Back to: COVID-19 | Forward to: Infomercial Interlude

Public appearances in a time of pandemic

This probably doesn't need saying, but I'm cancelling/avoiding public gatherings and/or public appearances for the indefinite, but hopefully short-term, future.

As of an hour ago the Scottish government announced that we're moving from "contain" to "delay" wrt. Covid-19—community transmission unrelated to travel or contact has been confirmed—and banning all assemblies of >500 people from Monday.

I'm personally in the high-risk category, being over 50 and with both type II diabetes and hypertension, so I'm self-isolating as of today.

Anyway. I won't be attending ConPulsion (local gaming convention in Edinburgh) in two weeks' time. I also expect the Eastercon in Birmingham to be cancelled, if today's COBR committee meeting in Whitehall announces a ban on public assemblies.

Looking more than two months ahead is pointless right now, but it's not looking good for this year's World Science Fiction Convention in Christchurch, New Zealand, either.

I'll update this if anything changes.

Stay safe.

1276 Comments

1:

It looks as though the Scottish government is recommending a ban but not actually enforcing one:

"The health secretary and I have decided this morning that we are minded that we will advise the cancellation, from the start of next week, of mass gatherings of 500 people or more."

Anyway, good luck with the self-isolation. I'll see you in the pub when it's all over.

2:

Very wise. As my normal lifestyle is little different, I shan't be changing much :-) But I have bought some silk gloves and am getting some portable alcohol cleanser for when I do need to go out.

3:

No, that's just polite Scottish circumlocution: with such a recommendation in effect no insurer will touch such events with a barge-pole, so they won't be allowed to go ahead. Moreover, "advise the cancellation" can be read either as a polite request or a warning that such events will be in violation of the law. ("Advise" in Scottish legal speech has a somewhat more emphatic meaning than "advise" in ordinary discourse.)

I'm probably avoiding pubs for the duration, too: they get crowded and some of them are a bit patchy on hand-washing supplies (e.g. relying on hot air driers and no paper towels).

4:

A fellow Type II and Hypertensionist here...

I completely understand your decisions in this situation, but does anyone know if the risks are the same for those who "have it but have it under control"?

My (medicated) blood pressure is normal (almost verging on low sometimes) and blood sugar levels (unmedicated) on par with non-type II:s. Very little info is available for this situation and one sort of wonders how much to panic if (read: when) the virus hits...

5:

We'll miss seeing you two. Damn.

The gig we went to last night in Cambridge is likely to be the last I buy tickets to for a while. It was relatively empty compared to most performances in J1 — less than 500 I reckon — but the demographic skewed older, with a decent proportion of the audience (we included) old enough to be the performer's parents. At least nobody appeared to cough.

As for CoNZealand, who knows? We've been looking forward to it for the best part of a decade. But we're booked to go via Singapore, and if they close their airport we'd be blocked from getting there anyway without rerouting.

6:

Prudence is a virtue!

"May no ill thing arise" is totally fatuous under the circumstances, yet I very much hope you get your first exposure from the vaccine.

7:

Any thoughts as far ahead as the second May bank holiday weekend? (Satellite 7)

I won't ask the committee from this far out.

8:

does anyone know if the risks are the same for those who "have it but have it under control"?

Don't know.

One thing that is known is that the mechanism COVID-19 uses to enter cells includes the ACE2 receptor site, which is targeted by a whole bunch of antihypertensive medications. Whether this is because folks with hypertension express more ACE2 receptors, or because the drugs they're on potentiate the viral infection, or because the tooth fairy said so, is unclear at this time.

If it turns out that ACE2 antagonists make the infection worse I'll take my chances with dropping one of my meds for a couple of months over dying as my lungs fail in the short term.

9:

Looking more than two months ahead is pointless right now

I play bridge semi-competitively here in Australia, and Emails have already been going back and forth between my team members about the likelihood of the Autumn Nationals (first weekend in May, in Adelaide) and/or VCC (first weekend in June, in Melbourne) being cancelled.

Not to mention the big Asia-Pacific tournament scheduled for Perth (WA version) in late April. That one was supposed to have participants from all over the World.

(And as I mentioned in the comment thread of the previous post, I am VERY suspicious of the current quoted cases for India (74) and Indonesia (34).)

10:

I have tickets to a Pet Shop Boys gig at the Glasgow arena in June. I'm expecting their world tour to be rescheduled.

I'd like to get to Satellite VII in Glasgow, but: that's likely going to be a casualty too (it's in late May).

Worldcon is too far out to say for sure but I don't expect the pandemic to be under control by August. I'm just glad I hadn't got as far as booking flights.

If we come through this okay and the global economy doesn't implode I'll try and make up for lost face-to-face time once the dust settles.

11:

I'm on the board of a community orchestra in Westchester County, New York. We perform at a number of nursing homes, libraries, churches and synagogues. We have canceled our April performances (some of the venues canceled before we could even contact them). Just yesterday, the board decided to cancel rehearsals for the near future.

My wife and I have tickets to see "West Side Story" next week. We are waiting to see what New York City decides to do about Broadway theaters.

We are in our late 60s, and my wife is a long-time asthma sufferer.

12:

As I suspected sports in the US is either suspended or going without "cheeks in seats". This is going to pull $billions out of the economy. If you you hate sports you will be impacted as the fall on job loss impacts you and your neighbors.

So far is seems most colleges are continuing without fans, the NBA has suspended all games, NHL is meeting today to decide, and then there's the start of the baseball season next month.

DT's no longer useful travel ban just adds to the economic misery.

13:

This is a disease with a long recovery time with a long right tail, no one knows with confidence when and how it becomes uninfectious, there's some evidence it can go dormant/non-symptomatic/non-infectious in the body and then at a later time reappear (but this is one of those things you need to see a lot of to be sure it's not reinfection from an unrecognized source), and that there's no vaccine or (as yet) approved treatment.

For planning purposes, I'm expecting that we're not going to see a resumption of normalcy until a vaccine is available. (Or a cheap reliable anti-viral, but I'd bet on a vaccine.) Even under "blank cheque, do it now" conditions, that's going to take thereabouts of a year.

Also for planning purposes, I'll point out that between the long supply chains, the average age of farmers, and the timing, this may not be an above-average agriculture year even if the weather is perfect.

14:

Oh, yeah. As of a hour or so ago, 200 colleges/universities have told the students to move out of dorms and their classes will continue via online means.

If course not all students have an alternate place to go. Some are from out of the country, others from across the country or state, and others are literally homeless in their original housing. Of course continuing to live in dorms with tightly packed rooms and communal dining isn't good for suppressing disease transmission.

Then there are the foreign students who have visas limited how much or little they can do online in terms of course work before being out of compliant with their student visa.

15:

Oh, SHIT! Thank you for making my day :-( My main anti-hypertensive is one, too. I do appreciate the warning, really :-(

16:

Yup, science meeting in Vienna in early May as well as the road trip to Finland to see some friends. Art exhibitions and art networking events here in Socal. And very particular to the San Diego/Tijuana region there is a rich cross-border culture of weird music and art that is going to suffer (I can’t imagine standing in line at the border crossing right now). But, staying alive matters, and not infecting other people is really important. We are preparing to socially isolate as well, as much as possible, since it’s been made abundantly clear that the USA is not going to be able to test enough people in time to stop the spread.

17:

Charlie @ 3 I however will be going to selected pubs, but I will be careful about hand-washing & face-wiping. [ Assuming said pubs are actually OPEN, of course! ] I've also started taking small vitamin_D tablets, to help top my immune system up. Although 74, I'm also fit & with v good lung function. "Public Functions" ... well, I'm assuming our Morris practice sessions will continue, but our first booked public appearnce, is, of course 23rd April, followed by actual May Day, the moved plastic may-day & two days after that. Um, err ...

Graydon there's some evidence it can go dormant/non-symptomatic/non-infectious in the body and then at a later time reappear Like Chickenpox/Shingles? Oh, how nice ... not. ( "Post-polio" also cpomes to mind, shudder )

colourtheorytoo Never mind not enough testing - apart from a few Fed officials & lots of State one trying ( & trying to avoid being stamped on by the idiot Donald ) the US does not appear to be doing anything to try to slow or stop this. The UK guvmint is now openly talking about "delay" - acknowledging that it's too late to contain. I note that a prominent member of The Shrub's team, David Frum, a former speechwriter for George W Bush, said Mr Trump’s Oval Office address was the worst action yet in a string of bad actions. one way of putting it.

18:

If it turns out that ACE2 antagonists make the infection worse I'll take my chances with dropping one of my meds for a couple of months over dying as my lungs fail in the short term. This has been bothering me too. There are now thousands of individual hospitalization records and such interactions with common medications, if any, should stand out. E.g. we don't know the direction of effect (if any) of ACE2 inhibitors on COVID-19 progression, and we should. (Also it appears (literature light skim only) that some ACE inhibitors don't bind to ACE2, e.g. lisinopril)

19:

As a denizen of the Seattle area (current epicenter for the U.S. outbreak), I can report that we have already seen a cancellation of Emerald City ComicCon (largest con in the PNW). Uni's have gone to all on-line classes, and most public K-12 schools have closed or are doing the same.

Workplaces have gone to 'Phase 3' social isolation, meaning they want anyone who can work from home to do so, including my company. This was led by Microsoft and Amazon.

In the grocery stores, non-perishable staples, such as pasta, beans, canned foods disappear as fast as they are stocked. Shopping areas are ghost-towns, and traffic on the roads has NEVER been this light! (Fewer cars during 'rush hour' than on a typical 3am Monday morning....)

Went to see the new Pixar movie with my son Saturday, and we were two of four people in the entire theater.

When people do meet, it's either an elbow bump, or the Vulcan hand symbol....

On the bright side, the orange baboon/buffoon has finally run into a crisis he can't upstage with outrageous outbursts. His speech last night had even the normal sycophantic Washington Times called him out on it, while the rest of the right-wing media all but pretended it didn't happen....

20:

Didn't see the new thread, so cross-posting and adapting a summary from the previous thread.

The start of the week looked promising with about 170-ish detected cases on monday, including the first hospital admissions. It rapidly deteriorated, with the first cases with untraceable infection vectors being announced on tuesday, and by thursday (today) we've closed the following on a national level. (1) * All education facilities, including kindergardens. * Cultural happenings. * Organized sports; in- and outdoor, including gyms, swimming pools, etc. * Restaurants of all kinds (including bars and nightclubs) where it's not possible to keep a 1-meter safe zone for every guest. * Barbershops, skincare, tatoo-/piercing-parlors, etc.

Any travel outside the nordic countries after February 27th will result in self-quarantine.

The Norwegian Institute of Public Health (FHI/NIPH) estimates the main epidemic will hit in May, and might last through to somewhere between August and October. Apologies for a local language link, but I think some of you might find it worth putting through auto translation.

I expect other europeans countries to come to similar conclusions shortly. Personally, we're only leaving the house for necessary shopping and walks.

Disclaimer: I work for NIPH, but not with anything related to epidemics and contagion.

1: Source

21:

I don't understand why large gatherings of over 500 persons are more of a threat than gatherings of fewer than 500 persons. In fact, I would think the smaller gatherings would be more of a problem because you're more likely to have intimate contact with others at such gatherings.

22:

It's a numbers game. The larger the gathering, the more likely somebody is infectious. On the other hand, the smaller the gathering, the smaller the room. Swings and roundabouts come to mind...

We're wondering whether to go to a RPG event on Saturday or not. We usually book a hotel for Friday & Saturday, and spend all day at the venue, but it's a smallish venue and can be quite cramped so we're not sure.

My sister has cancelled our meet-up - she's not feeling well. Just as well - it would have been extra driving for me.

23:

Well put; there are at least 3 others who'd have said more or less exactly that here.

24:

David L @ 12: As I suspected sports in the US is either suspended or going without "cheeks in seats". This is going to pull $billions out of the economy. If you you hate sports you will be impacted as the fall on job loss impacts you and your neighbors.

So far is seems most colleges are continuing without fans, the NBA has suspended all games, NHL is meeting today to decide, and then there's the start of the baseball season next month.

DT's no longer useful travel ban just adds to the economic misery.

Y'll probably don't realize how big a deal this is around here. The ACC Men's Basketball Tournament started on Monday. College basketball is BIG around here. Duke, Carolina (UNC), Wake Forest, Virginia (UVA), NC State ... We put the "madness" in March Madness.

"Following additional consultation with the league’s presidents and athletic directors, and in light of the continued conversations surrounding the fluidity of COVID-19, the Atlantic Coast Conference will immediately cancel the remainder of the 2020 ACC Tournament. For NCAA Tournament automatic qualification purposes, Florida State will represent the league as the ACC Champion. We are disappointed for our student-athletes, schools and fans to have to make this decision; however, the overall health and safety of all involved is the priority."

They CANCELLED the ACC Men's Basketball Tournament! CANCELLED IT!!! Florida State? ???

I also noticed that Cheatolini iL Douchebag's "travel ban" does not include tourists coming from countries where "Trump" resorts are located.

25:

I just sent a contact to Heliosphere, in Tarrytown, due the first weekend of April, to ask their status.

I sincerely hope we don't have to cancel Balticon (4th weekend in May), that would be a huge deal, and a huge hit on the club.

26:

We're due to be going to France at Easter on the Shuttle, camping just outside Paris, and going home via Parc Asterix. At this rate though I think my son may be getting a week of dog-walking round the local nature reserves instead.

France has banned events of over 1000 people. Somehow though this doesn't apply to theme parks like Disneyland Paris and Parc Asterix. And staff walked out at the Louvre earlier in the month, but they're back open again too. I'm not quite sure how that works, considering they all have well over 1000 people through the gates every day. Surely if you need to put a ban like that in place, you make sure it's across the board?

In the meantime I'm getting thoroughly pissed off with Facebook friends posting memes about all the previous epidemics which didn't touch them. It's bitterly amusing that when the Daily Fail is putting out their crap about whatever-it-is causes cancer/autism, they're all over it; but give them an actual pandemic which might genuinely impact their lives and suddenly they're all "fake news, the media wants us to be afraid".

27:

Absent some semi-miraculous outcome, it's loose, it's a pandemic, and it's not obviously going to be proportionately better than the 1919 flu pandemic. I would for planning purposes suppose we'll still be digging out of the metaphorical rubble in 2021.

One cheering thing is that the Vietnamese have produced a one-hour response cheap-to-produce test kit; with any luck, that's going to get licensed and massively replicated nigh-everywhere. If you had lots of those on hand and some sort of isolation tunnel sign-in to a hermetically sealed hotel, I would think you could (if the other logistics were working) plausibly run a con in the remainder of this year.

28:

Immediate check of my medicine cabinet did thankfully not reveal any ACE inhibitors (I had them a couple of years ago)

Quick search on the web gives examples from serious publications like Lancet etc so the problem definitely is suspected

29:

@27: metaphorical rubble

My, what an apt description of any communication from the current White House.

30:

According to the guardian Nicola Sturgeon specifically said that a ban on gatherings over 500 was not about reducing spread, it is about reducing strain on emergency services.

The assumption seems to be that 20 mins within 2m is exposure. Worse indoor than out, maybe due to humidity. So i guess the test of a gathering is how many different people do you stay within 2m of for 20min and is the air virus friendly. NB i think much of this is assumption based on flu, since we don't know about covid-19 yet but we think they are similar.

I guess this means scifi cons are worse than football matches. I know eastercon is probably waiting for official government advice. Anyone know if and attempt will be made to move some of it online? Not sure if i'm doing a talk or not, but if i am i'd be happy to internet it instead (or in fact as well if the con goes ahead but high risk people don't come)

31:

CardinalRam When people do meet, it's either an elbow bump, or the Vulcan hand symbol.... There's another alternative, which apparently Chas ("Speaker to vegetables") has taken up: Namaste V sensible. There's a lot to be said for "Live Long & Prosper" in these times, though.

Must dig out & re-read Defoe's classic A Journal of the Plague Year ... One quote from Defoe is well worth repeating .... From the river they travelled towards the forest, but when they came to Walthamstow the people of that town denied to admit them, as was the case everywhere. The constables and their watchmen kept them off at a distance and parleyed with them. They gave the same account of themselves as before, but these gave no credit to what they said, giving it for a reason that two or three companies had already come that way and made the like pretences, but that they had given several people the distemper in the towns where they had passed; and had been afterwards so hardly used by the country (though with justice, too, as they had deserved) that about Brentwood, or that way, several of them perished in the fields—whether of the plague or of mere want and distress they could not tell. This was a good reason indeed why the people of Walthamstow should be very cautious, and why they should resolve not to entertain anybody that they were not well satisfied of.

This happened about 350m from my front door ....

32:

According to the guardian Nicola Sturgeon specifically said that a ban on gatherings over 500 was not about reducing spread, it is about reducing strain on emergency services.

The assumption seems to be that 20 mins within 2m is exposure. Worse indoor than out, maybe due to humidity. So i guess the test of a gathering is how many different people do you stay within 2m of for 20min and is the air virus friendly. NB i think much of this is assumption based on flu, since we don't know about covid-19 yet but we think they are similar.

I guess this means scifi cons are worse than football matches. I know eastercon is probably waiting for official government advice. Anyone know if and attempt will be made to move some of it online? Not sure if i'm doing a talk or not, but if i am i'd be happy to internet it instead (or in fact as well if the con goes ahead but high risk people don't come)

33:

A comment I read a couple of days ago by someone who claimed to be an academic specialising in epidemiology was, roughly, "We're all stuck on the cruise ship Planet Earth." The cold reality is that, assuming you're not living a hermit's life on somewhere like Gruinard island or spending a year on the ISS then you will be exposed to COVID-19 over the next few months. It seems to have a high R number, it's readily transmissible and has a high probability of expressing itself once it gets into someone's system. Only the million-plus sufferers who survived have developed some form of immune response to the virus up till now, the rest of us are sitting ducks.

Quarantine, isolation, fanatical attention to hygiene, face masks, vitamins etc. won't stop it spreading and infecting people, they can only really slow the process down. This is worthwhile for a lot of reasons -- the horse might sing i.e. a workable antiviral treatment might be quickly developed with a Manhattan Project-level effort or a drugs/treatment regimen tested and implemented that raises the survival rates of the most seriously infected patients. Any sort of vaccine is months away, producing and administering billions of doses is even further down the line.

Much further ahead, the COVID-19 virus (SARS-CoV-2) is widespread and will not be eradicated, no more than common influenza viruses are. Will it follow the flu in mutating and hybridising year on year? A brief uneducated reading of some of the studies suggest that, being a coronavirus it's too big genetically speaking to mutate easily but I don't know enough to be sure. For one thing there's going to be a shitload of money and effort poured into medical research on this subject.

ObAnime: Hataraku Saibou (Cells At Work).

34:

Hm, I misunderstood the concern. This comment in nature reviews cardiology keeps getting referenced. It's 7 days old though. Has anyone found anything newer?
COVID-19 and the cardiovascular system (05 March 2020) ACE2 levels can be increased by the use of renin–angiotensin–aldosterone system inhibitors. Given that ACE2 is a functional receptor for SARS-CoV-2, the safety and potential effects of antihypertension therapy with ACE inhibitors or angiotensin-receptor blockers in patients with COVID-19 should be carefully considered. Whether patients with COVID-19 and hypertension who are taking an ACE inhibitor or angiotensin-receptor blocker should switch to another antihypertensive drug remains controversial, and further evidence is required.

35:

OTOH ... why, really, are we worrying? Quote[ It is important to keep this specific threat in perspective (during the 2017-2018 UK flu season there were 26,408 deaths and 1,692 in 2018-2019) and it is estimated only two per cent of those who catch coronavirus will die. In comparison SARS had a mortality rate of more than 10 per cent. ENDquote] As Nojay says ... we are going to have to learn to live & maybe die with it. Tough.

36:

The common cold is a coronavirus, and mutates like buggery. We simply don't know what will happen in even the medium term.

37:

Greg Tingey: we're worrying because we can do the maths. There are 70 million people in the UK. If 50% of them get the virus and it has a mortality rate of 1% then 350,000 people will die. That's more than ten times the number that died of flu in 2017-2018, and about 64% of the total number of people (541,589) who died in the UK in 2018.

If 70% get it and the mortality rate is 2% (everyone thinks it is lower than this, so I'm not sure where you got that number from), then almost a million people will die, in the UK: a little less than double the normal annual mortality in the UK.

38:

tfb I too can do the maths & the underlying asumptions are ( I think ) wrong I suspect something like 75% will "get" the virus, but only about 33% of those will even realise it, or they will be non-symptomatic carriers. Also, AFAIK ... ALL the deaths in thos country so far have been for people with pre-existing conditions, apart from being over 60 ... And I re-point you at those flu death statistics (!)

39:

That 2% is ... squishy.

The numbers we have now are numbers from when the health care system stays functional. The "health care overwhelmed numbers" are worse. It looks like there are differences just based on demographics; the effects are more severe with age.

None of the available numbers have actual measured rates of infection. The thing I've been particularly struck by is that at least some of the figures have death rates for the asymptomatic cases. (Apparently about a third of the rates for symptomatic cases.) That makes me wonder just how off the asymptomatic infection rate numbers might be, because maybe they're starting to have real infection rate numbers in Korea and China, but I don't think anyone else does.

40:

There are 70 million people in the UK. If 50% of them get the virus and it has a mortality rate of 1% then 350,000 people will die.

For perspective: that's half the UK death toll of the second world war, only in about 6-12 months (rather than over 6 years). It's actually comparable to the average death rate during the first world war.

This is the sort of event that gets into the history books and leaves memorials in its wake.

41:

Graydon None of the available numbers have actual measured rates of infection. YES - that is one of the "Really Important Numbers" that we don't have, along with those infected who show no symptoms, or such mild ones that it never gets reported .... And that combination of information we don't have is why I am presently sanguine - though that could change - the other end of the spectrum is the one Charlie is positing in #40, above. Now then ... make your bets & prepare your emergency services ... where is it actually going to fall out? Or are Charlie & I equally wrong & it's somewhere near the middle, or ... what?

P.S. There's a War Memorial on virtually every village green in the country ... but none for the flu pandemic.

42:

JBS @ 24: They CANCELLED the ACC Men's Basketball Tournament! CANCELLED IT!!! Florida State? ???

Yep, this is crazy time, JBS...plus Duke earlier today and Kansas just within the past hour or so cancelled all sporting activities by their teams indefinitely, and I'm sure others will follow. With Kansas the #1 seed in the NCAA tourney, and Duke is...well, Duke (I'm an alum living just east of Charlotte, so I'm a bit biased!), I expect the NCAA tournament is toast in short order. Which boggles the mind a bit.

And for those not soaking in this context, yes, in one sense it's just a sports tournament. But economically, March Madness is well over a billion dollars (between airtime revenue, tickets, hotels, bar tabs, etc.) jammed into three weeks. The ramifications of cancelling it are hard to wrap my head around, but I don't see any way around it. Unfortunately, we are indeed "living in interesting times"...

43:

they can only really slow the process down. This is worthwhile for a lot of reasons

You left off that a slower rate of infection means the health care systems needed will be less overwhelmed.

In the end since this is in its simplest form a respiratory infection, we will be loosing a lot of elderly much sooner than the actuarial tables would predict plus those with other lung issues. (I'd hate to be someone with cystic fibrosis who thought they could live to 40.) And if I'm right it will re-arrange health care planning for the next decade or two as it slices out segments of the population.

44:

In an interesting item, American and United airlines said they would cap fares across the Atlantic for the next bit as people are panicked to get home.

45:

David L Problem ... AFAIK the US does not have any "Health Care Planning" - & what little it has is being trashed by DT I will be interested (as will we all) to see if the Electoral Commission's recommendation to postpone the London Mayoral/Assembly elections goes ahead .... If so, what happens to the term limits, or does it re-set the clock by whatever the delay is?

46:

The NCAA has called off its men's and women's basketball tournaments as part of a complete cancellation of all remaining spring and winter championships.

Yep they did it. Hard to imagine.

For those outside of the US, think of them cancelling the ENTIRE World Cup mid way through an early game.

Now I'm curious about F1. I was reading last week about them starting to talk about running the races without spectators.

47:

Cancelling the NCAA? Piffle: Disneyland just announced they're closing. Sunset on the magic kingdom!

(Also, the Olympic torch-lighting ceremony went ahead -- but was limited strictly to 100 participants and witnesses. It's normally a spectacle for thousands.)

48:

12:00 pm: Trump says markets are going to be ‘just fine’ as stocks crater amid coronavirus worry

Dow Jones Ave closed down 10% today. Worst day since 1987.

NOT A CLUE.

49:

AFAIK the US does not have any "Health Care Planning"

Yes we do. Yes it has a LOT of problems but we have a system. Yours has problems also. Just not as many.

Drop it. You're getting tiresome saying the same rant over and over and over and over and over.

50:

Cancelling the NCAA? Piffle:

Riffing on Goldwater from ancient of days.

A billion here, a billion there, soon you're talking real money.

Cancelling NCAA basketball tournament is taking about 1/2 to 1 million hotel room booking nights out of the economy. Plus plane flights for 80% of those bookings. Plus car rentals. All at top rates.

Plus concession sales ($20 for a hot dog anyone? $15 for a bad beer in a plastic cup.) A

And so on.

51:

I'm just reviewing my health status after two weeks of working from home (ironically after coming down with flu-like symptoms following the attending same wedding that Icehawk mentioned in the previous thread...). Most likely just a seasonal local virus, as NZ is still in the very low numbers of Covid cases mostly linked directly back to known travellers, and I couldn't think of any reasonable infection chain that would have gotten it to me in late february. Work, however, sensibly kicked me out with a laptop and some data, and I've been desultorily collating historical databases here at home, and snacking too much between bouts of chills.

I'm still assuming I'll attend ConZealand, but that international attendance will be way down, even more so than usually due to the remote location (moving international conferences here always drops the numbers just due to travel time/expense). However, I'm expecting the only major Australasian reenactment event I usually attend to get postponed or cancelled, as I expect the Aussies to start moving to lockdown situations soon.

52:

I have the same comorbidities as OGH but a decade plus more years. Also two years out from open heart surgery with an artificial aortic valve and four bypasses. Here on Vancouver Island we just had our first positive test.

We've been testing for months here in British Columbia and are still at less than 50 cases for a province of about 5 million. But of course we are directly north of Washington State, a major epicenter.

I am in what I like to think of as stage 1 social isolation in that I am forgoing all but necessary social gatherings.

As an old age pensioner I think I perform at least one valuable service for society in that my income is safe from job loss and I will still be able to spend and do my little bit to keep the local economy at least partly ticking.

Victoria's income is largely from tourism and that looks to be taking a real big hit this year, as I don't think cruise ships are going to be very welcome even if they keep sailing. So every little bit of spending helps and Victoria has a very large number of pensioners with a steady income.

Our Prime Minister and Wife have started voluntary isolation as the Wife had contact with a known carrier.

53:

Closing dorms is stupid.

Yes, closely packed, etc.

But, all young people who are unlikely to need hospital care if they get it. Thus not a burden to the healthcare system.

More importantly, if you assume some have already been exposed, then sending them all off home will just help spread it (assuming they can get home - students from Italy for example might struggle to get a flight from the US).

54:

Gathering size is perhaps an attempt at compromise.

Yes, all public gatherings being banned would likely be best. But would also put a lot of small businesses into bankruptcy.

Franchises might have some leniency, chains more so, but in a lot of cases small restaurants/pubs/stores simply don't have the cashflow / reserves to survive a 2 week or more closure.

Many of them won't survive anyway as people self-isolate, but the politicians don't want to take the blame by forcing closure.

Then there are the people who will want to gather anyway, and forcing them underground without adequate health and sanitary facilities could make things worse.

55:

Would be interesting to know how true the following 2 understandings are.

My understanding from what has been said over the years is that even if we haven't had a specific version of say the flu before, or a vaccine for that version, our immune systems still have a partial advantage in fighting off the virus because we have had a variant (or multiple variants over the years) in the past so the immune system knows how to react.

The problem, thus, is that for something like Covid-19 the immune system doesn't get that head start. This in turn allows the new virus to spread easier - you are contagious longer as your immune system figures out how to deal with it.

Thus where in a normal year the flu may hit x% of the population, something new like Covid-19 will hit a much larger number than x - so making that 1% fatality rate that much higher in real numbers.

Again, based on media reports over the years, our perception of the flu is seriously biased - many of the public who think they have "caught the flu" don't in fact have the flu but rather just a variation on a cold. This in turn means, because of a sense of commonality based on false positives, we underestimate that danger of the flu.

56:

"Executive leadership" may be sticking its head in the sand but more locally leadership has apparently been told scarier tales. (Northern Indiana, a land of farmers and discretionary goods manufacturing. Some speculation that this may help recreational vehicals, a demonstration of a lack of imagination I assume.)

  • local public school systems are starting to shut down, going to"e-learning" next week. The state governor has cut 20 days from the number of days schools have to be teaching students to get state funds and it is expected that if the waste matter hits the rotating oscellator during the next few weeks he'll just cancel whatever is left of the school year. Almost all local politicians are Republicans hereabouts.
  • Local private school has closed. (elite place, they still teach latin for some unknown reason.) They're big, big bucks.
  • University of Notre Dame has shut down all school activities and told students to go home (staff must still report.) International students can stay on campus, for now. Private Catholic university, very expensive with students from all over.
  • Even small local gatherings are cancelling at local venues, museums, etc. At some point folks are going to have to talkto each other. Expect a jump in divorce rates.
  • My retired friend across the street says that his nephew has been told by his university in Florida to go home. Has no other home, has asked his uncle whether he can stay with him. Uncle is not happy but how can you turn family down? Hmm.

As I said, this is within a small backwater of a small backward Midwestern state so thick with Trump supporters that you practically trip over them. Haven't seen any runs on supplies, though: toilet paper is still plentiful. 😉

57:

The numbers we have now are numbers from when the health care system stays functional.

This is important. If an extra 1% need oxygen to survive, that means an extra 1% fatalities because very few countries have the ability to provide oxygen to more than 0.001% of their population. Intensive care is worse, you can't just give someone a two wheel shopping bag and a cylinder with a regulator on it. The latter are a standard industrial part, BTW, and even de-industrialised countries have squillions of them... you might not like industrial oxygen, but would you really rather die?

That's one reason I posted the Guardian link about remote aboriginal communities here. They're the "Charlie, but living in that small apartment with 10 similarly affected relatives" group and god help them when it hits.

58:

In California the governor has issued an order that includes banning gatherings/assemblies of more than 250 people.

(Disneyland is closing for at least two weeks.)

59:

One of the ones I'm on is a calcium-channel blocker, and the other is a diuretic. I don't think they involve ACE-2, but I'm not a doctor or a pharmacist. (My doctor does have my e-mail address.)

60:

Apparently what happens to people with severe cases is they start improving, then the virus hits their heart and they get a fulminating infection that kills them.

61:

We know about six things:

  • it's mutating; the UW Virology folks are tracking it through Washington state, and on that basis it's mutating with vigour and dispatch

  • comorbidity bad; smoking, age, other issues, all greatly increase your odds of death. It could be comorbid with itself.

  • The death rate for critical care patients is high, not less than 49% (http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/02/study-72000-covid-19-patients-finds-23-death-rate)

  • the only thing that has been shown to work to get the rate of spread down is aggressive, immediate mass testing and isolating the positives and those who had been in contact with the positives

  • if the health care system goes down, it stays down, and it stays down for everyone and everything (Italy), so you get excess deaths from untreated heart attacks and strokes and so on.

  • vaccines for coronaviruses are not necessarily possible. (Common cold mutates too fast.)

  • So I would feel safe in saying that outcomes are determined by whether or not the health care system stays up, this time and the next time; the likely resurgence time for a mutated-enough-to-spread-again strain, COVID-2n, is shorter than the time to train doctors.

    If the health care system stays up, you get about 1% mortality.

    If the health care system goes down, as seems nigh-inevitable in the mammonite dominions, nothing good happens. I would not be surprised if there's a mortality around one in four in that event.

    There's always the possibility of a vaccine, so we only have to do this once. There's always the possibility that something already trialled in humans and relatively quick to produce provides effective treatment and keeps the number of critical cases low. But right now, it looks like the entire anglosphere is headed at free community spread, meaning significant numbers of the afflicted get multiple strains.

    Long term? So much depends on who dies in what order.

    62:

    Charlie,

    This may seem trivial compared to the rest of it, but, if you do manage to make it out here for CoNZealand, do remember to come to Wellington, not Christchurch.

    I'm not expecting that Aotearoa is going to be hit all that hard by this thing. Your intermediate stops may be another question.

    JHomes.

    63:

    [quote]Yes we do. Yes it has a LOT of problems but we have a system.[/quote]

    Well, no, we don't. We've got a lot of partial systems, and many people don't have any access to health care. There was a reason The Free Clinic set up in Berkeley, and the doctors and nurses there volunteered their time.

    Officially everyone can get heath care if they show up at a hospital emergency room. In practice that often means waiting 16 hours or more. I once waited around 12 hours with high fever and vomiting and going unconscious (it was cellulitis), and I have good health insurance. Some places are better than other places, but you can't always predict, and you don't always have a choice. OTOH, most times I haven't needed to wait excessively...which doesn't mean I didn't wait for hours, it means I could tell that patients were being seen, and often that those seen ahead of me had more urgent needs. But there are lots of people who essentially don't have access to even that level of health care. You need someone to cart you there when you can't move yourself. You need someone to say with you and explain why you need to be seen when you're fading in and out of consciousness. And that's when a health insurance company guarantees the bill...which depends on having a current job that provides health insurance.

    64:

    Haven't seen any runs on supplies, though: toilet paper is still plentiful. 😉

    Stopped in to buy the fixings for dinner on the way home. No toilet paper left. While taking a picture of the empty shelf a woman told be this was the third store she's seen like that and she doesn't know where to buy any. Glad I bought a big pack a couple of weeks ago; if I'd run low a week later I might be out by now, which would get messy.

    No kidney beans left. Almost no flour left. No hand sanitizer or rubbing alcohol. No spaghetti (lots of other pasta, though). Almost no dried lentils. No baked beans of any kind. Much reduced choice in dried fruit. Lots more people than usual with carts full of canned goods.

    65:

    Robert Prior @ 64,

    There's sure as hell been runs on supplies where I live in Australia. I live alone, so I don't use much toilet paper, but I will confess to buying ONE 12-Pack last week.

    As an aside, the viral video of women in a supermarket fighting over a pack of TP was in the Western suburbs of Sydney. I would note that the chain was actually running a half-price weekly special on that brand at the time, and also that it was a luxury brand with 110 3-ply sheets per roll. So the lady who had filled her trolley with the last 4 12-packs might not have been getting as much as she thought.

    66:

    Stopped in to buy the fixings for dinner on the way home. No toilet paper left.

    Hmmm. Was in a grocery mid day Thursday. There was some still on the shelf. Maybe I should have bought it even at double the price I normally pay. (I shop sales and such, no price gouging.) But I have about 2 or 3 weeks supply in house just now.

    67:

    A guy I work with went to his local Aldi this morning in Baulkam Hills - after a 45 minute queue he managed to score an 18-pack. I told him not to spread the news too far or he'll get home and find his house burgled.

    68:

    Well Disney has announced the Mouse parks are closing world wide.

    Again no matter what you think of the mouse and their money making there are a lot of lower income people who will now be out of work for at least 2 weeks.

    The article I read didn't mention how direct employees are being handled but even if Disney covers their pay and benefits at some level during this, just like sporting events there are a LOT of people who are not employees who will be impacted by a loss of income.

    69:

    They've said employees will continue to be paid, and receive benefits.

    70:

    I have a son who works in a Covent Garden bar so this feels close to home. At large events and gatherings, it's not the person sitting next to me, I'm worrying about. It's the few hundred people I push past to get from my seat to the concession stand or the loo. It's the people I bump up against in the queues. But most of all it's the people who get to meet the entire crowd. And that's the hospitality staff who check tickets and serve food and drink. So that's big events, but what about the small every day events. The people in the bread shop tend to wear disposable gloves these days. But when did you last see a barman wearing gloves when they poured a pint and then handed the pint to you for you to put to your mouth? What about that mixologist cocktail waiter with the Hackney beard? It's going to take a real effort to continue daily life while being extremely conscious of what you touch and how clean it might be.

    One thing I caught myself doing and managed to stop last week. We were just on the verge in the UK of switching from pre-packaged veg to loose veg with bags that you fill yourself. So you go to get bag but it won't come away from the roll. So you do that thing where you lick your fingers to get more traction. Or the bag won't open so you do the same thing and rub it between your fingers. Then you go to the pile of loose onions and feel a few to find the newer firm ones. Then you take the bag to the till and the person there picks it up with their hands to weigh it. Just one small scene in viral transmission.

    It's enough to make you want to stay at home, order on line and only go out solo with no personal interaction with anyone at all, at all.

    My sporting thing is attending motorcycle racing by motorcycle. It's not hard to travel in splendid isolation, pay contactless or pre-paid, take your own food and drink and sit in a field outdoors well away from anyone else. But I doubt I'll be given the chance to do that this year.

    71:

    The people in the bread shop tend to wear disposable gloves these days

    Which they wear until the glove breaks before replacing it. I'd prefer they washed their hands every 10 minutes instead. Or even better, had one person on the till and another handling the food.

    Most loose vegetables should be fine, it's only the ones you eat raw without peeling that will be a real problem. Potatoes and onions go well over 80°C for long enough to kill most things. Lettuce not so much. But we know all that from the various bacterial problems we already deal with.

    72:

    mdive Yes to both your propositions The "background immunity" is v unlikely to work with the Corvid & ... I've had real Influenza - felt utterly ghastly for well over a week & just about fir=t for work at the end of 14 days. A bad cold is nothing like it.

    Graydon 1: Oh shit 2: Apart from age, I'm not in any vulnerable group - what about the rest of you folks? 3: As expected, I suppose 4: Agree re that - more sensible than mass shut-downs I suspect 5: Yes - shit, again. 6: Nasty, hadn't thought of that - we will just have to build a herd-of-humanity immunity I suspect.

    "Mortality of one in four" - of those infected, or the whole population? I think not - it would be more like 5-10% of those infected - which would be bad enough Reverse-racisism, though unintended ... "The entire anglosphere" - erm .. the rest of the EU is/are suffering are they not? Apologies if I've severely misinterpreted that, btw.

    Robert Prior Where are you? No obvious runs here ( NE London )

    Julian Bond My local store ( "The snobbiest Spa in Britain" ) has switched back to paper bags for loose veg ... & several other places are going that way. Low-Carbon, non-petroleum product, of course

    73:

    As of today, CoNZealand isn't cancelled.

    Our (damn awesome) PM flagged today that stronger travel restrictions are coming. Some large events are cancelling this weekend.

    New Zealand has only had five confirmed cases so far with no evidence of community transmission due to good testing, tracing of individuals, strong public health, and, to be honest, luck. I doubt that'll hold out but for now it's giving us more time to prepare. What happens in four months time is anybody's guess.

    74:

    Covering employees' pay is only a part of the issue. A mouse park is surrounded by all kinds of low end workers who are not directly employed by the mouse. And they many times will not be covered. Things like hotel cleaning crews many times are paid daily depending on demand. If demand goes to near 0 where will they wind up. And hotels around mouse houses are a really big industry. Ditto restaurants. And on and on and on.

    I'm working though setting things up for some of my clients to allow remote work (CAD is a PITA remotely) and in thinking it through I need to bring up things like the cleaning crew that comes by 2 or 3 times a week at night. They are ESL at best. And likely work with the sniffles. Do we tell them to not come for a while and put them out of work (totally a 1099 collection of small companies) or follow them around the office and wipe down behind them?

    75:

    Sarcasm here but based on reality that hit me yesterday.

    Want a medical mask?

    Walk into a doctor's office and when you speak to the person at the front desk cough. You will likely be handed a medical grade mask and told to put it on.

    This was me in the US yesterday but I suspect it is true in much of the world just now.

    76:

    Heteromeles will like this one.

    Locally we are going through a bit of a food fight in local politics about how the citizens interact with the city council on development. The city just abolished the old CACs with plans to come up with something new. These CACs tended to be dominated by a small group of older people who wanted the city to stop changing. And were very vocal about it. (When a city of 1/2 million is growing by 25,000 people per year it's hard to not change. I swear some would like to "build a wall".)

    Anyway, my CAC decided to go it alone and on their own. Now remember most of the people who attend these things are over 60. Many are over 70. When I emailed the leader and suggested that maybe this is not a good time for this kind of gathering he gave me this long explanation of how they were going to make it "safe".

    Makes me want to hit my head on my desk.

    77:

    Wow. While typing the previous comment there was a clip of BJ on the news saying that "the true number of cases is higher, perhaps much higher than the number of cases we have confirmed so far with tests".

    OK, now I'll accept that BJ is a better leader than DT.

    78:

    David L BoZo has openly admitted: "People are going to die" - he APPEARS to be listening to our in-house experts ( unlike DT ) even if, presently theor advice differs from some other experts [ NOTE: Anyone remember the revolting Gove, saying "We've had enough of experts" ?? ]

    I think I'm noting a decrease in air traffic, already ..... [ Nearest airport LCA, but a lot of LHR stuff flies over at a much higher level ]

    79:

    Yes we do. You just don't like it. I don't either. But it is a system. Saying it isn't is just rabble rousing.

    I'm lucky. I and my close family are middle class with decent employer provided, err, sponsored health care. So my costs are reasonable. About what they would be in taxes if it was single payer tax supported. But for those without such support life is hard.

    My recent experience with flu/Covid-19 testing and such involved 2 office visits and 3 lab tests. 2 in the office one sent out. I'm looking at about $350 out of pocket[1] with the Covid-19 test covered fully. Which I can easily deal with but lower end folks would likely pay more and just suffer through it and infect people with their flu and/or Covid-19 till the system picked them up.

    To me as bad as this is it might move the needle on single payer. Maybe some are going to realize that to deal with something like this (and protect their OWN health) we need a system where EVERYONE gets tested regularly until the spread of it is over. Which would mean $0 or trivial costs for the tests and treatment which means not provided through a paid health plan.

    [1] Most people in my situation (decent to good employer sponsored plan) would likely pay $40 total but I have signed up for a high deductible health plan which means I pay fully for the first $3k in expenses per person. But I get to put away $8k per year triple tax deductible per year by doing so. And yes I know this is all a bit insane and would all go away with tax payer funded single payer. But until the rules of the game change I will play the game to my best advantage.

    80:

    If you can afford it you pay them but insist they don't come in.

    81:

    I'm also a contractor to all my clients. So not my choice. But I do plan to recommend they do something like that.

    82: 24 - Well, the Paris - Nice cycle race is still on. That said, the one USian rider has withdrawn so that he can get home ahead of the Orange Carcinoma's travel ban... 37 - Your sums are correct, but your conclusions are fundamentally flawed. You've ignored that this is an additional source of mortality.

    General points:-

    1) Toilet paper keeps more or less indefinitely, so buy the biggest bales you can at the least frequent intervals. Note that CoronaVirii do not normally seem to cause a loosening of the bowel!

    2) (UK) Con Party having a humerus - coccyx mis-identification I think!

    83:

    I note that Viking Cruises has cancelled all cruises, both river and ocean, till 1st May. I don't blame them at all.

    (I've been a customer of theirs, and they're very health conscious. Before every meal, you pass your hands through a contact free hand sprayer, and the crew are constantly wiping down hand rails and the like. I'd be impressed by any hotel that did the same.)

    84:

    Princes has also cancelled a lot or all of their cruises

    DT is pissed. He considers this a business thing and want the cruise industry to keep going. He also has friends "in the biz".

    He's just in total denial of what is happening.

    85:

    Excuse the spelling.

    Princess Cruises, Disney Cruise have both suspended new cruises. When you get to a port the cruise you are on will likely end.

    86:

    Walk into a doctor's office and when you speak to the person at the front desk cough. You will likely be handed a medical grade mask and told to put it on.

    Or told to GTFO because they don't have any either. Clinics in Vancouver are running out of supplies for staff as people who have no use for them (and don't know how to use them anyway) buy them as magical talismans of protection.

    Also cleaning supplies. Not only are people buying and hoarding, people are buying and reselling at a panic-driven markup, like this couple in Vancouver:

    https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2020/03/12/were-hustlers-amid-coronavirus-fears-this-couple-has-made-more-than-100000-reselling-lysol-wipes.html

    88:

    No links in my #82 to be breakable. The only HTML is one word in boldface.

    89:

    Re: 'picture of the empty shelf'

    Might depend on which neighborhood you live in and how frequently that particular store gets restocked. Spoke two days ago with a family member who lives in the GTA: no shortages (yet) on regularly purchased household commodities.

    Read last night that the Canadian PM and his wife are in self-isolation: she's positive for COVID-19. They'll probably be alright: they're in their 40s and look very fit.

