outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

“The fact that a pandemic may or may not be occurring changes nothing about the meaning or intent of the State Constitution in the preservation of our inalienable rights,” the political leaders said in the video and accompanying letter.

grrrrrr, fuck you

obvious, i know, but political leaders should be held to a higher standard. we all know there's a lot of everyday dum-dums out there who don't know wtf is going on in the world, ever. but when you're in office those excuses melt away, and instead the assumption is that if you're repeating blatant falsehoods, you're doing it on purpose. therefore, fuck them for life

It's the Dakotas and Idaho, bastions of white supremacist terrorists, down-home mildly racist honkies, and an immiserated and segregated population of Indigenous people. Beautiful country, and also incredibly scary.

i just had this really dark fantasy, a rip-off of a certain scene in lord of the rings, where "herd" of conservative gun-nuts with herd-immunity appear on the top of a mountain, looking down on the valley of uninfected people who are taking precautions. it is terrifying and they block out the sun with their coal-rolling tank-trucks, and the valley water is polluted by endless chewed-up wads of Skoal from the watching herd.

"THE PANDEMIC MAY OR MAY NOT BE OCCURRING", they say, before setting their trucks into gear and rolling coal down the mountain at top speed. "BUT EITHER WAY, YOU WILL JOIN THE HERD EVENTUALLY".

but just as all hope is lost, a non-dumb herd with immunity appears on the top of another nearby mountain. they are all rambo-like, and shirtless, ripped tom hanks is their leader, etc

Tbh highly recommend the Indigenous zombie flick "Blood Quantum." Has some resonance with your fantasy.

i didn't realize tom hanks was in that one, gotta check it out! ;)

i watched la llorona (the 2019 one) for the first time last night. obviously it's about very different things, but it certainly resonated with the current closed-in conditions as well. the mob of people in the movie were righteous, of course, but irl it often feels like a mob of total idiots closing in, and in fact, starting to infiltrate the house as well, putting you in physical danger.

save us, ripped Tom Hanks

https://amp.dw.com/en/belgiums-covid-19-health-care-collapse-it-will-happen-in-10-days/a-55451750?

:-(

Our NYC serosurvey paper is now out in Nature:
1) if extrapolated to the NYC population we found>1.7 million infected and IFR at 0.97
2) earlier introduction of the virus into city than officially detected
3) seroprevalence AND titers are stable so far https://t.co/XK3TWVveXf

— Florian Krammer (@florian_krammer) November 3, 2020

More than half of South Dakota's covid tests are coming back positive right now. pic.twitter.com/fNrhF1Z6je

— Dave Levitan (@davelevitan) November 3, 2020

From xyzzzz's article about Belgium:

I've hoped now, for six months, that it would never happen. That people would have understood the risk. And that people would have changed their habits for one year. Just to avoid that. But it's a failure of the solidarity between people in Belgium — and a question of balance between solidarity and individual rights. Some people choose their own rights compared to solidarity. And the result is now here. I've seen people dying and regretting that they didn't wear the mask. I saw that. I saw families that had big parties with all the family members. And all the family members were infected. And I've got a family right now where 80% of the family is in the beds here. Right now, just after a birthday party.

xp:
Hopefully South Dakotans will remember governor Kristi Noem's dismal Covid-19 performance in 2022. Last election in 2018 was the closest in decades (51.0% to 47.6%).

I'm reminded of Argentina hitting 60% test positivity a month ago. It's jumped from ~200 deaths/million to ~700/million since. Yesterday Argentina reported +483 deaths (in a 45 M population) vs +522 (in a 332 M population) for the US. Only Belgium is doing worse.

Slovakia is testing its entire population: Slovakia to test all citizens over age of 10 for coronavirus

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/30/slovakia-to-test-all-citizens-over-age-of-10-for-coronavirus

Denmark will cull its mink population of up to 17 million after a mutation of the coronavirus found in the animals spread to humans, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said on Wednesday. Health authorities found virus strains in humans and in mink that showed decreased sensitivity against antibodies, potentially lowering the efficacy of any vaccines, Frederiksen said.

The head of the WHO's emergencies programme, Mike Ryan, called on Friday for full-scale scientific investigations of the complex issue of humans - outside China - infecting mink which in turn transmitted the virus back to humans.
Outbreaks at mink farms have persisted in the Nordic country, the world's largest producer of mink furs, despite repeated efforts to cull infected animals since June. Minks have also been culled in the Netherlands and Spain after infections were discovered.”

