling numbers, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez (R) said Thursday that another lockdown was possible if the outbreak didn’t subside soon. He said he would meet with business owners Friday to discuss the move.

“If something is not done in the next few weeks to alter our course,” Suarez said at a news conference, “we could be in a dire situation.”

???

?!?!!!?!!

if this outbreak doesn't subside soon, we're gonna have to do something. but it's out of our hands for now...jesus take the wheel

has someone tried reasoning with teh virus

all of cable news for the past four years

Insert Mr Show killer rollercoaster sketch here.

Btw, this is person who RT-ed yesterday contentious thread on Sweden and on covid narrative into my TL. He had been pushing a narrative of lack of evidence for mask wearing/how little we know and how that flows into the narrative and the political choices taken. It's an ok read:

Quite annoying thing that's happened IMO has a false dichotomy about "what the science says" and "political (i.e. based on ideological / value judgements) interpretations of the science". It's not entirely wrong at all and it's an important distinction to make, but also...

— Daniel Howdon (@danielhowdon) July 17, 2020

Except that the people who are arguing against using masks (not to mention actively trying to prevent their use) are doing so on purely ideological/political grounds not out of some reasoned review of the evidence. They don't care about the evidence and would be doing what they are doing even if the evidence of mask use was overwhelming and peer-reviewed (cf. climate change).

Spain: Catalonia asks Barcelona residents to stay at home as much as possible again, after new cases tripled this week as opposed to the week before. There's about 150 local new outbreaks
Israel: New 'weekend lockdown' starting now due to high rise of new covid cases, 2000+ a day
Belgium: Authorities say "second wave" has begun, as they rack up 33% more daily cases this week compared to last week
Holland: A hundred more cases this week than last week
France: R is above 1 again, for the first time since May.
Germany: R is above 1 again as well

Second wave y'all.

UK: New daily COVID cases are no longer dropping in the UK
https://covid.joinzoe.com/post/data-update-july-16

PBKR - yes I know this. I am not arguing around against wearing a mask just thought you all might like a look at the conflicting evidence for it.

Feel like governments are really just burying their heads in the sand and refusing to engage with the real issue here, that operating an economy reliant on social consumption might just be fundamentally incompatible with keeping a highly contagious and deadly virus under control. If these things meet head on there's no competition, the virus wins.

Until there's an acceptance of this then governments won't be able to even start on the task of ensuring the wellbeing of their citizens over the longer term, it appears they don't believe it's even possible.

Won't somebody please think of the economy

The reopenings will continue until morale improves

> UK: New daily COVID cases are no longer dropping in the UK

= increasing. just say increasing.

Good reporting on the battle between teachers and the federal govt in the US

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/teachers-back-to-school-protests.html?

⚠️Cautionary Tale!
60 y.o. John McDaniel died from #COVID after calling it a "political ploy"

He called the #Ohio shutdown "bullsh-t" "Does anyone have the guts to say #COVID19 is a political ploy? Asking for a friend. Prove me Wrong"

McDaniel leaves behind a wife and 2 sons. pic.twitter.com/jbIMdw4nmT

— Cleavon Gilman, MD🌵 (@Cleavon_MD) July 12, 2020

is anyone going to compile all these at the end of the year

this fucking fuck face

Georgia @GovKemp: "I am a believer that kids need to be in classrooms...every new school year has a challenge. We're gonna have cases that break out in the schools, either with personnel or perhaps students, just like you do with a stomach bug or a flu or anything else..." pic.twitter.com/qW9MhIWN1M

— CSPAN (@cspan) July 17, 2020

needs to meet the kids from Village of the Damned

school, where they freak out about head lice outbreaks, but a new novel coronavirus = "just a thing we have to live with"

Kemp is just unbelievably execrable.

PBKR - yes I know this. I am not arguing around against wearing a mask just thought you all might like a look at the conflicting evidence for it.

― xyzzzz__, Friday, July 17, 2020 8:13 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I read the thread. to be clear the evidence is not really “conflicting”, it is just weak by the standards medical scientists are accustomed to, due to the restrictions in study design inherent to mask-wearing — is it is impossible to use placebo, people in mask groups may not wear them while people in no-mask groups may wear them, etc. (this guy is a health economist, which instantly raises a red flag in my head, though he seems to have a good head on his shoulders.)

in medicine we are used to putting forth statements and drawing a distinction between the strength of the recommendation and the quality of the underlying evidence. taking a cholesterol pill after having a heart attack is a 1A recommendation: strong recommendation, good-quality evidence. wearing a mask in the midst of a pandemic caused by a respiratory virus would be something like a 1B recommendation: still a strong recommendation with moderate-quality evidence. it is a strong recommendation because the theoretical risks of wearing masks — I am struggling to really think of any legitimate ones, perhaps complacency with distancing and supply-chain disruptions — are so outweighed by the benefits even with only moderate-quality evidence.

it is regrettable that agencies like the WHO and CDC have so thoroughly bungled the messaging with masks when the recommendations should have been clear 4 months ago, and it is interesting (and possibly good, I’m still on the fence tbh) that laypeople have taken such a new interest in medical evidence, but really just wear a motherfucking mask

Great that you are not restricting your insuffferabilty to ILB, xyzzzz__. Don't hide your light under a bushel.