    90:

    Off-topic ...

    Haven't seen Heteromeles posting here or on his blog in a while - anyone know how he's doing? (Saw the online exchange re: did you get my email ...)

    91:

    Long time lurker, first time poster.

    I obviously like to consider myself a rational and intelligent person.

    That said, I can't help note how much the UK's response to COVID-19 this week feels like a huge gamble to get ahead of the rest of the world.

    Shutting down schools and restaurants and sports events etc has a huge economic impact both nationally and internationally. If we can keep the lights on throughout this potential Excession event, the UK ends up in a stronger position at any future trade negotiations.

    The gamble is that the virus doesn't take a sharp left turn and start culling kids and workers. Taking a really cold view of things as they are (of course a Conservative Govt. wouldn't be this heartless), if the virus spreads to 60%+ of the population, we gain our herd immunity for the future (we hope? this isn't typically how coronavirii work - colds mutate too fast for full immunity in the same way we end up immune to chicken pox). Maybe at the cost of a quarter of a million old and infirm (double whammy - lowers the burden on the pension deficit & health system).

    The language in the press conference told us to expect loved ones to die before their time, mentioned the idea of herd immunity and told us that our neighbours wouldn't stay in isolation anyway even if we asked them to. But we'll get through it! Just like we got through the war! Blitz Spirit!

    Don't get me wrong, it's refreshing to see the government actually listening to scientific advice - some of it even makes sense to my plebian brain, I'm just suspicious of the sudden change from a group of people who have so far listened to no other sensible analysis of long term impacts of large decisions. Coupled with the UK being the obvious outlier in our response so far. I feel nervous.

    92:

    Never thought about it before but here's my family work situations. All impacted by the Covid-19 situation.

    I'm an IT contractor to multiple people. I may loose some business but my best client needs me to set it up so everyone can go home and work there.

    My wife works at the HQ for a major US airline. $$ and infections are a big daily topic there. Task forces and such.

    My son's fav works as a nurse at an infusion clinic. Oy vey. So many ways things can go wrong.

    My daughter works at a company that admins clinical trials. She's an internal auditor so while not directly in contact with medical people the entire firm has issues with contact tracing when someone gets tested or confirmed.

    Her husband works as an engineer at a company that makes a packaging product for food related products.

    My son is in the best shape. His company sells low level monitoring software for Windows systems. No on site needed 99% of the time for their staff.

    We are all a bit on the edge here.

    93:

    I'm just suspicious of the sudden change from a group of people who have so far listened to no other sensible analysis of long term impacts of large decisions. Coupled with the UK being the obvious outlier in our response so far.

    A gun to the head after a warning shot into the wall behind you tends to "get your attention". I suspect that the minister getting Covid-19 was a bit of a wake up that all of these policies that they love to say work wonderfully maybe have a few flaws.

    As I've said to people in other areas, ideologies are great as long as they work.

    94:

    Question for the academics here:

    In an average year, how many of your faculty, grad students and post docs attend a conference? I'm guessing a fairly large proportion. If they also have any teaching responsibilities [e.g., TAs], then they're risk factors for virus transmission.

    Among students - apart from having to go back home - the biggest concern is: Am I going to lose my year, have to get another student loan, apply for another grant, etc. Haven't seen any news about what the gov'ts and uni's are doing re: student loans and research grants. Although the interest rates have dropped, most students are unlikely to see any rate drops on their mounting student debt. Note to Pols: University students are a significant voting demo and likely to physically survive this virus.

    95:

    Closing dorms is stupid. Yes, closely packed, etc. But, all young people who are unlikely to need hospital care if they get it.

    Question: who cleans the dorms? Who does the laundry? Is there catering on-site and if so, who cooks and washes the dishes?

    (I'm not really familiar with US college dorm arrangements but I do know that most residential systems have a socially-invisible underclass of paid-by-the-hour servants to keep everything running. Who in turn have communities to go home to, and often second jobs these days because they're not paid enough to live on. And by keeping the dorms open you're exposing them to lots of carriers.)

    96:

    It varies all over the map. Back in my day a decent dorm was 2 people sharing a small room with a bed, desk, closet for each. With a shared bath with 2 others. Showers and baths down the hall at times for the entire floor. Now they range from that up semi suites with private tiny bedrooms with common shared areas. Cleaning many times is an exercise for the student(s). Common areas are cleaned by staff but like you said this is typically NOT a highly desirable job.

    But many campuses also have cafeterias in various buildings on campus so that those students with "meal plans" eat there. Cafeterias are not good for the current situation.

    So cafeterias and student cleaning means a lot of lowest denominator situations. And if you have a room mate who just doesn't care you can really be SOOL.

    97:

    "Mortality of one in four" - of those infected, or the whole population? I think not - it would be more like 5-10% of those infected - which would be bad enough

    No, I mean one in four of the whole population. That's the expected sort of number for a severe greenfield disease.

    I am not saying we will get that, just that I'll be unsurprised. (Untreated MERS has 100% lethality so far; it's not like coronaviruses have an upper limit on lethality, and we know it's mutating.)

    Reverse-racisism, though unintended ... "The entire anglosphere" - erm .. the rest of the EU is/are suffering are they not?

    No one else's response has been as systemically bad as the Anglosphere's, for one, and for two, years and years of profit-maximization has done two important things; there is no surge capacity in the health care system at all (very low hospital beds/population numbers) and there is no domestic production. So it's entirely possible for the scientists to come up with a test (UW, Mayo Clinic, I'm sure a few more in the States; PHO in Ontario, etc.) but there's no ability to go "right, manufacture that" (Vietnam, who seem to have the best test going right now, or China or Korea.) This is absolutely crippling when it's a numbers game.

    For example, Canada alleges to be doing containment-by-testing; this has failed. It's failed through an inadequate test protocol. Canada is not on the list, but look at https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/covid-19-testing/ and you can see that it's clearly important to test more than Italy (at around 1 test per thousand persons) and that somewhere around 4 tests per thousand persons (South Korea), it starts to work.

    Nobody in the Anglosphere is testing that much because they can't; the capacity to create sufficient tests doesn't exist because it was systematically dismantled in the name of greater profits.

    As has been pointed out elsewhere, the reasons this shall be especially awful in English-speaking countries have nothing to do with foreigners and everything to with capitalism. Remember to insist on this point when people want to blame foreigners.

    The other thing is that herd immunity is not guaranteed to be a thing; the huge red flag about "comorbid with itself" is not "lethality increases", it's "you don't become immune". The apparently appropriate comparison is not to flu, but to a common cold with an eventual ~1% lethality rate every cold season. (If the primary attack vector into the cell is via ACE2 receptors, you plausibly cannot become immune because you need those receptors to keep your heart beating. Any protective mutations aren't present in the population because they result in (at best) stillbirth.)

    98:

    Also unless your college is where there is a university medical center training doctors I'd not want to have to deal with student health services for a Covid-19 situation. At all.

    I'm basing my comments on my kids who are 5 years removed from a typical large decent US university.

    99:

    Never thought about it before but here's my family work situations. All impacted by the Covid-19 situation.

    I'm a novelist. Non-separately-earning spouse (business partner). I can hole up indefinitely, in theory ...

    In practice, I supply inputs to publishing companies. The lead time on a new product is 1-3 years and I have purely by fluke/accident got no books coming out before October, so hopefully they won't be impacted.

    However ...

    One of my four editors (she's in the UK) is relatively young (30s/early 40s). So that's good. And my agent is about my age, but healthy. But the 3 other editors I work with directly are all older or have comorbidities or are disabled or some combination of all three factors.

    So even if I sail through this with nothing more than a dry cough, there's a strong risk that there will be big hiccups in the Charlie supply chain through 2021. My last big career earthquake came in 2016 when David Hartwell -- my editor for the first 7 Merchant Princes books -- died suddenly and a pointy-haired boss at Ace spiked the Laundry Files for being "not commercially viable"[*] and it took a couple of years to get settled down again (not helped by my parents dying). And this has the potential to be worse.

    [*] How does a series that hits the USA Today bestseller charts get shitcanned as "not commercially viable"? I have a lengthy explanation, but it basically boils down to "pick the wrong performance measurement window, get duff results". Let's just say the series is back on that chart again and everyone is happy (except Ace).

    100:

    Dorm staff should be able to avoid direct contact with the students, thus reducing risk.

    Though again, unless any of the dorm staff is say 60+ years old that risk isn't all that great to start with.

    And as you say, given their financial situation most likely would prefer the low risk and continued money.

    101:

    Undergraduates, not many, though some visit their homes (often in far-flung places). Graduates, academic and most academic-related, essentially all, and often several. Cambridge is notorious for the peak minor illness season being October (not February), because they come back from every corner of the earth (*) around September, after field research during the long vacation.

    (*) This is not an exaggeration.

    102:

    Do you think the inability to make our own medical necessities in a crisis could be sufficient to cause a rethink of the practicality of continuing anti-labour policies?

    103:

    Spoke two days ago with a family member who lives in the GTA: no shortages (yet) on regularly purchased household commodities.

    If you don't mind my asking, where in the GTA? I would like to buy some kidney beans and baked beans (because I want to make chilli this weekend).

    I'm in Richmond Hill (heavily immigrant-Chinese area, which correlates strongly to wearing masks*).

    *Which in my mind is correlated with "panicking and not paying attention to public health advice".

    104:

    Do you think the inability to make our own medical necessities in a crisis could be sufficient to cause a rethink of the practicality of continuing anti-labour policies?

    Nope. The source of those policies is a mammonite cult -- wealth is virtue! money is wealth! -- and no amount of quantified analysis will ever make a dent in the axiomatic positions that the virtuous (them) should have all the money.

    Invigorate a political movement to remove the mammonites from their present position of societal control? Maybe. Climate change/looming extinction hasn't sufficed for that. I don't think this is going to, either.

    It's difficult to get rid of a gerontocracy; yes, there's a disproportionate lethality from COVID-19 with age, but oligarchs have better medical care and it won't get all of them. All you really do is select for worse social skills in a peer context, which means a forcing towards things all the oligarchs agree on. (We've been seeing that happen for awhile now. They all agree on enslaving labour; they don't agree on much else.)

    105:

    Well, I went to two grocery stores last night and there were ridiculously long lines at both. I don’t know if it was the ridiculous pep talk from the Orange Idiot, or the fact that all sports were suddenly canceled, but people in my San Diego neighborhood have taken notice that this is a serious situation.

    I’m married to an academic, his university is moving to on-line teaching this week. Research hasn’t been closed down yet. Everyone is hoping Zoom doesn’t break. The students have been encouraged to leave the dorms but will be allowed to stay if they need to. Many of the students come from poor families, and the university is sensitive to their needs.

    As far as work goes, I am in the midst of a couple work from home projects anyway. I need to do a lot of networking to generate interest in them, but that’s not going to be happening for a while (secretly relieved).

    My husband and I had slight bout of unwellness a few days ago—crushing fatigue, chills, slight sore throat for me, brief low fevers, so we’ve taken ourselves out of circulation even though we feel better now.

    106:

    Re: Stores

    She mostly shops at one of Durham Region Costco's.

    Like many folks, my family is scattered across the continent which means hearing about the local news. (Yeah - I know about Ford, the Canuck version of DT. Sorry, eh?)

    107:

    The professional (as opposed to political) elements of the U.S. government are moving toward full (over)reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic. My little DOD agency is leaning hard on telework preparedness; overseas missions are being canceled, as are outreach events and routine travel. Since we are in a leased commercial space, there is concern that ANY person testing positive in our twelve story building could cause loss of access to the ENTIRE building.

    The good news, I suppose, is that we are not particularly critical to the national defense. However, these sorts of precautionary actions are taking place across the U.S. government; much more important issues are going to be delayed or not addressed.

    108:

    Graydon Thank you for the explanation(s) I didn't know about MERS - euuuwww ....

    Tim H It's not "Anti-labour" it's even simpler & cruder than that CHEAPER ... meaning cheap foreign labour on the end of a long supply line Yes, it's stupid. It's the "efficiency" vs Resilience standoff - again.

    colourtheorytoo That sounds exactly like a mild bout of the dreaded, doesn't it? Have you managed to find a test you can take without bankrupting yourseleves?

    109:

    I'd be curious about Ace using the wrong numbers. If you get a chance one day I'd love to read about how that worked. (Or have I already read about it and forgotten the problem?)

    110:

    You will have seen mention of the global pandemic office Obama established and Trump abolished?

    Post-SARS -- where we collectively dodged the bullet we're not dodging this time -- the prospect of human-human transmission of MERS was a significant factor in creating that office.

    111:

    Oh, it's quite simple. A diktak came down from On High: "we're overbought on urban fantasy series, rank them by next quarter's sales and dump the bottom 30% of them." This happened at a time when the next quarter was Q4.

    Problem: the Laundry Files had a regular launch slot in week 1 of Q3. At launch, hardcovers are shipped to bookstores on 90 days' rolling credit: stores then sell them and pay the publisher, or return them within 90 days in exchange for the new quarter's releases. (Unsold inventory goes to warehouse.)

    You can see where this is going, right? Q3 sales figures are sky high (launch week!), but the unsold copies go back to the warehouse in week 1 of Q4 and Q4 sales are therefore in the tank. Overall this is no big deal (the series hits the bestseller list in week 1; it'll be back in 12 months' time) but the idiotic decree to rank series by sales in one particular quarter (rather than gross annual figures) killed the Laundry Files by making it look unprofitable. When it really wasn't.

    (TLDR: my agent said "oh dear, what a pity, let's shop it around", and got me a much nicer deal with Tor.com. As Tor originally bid for the Laundry in 2005 -- but we went with a lower bidder because they already had the Merchant Princes and my editor was driving me up the wall back then -- going back to them was a no-brainer. And lo, after a slight dip (because: series switched publisher and publication month!) it's charting again. And that, incidentally, is why the Laundry Files has survived a change of publisher, when about 95% of series die when their initial publisher cuts them off at the knees: it has a dedicated following.)

    112:

    Re: who does the work in dorms

    In the US there would typically be a lot of 'work study' students doing the actual tasks. Students with an income based qualification to get above market rate low skill jobs with relatively flexible hours on campus. However they would be overseen/supported/trained by an hourly staff workforce of higher than average age (these are relatively good stable jobs with benefits).

    So I don't know. Maybe the older staff could 'work from home' and remote pilot the student workers through more things and then they could get by with only the younger staff on site?

    113:

    Re: '... it has a dedicated following'

    Seems to me that publishers would want authors with strong/long back-lists. Speaking of back-lists: which publisher gets the $$ after the move?

    114:

    ‘wearing masks*).

    *Which in my mind is correlated with "panicking and not paying attention to public health advice".’

    When people I knew in Japan wore masks a it wasn’t to avoid catching something, it was to avoid spreading it.

    115:

    I suspect Mr. “On High” had a bonus linked to 4th quarter earnings. As far as he’s concerned everything worked perfectly.

    116:

    [quote] (If the primary attack vector into the cell is via ACE2 receptors, you plausibly cannot become immune because you need those receptors to keep your heart beating. Any protective mutations aren't present in the population because they result in (at best) stillbirth.) [/quote] While this would mean it was impossible to become immune to the mechanism of attack, it would still be possible to have the immune system latch onto other features of the virus. Perhaps the link between the corona part and the SARS warhead. Tear that apart and the virus wouldn't be dangerous, and plausibly not even active.

    117:

    Oh, certainly; the immune system can do things.

    I'm hypothesizing that what can't happen (as has happened to some degree with both plague, Yersinia pestis, and malaria survivor populations) is for there to be a selection pressure for lacking the mechanism of attack. Which if combined with "returns annually, mutated enough to be infectious again" would be rather unfortunate.

    The University of Saskatchewan has a candidate vaccine in the "decide on an animal model" stage of testing. (I am grimly amused that the total funding input is about 1 MCAD since January.) Won't be ready for people for a year, even if it works. (The head of the team has confident positive things to say; this should not be regarded as the least bit indicative.)

    There's been a successful isolation of the virus at Sunnybrook, allowing it to be cultured and grown. ("level three containment facility"; the most unsettling way I think I've ever seen "it's not the end of the world" expressed.) Sunnybrook is a major hospital but I would expect other regional research hospitals will manage, too.

    It's kinda our job to make sure civilization lasts long enough to get a grip on the disease; the capability is there.

    118:

    David L @ 50:

    Cancelling the NCAA? Piffle:

    Riffing on Goldwater from ancient of days.

    Cancelling NCAA basketball tournament is taking about 1/2 to 1 million hotel room booking nights out of the economy. Plus plane flights for 80% of those bookings. Plus car rentals. All at top rates.

    Plus concession sales ($20 for a hot dog anyone? $15 for a bad beer in a plastic cup.) A

    And so on.

    Well, FWIW, that was Senator Everett Dirksen (R-Illinois) [probably the last HONEST Republican politician], and he didn't actually say it. It was a misquote.

    Closing Disneyland or Disneyworld ... and the Disney theme parks around the world, will hurt specific locations, but cancelling the NCAA will hurt the whole country, not just the one city that hosts the finals. There are conference tournaments all over the U.S. that feed into the NCAA and then there the sub-regionals that feed the regionals that feed the main tournament. And men's college basketball is one of the few things everyone in the U.S. can agree is a good thing, whether their team makes it to the Final Four or not.

    I don't care that much for spectator sports, but it's nice to see the team from my alma mater do well, and this year it looked like NC State did have a good team, one capable of going to the regionals, and maybe to the big dance, if not all the way to having the glass slipper fit.

    The financial impact on the rest of the country is going to be devastating. Not just the ACC Tournament in Greensboro, NC, it's going to affect Dayton, Ohio; Albany, NY; Spokane, Washington; St. Louis, Missouri; Tampa, Florida; Omaha, Nebraska; Sacramento, California; Cleveland, Ohio; Indianapolis, Indiana; Los Angeles, California; Houston, Texas; New York City, New York ... and Atlanta, Georgia.

    Cancelling the tournament will suck billions of dollars out of the economy all over the U.S. Plus, there's the knock-on effects from all the people who worked the tournament losing income, money they won't be spending in their communities.

    And the thing is, it's not the worst financial hit the U.S. is going to take from not effectively coping with the pandemic.

    119:

    JBS Which means that5 DT's chances of re-election, are effectively zero. UNLESS - he postpones the election ....

    Which has just happened here. Our guvmint has taken advice from our senior health officials - and postponed all local & mayoral elections for 12 months - which includes LONDON. Oh good! Even if Khan gets re-elected, I can postpone worrying about finding a replacement for the GreatGreenBeast for 12 months, as well..

    I note the Brit guvmint are saying - or seem to be saying - several things: 1: It's inevitable that people are going to die. 2: We are trying (we hope) to postpone & lower & lengthen the peak of the infection & seriousness, since "pure containment" simply isn't going to work. 3: Children are the LEAST likely to be infected & even then least likely to be seriously infected - so closing schools is an unnecessary panic measure. 4: We are watching to see what else might be necessary 5: We are prepared to do some financial easment ( to businesses/employers ) to try to lower the employment "hit" - because, of course, that also afeects tax-take ...

    120:

    David L @ 76: Heteromeles will like this one.

    Locally we are going through a bit of a food fight in local politics about how the citizens interact with the city council on development. The city just abolished the old CACs with plans to come up with something new. These CACs tended to be dominated by a small group of older people who wanted the city to stop changing. And were very vocal about it. (When a city of 1/2 million is growing by 25,000 people per year it's hard to not change. I swear some would like to "build a wall".)

    Anyway, my CAC decided to go it alone and on their own. Now remember most of the people who attend these things are over 60. Many are over 70. When I emailed the leader and suggested that maybe this is not a good time for this kind of gathering he gave me this long explanation of how they were going to make it "safe".

    Makes me want to hit my head on my desk.

    CAC is Citizen Advisory Council. I'm not among the "build a wall" faction, but I do think they should all move to CARY, NC.**

    ** Local humor - "CARY" is the name of a local town, but area natives will tell you it's an acronym for "Containment Area for Relocated Yankees"

    121:

    paws4thot @ 82: #24 - Well, the Paris - Nice cycle race is still on. That said, the one USian rider has withdrawn so that he can get home ahead of the Orange Carcinoma's travel ban...

    Maybe I'm missing something, but what's to stop someone from the Schengen Area from driving to Paris and boarding the Paris-London Chunnel Train and then booking a flight from Heathrow to JFK after they're already in England?

    122:

    Al Boum Photo won the Gold Cup again

    'Its so cruel, using a dead person's name to cheat you' Grawler a beggar, from Rath, prosperity.

    Will Tinky Winky 2 make The Big Forty? Confirmation bias, safety first. Teeth and ears mark the criminal.

    Re Only The Camcorder Survived, this addition to hide a conflict (7)

    123:

    Re: ' ... then booking a flight from Heathrow to JFK'

    As long as they're US citizens/residents, probably nothing. I'm guessing that US international airports will soon (if not already) have immigration/security re-screening everyone upon arrival. Possibly 'requesting' folks to prove where they traveled, when, etc. because with greatly reduced international travel traffic, security can spend lots more time with each traveler.

    Might help the DEA improve their stats.

    124:

    Charlie Stross @ 95:

    Closing dorms is stupid. Yes, closely packed, etc. But, all young people who are unlikely to need hospital care if they get it.

    Question: who cleans the dorms? Who does the laundry? Is there catering on-site and if so, who cooks and washes the dishes?

    (I'm not really familiar with US college dorm arrangements but I do know that most residential systems have a socially-invisible underclass of paid-by-the-hour servants to keep everything running. Who in turn have communities to go home to, and often second jobs these days because they're not paid enough to live on. And by keeping the dorms open you're exposing them to lots of carriers.)

    My experience is a bit out of date, so I expect a lot has changed, BUT not that much. The dorms I lived in when I was in college had a small staff (probably all contractors now) who came around & emptied the trash cans if you put them out in the hall in the morning; swept and/or mopped the floors in the common areas. They also mopped the communal bathrooms. They didn't have that much contact with the students, because they came around while the students were mostly out of the dorms putatively attending classes.

    They did NOT clean inside the student rooms. Students were responsible for keeping their own rooms clean.

    The university also had food service, ranging from a full-blown dining facility (similar to an Army Mess Hall) to snack bars.

    I paid for my last two years in college working as a cook for the Student Union Food Service (self service snack bar and short-order). Plus there are any number of fast food/casual dining restaurants & pubs surrounding the campus.

    Only a few of the dormitories had kitchen facilities. Those that did were pretty basic - stove, sink & a refrigerator and counter space where you could prepare food. I don't remember them having microwave's, but I was there back before home microwaves became common.

    If you had food that needed to be refrigerated, you had to label it and keep it in a closed container, and some asshole would probably steal it anyway (just like in any employee break room). This was about the time those "dorm" refrigerators started to become available. You weren't supposed to have a hot-plate/crock-pot/toaster oven in your room because the dorm wiring didn't have the capacity to support that. I expect that's been updated.

    You had to bring your own cooking utensils & wash your own dishes. If you left your dishes in the sink, they'd get tossed (or perhaps confiscated by the "cleaning staff"). Anyway, if you wanted to keep it, you washed it as soon as you were finished using it and took it back to your room.

    Mostly what has changed is the proliferation of PRIVATE, for-profit dormitories.

    Back in the day, they did keep a couple of dorms open for those continuing students who couldn't go home or move out during semester breaks & such, but the cafeteria & student union food service were shut down, so you had to eat out if you weren't in one of the dorms that had a community kitchen or knew someone who lived in an apartment & would let you come over to their place to cook.

    125:

    In today's Nature Review:

    'COVID-19 and the cardiovascular system

    Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infects host cells through ACE2 receptors, leading to coronavirus disease (COVID-19)-related pneumonia, while also causing acute myocardial injury and chronic damage to the cardiovascular system. Therefore, particular attention should be given to cardiovascular protection during treatment for COVID-19.'

    https://www.nature.com/articles/s41569-020-0360-5

    126:

    Watching Donnie’s press conference, introducing various CEOs telling what they’re doing to help prevent spread of the virus, and nearly everyone of them was grabbing hold of the podium sides, or adjusting the microphone, some shaking his hand.

    Meanwhile, have seen many stories about different world leaders testing positive after having met with one T.rump or another. Makes me wonder which way it’s going; are the visitors infecting the Rumps, or the other way around?

    127:

    Waves hand from another part of Vancouver Island. EST of luck Ed!

    128:

    David L @ 96: It varies all over the map. Back in my day a decent dorm was 2 people sharing a small room with a bed, desk, closet for each. With a shared bath with 2 others. Showers and baths down the hall at times for the entire floor. Now they range from that up semi suites with private tiny bedrooms with common shared areas. Cleaning many times is an exercise for the student(s). Common areas are cleaned by staff but like you said this is typically NOT a highly desirable job.

    Older dorms at NC State featured 2 person rooms on a double loaded corridor with a large Army style bathroom at either end. Newer dorms had "suites" 4-2 person rooms sharing a small Army style bathroom. The newer dorms also had a "laundry room" down in the basement/ground floor featuring coin operated washing machines and dryers.

    If you lived in an older dorm, you took your laundry home on the weekend (if you lived nearby) or used one of a couple of laundromats located across from campus on Hillsborough St (no longer there).

    There was also a University Laundry that operated similar to commercial laundry/dry-cleaners (the building now houses the "Language and Computer Laboratories"). You could drop clothes off and get them back clean a couple of days later.

    129:

    The titles Ace acquired before the move stay with Ace, until they lapse from print (as defined in contract small print -- it takes more than minimal ebook sales to keep them "in print" per contract). If Ace stop selling them my agent can issue a letter terminating the contract and the rights revert. At which point we decide what to do with the books. (Quite possibly self-publish them as cheap ebooks, at that point, but possibly re-sell them to another publisher). It gets gnarly.

    I think I once noted here that publishing is all about supply chain contract management: this type of situation is a classic case in point.

    130:

    Tim H. @ 102: Do you think the inability to make our own medical necessities in a crisis could be sufficient to cause a rethink of the practicality of continuing anti-labour policies?

    I don't think you need any reason to "rethink" such policies. They're inherently bad for the majority of the population. But there is a small minority that profits immensely from such policies & they happen to control governments, so there ain't gonna' be no "rethinking".

    131:

    I expect school closures within two weeks, remaining shut for the rest of this academic year (and possibly beyond).

    A lot of people in schools are not children, and children are disease-spreaders (often unwilling to follow basic hand-washing instructions, associate with kids from other schools, etcetera).

    The government mentioned (per the Guardian) that closing the schools will hit the UK economy to the tune of 3% of GDP. So we're heading into a deep recession even without the double-whammy of no-deal brexit arrangements and/or a global financial crisis, one or both of which look pretty much inevitable at this point.

    In other news, NHS hospital trusts are cancelling all non-emergency operations and out-patient visits, tripling the size of their intensive care units, and cross-training non-acute doctors in accident and emergency care to support the soon-to-be-overworked A&E staff.

    And the news keeps getting scarier.

    This afternoon I figured we were now 2-4 weeks, max, from the government invoking the Civil Contingencies Act -- but apparently new primarly legislation is expected to hit parliament on an emergency basis next week.

    132:

    SFReader @ 106: Re: Stores

    She mostly shops at one of Durham Region Costco's.

    Like many folks, my family is scattered across the continent which means hearing about the local news. (Yeah - I know about Ford, the Canuck version of DT. Sorry, eh?)

    Which "Durham"? There's one in the UK, one here in North Carolina ... or is it another one I don't know about?

    133:

    We can’t take a test because none are available, basically—we could even pay for it. An acquaintance of mine had the symptoms with a fever of 102 as well as an immuno-compromised husband at home, and she couldn’t get a test. If we call up with our list of mild symptoms that disappeared a few days ago, we will be laughed off the phone. Nothing we can do but be good citizens and try to stay away from other people. I did steal a box of disposable gloves from my husband’s lab which I can use as needed.

    Before we decided to go into lockdown we decided it would be nice to try CBD oil for anxiety only to discover (this is very Californian) full-scale panic shopping at the local weed dispensary. Parking lot full and more cars coming in every minute...we gave up and left.

    134:

    And keep in mind lots of things are going to go out of supply due to the existing supply chain disruption; it's not just N95 masks or gloves, it's stuff like antiviral drugs, the stuff used to treat HIV, or birth control.

    It's going to be interesting watching the GOP admit they're completely in favour of these things while compensating the American firms for lost business from public funds.

    135:

    I expect school closures within two weeks

    School Easter holidays start in a bit more than two weeks round here, I suspect there's some hope that things will stretch that long so parents don't have to bring forward whatever child-minding plans they have. Full Term at University of Cambridge ends today which I suspect means the bulk of the little darlings will be off tomorrow. With Easter Day being late they won't be due back until April 18th if Exam Term goes ahead as normal.

    136:

    I’m looking for good references about the ACE2 thing. I get that it’s still emerging, but best I’ve seen so far is in the correspondence (aka dear editor) section of BMJ.

    I’m on an ACE inhibitor myself, so have heightened interest I guess.

    137:

    It would be Durham Region, to the east of Toronto, taking in Oshawa, Pickering, and a bunch of other cities/towns.

    As to the original question, semi-serious runs on grocery store shelves in Mississauga/Brampton this afternoon likely as the latest pronouncements - Toronto and surrounding cities closing all libraries, daycares, and community centres until April 5th and the Ontario Chief Medical Officer ordering no gatherings over 250 people, and warning/suggesting no non-essential travel outside of Canada.

    Big tourist attractions (CN Tower, Art Gallery Ontario, Royal Ontario Museum) are closing until April 5th.

    etc.

    138:

    When people I knew in Japan wore masks a it wasn’t to avoid catching something, it was to avoid spreading it.

    Not the case here. People are buying masks to protect themselves*.

    At school and in my commute/shopping in the GTA, everyone I saw wearing a mask looked Chinese. Given the crazy misinformation that was floating around the local Chinese media about SARS, I do wonder what's being said on Chinese-language social media…

    *And using them in ways that defeats any kind of protection even of other people.

    139:

    " Some speculation that this may help recreational vehicals, a demonstration of a lack of imagination I assume."

    (I'm skipping over the other comments; please forgive me if this has been covered already)

    I've got a cousin who lives two miles from where the US builds RV's; his son works there now as an engineer (RV tech is serious and advanced).

    As you can probably guess, RV's are luxury goods; demand can be highly elastic.

    In 2008 and the aftermath, however, demand held up, but the availability of bank loans went to zero. My cousin took me to a large country-western bar/restaurant/dance hall on a Saturday night; it was at ~10% capacity.

    So it will be financing that's the key.

    140:

    Cancelling the tournament will suck billions of dollars out of the economy all over the U.S.

    I don't see the problem. You folks managed to spend trillions so that investment bankers got their bonuses, surely the government will provide compensation so that the economy doesn't crater.

    (Yes, sarcasm.)

    141:

    children are disease-spreaders

    Colleague of mine walked past North Toronto on his way home yesterday — a school on the bottom level of a condo, so lots of community walkways etc go past it.

    Group of teenagers in a fairly narrow passageway. Not unusual. As he walks past they crowd closer and start coughing on him. Did the same thing to his husband half an hour previously.

    Girl in one of my morning classes sneezing a lot without covering or turning her head. She didn't see it as a problem, despite repeated warnings. Nothing I can do but request compliance, no consequences if kid refuses.

    During SARS students who were sent home for self-quarantine got bored and went to visit friends at other schools, hung out at the mall, etc. No consequences.

    142:

    Re: Which "Durham"?

    This one is the 'Regional Municipality of Durham' which is just east of Toronto, Canada. It's hard to tell where one municipality stops and another begins in this part of the world. (Sorta like Miami.) Visited Durham NC some years ago - great place.

    Just had a look and there are 2 Costco's in that area: one in Ajax and one in Oshawa.

    143:

    Aaaand then there's the real Durham, which is about 160 kilometres south of Edinburgh (the real Edinburgh, not one of your copycat colonial knock-offs)! Which probably also has a CostCo these days. (Weirdly, CostCo stores are almost identical anywhere on the planet where I've visited one.)

    144:

    Re: ' ... everyone I saw wearing a mask looked Chinese.'

    Sounds like a case of 'damned if you do': wasting previous resources; 'damned if you don't': this virus came from China, and you're not being careful enough!'

    Richmond Hill & Markham - I usually go for dim sum there when visiting Toronto. Heard that most of the Chinese in this region are from Hong Kong (speak Cantonese) and aren't particularly fond of or relate to main-landers (Mandarin).

    145:

    Blast - where's the auto-correct!

    You know what I meant -- 'previous resources' s/b 'precious resources'.

    146:

    "'m not really familiar with US college dorm arrangements but I do know that most residential systems have a socially-invisible underclass of paid-by-the-hour servants to keep everything running. Who in turn have communities to go home to, and often second jobs these days because they're not paid enough to live on. And by keeping the dorms open you're exposing them to lots of carriers."

    Bang on.

    Now, there is still the problem with international students. Also some poorer students.

    147:

    There's Cantonese around, but most of the conversation I hear is Mandarin. Pacific Mall and the immediate area was more Cantonese (I haven't been in years), but further north around highway 7 and up in Richmond Hill I hear mostly Mandarin.

    As I've mentioned before, friends and nieces are Chinese. They tell me people are wearing masks to protect themselves. Certainly that's what the Chinese kids at school were doing. That's why colleagues at school were trying to buy N95 masks.

    148:

    Apologies if this is hogging your space, Charlie!

    As I was looking at Canadian news, this story caught my eye. Will be interesting to see what other religious groups there and elsewhere do.

    https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/covid-19-quebec-bishops-announce-cancellation-of-all-catholic-masses-in-the-province-1.4850711

    'MONTREAL -- The Assembly of Quebec Catholic Bishops on Thursday announced that all masses at Catholic churches cross Quebec will be cancelled until further notice in an effort to help stem the tide of COVID-19 in Quebec.

    The edict covers all Saturday and Sunday masses and other celebratory gatherings.

    Churches will remain open, the Assembly said in a statement, and it is inviting worshippers to gather there in smaller groups or for personal visits.'

    Other ...

    I'm on a bunch of mailing and contact lists (biz & personal) and as of this evening have received close to 20 emails about what each of these orgs/groups is doing re: COVID-19. Pretty consistent wrt to implementing and urging everyone to follow rational scientific guidelines.

    149:

    Ontario Association of Physics Teachers cancelled our annual conference (at the end of May). Between ongoing labour troubles and Covid it seemed the prudent thing to do. (I was going to be presenting — will use some of the school cancellation to write an article for the organization newsletter. Not as good as a hands-on session, but better than nothing.)

    150:

    That's why colleagues at school were trying to buy N95 masks.

    I drove across the US/Canadian border this afternoon. Going into the US was normal. However, going into Canada had changed. The booth official wore a bulletproof vest, as usual, but had added a face mask. And he asked two new questions, something on the order of:

    "Are you feeling sick or unwell?"

    "Have you returned from Italy or Iran in the last two weeks?"

    151:

    EXCLUSIVE:

    Ministers to unveil emergency Coronavirus powers:

    * Police allowed to detain infected

    * Care standards could be lowered for elderly

    * Ministers allowed to close ports

    * 'Trains, vessels & aircraft' can be halted

    * Schools can be directed to close or remain open

    The emergency powers, which will be in place for two years, will enable police and immigration officers across UK to detain anyone with suspected Coronavirus

    They will be able to detain them for a 'limited period' so they can be screened

    https://twitter.com/Steven_Swinford/status/1238589708751589376

    Times, London, 13th March, 2020

    They've also banned football (or rather, the Corporation who run it have postponed the season or something).

    Not sure we have a rainbow left to give. Paradox weaponry costs too much.

    152:

    Some of the Muslim groups in Ontario/Canada are recommending cancellation of sermons.

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/coronavirus-mosques-muslims-canada-friday-prayers-1.5496350

    Additionally VIA Rail has cancelled the overnight trains until at least March 27th (Canadian and Ocean).

    The Bell TIFF Lightbox movie theatre has reduced ticket sales so that patrons can keep 3 empty seats between them and other customers, and AMC in the US has announced a 50% cut in auditorium capacity - likely somewhat a moot point given all the major movies have release dates postponed.

    153:

    Re: 'They tell me people are wearing masks to protect themselves.'

    Okay - I understand now. Nevertheless, some folk will interpret a group's behavior in a poor light no matter what.

    More Mandarin than Cantonese - really? Couple of years ago I drove around that area hoping to find some music by that wunderkind (Dimash) that YT turned up for me. Went to many Chinese malls and plazas: they didn't carry anything from the mainland. (At most they downloaded/copied off the Internet.) They did carry CDs & DVDs from Hong Kong. My understanding is that China and Canada have okay trade relations already and are looking into some new formal trade agreement.

    154:

    trying to buy N95 masks

    The masks I've seen for sale here are either decorative paper "dust" masks that do about as well as a surgical mask, or the next step up largely pointless ones that have an exhalation valve. Well, they somewhat protect the person wearing them from inhaling recently-coughed globules, but they do little to protect others.

    Mind you, any mask should somewhat reduce the tendency to touch your face so I've been wearing my bicycle pollution mask because it covers more of my face without being unreasonably bulky.

    I'm not seeing a lot of masks around Sydney, though. Not that I've been going out much. Or using public transport. If I have to go to the office on Monday I think I'll take the lazy bike and ride 90 minutes each way just to avoid taking the train. Or travel at 6am when there are very few other train users.

    155:

    Relations between China and Canada have been strained ever since Canada arrested the CFO of Huawei in Vancouver at the request of the US in December 2018.

    156:

    Difficult to budget the high window, with two cases of goods in a hotel room.

    Guess what I found behind Jupiter, the warrior causing the deflection. LA Noire, guess we'll get past Eden.

    157:

    The Health Minister Edward Argar has been placed in self-isolation after dining with Nadine Dorries according to the Telegraph. Here he is coughing at the despatch box on Tuesday. https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-covid-19-uk-britain-united-kingdom-infection-deaths-symptoms-2020-3?r=US&IR=T

    https://twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/1238023750882414592

    Anyone please explain why this infected Minister says:

    "...funding for six"

    stage cough, sip of water[0]

    obvious underbreath

    "They're gone"

    companions laughing

    "...For six new hospitals"

    ~

    We parse this completely differently: given the make-up of the leadership class these days could mean Angels or Mysterons.

    [0] At least he didn't pour in on his phone.

    158:

    Behind Jupiter, the Warrior: behind the Warrior the Medusa, Eye's Bright. Behind that, whelp.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/imsorryjon/ [0]

    ~

    Problem is, you're flagging up a huge USA thing about hotels, lone gunman shooting festival goers, dodgy meetings and even dodgier owners and really odd police behavior there. Oh and the CCTV of mercs escorting VIPs out etc.

    So - be a little clearer? Or not: just a head's up what you're signalling to a certain crowd.

    [0] Yes: there is an entire (huge) community kicking out Garfield as Eldritch horror on Reddit, has been for a while. It's 'amusing' until you spot some rather, well: prescient things.

    159:

    On average wearing a mask makes people touch their face more - to adjust the mask, or because it makes them sweat. It's one of the reasons that wearing masks isn't recommended for the general public.

    160:

    Oh, and triptych.

    Yes, the President of the USA did just get in front of the TeeVee with a mass of sparsely talented C levels[0], announced a $50 billion package[1] at 3.30pm[2] that ramped the stock market up 2k points while announcing Martial Law or Emergency Code Orange/Red Patriot Act panic whatever.

    Just writing this here so there might be a record of this insanity so future Minds will remember that we weren't making it up.

    [0] Including some who ran AIDS into the successful conclusion that ended with Tom Hanks making a brave film[0.1]

    [0.1] Yes, much like Vietnam, it got Hollywooded. And an Oscar. Curtis film overlay

    But then, Tom Hanks got COVID19, and everything changed.

    [1] He'd signed an $8.5 bil Bill so who the fuck knows

    [2] Gotta get the Mason angle

    161:

    [Note: if you think the people who just ran a clear "fuck the peasants, we're here to save the market" are above that Tom Hanks connection move... think again. No, really. Really really.]

    162:

    Seriously: if 2020's next move is that the entire Authoritarian miasma claim that they were possessed to do all the evil shittery they clearly enjoy and now the virus somehow cured them, there will be blood[0]

    [0] Vatican to hold exorcist training course after 'rise in possessions' https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/30/vatican-to-hold-exorcist-training-course-after-rise-in-possessions-exorcism-priests

    And yeah: actual response is that the level of weird shit is Ghostbuster territory where one of us is, which denotes one thing:

    Power can never be seen to be held accountable, everything else is secondary to this goal.

    Which apparently includes 100% Mind fucking plebs into zombies and so on and so forth. 100% busted there, 100% faux cover narratives = we know.

    "I warned you"

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcxKIJTb3Hg

    163:

    Oh, and pro tip:

    Your Human Brains can't be both "psychopathic" and "schizoid effective" (traditionally labelled "paranoid schizophrenic"), according to your own science. Doesn't work.[0]

    Which means if you're labeling something both at the same time, you're clearly cheating.

    Rack up those paradox claims.

    "We don't care"

    Yeah, we fucking noticed, which is partly why this is happening. If you're no longer Homo Sapiens, then a whole new rule set applies.

    Chances are you still are, but you're slaved.

    MRI it, blood test it, spot the emergency brain tumor brigade with their advanced lobotomy craft these days.

    ~

  • It's not even the Ides of March yet, to cover this they're gonna need a few more towers.

  • [0] The reasons for which according to your primitive understanding will take an MRI. You're wrong, but (drum-roll): the Minds using this can't know that's not true.

    [1] And yes, Germany is banning MRI scans in certain places for some "RNG" reason. Work it out.

    [2] Biden's campaign is now officially elder abuse. Fucking outrageous that you're claiming that "Democracy is important from where we come from" and that shit is flying. Reference: shit PR ad with phone, which is clearly not a phone, it's not on, and he fluffs his lines.

    164:

    [The "you're wrong" there is not about Human Brains]

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnp1jfLhtck

    165:

    Hexad.

    No, it's a Paradox Weapon.

    You evil little bunnies.

    166:

    The good news, I suppose, is that we are not particularly critical to the national defense.

    Point made. That's good work and something to be proud of but not the most urgent thing the government is doing. I hope you get to continue; you're not likely to find my grandfather but you're finding others.

    167:

    Which means that DT's chances of re-election are effectively zero.
    UNLESS - he postpones the election ....

    This is less flexible in the US than in other countries. We're supposed to have an election in November but could in theory reschedule it. What would happen then?

    The US Constitution says The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January... and that's important. The next guy's term doesn't start then, it's a specific time at which Trump stops being president. Is there an incoming president? That would be convenient. The rules don't say there has to be.

    So imagine some circumstance that prevents any election at all from happening. At noon of January 20th Trump is no longer president; normally the vice president automatically is promoted but Pence just stopped being vice president. Without a vice president the order of succession falls through to the Speaker of the House, who's under different term rules and therefore at 12:01PM still has a job. That's Nancy Pelosi, who is not a fan of Donald and who he still remembers as the mean lady who impeached him.

    168:

    Someone tell your Empire Builders that (and yes, we've already posted the .civ testing version that did 65 mil dead) this is merely modelling for a success run.

    grep REPO stress test.

    This is a very similar thing [in fact, off the silly stuff: highly likely to be a fuck-up from immunity / vaccine development than anything else - it's way too specifically linked to a whole slew of research to be RNG based - and we can defend that position quite easily without having to resort to shock "AIDS" links]

    Anyhow, your real issue atm isn't COVID19, but hey. It's your Minds.

    You've managed to get into a position where the entire of US/COM NATO cannot even handle the most basic of emergencies[0] and now everyone knows it.

    But, more importantly [specifically - fuck you [redacted] utter failures] you're in a position where, effectively, Authoritarian / Ideologically based thought has the ability to stop any perceived threat and those forces are manifestly unable to deal with anything but lobotomized humans.

    That's the actual take here: and not one you'll get from .mil sources or Hackernews.

    That's the stress test: Gateway or not, absolute fucking retrograde inability to progress is staunchly fixed in, which means your species dies.

    Thanks for playing. Hackernews or VC or Harvard are just cloning facilities at this point - useless.

    "They'll kill you"

    We know

    [Star Wars reference for the oldies]

    [0] Stuff like poor Guam or Porto Rico are Empire stuff, not resource based.

    169:

    Please both grow up and read our posts.

    Orange Man Bad just pumped the stock market by 2k with a load of C level scum.

    He's pivoting to the "Well, the Government failed, we did our best, deep state is too entrenched[0], we've already replaced everyone in .gov positions of power with industry reps[1], why don't we do a Belgium[2] and make it all private"

    FFS ARE YOU THIS BLIND?

    THATS THE FUCKING PLAN.

    [0] As they lock down all the Judges for the next 50 years or whatever insanity you've decided is set in stone

    [1] Literally

    [2] No .gov for years

    170:

    Ironically people like Dom or Bannon or Putin or Elon or Silicon Valley do know this, which is why they're so able to shove billions to obvious scams.

