outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

I took the rapid response test yesterday. swab was certainly unpleasant but pretty minimally so, feeling passed in about five minutes. Test came back negative in about a half hour which left a kind of lightness in my activity for the rest of the day that both surprised me and that felt somewhat unrecognizable. Then I went and got my teeth cleaned which was its own kind of weirdness having someone actually IN MY MOUTH while the two people doing the work were PPP'd up like I was case zero.

I've been wondering if some parts of life will go back to much like "before" but just with masks indefinitely. Looking around, that's how it seems (ymmv). Gyms and movie theatres and indoor dining are probably fucked but going into stores & restaurants, the post office, etc, briefly and masked, is starting to feel kinda chill?

I woke up to an email this morning from my clay studio basically saying "don't panic but one of the students has tested positive. it's asymptomatic and we're doing our best to continue keeping things clean; you don't need to worry if you've been properly socially distancing" and now i don't know if it's wise to go back.

I have a hunch many of the same folks egregiously/obliviously not following safety guidelines are the same folks that will not vote this November because they "don't really follow politics, bro" or some shit.

The daughter of a good friend of ours had a member of her high school swim team test positive; don't know if that means the daughter is quarantining (she has an immune-compromised brother). And some local high school party a few days back has already resulted in close to 20 positive cases, which begs the question: did an asymptomatic person go and spread, or did someone know they were positive and go anyway? In the case of the former, if the teen was asymptomatic, why did they feel the need to get tested? But I can totally see the latter happening. That bar that opened some months back in Michigan, that was exactly the scenario: young dude went, got sick, still invited friends over for a fire pit and/or to infect them all and their families, too, which is just what he did.

Reminds me of a huge rain storm we had almost 20 years ago. All the underpasses were flooded, and on the news you could barely see the tops of a few cars that got overwhelmed by the water. The reporter turned to a man and asked him if one of those cars was his. "Yeah," he said. Didn't you see all the other stuck cars? she asked. What made you think *you* could make it? The guy just shrugs. "I dunno."

i don't know if it's wise to go back.

the major risk wouldn't be from rebreathing air that the positive student had shed virus into. the micro-droplets eventually settle. if the surfaces where it settled are well-cleaned, you are aware of what you touch, wash hands often and don't rub your face, then that's low risk, too.

the main risk would be that you or other students are already infected and you or they will begin to shed virus into the air while you are gathered for class. masks and distancing will reduce that risk, but that's what I'd think hardest about before going back.

The students are back here in St Andrews, and it seems like there are a lot of rumours flying around. A couple of friends who work in the halls have said there have been three positives, the cops busted up parties etc. I don't know. All I know is I'm staying put.

thx aimless, that's all pretty sensible.

1,500 cases traced back to meat processing plants in the last month and yet https://t.co/kYioFc00O6

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) September 9, 2020

Just so fucking hollow.

The fires across the West Coast are just the latest examples of the very real ways our changing climate is changing our communities. Protecting our planet is on the ballot. Vote like your life depends on it—because it does. pic.twitter.com/gKGegXWxQu

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) September 10, 2020

Here's video of one community in the midst of rapid change:

DEVELOPING: The Beachie Creek Fire burning east of Salem, Oregon has grown to an estimated 80,000+ acres. The town of Mill City is believed to have almost entirely burned to the ground. pic.twitter.com/BvbfIC3rIQ

— UA News (@UrgentAlertNews) September 8, 2020

Sorry that Obama tweet should be in the climate change thread. Guess it's all getting tied up with Covid in my head.

1/
Look at the shape of these curves.

New York and Madrid had similar epidemics until they spectacularly diverged.

In March, both cities were caught by surprise and shut down because of #COVID19.

In September, the situation is under control in NY and alarming in Madrid.

Why? pic.twitter.com/VF0BCl0xyt

— Miguel Hernán (@_MiguelHernan) September 11, 2020

not an expert on any of this, but this has the ring of truth

good thread, thanks

Karl you should follow https://mobile.twitter.com/kissane, she’s like the taniel of covid data. She’s how I saw that thread.

taniel of covid data.

lol, i love it. followed!
i don't know why i wasn't following Kissane before! I've seen her before in other covidtracking related twitter threads, but i didn't know she was like, taniel level

I mean you could also have seen that tweet in particular in the British politics thread but there’s also some mourinho/spurs content in there too.

maybe i underestimate how fucked up things are in madrid, but i find it difficult to give new york much credit. i mean last month i waited five days for a test result in nyc

Summary and link to paper here by the Wellcome Trust
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/looking-ahead-prepare-tomorrow-covid-19-futures-beth-thompson-mbe

looking at possible scenarios:
Future 1 - “Vaccines work, antivirals fail”
Future 2 - “Antivirals work, vaccines fail”
Future 3 - “Medical interventions are effective and evolution works for us”
Future 4 - “Medical interventions fail and evolution works against us”
"This thought experiment isn’t a prediction but a tool to imagine and explore what could happen."

