Coronavirus

n815e wrote: When anyone gets sick then sue them.
They shouldn’t be risking your health and your families’ health.

I didn't hear about this until yesterday at work, but somebody working in our warehouse came to work last Sunday bragging about attending a coronavirus party. All of her co-workers in the warehouse shunned her that day, and one of the owners yelled at her about endangering the team. She has been wearing a cheap surgical mask at work ever since, and I finally noticed yesterday.

Meanwhile, three of the four adjacent states still don't have shelter-in-place orders. Wisconsin only got on board recently, and so they have more than twice as many cases despite having roughly the same population. Iowa and the Dakotas are less densely populated, so things haven't gotten bad yet in those states.

Instead of expecting people to try to interpret and apply what he says or tweets, how about expecting the President of the United States to put some of that research you call for or consideration into the information that he disseminates? Or simply to defer to the experts, as a leader should do?

Because there are people that don’t question everything he says.
People that have poisoned themselves.
People that have outright ignored the problem or didn’t even believe it was real because he told them so.

There are people who are threatening Dr. Fauci’s life because his scientific and fact based approach means he is contradicting someone that uses neither of those things. For being honest and truthful instead of maintaining lies and dangerous misinformation, they threaten violence.

Even the official messaging from the government must pass through Pence’s approval to make sure it is politically expedient rather than factually correct or actually useful.

Yes, there is ever changing information as data progresses and decisions can be made on that.
That is completely different than telling people misinformation.

We need to be able to trust what we are being told. We need facts and transparency. When you have leaders mixing speculation, quackery, lies to manipulate opinions, etc. with actual facts then people find themselves confused and not sure what to believe or what to do.

And I get that this deluge of misinformation is a weapon used to try to get votes.
It’s a disaster when employed in a public health crisis.

jason10mm wrote:

southernman wrote: Just had a good snigger - on the UK news it was announced Brit scientists/doctors are testing certain drugs for Corvid-19 treatment including anti-malarials. I was only a few weeks ago that Trump was being laughed at for mentioning this, everyone just forgets Trump is a bit of an idiot so he would only have said something like that if medical advisors (and probably pretty smart ones) had mentioned that in a briefing (but not expecting him to splash it across crisis prime time TV).
Problem with having a bit of idiot has a leader, whatever intelligent advisors tell him usually sounds utterly ridiculous when he puts it out to the people .

It's also possible, just possible, that if the media would take Trumps words and instead of reflexively making a negative statement instead do some research, and translate those words into useful info for the populace that we could be ahead of the game instead of playing catch up. I mean, it's unlikely that Trump is completely making this stuff up, there must be some data behind it that a reporter could incorporate into a story, right?

Folks are throwing darts at the wall, seeing what sticks. Some, if not most, of the therapies are going to be useless or minimally effective. Dogging someone for just mentioning them is counter productive IMHO. The WHO and CDC first say no masks, now they say masks based on data. The situation is extremely fluid and some data points contradict each other, typical for largely anecdotal or retrospective reviews.

ChristopherMD wrote: I want a mask that makes me look like Bane.

This is such a good idea. If you 3D printed cool looking masks, maybe use would increase. Although if they are not N95, then you are rolling the dice.

It's not so much about N95 filtration to keep yourself from getting infected at this point. It's more about last-ditch efforts to keep yourself from spreading it and signaling to others that maybe they should remember the 6 ft rule. I think this works.

Wearing a mask also makes it easier for you to remember not to touch your face until you get home and wash your hands first.

Crazy day at work, thanks primarily to coronavirus. We have our first requests for the special sick leave days granted by the new Families First Coronavirus Response Act starting on April 1st. One employee died yesterday of a mysterious cause of death that was not coronavirus, as he had no symptoms at work on Saturday. I recently hired a guy for a different department, and he started this morning and ghosted us after lunch. I am trying to hire for several entry-level jobs, but we are actually getting fewer applications than before coronavirus.