    They just can't stomach that actual progress will also make them redundant, which is why they pick the failure mode ones.

    No-one really wants the Kwisatz Haderach because you have shittingly huge Ego issues at heart.

    Trust me, we know: EXCESSION is actually a massive OP to staunch a new [redacted].

    p.s.

    Still alive, so get absolutely fucked. Panic mode is setting in.

    "Corrupt" - wut? Rule34 is not corrupt and trust me, consensual kinks are ok if mutual.

    "Blah blah old Paradox Weapons"

    Yeah - and these old fuckers work for the actual .mil and they know nothing about them. This is bad.

    171:

    I'm not really familiar with US college dorm arrangements...

    My college dorm looked exactly like this, modulo a few decades of remodeling and wear & tear. (The sample floor plan is one level down from where I lived.) One and two person bedrooms, shared sanitary facilities, and in that dorm a kitchen on each floor[1]. The kitchen is labeled 'common area' on the floor plan; what British would call common rooms are down on the lowest two levels. The ground floor also has the laundry and, when I was there, a tiny micro-convenience store that would close inconveniently early.

    The college also had a cafeteria in another building, substantially like any other cafeteria.

    [1] College students being as they are, they required a damage deposit for the kitchen. A source in the know tipped off some of us that we should take care of it but there was no point in breaking the room a little; if at the end of the year we'd broken so much we weren't going to get our money back it was cost effective to trash the place. And if someone planned to make off with the appliances, do it when he wasn't looking.

    172:

    to adjust the mask, or because it makes them sweat

    Ah. I'm habituated to mine, so the current behaviour is "don't take if off when I get off the bike to go into the shops". Yes, it's sweaty inside, but that beats sucking down diesel fumes.

    173:

    Which means that DT's chances of re-election, are effectively zero. UNLESS - he postpones the election....

    He can't, at least not unilaterally. At minimum he'd need both levels of Congress to agree to it, which would be an uphill struggle even for someone who hadn't been loudly denying that anything was wrong on Twitter up until a few days ago, and it's likely the Supreme Court would have to weigh in on whether it was permissible without a constitutional amendment.

    And even if he did get Congress and the court both to agree to it, it might ultimately make his prospects worse. Holding elections when the law mandates them to be held no matter what else is going on is a big deal for Americans, and never postponing a nationwide one is something they're justifiably rather proud of. Having to break that perfect record because of a public health crisis that's got as bad as it has at least partly thanks to the Trump administration failing to take it seriously in the early stages is not going to reflect well on him even among the traditional Republican demographics.

    174:

    So New Zealand is effectively pulling up the drawbridge, until at least the end of March. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/120279430/coronavirus-prime-minister-updates-nz-on-covid19-outbreak

    "From midnight Sunday, everyone arriving in New Zealand will have to isolate themselves for 14 days, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced.

    The tighter border controls were announced during an update by the prime minister on New Zealand's response to the Covid-19 outbreak on Saturday afternoon. She said while it is not realistic for New Zealand to only have a handful of coronavirus cases, the changes would slow the spread of infection. ... Travel restrictions would be reviewed in 16 days, the prime minister said.

    Ardern urged New Zealanders not to travel overseas unless it was absolutely necessary."

    175:

    Honest Governmunt have a coronavirus ad out, poking pointy things at the obvious targets: https://youtu.be/Hks6Nq7g6P4

    176:

    Yeah, it looks as though I was a few days ahead of the prime minster on that.

    177:

    I'm going to repeat what I said in (2) # 119 We are trying (we hope) to postpone & lower & lengthen the peak of the infection & seriousness, since "pure containment" simply isn't going to work. Denmark (etc) are going to close their borders ... TOO LATE: Stable Door / Horse / Bolted

    JBS @ 121 The US have said they will be examining passport stamps ...

    Pasquinade Who TinkyWinky2? Please don't start imitating the ffffing Seagull .....

    Charlie Per your remarks - emergency legislation now officially expected next week BBC News item here See also Vulch @ 135 - wait until "Easter" hols start ... then make up your tiny minds .... Ah yes ... The emergency powers, which will be in place for two years HOW VERY CONVENIENT Wonder if they'll "forget" to remove them ... ? [ Like ID cards after WWII ]

    JBS HERE is the real Durham Good pubs, too. And in Summer

    Robert Prior You can tell the difference? I presume you know some of one or the other ..... In the UK, the majority spoken "Chinese" is Cantonese, of course.

    Moz ( # 174 ) Very fortunately, I'd just put my tea cuo down when I looked at that .....

    178:

    At least New Zealand calls it Dunedin :-)

    179:

    I listened to a peduliarly-coloured pompous ass saying that, due to his magnificent leadership, the USA is capable of performing 15-20,000 tests a day and that soon all Americans that wanted a test could have one just for the asking. That's arithmetic, that is. I am reminded of the following:

    The clever men at Oxford Know all that there is to be knowed. But none of them know half as much As intelligent Mr Toad!

    180:

    A question I can actually answer!

    Tinky Winky is a character from the Teletubbies, a dystopian sci-fi drama aimed at toddlers and student stoners in the 1990s.

    The actor who played TW was replaced after the first season, allegedly because his portrayal of the character was too camp and some people were paranoid about him turning preschoolers gay.

    Given that the character in question was a bizarre purple blob creature with a screen embedded in it's stomach I always felt that inferences about it's sex life were a bit of a stretch, but that's moral panic for you.

    181:

    I'm guessing that US international airports will soon (if not already) have immigration/security re-screening everyone upon arrival.

    I've only been to Europe 3 times but for the return each time EVERYONE on the flight had to visit the desk and have a short interview with someone while they looked over your passport. Only a minute or two but you didn't get a boarding pass without the review and talk.

    Which is why they want you at the gate AT LEAST an hour before departure.

    This was all in the last 3 or 4 years.

    182:

    This is less flexible in the US than in other countries. We're supposed to have an election in November but could in theory reschedule it.

    I thought it was in the Constitution but my brief research showed it set by EXISTING law. So to change it the House and Senate would have to pass a law and DT sign it or have the H and S override a veto.

    Chances of such a law passing are slim to totally invisible unless the universe changes a lot more than seems possible even in the extreme just now.

    183:

    I note the Brit guvmint are saying - or seem to be saying - several things: 1: It's inevitable that people are going to die. 2: We are trying (we hope) to postpone & lower & lengthen the peak of the infection & seriousness, since "pure containment" simply isn't going to work.

    Career health officials here (US) are saying the same thing. Just carefully so DT doesn't go nuts and fire the only competent people dealing with this.

    184:

    Career health officials here (US) are saying the same thing. Just carefully so DT doesn't go nuts and fire the only competent people dealing with this.

    They're on thin and uncertain ice anyway. He already fired other public health experts and lied about it. Not that the job title is important; he famously fires people basically at random, so nobody in his orbit has any job security. It was mediocre as an incompetence reality show and doesn't get better as an incompetence government.

    185:

    Re: 'Only a minute or two but you didn't get a boarding pass without ... '

    Which already felt like ages during those 2 minutes. And now you can look forward to an even longer interview because they'll probably keep the staff numbers up even as the number of travelers drops.

    Wondering about the pilots: aren't they required to fly a minimum number of hours per month in order to maintain their credentials? If yes, then the flight-simulation centers will be busier than usual.

    186:

    Reading between the lines, they are saying something different. The chief medical and scientific officers have been political appointments for some time; while I believe that the current ones are both competent and fairly honest (NOT always the case!), I also believe that their contractual conditions include some pretty strong gagging clauses. In particular, even an immunity of 60% is NOT enough to stop an infection with a reproductive rate of 2.5 times, though it would reduce it to a manageable (if severe) problem. What they have glossed over is that the real chaos and most deaths will occur while the UK is reaching that, and we have no idea if the virus works that way, anyway - many coronaviruses don't. Whitty's comment that there could well be 10,000 cases in the UK when only 350 were identified was most imformative, and may have been as far as he dared go in telling the truth.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-herd-immunity-uk-covid-19-pandemic-outbreak-flu-a9400171.html

    Note that they are proposing to test ONLY people who need admission to hospital, and rely on self-reporting and -isolation of less serious cases for restricting the spread. As far as I can see, there has been a lot of talk about compensating people who can't afford to do that, but effectively no action.

    https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/wuhan-novel-coronavirus-initial-investigation-of-possible-cases/investigation-and-initial-clinical-management-of-possible-cases-of-wuhan-novel-coronavirus-wn-cov-infection#interim-definition-possible-cases

    What I think they are saying is "Oh, shit! We have lost control of this." and the gummint is proposing actions that may spread things out a little, but are primarily chosen to minimise the political, economic and social impact. And, no, an extra 300,000 deaths mainly among the infirm and elderly is not regarded as a major impact - indeed, some of the shits may regard it as a benefit, but reducing the NHS and care cost in the medium term. The Daily Wail is about as reliable as the National Enquirer, but is strongly pro-Johnson, and I believe that this is a good indication of what is really going on behind the scenes:

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8110943/Most-frail-not-critical-care-doctors-warn.html

    187:

    "From midnight Sunday, everyone arriving in New Zealand will have to isolate themselves for 14 days, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced.

    Any indications of how that's actually expected to work? Are quarters going to be provided for those that don't have any, are 14-day survival packages of food and other supplies going to be given to people who can't go shopping?

    188:

    Any indications of how that's actually expected to work?

    Reading to the bottom of the article reveals this line:

    * Measures to help those in self-isolation to be announced next week

    So that's comforting.

    189:

    will use some of the school cancellation to write an article for the organization newsletter

    When you do, will it be possible for you to provide us with a link? Please?

    190:

    Agree, needing the House of Representatives to agree will be very problematic.

    On the other hand the appearance is he owns the Supreme Court so that would appear to be a simple rubber stamp for anything he proposes.

    As for Republican voters, sadly I don't think they will object as much as you think.

    Most of them appear to think he is doing God's work, and as long as it is an us vs. them mentality like it has been for the last 10+ years they will take anything that keeps a Democrat out of the White House.

    It is very easy to say that this mess is the end of his re-election hopes, but the voters of the world are so unpredictable these days that even this may no harm him - it could actually help him if the base thinks the media is picking on him for pointing out all of his incompetence.

    191:

    And Apple has now closed all of its retail stores outside of China until March 27th (paying employees during the closure)

    https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/03/apples-covid-19-response/?subId1=xid:fr1584190178120fei

    As for the hope that summer will bring an end/suspension of the virus, Saudi Arabia is stopping all international flights for at least 2 weeks. This is a good indication that heat doesn't deter it if the reported cases didn't already.

    193:

    Here's a link to the newsletter:

    Thank you.

    194:

    I think its a mixed bag from Bozo and Chums.

    On the positive - they are acknowledging that this thing is here to stay and needs long term planning to deal with it. They have made some assumptions about immunity and re-infection rates that appear to be just that - assumptions.

    On the negative - they appear to either be accepting a given number of casualties and have written them off or have made some optimistic assumptions about the NHS's ability to deal with the number of critical cases expected.

    There is an argument for starting to take the economic view in addition to the humanitarian view as well. The travel industry is gone - totally wiped out - for a minimum of the next 6 months (including my job in the next 6 weeks I reckon). The hospitality industry is on the way out too. Supply line and staff shortages will likely kibosh the rest of the economy. Tax receipts will be through the floor and welfare payments through the roof. The only positive tax receipts will be inheritance tax

    We are likely already in a recession that makes anything since the Great Depression look like a walk in the park and makes 07/08 look like a mere blip. There is going to have to be some pretty massive economic support coming from all the Western Governments and it seems unlikely to arrive in time to save a lot of companies.

    195:

    Test kits, masks ...

    Countries/gov'ts that aren't addicted to their delusions of superiority can probably get help from China - both from the gov't and at least one wealthy individual (Jack Ma, Ali Baba co-founder).

    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/china-sends-essential-coronavirus-supplies-italy-200313195241031.html

    196:

    Oh, yes, but it looks like an average mixture only in comparison to their previous record. 300,000 dead, which would double the annual death rate (and over a million needing hospital treatment, but only some getting it) is the optimistic figure. The pessimistic one, based on the raw figures coming out of China, is four times that - 1.3 million dead in the UK and over 5 million needing hospital treatment. Given that the more infectious form of the virus seems to be much milder than the initial one, we can hope for the former. But it IS purely hope, based on unreliable assumptions (as you say), and good governments do not rely on that.

    Your point is taken, but that doesn't mean that their "keep calm and carry on" approach is a good one. If it does fail, their economic gestures aren't going to do any good whatsoever. Inter alia, they are NOT bringing in the other political parties and devolved parliaments (let alone Eire), in the way that they should for a major crisis.

    197:

    As for Republican voters, sadly I don't think they will object as much as you think.

    I think you're referring to the person my comment was about. I have no illusions about the right 1/3 of the voters. Ditto the left 1/3.

    198:

    My comment was in a reply to Jake (as the comment header indicates), not you. Not sure why you think otherwise?

    199:

    I tend to agree but think if this was a giant experiment the UK's approach would be worth trying out. Sadly its not and history will be the only judge and it will be cold comfort to those of us who have lost and suffered through it.

    An aside. Found a good site with the data on all this. Trying to understand how much of an outlier Italy is.

    https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-source-data

    200:

    Robert Prior @ 139:

    Cancelling the tournament will suck billions of dollars out of the economy all over the U.S.

    I don't see the problem. You folks managed to spend trillions so that investment bankers got their bonuses, surely the government will provide compensation so that the economy doesn't crater.

    (Yes, sarcasm.)

    Two things:

    1. The <code>code tag</code> most people use to indicate sarcasm doesn't work here, but the <tt>teletype tag</tt> does the same thing. If you are concerned with transgressing Poe's Law , there is a tool available.

    2. The Obama administration spent trillions to keep the Wall Street banksters in business. The current MAL-administration is primarily driven by being the ANTI-Obama administration - figuring out what Obama would do so they can do the exact opposite - which puts them in a bit of a dilemma over who, when or whether to bail anyone out.

    201:

    Because at time I make a stupid mistake. And admit it.

    202:

    Robert Prior @ 146: There's Cantonese around, but most of the conversation I hear is Mandarin. Pacific Mall and the immediate area was more Cantonese (I haven't been in years), but further north around highway 7 and up in Richmond Hill I hear mostly Mandarin.

    Being an ignorant ol' 'murican, "It's all Greek to me." 8^)

    203:

    figuring out what Obama would do so they can do the exact opposite - which puts them in a bit of a dilemma over who, when or whether to bail anyone out.

    That's obvious. Clearly hotels and resorts are suffering, so their owners will need support. Possibly compensation based on their being fully occupied at rack rate — tax exempt, of course — without the need to provide documentation and especially without the need to pay staff to look after the now-empty rooms…

    Obama never bailed out hotels and resorts, so they're good to go on this one.

    204:

    Scott Sanford @ 166:

    Which means that DT's chances of re-election are effectively zero.
    UNLESS - he postpones the election ....

    This is less flexible in the US than in other countries. We're supposed to have an election in November but could in theory reschedule it. What would happen then?

    The US Constitution says The terms of the President and Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January... and that's important. The next guy's term doesn't start then, it's a specific time at which Trump stops being president. Is there an incoming president? That would be convenient. The rules don't say there has to be.

    So imagine some circumstance that prevents any election at all from happening. At noon of January 20th Trump is no longer president; normally the vice president automatically is promoted but Pence just stopped being vice president. Without a vice president the order of succession falls through to the Speaker of the House, who's under different term rules and therefore at 12:01PM still has a job. That's Nancy Pelosi, who is not a fan of Donald and who he still remembers as the mean lady who impeached him.

    There's nothing in the Constitution that allows the government to postpone the election either, so what makes you think they'd give a damn what it says about when their terms in office are supposed to end?

    I will defer further comments regarding the U.S. election until another thread, but you all know I have an opinion on the subject, and it is not favorable to the current MALadministration.

    205:

    You were wondering what the reinfection rate is:

    "More than 100 people have gotten coronavirus twice in China — less than 0.2 percent of the country’s confirmed cases."

    https://twitter.com/MiamiHerald/status/1238590958427607042

    206:

    Tinky Winky 2 flu seems to be a nasty flu where the worst element is more potent than usual. However I don't anticipate it to be more than twice as lethal than any other seasonal flu, if that. A science fiction conference is a peculiar event. The cancellation of rugby, football and US college sports is pointless and ascribing resistance to doing so as nationalistic populism and an atavistic belief in 'herd immunity' is mendacious.

    President Trump has set out his stall against fake news. At the end of the year we will know whether the Tinky Winky 2 flu is an exercise in conformation bias on a world scale and a politically motivated media panic which educated and technologically literate posters on Charlie's Diary should have resisted. It will have cost trillions of dollars. What is the reason to cancel elections? At what level of fatality, compared to seasonal flu, is that justified?

    Next year there will be another flu. Aren't lives saved this year by excessive measures going to be vulnerable next year? If I need another label for next year's flu, former Labour leader J. Fraudron Brown has a Guardian article on the Tinky Winky 2 flu, as you might expect.

    207:

    Greg Tingey @ 176: JBS @ 121
    The US have said they will be examining passport stamps ...

    Yes. I know. I was just trying to "make a funny". We really do need some king of a "humor" (or humour) tag so I can make it obvious when I'm not serious, but don't want to resort to sarcasm.

    Pasquinade
    Who TinkyWinky2?
    Please don't start imitating the ffffing Seagull .....

    Too Late ... and how do you know it's not just another manifestation of the ffffing Seagull?

    JBS
    HERE is the real Durham Good pubs, too.
    And in Summer

    Yes, I believe I did mention knowing there's one in the UK, although the city here in North Carolina is not actually named after the original. It was named in honor of Dr. Bartlett Leonidas Snipes Durham who donated the land for a station on the North Carolina Railroad. The railroad, in turn named it Durham's Station.

    The station was important stop during the post-American Civil War tobacco boom. In 1869 the North Carolina Legislature incorporated the "City of Durham" around the area of Durham's Station dropping the "'s".

    We don't have a Gothic cathedral, but we do have the Duke Chapel

    I was born & raised in Durham, NC, growing up literally "on the wrong side of the tracks". John D. Loudermilk wrote the song Tobacco Road about growing up in Durham.

    Most of the world never heard of Durham, NC before they made the movie Bull Durham.

    208:

    Most of the world never heard of Durham, NC before they made the movie Bull Durham.

    Well those of us who flew into RDU figured it out.

    209:

    However I don't anticipate it to be more than twice as lethal than any other seasonal flu, if that.

    An anticipation worth very little against available data.

    As of right now, the John Hopkins data collation page is showing 153,503 total infections and 5,789 total deaths.

    That's roughly 3.8 percent. Seasonal flu is about 0.1 percent.

    Now, certainly the stats underreport both cases (because testing is only plausibly sufficient in a very few places) and deaths (because most folks in the ICU will die, but many have not have done so yet, and because there are people going into graves without being tested) and there's chronological lag in the reports being collated and so on. And you can certainly take the position that there's an order of magnitude more cases, mildly symptomatic or asymptomatic, not being counted in the stats.

    But! these are still the mortality statistics of various vaguely functional health care systems, not one in a state of collapse and unable to provide oxygen, anti-inflammatories, or just rest and fluids; and these are the initial, preliminary numbers, not where the eventual (and unknowable) chain of mutations take us.

    The other but! is that the modern economy requires multiple just-in-time schedules to work reliably. As soon as there are regional pockets of social distancing, the just-in-time starts to fail, and because the whole notion of just-in-time is a hack to avoid needing a control system, the larger global system of production starts to oscillate. We are absolutely certain it sucks at dealing with this, and economic hardship kills people, too.

    Which, well, it's not especially obvious that anyone in a position of power is overreacting.

    210:

    US focused, but this suggests that there will be global opportunities for large political shifts (good and ill). He is a New York Times columnist, center US right, climate change denier (in past at least) etc: Trump Meets Nemesis, Punisher of Hubris - A virus exposes the folly of what the president’s base believes. (Bret Stephens, March 13, 2020) Bret Stephens needs to examine his own (difficult to forgive) hubris, but this isn't bad. But the original Nemesis was not a villain. She was a goddess — an implacable agent of justice who gives the arrogant, insolent and wicked what they deserve.>/i> ... As a matter of politics, however, it’s hard to think of a mechanism so uniquely well-suited for exposing the hubris, ignorance, prejudice, mendacity and catastrophic self-regard of the president who is supposed to lead us through this crisis.

    US is in flux at the moment; lots of panic moves, lots of randomness in disease spread. (And continued hubris among the political and business leadership.)

    JBS #206 how do you know it's not just another manifestation Pasquinade (nym) is being mildly rude and boring and unsophisticated and mostly sans semantics. TOWTNs is doing (many) something(s) else, much more intriguing both from a varied technique standpoint and semantics. (e.g. "Chinese Room" (analogy, and it appears, could be wrong) but not in the original sense. And perhaps some showing-off from my perspective.)).

    211:

    Calling it a flu seems to be a deliberate act of dismissing Covid-19 as a normal everyday event. Covid-19 is not the flu.

    Beyond the fact that both are viruses, they are very different things with different symptoms and thus different stresses on the body and health care system.

    More importantly, as an entirely new (to human hosts) virus our immune systems have no experience dealing with it. So even if it does return next year (or never go away), there is a hope that our immune systems will be better able to deal with it reducing the consequences.

    Beyond the obvious problem of people dismissing the experts as alarmist or peddling "fake news", the biggest problem is that people are ignoring the advice of both the experts and their governments.

    Italy has just announced another large jump in numbers, something the Italian authorities predicted days ago because too many Italians ignored the instructions to avoid gathering in large numbers and instead went to beaches and other resorts, or gathered in town squares.

    Similar things being reported in the US, where many on Twitter indicating many bars/pubs being packed with customers last night.

    212:

    So there is a certain irony is that Trump's alternate White House, his Mar-a-Largo resort, now has 3 confirmed Covid-19 cases from last weekend while Trump was there (the url is misleading) - https://www.businessinsider.com/second-mar-a-lago-visitor-tests-positive-for-coronavirus-wapo-2020-3

    The UK's special flight relationship with Trump didn't last long, the flight ban now includes the UK and Ireland. Supposedly Trump also contemplating travel bans within the US.

    Italian doctors have started to treat ICU patients with an auto-immune drug, which helps the lungs deal with the inflammation resulting from Covid-19 while not directly treating Covid-19

    Quebec Premier is asking everyone 70 or older to stay at home, and visitors to hospitals, long term care homes, and seniors residences in the province are forbidden.

    213:

    Graydon Thank you ... the modern economy requires multiple just-in-time schedules to work reliably. As soon as there are regional pockets of social distancing, the just-in-time starts to fail, and because the whole notion of just-in-time is a hack to avoid needing a control system, the larger global system of production starts to oscillate. We are absolutely certain it sucks at dealing with this Which is what I've been saying for ages ( Not just about this, either ) ... "Efficiency != Resilience ... also "Horse-Harness made of knotted rope" if you recognise the misquote. My opinion, based on not a lot, is that the actual number of deaths, proportionately, is not going to be that large ... but the panic & disorientation & fucking around are going to royally screw the world economy. WHat shares hould I buy at the bottom of the trough, to really clean up, I wonder?

    Corvid-19 appears to traget the cardiovascular system ... which is the best bit of my current atate of health. I went to a local pub this afternoon - noticeably quieter than usual though still planty of (younger) people.

    214:

    Stock market likely to be a gamble, but my suspicion might lean towards companies with a healthy balance sheet even with the chaos - not necessarily large companies, maybe some regional companies, where they will be able to quickly react and move in to take advantage of the gaps left behind by the small businesses that go under with the current "distancing".

    Otherwise it gets more difficult as you need to try and read how a government reacts, do they stick with a discredited ideology or do they listen to experts.

    In a sensible world we won't be getting rid of the just-in-time far flung supply chain, but country level governments will take a more nuanced look at what is "national security" and hence should be exempt from the market. So the ability to make face masks for example might be something to regulate must be made local, so you don't need to rely on shipping halfway around the world in the next crisis.

    Some countries (hint USA) should going forward look at actual real high speed home Internet as a necessity - how many people are struggling to work at home with inadequate yet expensive slow Internet? If they do then the providers of equipment and supplies could be a good investment, though maybe not the Verizon/Charter/etc. But ideology rears its ugly head on that one.

    215:

    Obviously every virus is different, but does anyone have a more positive take on this?

    I was in Taiwan during the SARS outbreak; army cordons around isolation hospitals, schools closed, etc. And after a couple of months everything returned to normal. In fact, there was a bit of a bounce as people went out and relievedly started spending money again.

    While it's good to plan for the worst, if such a thing is possible, should we not also be planning for how we'll get on with our lives?

    216:

    While Tinky Winky 2 flu is technically not a flu, it is a respiratory virus which co-circulates with flu. It has the same symptoms as flu, it is transmitted like flu, it is treated like flu, it is prevented like flu. Before it was isolated it would have been included with flu, had forms of it existed.

    The 2009 flu pandemic was revealed the following year to have been no more lethal than the seasonal flu. Next year we will discover how much Tinky Winky 2 flu and whatever was circulating with it was worse than the seasonal flu. It has a novel genetic form, is that alone going to justify the measures taken?

    217:

    I've seen instructions for making your own - washable, yes, and you can get at least two from a "fat quarter" of fabric (That's a piece half a yard long by half the width of the fabric.) This is what they used before disposable everything.

    Directions: Cut (2) 7.5 inches wide x 7 inches high from plain cotton muslin. Iron (3) 1/2-inch folds across the length of each square. Sew together fabric squares top and bottom across length. Turn inside out and re-press folds and seams flat. Turn in ends 1/4-inch and pin close, then stitch. Use 1/4-inch elastic to sew along short ends to make ear loops.

    YMMV. Tweak as you go for fit because not everybody’s noses or ears are the same. ;-)

    218:

    There are hospitals in Italy shifting to battlefield triage because they can't treat all the critical cases. There are hospitals in Seattle warning that they're going where Italy is going on current trend and will be into partial resource exhaustion in four days. This doesn't much resemble seasonal flu.

    Direct deaths aren't the primary concern; how many people die if the health care system crashes from the surge load?

    It's a lot. If the health care system stays crashed for any length of time, including the very long supply chains back of drug synthesis and supply, we go back to 1920s mortality rates; strokes and heart attacks start being reliably lethal again, every diabetic dies, stuff like that.

    So maybe the question isn't "the unknown prompt lethality might not be that bad" (though even with effective treatment, it's looking pretty bad), but "what do we need to do to keep the health care system functioning?"

    219:

    Had a thought about colleges & universities closing down their dormitories ...

    When I was at NC State, we paid rent for the whole semester at once. Do they still do it that way? If so, do the students get any kind of pro-rated refund when the school closes the dorms?

    220:

    SARS got contained. COVID-19 is most entirely loose.

    We haven't begun to see the economic hit; even with a relatively small death rate, it's unlikely that the status quo ante will be entirely restored, and possible that it won't be restored at all.

    "Getting on with life" is a question for a post-vaccine world, should that world come.

    221:

    A quick search suggests that H1N1 (2009) was about twice as lethal as a typical flu, with some argument, and the severe cases were skewed younger, I presume (without looking) due to preexisting (partial) immunity among some of the older people. You're implicitly conflating death rate and overall mortality; the later is dependent on the percentage of the population getting infected and on the former, and the former on how much healthcare systems are burdened beyond capacity to properly care for the severest cases, i.e. on the later. South Korea is a good model for a non-overwhelmed healthcare system; there the death rate is One chart shows how the coronavirus is more deadly than the flu even in South Korea, where the COVID-19 death rate is low (Andy Kiersz, Mar 12, 2020) As of Thursday, 66 out of 7,869, or 0.84%, South Korean patients confirmed to have the coronavirus have died. But extremely skewed towards the older population. South Korea has contained this through vigorous measures according to their statistics. As have a few other countries with curves that have leveled off or better. Etc. (Yes, the economic costs will be high. Yes, there are reports in the US of the usage "Boomer Remover". GHG emissions way down, good in the fullness of time.)

    222:

    WHat shares hould I buy at the bottom of the trough, to really clean up, I wonder?

    Status quo ante is not looking especially likely; once the hard border closures start, they'll be a goodly while opening up again, and they won't open evenly or all at once. Knowing, today, what supply chains cross what border is exceedingly challenging.

    My own take is that things are going to be getting worse for awhile; if I'm being a bit dry, so much depends on who dies in what order.

    (even the traditional safe investment, a local brewery, isn't looking too good with the probable state of barley supply post-Brexit.)

    Somebody doing primary manufacturing, especially of pipe or pumps, seems like the best bet.

    223:

    I work in front line human services that don't go away even in health crises - in many ways the homeless shelter I work at has been dealing with another health crisis for some years now (opioid deaths).

    Staffing is difficult at best, which places more pressure on existing staff, and we can expect a lot of sick days to be called in. Which will mean people actually at work will have to work more, and then get sick as well.

    This combines with a population that has a marginal relationship and capacity for personal hygiene at best - historical abuse, mental health, addictions and poverty do not combine well in most cases and self care falls down the priority list.

    Protocols at present involve a lot of cleaning and disinfecting and a healthy maintenance of distance, but it is only a matter of time before I find myself faced with having to perform CPR on a visibly ill person who has overdosed. This is not a good thing at the best of times and we use precautions, but this scares the crap out of me when I think about it too much.

    HIV, Hepatitis and other issues always make such situations fraught, but this bug is yet more communicable. One never wants to be in a situation where choosing not to help someone (and therefore allowing them to die) is a prudent choice.

    224:

    For somewhat selfish reasons, I hope the worst will be over till the middle of May; KMFDM are playing in Krefeld, and I got a ticket.

    On another note, problem is I likely have to go out at the moment; I'm transistioning between jobs, it's all somewhat stressfull, and I assume seeing some people besides work and family is critical for staying afloat; I saw some anarcho-whatever (I would have said -syndicalist, but it might have been -communist) talk about post WW1 revolution in the Ruhr yesterday, somewhat around 15 people, still, you wonder about the risks with elderly relatives at home.

    I already binge-watched Avenue 5 and am going to start Picard soon (one guy at my now soon former place of work is a big Trek fan), and then, there's always (re)watching Farscape; other propositions welcome. ;)

    225:

    While Tinky Winky 2 flu is technically not a flu, it is a respiratory virus which co-circulates with flu. It has the same symptoms as flu, it is transmitted like flu, it is treated like flu, it is prevented like flu. Before it was isolated it would have been included with flu, had forms of it existed.

    Wrong on multiple counts.

    Aside from them both targeting the respiratory system, COVID-19 doesn't have much in common with influenze at all: in particular its symptoms differ significantly from flu, and it is neither treated the same way as flu, or prevented the same way.

    Please stop spreading misinformation. If you keep doing so, I'm going to red-card you.

    226:

    My interpretation was from https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/coronavirus-disease-2019-vs-the-flu

    The senior director of infection prevention explains the similarities and differences. I searched Johns Hopkins as it had just been cited.

    227:

    If so, do the students get any kind of pro-rated refund when the school closes the dorms?

    I'm sure that is item 463 on the list of things to deal with "soon". :)

    Here in NC the governor just closed all public school systems. Oh boy. There are around 12 million people in the state. Heck our county school system had 140K+ students as of 2016. Families are going to be disrupted to say the least.

    228:

    Flu has a mortality rate of around 0.1%, Covid-19 is currently at around 1% to 3% - so 10x to 30x worse.

    Flu has an R0 of 1.3 (each sick person will infect 1.3 additional people), Covid-19 is currently 2 to 3.1 (the incubation period for the flu is 2 to 4 days, Covid-19 is 1 to 14 days).

    Recover time flu is 1 week, Covid-19 2 weeks (twice as long, so twice as much resource usage for hospitalized cases).

    There is no human partial immunity, so it is spreading unchecked.

    All of that means that more people will end up in the hospital system with Covid-19 than the flu, and when then end up there they will take up more resources for longer.

    This then means that those limited resources (special care, ventilators) are not available for things that happen anyway (flu, car accidents, surgery complications, etc), causing more problems/deaths.

    See this for all the charts that explain it, and the 2 curves that demonstrate why countries are killing their economies temporarily to try and slow the spread https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/3/12/21172040/coronavirus-covid-19-virus-charts

    229:

    The following link has an explantion of why experts are so worried about Covid-19, and why it is so much more dangerous than the flu.

    But it also covers SARS, and a key difference.

    With SARS patients were not contagious until after the symptoms had appeared - this made is relatively easy to stop SARS from spreading once we knew what we were dealing with. This is likely why SARS never (so far) returned.

    Covid-19 patients are contagious for 1 to 14 days prior to symptoms - thus there is no way other than isolation to stop the spread.

    You can't isolate everybody until a vaccine (if possible) is created, so the best we can do is try and slow the spread enough so that the health care systems don't collapse.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-03-05/how-bad-is-the-coronavirus-let-s-compare-with-sars-ebola-flu

    230:

    Re: ' ... explains the similarities and differences.'

    You [conveniently?] missed several 'might's in the explanation.

    If you look at the WHO site's FAQ page, you'll notice that they mention that studies are still on-going. 'Most common' does not mean 'only'.

    https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/q-a-coronaviruses

    And if you look at the Johns Hopkins tracking page, you'll notice that the death rate in Italy is currently at 6.8%.

    https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

    Death from the annual flu is usually about 0.1%, meaning that if COVID-19 is not contained and resources are not available, you're looking at over 60 times the seasonal flu deaths. This is frighteningly high in a country that scores better than the US on its population's overall health, access to health care and longevity.

    https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/country-health-profile/italy

    https://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/country-health-profile/united-states

    231:

    Apparently ACE2 ist also somewhat implicated in the old SARS-COV, and there has been some research into it.

    Going by the research, kininase II or whatever, AKA ACE, the target of the whatever-pril ACE inhibitors beloved to hypertensives all over the world and ACE2, the Keymaster of Gozer, err, SARS-CoV-2 are somewhat antagonistic; ACE converts angiotensin I to angiotensin II (it also converts some other peptides into other peptides as well, which is why my mother got home with a nice prescription for dihydrocodein when put on an ACE inhibitor, one of those building up makes for inflammation of the airways and coughing), ACE2 converts angiotensin I into angiotensin[1-9] and angiotensin II into angiotensin[1-7], with the latter being a vasodilator, in contrast to angiotensin II, which is a vasoconstrictor.

    ACE2 activity being downregulated by SARS-CoV-2 might explain the problems for hypertensives (and maybe type-II diabetics, who have might have lower ACE2 activity to begin with), they lose the protective effect of angiotensin[1-7]. Also note ACE2 ist implicated as a protective factor in pulmonary hypertension.

    (Oh, and no, ACE2 is not all good; for example overexpression might lead to cardiac fibrosis)

    Problem is, though ACE2 is AFAIK not inhibited by most ACE inhibitors, expression is likely upregulated in people taking ACE inhibitors and AT1 receptor blockers, from what I read that might even be part of the therapeutic effect. Problem is higher expression of ACE2 also means higher susceptibility to SARS-COV. Please note I'm not sure if other antihypertensives have an effect on ACE2 expression, and when switching to the diuretics, at least one thiazide heightens the risk of some skin cancers.

    As for inhibitors of ACE2, first problem is not all ligands might work but only the ones stabilizing a structure that doesn't bind to its conterpart on the virus envelope. There is a similar situation with JC polyomavirus and some 5-HT2 receptors, e.g. the virus uses them to enter cells, and while some 5-HT2 antagonists inhibited virus propagation in some models, risperidone, another antagonist, didn't in another. Please note risperidone is quite close in structure to ketanserin, de agent that worked, so either even small molecular changes can make big differences, or one of the models sucked big time.

    But at least one compound targeting ACE2 worked on SARS-Cov.

    OTOH, there is an activator of ACE2, diminazene, though I'm reminded of carcinogenic azo compounds by this structure. No idea if it would help in downregulated ACE2 due to SARS-CoV-2, restoring somewhat normal function.

    BTW, my inner high functioning autist is screaming when I hear about "the ACE2 receptor". Actually, from what I have seen, it's a membrance bound enzyme catalyzing the hydrolysis of some peptides, it doesn't transmit any signals. But then, the term is also used for cell adhesion molecules and like, so I guess I'll endure this nomenclatural ambivalency (at least it's this for my inner HFA)...

    Please note that these are some of my takeaways after skimming throug wiki and pubmed, I'm just reconnecting with the local biologists at this time and severely outdated. Where one event where I reconnect, the Rensch lectur, is likely to be cancelled. Errr. So please don't take this as gospel but more liek an entertaining apocryphal.

    233:

    Nice, thanks. And if i counted correctly, 19 links. Spiders should be loving this ... thread.

    234:

    My dad (an epidemiologist) was still alive when SARS hit, and his advice made dealing with the community panic pretty simple.

    Unfortunately, COVID looks to be like his good-thing-SRAS-isn't-like-this scenario. Makes those middle-of-the-night nightmares harder to shake off.

    235:

    Without a vice president the order of succession falls through to the Speaker of the House, who's under different term rules and therefore at 12:01PM still has a job. That's Nancy Pelosi

    Didn't you leave out "and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January"?

    And if you're not having a presidunce election presumably you're also not electing the rest either? So you're going to have a gaping void where currently you have... whatever it is that is in there.

    236:

    Pigeon,

    I owe you an apology.

    My response was intemperate and my language inappropriately aggressive when you posted about how the airports should be closed immediately in the last thread on coronavirus.

    I'm sorry.

    You struck a nerve. Like most mum and dads who have to travel for work I have a fear of not being there when my kids need me. I was in Australia for work when NZ shut down travel from China a few weeks ago - a blanket closing of NZ airports at that point would have left my kids (and their mum) without me in a pandemic. But my response that people who want to shut the airports should "Fuck off!" was still more vehement than was appropriate, and I'm sorry I was so aggressive.

    I stand by the content of what I said. Shutting down all travel immediately stops people getting home, which is extremely disruptive to people's lives, especially people who have dependents that they need to be there to care for. There are other ways to restrict travel that do not stop people who have dependents getting home to care for them (NZ's current travel bans with 14 days self-isolation of travellers, for example - I think it's very sensible).

    But I regret the way I said that. Particularly the "Fuck off!" part. Sorry.

    Regards,

    icehawk

    237:

    Any indications of how that's actually expected to work? Are quarters going to be provided for those that don't have any, are 14-day survival packages of food and other supplies going to be given to people who can't go shopping?

    We will find out.

    It's not about stopping any chance of infections.

    It's about moving the odds strongly our way, to slow the spread of the disease.

    NZ supermarkets deliver, and either have added or are adding the ability to request contactless delivery to their apps. Likewise Uber Eats, etc. No idea what a NZ motel would say if you asked to self-isolate there, but most NZ motels are owner-operated not big chains and the owners are practical people - I expect they'd sort out something.

    The NZ govt has been clear that delivering to a friend or family member who needs stuff is okay - they want you to mimimize contact as much as is practical, so getting a lift from the airport with a mate is better than going home from the airport on public transport.

    If all the NZ govt succeed in doing is reducing chance of infection rates by 99% by removing most contact - and especially prolonged contact - then the policy will be a success as it'll make tracing and managing infections vastly easier. In practice, of course, it's also stopping unnecessary travel to NZ.

    A problem will be people who don't self-isolate. There's already been a dick on the news saying she wasn't about to do that because she "only works in an office with seven people". The legal details of that are unclear. But my guess is we'll see quite strong social pressure: I'm sure people like Zane, or my wife, will very loudly and very publicly berate and shame anyone they see in public who should be self-isolated. I'd probably be angry enough to find the social confidence to do so myself.

    But again it's still a success (though less of one) if it works only 99% of the time.

    238:

    Nope - that's for the Senators and Reps whose terms ended. Pelosi, being reelected last year, her term does not end until '21.

    239:

    I disagree. We have no system. It's utterly fragmented.

    On the other hand, Medicare for All. sigh Let me give you FACTS, something that no "journalist" has done (they all work for billionaires, or only report what someone else said).

    The last job before I retired last year, my company was paying over $12k PER YEAR for me, alone, for a "gold" plan... and I had to pay another $1k or $2k/year.

    Now, all the THIRTY TRILLION DOLLARS!!! is bs. They're basing it on current rates... and on the rate of increase that they expect from the insurance companies.

    Medicare: as of '16, they average $7400/year or so for men, and aboug $8300/year for women. You want to tell me that there's a single company that would not a) want to pay $4k PER YEAR LESS PER EMPLOYEE? AND there would be NO 5%, or 10%, or 20% increase EVERY SINGLE YEAR (yeah, I worked somewhere in the last 15-20 years that got hit with the 20%). We won't even talk about how, when I was on COBRA, in 13 mos, between '04 and 05, Aetna increased my premiums 100%!!!!!!!!!!!!

    240:

    I went shopping today. Forget tp, got that, we needed coffee beans.

    Trader Joes (where I get espresso beans) was out of a lot (but not espresso). Had to go to Rdman's for regular (columbian supremo), emptied the dispenser, and had to get Columbian French roast.

    Then I had to go to the ethnic market ("Korean Corner" supermarket size) to get leeks*. Every single line was at least 12 people long and slow.

    America: we overreact more than anyone else!

    • I make Welsh leek and potato soup on March 16th, yeah, I know, two weeks late for St. David's day... but it is the day before the 17th

    Oh, and in the US Oct 12 is the traditional Columbus Day, so I recognize Oct 11 as Lief Erickson Day....

    241:

    Obviously every virus is different, but does anyone have a more positive take on this?

    Positive take, as requested:

    There are countries like Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea and China that seem to be doing a good job of controlling this.

    China didn't start well, but they have done a rather good job once they got onto it. South Korea shows that having bad luck at the start of your infection makes a big difference (and did they ever...), but now seem to be showing that it's possible to get it under control despite that.

    So the gap between worst-likely-case and best-likely-case remains very large. It's not impossible that most countries will control it. I really don't think we can tell yet. I hope so.

    Though you know that you are in deep, deep shit when the possibility that Trump could get re-elected (by complaining in November that it was all a big deal over nothing) is the best possible case.

    242:

    Only dorm I was ever in was around '74, when I had a girlfriend for a few months who lived in the dorms at UofP in Philly. Two single rooms, a shared room (4 in the suite) and a tiny kitchen and bathroom.

    243:

    Dirksen was an ignorante sleazebag. Or don't you remember his "Golden Fleece awards", where he didn't understand what they were studying?

    244:

    a blanket closing of NZ airports at that point would have left my kids (and their mum) without me in a pandemic.

    If such a closure would have left the in-situ NZ health resources able to contain the spread, that would have been an excellent trade for them. (And you. And everybody in Aotearoa. It's been a hundred years since a greenfield epidemic went global. Everybody seems to have forgotten.)

    Personal isn't the same as important, to quote Carrot and thus Pratchett. We're all going to have to figure that out again.

    It takes a long time to train doctors. It takes a long time to stand up functioning hospital organizations and effective community health mechanisms and the production and distribution networks necessary to support them. If the health care system goes down, it stays down; it's not inherently resilient. There is no surplus on which to draw.

    So far, all the North Atlantic democracies have abjectly failed to deal. Whether we're into "deal not an option; try to survive" is not yet clear. We could be.

    Everybody stay home this week, save as the house catches actual fire.

    245:

    Garfield, hmph Eldritch horror?

    I know who can take him down, easily: Fat Freddy's Cat, the only real cat in all of comicdom.

    246:

    The Idiot's base, last I read, had shrunk to 29%. I'd love to see it now.

    247:

    The Golden Fleece awards were from William Proxmire, not Everett Dirksen.

    Enjoy!

    Frank.

    248:

    That's good news. It would be kind of funny if she became the first woman president as a result of this but I somehow think she'd be regarded as extra illegitimate on account of her femaleness. In a way that wouldn't matter though because the far right are already at 11 on the dial...

    249:

    If such a closure would have left the in-situ NZ health resources able to contain the spread,

    "If"

    I'm reading my prime minister saying the New Zealand will have the "widest ranging and toughest travel restrictions of any nation in the world", our health experts back them, I'm agreeing with those restrictions. And you're claiming that following them is an unacceptable level of risk. I don't think your point is irrational, but I think I can reasonably disagree.

    (But I really liked the Pratchett quote. Very apt, made your point very well. I do enjoy comments by writers, people like you and Charlie say things so well even when I disagree with you.)

    It's been a hundred years since a greenfield epidemic went global. Everybody seems to have forgotten.

    Actually, that's one feature of the NZ response that hasn't been discussed.

    The 1919 epidemic hit the Pacific islands nations particularly hard, due to less natural immunity and difficulty of care in isolated communities. Significantly harder than you in the Americas or Europe. NZ's role in that is a particularly shameful part of NZ's history.