Just don’t raise mink *touches forehead and winks*

(I know they’re not wild and letting them go would be an extremely bad idea)

This tells me we are going to be dealing with this virus for closer to 20 years than 2 years.

There's also the chance that a mutation that increases transmission but reduces virulence/lethality will occur. It would be favored by evolution, and its a common fate of pandemic pathogens.

Our weekly update is live and it's brutal. COVID-19 is surging in large midwestern states while continuing to burn through heavily rural states in the Mountain West. Nationally, deaths are up 8% & for the last 2 days, the US has seen over 100k daily cases https://t.co/nCcpPB2d9L

— Jessica Malaty Rivera, MS (@jessicamalaty) November 6, 2020

it is brutal. near where I live, every single indicator is going the wrong direction, and fast. positive rates, deaths, hospitalizations are the highest they've been since mid-late May.

Oregon's numbers are all headed the wrong way, too, but they are rising from a lower floor, because so far we've been less hammered than most states. Our trend is the same bad direction as almost everywhere else.

The next four months look to be brutal. It's easy to foresee 400,000 dead by the time Biden is sworn in. Getting anything even remotely under control will be a massive challenge and the economy won't be in good health, either.

Zoom shares are tanking in the wake of the Pfizer vaccine announcement

more optimistic than i am

Vaccine hasn’t been peer reviewed yet, it’s great news but don’t pin everything on it until it’s been further studied.

/quietly stamps out bonfire of facemasks

I think it is quite irresponsible to even call it a vaccine until it is thoroughly tested + proven. But if these cunts put out yellow smarties and called it a vaccine they'd still make a fortune.

I have a vaccine in my pants pay me 2 c it

you want vaccines? bofa deez nuts are the vaccines!

Aaaaaay

I'm starting to think I might have had asymptomatic Rona a couple of weeks back. There was a small outbreak at my son's school and a week or so later I felt like I had a mild cold, with no temp, but my sense of smell was wrong for weeks. I kept thinking I could smell weed all the time, including in the middle of nowhere. Now I can just smell the fragrant decay of autumn, no weed.

If smelling weed everywhere is a symptom of Covid I might have had it for years

oh I know it is so strong and pungent + travels so far these days, but I was smelling it in places where the nearest sentient beings to me were cows that were dots on the landscape.

Cows love weeds though.

Oh, weed...

Cows always seem pretty mellow tbf

omg if smelling weed was a symptom give it me now!

oh really? it makes me feel physically sick!

I think cows might be tripping on shrooms when they occasionally decide to hunt down and trample some field interloping fule to death.

Unfortunately, I accidentally bought stock in Pfizer Total Landscaping

— wolf (@hungry_cap) November 9, 2020

This goes into the details of the study. The timing around the election is honestly pretty fishy! Haha oh well.

https://www.statnews.com/2020/11/09/covid-19-vaccine-from-pfizer-and-biontech-is-strongly-effective-early-data-from-large-trial-indicate/

Also note this one is going to be a fucking nightmare to distribute (two supercooled doses) but it’s mere existence bodes well for the others.

two supercooled doses

https://i.imgur.com/bqBwmlY.jpg

I totally could believe they purposefully held back the news until after tbe election, and I'm totally fine with that

Pfizer said before third week of November would be the earliest, so if anything they rushed it rather than hang on to it


https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/pfizer-mid-november-earliest-seek-virus-vaccine-73655074

I am told by my PHD pharmacologist brother whose career is reviewing such vaccine studies to not trust Pfizer.

if Pfizer had held to the original plan, the data would likely have been available in October

Guessing someone's going to be glowing red (or at least orange) with anger about this decision.

Is it pronounced fizzer?

More like F-eye-zer.

If they're named after a WipeOut class they're fine with me

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/wipeout/images/2/2a/Feisar_3.png

Sorry to hear you got COVID-420 calz

this is still great news though right? i mean i cried reading the article thinking i and loved ones could be vaccinated by january. nightlife, restaurants could be back in action by spring?

xp
lol the only vaccine for that is to smoke reefer!

it sounds quite problematic having a vaccine with a storage requirement of -80 something fahrenheit. Which I say knowing nothing about state of the art portable freezing tech

I totally could believe they purposefully held back the news until after tbe election, and I'm totally fine with that

*chef's kiss*