outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

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.

― soaring skrrrtpeggios (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Tuesday, September 15, 2020 10:25 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

My little working theory is that there is a very high level of "background radiation" of anxiety hanging over the country resulting from (1) many years of unresolved economic inequalities highlighted by the Great Recession and now exacerbated by the new gilded age and the pandemic; and (2) unacknowledged but obvious resource scarcity from climate change.

Of course, none of the foregoing completely explains or justifies the inbred racism and selfishness in this country.

xpost Yeah, I have no idea. But I assume majority black churches (of which there are many) are giving a lot, too.

Prosperity gospel, one of the greatest cons.

we've come so far in terms of public health, science, general knowledge, all literally free to anyone with a phone more powerful than almost every computer that has come before it, and as comprehensive as a library. And yet here were are, willingly choosing stupid again and again

this is probably the most depressing part of this pandemic for me. the one hope I had about avoiding climate change related catastrophe was that one day the reality would become simply undeniable and we'd all get on the same page but if anything the more information we have the dumber we get. Florida is gonna be underwater and these idiots will still say "the climate's always changing, you idiot" as they pull the lever for Don Jr. yes this pandemic is tricky but it's not exactly complicated stuff. we know exactly what we need to do to save lives and we simply choose not to.

Tracer, I agree about ethics, but then the issue becomes whose ethics? If we're going with Christian ethics, then we're going to come into so many disagreements within the first few minutes of discussion that the point is moot.

The despair of my outlook is underscored by the fact that I truly do believe that we are all brothers and sisters, and that so many people refuse to believe that as part of their guiding belief system is not just baffling or infuriating, but incredibly sad.

any ethics at all would be hottt

was going to write “good” but my phone autocorrected to “hottt” - phone otm obv

starting to rethink my “humanism is bad” position as the product of a privileged age perhaps

The stupidest thing about these stupid idiots is they have no idea how good they have it and how much they will regret destroying systems that once allowed them to have it so good.

starting to rethink my “humanism is bad” position as the product of a privileged age perhaps

Focus on climate change and maintain your stance guilt-free.

Why do British people say “r number”? It’s just “r”.

isn't it r0?

isn't she r0v31y

R0 and Rt depends or just R is fine if the difference doesn’t matter. “R number” is like calling x in an equation “x number”.

we're close enough to cornwall that otherwise people assume we're pirates

wait I thought this was a message board for pirates

ilx-arrrrr

Yeah, it's the pirates thing

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/covid-19-acoustic-face-mask-music-enhancing-hungary-conductor-13105742

Fucksake

'They didn't stop off in pubs on the way'
A club trip to Doncaster Races was blamed by the Welsh Government for a covid cluster.
The partner of one member hits back pic.twitter.com/ZnBBkeDa94

— BBC Wales News (@BBCWalesNews) September 17, 2020

how the fuck are we 6 months into this and there are still people who don't understand you can have CV without symptoms? and that maybe if you get tested (so presumably did have symptoms) you wait for the results before getting all your mates together on a bus trip?

The American woman in Germany who broke quarantine to throw a barhopping "rona party" while she had a sore throat should have to spend the rest of the year in solitary.

Dean of St Andrews has announced a 7pm curfew for students starting tonight, apparently.

(Though that’s according to my mum, so who knows)

Pretty grim news here on the Oxford coronavirus vaccine: 2 of the 8,000 UK participants in the trial have developed a rare illness involving inflammation of the spine; in the US the illness hits about 1 in every 236,000 people annually. https://t.co/zcBbAbLNBg pic.twitter.com/mVVFZOMCHd

— Tom Gara (@tomgara) September 20, 2020

This is all making me super excited to get my second dose of Moderna's on Tuesday (tho i think i got placebo fortunately)

The Moderna vaccine is a mRNA for the spike protein. Body cells absorb it by endocytosis, and hopefully enough express the spike protein that it's presented on cell membranes to the immune system.

The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is a chimp adenovirus (non-encapsulated, unlike SARS CoV-2) that expresses the spike protein, though not for its own construction. Some SARS CoV-2 spike protein in infected cells presumably finds its way to cell membranes to elicit immune response. But the chimp adenovirus vector means a lot of other potential antigens, some of which may present molecular mimicry problems. Chimp adenovirus vaccines have been used successfully for vaccines against Ebola and Zika in animal models, but AFAICT never for a successful human vaccine. There are more potential antigens in the Oxford vaccine candidate, and potential for the Oxford vaccine's proteins to have molecular mimicry with CNS proteins.

I'm very glad that there are over 100 vaccine candidates at various stages of research, though only a few dozen being pushed through human testing ATM. Some won't provide (much) immunity to SARS CoV-2, some may elicit autoimmune disorders through molecular mimicry. There will be Nobels for the team lucky enough to make the first vaccine against any coronavirus.

what’s a CNS protein?

The case prompted a pause in AstraZeneca’s vaccine trials to allow for a safety review by independent experts. A company spokeswoman told the Times last week that the volunteer was later determined to have a previously undiagnosed case of multiple sclerosis, unrelated to the vaccine, and that the trial resumed shortly thereafter.