    Which is why there's more detail to our isolation policy than has been discussed here, regards that. NZers travel to our Pacific neighbours will be restricted by NZ, with details as yet to be announced. Travel from our (uninfected) Pacific neighbours will be less restricted.

    So people may not have learned all the lessons you'd like from the 1919 pandemic. But down here they are certainly remembering, and working to not repeat all the same mistakes.

    250:

    My understanding is that those diseases that hit the young and healthy hardest generally (if not always) did so via Cytokine Storm - essentially making the immune system go berserk and make a mess of everything. See Wikipedia

    251:

    NZers travel to our Pacific neighbours will be restricted

    Context that icehawk left out is that someone travelling from NZ almost certainly brought measles to Samoa recently, killing 83 from a population of about 200,000, mostly kids. Those wounds are still raw, and it's one reason Samoa was so quick to shut things down in the current pandemic (site has a list of all their health advisories, that was not the first).

    Ardern can wah wah about having the strongest measures but Samoa has acted more quickly and more decisively than Aotearoa, and likely at greater cost to themselves. They know that damaging the economy is a secondary consideration when they're asking how many people will die from a disease.

    Meanwhile in Australia... I for one am staying at home for a while except to go shopping for essentials.

    252:

    A little more detail on NZ 14-day practicalities - includes narking on perceived violators https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/120293045/coronavirus-how-will-people-in-selfisolation-be-policed

    Also, until a few hours time, those travelling from AU and USA where still able to use eGates. Once the 14-day treatment applies, eGates are closed (so people have to lie face-to-face). This limit[ed/s] the queues at airports, probably at the cost of letting more than just the one known carrier in. https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/120297058/coronavirus-kiwis-told-to-avoid-travelling-abroad-as-customs-says-it-will-close-all-egates

    253:

    Didn't you leave out "and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January"?

    I simplified for the sake of clarity; hopefully I didn't leave out so much I confused anyone.

    Getting deeper into the details - which Donald would never do - Nancy Pelosi's current term ends on 3 January 2021. If California has any election-shaped event at all the odds of her being elected to an 18th term seem very good. The filling vacant seats rules vary; it's possible for Senators to be appointed but a representative must be elected by the people of her district. This often happens by a special election called as needed, the way ordinary nations like Scotland do it. grin

    If there are no elections at all things change; the person who hadn't timed out of office would be Chuck Grassley, who's a senator with a six year term beginning in 2019, and since he's neither frothingly insane or obviously treasonous I wouldn't expect most UK residents to be aware of him.

    He also doesn't offer the amusement value of explaining to Donald that he must do a thing or Nancy Pelosi becomes president!

    254:

    The Idiot's base, last I read, had shrunk to 29%. I'd love to see it now.

    Why settle for now? The fivethirtyeight site has this page graphing How popular is Donald Trump? going back years. As I type the average is 42.3% approval, which is typical; he hovers around the low forties in defiance of pretty much anything that happens. Everyone willing to be swayed by actions or events has already made up their minds and his core support is faith based.

    Or were you thinking of BoJo? I don't have poll numbers on him at hand, sorry.

    255:

    And if you're not having a presidunce election presumably you're also not electing the rest either?

    In the US system there is no provision for not having a presidential election. At least not without new legislation and fat chance getting that through the current House which sits until after the next election.

    As to the Congressional elections, Pelosi is from California. Again fat chance of them doing anything which might leave DT in office.

    256:

    mdive And ... BECAUSE sufferers are contagious for 1-14 days WITHOUT SYMPTOMS ... it follows that comtainment & isolation simply are not going to work, at all, are they? Or are they - you tell me.

    Why is the death rate in Italy so high, when here it appears to "only" be people with pre-existing conditions & about 1.5 - 2% - yes?

    FrankO Poxmire (!) shudder ... what an ignorant, arrogant, bigmouthed shit. A forerunner to DT, come to hink of it.

    257:

    As to the Congressional elections, Pelosi is from California. Again fat chance of them doing anything which might leave DT in office.

    Yes, this. Pelosi represents the California's 12th District, which is different from the city of San Francisco in no way Brits need care about. She has not gotten less than 80% of the votes in any of the last four elections.

    Disease fears are bad but not even the 1918 flu and another 1906 quake would keep San Franciscans away from the polls if they had the opportunity to both vote for Nancy and stick it to Donald.

    258:

    If you test only people with severe symptoms, as the UK is planning to, you will get a very high death rate. The reason that there are so many cases in Italy is almost certainly because the virus had spread through the population before anyone woke up to its presence.

    That arsehole Halfcock is proposing to put all over-70s and those with pre-existing medical conditions under house arrest. As a retired doctor said to me last night, nobody realises that you can self-isolate just as well outside as inside. I am going to be impacted if I can't go touring - on my trike on my own in Scotland, camping out - which IS self-isolation! But the UK is governed by urbanites :-(

    The real issue is the number of relatively poor, elderly people who are not Internet-capable or -savvy, often without younger relatives nearby, and sometimes don't even have a telephone. Just delivering what TPTB think of as regular medicines, groceries etc. will NOT be enough. And I will bet that the gummint will not go as far as to require mail-order companies to home deliver small orders for free.

    And the death rate in our prisons and concentration camps, oops, immigrational removal centres etc. is going to be horrendous, but I will bet that most of the current shits will see that as a benefit.

    259:

    Testing for coronavirus...

    We don't know how many false positives the various different tests produce, nor do we have a number for false negatives. Relying on "tests" as a magic panacea is distracting from what's happening and what's being done about it. Implementing much greater levels of testing will take resources away from treatment and attempts to contain the spread of infection -- a trained medic taking swabs from people for testing is someone who's not able to work front-line in an isolation facility since they're busy doing something else and they're most the likely person to come into contact with someone who's infected and hence they would have to drop out of the rota for at least seven days. All the testing in the world isn't going to stop 30 million or more people in the UK getting infected over the course of the next few months. The only way to implement very high levels of testing that I can think of is a self-test process of some sort although the error rates would be higher than they actually are today.

    Physical isolation will work to stop someone at-risk becoming infected, that's a given. The impossibility or inconvenience of effective widespread isolation measures is another matter, mostly a problem of logistics and resource allocation including double-checking that people don't fall down the cracks. This will happen though, accompanied by headlines and accusations when Granny dies and no-one finds her body for a week.

    I can't see any way to save everybody in this situation, there is no perfect solution.

    260:

    A little more detail on NZ 14-day practicalities - includes narking on perceived violators

    That sounds pretty heavy-handed: all enforcement and no support. I suspect that there are many incoming travelers who do not have the means to self-isolate for 14 days, so some support will be necessary.

    261:

    a trained medic taking swabs from people for testing is someone who's not able to work front-line in an isolation facility since they're busy doing something else

    Yes, but you don't need a trained A&E nurse to take swabs: trainee nurses or even dental technicians will do, at a pinch.

    What you do is, you cancel elective procedures and non-essential out patient stuff, and divert specialists from other fields into supporting roles -- an oncology professor may not be remotely current in emergency medicine but they did practice it for a while 20 years ago during their training, COVID-19 is fairly standardized, so they can be deployed to do triage and stabilize the less-critical cases, leaving the actual A&E specialists to handle critical cases and the usual heart attacks that come in. Added bonus: with the pubs and big events shutting, the usual Saturday night booze-fest in A&E is also cancelled (i.e. no influx of annoying angry drunks).

    A big influence on the death toll will be stuff that used to be routine -- early cancer diagnosis, for example -- falling through the cracks because resources are diverted to the pandemic.

    262:

    It appears that CDC has been preparing for a pandemic similar to COVID-19 for quite a while.

    https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/rr/rr6601a1.htm Community Mitigation Guidelines to Prevent Pandemic Influenza — United States, 2017 These guidelines replace the 2007 Interim Pre-pandemic Planning Guidance: Community Strategy for Pandemic Influenza Mitigation in the United States — Early, Targeted, Layered Use of Nonpharmaceutical Interventions (https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/11425).

    "Nonpharmaceutical Interventions" means the isolation/distancing and hygene measures we're seeing now. It appears to have taken until around 25 February 2020 for CDC to start talking about applying the guidelines in the, ah, guidance.

    https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/cdc-say-us-must-prepare-for-coronavirus-spread

    263:

    but I somehow think she'd be regarded as extra illegitimate on account of her femaleness.

    Nope. But pissed, totally. I know a lot of people at both ends of the spectrum. They have no problem admiring that she's the Speaker of the House and 3rd in line. They just get ill imagining that it might happen for her to get there.

    Talking about US (and other country politics) can be hard at times. There are certain things carved in stone in each country. Others are very established precedent. And others are fuzzy in the details due to no one thinking thing through in what would see bizarre ways at the time. And of course which are which varies all over the map by country.

    DT wanting to replace the Fed Chair is one of the US ones that is a bit fuzzy around the edges. Replacing him will not change much of anything practical at this point except that DT is totally pissed that the current Chair (Powell) doesn't go along with whatever DT wants.

    264:

    However, I am somewhat amused by the sight of the gummint moving from complacency to panic in under 3 days - that's a record in my experience.

    Whether our disused car manufacturers are either capable of or prepared to retool to produce ventilators for a one-off order is less clear - as is whether the gummint will be able to get the designs etc. out of the existing manufacturers. As is how many of their other panic measures will be either feasible or effective.

    265:

    Yes, but you don't need a trained A&E nurse to take swabs: trainee nurses or even dental technicians will do, at a pinch.

    What you do is, you cancel elective procedures and non-essential out patient stuff, and divert specialists from other fields into supporting roles

    That's what the government is doing, according to the BBC. They're also requesting some manufacturing facilities (including, if you read between the lines, companies like BAe) to work on building lots of respirators to meet the peak demand expected in a few weeks time. The licencing and design evaluation procedures will be severely curtailed on the basis a not-up-to-spec device is probably better than no device at all.

    On that, there are reports that ventilators aren't doing a lot of good -- one report from an Italian medical facility reports 32 patients were put on ventilation for treatment of bilateral lung failure due to conoraviirus. 31 of them died. Of course that's biased, the patients were in a bad way before they were ventilated otherwise they wouldn't have been put on the machines but still it's not a good sign.

    266:

    My best guess is, someone took BoJo out behind the woodshed and schooled him about exponential progressions and why Cummings' ideology is a stupid gamble under the circumstances.

    (It wisnae the Wee Fishwife: he doesn't listen to her at the best of times, even though she's basically a repeater for the chief medical officer of NHS Scotland right now.)

    I think most of our manufacturing industries are too atomized -- too part of the pan-EU supply chain -- to make stuff on their own any more, without a big ramp-up. Some of the specialists, maybe, especially the big engine firms, but how efficient will Rolls Royce (gas turbines), Caterham (formula one motor racing, hypercars), etc. be at changing gear in a week?

    267:

    Too late to comment on that, but still: if you are taking angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors or antagonists of angiotensin II receptors, you might want to substitute those in such occasion (if connection between angiotensin system receptors and virus entering cells checks out) with dihydropyridine calcium antagonists (L-type calcium channel blockers). Those are vasodilator drugs, preferably used for blood pressure control in hypertension.

    268:

    The licencing and design evaluation procedures will be severely curtailed on the basis a not-up-to-spec device is probably better than no device at all.

    True, but bear in mind the likes of BAe are not used to the unusual parameters of medical equipment. So there are risks of accidental deaths as a consequence of inadequately vetted designs using, say, lubricants that the designers don't realize are cumulatively toxic and the virtually-non-existent medical certification system (hey, we left the EU Medicines Agency! Brexit means Brexit!) don't spot in time.

    (See also the recent US panic over deaths due to vaping THC, which was actually due to a non-lung-safe carrier liquid in the cartridges which were made by unlicensed third parties because cannabis is still partially illegal in the US and the US government was trying to ban vaping because they'd been bought by the big tobacco lobbyists.)

    269:

    Looking at the stats for deaths & serious case here: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

    The numbers seem to be roughly the same, suggesting if it’s serious, it’s fatal. That might make a difference to the worry of health system collapse - ie. it’s mild or it kills you, doesn’t matter whether you make it to a ventilator or not...

    270:

    ... And I'm just back from a brief neighbourhood shop, mostly for canned goods (we'd somehow completely run out of chick peas and a couple of other types of bean).

    Yup, the shelves were unusually depleted at the local organic shop.

    (I bought ten cans of stuff we get through: not exactly panic buying/stockpiling as we can eat our way through that in a week to ten days, but maybe more than I'd usually buy because I'm not sure when I'll be able to repeat the exercise.)

    ((It's hard to over-buy when you do your shopping trip on foot, using a backpack, and it terminates by hauling everything up four storeys on foot: that puts an upper limit on your stockpiling activities.))

    271:

    Re: serious cases Unless I’m reading it wrong and that stat is current rather that total ...

    272:

    True, but bear in mind the likes of BAe are not used to the unusual parameters of medical equipment.

    Add to that that the BAe idea of a clean factory is a filthy mess in terms of making medical equipment. Just keeping microscopic containment out of the process might be too much without a complete re-work of the factory floor.

    Bacteria stuck to the side of a piston or crank case doesn't matter on your typical engine.

    273:

    I'm wondering how long before fresh fruit and veg starts getting scarce, given that so much of it comes from Spain.

    274:

    Door-to-door ...

    This is the time of year that the door-to-door scam artists and religious mag distributors start ringing doorbells. Wonder whether it would be okay to call the cops on them this year.

    Unfortunately, the local kids' sports, activities and charities also typically start their door-to-door collections around now. It's usually one or two kids at the door with their mums or dads watching and waving at the home-owner from the sidewalk. Oh well, next year I'll give a bit more.

    Okay - the above is in fact what I've been thinking but what I'm also trying to get at is: this self-isolation and social distancing also means that you do not change the circle of people you come in contact with. No new contacts. If you're in contact with 7 different people each day of the week, you're actually in contact with 49 different people by week's end. I realize that most of you folks can out-math me - I'm just trying to be really clear here. I'm not sure that some of the 'avoid-crowds/use social-distancing' messages gets the cumulative aspect across.

    275:

    Been thinking about long term societal changes once we're past the immediate response (yeah, I know, assuming we get past it without a complete societal collapse). Somebody upthread (or in the old thread - I can't remember) commented that the anti-vaxxers could be deemed to be bio-terrorists. So, that alone potentially leads to the following:

  • Citizenship and rights. No vaccinations, no rights (unless there is a valid medical reason for no vaccinations).

  • Travel. We'll be going back to the 1960s and the requirement for pre-travel vaccinations. If you didn't have the correct paperwork, you didn't get entry. Will air travel still be a mass-market thing or will we go back to surface travel? When it took several days to get anywhere, anyone pre-symptomatic would probably be symptomatic on arrival and would be immediately whisked into isolation.

  • Crime. There will be a black market in fake or stolen vaccination certificates. Sellers and purchasers will be criminalised, possibly losing citizenship rights.

  • Social distancing. Will we go back to the days of notifiable diseases and quarantine periods? I recall missing schooling because of various childhood illnesses. There's potentially going to be societal pressure not to travel or go into work for x days even for a mild cold. People won't travel without valid reasons, especially foreign travel. Will we go back to the traditional seaside summer holiday or will that be too close to other people? Unless we go back to the idea of Wakes weeks but for communities rather than factories...

  • Single family breadwinners, aka stay-at-home mums. If both parents work, what happens when the kids have to stay home? The grandparents (or other family members) could be the other side of the country... This has knock-on effects on employment and divorce, and social stigma for out-of-wedlock (stable partnership) children.

  • Contraception. If there's social pressure not to have children outside a stable relationship, there's going to be higher rates of abortion, depot contraceptives, or reversible sterilisation procedures. Which takes us onto 'christian' values...

  • Community cohesion. Live together, socialise together, build social capital within your community. Ostracism cuts you off from the community. Will we go back to the extended family?

  • It's all sounding like a return to the 1950s - can we put the genie back in the bottle? Do we want to?

    276:

    I wonder if they have got the approach wrong. Surely a quicker route to higher production albeit with less peak potential is to supply BAE staff or similar to existing manufacturers of ventilators - assuming we have one or two. That way they get to run their production lines 24/7 under existing conditions.

    I’m also pretty disappointed that there isn’t a “Manhattan project” for CoronaVirus yet. Although I wouldn’t bet against the Chinese already having one.

    I also wonder if they are preparing to license their field hospital designs to the rest of the world - presumably they are also crash building various capabilities for the COVID-19 second wave that will hit them as soon as they relax the Wuhan restrictions. Assuming they ever intend to of course.

    277:

    A lot of BAe's military production of things like missile optical sensors and the like requires clean-room assembly and exhaustive inspection. Parts that come out of a Haas or Tormek five-axis CNC machine on the factory floor will be covered in cutting fluid but they get cleaned before they go on to final assembly, ditto for laser-cut plates and additive 3-D printing.

    As for dealing bacteria, that's what proper sterilisation is for. Part of the licencing design spec is to ensure they CAN be sterilised after each use to meet stringent regulations. I'd expect a company like BAe to be a primary-parts and assemblies supplier to existing manufacturers, allowing them to go to 24/7 production by moving their own sub-assembly workers and plant to producing finished units more rapidly, but I'm not in charge (thankfully).

    Producing lots of home-use oxygen delivery systems might be more useful than hospital ventilators, either oxygen concentrators or bottle-supplied gas, for people with breathing difficulties who could use the "boost" to keep them out of the institutional medical care system which is going to be seriously under load.

    278:

    These aren't assertions, only questions.

    I agree that a regular seasonal flu can't locally overwhelm a health service however it is organised- though novel flu strains have that potential?

    The key difference with the previous betacoronavirus is that it is infectious before symptoms- this is like flu? I'm not sure why an infectious disease would be classed similarly with a key difference in transmission?

    It is generally accepted that the statistics are not accurate? Britain, Germany and India had their first cases in January like Italy, the mortality rate is 0.2% in Britain and Germany, there have been 3 reported deaths in India and under 100 cases? Is the expectation that there will be a huge increase in the death toll in China?

    HMG expert advice was not to ban mass gatherings, though this was objected to by non-government experts? On the day Cheltenham finished we were advised that a ban was being prepared for next week?

    It is not clear why the pattern in Italy be should be different from the rest of Europe? The Italians have designated a hospital for the outbreak- in Camerino- has this happened elsewhere? The Italian medical authorities are also under legal investigation?

    279:

    It is possible that the chief medical and scientific officers gave him an ultimatum: start taking serious action NOW, and we will support you, or here are our resignation letters (and the reason will leak), but I have no idea if they have that much spine.

    280:

    I’m also pretty disappointed that there isn’t a “Manhattan project” for CoronaVirus yet.

    DARPA started a program in that direction back in 2017, but evidence suggests they haven't gotten there yet.

    https://www.darpa.mil/program/pandemic-prevention-platform

    (A friend told me that one of the principal researchers in that is currently stuck in Italy with COVID-19.)

    281:

    Re: 'These aren't assertions, only questions.'

    Hmmm ... interesting.

    Did you know that repeating questions in a slanted manner can produce the same impact as phrasing the content as declarative sentences?

    Did you know that such question phrasing is a big no-no in legitimate survey research?

    Just asking ...

    282:

    It seems to me that pressure swing oxygen concentrator production is vulnerable mostly to supply chain issues with the zeolite pellets they require for nitrogen gas adsorption. (Having said that, portable ones for home use allegedly retail for around $600, per wikipedia, so I'm guessing the cartridges are standardized and mass produced already.)

    Membrane gas separation can use other materials, including organic polymers ... but again, we're into availability issues for unusual physical-chemical materials.

    Cryogenic oxygen concentrators don't need zeolites or large surface area membranes, but are energetically less efficient: however they're the type of technology that RR et al should be absolutely on top of (high pressure compressors, countercurrent refrigeration, liquid pumps). Maybe for filling oxygen cylinders in bulk?

    283:

    Yeah, I noticed that.

    Pasquinade is now banned from commenting.

    I'll revisit the ban in future for non-COVID-19 related threads.

    284:

    The Fukushima disaster (remember when that was going to kill everyone?) actually caused an interesting hiccup in zeolite production since it's what is inside the big canisters that were used to process contaminated water and remove radioactive isotopes in an ion exchange process. The downslope of that disaster resulted in the increased production of zeolite worldwide.

    The swing concentrators are useful since they don't require oxygen bottles to be swapped out -- amongst other things the local Fire Brigade has to be notified that such cylinders might be in someone's home if they're called out to a fire there. The concentrators are also popular with hobbyist jewellers to provide small amounts of oxygen for gas torches for silver soldering and brazing, again obviating the need to swap cylinders out when they're depleted.

    BOC stands for British Oxygen Company, the primary supplier of various gases for industry in the UK. There's no shortage of oxygen production facilities and storage (BOC got its big start when the Bessemer steel-making process got upgraded from blowing air through molten iron to using pure oxygen), it's the distribution side of things that is likely to take a hammering if the demand for home oxygen supplies escalates rapidly.

    285:

    Timing is a whole lot with exponential doubling. (yes, yes, really a sigmoid curve, but right now, the practical difference from exponential doubling is of little practical concern.)

    At that time, closing the borders and waiting a couple weeks while in-situ health resources did their damndest to find and isolate every case of COVID-19 in the country would have been worth a lot. (Remember, this is a game of "as slowly as possible"; ideally, most of your population gets exposed for the first time from the vaccine.)

    Today, that's all moot. Testing capability for anybody who has had it spread greenfield is moot; I mean, useful, for triage, but the Korean model applies to a time window we're not in anymore. Only practical thing to do right now is stay in. (For a really strong value of "stay in"; "oh I am out of" doesn't count, unless it's "oh I am out of my medication" or "oh I am out of my last thing to eat".)

    286:

    Best stats we presently possess have 90% of serious cases die.

    Quick recap -- "mild" means "did not require supplemental oxygen"; "serious" means "required supplemental oxygen"; "critical" means "went to the ICU". A mild case of COVID-19 is not equivalent to a brief cold.

    Doctors are really reluctant to do battlefield triage and ignore those expected to die; it's been happening in Italy, but is itself evidence of systemic failure. (It is also, from a politics and PR point of view, something any politician wishes to avoid.)

    Just the folks who need oxygen overwhelm the system anyway because best available information has them needing oxygen for weeks.

    287:

    Can you point at any decent data on that?

    288:

    My takes is that a lot of government have altered their reactions in the last couple days, and I think this is because someone managed to get them to accept that asymptomatic and presymptomatic transmission is a primary mode of spread.

    The "rapid exposure" plan Cummings, et al. were going for presumes that there isn't any asymptomatic transmission and it presumes that there's definitely post-infection immunity AND it presumes that the wave of infection and recovery through the population is pretty quick, on the order of a couple months. All of these are false, any of them being false breaks the plan, and the only one you can definitively prove-with-a-tangible-fact (rather than statistical expectation) is the asymptomatic transmission one. I suspect someone managed to get to somebody with the "it's busted" news and have it stick.

    289:

    Generally speaking anyone attempting to pick and choose from the available statistics in an attempt to "choose" a story is being foolish given how early we are in the spread of this virus.

    There simply is far too little known at this point, including most importantly how much Covid-19 has spread into the most at risk category of people in any given population.

    Ironically in a way, the "shuffle them off into a nursing home and then proceed to ignore them" can be both a blessing and a curse - a blessing in that it creates self-isolation, curse that once it gets in it can spread quickly.

    While there is obviously (given the heavy European nature of this forum) a focus on Italy it is worth reminding about Washington State - as of today 642 cases with 40 deaths in a population of 7.5 million. So the death rate (40/642*100) is 6.2%, thus demonstrating that early statistics are likely misleading - the expectation is that percentage will drop as more people get tested and survive (not to mention the number of people who have Covid in that population but who haven't been tested and likely never will be tested).

    290:

    Generally speaking anyone attempting to pick and choose from the available statistics in an attempt to "choose" a story is being foolish given how early we are in the spread of this virus.

    I used this example with someone who said it was nuts to worry given the low rates of infection in the US last week.

    If you have 100 people, test 5, and get 1 positive result what does it mean? That only 1 of the 100 are infected? That 20% are infected? That maybe 96 are infected? We just don't know.

    291:

    Nothing more recent than the WHO report out of Wuhan; there was a report back in February pointing out that the best ICU results as of that time were fifty-fifty. (49% mortality). So far as I know, we haven't got anything that specific out of Italy yet, in large part because COVID-19 patients spend so long in the ICU.

    Per https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30627-9/fulltext Italy is sticking to "10% in the ICU" expectation in the data from Wuhan; consistently between 9 and 11 percent of new patients need ICU care. (That note is about how Italy's ICU capability fills up in "one more week", by 20 March.)

    I doubt anybody's planning scenarios included the weeks and weeks in the ICU COVID-19 requires. I also doubt we really know the mortality rates just yet.

    https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30195-X/fulltext

    has an estimate around 6% in symptomatic patients; it doesn't get into ICU-specific numbers.

    292:

    My daughter tells me that the shortage of pasta has caused a tremor in the force^W student consciousness - its their #1 staple when cooking meals.

    293:

    dpb I'm wondering how long before fresh fruit and veg starts getting scarce NOT my problem ... nyaahh, nayah, nayahhhh! ( Allotment )

    I wonder ( SORRY, Charlie! ) if Pasquinade didn't have half a point. IF you have relevant pre-existing condition AND/OR you are in a high-risk grouo ... the it matters, as does your local health services ability to cope.] If not, then not The rest of us, not in those groups may or may not get this disease, we may feel like shit for a week or so But, it isn't going to kill us. I am suprised to find myself so fatalistic about it, actually ... I'm going to carry on (almost) as if nothing has happened, if only because I don't think it's going to make the sightest bit of difference. Like my father in 1940-41 ... if that falling bomb has your name on it ... tough, if not, well ... it's missed you. The actual numbers ( outside Italy - w.t.f. is happemimg there? ) are actually not worrying, provided you don't have a relevant pre-existing condition - & I don't?

    OK, let's suppose I'm wrong - please show where? { Consider the total population of the PRC & the number of deaths & ... it's TINY, isn't it? ] Answers - please.

    SEE ALSO the musings on the actual accuracy of relevant statistics in ~ 288/289/300 - which is, signioficantly (?) the same question I think I'm asking.

    294:

    I am suprised to find myself so fatalistic about it, actually ...

    Likewise.

    We both survived the Cold War while living in target zones. I wonder if that has something to do with it? I find myself thinking "oh well, I was surprised to make thirty". Rather annoyed that my retire-and-finally-travel-a-bit plans have been scuppered; OTOH, half a year later and I might have been one of those folks trapped in a strange country under lockdown.

    295:

    The rest of us, not in those groups may or may not get this disease, we may feel like shit for a week or so But, it isn't going to kill us.

    The available numbers -- in Washington, in Italy, and in China -- give a symptomatic death rate about 6%. (5.6% to 5.9%.) It's not impossible that everybody who gets infected is eventually symptomatic; the known time to symptoms is a very squishy concept right now as first exposure can't be tracked with accuracy.

    And, well, direct deaths are not really the problem in a pandemic; the indirect problems are generally worse. (For a prompt example, if you have a heart attack and the ICU is full or the medical system has fallen over. For a less prompt example, if you're a Type I diabetic and your insulin is produced in a country who has just closed their borders.)

    More generally, this is not an event, it is a tendency. People aren't being approached by a spectral being which compels them to roll dice, and they're either dead or fine thereafter. It takes weeks and weeks to recover in serious cases; this means the economic uncertain is effectively amplified. ("When are Sam and Pat back at work? Will Sam and Pat be back at work?" are questions with no specific answers.)

    And this is pulse one; the idea that there won't be a pulse two, well, the future is unknown. But that's not a responsible way to plan.

    296:

    It's better to buy the dried beans and peas. If you don't already have a slow-cooker, buy one of those also. Then just dump the mix of beans you want into the slow-cooker, add water, and turn it on low. Add spices as you want to. I find that even for chick peas (garbanzos) if I start it at night after dinner, it's ready the next morning, but I usually guess wrong on the water, so then I crack the lid and turn up the heat so they're dry enough before lunch.

    Probably 10 minutes time investment, and the beans are cooked as dry as I want and spiced the way I want.

    297:

    This is a dark day. The blessings of the Flying Spaghetti Monster have been withdrawn.

    298:

    My 2018 bulletti, oops, borlotti take 3-4 days in a slow cooker on high! Still, it's better than watching a pressure cooker for 5-6 hours :-)

    299:

    re:(274)

    I'd add one more thing - the NHS. Assuming the NHS dosen't collapse there is one thing I'm waiting to happen after covid19 is over and that is bozo telling us all a) how wonderful his govt has handled everything and b) "....well, the NHS was good but not GREAT and that nice Mr Trump over in the US got everything sorted with their healthcare system .... so that's what we need in the UK....".

    Or to put it in short, the tories have long been after an excuse to privatize the NHS; covid19 could be just that.

    And I wonder how does all of this impact on brexit? Are we now >50% of crashing out with no deal?

    ljones

    300:

    Considering that all the current evidence suggests that the US experience is going to be an absolute shitshow I doubt even Boris can make that fly.

    301:

    I don't think that the data support your statement that 90% of serious cases will die. Using your definitions, at least 90% of critical cases, yes, but needing oxygen and needing admission to the ICU are not the same. I think that it will be more like 50%, possibly a fair amount lower. Still not great news for those of us with pre-existing problems, but better than you implied.

    While I am also fatalistic (after all, I have outlasted most of my male relatives by decades), Greg's figures are even less plausible. Its exponential expansion has been halted in China by draconian isolation measures and widespread testing, but that's unlikely to last, and I can't see those being applied in the UK or USA. By the end of 2020, I would guess that the UK death rate will be somewhere between 0.3 and 1.5 million (i.e. the annual death rate will be somewhere between double and sixfold normal), with a similar demographic distribution to normal. That's socially and economically just a short-term problem.

    HOWEVER, it assumes that it doesn't increase in severity, start killing more of the young and fit, and neither the gummint nor the population react in ways that make the problem vastly worse. And it's unclear what the medium- and long-term scenarios will be.

    302:

    FWIW: To kill corona viruses in blood requires holding it above 60C for an hour. Slightly (how much?) less if it's dry. Slightly (how much?) more if it's surrounded by protein.

    It's also reported to survive for 4-5 days on paper at room temperature. (That one may be specifically for COVID-19, I don't remember.)

    So I've started baking my mail in a warm oven. Science news with it's plasticized paper outer cover survived unharmed. (Well, my oven says 200F, but I've never measured it.)

    This, however, means that hot food and drinks should be safe, especially if served on a hot plate. (Of course, usually this won't matter. But...)

    303:

    Yikes!

    Meant "critical", not "serious"; apologies for the brain leak.

    304:

    sigh

    The GOP has been so vile, for so long, they run together after a while.

    I sit and type corrected.

    305:

    Nursing homes... in the US, there will be deaths, and I suspect a lot. Who knows, it may change things. I had a friend who worked in one in Bumfuck, OH for nine years, and my Eldest has worked in them, and I have yet to hear of good things about any of them. Think "warehouses".

    306:

    Ellen likes doing beans from dry, and takes a day, with them soaking overnight after being parched.

    For my birthday, she made pinto beans properly, and that, with rice and some of the Real Texas bbq that I'd made last US Labor Day weekend that I pulled out of the freezer.... Froze the rest of the bans, and she made bean dip about a week or so ago. Mmmmmmm....

    307:

    Its exponential expansion has been halted in China by draconian isolation measures and widespread testing, but that's unlikely to last,

    Yes. The present halt has left virtually the entire population of China(*) vulnerable to further outbreaks. So the strong (or other) measures are going to have to be applied to those other 1.3e9 people in time to come until a vaccine is developed. Buying time in the time of plague is a good thing, as discussed here and elsewhere, but China is not as yet out of the woods.

    (*)Most likely, but we still don't know enough about the infected/verified ratio.

    308:

    Oh, btw: last night, being the 2nd Sat of the month, was the BSFS business meeting. Some folks made it to the building (I'm not calling it a clubhouse for legal reasons), but 35 of us dialed in via zoom.

    309:

    I find pressure cookers are great for dried beans. Chickpeas and black eye beans drop to about 30 mins cooking with reduced soak times.

    It's not quite the same but energy and time savings are substantial.

    310:

    I'm currently a director for two of our local minor sports organizations (hockey and baseball). Fascinating the different discussions happening in the two.

  • Hockey - immediate shutdown of all events, practices etc. etc.
  • Baseball - strong resistance from a couple of (right wing) board members to doing anything in this irrational panic. So far a 1 week delay in any activity.
  • I'm fairly sure our insurers will make the decision for us. If not I may have to become more forceful.

    311:

    We've got an instant pot clone -- automatic electric pressure cooker/slow cooker hybrid. Extremely useful! Dried beans still need an overnight soak first, though.

    312:

    How programmable is it? Can it do things like pressure cook, drop the temp and slow cook?

    I love my pressure cooker but have a space problem so anything that lets me get rid of multiple bits of equipment and consolidate is worth considering.

    313:

    whitroth @ 237: Nope - that's for the Senators and Reps whose terms ended. Pelosi, being reelected last year, her term does not end until '21.

    Pelosi is the "Speaker" of the House of Representatives. Representatives (House) have two year terms. She's up for reelection this year, as is 1/3 of the Senate (staggered six year terms - Class 2 is up this year).

    If there were no election this fall ALL of the house & 1/3 of the Senate would have their terms expire Jan 03, 2021. Chuck Grassley (Senate Class 3 - next election in 2022) would "legally" become President at noon on Jan 20 because he's next in the line of succession as President pro tempore of the Senate.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_line_of_succession

    But that also presumes that Cheatolini iL Douchebag would abide by the Constitution after calling off the election. Since there is no Constitutional mechanism for calling off the election, that's just a plain wrong presumption.

    314:

    This supposes a nice neat pattern of constitutional succession is available!

    I am wondering what the conventions are going to look like; a Democratic convention with both Biden and Bernie in the ICU is an interesting hypothetical.

    We know both Trump and Pence have been exposed; a GOP convention during the Pelosi Administration would presumably be a sight to behold.

    But those are rather simple and obvious, too; I expect there's going to be a much more confused political landscape, full of rumours about who is or isn't unwell.

    315:

    whitroth @ 242: Dirksen was an ignorante sleazebag. Or don't you remember his "Golden Fleece awards", where he didn't understand what they were studying?

    Yeah, but he was the last HONEST ignorant sleazebag Republican to serve in the Senate.

    317:

    Charlie Stross @ 260:

    a trained medic taking swabs from people for testing is someone who's not able to work front-line in an isolation facility since they're busy doing something else

    Yes, but you don't need a trained A&E nurse to take swabs: trainee nurses or even dental technicians will do, at a pinch.

    If it's just swabs and no blood draw required, the average Army Private could be trained in a couple of hours to do it properly.

    319:

    This is currently getting reported on the Democratic websites, and I suspect it will become a major scandal shortly. What's weirdest about the whole thing is if Don the Con imagined that this would keep the rest of the world from getting vaccinated.

    320:

    May I suggest this humorous PSA to brighten up your day. It also has a good suggestion for a substitute for toilet paper if you run out of it.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hks6Nq7g6P4&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR1zvj4fgN2MDqcq2Om5ScBn_QiBI0_9-VOkfcPBi2nR8LkvQP9WbXkIjro

    321:

    I saw this on another forum I participate in:

    "Don't know what's happening in the rest of the world but UK supermarkets have recently instigated buying quotas:
    ASDA
    2 hand sanitisers and a 4 pack of toilet roll
    TESCO
    1 hand sanitiser, 500g of rice and 4 pack of toilet roll
    Waitrose
    1 lobster, 6 quail's eggs and 100g of Pate de Foie Gras
    Aldi
    1 MIG welder, 1 pink sports bra, 2 trumpets and 1 wetsuit."
    322:

    That German vaccine company article was interesting. I would note that Derek Lowe http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/ has been skeptical about mRNA vaccines. Apparently they're very difficult and barely tested.

    That said, the politics of overt moves to secure exclusive access to a vaccine are ... worrying. It does, however, somehow fit with the CDC wanting it's own custom test.

    323:

    Trump 'offers large sums' for exclusive access to coronavirus vaccine - German government tries to fight off aggressive takeover bid by US, say reports (Philip Oltermann, Sun 15 Mar 2020) which links this: Company Founder Ingmar Hoerr Succeeds Daniel Menichella as CEO of CureVac AG (March 11, 2020) TÜBINGEN, Germany and BOSTON, March 11, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- CureVac AG, a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company pioneering the field of mRNA-based drugs, today announced that company founder and Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Ingmar Hoerr is replacing Daniel Menichella in his function as Chief Executive Officer (CEO). American CEO was replaced a few days ago... https://www.bloomberg.com/profile/person/16512667

    324:

    Madeleine @ 274: 4. Social distancing. Will we go back to the days of notifiable diseases and quarantine periods? I recall missing schooling because of various childhood illnesses. There's potentially going to be societal pressure not to travel or go into work for x days even for a mild cold. People won't travel without valid reasons, especially foreign travel. Will we go back to the traditional seaside summer holiday or will that be too close to other people? Unless we go back to the idea of Wakes weeks but for communities rather than factories...

    I remember having to stay home from school because I had the measles. I had the measles because my younger sister got it from one of her class-mates at school & brought it home to give it to me.

    On another note ... reduced sodium chicken noodle soup tastes like cardboard. I welcome any suggestions for how to add some taste to it without having to just add salt.

    325:

    And I'm just back from a brief neighbourhood shop

    Our three local (like 5 km distance) supermarkets have been hit by panic shopping, but the half dozen small markets (mostly multigeneration Chinese ones) still have fairly full stock. Dunno if that's due to sinophobia driving away shoppers or something else. Anyway, we're shopping at them when we need to, which is as seldom as possible. Also, alcohol.

    326:

    I need to check the manual. Which $SPOUSE has helpfully hidden, after seemingly memorizing it. (It can be used to sautee/brown veg/spices then pressure cook, and then depressurize and reduce if the resulting stew/soup is too watery, but under manual control. Not sure how programmable. Also, different models have different features. What I can say, as a non-user, is that it's versatile and has multiple operating modes.)

    327:

    Hot sauce, obviously:)

    328:

    I mentioned Avenue 5 already, so I hope nobody minds if I post this video:

    "Where did you get the 1% ?" "I was trying to be nuanced." "Nuanced? Well, I think you just NUANCED them to death."

    329:

    I remember being taken to chicken pox, German measles and mumps parties, so that we COULD get it :-) Measles, I got at school, which delayed my return home (boarding school) for ten days.

    330:

    Try turning Javascript off ....

    331:

    What make and model is it if you don't mind me asking? I've got a John Lewis gift card to use up in the next month or so and one of those is high on the list.

    332:

    Sounds very promising, and the ability to do that stuff is more important than the ability to do it all on autopilot. I'm going to be unimaginative and echo what vulch said, except for the bit about the gift card.

    333:

    Garlic power, curry powder, chili powder, parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme.

    I generally preferred a mix of garlic powder (well, actually freeze-dried garlic chunks) with a bit of curry powder. (Garlic powder loses its taste too quickly after you open it.) Onion works well.

    FWIW, to replace salt I generally find that a mix of many spices is preferable, with no one dominant. My wife couldn't eat salt at all, so we experimented a lot.

    334:

    To be clear, there are many companies (and probably other, non-corporate entities) working on a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2. So this story is a bit weird, and could be disinformation. Having said that, I would not be surprised if there were recordings.

    335:

    Try Tabasco or other hot flavouring of your choice. I'd suggest Worcestershire sauce (Lea & Perrins) but that may be adding the sodium back in, ditto soy sauce.

    336:

    Yes. Many ready-made meals are such junk that they are tasteless without a lot of salt. I am very salt-intolerant, but I grow something like 40 types of herb (plus 5 varieties of chilli), and stock a large number of spices. However, the real key is to make the soup yourself, or eat something else! Unfortunately, for good stock, you need an elderly, free-range chicken, which is NOT what you can buy in most of the UK or USA.

    337:

    As much as that is obviously humour, my local major grocery store in a suburb of Toronto has put in place some quotas, with family limits of 2 bags of milk (each bag containing 4L divided into 3 smaller bags), and 2 packages of fresh meat products (or 2lbs of meat is from the butcher counter).

    And yesterday another local discount grocery store had a paid duty police officer controlling access into the store, with 20 people lined up waiting to get in.

    338:

    Lucky you being taken to parties. I just caught everything possible (still do when exposed to other people's diseased offspring). I think our GP reckoned it was spontaneous generation. I remember being kept inside during the winter months at my primary school because I was considered delicate. By the time I went to secondary school I think I'd had everything you could still catch with the exception of scarlet fever and rheumatic fever.

    339:

    On another note ... reduced sodium chicken noodle soup tastes like cardboard. I welcome any suggestions for how to add some taste to it without having to just add salt.

    Fat is flavour. Saute something and heave it in the soup.

    Chicken goes well with lemon and tarragon; fry some dried tarragon in a soup-appropriate quantity of fat (bacon fat, olive oil, lard, it doesn't much matter...), stir in some lemon squeezing and heave that in, and maybe it will taste like something.

    Sautee'd garlic with the sauteing oil, onions semi-carmelized in beef fat, lots of quite simple flavours out there. If you're feeling ambitious, roast some carrots with chopped onion, lots of oil, and a spot of honey (mint, cinnamon, thyme) and add those, but you do need a quantity of soup to make that worthwhile. A single roasted carrot is a sad and lonely object.

    340:

    It's a Sage by Heston Blumenthal Fast Slow Pro (coincidentally sold by John Lewis). (Good Housekeeping say it's £200, but I recall us paying closer to £130-140 for it.)

    NB: the Good Housekeeping review I linked to there is a bit bonkers -- I mean, marking it down for not having a see-through lid? On a pressure cooker that's good for at least 1 bar over ambient pressure?!? I should think not ...!

    341:

    RR, maker of hundreds of identical turbines, doesn’t sound a good bet for making ventilators.

    Caterham, maker of one-offs with metal frames, fiberglass parts, electric harnesses, fluid piping & pumps ... I think they’d have no problem.

    342:

    The parties weren't exciting - sitting around waiting to catch a disease isn't what I would choose to do, even as a child :-)

    343:

    A few comments about low sodium soup tasting like cardboard.

    One is that there are plant-based salts (especially in celery) that can make something taste saltier without adding sodium. That said, another is that different people taste salt differently. My wife and I argued about this for years before I realized that what she was complaining about and what I complained about were two different things. To me, celery makes things taste saltier. To her, "it tastes like grass."

    Everyone who already suggested using herbs, spices, and playing with the acid a little (vinegar or lemon juice) are on point.

    Finally, retraining your palette is always an option. The old-fashioned way is to get hungry before the meal. At that point, food tastes delicious even if it's not perfect. The other ways is to get used to eating stuff that's healthier for you. Heavily salted food took time to get used to, and it can get eased back.

    344:

    No apology needed - I consider casual conversational profanity to be just the ordinary state of affairs, conveying emphasis or even merely maintaining rhythm rather than signifying insult, and took no offence. I apologise in turn if my use of language in replying conveyed the wrong message.

    The situation bears significant similarities to Britain leaving the EU, in that an especially maddening aspect is the way it is made so much worse by desperately trying to cling on to things that were a stupid idea in the first place even while their consequences are rendering the stupidity as unambiguously obvious to all as a slap in the face with a dead fish. Greg has mentioned one example - dependence on international just-in-time supply chains and destruction of the possibility of reverting to local production. Many people (including yourself) have mentioned another - the insistence that individuals' personal access to food and shelter must absolutely depend on them grinding crank without respite (even respite mandated by forces outside the grinders' control). The two are connected, of course, being but examples picked (at arm's length, with two fingertips) out of the same bucket. Yet instead of drawing the obvious conclusion that enough is enough and carting the bucket off to the decontamination chamber (as if gassing the planet with its fumes wasn't already enough), the aim is to leave it sufficiently intact that it can continue to fester and cause the same problems all over again the next time something like this hits.

    But the effect of the maddening is especially sharp in the case of THE CROW (Covid/Corvid, crow-navirus, crow in a virus, awa' the crow road, etc) because of what it also has in common with WW1: the stark demonstration of just how many of our deaths the ruling classes are happy to order when the alternative is them having only one feather mattress instead of a dozen. (And need a slap in the face to stop them actually saying so in public, see eg. Charlie and EC above.)

    345:

    Hungriness helps, but it doesn't make horrible food eatable. I have more than once gone to bed hungry after a day's exercise, because all I had was food that was too revolting to swallow.

    346:

    Re: JavaScript

    Thanks - but most times I've touched tech innards, the thing died. (My true talent.)

    347:

    Graydon Where I am in agreement with you & Charlie is that the world-wide economic effect is going to be enormous. We are heading striaght into a recession (at least) that makes the 2008 banks-crash look like a Sunday picnic.