It gradually dawned on me that I have been carrying around a silly assumption that there will be a day when everything abruptly snaps back to normal. Our governor will lift all the restrictions on schools and businesses and public venues, and the sun will be shining bright, and everybody will be laughing and talking. And almost nobody will ever get sick from Covid-19 again, especially after the vaccine is invented and everybody takes it.

There *will* come a day when our governor lifts the restrictions, or possibly a series of days with different restrictions lifted on different days, and that might be as soon as May 15th or May 31st. And the sun might even be shining, and some people will be happy about it. But people will still be getting sick, and there might even be another surge in cases 2 weeks after restrictions are lifted. Many people may be cautious about returning to old routines. For example, right now I find the idea of dining in a crowded restaurant to be slightly gross, and the concept of being in the middle of a crowd at a concert to be a little scary. There may be a vaccine developed by 2021, but it may also turn out that coronavirus will have mutated into multiple strains by then, and it may just keep coming back every year like the flu. So the best we might hope for is a partially effective vaccine that we will take every year, one that will be based on the known strains of the previous year.

I hope that our society reevaluates some old assumptions and makes some positive changes. Maybe it would be better if people just watched sports on tv instead of cramming into stadiums. Maybe a lot more people could work from home at least part of the time. Maybe shaking hands or kissing cheeks with strangers is a gross and archaic custom that needs to end. Maybe cramming 8 billion humans onto one planet is a bad idea and we should be more responsible about family planning. Maybe anti-vaxxers should not be allowed the freedom to practice their anti-science BS anymore.

Shellhead wrote: Maybe anti-vaxxers should not be allowed the freedom to practice their anti-science BS anymore.

Abso-fucking-lutely this.

Shellhead wrote: There may be a vaccine developed by 2021, but it may also turn out that coronavirus will have mutated into multiple strains by then, and it may just keep coming back every year like the flu. So the best we might hope for is a partially effective vaccine that we will take every year, one that will be based on the known strains of the previous year.

I've already heard it posited that we'll need to rename the "cold and flu season" to the "cold and flu and coronavirus" season. It's just going to be a part of life going forward. Yes, we'll have vaccines and better "herd immunity" as a species, and thus less of a crushing impact on our healthcare systems, but it's never going to go away.

I'm trying to maintain some optimism that SOME good may come out of all this. Mainly, that people will see the need to invest in public health, and we will elect politicians who take public health seriously.

Shellhead wrote: For example, right now I find the idea of dining in a crowded restaurant to be slightly gross, and the concept of being in the middle of a crowd at a concert to be a little scary.

I can't imagine at what point I'd feel comfortable even going to a game night among friends. A half-dozen people sitting across from each other for hours passing dice around has lost all appeal.

ChristopherMD wrote:

Shellhead wrote: For example, right now I find the idea of dining in a crowded restaurant to be slightly gross, and the concept of being in the middle of a crowd at a concert to be a little scary.

I can't imagine at what point I'd feel comfortable even going to a game night among friends. A half-dozen people sitting across from each other for hours passing dice around has lost all appeal.

Ugh, yeah. The last game night that I went to had like 14 people sitting at two tables that comfortably fit a total of 12 people.

Well I'm officially furloughed for an indeterminate period, "hopefully less than 6 months". Guess it's time to see how on fire our states unemployment process is atm (hint, the answer is very very on fire).

I’m going to have to stop licking dice...

Latest from Kuwait. The area I live in is in total lock down and enforced by army and armed police.

No fresh fruit, milk or veg is getting to supermarkets due to strict encircling of the residential area with fencing, in some cases, electric fencing.

Tinned supplies are running down in internal supermarkets. We expect this to continue for a month.

I have some food in freezer but not enough for a month so I'm instigating some self rationing.

Stopped exercising and reduced my food intake accordingly.

Queued for 2 hrs at 5am this morning to reveal a near empty supermarket. Survival is the priority in this situation. Luckily, electricity supplies are OK so AC is working and, of course, internet.

Water from the taps as bottled water is now gone.

Yikes, TM. That sounds mildly insane. It's not like they can let people starved in the lockdown area, right?