#BREAKING Israel announces 3-week nationwide coronavirus lockdown pic.twitter.com/HoCkuobWKP

— AFP news agency (@AFP) September 13, 2020

2020 summed up in a url
https://gothamist.com/news/verizon-karen-video-racist-anti-mask-no-data-rage-covid

lol

thanks, the AQI is like 600 here and there is still a pandemic and I needed a chuckle

that's an utterly appalling video in that link btw, approach with caution

uk covid cases heatmap

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eh25tnRXsAAwUdU.png

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eh25tnRXsAAwUdU.png (because that will fail to embed)

someone is trying to stop coronavirus. the proud patriots of michigan won't let that happen.

Group says it has topped 400K signatures, in 2 months, to repeal Whitmer's unilateral emergency powers to curb virus; GOP-backed maneuver lets Legislature rescind 1945 law & sidestep veto; Unlock Michigan wants 500K signatures, may submit in Sept #mileg https://t.co/TPIG4VUJtb

— David Eggert (@DavidEggert00) September 14, 2020

This has to be an SNL skit. It just has to be. pic.twitter.com/HURtVSr9DL

— Jared Carrabis (@Jared_Carrabis) September 14, 2020

oh my god, the 6-year-old saying "the flu kills more than coronavirus"

as i shut that off, someone was making an important point about george floyd not being able to breathe, as compared to masks for covid19.

great job, local news

Brought to you by the species responsible for the Children's Crusade, among other historical hits.

that means you missed the old lady who hates masks because "child molesters love em"

Weird to see people passing that video around on Twitter for laffs, i thought I had a pretty dark sense of humor but that shit is legit terrifying and sad

yeah. it's enraging. that 6-year-old was make to perform a rehearsed lie to make his parents proud.

the flu does kill more people than coronavirus....if we count 5 years of flu stats, and we move some numbers around here, carry the 2, rinse, repeat

^i'm sure one of the other kids in his 1st grade zoom chat will kindly set him straight on that

SLC_patriot2014: mommy says the flu killded more people than the coronavirus
GokuAlexIam6: actually my dad says that it's not an apples to apples comparison
TimmySunshine: poooooooooooooooooooop :P

TimmySunshine: poooooooooooooooooooop :P

new thread/board/everything title

Weird to see people passing that video around on Twitter for laffs, i thought I had a pretty dark sense of humor but that shit is legit terrifying and sad

have u seen the movie Joker

That's one way to do it:

https://nypost.com/2020/09/14/anti-maskers-forced-to-dig-graves-for-covid-19-victims-in-indonesia

incredible byline on that

In my big college town all the frats and sororities (shockingly) voted to not worry and to just keep partying as usual despite the recent massive uptick in cases in the 18-25 year old range. So the county health department issued an emergency order for mandatory quarantine of 30 off campus residences for two weeks, (23 of which are fraternities and sororities) and is actually affixing quarantine notices to the buildings like ye olden times.

I got a kind of hilariously worded text from the campus emergency notification system that very consciously avoided any indication that the school has any control over what happens in off-campus private residences BUT they really really want you to know this order exists.

PLAGUE HOUSE
THOU SHALT ENTER NOT

I was teaching Foucault and the Panopticon to freshmen right before everything got wild in March. It was...more than a little eerie.

Wow joygoat

re that news report - how did you guys reach that state

most of them probably already live there, they're used to it

I'm just going to be perfectly frank and say that despite my knowledge that much of what was happening in that video is the result of an education system decimated by conservatives and skewed toward the needs of a shrinking number of middle class whites, I am also more and more convinced that about half of this country is filled with the dumbest, most selfish, myopic idiot fucks of any population anywhere else on the planet. And to be cruel, I wish ill on all of them.

I am also more and more convinced that about half of this country is filled with the dumbest, most selfish, myopic idiot fucks of any population anywhere else on the planet. And to be cruel, I wish ill on all of them.

I'm pretty much here as well. At this point it's hard to see otherwise. We can blame education, conservative news overload, fear, "economic anxiety" all to some degree, but at the base of it all there is a not insignificant percentage of this country that is just plain fucking stupid and selfish and, worse, extremely proud of being so.

Sounds about right! That's the "innocence" of the 1950s that these dummies want to return to, a time when everyone was at least a little bit stupid but you could still achieve a lot and make a good living despite it. (And also, I suspect, it was still a smarter stupid than where we are now, at least by standards of literacy, math, science, etc.)

I mean, there's also the obvious racial, sexual, and gendered connotations of such a return.

It's all just infuriating!