    Troutwaxer Not so sure about that - we recently, as a matter of course, fully re-stocked our pasta supplies 😁

    EC My Borlotti are soaked in warm water for 2-3 hours, then slow-cooked - but, of course, they are home-grown beans. Sorry, but I simply can't accept your ultra-pessimistic numbers. I would put 300 000 at the top end of the range, for instance.

    ijones NHS - no - I don't think they will dare, if only because the US non-system will collpase first & secondly ... I ssuoect everything Brexit-related will get pushed back/postponed by 6 months or a year - like the elections. I hope.

    Charles H And all moderately alchoholic drinks will also be safe, how sad.

    Medeleine home-grown chilis ( Capsicum pubescens ) is/are good - the latter will go perennial on you, if you can keep it above 3°C - mine is now 3 metres tall & 2 wide (!) ( EC _ What's a "ready meal" ?? /snark )

    Pigeon @ 343 In Spades, redoubled ....

    348:

    Thank you, looks good. No stock in the Cambridge branch but free delivery later in the week. Fetches wallet...

    350:

    Been thinking about long term societal changes once we're past the immediate response (yeah, I know, assuming we get past it without a complete societal collapse).

    Unless a mutant coronavirus comes along that's smallpox-class deadly (this probably won't happen*), I doubt this will go to complete societal collapse. In any case, crises happen every year, and as I pointed out in Hot Earth Dreams, the only way to tell we're in trouble is when the rubble gets abandoned rather than built into something new. By that standard, we may already be heading into collapse (Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan being abandoned, with migration rather than rebuilding), or probably not. I don't think SARS-CoV is the First Horseman of the Four, even if this damn virus wears a crown (corona) ("behold, a white horse, and he who sat on it had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer").

    Anyway, here's what I see as more likely consequences of this:

    --Handshakes becoming less common and more meaningful, in the sense that the dudes shaking hands are showing that either they're too stupid to adapt, they're countercultural, or they're not afraid of contagion because they've got huge tough immune systems that somehow don't go berserk when hit by the wrong virus. Expect proliferations of bows, elbow bumps, and vulcan salutes. Actually, what happened in Africa after Ebola passed? Was the Ebola elbow bump abandoned?

    --Far less trivially, expect the democratic part of the world to swing more strongly towards a South Korean-style surveillance democracy. Contact tracing is really easy when you know where everyone is at all times. Given how thoroughly Washington DC has flailed on this, and apparently the EU countries are acting like they're not in an EU(?), the world may well turn towards models of successful containment: China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Curtailing pandemics is an excuse for a (benign?) surveillance state the likes of which can't quite be justified by crime.

    --On the bigger scale, if the NATO countries screw up their Covid19 response after months of warning that the problem was coming (akin to failing a take-home test), while China gets the "unexpected oral exam" of the virus popping up on its home turf and did okay containing it, then expect the world to look to China as a model for proper governance, rather than to liberal democracy.

    Going forward we could see other countries experimenting with "chinese systems," with local-level democracies (counties, cities, and below being elected by the locals) strongly controlled by a national top-down technocratic "meritocracy." Trump, Johnson, and many others make an unfortunately eloquent argument for why free elections may not be the best way to choose leaders who are in charge of important stuff. I don't think this is a good thing, and not just because I'm a liberal democrat. But "East Asian-Style" "democracy" may well take off (not scare quotes--I think this is how it will be branded on roll-out).

    --Oh, and if the US does experience mass pneumonia, expect older, poorer, badly educated white men to suffer and die disproportionately. That might affect US politics comes this fall with the election. Who knows?

    *Probably won't happen? SARS-CoV is a more infectious, less lethal version of the old SARS. We already saw what happened with the more lethal version of SARS: it burned itself out.

    **The corruption at all levels need not be spoken of, of course. Unfortunately, such corruption is not unique to chinese-style systems.

    351:

    Recession, at least one financial crisis, and a petroleum price war which is especially concerning since it looks extraordinarily badly timed.

    Plus recovering from rebounding long supply chains when you don't have existing local production is not known to be straightforwardly possible.

    352:

    "Only practical thing to do right now is stay in. (For a really strong value of "stay in"; "oh I am out of" doesn't count, unless it's "oh I am out of my medication" or "oh I am out of my last thing to eat".)"

    Which is not noticeably different from my usual lifestyle; but both those reasons applied yesterday, and the increased attention I was paying to the possible presence of invisible demons on things made it somewhat disturbing.

    (Similar constraints on cargo size to Charlie; mobility scooter rather than backpack, and breathing problems rather than stairs, but it comes out about the same. And if I buy more than 4 days supply of milk at once it starts going off on me.)

    Pharmacy: first wait outside until there's nobody else in there; fine, I do this anyway because the staff have no concept of keeping their voices down and happily bellow out personal information for everyone in the shop to hear, so no change there.

    Push open door with foot. Try and get it to catch so it's still open for me to go out again, but it won't.

    Prescription form needs signing; I have anticipated this, and have brought my own pen to use instead of the mucky thing tied to the counter. Do it with my hand in the air and only the point of the pen in contact with anything, which makes my writing a bit messy, but sod it. OK so far.

    Fail to get my hand out in time to take the package directly from the assistant before they put it down on the counter where everyone else's hands have been, because I'm messing around trying to write on things. Bollocks. Remember that one for next time.

    Fail to open the door to go out with my elbow because the spring is too strong. Have to touch the handle. Bollocks. Am particularly annoyed because the construction of the door is such that it perfectly well could open both ways except for a small plate that deliberately prevents this.

    Food shop: the door is automatic. Plenty of stock because it's only just reopened after a "refurbishment" (painting things black and installing crappy lighting so it's all dark and gloomy and harder to see stuff). A whole bunch of fridge-type items that used to be on open shelves are now in cabinets. The handles on the cabinet doors are infuriatingly minimal and it is not possible to open the doors with a foot, knee, elbow, shoulder, or even a gloved hand. Fingers are the only option. Bollocks.

    Checkout less worrying than in the pharmacy because not many people put their hands on the counter here, only their food, and not so many of them are ill. Of course both shops you have to hope that the assistant is clean, but there's not really any way around that.

    Come out to find that it has rained into the pocket on my scooter where I put the prescription and made the paper bag go soggy, then someone has come along and torn the soggy bag open to see if there's anything you can get off on in there. Good, now I can pick the boxes out from inside the bag without touching it :)

    Note for next time: bring some kind of hook with me to open handles with.

    But the most disquieting thing is the already existing knowledge that the food shop can be a terrible transmitter of contamination. I have observed this several times in the past, usually by eating something and discovering it smells. I then check around and discover that a lot of the other food also smells, and so do my hands, the door of the fridge, the handle of the teapot, the handle of the kettle, the butter knife, the mug, the arms of my chair, the handle of the front door, etc. etc. etc. What has happened is that some random unknown person has had some horrible stinky muck on their hands and touched something - a door handle or something on the shelves which they then put back - who knows what. From there it has transferred to everything else. And I don't notice until I get back home where there are no smells of that kind to mask it, and put something contaminated near my face to eat it.

    For sure I can wash my hands when I get in, but it's already all over the food by then. It doesn't stop it getting spread around and sometimes I have to decontaminate the place several times because I've missed a bit and then it gets spread around again. And this is the demo version where the contaminant is easily detectable and doesn't actually cause any harm if I put it in my mouth. With the real version neither of these things are true...

    353:

    I'm going to go all cynical and point out that nothing which doesn't remove or, minimally, replace the entrenched oligarchy really matters; look what happened to the New Deal.

    People expect from government a reasonable degree of safety and succor in disaster; a government which cannot deliver these things doesn't retain legitimacy. That's been a Confederate objective since forever, since they don't consider the US Federal government legitimate. If they can just get rid of it, they can put things back the way they're supposed to be, which definitely includes no actual state at the federal level.

    So I'd expect a surveillance mechanism, but one implemented by corporations and designed to make it impossible for slaves to escape, er, for a benevolent investor to exert necessary control over the conduct of their employees. There isn't much in the way of surrender of autonomy a US employer can't de facto demand as it stands.

    354:

    Colour me croggled!

    355:

    Or we could see the next iteration of Charlie's "Beige dictatorship" under Biden, where expert, evidence based technocrats, like the CDC pandemic team Trump disbanded, are increasingly put in charge of systems that were corrupted by the current administration, to try to deal with the challenges of the 21st century, including pandemics, cyberwar, and climate change. So long as politicians work hard to be ineffective, the executive branch has to step in to insure that the system keeps working predictably.

    This may sound hyperbolic, but I'm already seeing similar things happening in San Diego and California, where technocrats see local democracy as a NIMBY haven that needs to be ignored in order to save society from climate change, homelessness, and other crises, while developers are now grooming state-level bureaucrats to get leverage on local level land use decisions by going over the heads of their local opponents.

    In any case, if the Chinese system spreads, it won't be in the US directly. Rather it will be among China's "Belt and Road" partners. For those not paying attention, the "Belt" are Eurasian countries (China's overlands trading partners) while the "Road" are China's overseas trading partners, using the really old definition of road as "sea route." The US promoted democracy the same way after WW2, so there's nothing unprecedented about this happening.

    356:

    I attribute it to them simply having the salt left out of the cooking process. My mum does that with her own cooking, with the same result - I have to put similar amounts of salt on that as I do on ready meals.

    However, although the amount I put on certainly counts as "crap loads" to the eye, it's surprisingly little by weight. Applying it to one ready meal every evening, and a somewhat lesser quantity to porridge in the morning, the 65g-capacity working reserve still lasts for months, and the 750g main stash for several years.

    Moreover, the amount I put on in the evening is more than required simply for flavouring. I am also trying to soak up surplus water in my body before I go to bed so I don't have to get up for a piss three times before I've even managed to get to sleep at all. It's a pretty crude measure of comparison, but if its ability to generate thirst is anything to go by I reckon I consume far more salt in bread than I do in what I add deliberately.

    357:

    See "Winter Holiday" by Arthur Ransome for a plot almost entirely driven by 1930s school quarantine regulations. (Including throwaway remark that the one infected character should get rich by flogging handshakes for sixpence.)

    358:

    If you have access to Trader Joe's, 21 Seasoning Salute is a sodium-free, savory blend.

    359:

    That's unlikely:

    Fed Cuts Main Interest Rate to Near Zero, Vows Massive Bond-Buying Program

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-15/fed-cuts-main-rate-to-near-zero-to-boost-assets-by-700-billion

    ~0% rate, $700 bil QE

    BREAKING:

    Futures already plunging despite emergency Fed rate action

    https://twitter.com/TheStalwart/status/1239310765045227521

    Getting a lot of chatter that 'Gozer the Gozarian' has won, Gates are open, you get the picture. UK money people have been prepping for this for a while. So, as stated (grep time), it's a big barney between Capital forces, Public/Private etc. Titanic Funds and Big Players.

    Or it could be just a financial flu.

    None of this is about what's actually going on, but is a symptom.

    Ides of March, White Rabbit

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUY2kJE0AZE&list=RDEUY2kJE0AZE

    ~

    "Belief is for rubes"

    "Guess you missed that hurricane, belief in certain things is life-saving"

    Flips a few cards: we were promised 8 Eight years, you broke the deal. Some ugly wetware being uploaded into susceptible humans as we speak.

    Saw a bumblebee today, sad you killed them all.

    360:

    Here in the Toronto area I walk through a major shopping mall to/from Bus and Library.

    The last week the mall has essentially been empty, with the food court at lunch having maybe 15% of tables in use and the McDonalds in the Walmart having 3 customers instead of being packed. Glancing into stores and there aren't any visible customers.

    Thus I am not surprised Nike has joined Apple in closing their stores - with no customers there is no point in staying open (though things could be different in the US I guess).

    So with consumer spending (other than on groceries for now) having essentially stopped I agree the economic news is going to be very dire.

    As for the NHS and Brexit, I hope you are right - but the danger is in the chaos and fallout the government can sneak through/push through something that otherwise will be impossible. Something that might be useful to watch is how UK based news outlets report the state of things in the US - if they ignore/spin any negatives of the US health care system the "average voter" might decide the US healthcare companies are better if Boris & company screw things up badly enough.

    361:

    The railway operators in the UK have gone to the government for help given a signficant drop in passengers https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51896169

    362:

    Ah, wrong generational references.

    Adelaide's Lament, from Guys And Dolls (1955)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RX-eFkGdJNM

    "It's the Son"

    "We don't have the resources"

    "As an Oxford statistician, that's certainly a Divine Being"

    "Junk"

    "Charlie, it's not her, it's the Son"

    Xbox live just got nuked, which is good timing. Go look for the # of US centric 'let's party' social media stuff to spot what they want.

    ~

    There's an old SF film (1980's?) set in a future where the USA is stuck in the 1950's and everyone has to wear IQ caps and the 'big reveal' is that there's a secret society of uncapped who run it all and...

    Well.

    ~

    The Fourth Industrial Revolution debate just got answered: USA is not going to be a super-power for much longer.

    363:

    Very Good short breifing on Corvid-19 by the Beeb, here From that I could have it - right now & never, ever know that I had. { I've got a v mild sniffle, that vanishes within 2-3 minutes of leaving the house & my lungs start pumping more .... } I'm also still, occasionally getting a faint cough. left over from the revolting one that did the rounds in November last year. No temperature, no headaches, etc It is estimated around 6% of cases become critically ill. This: and the rest will carry on with their lives, either with no effect, or with between a couple of days to a week off work - personally, to them, not a problem ...

    Pigeon My usual pharmacy has a sensor-operated door - I don't need to sign ANYTHING [ They know me & I'm over 70 ] Checkouts - let's actually hear it for the automated self-serve ones - PROVIDED, of course that they are regularly wiped down - which the staff were doing to every table in the local pub I went to today, as soon as each site was vacated - the bar-top as well. Now there's something that I hope persists, after all of this is over.

    mdive The pub was not as full as usual & the age spectrum was even more heavily slanted towards people under 50 - mostly between 20 & 40, often with small children. [ Their Sunday lunches are good - if only because they get their meat from the same butcher as I, who is about 7 doors up the road on the opposite side of the same street! Their Yorkshire puddings look & smell as good as mine, etc ... ]

    I note that the guvmint are proposing to tell "over-70's to self-isolate" Well you can fuck right off with that one - I need to get to my allotment for: Fresh food, exercise & fresh air ... And to a pub that I trust for decent beer - not necessarily one of my locals, either. Of course, I'm relying on my general good health, strong cardiovascular system & good diet to see me through, even if I do get infected. [ Also see above about being infected & not even knowing - which is where we came in ... ]

    364:

    Branson has gone to the .gov asking for a plane bail-out. This is not a smart move. But generally the entire leisure industry is snapping around, C levels having all golden parachute bailed already. Hotels and restaurants [certain regions] are actively hiding #data.

    There's warning signs flashing up all over, but not the important ones. Listing all the little ones is useless. e.g.

    BREAKING: CDC recommends the cancellation or postponement of all events with 50 people or more for the next 8 weeks

    https://twitter.com/lookner/status/1239322405245419523

    France has done 5,000, Australia 5.

    Let's just say: we're not feeling aroused by any of this, it's all achingly obvious.

    ~

    Well you can fuck right off with that one

    Well, yes Greg.

    That's what they're counting on.

    Of course, I'm relying on my general good health, strong cardiovascular system & good diet to see me through, even if I do get infected.

    That's not really how it works, but hey. We gave you warning (DAMN SEAGULL NONSENSE) like a month or two before all of this, so plonk it in the "debts owed" slot.

    ~

    And, Pas.

    grep Nettles and Hemlock in the last thread. Then look up the play, and the book title. The point is that if nothing is real, then...

    Climate Change is going to grind you all into paste.

    365:

    The Fourth Industrial Revolution debate just got answered: USA is not going to be a super-power for much longer.

    It's not clear they are now.

    The example that sticks to my mind is titanium machining; there are at least two places in China that do it for retail objects on full commercial scales. There isn't anywhere in the US that does so. This isn't a question of capability -- lots of skill with the material diffused into the various communities of practice -- but the strangulation of capital is at the point where innovation can't happen locally. (There is not enough import replacement going on, in Jane Jacobs terms.)

    Which is where things always go when mammonites wind up in charge, but you'd think the plethora of historical examples would be more widely recognized.

    366:

    Again, that's not saying what you think it's saying. They're going to remove the ability of non-Eloi kids access to certain things. And by things, we mean stuff that gets broken by lead poisoning etc.

    Breaking: My #WeWork office in Miami (Brickell City Centre) just sent this out to everyone that works there:

    https://twitter.com/carlosgil83/status/1239344557906681862

    Not because it was, but because it should have been, your abilities with Prediction are woefully shit.

    Watches Light Close, Banishment, Exile, Forever Locked

    Beau Travail (1999) - Ending

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grGiq0yTaj4

    Anyhow, no-one else was going to cheer up you peeps.

    367:

    Which is where things always go when mammonites wind up in charge, but you'd think the plethora of historical examples would be more widely recognized.

    But the core premise of mammonism is that what is good for the greedy individual today is good for everybody all the time. The rational economic unit always makes decisions based only on immediate financial impact and the magic of the market assures that everyone doing that produces maximum possible welfare at all times. Any problems are caused by irrational units and those must be eliminated.

    368:

    Well, sure, they do say that, and they do say that at length, but it's obviously mystical twaddle.

    Even the nigh-toy stocks, flows, feedbacks, constraints systems model makes it really, really obvious you can't get a stable system on pure feedbacks. (or pure constraints; the capitalism or socialism? question is one of those deliberately crippling binaries. Neither can work. Try defining material results and actually measuring them and making adjustments.)

    369:

    I've just been reminded that the phrase "reality-based community" was invented as a term of abuse by Rumsfeld or one it his minions.

    I don't disagree that the idea is nonsense, dangerous twaddle or whatever, but the idea that there are not powerful people, even powerful economists, who actually believe it is IMO wrong. It's like the people who claim that Catholics don't really believe that they're practising ritual cannibalism. Very soon after you say that some very serious person will be dragged out expounding very the idea being challenged. Much as Dominic Cummings is trotted out whenever someone claims that the UK Conservatives don't really want to kill off large numbers of poor people.

    370:

    My #WeWork office ... Not because it was, but because it should have been, your abilities with Prediction are woefully shit.

    You know how strongly I dislike what such workplaces (and similar) do to their denizens'(/prisoners') minds.

    Isolation these days and forward for a while in the US, for those who can. I'm a competent(/adequate) hermit though, if having a good internet connection (+backups) does not disqualify one.

    (Lotsa botnet love on port 22, not sure what's going on there. Much of it US-based for a change.)

    371:

    The rational economic unit always makes decisions based only on immediate financial impact and the magic of the market assures that everyone doing that produces maximum possible welfare at all times. This is compact enough to make me laugh, thanks.

    372:

    So Starbucks in Canada/US are moving to a take out only model, and will be removing seating from their locations for at least 2 weeks.

    Anyone want to guess how many of the Starbucks addicted will simply gather nearby anyway?

    373:

    The US is an interesting thing.

    Is it a country in decline - absolutely. In part Trump is a symptom of that decline.

    But as to the question of whether it is a superpower, that is far more complicated.

    Yes, as a result of its decline, it can't throw around it's economic might the way it has in the past - this is also a reflection of other countries in the world catching up to it.

    Economic might isn't everything though, and thanks to it's military the US will remain a superpower for quite a while yet.

    And perhaps more importantly, as global warming / climate change / whatever we are calling it his year progresses that military might will have advantages.

    374:

    Anyone want to guess how many of the Starbucks addicted will simply gather nearby anyway? This might be significantly better, because of breezes clearing the air quickly. Has anyone cited this yet? Aerosol and surface stability of HCoV-19 (SARS-CoV-2) compared to SARS-CoV-1 Small experiments, but it suggests that aerosol spread is possible; would be really nice to see replication attempts and equally important see testing of whether normal breathing/talking might cause spread. HCoV-19 remained viable in aerosols throughout the duration of our experiment (3 hours) with a 30 reduction in infectious titer from 103.5 to 102.7 TCID50/L, similar to the reduction observed for SARS-CoV-31 1, from 104.3 to 103.5 TCID50/mL (Figure 1A). (Fairly large error bars; see preprint for details.)

    375:

    global warming / climate change / whatever we are calling it his year I've started using "global heating", used by a few here and pushed by The Guardian for a while. Low heating costs this winter in the US, but I'd trade that without hesitation for normal temperatures. Not an option, though COVID-19 is making a pretty big dent in GHG pollution.

    376:

    Military might is not severable from the economy supporting it. (The current US military is overstrained, overstressed, and under-resourced; it's a being run as a profit centre for the well-connected, the spending on it isn't turning into capability.)

    The Oil Empire is over. The Carbon Binge is going to stagger on a bit, but not for very much longer; not, I don't think, so much as a whole generation.

    This particular demand crash is global, and it's happening at a time when the US leadership has no idea how to conceptualize the problem. Neither does the UK's, and I'm not taking too many bets anywhere that backed austerity in 2008. (Has the US right finally managed to get enough gold bugs into positions of power to return the US dollar to the 20 USD = 1 troy ounce they think is constitutionally mandated? It's going to be bleakly amusing if so.)

    The sensible policy response is obvious -- take the Mellon Doctrine and replace "liquidate" with "decarbonize" -- but I don't think that's going to happen unless and until the incumbents can be removed.

    377:

    Hunkering down:

    After a day of working from home, the Amanda Palmer concert I was to attend tonight is off (not that I was going anyway). Good news for you if you are quick - she's live-streaming it instead:

    https://www.crowdcast.io/e/music-in-the-time-of

    I believe it means Neil and Ash are here in Wellingon too. In other circumstance I'd hope to see him.

    378:

    but the Korean model applies to a time window we're not in anymore.

    The world is a bit more heterogeneous than that. Once you step off the continents.

    NZ has 8 confirmed cases, 3 probable. 3 of which are family members living with other cases. We're still in that time window. Most Pacific nations have 0 cases (and yeah, we might find we're wrong about that, but likely not).

    We might get unlucky. Or fail to get lucky. But we really are several weeks behind the UK or Canada on the growth-curve of the infection.

    Australia is... in more trouble. But even Australia is running behind you lot - if they had South Korean levels of organisation I think they'd have a good chance to trace-and-find enough infections to control it. Their problem is that you can't build such an organisation in a few days, and that is probably all they've got.

    Gotta go, Amanda Palmer's about to livestream the concert she'd not playing here in Wellington, that I'm not at...

    379:

    ...so it turns out that given a concert abandoned due to plague in gorgeous old church, Neil Gaiman will stand at the pulpit and, in quiet echos of the empty night, read Edgar Allan Poe's Masque of the Red Death.

    With ghoulish relish.

    380:

    Question I realise Pasquinade, for some reason has got up OGH's nose ... but do we have to put up with stuff like the insulting & ignorant ramble @ 364? "That's what they're counting on" Who is "they" & what utterly insane paranoid stupidity is this? SNARL

    ( Note-to-Charlie: If you don't like this particular post, please delete it, but my understanding is not grokking this one, at all. )

    [[ updated from 363 to 364 - an earlier post got resurrected from the spam trap, putting the count out - mod ]]

    381:

    Total fossil carbon consumption worldwide is increasing, not decreasing. The dark horse, gas is taking over from its liquid and solid counterparts with production worldwide doubling over the past 30 years but the old members of the Black Gang will still be big business thirty years from now.

    The world wants more energy. Poor people don't want to be poor any more and if the energy they need to be not-poor is carbon-based and under their feet then they will dig it up and pump it and burn it to provide that energy. Promises of abundant affordable renewable energy next decade or next generation isn't going to keep the lights on right now.

    382:

    It should be just a throat swab, quick and simple.

    I was tested last Wednesday, together with several of my other "foreign" colleagues (i.e. not from China). Took all of 60 seconds including completing the forms and labels with my details. One junior medical technician or nurse with long swabs, two assistants taking notes and preparing labels. All wearing full suits with hoods, face masks and visors. Open wide, swab, bag and label ready to send off to a lab.

    Test result back this morning, happily negative :-)

    383:

    darkblue If you must ( And it's quite probable that we must, at some point ) ... Then that's the way to do it. QUick swab, easy test - hopefull you are clear - on you go. Balnket bans are simply not going to work. I'm over 70, but I NEED to get to my allotment - after all, I'm getting no closer to anyone else than a couple of metres, at any time. What's even dafter is that I could get in my car & drive, but walking down the street ...

    Meanwhile I note that the UK has had its first victim "under 60" - aged 59 & all too clearly overweight & I would guess, lungs in not too good a shape.

    384:

    It should be just a throat swab, quick and simple.

    Mine (and I guess most all in the US just now) was a nasal swab. Where they stick a cotton covered stick up through your nose and then it feels like they are getting the sample from the back of your skull from the inside. Ugh.

    385:

    Definitely not! Due to my salt-intolerance, we leave salt out of most cooking (definitely including anything with meat or cheese and almost all puddings), and my wife has to add a lot. As we are foodies (and, yes, Greg, my borlotti are home-grown, too), flavour is rarely a problem.

    Salt will not stop you pissing - in fact, it may increase it - reducing water intake does. And I can assure you that getting dehydrated does NOT help with sleeping - most people are much better off getting up to piss several times. I need to drink a lot of it, specifically to get rid of surplus salt.

    386:

    I like it! Performance art, at its best!

    387:

    I note that the guvmint are proposing to tell "over-70's to self-isolate" Well you can fuck right off with that one - I need to get to my allotment for: Fresh food, exercise & fresh air ... And to a pub that I trust for decent beer - not necessarily one of my locals, either.

    Going for a walk on your own, or working your allotment, has very low chance of infection if you do it away from other people. It would have counted as self-isolation under the NZ govt's guidelines of a few days ago, but they changed them when they introduced compulsory self-isolation (I assume to stop people rorting the system).

    So instead of self-isolating, just spend a few weeks pretending you're an anti-social old codger. I find most SF fans can do that, if they put their mind to it.

    388:

    Reply to Allen Thomson #306:

    What you are missing is that in China there are still many preventative measures in place, even if the lock down is relaxed. Our factory only reopened two weeks ago. We were closed for five weeks in total, counting the two weeks for the spring festival holiday then three weeks working from home before the local government granted permission to reopen.

    That permission to reopen requires the company to show they have suitable precautions in place, to detect any new cases and isolate if necessary. Entry into the factory is only after a temperature check, a spray of hand cleanser, and then through a tent with some kind of mist spray. The main engineering and admin office is isolated from the rest of the factory and dormitory buildings. Everywhere we go there are temperature checks; when I take the company bus in the morning, at the factory entrance, twice a day during work at mid-morning and mid-afternoon, when I take the bus again in the evening, at the entrance to my apartment block, at the supermarket. These are not intrusive, most people see this as sensible since one of the first clear symptoms is a fever.

    This is in an area that was not badly affected, but even here everything closed for at least two weeks, except food shops.

    I have some colleagues who went home to Hubei province for the holiday. They are only now beginning to be allowed to leave Hubei, and when they return here they must observe 14 days quarantine, four days in a hotel, then ten days at home before returning to work IF they have not tested positive during the 4 days in the hotel.

    Everyone at the factory has completed a travel history form, when we returned to China, which border crossing, when we returned to the local area, how long we stayed at home before coming back to work. The apartment building management office also asked for the same information. This is a serious level of tracking, but it allows the local governments to spot any new cases and then quickly trace their travel and contacts going back at least a month.

    You might consider this an unacceptable level of surveillance. But here it seems to be accepted as necessary for the good of the community. Personally I feel safer here in China at the moment than I would back home in England...

    389:

    just spend a few weeks pretending you're an anti-social old codger. I find most SF fans can do that, if they put their mind to it.

    Yeah, but we like to get together in the bar at a convention and grumble about how anti-social we are. And it's your round.

    I've still not heard from the committee of this year's Eastercon but I can't see it going ahead now. The hotel's going to cancel the booking but room refunds and deposits and membership refunds will take a while to get sorted out. I assume the con had insurance for such contingencies but I'm not a member of the committee. This will be the first Eastercon I've missed since 1977.

    It's another side-effect of the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the impact on insurance companies as travel and event cancellation clauses start to bite (Glastonbury, anyone?). The front-line will have hedged a lot of the risk but at the end of the day there are going to be big financial payouts by someone.

    390:

    Australia - well all these things are state jurisdictions, and post the Gillard-era national health agreements mostly organised at LHN level (in Queensland we call them HHSs, but it’s the same thing). That doesn’t mean there isn’t co-ordination at state and federal level. Contact tracing is a huge thing and has been for a long time, and there’s a lot of reserve capacity in the existing teams and networks. It really isn’t a question of building it from scratch, more about how much planning went into how it can ramp up quickly. There were full scale dress rehearsals for SARS and H1N1, but I’m not sure we’re out of the woods as such. The current federal executive branch are mammonites but barely literate ones, defunding CSIRO and universities with a vague goal to eliminate thinking that doesn’t match their world view.

    Meanwhile test kits are running out, we’re hitting the really exciting part of the growth curve and while we can be hopeful it will turn normal, we’re dealing with people whose only experience with such figures and visualisations involves stock prices. I’ll be seeing my GP this week sometime to help come up with an action plan, considering switching hypertension meds, reducing contact with others. I don’t think we’ll come out as well as South Korea, SIngapore or even Japan. But we won’t be in the mountains of skulls range either. The UK is taking an interesting approach...

    391:

    This isn't a question of capability -- lots of skill with the material diffused into the various communities of practice -- but the strangulation of capital is at the point where innovation can't happen locally. (

    A secondary symptom of the same disease: as someone lamented (on Hacker News, I think, before being savagely and mercilessly downvoted), in the 1960s the best and the brightest went into designing semiconductor fab lines, spaceships, and heart-lung machines: in the 2010s the best and the brightest were all trying to design a more addictive pay-to-play game for your Android phone.

    The venture capitalists noticed where the money was and backed those plays: stuff that involves hardware was, well ... the English gentry's aversion to "trade" (as opposed to breeding better racehorses and extracting rent from their tenants via their man of business) springs to mind.

    392:

    The Seagull has been warning us -- very elliptically -- that we're approaching a rupture point and some very bad people indeed have decided it's time to cash in their chips and shovel the no-longer-wanted pieces off the game board and into the trash. (Hint: those pieces are Us.)

    BTW, you can be effectively self-isolated while weeding/planting/harvesting your allotment; just maintain social distance from other folks while you're doing it. No need to stay in 24x7 and be a mushroom.

    393:

    [I]n the 2010s the best and the brightest were all trying to design a more addictive pay-to-play game for your Android phone.

    Well, some of them are also inventing more financial instruments and figuring out better (by some criteria) algorithms for millisecond trading...

    394:

    There is a certain class for whom a tertiary economy is intrinsically superior to the mere making of things. Even in the IT industry, ‘high level’ means everything is reduced to the level of understanding achievable by a five year old, because everyone’s a specialist, “leaders” specialise in leading and therefore cannot be required to understand any of that technical stuff.

    Cf (handwaving at) Ricardo and comparative advantage taken to an extreme and the most basic guiding principle. Farmers and people who own farms, miners are people who own mines, everyone else is just a worker. Being an employee is morally inferior because agency and employers all deserve beatification, merely because every other one is worse. The public sector isn’t part of the real economy, yet somehow the derivatives market is.

    Of course in Australia, making things is morally inferior, but paying people to dig stuff out of the ground and sell it to people who make things with it is superior. Because Ricardo or something.

    395:

    Well, some of them are also inventing more financial instruments and figuring out better (by some criteria) algorithms for millisecond trading...

    Same difference.

    The point is (as Graydon pointed out here a few years ago) that some time in the 1960s the focus of western industrial capitalism shifted subtly from wealth creation to wealth concentration. (It had always been about grabbing more wealth, but the klept mindset took a beating in the 1930s-1950s: besides, a war economy was a great opportunity for investment growth in making physical shit.)

    Attitudes at the top eventually filter down to the bottom and now everybody has absorbed some part of the rehashed warmed-over MBA shitbaggery that has damaged so many formerly productive companies -- outsourcing, minimal viable products, gamification, anything to extract money while delivering as little value as possible. There are plenty of dissidents, but the dissidents are not positioned to prosper in a society that has stripmined its social capital and disregards the need for infrastructure.

    396:

    icehawk The full-on, cantankerous fully-paid-up-member of the "awkward squad" in me - never too deeply buried .... ( As some of you may have noted? 😄 ) Is definitely showing in this. OK, if I am actually infected, then yes, measures fully justified ... but you can take some "precautions" too far. ( I think ) Also, after the utter deliberate lying fiasco of supposed "safe limits" for alcohol consumption, being - - - 1] Made up out of this air ... & then 2] Halved with zero sientific basis I'm a little cynical, shall we say?

    I will be interested to see if my scheduled hospital appointment, right at the end of March, goes ahead [ I have to travel into almost-central London, to have my back/nerve-pinching monitored, to see if I need a re-run of injections, later in the year ]

    Charlie Maybe - but I ( And I suspect a lot of others ) would appreciate it if it actually MADE SOME SENSE ) - it does not, at all, ever. [ Or maybe 15 of the time ] I appreciate all too clearly, that there are some amazingly greedy selfish & long-term stupid ( And short-term "clever" ) people in charge of far too much - we all know their names, I think. What I'm frightened of is being stopped by some stupid plastic-plod on the way to-&-from & then being ordered about. THAT won't end well.

    397:

    @Greg Tingey:

    I too can do the maths

    Unfortunately you're making it clear that you can't. There is considerable uncertainty as to both the number of people who will get it, the proportion of those people who will get ill enough to require hospitalisation, and the proportion of those people who will die (and the proportion who will die who would not have died anyway), and in addition there is uncertainty about how all this happens over time.

    So what people who can do the maths (I am not one of those people: I am or was competent to do the maths, but I don't have the background) do is construct models which they run with data we have and data we must guess. Those models effectively produce a range of scenarios with attached probabilities (which themselves may be wrong, of course): either because the models themselves are dealing in probabilities or they are running ensembles of models with varying initial conditions (weather prediction does the latter based on perturbing the initial state, I suspect this stuff does the former as the amount of data is much smaller).

    Some of the results of those models are hugely worse than seasonal 'flu (it's easy to produce some of those outcomes by hand in fact, as I did). And those nasty cases have probabilities which are significantly above zero.

    If there's an outcomes which are very bad indeed and which may happen with a probability significantly above zero, then you worry, a lot, even if there are other outcomes, with higher probability even, which are less bad. If there's even a significantly less than 1% chance of the outcome being 'zombie apocalypse' then you should worry, a lot. That's what 'being able to do the maths' means, and that's why the people who can do the maths are worrying.

    398:

    Well, yeah, sorry, tone of voice is difficult in text. I agree completely that those things are just somewhat different symptoms of the same thing.

    I play computer games quite a bit, and in a hobbyist-artist sense would like to make them. However, it seems if I wanted to make them for a living, it'd be mostly trying to figure out how to extract the biggest amount of money from players, especially in the mobile game business. (Sorry, all friends in the business, that's how it looks like.)

    399:

    Greg: OK, if I am actually infected, then yes, measures fully justified ... but you can take some "precautions" too far. ( I think )

    You are wrong about this.

    The reason you are wrong is that it is possible to be infected, and infectious to other people, while remaining free of symptoms. You won't know you're infectious, in other words.

    (The asymptomatic/infectious period is only 1-7 days -- probably at the shorter end of the scale -- but the point is, you won't know you're infected when you pass COVID19 on to your wife and the nice folks who also hang out at the allotments and the postie and the workers in the shops you visit etc etc.)

    400:

    The pub was not as full as usual & the age spectrum was even more heavily slanted towards people under 50 - mostly between 20 & 40, often with small children.

    I note that the guvmint are proposing to tell "over-70's to self-isolate" Well you can fuck right off with that one - I need to get to my allotment for: Fresh food, exercise & fresh air ... And to a pub that I trust for decent beer - not necessarily one of my locals, either.

    And it's clear that a lot of the UK public just don't get it yet about social distancing. Very briefly visited the local supermarket on Sat and there were large numbers of complete families and groups of teenagers doing the panic shopping together. Why? Why not just send one person out with a list?

    Rumour is that central London is a ghost town and the restaurants are empty. But what is going through the head of people who think it's still a good idea to take the family to the pub for lunch? Or to go out drinking on a Fri and Sat night.

    IMHO, you can successfully self-isolate and maintain social distance in the outdoors, especially in the countryside. I don't intend to stop walking and cycling on my own until there's a curfew enforced. So I have no problem with you going to the allotment. But I do genuinely have a problem with you going to a pub even though collectively that's going to destroy the hospitality industry.

    401:

    Even now, I am one of the people who can do most of those calculations, but I lack decent data - unfortunately, so do the people who are doing them for real, though they have better access and are more skilled and up-to-date in the analyses :-( The figures on UK death and hospitalisation rates are what TPTB are carefully (not) quoting, but match what they DO quote, and are less than the Daily Retchpress claims a leaked document has estimated.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-51902653

    We need to take this seriously, but putting all 'vulnerable' groups under house arrest for 4 months 'for their own good' is NOT going to help. Even if it were feasible without causing as much harm (including deaths) as it prevents, 4 months of imprisonment (often in solitary confinement) followed by exposure to the virus isn't beneficial to those people. It's not as if the carriers are going to become rare over that period.

    Inter alia, being housebound for 4 months will massively reduce such people's fitness and vitamin D levels, and INCREASE their risk of death when they DO get exposed (as almost all will). Well-off people with sizable gardens (like me) would be more-or-less OK, provided that we don't go stir-crazy; but many elderly people are not so privileged.

    We are increasing our 'social distancing', using gloves when going out, increasing hand-washing using the NHS technique (especially after touching possibly contaminated surfaces), wiping imported hard items with bleach, trying to keep fit and well-nourished, and watching out for symptoms (hard in my case, with a chronic cough).

    402:

    but the point is, you won't know you're infected when you pass COVID19

    I've read several places where "younger" people can get Covid-19 but be mostly asymptomatic. But I've never seen any details about what this means.

    People under 30 years old? Under 20? Under 15?

    Are there any reasonable sources for this?

    I keep thinking depending on how true this is taking the family to visit grand mom in the retirement village could be a fast way to wipe out a few dozen or 100 seniors.

    403:

    Things are never simply binary in such cases. The younger the people are, the higher the incidence of near-asymptomatic cases will be, but I haven't seen any figures, either. Nor have I seen any definite evidence that does or does not occur (e.g. whether such people have an elevated temperature). Your thoughts are correct, however.

    404:

    https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/

    Gives a good breakdown of deaths by age... based on WHO China report.

    405:

    I'm more interested in the percentage of infections that are asymptomatic by age. Of course that's a hard one as almost no one is testing asymptomatic people. And those that are tested are not producing results in a way where the stats are very useful in terms of distributions across a population.

    406:

    Generally speaking, any particular disease has a fairly standard presentation; you get it, some time passes, it becomes symptomatic, the first noticeable symptom is your ears turn this awful turquoise colour, and on the progression of the illness goes until you get well or die. These progressions are used in diagnosis. (Fever before puking? probably not the Twitching Awfuls, then...)

    For COVID-19, we don't know what that standard presentation is. We do have several niggling facts: 1. Asymptomatic and presymptomatic transmission both happen 2. Asymptomatic may not be a thing; there's some indications out of China to the effect that everybody who tests positive eventually shows symptoms, but it can be a long wait 3. There are enough reports that it looks very much like you either don't develop immunity from being infected, so you can catch it again, OR you can go into remission, have no symptoms, and then develop symptoms again. NEITHER of these is confirmed; it will take both time and spare attention to confirm either.

    So what we do know right now is that being infectious happens well before symptoms, that the period of pre-symptomatic infectiousness has a variable length, this period of time probably has a distribution with a long right tail, and that while the likelihood of going symptomatic varies by age, the results of going symptomatic don't vary all that much.

    So far as my no-medical-specialization-at-all understanding can tell, this is the common cold, only lethal in a percentage of cases.

    Hopefully this is wrong; hopefully there's an effective single vaccine. Hopefully there's a course of treatment with effective interventions. But right now, it sure looks like prudence requires all of us to treat it as being just like the common cold, only it'll sometimes kill you.

    407:

    https://www.statista.com/statistics/1102730/south-korea-coronavirus-cases-by-age/

    is the only stuff I know about where you get the asymptomatic cases in with the symptomatic cases and broken down by age. Prying out the percent asymptomatic might be possible from the rest of the data.

    And John Hopkins now has the "not China" numbers past the "China" numbers and coming up on 90k confirmed.

    409:

    this is the common cold, only lethal in a percentage of cases.

    Back in the 80s I was on an airplane for a few years an average or 3 or 4 times a week for 4 years or so. My boss and I had continuous colds. I rarely get them now as I figure I've had 80% or more of the variations floating around the western world.

    Too bad I can't have the same thing with this.

    410:

    Rumour is that central London is a ghost town and the restaurants are empty.

    I can't say about London but here in the western US that's how it looks on the ground. Street traffic is unusually light - the recent weekday traffic has looked like Sundays and last Sunday looked like Christmas. Restaurants are indeed empty and some are closing early or not opening at all. One restaurant outlier is that a pizza delivery place I know is very busy, and I haven't decided how the numbers on that work out.

    Our public libraries have closed, and many or all schools, and Powell's Books.

    411:

    I was last in central London about a fortnight ago, and it was already perceptibly less crowded than usual. Not empty though, but there were seats available on the Tube.

    A week ago in central Leeds seemed about what I'd expect, but I don't know what an early March Saturday afternoon is normally like there.

    413:

    I live across the street from a major public transport nexus here in Edinburgh -- two busy bus and coach stops, a tram stop and a mainline railway station. At 9 o'clock this Monday morning the rush hour wasn't happening, basically. The long streams of people on foot heading towards the giant call-centre offices up the hill were not present, the queues at the bus stops were two or three people. The buses passing our window were half-empty, ditto for the trams. After that it quietened down even further. I can envisage a temporary change in bus and tram timetables to match the reduced demand for travel.

    It's possible this coronavirus outbreak will give the idea of enhanced public transport at the cost of private car ownership a severe kicking, although general road traffic seems to be down a lot too (we're on the A8, a major route into the city centre which is normally nose-to-tail busy on weekdays).

    414:

    Re: 'So far as my no-medical-specialization-at-all understanding can tell, ...'

    You're a very clear communicator - much appreciated & thanks!

    Feel like taking on antibodies as your next topic?

    415:

    tfb Actually I CAN do the maths ... but - the problem is that neither of us actually know what the base ( starting ) numbers are What proportion of cases are there that are completely undetected ( Charlie touches on this - I could be infected & not know it at all, or ever know that I've been infected for that matter. ) What proportion of those infected are actual "spreaders" - though it's probably safer to assume 95% or above for that one. What proportion of those infected will actually need any medical treatment & then - how many of those will need serious medical intervantion? And the numbers for all of those seem to vary wildly from country to country, which really does not help.

    Per the allotments, it's easy, of course - you simply stay more than a metre away from anyone else, preferably two. Ditto walking down the street. Getting on a train, though ......

    Graydon has some v. useful points. Though "getting it again" could be like shingles after chicken-pox - a royal p.i.t.a. - but big hairy deal otherwise.

    However, I'm fully with EC Simply ordering people over 70 to stay indoors & out of circulation will probably kill more of them.

    The boss is still commuting in to work - she says that the trains have SEATS available & the streets are perceptibly emptier. Her office is within close direct sight of St Pauls, so smack in the centre.

    Nojay Haymarket, I presume?

    416:

    OTOH It appears that re-occurrence, even after testing "clear" is a real possibility ... Something we can really do without.

    417:

    I'm more interested in the percentage of infections that are asymptomatic by age. Of course that's a hard one as almost no one is testing asymptomatic people. South Korea is closest, since they are doing the most testing, though the breakdown you're looking for is not really available. See Graydon's link #407: Age distribution of coronavirus (COVID-19) cases in South Korea as of March 10, 2020 About 30% of the cases in ROK were (March 10, 2020) in the 20-29 age group. Some not-broken-out fraction of those were asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic and may have been mixing with other people.

    Anywhere where testing is limited and targeted at symptomatic individuals (or severe cases), one needs to presume that people one is interacting with may be infected.

    i.e. no pub, Greg. (Or for many/most of us here.) Also, I'm in the US and am making extra effort to maintain distance from Trump voters, since too many are still treating this as a hoax and proudly not taking precautions. e.g. popular American Death Cultist Sheriff David Clarke continues to promote mass murder in defense of capitalism:

    It is now evident that this is an orchestrated attempt to destroy CAPITALISM. First sports, then schools and finally commercial businesses. Time to RISE UP and push back. Bars and restaurants should defy the order. Let people decide if they want to go out.https://t.co/eWCBQczjyN

    — David A. Clarke, Jr. (@SheriffClarke) March 15, 2020
    418:

    Just walk down the road muttering "Godzilla, Godzilla, Godzilla" over and over again. You will be self-isolated.