Transverse myelitis can sometimes be the first sign of multiple sclerosis, which involves more complex symptoms. But the myelitis alone can also occur after the body encounters an infectious agent like a virus.

It's alarming but I don't think it necessarily means the Oxford vaccine is necessarily unsafe.

Tracer: CNS = Central nervous system. The concern is that antibodies to vaccine proteins could be cross reactive with endogenous proteins, starting up autoimmune disorders.

i don't know what endogenous means either, sorry :( You're talking at a technical level that I just can't understand

Q: Is Dr. Fauci right that masks help stop the spread?

A: He’s a liar.

Q: Why is that?

A: Because I don’t believe in numbers. pic.twitter.com/ZLqUlK5Z2M

— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) September 21, 2020

It's a good thing these people have an outsized influence on, and representation in, our government. This fuckin' country.

Wish these people would stop believing in breathing. Oxygen must be some sort of Soros-G5-PizzaGate-Bilderberg ploy à la chemtrails amirite?

I can't say I can read the graph too well but if it supports the question..

Anyone with a theory about why COVID-19 cases have started rising again has to be able to explain why the timing of the rise was so simultaneous across the whole of the UK. This is every local authority in the country on the same plot: pic.twitter.com/rQfJqx3pnO

— Colin Angus (@VictimOfMaths) September 22, 2020

It's probably a combination of schools + people getting more relaxed/complacent in pubs and restaurants in late August?

https://www.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=47574f7a6e454dc6a42c5f6912ed7076

This is probably the most granular map so far of where the cases are and even that is only showing the confirmed cases, not as much use when the testing system has fallen over.

twitter ruined that image (their compression is garbage; even worse for videos)

Apologies for the fuzzy image, Twitter doesn't like the original - it's too big. You can find a massive, zoomable version here: https://t.co/uKBPP5gRG1

And the code to create it is here:https://t.co/fY9Wykn0Kl

— Colin Angus (@VictimOfMaths) September 22, 2020

xp

haha, the massive, zoomable version is too big for my display.

Colin Angus: create a 1600x1200 jpg or something!

Branwell was wondering what he was up to these days

This is the friend of someone I know here in Cardiff. Sounds absolutely horrible but as an update, almost six months later, she was finally able to go for a run yesterday (although only for a minute)

https://sarra43.wixsite.com/saracovid19blog

Wow. I don't get why people are so blasé about it, I'm constantly seeing "well you only have a 0.001% chance of dying" or whatever they reckon it is. For many families even one person getting it badly would screw up jobs, childcare, dependants, let alone the toll on mental health and longterm physical health.

"well you only have a 0.001% chance of dying"

This is just the usual binary thinking trap that people put their foot into time and time again. For those without firsthand experience, the dominant idea is that you either die or recover and dying is bad, but recovery is good. All other details tend to get overlooked. The fact that this disease is so new also means that its long term health effects aren't really identified and familiar, yet, so people haven't learned to fear them.

tbf I'm not sure many people are being blase, per se, so much as taking calculated risks, just like every time we get in a car. and those risks are different for different people. and people are just different, too. for example, I know low risk people taking more precautions than some higher risk people I know.

yeah it's insane that people think that way and again I feel like our poisonous political environment & media coverage has something to do with it. if you're pro-Trump you can point to the death toll as the only "bad" outcome and then say "well we all know these numbers are bogus, right?" and if you're anti-Trump you can point to it and say "holy shit all these people are dying because of our idiot president" and either way you kind of oversimplify the total effect of this thing

do we know how likely "long term health effects" are to manifest? you'd think that after 9 months we'd have some idea

There are so many numbers I don't know after all this time. for example, not how many people get it, but how many people are hospitalized with serious conditions, what percentage. I dunno.

Yeah I guess I meant people being blase in what they say to people who are likely to already have it/be at high risk from it (eg healthcare workers). People's own actions vs risk is a whole other thing, and likewise I've seen the full range. Age is the biggest single risk factor I believe, so that's why I find it sobering when 26-year-olds are really struck down by it. A relative thinks they've had it for 100+ days and they were the one venturing to the shops to protect the asthmatic partner!

well, let's bust out the good ol envelope and turn it around to the back, where the work must be done

https://covidtracking.com/data/national

mortality rate
6,941,911 confirmed cases
194,852 deaths (confirmed + probable)

194,852 / 6,941,911 = 0.0280

converting that to a percentage, that's a 2.80% mortality rate.

hospitalization rate
6,941,911 confirmed cases
400,840 cumulative hospitalizations

400,840 / 6,941,911 = 0.0577

converting that to a percentage, that's a 5.77% hospitalization rate.

(all figures for the US only)

so basically, in the US at least, about 5% of the cases end up going to the hospital, but of those, almost half die.

(unless my envelope got really messed up. a lot of pushing going on lately)

although actually, i guess it's not always true that one goes to a hospital for covid19 before dying. so i suppose the likelihood of dying after hospitalization is lower than "almost half", sorry.

Hi, y'all https://www.miamiherald.com/news/article246005375.html

^

The governor’s announcement Friday allows restaurants across the state to immediately reopen at full capacity — and prevents cities and counties from ordering restaurants to close or operate at less than half-capacity...

missionaccomplished.jpg

florida wins!