Haven't kept up with the thread, so apologies if this was already posted:

https://www.livescience.com/hair-stylists-infected-covid19-face-masks.html

Kev otm - as far as this extremely easily implemented policy is concerned the ~evidence~ is more than satisfactory, it’s great, beautiful, that evidence. “Oh but how many robust studies are there that conclusively prove not slowly filling a room with my spittle prevents the spread of this aerosol-transmitted disease” is such a non-starter. (& the subtext is usually “is it guaranteed to stop me, the protagonist of the universe, from personally getting it”)

hey americans your graph looks rly bad. seriously

Great that you are not restricting your insuffferabilty to ILB, xyzzzz__. Don't hide your light under a bushel.

― Isolde mein Herz zum Junker (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 17 July 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Just doing what I do best, James. Will keep at it, thanks for the encouraging words.

I despair over the culture of indifference and entitlement that the other party has preached. Often from actual pulpits.

I lived through Iran-Contra and impeachments over blow-jobs and the Iraq war marketed with lies and the mortgage derivatives collapse and ongoing climate agreement obstructionism. But I've never been as ashamed of my country.

Sometimes I feel the only good that might come of this is reeducation camps. Teach the masses what the exponential function means....

At no stage did I say not to wear a mask, but that thread does highlight that a lot of ppl are still in the dark with a lot of this. Locking down with distancing has been the thing that has definitely worked.

k3vin thank you for that post, I just shared it on FB in a thread where there was some (legit) confusion

It annoys we that the debate has been allowed to be skewed to absolutes about what stops covid from spreading.

Masks and hygiene and distancing and testing etc all contribute to reducing the risk and keeping the numbers down. That is enough for me to follow the guidance. I can do that and still accept that at some point I'll be exposed and could get ill.

I'm hopeful that enough of us doing so will keep the hospital beds clear for others and buy crucial vaccine/treatment time.

This 'infringing on my constitutional right to cough on baristas' nonsense can fuck right off and it's worrying that it's spread to the UK. I literally see people saying Nicola Sturgeon is imposing masks as a sinister government control measure. Like, to what end? What does a government get out of that?

Uk government has paused announcing daily Covid death totals to give them time to cook the books.

The guy that wrote a thread I linked now has an article on masks and compliance and the gaps in information on how best to use it.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/18/face-masks-public-health-campaign

Very thorough summary of vaccine progress from the CBC website in Canada.

http://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/coronavirusvaccinetracker/

that's a fantastic page, thank you

Uk government has paused announcing daily Covid death totals to give them time to cook the books.

― American Fear of Scampos (Ed), Saturday, 18 July 2020 bookmarkflaglink

What's the official bullshit for this?

Ok just saw yes cooking books

Feel like governments are really just burying their heads in the sand and refusing to engage with the real issue here, that operating an economy reliant on social consumption might just be fundamentally incompatible with keeping a highly contagious and deadly virus under control. If these things meet head on there's no competition, the virus wins.

Until there's an acceptance of this then governments won't be able to even start on the task of ensuring the wellbeing of their citizens over the longer term, it appears they don't believe it's even possible.

― Matt DC, Friday, July 17, 2020 2:18 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Matt DC I've been thinking about your post, and want to understand better what you mean by "social consumption". Can you say a little more?

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/20/oxford-coronavirus-vaccine-triggers-immune-response-trial-shows

Fingers crossed…

the power of positive thinking

Gov. Mike Parson: “These kids have got to get back to school.... And if they do get COVID-19, which they will — and they will when they go to school — they’re not going to the hospitals.... They’re going to go home and they’re going to get over it.” https://t.co/yEtHbYf3sZ pic.twitter.com/SzoieUGPOh

— St. Louis Post-Dispatch (@stltoday) July 20, 2020

"getting over it"....

https://english.elpais.com/science_tech/2020-07-17/over-half-of-coronavirus-hospital-patients-in-spain-have-developed-neurological-problems-studies-show.html

Kids only infect other kids, it's like a game of tag.

Fuck this fucking country. Just awful.

On the bright side, you'll be ahead of the curve and achieve herd immunity as early as 2030.

who will win, the governors trying to force kids to go to school, the protesters trying to prevent kids from school, the protesters trying to force kids to go to school, a named US military branch, an unnamed US covert ops squad, the mayors trying to force the governors to stop forcing the kids to go to school, dr manhattan, or nikki haley

sorry to make light of it - i am very lucky to not have to deal with this right now, directly. i know so many ilxors are - teachers, those of us with kids. it's such a fucking mess. :(

Feel like i want to page k3v every time there's news on any vaccine dev and have him de-spin it for us

my partner is definitely stressing about what's going to be asked of her in terms of going back to classes; schools are paralyzed waiting for governor/DOE to make a pronouncement. Seems likely they will wait until two weeks before classes start and union will strike. Administration is asking educators to prepare for both remote learning AND in person classes, which complicates things considerably. Teachers gonna get stuck in the middle of an unnecessarily political shitstorm.

Oddly, cucumber.