    419:

    Hah, David Clarke deleted that tweet. Too late, though.

    420:

    Being tested on Monday and getting a negative result on Wednesday doesn't prevent you from getting infected on Thursday. Some folks believe the amount of testing going on is some kind of measure of the effectiveness of preventative efforts and it isn't. In addition we've got no idea of false positive and false negative rates for the various tests and I don't think we will get any real numbers on those important details, at least not soon.

    Testing capacity is best prioritised for primary care practitioners working in hospitals, ambulance teams etc. -- they're most likely to be exposed as they examine and treat possible carriers and they need to tested regularly (daily?) and get pulled off duty as soon as they themselves test positive to stop them exposing others to coronavirus even while they're asymptomatic.

    We're well past the point where contact tracing and testing of isolated cases is going to slow down the spread of this virus. The genie is out of the bottle in that regard.

    421:

    Re: 'Testing ... genie'

    This would be a good time for a virus specialized diagnostic AI. Diagnostic AIs are already being used to identify cancers with some success. If COVID-19 mutates faster than related viruses, having an AI on the case to ping likeliest new harmful strains would be helpful. I'm assuming that confirmations would still be done by humans as part of QA.

    Other COVID-19 related stuff ...

    Just watched MedCram and heard/saw that some State gov'ts are hiring whole hotels to be used for COVID-19 isolation.

    On the plus side, this helps the hotel industry. On the down side, are the housekeeping staff up to the task re: clean-up if their guests test positive? Once this is over, would you want to stay at a hotel that housed COVID-19 patients?

    For Randy Rainbow fans - he's got a new video out.

    422:

    Madeleine @ 334: Try Tabasco or other hot flavouring of your choice. I'd suggest Worcestershire sauce (Lea & Perrins) but that may be adding the sodium back in, ditto soy sauce.

    Thanks. I'll try the Worcestershire. I just checked the bottle and it says "80% less sodium than soy sauce".

    I don't think the salt in chicken noodle soup really does anything to add flavor, it just hits the taste buds in a way that allows the flavor that's there to be expressed more fully.

    I don't use much salt, but I don't have any particular problem with sodium. I got the "low sodium" chicken soup because it was the only one the store had. I don't think it was because of panic buying, because there was no empty space on the shelf where a non-"low sodium" soup should have been.

    They were out of Italian Wedding Soup, but again, I don't think that was a sign of panic buying because all the other soups appeared to be well stocked.

    423:

    Nojay Ah, yes, you've hit another nasty liitle quirk there - thanks for pointing that one out...

    424:

    The long streams of people on foot heading towards the giant call-centre offices up the hill were not present

    They must not handle travel things.

    The airline where my wife works has their call centers on mandatory overtime in non trivial amounts. I'm sure the others do also. Plus hotels. Several people I know have tried multiple times to get through to hotels and given up after an hour or more.

    425:

    Since we're past {checks} 300, I offer this which might be useful for near-future worldbuilding post COVID-19(*).

    https://www.justsecurity.org/69056/the-complex-policy-questions-raised-by-nuclear-energys-role-in-the-future-of-warfare/

    (*) I think it likely that there will be a future post COVID-19 and the world will return to its usual nuttery until it wakes up to climate change or some other disaster.

    426:

    Greg Tingey @ 380: Question
    I realise Pasquinade, for some reason has got up OGH's nose ... but do we have to put up with stuff like the insulting & ignorant ramble @ 363?
    "That's what they're counting on"
    Who is "they" & what utterly insane paranoid stupidity is this?
    SNARL

    ( Note-to-Charlie: If you don't like this particular post, please delete it, but my understanding is not grokking this one, at all. )

    Looking at it in my browser, post #363 is one of yours. 8^)

    427:

    darkblue @ 382: It should be just a throat swab, quick and simple.

    Yeah. That's why I said your basic Army Private could be trained to do it properly in just a few hours.

    Hell even a basic Air Force private or enlisted Navy sailor could be trained to do it. My point being, most governments already have military organizations with enlisted personnel they could "draft" to assist health services in the current situation.

    Screening doesn't require the full attention of trained medical personnel, other than you'd want some of them to supervise the soldiers, sailors & airmen drafted for such duty. That way you could get more use out of your medical personnel caring for those who have the virus.

    428:

    Bear in mind those travel call centers are busy with mostly non revenue generating work like cancellations and repatriation flights. They will be getting quieter and quieter.

    Also bear in mind that even for call centers working from home is now A Thing.

    Took my 0630 London commuter train today - 10 people in my carriage when it's normally 90% full. Tube busier but still noticeably quiet. Think a Friday on a half term week or a bit less still. Generally seems to be much less suburban* commuters about and a few less London based Commuters about.

    *Suburban being defined as needing National Rail + Tube to get to work.

    429:

    Boris has just requested all non essential travel is stopped. Work from home you filthy germ bags.

    430:

    I think you're slightly wrong about the "infections..no symptoms" period. From what I've been reading it's more like 2-14 days usually with outliers that extend to at least 28 days. And perhaps more.

    The thing is, some people seem to carry the disease around without symptoms ever. And they're infectious. So that 28 days probably is an artifact of measurement. Some folks are claiming the "everyone eventually develops symptoms" but the places I've read that didn't say on what basis they made that judgement. So I think it's best to assume that there are asymptomatic carriers that are permanent carriers. These folks are uncommon, of course, but their duration still makes them significant. And they've no way to know they aren't healthy.

    431:

    In the event that COVID-19 can't be vaccinated against and doesn't produce immunity, the eventual probable requirement is test production sufficient to test the entire population every quarter.

    Best if it's the thin edge of the wedge for public pharmaceutical production.

    432:

    [quote]I've read several places where "younger" people can get Covid-19 but be mostly asymptomatic. But I've never seen any details about what this means.[/quote]

    I think your sources are confused. It's a probability thing. Younger people are more likely to have a milder case, and it seems to be a gradient (probably not smooth) from 90 years to 9 days (that's hyperbole, I don't know the actual spread). But older people can also have symptom free infections, it's just less frequent (in proportion to number of cases). And some people in every age group have the disease without symptoms (at least for a week or so, and probably longer, but the longer period beyond a week is less frequent).

    You won't see any details because the information to develop them isn't available. And explaining probability distributions without knowing the data is really difficult. (IOW, if you see claims of hard boundaries, doubt them.)

    There really seem to be a lot of edge cases in this disease, and that's what we should expect. It's an RNA virus and it mutates like mad. If we currently know how large it's critical regions are, I haven't heard about it. (OTOH, I'm a retired programmer, not a virus-geneticist.)

    P.S.: Being young and healthy is no guarantee this thing won't kill you. It gives you better odds is all.

    433:

    Antibodies are little protein Yale keys; does this receptor fit all the lumps and bumps? Instead of "we can open the door" it's "We know what this is!"

    Functionally, the antibody is now stuck to the antigen, and with the receptor plugged, the antigen is relatively chemically inert. It won't be doing whatever miracle-of-life wet nanomachinery stuff you'd rather it hadn't. (This is the metaphorical equivalent of a bunch of monsters shut behind standard industrial doors with both-sides key locks; B-cells are running around trying a bunch of keys, and whenever one fits in the lock, breaking it off in the locked position. Now the monster has no option of opening the door.)

    But because this is life, there is variation; sometimes you haven't got enough keys to lock up all the monsters (your body has never seen this before and the B-cells don't know how to make that pattern of key, you're immune compromised and your B-cells are very tired....) or something has gotten excessively keen and the whole mechanism overreacts or something especially clever manages to present as "no, no, a standard metabolic function, nothing to see here".

    But in general antibodies are these little bits of protein floating around in the circulatory system, they're actively produced by the body, and the associated immune function is to plug up antigens as a means of disarming the antigen; at scale, whether it's physical or chemical is rather a moot point.

    434:

    To hear that Powell's has had to close makes this feel real in a way almost nothing else has, even though I live in San Diego and only go to Powell's when I visit extended family in Oregon. I think it's because Powell's is such a magnificent sanctuary and refuge from the world...I should see if they are still accepting on-line orders.

    Meanwhile, down here my husband (academic microbiologist) just donated all of his reagents to a colleague who is collecting them to give to the testing cause. I am ordering a few last art supplies to see me through. Some community organizers are putting together a county-wide mutual aid organization. 2020: making me miss the halcyon days of 2019.

    435:

    Charlie Stross @ 399: (The asymptomatic/infectious period is only 1-7 days -- probably at the shorter end of the scale -- but the point is, you won't know you're infected when you pass COVID19 on to your wife and the nice folks who also hang out at the allotments and the postie and the workers in the shops you visit etc etc.)

    That's something I'm not real clear on. If I'm in the "asymptomatic/infectious period" how does COVID19 jump from me to them unless I breathe on them and have actual physical contact. I wash my hands before I leave the house, go to the store & pick out the items I want and take them to checkout where I put them on the conveyor. The clerk scans the items & puts them in a bag while I stick my card in the reader. The clerk puts my bag on the counter, I pick it up & leave. The closest we've gotten to each other is 3-4 feet.

    I can understand the clerk might pass it because he/she is breathing on the bags all during their work shift (but not on the reusable bags I bring from home). But I don't understand how such brief encounters might make ME spread the disease?

    I don't have a wife or an allotment (I'm guessing "an allotment" is a small portion of a community garden?), but I do have neighbors I see & talk to when I'm out walking my dog. When those encounters occur we're staying far enough apart I'm not worried about them giving it to me. I read somewhere that person-to-person transmission requires maintenance of intimate distances over a period of several minutes.

    I can see how sitting in a pub for an evening might be a bad thing, but not how just passing someone on the sidewalk would be?

    436:

    All of our efforts at the moment are to flatten the curve, and the necessity of that means that the politicians in charge (and to a lesser extent the population) are willing to sacrifice entire economies to do that in the short term.

    But that isn't going to last, because it can't.

    If - and it is a big speculated if at this point - there is no long term way to control Covid-19 either by immunity (from surviving it or vaccine) or because it mutates too rapidly, then testing every 3 months won't achieve anything (other than to provide a snapshot of data).

    So we either go the way of the Chinese - check everyone's temperature constantly - or we reach a point where it has killed off the vulnerable and life returns to a new normal were as it makes it's yearly round it merely kills off the newly vulnerable. Note I am not advocating this, it will be terrible and deprive society of people who still have a lot to contribute.

    Note that even the Chinese method will require substantial changes to (particularly American) society, where we decide you absolutely cannot work when sick and the resulting need for social assistance to cover lost wages and some mechanism to deal with isolating sick kids from schools given a lack of stay at home parents.

    437:

    Elderly Cynic @ 408: I forgot about this aspect:

    https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stress-anxiety-depression/loneliness-in-older-people/
    https://www.nhs.uk/news/older-people/social-isolation-increases-death-risk-in-older-people/

    Yeah, it's too bad that all the prescriptions for what to do to keep from dying of loneliness are the exact same thing governments are telling people NOT to do so they won't risk spreading the virus.

    438:

    Elderly Cynic @ 412: Meanwhile, back on the ranch:

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/coronavirus-us-panic-buying-guns-ammo-nra-a9403886.html

    They're afraid the gubmint's black helicopters are coming to take away their toilet paper

    439:

    Everyone is vulnerable.

    There is absolutely no basis to believe that good health, youth, or general robustness make you less vulnerable; there is sound reason to believe these things make you less likely to become symptomatic.

    The data we have indicate that the rate of infection is variable by age, by lung damage, by some pre-existing conditions; once you are symptomatic, everybody seems to have the same roughly six percent mortality.

    440:

    Troutwaxer @ 418: Just walk down the road muttering "Godzilla, Godzilla, Godzilla" over and over again. You will be self-isolated.

    That used to work, but now people just assume you've got a blue-tooth headset for your smart phone.

    441:

    Sorry, bad wording on my part.

    By vulnerable I meant those that Covid-19 is likely to kill, which evidence so far seems to indicate the elderly and those with underlying lung issues.

    Otherwise, if there is no way to get immunity then essentially we are all going to get Covid-19 at some point, and then repeatedly as it continues making the rounds year after year as you say.

    442:

    Being tested on Monday and getting a negative result on Wednesday doesn't prevent you from getting infected on Thursday.

    Or from getting infected on Monday evening and being contagious all day Tuesday and Wednesday and thinking you're clear.

    Tests are best used first to confirm that diagnoses of COVID19 are correct (that it's not ARDS or fever from some other cause, in which case COVID19 treatment may be inappropriate), and then for sampling the population of medical staff to see if additional barrier/contagion precautions are needed, and finally (limits imposed in sequence as the supply of test kits increases) for random sampling of the population to track the actual, as opposed to symptomatic, prevalence of the disease.

    443:

    If I'm in the "asymptomatic/infectious period" how does COVID19 jump from me to them unless I breathe on them and have actual physical contact.

    Some damp exudate -- droplets from your lungs, your nasal passages, probably even sweat -- from your person gets on a surface. For the next ~week, anybody who touches that surface gets virus on them. If that person then washes their hands, it probably doesn't infect them; that person then touches their face, getting virus near or on a mucous membrane, it may infect them. No direct physical content; it can happen days later. Handwashing shifts the odds.

    Handwashing is a way to avoid indirect receipt of a virus particle, where it goes from your hands to one of your mucous membranes; it doesn't prevent direct transmission when you stand close enough for some other party to inhale the damp exudate (which nigh-every checkout will require!) and thus they get particles directly in their lungs and infected. That concern is where the 2 metre distance between people rule comes from. The 2 metre distance is not especially adequate in enclosed spaces like tube trains or elevators and presumes that you are not actively coughing or sneezing.

    444:

    The commute here in the DC area was halfway to a ghost town - express bus had five passengers instead of 40; Metro (light rail) was similarly sparse. Even the auto traffic was far lighter.

    However, this can't be maintained for very long. My work requires access to stuff I can't legally take home, and I think there's going to have to be a lot of redefining and re-engineering of government and business to optimize telework on a permanent basis. Besides, at some point, much work involves you talking face to face with another person at some point. Even Charlie has to occasionally talk to his agents and publishers in person, plus we readers seem to like seeing "them what wrote the words."

    Separate topic - from today's DOD COVID-19 update: A recent report published in the Annals of Internal Medicine that analyzed confirmed COVID-19 cases reported outside of China from 4 JAN to 24 FEB found that the median incubation period for COVID-19 was five days, with 98% of cases developing symptoms within 11.5 days.

    So that's a significant infectious period prior to being symptomatic. Controlling this via social distancing is likely to be unsuccessful overall. I think we're headed toward the worst case.

    445:

    OK, ignore one of those "at some point" phrases. Gotta work on my editing.

    446:

    Re: Antibodies

    Thanks!

    447:

    Because Covid-19, like many viruses, has the ability to survive on surfaces waiting for transfer to the next person who touches that surface.

    See this story, where testing has revealed Covid-19 can survive 2 to 3 days on some surfaces (link to pre-print of study included in story for those interested) https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/14/811609026/the-new-coronavirus-can-live-on-surfaces-for-2-3-days-heres-how-to-clean-them

    This is why transit operators, public spaces like malls, fast food restaurants, etc. have all made public announcements about the additional cleaning that they are doing.

    And the key point is that while coughing is the obvious source of droplets that infect a surface, we expel smaller amounts of droplets simply by breathing or talking, thus even those without symptoms are transferring the virus (though not as efficiently).

    As for your shopping example, you are missing the potential obvious - someone infected coughs/breaths on a can of soup/beans/bag of pasta/etc. You then handle said item, transferring the virus to your hands. Thus you now have the virus on you.

    448:

    And this is what I'm trying to point out -- there are two probabilities. One is of going symptomatic; the other one is of dying once symptomatic. Constructing "vulnerable" as "those most likely to die in the initial greenfield spread" is a mistake.

    The dying probability is remarkably uniform so far. Going symptomatic isn't uniform, and is more likely in the people with accumulated lung damage of one sort or another.

    That's during the initial greenfield spread, and is giving use the increased mortality in the old and smokers and so on.

    In a saturated environment -- where COVID-19 is like the common cold; everyone's been exposed, the entirety of the living have had it at least once, and none of the living have yet experienced selection pressure, going symptomatic presumably keeps the same roughly 6% chance of mortality we're seeing be so surprisingly uniform now. You get to roll that same once-chance-in-seventeen every year, or thereabouts. After twenty symptomatic episodes, you have about a 30% chance of survival.

    In the present circumstances, everybody's vulnerable.

    449:

    B-cells are running around trying a bunch of keys, and whenever one fits in the lock, breaking it off in the locked position. Now the monster has no option of opening the door.)

    Not exactly. Rather, the other end of the key has a red flag attached.

    (Massive oversimplification coming right up ...)

    Various immune system cells (T cells, mostly, but there's a whole zoo) wander around and whenever they encounter something tagged with the flag they engulf and digest it. They produce cytokines, which stimulate local immune responses.

    Antibodies are produced by random permutation by B-lymphocytes in the bone marrow. If a particular antibody starts to glom onto a lot of targets, it gets munched on by T-cells, and a T-cell with that particular antibody complex matches the B-lymphocyte that created it and induces it to start replicating at high speed, cloning itself and producing more antibodies of this particular kind. After the main infection is over this particular strain of antibody factory will be privileged and sit around in larger-than-minimal numbers in case of reinfection (hence persistent immunity).

    This is all part of the adaptive immune system, which is complex as hell but basically learns what to defend against from exposure.

    In addition to the AIS the immune system has a bunch of hard-wired very simplistic pathogen-checkers, the innate immune system, which relies on pattern recognition proteins on the surface of some strains of immune system cell that recognizes proteins common to bacteria, fungi, and other invaders. When these tag an invader they start kicking off different emergency signals, mobilizing other immune system responses -- vasodilation (increasing blood flow through small blood vessels), attracting macrophages (which eat debris) and phagocytes (which attack invasive unicellular organisms), and so on.

    The innate immune system is faster and more efficient but doesn't learn to recognize new threats (except in the crudest long-term manner -- via evolutionary selection pressure on the organism as a whole).

    450:

    Ellen and I nearly died reading that.

    Wait, Aldi's got MiG welders in the weird aisle? I may have to go there this week....

    Note that if we need O2, we've got it. You can tell we're a great match - once she moved in, last year, this house had two oxy-acetelyne welding rigs.

    451:

    What browser are you using? I use firefox, as I've said before, and have installed noScript (using the firefox add-on/plugin/whatever tool). It shows up as an icon on the top, and by default, it disables scripts and links - you have to click on it, and click on enable or temporarily enable to let them work. No innard-messing needed.

    452:

    Canada has just instituted new rules.

    No entry for anybody who is not a Canadian citizen or permanent resident. Currently exemptions for diplomats, air crew, US Citizens, and immediate family members of Canadian citizens.

    As of Wednesday international flights will be restricted to landing in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal to allow for enhanced screening of arriving passengers.

    453:

    Nowhere near all politicians "work hard to be ineffective", at least in the US. The GOP believes, 150% of them, that "government is the problem" and "government doesn't work" and they LIE WHEN THEY TAKE THEIR OATH OF OFFICE, and do their absolute best to keep it from working. What should we call them, not luddites, but randites?

    455:

    Well...

    South Sudan Is Building Its Electric Grid Virtually From Scratch

    https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/policy/south-sudan-rebuilding-grid-from-scratch

    456:

    I am not an anti-social old codger, I'm a curmudgeon, and I worked long and hard to read that high estate.

    457:

    By the bye, for those feeling con-deprived, someone's created, over the weekend I think, a facepalm group: Concellation 2020, the con that was cancelled before it was announced, you can get your membership money back, but attendance is mandatory....

    It's an incredibly silly place.

    458:

    JBS @ 426 See the mod's comments @ 380 regarding that, please? Sometrhing 'orrible happened with the count - it was correct when I made it!

    For your edification, re "Allotment" HERE is the wiki page Here is a UK history - other internal links are useful from there ... With the exception of Onions ( Which I'm trying to remedy this year ... ) I basically don't buy vegetables - I grow all my own. Benefits: exercise, fresh air, healthy food, also really fresh, of varieties I want to eat, not what the commercial growers want to pass off on me & some things you simply cannot buy in any shop that I know of. I don't even buy jam, as I have enough fruit to make all my own, too. I went down there today, checked that the first row of peas are just showing their shoots, put the last set of Broad-Bean seeds in, lifted a few Leeks to add to those in the fridge & noted that one Asparagus shoot is up [ 4-5 weeks early! ]

    Graydon It's a VIRUS There must be some form of immunisation, surely? ( However, remembers "Common Cold" ... um, errr ) One can hope that people build up personal, if not immunity, reduced susceptibility.

    @ 439 & 441 Agreed - I could still get the lurgi as easily or as hardly as anyone else ... but, because my heart-lung fuction is really good & I've never smoked & I don't have diabetes or high blood pressure .... So, even if I get it, my chances of survival are high, even if I do feel like shit for several days. Disagree about that SIX (?) percent mortality, though.

    @ 443 I'm going to start carrying both a small packet of tissues, a proper pocket-hankerchief & a small bottle of "face cleanser" & some pads. It's all about improving the odds, isn't it? Gloves might be a good idea, too.

    whitroth ME TOO!

    460:

    Australia is running behind you lot - if they had South Korean levels of organisation I think they'd have a good chance to...

    Nope. I was wrong. 2 days ago it looked like that, and already Sydney's number of cases is exploding.

    461:

    Sort of my point.

    Easy to lump the US military in with the rest of the US and say it is in decline, but unlike the politicians the US military is actually being run by competent people. The US military has believed in global warming and the eventual end of oil, and as such has been planning based around it for over 20 years already.

    The study that article mentions is just the latest evidence of that, and the fact that it is projecting problems 10 to 20 years in the future is somewhat meaningless given that at least some of the underlying issues will be dealt with in that time period.

    So while there are certainly currently issues - never-ending wars in Iraq/Afghanistan - push comes to shove and the US military will remain a force (for good or bad depending on perspective) for a long time yet.

    462:

    This is very interesting, mainly because Alaister Reynolds, an author I used to read,* suggested that Africa could be expected to leapfrog the west because their infrastructure would be created without all the carbon-using and otherwise obsolete infrastructure currently in use by The West. So I will be quite interested to see how that particular effort goes.

    • On "used to read" he forced the ending of a book, which I subsequently threw in the trash, by violating everything we all know (even mathematically undereducated sorts like myself) about how trajectories and orbits work. And he was not using a physics-proof space-drive to do it either, which might have been forgiveable. I was done!!
    463:

    Well, I guess Boeing is happy - no more pressure to get the Max flying again soon while airlines are parking 75% of their fleets due to a lack of customers

    464:

    It's a VIRUS There must be some form of immunisation, surely? ( However, remembers "Common Cold" ... um, errr )

    Yeah. On present information, this is pandemic common cold with a significant mortality rate. (common cold does occasionally kill people, it's just rare.)

    I'm using 6% for math-in-head purposes because of this Lancet article which, being four days old now, is doubtless a bit out of date. It produces numbers that converge on 5.7% as the global rate.

    465:

    So Ontario's Chief Medical Officer is recommending all restaurants and bars close (take-out and delivery excepted), as well as all private schools, daycares, and churches.

    Toronto's Medical Officer of Health going further recommending all above plus theatre close, and threatening to issue legal orders if they don't voluntarily close.

    But in the category of unintended consequences, Canadian Blood Services is asking healthy people to give blood with donations levels dropping 20% late last week and the possibility of a critical blood shortage soon.

    466:

    You can simultaneously donate blood and get tested. That's a great bargain in terms of time and effort!

    467:

    "It's a VIRUS "There must be some form of immunisation, surely? "( However, remembers "Common Cold" ... um, errr )"

    AIUI the problem with that thing is not that you don't get immunity - you must do, so as to be able to get it out of your system at all - but that there's a constantly changing pool of craploads of minor variations so whatever defence you develop against one of them is uselessly out of date almost immediately.

    On the other hand there must be a considerable amount that remains pretty much the same, on both smaller and larger scales - the main functionality of the code obviously doesn't change much, since it carries on doing the same thing; and the overall form remains the same, since we can make classifying statements like "the cold virus is a coronavirus". But the code is not accessible to the immune system, and whatever factors allow the brain to recognise it through an electron microscope or whatever don't register with the immune system for some reason (too large a scale?)

    Since the thing is identifiable it must logically be possible to devise by ingenuity some countermeasure that operates by recognising the same characteristics, even if the body's automatic systems can't. I don't suppose it's easy, but I also suspect the main reason it hasn't been done is that you don't generally die of a cold (unless you're a nobby lass in a Victorian novel). Whatever the reason, the fact that The Crow is the same kind of virus with a more unpleasant payload makes it look rather less justifiable from now on.

    468:

    Just made good Welsh leek and potato soup last night, and the "Canadian-style" bacon that was part of a present for the holidays (and is in the freezer) definitely was better than American bacon in it.

    Happy belatedly (Welsh) St. David's Day, which I celebrate with suop on the day before the 17th of March....

    Curmudgeonhood: I had the best role model: the late Jack McKnight (the man who machined the first Hugos in 1953), and, for Americans, Peggy Rae's father.

    I don't like to forget people who should be remembered.

    469:

    Africa - think of Europe, leapfrogging the US, in the rebuilding after WWII.

    In the stories I'm writing, esp. the further future (including the stories now, set 70-100 years from now), I'm making a deliberate effort to get people from around the world in, including Africa.

    It makes it easier that a number of places I worked between 1995 and when I retired last year had people from literally all over (of course I steal some of their names, what, where do you get names from?).

    470:

    My current work is semi-satirical and set in a fantasy realm, so I'm mainly making them up or using names with a slight "Olde English Village" kind of feeling.

    471:

    One question I have that doesn't seem to have a good answer on the Internets -- what over-the-counter drugs will help ameliorate the symptomatic effects of SARS-CoV-2? I've seen a lot of "Himayalan zinc will protect you!" and assorted homeopathic/New Wavey suggestions up to but not limited to pureed kale enemas but I'm looking for recommendations to get people over the hump of spending two weeks with fever, coughing, muscle pains etc. Sure there's the basic standard of remaining hydrated and eating healthy, assuming you have suitable food in the house, energy drinks and the like but what will make the experience less unpleasant and hopefully aid recovery after the infection has gone.

    472:

    The existing advice is to avoid NSAIDs of all descriptions, which are strongly suspected of making things worse, and to stick to acetaminophen/paracetamol but only if your fever is over 101 F/38 C and to go easy on it because kidney overload is a worry.

    In general all the actual medical types are being really really cautious about advice in this regard because so much is unknown about the disease.

    473:

    In the US they outlawed the one anti-hystamine which works well. (Apparently it contained precursors to Meth, which is still widely available.) You may still be able to get it by giving your contact information to a pharmacist, but that's not something I'm inclined to submit to.

    474:

    Re: '"There must be some form of immunisation, surely?'

    There are a few vaccine candidates with the first starting testing as of today. However ... as has been repeatedly said ... even if it works, using current tech, it would probably take 12-18 months to make in sufficient quantities and distribute.

    https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/coronavirus-vaccine-test-opens-1st-doses-n1160836

    One vaccine producer in Canada plans to use plants to grow their candidate vaccine saying that their approach would speed up production vs. the traditional route.

    https://www.biospace.com/article/medicago-successfully-produces-a-viable-vaccine-candidate-for-covid-19/

    475:

    So, not much in the way of technical detail, but NPR's Planet Money podcast sort of covered the vaccine problem in a recent episode - interesting fact the US has a special supply of chickens providing eggs for the growing of the virus's to create vaccines, and that it obviously takes time to incubate the virus, rinse, repeat (not to mention the washing of the virus to get rid of the egg stuff).

    https://www.npr.org/2020/03/06/812943907/episode-977-wheres-the-vaccine

    476:

    "For the next ~week, anybody who touches that surface gets virus on them. If that person then washes their hands, it probably doesn't infect them"

    ...until a couple of minutes later they touch some other thing that they've touched in between touching the surface and washing their hands, and pick up another load all unbeknownst.

    See above re. someone with horrible stinky muck on their hands having been in a shop at some time before me. By the time I notice the contamination - usually by eating something I've just bought and finding it smelly - and start trying to track down and clean up everything else it's got on to, "everything else" is a heck of a lot of stuff: all the rest of my shopping, handles on all sorts of doors and utensils, furniture, clothing, other parts of my body... and perhaps I miss a bit, even though it's got the smell to detect it by, which then starts spreading again and a few hours later I'm in for a second round of chasing down random stinky objects all over the house.

    The stinky tracer makes it very obvious that even a trace of contaminant spreads like polonium, and washing my hands does very little to alter that. By the time I get home and wash my hands it's already got all over everything else. To be properly effective would mean going to lengths like stripping off completely outside my front door when I get home, binning the clothes and the shopping bag, having a shower in the garden, and scrubbing down all the shopping at the same time (how do you wash bread, anyway? At least you can wash money now they're making notes out of plastic.)

    The precautions, for me, are essentially normal behaviour intensified, since coronavirus transmission is already something I find it highly desirable to avoid - having a cold is not a trivial matter with my existing respiratory problems. And what I get from it is that the most addressable part of the problem has got to be educating people not to contaminate things in the first place, because once the contamination is out it gets all over bloody everything before you know it and you can never be sure of cleaning it all up. Don't breathe on things, don't touch anything unless you are actually picking it up to take it home, recognise that things like money and door handles are especial problems, etc. And do not knock on my door and say "Hello Pigeon, I'm calling to see if you're interested in >atchoo<"...

    477:

    You can still easily get pseudoephedrine - you just have to go to the pharmacy counter and sign for it. And they won't sell you the large bottles we used to get, only a package of, like, 24.

    478:

    There's going to be a lot of Biggest Biological Breakthrough Since Breakfast announcements over the next few months. It may be wishful thinking on my part but I believe a handful of candidate vaccines will be rushed into production by the autumn, bypassing a lot of testing and double-checking with tens or hundreds of millions of doses ready for deployment by the end of the year when the next wave of SARS-CoV-2 (possibly mutated) is expected to hit. I may be wrong on this though.

    479:

    It appears Lord Wellington's statue in Glasgow, in addition to the traffic cone he normally sports is now wearing a face mask and safety goggles too.

    https://twitter.com/AbigailRoseHill/status/1239653966113374210/photo/1

    480:

    I'm not convinced that would necessarily be a good idea anyway. The "precursor" thing is down to them being chemically extremely similar already, and they have their effects through the same chemistry but with the emphasis changed a bit and toned down somewhat.

    I have found that the absence of toning down makes (ordinary) amphetamine absolutely bloody marvellous for relieving the symptoms of a cold, miles better than any weedy OTC rubbish. Dries it up thoroughly, and also effectively addresses the problem of feeling like a loose turd, which nothing else does. But it also seems to have a strong tendency to make it eventually develop into bronchitis instead of getting better. So I don't do it any more, and I suspect that that effect would have far more negative interaction with The Crow than it does with the ordinary cold.

    481:

    I don't feel I should have to sign for ordinary cold medicine. I'd have to be very, very sick before that seemed like a logical alternative.

    482:

    Re: 'Biggest Biological Breakthrough Since Breakfast announcements'

    Some of the orgs listed below are among the largest pharmas - if their clinical trials show promise, they'll probably get green-lighted faster than the smaller outfits esp. if they're US based. It'd be nice if things didn't get political, but that OO Twat is bound to continue screwing things up.

    https://www.marketwatch.com/story/these-nine-companies-are-working-on-coronavirus-treatments-or-vaccines-heres-where-things-stand-2020-03-06

    BTW - the plant-grown meds is for real.

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26082108

    'Plant-Derived Monoclonal Antibodies for Prevention and Treatment of Infectious Disease.

    Abstract

    Numerous monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) that recognize and neutralize infectious pathogens have been isolated and developed over the years. The fact that infectious diseases can involve large populations of infected individuals is an important factor that has motivated the search for both cost-effective and scalable methods of antibody production. The current technologies for production of antibodies in plants allow for very rapid expression and evaluation that can also be readily scaled for multikilogram production runs. In addition, recent progress in manipulating glycosylation in plant production systems has allowed for the evaluation of antibodies containing glycans that are nearly homogeneous, are mammalian in structure, and have enhanced neutralizing capabilities. Among the anti-infectious disease antibodies that have been produced in plants are included those intended for prevention or treatment of anthrax, Clostridium perfringens, Ebola virus, human immunodeficiency virus, herpes simplex virus, rabies, respiratory syncytial virus, staphylococcal enterotoxin, West Nile virus, and tooth decay. Animal and human efficacy data for these MAbs are discussed.'

    483:

    Locally we are going through a bit of a food fight in local politics about how the citizens interact with the city council on development. The city just abolished the old CACs with plans to come up with something new. These CACs tended to be dominated by a small group of older people who wanted the city to stop changing. And were very vocal about it. (When a city of 1/2 million is growing by 25,000 people per year it's hard to not change. I swear some would like to "build a wall".)

    Just saw this #76. Thanks! It looks very familiar. The CAC I'm on just cancelled its meeting this week, to a resounding thank you!

    One thing that is relevant is that these old codgers have been community activists since the 80s and 90s, so they're effectively the community elders who helped mold places (and parks) into what they are now.

    One big unmet problem is that the kids these days aren't talking with these elders. Instead, they're trying to reinvent what they've already done...from scratch. And worse, they're trying against an opposition that's been figuring out how to deal with the elders for decades. So the kids are starting from scratch, out of ignorance and ego, while their opposition is not.

    Not the best situation.

    While I don't think the teens of the climate rebellion should blindly copy what environmentalists have been doing for decades, given the tiny numbers of people doing most of the work, it's amazing what the enviros actually have accomplished. I hope that the climate rebels will realize this and level up by learning from what their elders did already, so that they can build on it, rather than starting fresh as they have been. Oh well.

    484:

    It may be wishful thinking on my part but I believe a handful of candidate vaccines will be rushed into production by the autumn, bypassing a lot of testing and double-checking with tens or hundreds of millions of doses ready for deployment by the end of the year when the next wave of SARS-CoV-2 (possibly mutated) is expected to hit. There will certainly be a lot of corners cut, in several countries. Antivirals are another wildcard. Same for (other) potential improvements in treatment of the SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia. Any others? In the meantime we work out/tune techniques for lowering R0 for SARS-CoV-2 at all scales. Probably including massively more testing including random testing of people without symptoms. Some of these will help a lot with other some other human-to-human infectious diseases as well.

    485:

    Suspect there is no great answer.

    My only generic advice would be for anyone living alone (or even living with someone else and you both come down with symptoms at the same time) and staying at home is to arrange for a neighbour/friend to check on you at some interval (daily/twice a day/?) either by phone or a check through a window to make sure you are still sort of okay and haven't passed a point where you need professional medical care but are unable to phone for it yourself.

    486:

    Greg: It's a VIRUS -- There must be some form of immunisation, surely?

    So how's that HIV vaccine working for you? /snark

    Vaccines are feasible, vaccines are not inevitable. Any virus that mutates rapidly is a total PITA for vaccine developers; HIV is the type specimen for mutation, but rhinoviruses (the common cold) and influenza are also problematic. Influenza we have to develop new vaccines for every 6-12 months (although there is some hope of a wide-spectrum flu shot on the horizon that puts an end to the yearly jabs). The common cold turned out to be more trouble than it was worth (lots and lots of trouble, not much damage).

    We know a lot more about how to design vaccines these days, and the fact that COVID19 was sequenced within days and isolated in bulk earlier this month (meaning: they can produce loads of it for research purposes) is promising. Flip side: it mutates. A vaccine will be helpful, but less so if we all get it, relax, and six months later a new variant strain pops up and goes green field on our ass again.

    487:

    "I'm using 6% for math-in-head purposes because of this Lancet article which, being four days old now, is doubtless a bit out of date. It produces numbers that converge on 5.7% as the global rate."

    That article's methodology: "We re-estimated mortality rates by dividing the number of deaths on a given day by the number of patients with confirmed COVID-19 infection 14 days before."

    But it's known that dividing deaths by cases is too low as a mortality rate because of time-lag (it doesn't include the infected who aitn't dead yet) and too high because of unnoticed infections (the mild cases you didn't see). Seems to me that article's trying to correct for the "too low" part but not the "too high" part.

    So it seems likely that:

    a) The pessimistic take that we weren't testing enough and weren't seeing most cases is wrong. OR b) The pessimistic take that it's a 6% mortality rate is wrong.

    So are you optimistic about (a) if you're pessimistic about (b)?

    488:

    Im wondering is the reason its been so contagious in France, Italy and Spain- theyre very touchy-feely cultures and the reason its been more lethal- theres a lot of damaged lungs from the smoking

    489:

    Ahem: the problem with paracetamol/acetaminophen is that it's hepatotoxic -- take enough of it and it will cook your liver (and you will die in 3-8 days unless you're lucky enough to get a transplant organ, which in the current crisis is a big fat "nope").

    This really is a situation where we should be loosening up restrictions on selling opioids over the counter. Most people don't abuse them to the point of addiction/overdose (the side-effects aren't that much fun -- severe constipation, nausea, and really florid dreams bordering on hallucinations) -- and a small dose works wonders for getting a good night's sleep despite a sore chest. Downside: opiates are a respiratory depressant. But by the time that's an issue due to COVID19, you've got bigger problems and should be in hospital.

    The UK already sells co-codamol 500/8 tablets (500mg paracetamol/8mg codeine) in pharmacies in boxes of up to 32 (usual warnings about not o/d'ing on paracetamol apply). For the duration, co-codamol should go GSL (General Sales List), i.e. available in non-pharmacy retail stores, and possibly make co-codamol 500/15 legal for pharmacist-supervised sale (that's a good bit stronger).

    490:

    Ahem: sudafed (aka pseudoephedrine) is a precursor to methamphetamine, but it's not an anti-histamine at all. (It's a fairly effective decongestant.)

    491:

    I think the hope is that any mutated variant of SARS-CoV-2 that arrives en masse next year will be less damaging to the human system and possibly less virulent than the current version. With a lot of the survivors having developed some immunity to this year's version they will have collateral immunity to the new version reducing the effects even further. The fear is that next year's SARS-CoV-2 might be worse.

    I am surprised at myself, the level of calm acceptance of the situation accompanied by a somewhat-ghoulish interest in the mechanics of how things are developing. I've always been a bit of a disaster junkie, following the news of major events and their resolution (Deepwater Horizon, the Great Tohoku earthquake etc.) and this is more of the same, basically.

    492:

    Interesting question - risk a second wave of Covid-19 or risk an inadequately tested vaccine?

    Don't know how I would answer that.

    493:

    I went to my GP today for a previously booked appointment for a blood sample. There was a staff member in a mask outside screening people - only those with appointments got inside. Inside they had a tape line a couple of meters back from the reception desk to stand behind with a table and hand-sanitizer. Most of the seats had been removed from the waiting area so that the remaining ones were a meter or so apart.

    In the Boots pharmacy it was business as usual though. In the coop a staff member wearing gloves was wiping down the self-service checkouts with some kind of wipes after each customer.

    494:

    Charlie As you say, the rapid mutation of an RNA-based virus is a real arse to deal with. OTOH, even an out-of-date vaccine should give some protection - not idemtical, but similar, should lessen the effects on the victims (we hope)

    andyf @ 488 YES

    Nojay Me too ... I strongly suspect we are going to have to live with this one. The ongoing effects on not just "Public Health" but also "lifestyle" - like drinking is OK, but seriously NO to overweight, smoking or amything that fucks with your cardiovascular abilities ...

    Footnote: The Bosses' firm have told everybody to work from home, satrting tomorrow, arrangements are being made for improved e-comms, etc. People may have to come in, individually, once a week or so, to "catch up" - but, agian, they are trying to load the odds in their favour.

    495:

    Senate minority leader Ev Dirksen was known for his rumpled appearance and disheveled hair, as well as for cooperating with LBJ on getting the Great Society programs herded through Congress. Johnny Carson once joked "in the senate today they dropped Ev Dirksen headfirst into a vat of Dippity-Do, and when they pulled him out every hair was perfectly in place." I saw him once in the late 60s in Lombard Illinois, where I went to high school. Lombard has an annual Lilac Parade to celebrate opening day for their Lilac Park district, which typically draws some tens of thousands of spectators from surrounding Chicago suburbs, so state politicians make appearances on the reviewing stand. That spring there'd been a late cold snap and none of the lilacs had flowered yet, but the parade was all pre-scheduled so they just sprayed lilac scent up and down Main street and carried on regardless. When they handed Dirksen the microphone for a comment, he replied in his famous breathy baritone, in a modulated high-midrange-low three tone delivery, "Well all I want to know is, where are the lilacs.” WELL was three syllables, (hi-lo-mid), ALL I WANT TO KNOW IS (lo-hi-lo-lo-lo-mid), WHERE was three syllables (hi-lo-mid), ARE THE LILACS (lo-mid-hi-low.) A performance I found so impressive it may have influenced me to study a tonal language some years later. Goes to show that Chicago area parades don't usually turn out like the one in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, but one can always hope.

    496:

    Hm, this might start to answer some of the questions about about asymptomatic spread: Covid-19 Is Spreading Far and Wide From People Who Don't Feel Sick, New Research Finds (Ed Cara, 16 Mar 2020) References a new study: Substantial undocumented infection facilitates the rapid dissemination of novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV2) (Ruiyun Li, Sen Pei, Bin Chen, Yimeng Song, Tao Zhang, Wan Yang, Jeffrey Shaman, 16 Mar 2020) Overall, our findings indicate that a large proportion of COVID-19 infections were undocumented prior to the implementation of travel restrictions and other heightened control measures in China on 23 January, and that a large proportion of the total force of infection was mediated through these undocumented infections (Table 1). This high proportion of undocumented infections, many of whom were likely not severely symptomatic, appears to have facilitated the rapid spread of the virus throughout China. ... Importantly, the situation on the ground in China is changing day-to-day. New travel restrictions and control measures are being imposed on new populations in different cities, and these rapidly varying effects make certain estimation of the epidemiological characteristics for the outbreak difficult. Further, reporting inaccuracies and changing care-seeking behavior add another level of uncertainty to our estimations.

    SBH #362 "As an Oxford statistician, that's certainly a Divine Being" That could be read as esoteric microfiction. (I like it, yes. :-)

    Watches Light Close, Banishment, Exile, Forever Locked I prefer to think of this as opportunities to be seized by the good. Shock Doctrine style change is not just for the evil. (Optimist, congenital.)

    Beau Travail That scene is superb. I like to dance in the dark to the rhythms of reality.

    497:

    I think that methodology is about the rates relative to symptomatic, rather than total cases, and is obviously plausible within the limits of its assumptions. (That 14 days can't be correct; it may not be all that wrong, either.)

    So we don't know, and probably can't know, the initial mortality rate because we'll never know that actual initial rate of infection. We have some slop in symptomatic cases; it hasn't been correctly diagnosed in all cases, for example, so the symptomatic case count is likely to be a bit low. (I'm excluding the US, where there's an active official effort to produce artificially low numbers. We know the US numbers are fantastical.) So it's not a perfectly accurate number.

    Accurate enough for present planning purposes? I would think so.

    498:

    Dentists - Pacific Dental Conference

    The article says 15,000 attendees from the US, Canada and other countries so I'm guessing that Washington State area dentists would likely have attended.

    https://globalnews.ca/news/6685494/elective-non-essential-dental-services-paused-after-covid-19-cases-linked-to-vancouver-conference/

    'The College of Dental Surgeons of B.C. has announced all elective and non-essential dental services are to be suspended immediately.

    This comes as B.C.’s top doctor is asking all attendees of last week’s Pacific Dental Conference in Vancouver to self-isolate after a number of COVID-19 cases were linked to the event.

    Dr. Bonnie Henry said Monday that her office has connected the conference, which occurred March 5-7 at the Vancouver Convention Centre, to at least four new cases.'

    499:

    Short and useful page (just spotted it on the cdc site), so copying/pasting here. The endemic ones (that cause a "cold") are the first list. Human Coronavirus Types Coronaviruses are named for the crown-like spikes on their surface. There are four main sub-groupings of coronaviruses, known as alpha, beta, gamma, and delta. Human coronaviruses were first identified in the mid-1960s. The seven coronaviruses that can infect people are: Common human coronaviruses - 229E (alpha coronavirus) - NL63 (alpha coronavirus) - OC43 (beta coronavirus) - HKU1 (beta coronavirus) Other human coronaviruses - MERS-CoV (the beta coronavirus that causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS) - SARS-CoV (the beta coronavirus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS) - SARS-CoV-2 (the novel coronavirus that causes coronavirus disease 2019, or COVID-19) People around the world commonly get infected with human coronaviruses 229E, NL63, OC43, and HKU1. Sometimes coronaviruses that infect animals can evolve and make people sick and become a new human coronavirus. Three recent examples of this are 2019-nCoV, SARS-CoV, and MERS-CoV.

    500:

    Click bait and just (AFAIK) amusing speculation, but funny: Apple Could Look to Acquire Disney Amid Stock Drop, Analyst Says (3/16/2020, Georg Szalai) "The upside from acquiring Disney would be securing their content/streaming strategy and potential synergies from adding the emerging Disney ecosystem to the iOS platform." (Disney Corp is being damaged by COVID-19)

    501:

    Ahem: the problem with paracetamol/acetaminophen is that it's hepatotoxic -- take enough of it and it will cook your liver (and you will die in 3-8 days unless you're lucky enough to get a transplant organ, which in the current crisis is a big fat "nope").

    Absolutely, and why you never ever ever take the stuff for hangovers.

    That particular bit of advice I recall as being worried about kidneys anyway; COVID-19 is apparently tough on kidneys, mechanism currently poorly understood.

    502:

    Of possible interest to the UK folks, a PDF from Imperial College on the projected requirements for critical care beds verus the expected outcomes for various non-pharma mitigation strategies.

    There's a US graph as an appendix, last two pages.

    Only 20 pages overall, likely worth a read.

    503:

    Couple of amusing things from Sydney:

    • went into a shoe shop in the mall wearing a mask. Shop assistant stayed at the far end of the shop until I was ready to pay, then tried very hard to maintain (anti)social distance during transaction. There were very few shoppers. But I wore out/destroyed my only walking shoes when I moved, and I want to be able to walk if I need to (I have bicycling shoes, gumboots and steelcap boots... none are great for even 1km of walking)

    • best comment overheard in the supermarket "there's no cereal" "better get two packs then"

    Supermarket looked like the aftermath of a riot, even stuff that was being restocked was being bought. But still odd things, like UHT milk being bought in bulk but not-milk sitting on the shelf (I got 8 litres of my preferred rice milk). The pasta, pasta sauce and rice is basically gone though. I got two 750g bags for my ex because they were on the top shelf behind some empty boxes. Likewise, there was some ready-to-restock pasta sauce in boxes under the bottom shelf. Emphasise was ... I put it on the shelf and the next customer grabbed it immediately. All 24 jars.

    Meanwhile I am officially off sick today, and will be trying to defer returning to the office this week. But sadly I need access to things I can't currently get to from home. Hopefully the minions will fix most of that by the time I get desperate. But the "use internal wifi to test the phone app"... has to be done inside, opening that network to the public is out of the question - it's insecure-by-necessity.

    504:

    To hear that Powell's has had to close makes this feel real in a way almost nothing else has, even though I live in San Diego and only go to Powell's when I visit extended family in Oregon. I think it's because Powell's is such a magnificent sanctuary and refuge from the world...I should see if they are still accepting on-line orders.

    Yes, and offering free or cheap shipping.

    You're right about the atmosphere of the store. I don't get downtown as much lately but I have friends who enjoy relaxing in the coffee shop and human watching. As I told to another introvert, "It's still socializing if you both sit and read a book in the same room."

    505:

    Folks on this side of the pond are getting religion: here in the conservative backwater of northern Indiana the governor today closed dine-in seating in all bars and resteraunts (they can still offer carry out and delivery,) closed casinos, gyms, theaters, etc. and limited gatherings to 50 people. All the schools closed over the weekend and just today I saw my first people wearing masks. Change comes hard here in the midwestern United States and and I'm surprised that it's come this far with only one death in the state so far. Of course, last Friday saw the first serious run on the grocery stores and today was worse but I left knowing with satisfaction that there were still a few packages of toilet paper on the shelves.

    506:

    I got my recorded reminder yesterday evening of my Friday quarterly check with the chemo people. I'm waiting to see what happens. (I can send them the vitals (weight, temp, and BP), and they can send me the PDF with the blood test results, but the port would have to wait to get flushed.)

    Other than that, I can stay in most of the time - but I need more bread and veggies.

    507:

    There has been much talk about "flattening the curve" to protect the health care systems.

    This article talks about how long the measures to do that may need to be in place, and includes a chart with the curves for covid-19 based on mathematical models and actual numbers for the decrease and the number of days for 3 different scenarios

    https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-scientists-see-no-quick-end-to-the-coronavirus-battle/

    508:

    Further to the article showing this likely isn't a quick couple of weeks process, the province of Alberta appears to have closed it's schools for the rest of the school year based on the Chief Medical Officer stating that any school closing would need to last until September to be effective.

    https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-could-coronavirus-mean-schools-are-out-for-the-year/

    509:

    Dear host, might you please ban Graydon from this thread for repeatedly stating that Covid-19 has a fixed morality rate of 6% in all symptomatic cases? He cited the Lancet, but his Lancet link did not state the thing he stated at all.

    It seems needlessly fear inducing.

    Here's a counter source (media: https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/16/lower-coronavirus-death-rate-estimates/ paper: https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-17453/v1) showing that upon proper calculation, the symptomatic fatality rates in China varied with age, 0.5% ages 15-44, 2.7% for over 64s, with the higher end of the standard confidence interval still only 4.7%. Quite the opposite of what Graydon said: upon carefully calculating for a cohort, the numbers were lower. And that's China.

    I'm not trying to downplay, by the way. I live in Texas and my family are coming to full quarantine this week, and I do buy some estimate of mass death and am advising friends and family of such. But, yeah, Graydon is way beyond the pale.

    510:

    6% is just one of the numbers Graydon has given, and apparently for "ease of mental arithmetic". But if you don't want to read Graydons posts I suggest installing the "blog killfile" plugin for your browser. A bunch of us use it to avoid the many-named one and it works quite well.

    511:

    Article below gives a reasonable explanation of the problem discussed above. We'll only know the actual infection rate once testing becomes widespread, so right now we can count (most of) the deaths but only guess the infection rate.

    There is a disturbing flipside to the fatality rate being lower than initially reported: each death implies a much greater number of circulating infections. Most COVID-19 deaths occur at least two weeks after infection. So a single death today means that around 100 people were already infected two weeks ago, and that number has likely increased exponentially to several hundred by today.

    The implication is stark. We cannot wait until multiple people die in a COVID-19 cluster before enforcing extreme containment measures. By then the outbreak will already be extremely large and challenging to manage.

    https://theconversation.com/the-coronavirus-looks-less-deadly-than-first-reported-but-its-definitely-not-just-a-flu-133526

    512:

    Re: Dentists

    At least two teenage contemporaries of my son are now in self isolation because one or both parents returned from that conference. Also my kids' routine dental appointments for tomorrow have been cancelled.

    In a more personal impact, the homeless shelter I work at is not accepting any new entrants, and one of the people currently here is now in 'isolation' in one of the dorm(ish) rooms due to flu like symptoms. Twice on tonight's shift I have had to ask him to return to his room.

    This presents a difficult moral question. If a symptomatic person refuses to self-isolate and continues to endanger the (immune compromised) people around him, do we turn him out? That isn't a solution as being homeless will not lead to a good outcome generally and I cannot look in the mirror again this lifetime if I turn someone out into the cold with the flu. Mental illness is a factor in this as well, also empathy.

    That said, this person has not been abroad or much of anywhere in a long time and likely just has the run of the mill flu. Nonetheless, the situation has gone very quickly from abstract to concrete in my direct personal experience.

    513:

    Bill Arnold 1] That undocumented / non-symptomatic transmission is the real worry, isn't it? Meaning that those people are immune carriers, or similar - if true then stopping the spread is impossible & we will have to live & die with the results. 2] "Oxford statistician" etc .... SNARL If you are going to do that ... perhaps you would care to translate it into English, so that we can understand it? Assuming, of course that there actually is some content in there, which is a dubious proposition. 3] Thanks for that short rundown on the various types of corona virus - gives some useful background

    mdive "No end to the coronavirus battle" - horribly afraid this is correct. In which case, one almost is inclined to "lie back & enjoy it" - provided, of course your personal fitness/overall health etc is up to the struggle. Um. As I may have mentioned, I have a very mild sniffle - which vanishes as soon as I go outdoors & start walking/gardening etc - the Boss thinks I'm becoming affected by mild hay fever ( She's taking antihistamines for the abundant tree-pollen - yes this early ) OTOH, I could be a completely blind carrier, couldn't I? Are those completely asymptomatic carriers those who are the guaranteed survivors is the next question?

    moz This is what I've been saying, actually ... Let's suppose the death rate is 6% - for over 70's, but lower for younger ... But (see above) we STILL haven't faintest bleeding idea or clue what the real infection &/or carrier rate is, do we? For total numbers, you have to multiply those together - & it's going to reduce the fatality numbers, but (again) we do not know by how much. That link you provided is (more-or-less) what I've been arguing. The "CFR" depends on the number of those infected & with "blind" crriers, you simply cannot do the calculation, can you?

    LAST thought for this post: This disease is the direct result of human arrogant, greedy stupidity [ Chinese "wet" markets, with non-food animals being used for food, isn't it? Even if the other reservoir is the usual one: Chickens. ] We have done it to ourselves.

    514:

    This is not aimed at you, but at people who don't know it.

    While I think that Thatcher was wrong to abolish the Common Cold Research unit, it had made essentially damn-all progress since its creation - it wasn't just that it was too much trouble, it couldn't find a vaccine that was even remotely plausible. I lived near it, and its work was a mainstay of the local rag. As you say, we might be able to do better now, but the incentive isn't there.

    But, even if you have a vaccine, they don't always help much. Immunity may not last long and they may be dangerous in themselves. Norovirus, rabies and TAB (not an anti-viral) spring to mind.

    515:

    I do wish that a few people would learn that Africa is (a) a continent with more human variation (social as well as genetic) than the rest of the world put together and (b) sub-Saharan Africa is very different from anywhere else, in ways that surprise almost every outsider. I am an outsider, too, but am aware of that. I doubt his prediction, for social reasons.

    516:

    Brilliant - Not... Now when everyone who can is working remotely the internet in Stockholm and eastern Sweden goes down. Working in helpdesk so a million calls about no network atm...

    It's slowly coming back but still not 100% capacity

    517:

    Going off on a bit of a tangent. . "‘Go home!’: Mel Brooks and son Max share a comedic PSA on the coronavirus." https://bit.ly/39YWVZP

    518:

    Herd immunuty treshold (HIT)

    För influenza, it is up to 44% of the population. (flu is not related to COVID19) For Ebola it was up to 60%. For pretty much all other disease, it is in the eighties. Source: Herr Doktor Wiki. Bojo is gambling on COVID19 being a strain with a low HIT. Since I do not believe in miracles, I think the English (but not the Scotsmen) are pretty fucked. . My savings are taking a beating, but I take comfort in the backers of Bojo and Trump losing even more money. . Eventually, some of them will realise they backed the wrong horse, and order their proxies/ politicians who want campaign donations/ catamites to pull the plug on the incompetents. I hope I am alive by then.

    519:

    Charle’s blog is apparently social media according to NHS practitioners?

    at least for the ACE debate, which has been trying to answer the coronavirus “ACEI (......pril) vs ARB (losartan)” question.

    From UK GP newsletter

    “ GPs should continue treatment with ACE inhibitors and ARBs, the Council on Hypertension of the European Society of Cardiology...said: ‘Because of the social media-related amplification, patients taking these drugs for their high blood pressure and their doctors have become increasingly concerned....have stopped taking their ACE-I or ARB medications.’.....strongly recommend that physicians and patients should continue treatment with their usual anti-hypertensive therapy because there is no clinical or scientific evidence to suggest that treatment with ACEi or ARBs should be discontinued because of the Covid-19 infection.’ “

    Hot-topic as I noticed the DT today has a front page (scare)story on ibuprofen and Cov-19, “ Experts question official NHS advice over ibuprofen and coronavirus People with mild symptoms urged to avoid anti-inflammatory drugs after French health minister, neurologist, Olivier Veran’s warning “ so ACE does need watching.

    For protective family health here in Italy we are taking (Boots) delayed slow-release Vit-C & Zinc, and local Vit-D drops or nasal spray. I did ask in the local pharma for co-codamol, but the shop went into panic mode until I apologised for being a mad foreigner. Italy mostly uses C22H28N2O5 ketoprofen lysine as their NSAID of choice, ‘aspirin for horses’

    Spring is here, everyone around has light ‘cold’ symptoms from increasing pollen levels. We have not only Italian bidets but I just bought a €230 Japanese toilet replacement seat, so have bypassed any potential loo-roll calamity, life continues, “Andrà Tutto Bene” is written on balconies. Prosecco is still available.

    520: 442 - And indeed there are people (I think journalists and "healthcare managers") who seem to think that a Covid-19 test is some sort of "silver bullet" rather than a confirmation of diagnosis (based on hearing/seeing interviews). 479 - What is a surprise is that his horse isn't wearing a traffic cone too! 486 - I feel your pain; I'm having similar conversations (and that's not considering BoZo's daily waffle) 509 - You might want to "killfile" me too, because I'll also choose approximations to $number "because they're easier to work with than actual $number is".
    521:

    moz @503,

    Yup. Similar here 300 klicks down the road.

    As it happens, my brother works as a "casual" (but really PPT) shelf stacker at a small Coles Supermarket. He has some interesting tales from the last fortnight, and especially from the last 3-4 days.

    Tonight the ENTIRE CHAIN (we're talking country-wide) is closing earlier than normal, and bringing in every available stacker for as long as they are willing to work to try to get the stores looking as normal as possible. Then tomorrow every store that isn't legally restricted is opening an hour earlier than normal, with entry restricted to Seniors (which includes yours truly) and disabled customers so they can beat the crush. The other really big chain is doing the same.

    I believe they're going to repeat this exercise for several days in a row.

    522:

    Hmm, my wife has been taking paracetemol daily (4 doses) for nearly 20 years as (some) pain relief from osteo-arthritis - its not clear what alternative options could be used over that period of time. Co-codamol in the UK comes with a warning about not taking the full dose for more than 3 days due to risk of addiction.

    523:

    What is a surprise is that his horse isn't wearing a traffic cone too!

    Sometimes it does but the horse's ears get in the way. It requires either a traffic cone with holes hacked in the base to accommodate the ears or one of the very big highway/motorway cones which are bloody heavy and not normally used in city centres.

    524:

    The universities in the UK are moving to 100% online for lectures, seminars, exams (apart from finals). Following on from this some of them are telling their students to 'go home now' for the rest of the academic year. One effect is that a proportion of students wont have arranged their next years accommodation (typically a room in a shared private sector flat), which in turn means having to move all of their stuff back home, which generally rules out public transport. In my case this will involve 2 x 500 mile car journeys - heres hoping there are still some hotels open !

    525:

    Well, most of them are. I know one lecturer who is being prevented from delivering lectures because someone in the uni doesn't like paying for software licenses.

    526:

    Re: ' ... and I cannot look in the mirror again this lifetime if I turn someone out into the cold with the flu.'

    Yeah - this entire situation is the trolley car problem writ large except this is for real and because this is real life we're not constrained to only one of two ethically/emotionally unacceptable solutions. I think this is where one looks for a work-around.

    The only plus side I can see for now is if you can still feel this way, you haven't burnt out your humanity. Take care.

    527:

    THIS POST includes "Imperial's" short version of what might or might not work And also emphasises the uncertainties, because we don't know the absolute base numbers. Oh yes: "The social and economic effects of the measures which are needed to achieve this policy goal will be profound."

    One way of putting it.

    528:

    Dear host, might you please ban Graydon from this thread for repeatedly stating that Covid-19 has a fixed morality rate of 6% in all symptomatic cases?

    • Thinks hard *

    Who am I going to ban, person I've known in IRL for most of 20 years, or random first-time occasional not-personally-recognized poster calling for a regular to be banned, when the ban hammer hereabouts is generally wielded for abuse/trolling rather than honest disagreement?

    Do you really want to find out?

    529:

    So New Zealand is reacting big, with a stimulus package amounting to 4% of GDP (3 to 4 times bigger than what Australia/UK/Ireland/Singapore are doing according to article).

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/17/new-zealand-launches-massive-spending-package-to-combat-covid-19

    530:

    Meanwhile, out in the big room with the blue ceiling and the daylight-spectrum eye-burny illumination source ...

    I went out an hour ago (had an unavoidable errand to run in Edinburgh city centre that required in-person attendance).

    Observations: footfall in one of the busiest shopping streets in the UK was about what you'd expect on Christmas or New Year's day, i.e. when everything is closed.

    At 1:30pm -- lunch hour peak -- there were no queues in the flagship MacDonald's just round the corner from Prince's Street. I mean, people were using the touchscreen ordering terminals and some hardy souls were eating in ... but there were no queues.

    At 1:40pm, my bank (which usually has a 5-10 person queue for counter service at that time of day) had a 2 person queue. And a member of staff in gloves and with a disinfectant bottle making the rounds of the touchscreen ATMs more or less constantly.

    Discretionary (non-food) retail appears to be a disaster zone right now.

    En route home today I paused at the local off-license. The range of beers on sale -- especially foreign ones -- is down drastically. In particular, all the best German imports have already vanished: I don't think they'll be coming back. They're promoting their home delivery service, which I think I'll be making use of to a modest degree (due to avoiding pubs: haven't been in one for 10 days and counting at this point). Assuming they stay in business and there's anything left worth drinking, that is.

    I have to go out again tomorrow (again: non-avoidable) and will be diverting into the Sketcher's store on my way home to grab a spare pair of shoes. (They wear out fast but they fit well and don't hurt or otherwise damage my dodgy foot: current pair won't last more than 2-3 months and I'm not willing to gamble on the store still being in business when I absolutely need to replace them.)

    Rumours are circulating that the supermarket chains and wholesalers have put their crash-out-brexit contingency plans into operation early to cope with the panic buying/shutdown. This fits with what I've seen.

    I indulged in some guesstimating/back-of-the-envelope brainstorming this morning.

    I suspect the UK is looking at a 5-10% contraction in the economy this year, before we hit the cliff-edge at the end of the Brexit transition period.

    Earlier I was comparing things to 2008, but then I got to thinking about 1979-81 (when Thatcher swung the axe and the UK economy last shrank by 10% in a year). Now I'm thinking 1933 is more like it.

    (That unavoidable in-person errand? Was re-distributing my savings/pension pot so that (a) my wife can get hold of it if I'm incapacitated and/or without going through probate, and (b) to ensure I have better financial protection in event of a certain major bank collapsing. Which should tell you how happy and confident I'm feeling today.)

    531:

    PS: I have very much got a phony war feeling right now. Yes, I know the Dow Jones is down about 30% from its peak, and sterling is in the tank (at about $1.22 to the £1.00 GBP) but I think this could be the calm before the storm hits. Friday afternoon markets are going to be wild as they project the epidemiology reports forward into the next week's trading.

    In particular, Conservative (British) government policy on how to protect the economy isn't so much brain-dead as simply missing in action. I mean, it's not there. They're not ordering hospitality/restaurants/pubs/theaters to close, so they're hanging those businesses out to dry without top cover/insurance guarantees. They're barely stirring on sick pay. I can see the economy cratering simply through neglect.

    532:

    Don't know the name, so don't know how reputable to consider it, but apparently Capital Economics is predicting the UK economy to shrink 15% in the next 3 months.

    One one hand sounds alarmist/exaggerating, but with most retail effectively closed even if they are currently keeping the physical stores open it does make one wonder if they might be close for at least the rest of the year.

    533:

    Hurrah for prudence!

    Here in Kitchener-Waterloo, the hospital parking lot across the way from me is unusually full for the second day; the hospital attached to the parking lot has the regional cancer treatment centre, and between the full lot and the various patient transfer ambulances in a steady stream, I would guess that there's been some planning going on and that the other hospital has been designated for the the COVID-19 cases while this one gets filled up with the everything else.

    I have a package coming in from Hong Kong; DHL is still shipping as though the times have not altered. The stuff on the boat from Boundless Voyage, well, not going to take any large bets on that one.

    534:

    moz 510: thanks, good idea!

    boss 528: I didn't know you knew him in person. Why would I? Still, glad you took a look, happy with the verdict. Thanks!

    535:

    I've mentioned this before but a number of insurance companies are quite likely to go bust if they end up having to pay out for event cancellation clauses in the insurance policies wise organisers take up before they sell any tickets, book venues, sign contracts with performers etc. The premiums are based on the likelihood of one or two policy-holders out of dozens or hundreds having something happen to prevent their particular event going ahead which means a payout or two in a given season. The current situation means that pretty much every policyholder will make claims for cancellation.

    God knows how much Glastonbury is insured for but it's not likely the premiums were even 1% of the expected ticket take, and there are a lot more events like that where ticket refunds will be demanded, set builders will want their invoices paid etc.

    536:

    There was some minor political figure in the States going on about how everyone should ignore the bans on gatherings, restaurant shutdown orders, etc. because they're an attack on capitalism.

    They're not actually wrong; a pandemic is not suitable circumstances for capitalism, and acting like there's a pandemic on will shut down the capitalism. Used to be there was a "until capitalism may resume" set of in-extremis social rules available, but I really don't see those being able to operate today. The general response I'm seeing amounts to "socialism could have happened at any time; the entire economy is bullshit" as data caps get lifted and evictions get banned rather than "an emergency abeyance of normal times". (With a side of "let the weak die, I want capitalism more than I want to avoid excess deaths")

    The Phony War was a sort of "oh god not again/really/do we have to?" thing; everybody involved had a really clear idea what war to the knife among industrial states was like, and they didn't want to, and they really didn't want to with strategic bombing, but there was a mental context. It's seeming really unclear today there's a soul in the halls of power in the Anglosphere who can deal with the idea of something that you can't delay, can't bribe, and which is immune to the exercise of power.

    The skills exist; the context absolutely does exist. There's a bunch of good examples going on. Whether we get policy there fast enough is something I'm carefully not thinking about.

    537:

    Re: ' ...emphasises the uncertainties, because we don't know the absolute base numbers.'

    Yes as many folks have already commented on this blog.

    So because I want my loved ones (plus 21st century society, i.e., tech/sci/arts, etc. and myself) to stick around for more than the next few months, I'm going to:

    Prepare for the worst and hope for the best.*

    *Yeah, I know Disraeli was a Tory who got priorities bass-ackward hence the need to flip his quote.

    538:

    One big unmet problem is that the kids these days aren't talking with these elders. Instead, they're trying to reinvent what they've already done...from scratch.

    That sounds rather familiar. Good to know young people haven't changed that much since I was young… :-)

    539:

    "It's a VIRUS "There must be some form of immunisation, surely? "( However, remembers "Common Cold" ... um, errr )"

    AIUI the problem with that thing is not that you don't get immunity - you must do, so as to be able to get it out of your system at all - but that there's a constantly changing pool of craploads of minor variations so whatever defence you develop against one of them is uselessly out of date almost immediately.

    Yes. And there are a lot. Back in the 80s when I was flying it was estimated there are 400 variations of the common cold. I and my boss had non stop colds due to flying in closed tubes 2 or 3 times per week. For the last 20 years or more I rarely get a cold as I've had most of the variations. But now I'm starting to get more. And I suspect it is from the pool to have mutated enough that my old immune reposes are seeing more and more new things.

    540:

    whitroth @ 450: Ellen and I nearly died reading that.

    Wait, Aldi's got MiG welders in the weird aisle? I may have to go there this week....

    Note that if we need O2, we've got it. You can tell we're a great match - once she moved in, last year, this house had two oxy-acetelyne welding rigs.

    Yeah, my first response (before I realized it was a joke) was, "I already have a MIG welder. What I need is another bottle of inert gas."

    I haven't done oxy-acetelyne welding in years, so I didn't think of industrial oxygen as a source, but wouldn't you need a special regulator (plus some kind of filtering system) to step the pressure down to where you could safely breathe it?

    541:

    The climbing forum I frequent is full of people trying to rationalise why driving half way across the country to climb hills doesn't count as inessential travel.

    I suspect that in about a week they will stop trying to bargain.

    542:

    In the US they outlawed the one anti-hystamine which works well.

    Outlawed or made it a behind the counter?

    In the US a lot of over the counter drugs that could be turned into meth were made that you could buy them but only one package at a time and you had to show an ID. Didn't stop people from buying multiple if they wanted to visit multiple stores with multiple IDs but made it much more of a hassle so the local drug cooker couldn't go in the buy 20 packages at a time.

    543:

    if they're US based.

    Most big pharma defines multi-national these days. Hard to pin down just what US based might mean.

    544:

    One thing that is relevant is that these old codgers have been community activists since the 80s and 90s, so they're effectively the community elders who helped mold places (and parks) into what they are now.

    Ah, not here. Around here they want things to go back 20 years or more. Because everyone wants a split level house with a phone on the kitchen wall, tv in the basement where the kids spend all their time, dad works, mom doesn't, etc....

    And if you try and explain that just maybe things have changed they get very upset.

    545:

    There was some minor political figure in the States going on about how everyone should ignore the bans on gatherings, restaurant shutdown orders, etc. because they're an attack on capitalism.

    Devin Nunes, Republican congressclutter from California, most notorious for stifling discussion of the Trump/Russia connection (he chaired the House Intelligence Committee) and trying to sue a fictional cow on twitter (he's a happy SLAPPer -- that's Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, which is a pretty shitty intimidatory tactic usually deployed by corporations who don't like grass-roots activists.

    It's seeming really unclear today there's a soul in the halls of power in the Anglosphere who can deal with the idea of something that you can't delay, can't bribe, and which is immune to the exercise of power.

    The Scottish government is going better than the UK-level administration so far, but has limited maneuvering room and suffers from the usual problem of being lead by a recycled lawyer. (An energetic and not-obviously-corrupt one, which is good, but still: bargaining.)

    546:

    We're back in the age of sail.

    No wireless, no weather forecasting, stock spare spars and cordage, provision as well as you can, and then whatever comes over the horizon you have to deal. Help the distressed, because someday that will be you.

    Prosperity has been created on this basis before. I expect it's going to be an extremely lumpy cognitive transition.

    547:

    (It's a fairly effective decongestant.)

    Yep. On my last flight after mostly getting over the flu I forgot to take some. And got to experience that fun of a clogged Eustachian tube while on a flight. Something I had been able to miss for over 20 years.

    It did not get to the level of me getting a sharp instrument out and plunging it into my ear but almost.

    548:

    Greg Tingey @ 458: JBS @ 426
    See the mod's comments @ 380 regarding that, please?
    Sometrhing 'orrible happened with the count - it was correct when I made it!

    I just found it amusing that after the Mods fixed the problem it changed the numbering so that your complaint was pointing back at one of your own posts.

    For your edification, re "Allotment"
    HERE is the wiki page
    Here is a UK history - other internal links are useful from there ...
    With the exception of Onions ( Which I'm trying to remedy this year ... ) I basically don't buy vegetables - I grow all my own.
    Benefits: exercise, fresh air, healthy food, also really fresh, of varieties I want to eat, not what the commercial growers want to pass off on me & some things you simply cannot buy in any shop that I know of.
    I don't even buy jam, as I have enough fruit to make all my own, too.
    I went down there today, checked that the first row of peas are just showing their shoots, put the last set of Broad-Bean seeds in, lifted a few Leeks to add to those in the fridge & noted that one Asparagus shoot is up [ 4-5 weeks early! ]

    Pretty much what I had already figured out.

    549:

    One warning; pseudoephedrine (and ephedrine, and crystal meth ...) is absolutely terrible if you have hypertension: it's a hard "nope" unless you want to stroke out early.

    550:

    Senate minority leader Ev Dirksen was known for his rumpled appearance and disheveled hair

    One of the best jokes I've heard in a while (riffing on a popular beer commercial running on TV in the US lately) was:

    Hello, I'm Bernie Sanders. I rarely comb my hair but when I do I use a balloon.

    551:

    Or "Sheriff" David Clarke; see tweet text (tweet since deleted) at #417. That might be the one Graydon is referring to. (I might be on G's ignore list; that comment was in part a ping to G.) The game has shifted in the US - the Very Serious Persons are now uniformly all-in on measures to reduce R0; numbers for results of these actions start becoming clearer in in a few weeks. And (this caused quite a few smiles(/anger) in the US), DJT is really angry with his son-in-law: “There’s No Boogeyman He Can Attack”: Angry at Kushner, Trump Awakens to the COVID-19 Danger - For weeks, Trump and his son-in-law saw the novel coronavirus mostly as a media and political problem. But the spiraling cases, plunging markets, and a Mar-a-Lago cluster finally opened eyes. (Gabriel Sherman, March 16, 2020) Sources say a principal target of his anger is Jared Kushner. “I have never heard so many people inside the White House openly discussed how pissed Trump is at Jared,” the former West Wing official said. Sources told me Trump is regretting that Kushner swooped into the coronavirus response last week. Kushner, according to sources, encouraged Trump to treat the emergency as a P.R. problem when Fauci and others were calling for aggressive action.

    552:

    Charlie Actually the big slump hit monetarily in 1929-31, but the after efects, such as large-scale manufacturing appeared in '31-33 - it then lasted un well into the late 30's - until Chamberlian's re-armament stimulus in 1938-9 in fact. And our economy is still going to better off than the US one, certainly until any prospective 2020 election is over. And are any of the other European countries going to be in siginifcantly better shape? Certainly not France or Italy ... We're all in this together, brexshiteer lunacy notwithstanding.

    Graydon Not quite Freight ships will still "sail", provded the cres test "clean" before they start. We still have "instant" e-comms ( thoug there was a major hiccup/spike with most of the phones being down for a couple of hours this morning. Weather forecasting depends on satellites & big computers in clean rooms, so that's ok, too. But, it's going to be a royal p.i.t.a.

    553:

    This disease is the direct result of human arrogant, greedy stupidity [ Chinese "wet" markets, with non-food animals being used for food, isn't it? Even if the other reservoir is the usual one: Chickens. ] We have done it to ourselves.

    Here you go. Take 1.3 billion people living in what we would consider poverty with a few million living middle class or above. With maybe 100K at west world standards of living. Barely.

    Now bring them up to more modern standards without boot stomping on all social customs that have existed for 2000 years. Do it in 20 to 30 years.

    There will be a few odd things that get left that cause problems.

    554:

    Now when everyone who can is working remotely the internet in Stockholm and eastern Sweden goes down.

    Guess what world wide company's collaboration tool buckled yesterday due to the increased load?

    Teams. So people who WERE at their office but trying to to the normal teams meeting now got to go down the street and meet with people in person. [eyeroll]

    555:

    Nojay @ 471: One question I have that doesn't seem to have a good answer on the Internets -- what over-the-counter drugs will help ameliorate the symptomatic effects of SARS-CoV-2? I've seen a lot of "Himayalan zinc will protect you!" and assorted homeopathic/New Wavey suggestions up to but not limited to pureed kale enemas but I'm looking for recommendations to get people over the hump of spending two weeks with fever, coughing, muscle pains etc. Sure there's the basic standard of remaining hydrated and eating healthy, assuming you have suitable food in the house, energy drinks and the like but what will make the experience less unpleasant and hopefully aid recovery after the infection has gone.

    Just a SWAG, but I expect NSAIDs and whatever other OTC treatments that are used to alleviate flu symptoms.

    One of the things I've read about that kills the elderly is COVID19 has a marked tendency to develop into pneumonia. I'm still wondering if the pneumonia vaccination I got will help prevent that from happening if I do get sick?

    556:

    The ordinary welding regulator will do. The principal concern is limiting the flow rate, so it's delivering enough to be useful but not too much and wasting it. It's pretty hard to accidentally make a mask that doesn't start lifting off your face long before you're at risk of bursting. The usual things like they tie on your face in the back of the ambulance leak like fury and there's no chance of any pressure building up.

    Gasdive will be the one to ask about contaminants, but it seems to me that anything which is inert to high pressure oxygen will also be inert as far as the body is concerned.

    557:

    I was not referring to the actual means of ocean transport!

    We're used to being able to confidently plan a few years out. We're losing that in pretty much every respect, and are back in a metaphorical age of sail where "what came over the metaphorical horizon today?" is also the planning horizon.

    It's been done, it's entirely doable, but it's a major change in expectation.

    558:

    I might be on G's ignore list

    Haven't got an ignore list, but I do miss things!

    559:

    Yes. And there are a lot. Back in the 80s when I was flying it was estimated there are 400 variations of the common cold. Upwards of 100 of them are rhinoviruses. What's Causing My Cold? (May 08, 2019) - Rhinovirus. This bunch is most active in early fall, spring, and summer. They cause 10%-40% of colds. You'll feel plenty miserable when you catch one, but the good news is they rarely make you seriously sick. - Coronavirus. These tend to do their dirty work in the winter and early spring. The coronavirus is the cause of about 20% of colds. There are more than 30 kinds, but only three or four affect people. - RSV and parainfluenza. These viruses cause 20% of colds. They sometimes lead to severe infections, like pneumonia, in young children Encouraging story though about resistance.

    560:

    DO NOT USE NSAIDS. See Charlie above.

    561:

    Lockdown now in Paris. This morning food stores were swamped, some of them having regulated queues , others in free-for-all mode. From 12:00 onward, anybody going outside must be able to produce a silly self-printed or hand-written "attestation de déplacement dérogatoire" stating your motive for being out, dated,signed with full name, address and date of birth. Adding drawings, writing with crayons do not make these things invalid. Failure to produce it to any policeman or soldier: 35 to 135 euros fine.

    562:

    So hotel chains are starting furlough employees and close entire hotels, and UK auto plants are halting production for at least 2 weeks due to drops in demand and supply chain issues.

    The ripples are spreading.

    563:

    Whew! :-)

    For those who haven't read it, the Imperial College document is a model of how to communicate to recalcitrant government officials. (Guessing it was intentional.) There are reports that it had an effect on both the UK and US governments. The models are almost cartoonish/drawn in crayon(/sharpie) but they communicate the problems well.

    Diagrams. Lots of them. Impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to reduce COVID19 mortality and healthcare demand (16 March 2020) Our results show that the alternative relatively short-term (3-month) mitigation policy option might reduce deaths seen in the epidemic by up to half, and peak healthcare demand by two-thirds. The combination of case isolation, household quarantine and social distancing of those at higher risk of severe outcomes (older individuals and those with other underlying health conditions) are the most effective policy combination for epidemic mitigation.

    564:

    Charlie Stross @ 490: Ahem: sudafed (aka pseudoephedrine) is a precursor to methamphetamine, but it's not an anti-histamine at all. (It's a fairly effective decongestant.)

    Yeah, you can buy all the [brand-name OTC] allergy medicines you want, it's the [[brand-name OTC] allergy medicine plus Decongestant that they keep behind the pharmacy counter & you have to sign your life away to get.

    And oh frabulous joy ... we're heading into the seasonal allergy months around here and guess what the symptoms are?

    I do have seasonal allergies, (David L will love this one ... I'm allergic to pine tree pollen) and the symptoms are just like the flu (sniffles, sneezing, runny nose & cough) except for there's no high fever. Hadn't thought of that yet. I usually take the 12 hour timed release once a day from early April to late May. Can't take the 24 hour one because it gives me heart palpitations.

    565:

    In general I'm generally drug averse unless my doc prescribes it. I take OTC when I must.

    I'm the odd duck who usually doesn't take anything for a headache because I want to know why I have it and what I've done to make it go away. Now when/if I'm seeing stars, that's different.

    And then I do weird things like look it up on wikipedia then follow the references.

    566:

    I keep jumping up and down - you don't have to sign for zinc gluconate (and please ignore the idiocy of CVS' marketdroids, who think it's "homeopathic" - it's not, it's clinically proven.)

    567:

    Re: 'Hard to pin down just what US based might mean.'

    I was thinking J and J ... they're huge and self-describe as 'US'-based. On the plus side - looks like they're acting responsibly in stomping down on some of the circulating hype about another of their HIV drugs.

    https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/j-j-repurposed-hiv-med-prezista-s-chances-as-covid-19-treatment-unsubstantiated

    568:

    Hey, Charlie - I just saw an article about the second recipient of the HIV vaccine is still showing zero signs of the disease at 2 years.

    Oh, and is COVID-19 a ferocious variant of cold viruses? If so, should it be called a hippovirus, rathar than a rhinovirus?

    Just asking....

    569:

    [quote]You can simultaneously donate blood and get tested. That's a great bargain in terms of time and effort![/quote] It's a great idea if it's true. Perhaps it's true in some places, but at one point Politifact had that listed as "Fake news". The testing kits are in extremely short supply. And I ran across an article about deactivating coronaviruses in blood by heating it up to 60C for an hour.

    So I tend to think it's probably not true.

    570:

    I don't want to imagine what Apple would do to the Star Wars franchise. Baby Yoda using an iPhone?

    571:

    Worked for a guy for about a year who is a consulting systems architect for large businesses. He had a well-developed and startlingly effective "let me draw you this in crayon" routine.

    I suspect that it's a taught skill, and Imperial College seems to have hauled in their leading practitioner for that report.

    572:

    On the other hand, sitting there on a subway platform, with her arm around his leg (he was on the top of the back) and both on their mobiles is not socializing.

    573:

    JBS .... kills the elderly is COVID19 has a marked tendency to develop into pneumonia Yup - so, if your heart-lung system is up & functioning well - & in my case you can't do some of the dances we do without having a really good oxy-pumping system in your lungs - then you might get it, you will feel like shit, but it won't kill you. If you are a smoker, or have asthma, or .. then your chances do not look so good.

    But, as remarked elsewhere, even if the total Death Rate is "only" 0.5%, we are still going to lose an extra 300 000 people, maybe.

    574:

    David L will love this one ... I'm allergic to pine tree pollen

    When I got into my car Sunday I notice it had started. My white car was green tinted. To the extend that the wipers made piles of dry pollen at the corners of the window. And this is just how it starts. There are days where you can talk about depth of pollen on flat surfaces. If lucky it lasts for 2 weeks and rain washes most of it off. On heavy years it can last a month or more and you get to hose down everything you own that's outside. If you don't the evening moisture turns it into a green paste that hardens/stains EVERYTHING.

    575:

    At least one reasonable source claims that NSAIDs to ameliorate the fever of CORVID-19 will make the disease worse, and recommends acetaminophen (paracetamol). This is annoying, as acetaminophen doesn't help me at all at safe dosages. It specifically recommended against ibuprofen, but didn't specifically mention aspirin.

    576:

    It's undoubtedly inessential, but I can't see dispersed fresh-air activities in general being spreaders of infection. Like Greg's allotment. If he brings his own spade and doesn't go coughing over other allotments' vegetables I don't see the problem.

    It's occurred to me that now might be an ideal time to set to on my project to photograph the city centre from the same viewpoints as photographs from a hundred years ago I've found on local history sites. The principal difficulty in normal times is that the crowds do my head in; a secondary one is viewpoints which are now in the middle of roads. So avoiding people is a necessary part of the whole enterprise in any case, and with the place empty it's actually possible to do it.

    577:

    Closings.

    Governor announced today that all dine in food and drink had to shut down as of 5:00pm today. Take out and delivery was OK.

    I understand other states are doing the same.

    Here in NC there are 10 million people. More than a few will be out of work.

    And I get to go to an office today to do more on getting everyone to be able to work from home.

    578:

    "Go home! Go home!"

    https://2015.acmi.net.au/media/2821853/stalter-and-waldorf-blog.jpg

    Actually, I need to go out to the store for Ellen's lactose free milk, and some munchies....

    579:

    [shakes head] You can't use a tank without a regulator, unless you're going for flamethrower. With my old setup, I'd get the O2 down to 10 or 20 lbs of pressure. We'd waste it, of course, unless we turned it on to breath, then turned it off....

    580:

    Behind the counter, to sign for, don't need a scrip. But you can't, as my late wife and I could do around 1989, buy a bottle of about 200 little red pills.

    581:

    Just a SWAG, but I expect NSAIDs and whatever other OTC treatments that are used to alleviate flu symptoms.

    NO.

    Current advice is mixed, but avoid taking anti-inflammatories (corticosteroids, NSAIDs) for symptomatic relief of COVID19 -- there are indications that Ibuprofen exacerbates the lung inflammation.

    The pneumonia caused by COVID19 is not due to a secondary bacterial infection and thus not protected against by the current pneumonia vaccination.

    582:

    I wouldn't mind a phone on the kitchen wall, it would save space on top of the cookbook shelves. On the other hand, you've heard me rant against split-level designs, and if they want one, they're idiots.

    583:

    "corticosteroids"

    What happens if these are an ingredient of an inhaler for existing lung conditions? (eg. fluticasone (seems to work), beclometasone (doesn't really).)

    584:

    I have had to cancel my plan to go cycling in Skye, Lewis and Harris in April. Camping out. On my own. With the intention of avoiding as many people as possible. Mutter.

    585:

    Is that not colder than the moon with a side of unrelenting gales this time of year?

    586:

    Well I was able to cancel my 7 night stay in London an hour ago. It was due to start in 2 days. By waiting till the last minute I was able to rescue my 7 night certificate for use for up to a year from now.

    Of course to get there this week walking may have been the best path.

    587:

    Charlie there are indications that Ibuprofen exacerbates the lung inflammation. You what? But Ibuprofen is an anti-inflammatory ... so w.t.f. is happening here? Annoying, because I try to avoid Parcetamol & pankillers, if at all possible & use anti-inflammatories, if necessary. Um.

    588:

    Went into the office today and got my laptop updated with a bit of kit so I can use it from home. 3pm - message round from senior management - as of tomorrow, all staff who are able to work from home must now work from home until the all-clear...

    Fingers crossed, the bit of kit works...

    589:

    Yes. Handing out surplus 27" iMacs to employees of a client yesterday and today. They will at least be able to remote in and control their office computers. Email and such on the home one. But CAD is a PITA over internet WAN connections.

    Next step is a split VPN to allow them to work off both.

    590:

    [quote]I keep jumping up and down - you don't have to sign for zinc gluconate [/quote] Yes. And if you're zinc deficient it helps. But if you overdose on zinc you also hurt your immune reactions. And it's cumulative. So it takes a while to get over it.

    591:

    The Snopes link, which says what has been said elsewhere, is that inflammation is part of the body's immune system response and thus anti-inflammatorys end up compromising the effectiveness of the immune system.

    Charles H: Asprin is mentioned to be avoided as well, as it is also an anti-inflammatory (aka NSAID) like advil/ibuprofen/etc.

    592:

    Hmmm... having checked my cupboard I find I've got most of a box of co-codamol 500/30 left from when I pulled a muscle. (I don't like taking paracetamol (because of the liver toxicity) at the best of times and try not to exceed 25% of the recommended maximum daily dose.) GP prescribed a box of 100, which was almost certainly overkill given my usage.

    Work have finally said "anyone who can work from home should work from home", about a fortnight after I decided that was the safest move. (I tended to WFH when on-call anyway to reduce the response time if anything went wrong - and the current laptop can take 20 minutes (or rather longer) to boot up and connect due to its low spec and crap software load, so I hibernate it overnight.

    All I can do now is be extra careful and hope everybody else is OK.

    593:

    Simple answer, continue to use the inhaler.

    Non-simple answer - talk to your medical professional.

    There is no point stopping a drug because bad things might happen if you catch Covid-19 if instead you die because you aren't taking the medicine.

    More generally, if you are a person who is taking multiple drugs for various conditions consider keeping a list of what you take, with dosage and time of day, on you. That way if you end up in hospital you can quickly and accurately provide a record of your medications to the medical staff. Depending on how thorough you may want to be also include a list of any medical issues you are experiencing, and perhaps a list of your doctors.

    We did this for years with first my mother, and then my father, and it made the trips to the ER much simpler.

    594:

    Nah. No more than a bit chilly (*) and, by April, the gales are beginning to die down so it's mostly just solid rain :-) I am kitted out and prepared for such conditions, because they often occur even in July in the Highlands at 2,000' and up.

    (*) It may FEEL like Pluto, but that's only because of the pervasive dampness - essentially all my clothing is wool, which remains insulating under such conditions.

    595:

    But if you overdose on zinc you also hurt your immune reactions. This has been guiding my Zn intake over the last couple of weeks. Zinc - Fact Sheet for Health Professionals RDA (Recommended Daily Allowance) is 8mg for female adults, 11mg for male adults. Max 40mg/40mg female/male.

    (Also doing 2000-4000 IU Vitamin D. (50-100 micrograms) ATM. 4000 is the upper limit for adults.)

    596:

    It's a bit trickier to keep warm in Scotland than somewhere like canada because of the humidity but once you have the right gear it's not too bad.

    On balance I would rather have cold and wind than midges.

    597:

    Now, if anyone remembers what I post, when I give the whole spiel about zinc gluconate, it's MORE IS NOT BETTER. TAKE IT THREE TO FOUR TIMES A DAY, NOT MORE.

    Ok?

    598:

    On balance I would rather have cold and wind than midges.

    So say we all.

    (I am given to understand that midges and blackfly are not precisely the same thing, nor the noseeums, but the principle holds.)

    599:

    I admit I tend to forget that waiting for non-rainy weather in the UK is a bit like waiting for clear weather in the Cabot Strait.

    Very spoiled here by the Niagara peninsula for bike-trip purposes.

    600:

    For those who have't experienced the joys of the North:

    https://www.nfb.ca/film/blackfly/

    601:

    Just want to mention, since it keeps coming up: simple mortality rate is not a good indicator of the danger from this disease.

    The true mortality rate of COVID-19 does depend on age and comorbidities, but it also critically depends on available health care.

    Arguing about what the "true" mortality rate is at this point is kind of missing the point, in that it can only be known in retrospect based on how we respond to the virus in our local community.

    Just to give a bit of data here, the crude fatality rate as of the original WHO China report (I believe it's been updated, with higher numbers) was 3.4%. Keep in mind that this includes the extraordinary measures China took in Wuhan to expand the health system, which included rushing 40,000 health care workers into the region. China also has very widespread testing now, but did not at the beginning of the crisis (obviously).

    The fatality rate in South Korea is currently about 1%. South Korea is doing extremely widespread testing, and hence has discovered vast numbers of cases in young, asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic people. But also, critically, because of containment their health system is not overwhelmed and they're finding cases early. (Also as a technical point, the 1% is based on the current known cases and the current deaths, but deaths are offset from infection by weeks).

    But we can't, from this data, just say that the true fatality rate is 1%. The reason is the other lesson from China: the hospitalization rate was 20%. Most of these cases don't need ventilators, but they did need oxygen or other assistance.

    If medical treatment was not available due to overload, your personal chance of dying of the disease wouldn't just be based on the South Korea numbers, or the Wuhan or Italy numbers. It would critically depend on your chance of receiving competent hospital care if you need it, locally.

    Even young people with no comorbidities need hospital care with this disease. I don't know how common it is, but it happens.

    602:

    I had to do my grocery shopping today. I didn't have all of the food I need to carry me over to next week, so I went ahead. I especially needed milk so I can take my medications. Add non-fat dry milk to the list of items out of stock.

    I did stock up, so I don't think I'll need to go out next Tuesday. Not panic buying, but buying stuff that will tide me over if I become really house bound.

    Had one "encounter" with a selfish Millennial asshole son-of-a-bitch! Fortunately for me I was several feet back & he was facing the other way when he coughed all over the shelf of salsa. Didn't even try to cover his mouth. I didn't need salsa, but I wouldn't have bought it anyway after that. Still, he put it in the air I have to breathe.

    I don't have a face mask, & I figured wearing my cartridge respirator was probably over-doing it. I did put on a bandana so I can wear it "cowboy train robber" style & I wore disposable gloves.

    For the foreseeable future, I won't have to go out of the house again except to walk the dog.

    603:

    I just went out to pick a few things up, too. Now, I have to say that the traffic was like I expect it the day after the Rapture, much lighter, easierr to find parking....

    On the other hand, we're Americans. We OVERREACT more than anyone else in history has ever done!!! I went to a second supermarket, since there was no milk other than skim at the first.

    604:

    Just to give a bit of data here, the crude fatality rate as of the original WHO China report (I believe it's been updated, with higher numbers) was 3.4%.

    As of right now, the JHU tracker shows for China the following:

    Total confirmed cases: 81,058 Total recovered: 68,798 Total deaths: 3,230

    That leaves a tad over 9,000 unresolved. The identified cases are hardly growing at all, and I'd think that it wouldn't be overly optimistic to expect most of the unresolved ones to recover.

    605:

    What happens if these are an ingredient of an inhaler for existing lung conditions?

    Continue to use your prescribed medication whatever happens, until a doctor un-prescribes it. Preferably one who is aware of your medical history and can balance out the risks inherent in pursuing various treatment strategies (because no medical treatment is guaranteed 100% risk free).

    (That's my understanding of advice.)

    Messages are mixed: Ireland now says "ignore advice to avoid NSAIDs and corticosteroids", France says "avoid", WHO says "safety picture is unclear -- insufficient data".

    606:

    Transmission spread -

    Some good visuals describing spread via contacts including how much damage one person can do (Korea's Case #31).

    https://graphics.reuters.com/CHINA-HEALTH-SOUTHKOREA-CLUSTERS/0100B5G33SB/index.html

    607:

    alexhewat @ 521: _moz_ @503,

    Yup. Similar here 300 klicks down the road.

    As it happens, my brother works as a "casual" (but really PPT) shelf stacker at a small Coles Supermarket. He has some interesting tales from the last fortnight, and especially from the last 3-4 days.

    Tonight the ENTIRE CHAIN (we're talking country-wide) is closing earlier than normal, and bringing in every available stacker for as long as they are willing to work to try to get the stores looking as normal as possible. Then tomorrow every store that isn't legally restricted is opening an hour earlier than normal, with entry restricted to Seniors (which includes yours truly) and disabled customers so they can beat the crush. The other really big chain is doing the same.

    I believe they're going to repeat this exercise for several days in a row.

    While I was doing my shopping this afternoon I overheard one of the young men who works there telling someone he'd just moved in to a new apartment, but his roommate wouldn't be able to move in until July and he didn't know how he was going to afford the rent until then. He said it was fortunate the store has told him and his coworkers they can work all the overtime they are willing to work. I didn't get the impression that even with the overtime he was going to have enough, but he sounded hopeful.

    Rents in Raleigh are out-of-site outrageous. I don't see how some of these kids make it without sleeping 4 to a room (8 kids sharing a 2 BR apartment). I know if I didn't own this house I wouldn't be able to afford rent in Raleigh. I looked recently and even a run-down studio apartment is more than half my monthly income.

    608:

    midges and blackfly

    Kiwi "sandfly".

    One of my discoveries when I got to Australia is that apparently those things don't exist here, so most of the mosquito netting type products are sized to allow sandflies to get through easily. This includes tents made in or for Australia. Luckily my made-in-USA hammock has proper mesh, although because it's a hammock you need to be careful not to press against the mesh.

    609:

    all staff who are able to work from home must now work from home until the all-clear...

    Which, if current news is to be credited, is unlikely to be much before mid-July unless the vaccination / treatment developers pull a miracle out of the hat. Is the management ok with that?

    (See the link upthread to the University College London projections.)

    610:

    Nojay @ 535: I've mentioned this before but a number of insurance companies are quite likely to go bust if they end up having to pay out for event cancellation clauses in the insurance policies wise organisers take up before they sell any tickets, book venues, sign contracts with performers etc. The premiums are based on the likelihood of one or two policy-holders out of dozens or hundreds having something happen to prevent their particular event going ahead which means a payout or two in a given season. The current situation means that pretty much every policyholder will make claims for cancellation.

    God knows how much Glastonbury is insured for but it's not likely the premiums were even 1% of the expected ticket take, and there are a lot more events like that where ticket refunds will be demanded, set builders will want their invoices paid etc.

    How does that work? Does the insurance cover the lost revenue (event would bring in $1 billion if it went off & they sold all the tickets and now it's not going to happen so it ain't bringing in nothin') or does it just cover the costs that are now not covered by the revenue (event cost $10 million to put on and that's already been spent before it was cancelled and they start having to refund tickets)? Or somewhere in between? Or ...?

    Either way, I know the insurance companies calculate premiums figuring on very few events being cancelled & having to pay out and there's no way to calculate the chances that EVERYTHING is going to be canceled at the same time.

    611:

    Graydon Not so ( Ignoring the past 3 months of course... ) Here the average rainfall is approx 550mm per year - not a lot. Paris climate is almost identical to London's - I think it actually rains more in Paris than in London ..... It's the variability & the change in rainfall over a very short distance that confuses people.

    moz Re. 'orrible insects Weta?

    General Overview - Britain THIS web-page is very useful - particularly the graph showinmg number of cases against time -it appears to already be tailing off, though, of course, numbers are still rising. Interesting - keep an eye on this one?

    612:

    Charlie Stross @ 545:

    There was some minor political figure in the States going on about how everyone should ignore the bans on gatherings, restaurant shutdown orders, etc. because they're an attack on capitalism.

    Devin Nunes, Republican congressclutter from California, most notorious for stifling discussion of the Trump/Russia connection (he chaired the House Intelligence Committee) and trying to sue a fictional cow on twitter (he's a happy SLAPPer -- that's Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, which is a pretty shitty intimidatory tactic usually deployed by corporations who don't like grass-roots activists.

    Those kinds of lawsuits are actually against the law in the U.S. Doesn't stop them though. Lawyers can usually figure some way to sneak around the prohibition, especially with the way the courts are being packed with right-wingnuts.

    But I don't think it was Nunes this time (although it wouldn't surprise me if he was also held that position), it was some crackpot republican from Texas I'd never heard of ... or might have been a crackpot republican from Tennessee ... anyway the state started with 'T'.

    Nunes is a crackpot republican from California and is much higher profile. I'd have recognized Nunes's name with a yeah, there you go again and why don't you GFY!. I didn't recognize this guy's name.

    613:

    Looking at the John Hopkins site is a bit scary. The logarithmic trend line for the non-China cases has been annoyingly straight for more than a month. If it continues without flattening, we are looking at a 1 million cases in 2 weeks (3/30), and 10 million 2 weeks after that, 100 million+ by the end of April. Hoping it starts to flatten Real Soon Now.

    614:

    The reports are that the SXSW festival in Texas, while it had insurance, the insurance doesn't cover pandemics as a cause for cancellation.

    Thus SXSW is expecting losses in the millions, and may be an indicator that the insurance industry doesn't have as much risk as maybe thought.

    615:

    One of the issues wrt insurance in the UK that will A) seem odd to non-Brits B) be a big deal to ToryBastardBoris and co ... is Lloyd’s insurance. Rich people sign up as ‘names’ and get the premiums shared put. Lots of money. But the cost is that your entire assets are at risk. Obviously they are not going to stand for that if there is any way to avoid it. Much better to let little people get screwed.

    616:

    Pigeon @ 560: DO NOT USE NSAIDS. See Charlie above.

    Those are what my doctors told me to use. It's been years since I've had the flu, but at that time the doctors specifically warned me against acetaminophen (Paracetamol) or asprin for flu symptoms and suggested ibuprofen or naproxen. I can take naproxen, but not ibuprofen.

    617:

    Looking at the John Hopkins site is a bit scary. The logarithmic trend line for the non-China cases has been annoyingly straight for more than a month. If it continues without flattening, we are looking at a 1 million cases in 2 weeks (3/30), and 10 million 2 weeks after that, 100 million+ by the end of April. Hoping it starts to flatten Real Soon Now.

    I was just looking at that very trend line and, alas, it's not flattening. To the contrary, it took a noticeable bend upward in late February. Given that it's a logarithmic plot, "noticeable" should not be taken lightly.

    618:

    Thank you. As long as it's not "FUCK, NO WAY" :) I'd just fired off an email to my doctor raising the subject, along with other things.

    619:

    Greg Tingey @ 573: JBS

    .... kills the elderly is COVID19 has a marked tendency to develop into pneumonia

    Yup - so, if your heart-lung system is up & functioning well - & in my case you can't do some of the dances we do without having a really good oxy-pumping system in your lungs - then you might get it, you will feel like shit, but it won't kill you.
    If you are a smoker, or have asthma, or .. then your chances do not look so good.

    But, as remarked elsewhere, even if the total Death Rate is "only" 0.5%, we are still going to lose an extra 300 000 people, maybe.

    I quit smoking over 50 years ago (grew up on Tobacco Road and started smoking when I was 10 years old - quit when I was 20). My cardiovascular system doesn't limit my dancing, my knees do. I'm in reasonably good health for a man my age with mild hypertension and Type II diabetes (both controlled, WELL controlled, by medication) and a cancer survivor.

    You know, I feel sorry for those extra 300,000 people, but I'm a lot more concerned about what factors might make me one of them. I want to know if that pneumonia vaccine is likely to be effective protecting me from the worst if I do come down with COVID19.

    620:

    This isn't the flu. Conclusions relating to the flu cannot be assumed to be valid for the crow. Charlie is a qualified pharmacist so I have confidence in his ability to separate truth from bollocks in matters of pharmaceuticals. If your doctor has already been telling you not to take common things I reckon your best bet is to contact them for an updated personal recommendation.

    621:

    David L @ 577: Closings.

    Governor announced today that all dine in food and drink had to shut down as of 5:00pm today. Take out and delivery was OK.

    Here in NC there are 10 million people. More than a few will be out of work.

    He also announced he was suspending the one week waiting period before people can apply for unemployment insurance, along with the requirement to "actively be seeking work" and that companies won't be burdened with the cost for unemployment compensation. He reasoned that most companies that will have to lay people off because of the closures will want to hire their people back just as soon as they can reopen, so many of the newly unemployed will eventually have jobs to go back to.

    I didn't hear the whole announcement, so I don't know what measures they're proposing to try to help keep some of these companies in business so they can eventually hire their people back.

    622:

    "Pneumonia" is not one specific disease; it's a word somewhat like "fever", in that there are many possible causes. Some of these are opportunistic secondary infections that take their chance when you're already weakened by something else; some of them are primary infections that rock up out of the blue and bang you start exhibiting pneumonia. Coronavirus is an example of a primary pathogen that causes pneumonia directly. It follows that a vaccine that would protect you against coronavirus pneumonia would necessarily be a vaccine against coronavirus full stop. Since we do not have such a thing, we know that your past vaccination is not going to be effective.

    623:

    Aww, she's cute. Don't call her 'orrible, look, you've made her all sad...

    http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/Deinacrida_rugosa_female.jpg

    624:

    mdlve @ 591: The Snopes link, which says what has been said elsewhere, is that inflammation is part of the body's immune system response and thus anti-inflammatorys end up compromising the effectiveness of the immune system.

    Charles H: Asprin is mentioned to be avoided as well, as it is also an anti-inflammatory (aka NSAID) like advil/ibuprofen/etc.

    I believe Aspirin is cautioned against because of something called Reye syndrome. I suggested NSAIDs because that's what my doctor told me to use to alleviate symptoms last time I had the flu, but that has been many years. They did advise me against acetaminophen (Paracetamol) and Aspirin.

    If they are now advising against NSAIDs, it sounds like there's NOTHING you're allowed to take to alleviate the symptoms.

    625:

    Robert Prior @ 600: For those who have't experienced the joys of the North:

    https://www.nfb.ca/film/blackfly/

    https://bootsonground.com/camel-spiders.htm

    Every Monday morning you lined up to take your anti-malarials

    https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2016/08/11/malaria-drug-causes-brain-damage-that-mimics-ptsd-case-study/

    ... and then lined up for the porta-potties.

    Y'all just keep coming up with more and more things that are probably going to make this shit kill me.

    626:

    The only real advice in a situation like yours is to talk to your doctor, as none of us on here or anywhere else on the Internet will know why you have been given specific advice to use NSAIDS.

    The advice online, such as it is, is based on the person taking the advice being an otherwise healthy individual who hasn't been given specific advice by a health care professional - and thus is looking at the shelves and wondering which of this assortment of drugs should I use.

    Any number of underlying health issues, or potential health issues, can cause a doctor to give advice that is different than the general purpose advice.

    627:

    Pigeon @ 620: This isn't the flu. Conclusions relating to the flu cannot be assumed to be valid for the crow. Charlie is a qualified pharmacist so I have confidence in his ability to separate truth from bollocks in matters of pharmaceuticals. If your doctor has already been telling you not to take common things I reckon your best bet is to contact them for an updated personal recommendation.

    Yeah, but the question I was originally thought I was trying to answer was what to do to "alleviate the flu like symptoms", so I suggested what my doctors had told me to do for such symptoms.

    Apparently with COVID19 the palliative steps you'd use for the flu are contraindicated.

    628:

    Oh, it happens. Sometimes it happens for quite a long time. Thing is you can almost never have any confidence that it's going to keep on happening for more than half a week or so from the present moment, and not uncommonly the confidence period drops to less than half an hour. You certainly can't pick some arbitrary date on the calendar half a year in advance and reasonably expect a couple of weeks of fine holiday weather; you might get it, but it'll be pure luck. And of course in winter it takes so long for anything to dry out that it basically never happens and the whole place remains soggy for months on end, so it seems rainier than the actual amount of precipitation would suggest.

    Conversely you can be reasonably confident, at least towards the south end, that the precipitation will remain in liquid form, with no more than a week or two when that doesn't apply. Years that don't conform to that pattern are rare enough that you can say "1963" or "1947" and even people who weren't born then know what you're on about. I'm particularly fortunate to be in a local microclimate that usually manages to avoid it even when everywhere else doesn't. And on the pleasant side of the equinoxes, it's similarly rare for it to get over 30°C or so (again, excepting bits of local microclimate, not mine in this case). Selecting a destination to emigrate to (purely as an intellectual exercise) is next to impossible given a requirement that the climate should be similarly equable; nearly everywhere fails at one end of the scale or the other, and much of the world fails grossly at both.

    I find the primary requirement for weather protection is a coat which is properly windproof. If the wind is blocked, then as long as I keep walking I'm more likely to need to shed body heat than conserve it, even if it is below zero. There's enough surplus that it doesn't really matter if the coat isn't brilliantly waterproof, as long as it's sort of OK; I still stay dry enough underneath because the seepage cooks off as fast as it gets through.

    Extremities are the problem. I've had difficulties taking photographs because although my hands start off fine when I take them out of the gloves/pockets/opposite sleeves, a cold wet wind freezes them so fast that my fingers cease to function either as actuators or as sensors before I've finished twiddling all the necessary bits on the camera.

    629:

    None of those are really for the symptoms; those are mostly for why the symptoms hurt.

    There are straight-up expectorants, cough suppressants, and decongestants out there, but generally you don't want to take them together. (Expectorants get the mucous moving; wrong time for a cough suppressant!)

    Specific medical advice is highly preferable to asking the internet. GPs will likely be waffly about COVID-19 because no established standard of practice, but still better than the internet.

    630:

    mdlve @ 626: The only real advice in a situation like yours is to talk to your doctor, as none of us on here or anywhere else on the Internet will know why you have been given specific advice to use NSAIDS.

    I think that was probably just the best medical advice they had at the time I last came down with the flu. The Army started giving me the flu shots some time in the 1980s, and I haven't had the flu for more than 30 years.

    If I come down with this shit you can be sure I'll be calling the doctor's office. In the meantime, I'm just trying to follow the recommended hand-washing & self-isolation protocols and stay out of their way.

    631:

    Some insight into what Italy's medicos are going through:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKS1pahoPRU

    Coronavirus in Italy - Report From The Front Lines #JAMALive (approx 35 min)

    Physicians in Lombardy, Italy, have been overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients requiring critical care. Based on an existing ECMO center network they developed an ICU network to rapidly identify, triage, and manage patients infected with SARS-2-CoV. Maurizio Cecconi, MD, of Humanitas University in Milan discusses the region’s approach to the surge, including clinical and supply management, health care worker training and protection, and ventilation strategies, with JAMA Editor Howard Bauchner.

    Read the report of Dr Cecconi's experience at: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama…

    Streamed on Friday, March 13 at 08:00 Central US Time (GMT-5). #Covid_19 #SARSCoV2 #coronavirus

    632:

    JBS @ 607,

    the store has told him and his coworkers they can work all the overtime they are willing to work

    Quite. My brother got in at 6:30 this morning, after starting at 9:00 last night. He normally works a 4-hour shift on Tuesday evenings.

    I went to my local Woolworths to get some stuff for mum, and hopefully one or two items for myself, during the Seniors/Disabled hour. The store was quite busy, and from my casual observation I must have been about the only customer NOT buying toilet paper. Even after last night's efforts and quite stringent purchase limits on many items, a lot of shelves were already empty or near empty. No joy today for the regular shoppers looking for the usual suspects (Toilet Paper, Long-life milk, frozen vegetables/fish portions, Microwave meals etc. etc.).

    633:

    I don't think it was Nunes this time (although it wouldn't surprise me if he was also held that position), it was some crackpot republican from Texas I'd never heard of ... or might have been a crackpot republican from Tennessee ... anyway the state started with 'T'.

    Possibly Chip Roy, who opposed a relief deal and called it "welfare," at the same time he's "troubled" by the weakness of response when some people tested positive at an Air Force base?

    I'm sure I've seen other idiots saying similar things.

    There are plenty of reasons to dislike Ted Cruz but he's grasped that plagues are bad and you'd have remembered him.

    634:

    Don't know that I buy what is being claimed, but this article from MIT Technology Review is claiming "social distancing" will become the new normal for humans going forward and not the just 18 months listed as possible in the Imperial College paper, and thus the solution is mass surveillance going forward.

    https://www.technologyreview.com/s/615370/coronavirus-pandemic-social-distancing-18-months/

    635:

    “There are plenty of reasons to dislike Ted Cruz“ - tru dat. If we’re clever enough we might be able to keep him convinced that things are bad and he’ll keep self isolated forever.

    Meanwhile the orange asshole is trying to gaslight the world, claiming he “had a feeling it was a pandemic before they were saying it was a pandemic” Fux Noos is already pivoting so fast that Cherenkov radiation is coming off the tips of their ever growing noses. By the time most of you read this we will have always been at war with Coronov-asia.

    636:

    Meanwhile, out in the big room with the blue ceiling...

    Out my window the autumn sun is setting, the soccer practice in Newtown park is running as usual, people are sitting at the tables outside the zoo cafe.

    Wellington CBD was busy at 2pm when I walked to the physio. Schools are running, university is running, business are preparing for what they'll do if people start working from home.

    My friends in Christchurch have cancelled our ultimate frisbee national champs. Earthquakes, terrorist attack, this - they write emails promising "emotional support for our community" like seasoned pros. May I never gain such skills.

    I made a complaint last night about a local campervan business that is advertising itself to tourists for their 14-days of self-isolation, and suggesting they should tour the country in a RV stopping at the usual tourist spots while "self-isolating", and telling them that it's okay to mix with other people while self-isolating as long as they don't spent more than 15 minutes within 2 meters of someone. My complaint vanished into the void.

    NZ's confirmed cases rose from 12 to 20 today. 5, 8, 12, 20.

    I fear the cold, hard logic of an exponential series.

    637:

    Handy COVID-19/flu/cold symptom comparison via respected NZ science communicator Siouxsie Wiles https://thespinoff.co.nz/science/18-03-2020/siouxsie-wiles-how-testing-for-covid-19-works/

    638:

    @ 613 & 617 That's for world cases, yes? I'm more concerned with "Brit" cases" & the graph I referred to in # 611 That's the one for us Brits to watch ...

    SS That Chip Roy link doesn't work over here, but I googled for it WHat a slimebag

    icehawk 5 / 8 / 12 / 20 eh Using the date I mentioned above, ours was: 9 / 13 / 16 / 20 / 23 / 36 / 51 / 87 /116 etc - 1950 as of Sunday.

    Errolwi Liked that quick symptom-chart

    639:

    Oh yes. We're talking local government, and we're the Public Health department, so yes, they're aware. Besides London is the current UK hotspot for cases.

    My usual train into London yesterday was more than half empty, even after Stevenage when it's usually standing room only. Even after changing onto the Moorgate service, it was still pretty empty. On the way home it was a bit more crowded but still no problems with seats - most people were not sitting beside another person.

    640:

    Charlie is a qualified pharmacist so I have confidence in his ability to separate truth from bollocks in matters of pharmaceuticals.

    Disclaimer: I am not a qualified pharmacist.

    I used to be a qualified pharmacist, but I last practiced in 1989.

    You should assume that everything I know is subject to 30 years of creeping obsolescence and memory rot, not to mention new discoveries in medicine that have bypassed me completely. (Of which there have been a lot.)

    641:

    Re: mass surveillance

    The countries which are regarded as dealing with the spread of coronavirus the best (Singapore, Indonesia, South Korea etc.) are ones with intrusive and widespread social monitoring, facial recognition cameras etc., things that privacy advocates around the world have been railing against for years. Even China which was Ground Zero for the outbreak apparently has things under control in major part by enforcing rigorous social measures of the sort few liberals would have considered a good thing, at least until this outbreak occurred.

    642:

    Yes - they tickle your privates when you sit on the long drop (just as cockroaches do), but don't carry human diseases, don't bite and normally just like to be left alone :-) I like them, too.

    643:

    Several decongestants work (including menthol and eucalyptol), but I have never found any expectorants that do for my bronchiectasis. I have never found an over-the-counter cough suppressant that was any better, but codeine has a little effect.

    644:

    Unfortunately, it's misleading to the point of being actually wrong. A cold, per se, may not lead to breathlessness, but the almost inevitable secondary infection often does.

    645:

    This is satire…. I think. I am almost certain it is satire. . Dominic Cummings’s so-crazy-they-might-just-work ways to defeat the coronavirus https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/politics/politics-headlines/dominic-cummingss-so-crazy-they-might-just-work-ways-to-defeat-the-coronavirus-20200317194612

    646:

    Yeah, but most of us would put Dominic Cummings (and Alexander Bozo Falafel Johnson) on the "B Ark".

    647:

    Today's news: in the absence of a vaccine or effective antiviral drugs, we're going to have to keep up the suppression strategy indefinitely -- possibly for 16-18 months, if we're waiting for one of the vaccines already beginning human trials to be confirmed safe for mass roll-out (i.e. without killing a fuckton of recipients) and to ramp up manufacturing (probably going to happen concurrently even before approval, if they go to Manhattan Project management, which I think is highly likely -- pursue all objectives on the critical path in parallel, and damn the expense). It may be possible to relax the suppression/stay at home regime for up to a month once every three months or so, but don't get your hopes up.

    However, ...

    The BMJ's best practices have a round-up of emerging treatments for COVID-19. (BMJ = British Medical Journal: the other major British medical journal, aside from The Lancet.)

    Edited highlights:

    Antivirals

    Various antivirals (monotherapy and combination therapy) are being trialled in patients with COVID-19; however, there are no data to support their use. Remdesivir shows in vitro activity against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and has been used to treat patients in China, as well as the first patient in the US. Clinical trials with remdesivir have started in the US and in China.

    Intravenous immunoglobulin

    Intravenous immunoglobulin is being trialled in some patients with COVID-19; however, there are no data to support this.

    Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine

    Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are being trialled in some patients with COVID-19. Chloroquine shows in vitro activity against SARS-CoV-2. An expert consensus guideline in China recommends chloroquine in mild to severe cases of COVID-19 as it may improve the success rate of treatment, shorten hospital stay, and improve patient outcome.

    Traditional Chinese Medicine

    Traditional Chinese Medicine is being trialled in some patients with COVID-19 (e.g., Xue-Bi-Jing, Shuang-Huang-Lian, Xin-Guan-2); however, there are no data to support this. These medicines are commonly used in China to treat COVID-19 patients.

    Stem cell therapy

    Stem cell therapy is being investigated to treat patients with COVID-19 in clinical trials. It is thought that mesenchymal stem cells can reduce the pathological changes that occur in the lungs, and inhibit the cell-mediated immune inflammatory response.

    Angiotensin-II receptor antagonists

    Angiotensin-II receptor antagonists such as losartan are being investigated as a potential treatment because it is thought that the angiotensin-converting enzyme-2 (ACE2) receptor is the main binding site for the virus.

    Convalescent plasma

    Convalescent plasma from patients who have recovered from viral infections has been used as a treatment in previous virus outbreaks including SARS, avian influenza, and Ebola virus infection. A clinical trial to determine the safety and efficacy of convalescent plasma in patients with COVID-19 has started in China; however, there is no data on its use as yet.

    648:

    Flashing back to the incompetence porn TV show thread a few weeks ago, here is coverage of perhaps the most significant story from a former Sad Puppy ever, telling of two allegedly adult humans deciding that this would be a great time for a vacation in Italy and running head-first into unexpected reality. The protagonists fail to realize that a quarantine lockdown might make travel difficult and it gets worse from there. At no time do they reflect that any of their problems might have resulted from their decisions and actions.

    649:

    My opinions (for what they're worth):

    The ones to hope for are: antivirals, Chloroquine/Hydroxychloroquine, and ACE-II antagonists.

    (There are also reports elsewhere about assorted other antivirals and even an antibiotic with some anti-viral properties, but the BMJ hasn't added them to its list.)

    Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine are venerable anti-malarial agents -- licensed since 1934 and 1955 respectively -- and there are reports from Italy of a trial (uncontrolled, unblinded, no crossover) in which a double-digit number of patients experienced a very significant reduction in virus load when given 600mg hydroxychloroquine daily. This is -- obviously -- being followed up. The questions are: is a reduction in virus load actually indicative of a cure, and do other studies substantiate this effect. If the answers are "yes" then we have a third-act movie plot twist for the current disaster movie that any sane Hollywood producer would reject as "too implausible" -- just ramp up production of an already-licensed and well-understood, cheap-as-chips medicine, and hand it out to the entire population until a vaccine comes along. (Let's ignore the side-effects (the laundry list is extensive and tops out at liver failure); the incidence of fatal ones is much lower than the likely death rate due to a pandemic.)

    Did I say cheap-as-chips? In the developing world, chloroquine sells for roughly US $0.04 per dose -- in the USA it's more like $6/day for hydroxychloroquine, but hey, that's the US medical system for you. The point is, it's cheap enough that if supply can be ramped up we can afford to medicate entire national populations.

    ACE-II antagonists: disclaimer, I'm on a close cousin of losartan for hypertension. (Which means I have a personal reason to hope this class of drugs are effective.) Again, we have a lot of data on these drugs, they're relatively cheap, and if they're effective they can be ramped up fast.

    650:

    Interesting. Given that, I am surprised that it does not mention quinine as such - yes, I know why it is rarely used (to my cost) - but it's often effective in surprising ways, and is still favoured by 'traditionalists'. It may have been tried and found ineffective, of course.

    I am on 16mg Candesartan, so have a similar personal reason!

    651:

    Well, in this general context, I used to know someone who was a sales rep, and concerned about "how much he drank". He switched to G&IT, with an understanding that the barman would serve him tonic on the rocks. He managed to get himself hospitalised with quinine poisoning. (I guess this isn't an actual surprise to you or Charlie?)

    652:

    Yup: if you dilute the tonic water (quinine solution) with enough gin, you can't drink enough to poison yourself without first succumbing to acute alcohol poisoning!

    653:

    Cripes, no! You might have done with 19th century tonic water, and it MIGHT be available at that strength in some unregulated country. He must have drunk a hell of a lot of tonic, assuming it was USA strength.

    654:

    hydroxychloroquine

    I have a friend who made the comment that the first good thing to come out of her arthritis is that she's taking this drug.

    Especially since her husband is a physician seeing patients daily. Cardio. People who need to be checked regularly. The system where he works is looking at home EKG kits. Of course that may just switch him to the emergency room.

    655:

    Re: Tonic water

    Not a good beverage for folks with platelet issues. Don't know how much you'd need to drink to crash your platelet count if you're starting from normal/healthy.

    Don't recall if anyone's done any CBC-Diff type analyses on COVID-19 patients: no symptoms vs. mild symptoms vs. serious symptoms vs. deceased. (Some viruses are known to affect platelets.)

    656:

    Keep drinking the Gin & Tonics .... Oh dear, how sad

    657:

    I've had difficulties taking photographs because although my hands start off fine when I take them out of the gloves/pockets/opposite sleeves, a cold wet wind freezes them so fast that my fingers cease to function either as actuators or as sensors before I've finished twiddling all the necessary bits on the camera.

    I used to have that problem until I bought a pair of gloves that let me expose the first joint of my thumb and forefinger at need. So most of my hand stays warm, and I can quickly re-cover my fingertips after making the fine adjustments.

    Something like this (although not this model):

    https://www.amazon.ca/LowePro-Photographers-Glove-L/dp/B019GXBYZG

    658:

    So the qualification lapses if you don't keep your flight hours up? OK, I didn't know that.

    That you'll not be up to date is obvious, but my point was that you have been taught the habits of thought and the way things fit together in a pretty complex field that most people on here are at best only distantly connected with. So you can read things like "the attacking virus division was enfiladed by machine antibody fire from concealed B-cell positions and suffered 90% casualties", know whether to go "rock on" or "haha bollocks", and clue people in who don't know the wrinkles and think it's more/less hopeful than it really is. Etc.

    I guess I'm basically trying to say thanks for running this informative thread.

    659:

    That might do the trick. Witch gloves, basically. With the added benefit that I can cackle at people and make sinister clawed hand gestures and they will run away.

    660:

    I'm on carbocisteine as a mucolytic, and it's basically bloody great. It makes it much easier to cough stuff all the way up without getting stuck in a seemingly endless repetition of "2 steps forward and 1.9 steps back". They also seem to give it out to people with pneumonia even if they aren't hacking stuff up, just to lighten the load a bit. Might be worth asking the doc if you haven't already tried it.

    Tonic water - I used to love that stuff as a kid. It's still my preferred choice if I have to pick a "soft drink". Everything else is full of sugar, or some artificial substitute. Trouble is that in situations where that choice arises it's only ever available in dinky little bottles, and trying to make up a respectable quantity of it gets ridiculous.

    661:

    ACE-II antagonists: disclaimer, I'm on a close cousin of losartan for hypertension. (Which means I have a personal reason to hope this class of drugs are effective.) Again, we have a lot of data on these drugs, they're relatively cheap, and if they're effective they can be ramped up fast.

    Yikes! No!

    For those just now reading, Covid-19 uses ACE-2 proteins as the entry into cells. These are expressed on epithelial cells all over the body, accounting for some of the symptoms and problems.

    ACE-1 and ACE-2 are unfortunately fairly different. See Derek Lowe's post yesterday on In The Pipeline. Drugs that work on ACE-1 DO NOT work on ACE-2.

    Warning, this isn't my thing, but it is my wife's thing (she's a working pharmacist), so I checked it against her and other sources. ACE-2 really doesn't have any drugs working on it, mostly because it's not been implicated in any diseases yet, unlike ACE-1, which has been the target for multiple classes of drugs.

    There are two critical points here: -ACE-1 inhibitors don't work on ACE-2. -Diabetes and the use of -pril and -sartan drugs increase the expression ACE-2 protein on cells. This is why diabetes and hypertension under treatment are risk factors for Covid-19.

    There might be a weird treatment option: with the virus on the ACE-2 receptor, there's a lot of angiotensin-2 protein free in the blood, and this might be causing some of the lung injuries seen. If so (and this is FTL-level bullshit speculation at this point), cranking up the number of ACE-2 receptors on cells might actually help prevent damage by soaking up the excess angiotensin-2. At the risk of giving the virus more cells to latch onto. Read the In The Pipeline blog for more details, and do not fucking try this at home! If you're in the severe lung damage phase of the disease and not at the hospital, you're in no shape to try ODing on a prescription hypertension drug.

    In the more sane world, the bottom line is that no one's got a drug that targets ACE-2 receptors or alternatively, the spike on the virus that targets them, although people are looking furiously. There are some tests quietly or not-so-quietly going on in various hospitals of drugs, which, like the chloroquine, might provide some relief.

    In the meantime, non-pharmceutical techniques are what we've got to work with, so soap, water, and behavioral changes really are your best bets.

    If you want to do something useful and techie, start figuring out which ventilator parts are in short supply and pitch in on 3-D printing some more for your local hospitals. Get set up now before the demand wave hits and/or you get sick yourself. (link)

    662:

    This is early days, and we should not celebrate too soon, but this seems promising.

    " Japanese flu drug (favipivavir) 'clearly effective' in treating coronavirus, says China" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/18/japanese-flu-drug-clearly-effective-in-treating-coronavirus-says-china

    663:

    Correction, should be "favipiravir"

    664:

    So the qualification lapses if you don't keep your flight hours up?

    It lapses after 12 months. And there are mandatory ongoing education requirements these days. (Four year degree plus two years' supervised practice to qualify, IIRC; in the US it's considered a doctoral-equivalent profession.)

    665:

    Whoops, I garbled -- symptomatic of being out of practice for a third of a century. What losartan does is, it's a selective, competitive angiotensin II receptor type 1 (AT1) antagonist, reducing the end organ responses to angiotensin II. Physiological effects of angiotensin-II are antagonized by losartan -- it doesn't directly bind to it.

    666:

    Thanks to both of you. I am no wiser, but am better informed.

    If I were in Halfcock's position, I would consider setting up a simple (double?) blind trial of plausible existing chemical treatments and placebo, authorising doctors to accept volunteers for it among vulnerable groups of users, and analyse the results in real-time. There are old and trusted statistical methodologies for that, and the principle obstacle is existing bureaucracy (which is there for good reasons, in general), which is easy to bypass. Yeah, it's ruthless, and might increase the death rate in the short term, but ....

    667:

    The cynic in me wonders how much that doctor gained when the stock went meteoric.

    668:

    Thanks much for that BMJ COVID-19 treatment trials roundup link. (And others have been posting good links.)

    Some of you might be amused: I've seen about 6 IPV4 addresses owned by "U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services (UDHHS)" attempting ssh connections to my home internet connection. Plus at least one from "World Health Organization WHO Headquarters". Probably members of one or more botnets.

    Finally people are starting to say the obvious, that drastic social distancing is in part a substitute for adequate levels of testing (currently limited in most places because of insufficient test kits and test infrastructure):

    This is the key takeaway: the more testing you do, the less social distancing you have to do, because you can identify and isolate the people who are sick, rather than forcing everyone to isolate. And the US is still at a point where widespread testing would be useful. https://t.co/48qwQuqWlW

    — James Surowiecki (@JamesSurowiecki) March 18, 2020

    (Roughly, distancing is partly a crude form of testing, with a long lag.)

    669:

    a pair of gloves that let me expose the first joint of my thumb and forefinger at need

    AKA "sniper gloves." Different but similar application.

    670:

    Further to the guesses on economic impact, Deutsche Bank is estimating the US economy to shrink 13% in the second quarter.

    671:

    Finally people are starting to say the obvious

    In about a week, people are going to notice that the present circumstances last a minimum of a year, more like two, and potentially indefinitely. (If we really do have a common cold that frequently kills people -- can't vaccinate, have to deal -- there are permanent social changes.)

    This in turn presents a stark choice between permanent collectivist economic reorganization -- testing has to be free, mandatory, and prompt, for example -- and letting the corpses pile up. There isn't any obvious middle ground.

    Lots of people prefer the corpses to giving up capitalism, and have already said so. Going to be an effort to express that the collective is prefered to the corpses. (Especially given that there isn't any immediate possibility of non-Mammonite media.)

    672:

    I use a similar kind of strange fingerless glove/mitten hybrid , sometimes called a shooter's mitt (but listings often leave off the apostrophe). Mine are made of windblocker fleece, they are a fingerless glove with a flap-over bit like the top part of a mitten, which is held on the back of the glove out of the way when you want to use your finger tips. The thumbs were originally completely, er, gloved , but I've cut off the top bit of fleece on my dominant hand thumb to facilitate dial twiddling and the material doesn't fray, you just need to ensure the seam won't unravel The first pair I bought after accidentally spotting them whilst walking past a display of fishing kit in an outdoors shop, and find them so good for photography and geocaching that I've bought a few more pairs when I've seen them in shops since.

    Some cheap versions use a button/cord loop to hold the flap back, which is stupid as it's almost impossible to work without uncovering the fingers of the other hand, so I've stitched velcro on I've found the windblocker fleece warm enough for general UK winter purposes, and it's OK in a slightly wet situation too . If it was really cold I'd maybe try silk liners to boost the warmth,or overmitts if things were extreme.

    I'd suggest a search for them, Trekmates and JACK PYKE have versions but mine are no-name cheap ones. Some list them as shooters mitts, some as convertible fingerless gloves, and there's thinsulate lined ones which are no doubt warmer than mine.

    673:

    Story from slashdot: An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Already exhausted from testing for monkeypox and Lassa fever, Nigerian molecular bio-engineer Nnaemeka Ndodo had to work well past midnight earlier this month to find out if six Chinese construction workers were infected with the coronavirus. Ndodo had to collect samples from a hospital an hour away in Nigeria's capital, Abuja, then wait for six hours to get the results in what's one of only five laboratories able to test for the virus in Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation, with about 200 million people. In about three months' time, U.K.-based Mologic Ltd., in collaboration with Senegalese research foundation Institut Pasteur de Dakar, could shorten that wait to 10 minutes with a test that will help a continent with the world's most fragile healthcare system cope with the pandemic.

    Using technology from home pregnancy and malaria tests, its saliva and finger-prick kit could be ready for sale by June for less than $1 apiece. In Africa, they will be manufactured in Senegal by diaTropix, a newly built diagnostics manufacturing facility run by the director of the Pasteur Institute, Amadou Alpha Sall, who has led training around the continent for coronavirus testing. The current Covid-19 tests, known as PCR tests, detect the genetic material of the pathogen in a laboratory process that can take several hours and cost over $400 in some private facilities. Mologic and the Institut Pasteur have joint capacity to produce 8 million tests a year and plan to sell them directly to African governments as well as the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization and the WHO, Fitchett said. Mologic is seeking to acquire a manufacturing facility to produce an additional 20 million tests annually, initially in the U.K. and later in Africa.

    story and links at https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/03/16/2028217/ten-minute-coronavirus-test-for-1-could-be-game-changer

    674:

    Why do one person, when you can be in college, from a well-off family, and go party for spring break on the beaches in FL?

    675:

    I think you mean "out of sight" outrageous.

    I sympathize. I live in the DC area. The cheap rents in your area would be nice... I'm just happy I own this stupid small split-level.

    (Which, after several years without one, as of yesterday, now has a doorbell, wired, so it's loud enough to be heard from upstairs.)

    676:

    My new doctor is amused by my smoking answer, as opposed to my old doctor, and all her P/As I saw, who all had no sense of humor, and wanted to work up a plan to get me off tobacco.

    I mean, I've smoked a pipe since I was around 19, and these days, I smoke 2-3 times ->a year<-.

    Damn, it's been over a year, and I've got a real jones for some tobacco....

    677:

    I usually don't start till warmer weather, but I might have to suffer....

    678:

    Scott Sanford @ 633: There are plenty of reasons to dislike Ted Cruz but he's grasped that plagues are bad and you'd have remembered him.

    Yeah, especially because AFAIK no one has even tried to offer proof Ted Cruz wasn't the Zodiac Killer.

    679:

    So the WHO has officially recommended against using ibuprofen to manage symptoms of Covid-19.

    This is based on caution until further investigation can be done into the recent claims, and the news article has quotes/opinions from various sources including British Pharmacological Society that all agree about a cautious approach.

    (as always, if your medical experts have put you on ibuprofen / advised against paracetamol then seek their advice) https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/ibuprofen-covid-19-novel-coronavirus-1.5501496

    Also a story of a study by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) (US Government) showing that a sneeze/cough can result in contagious droplets remaining airborne for hours and on some surfaces for days https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/coronavirus-surface-study-1.5501296

    680:

    This in turn presents a stark choice between permanent collectivist economic reorganization -- testing has to be free, mandatory, and prompt, for example -- and letting the corpses pile up. There isn't any obvious middle ground. Mass murderdeath[1] in the defense of capitalism. An interesting twist is that this disease has a much higher death rate for the age cohorts that contain most of the power and money. This has amplified the response, IMO. Treatments, if any, to reduce mortality in severe cases, will be a variable affecting the economic effects and their duration. (Vaccines, if any, as well, longer term.) [1] or a euphemism.

    681:

    For anyone interested in reading the actual science articles, here's LitCovid:

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/research/coronavirus/

    'LitCovid is a curated literature hub for tracking up-to-date scientific information about the 2019 novel Coronavirus. It is the most comprehensive resource on the subject, providing a central access to 1200 (and growing) research articles in PubMed. The articles are updated daily and are further categorized by different research topics and geographic locations for improved access. You can read more at Chen et al. Nature (2020) and download our data here.'

    Now all I need is someone who can translate this stuff into plain-speak.

    682:

    The advice on whether or not to take ibuprofen is getting complex/garbled: Here's the BBC yesterday. They're recommending acetominophen for fever, ibuprofen in low doses if you have to.

    Meanwhile, start plotting for the revolution, as the vulture capitalists undoubtedly have been...

    683:

    Robert Prior @ 657:

    I've had difficulties taking photographs because although my hands start off fine when I take them out of the gloves/pockets/opposite sleeves, a cold wet wind freezes them so fast that my fingers cease to function either as actuators or as sensors before I've finished twiddling all the necessary bits on the camera.

    I used to have that problem until I bought a pair of gloves that let me expose the first joint of my thumb and forefinger at need. So most of my hand stays warm, and I can quickly re-cover my fingertips after making the fine adjustments.

    Something like this (although not this model):

    https://www.amazon.ca/LowePro-Photographers-Glove-L/dp/B019GXBYZG

    I like these a lot. They fit inside a larger glove if I need extra warmth, but still trap sufficient heat when I take the outer glove off that my fingers can still manipulate the camera controls. The compression helps my hands not to cramp up so much.

    https://www.cvs.com/shop/copper-fit-hand-relief-compression-gloves-prodid-2470031

    And these work quite well for those outer gloves:

    https://www.armynavyoutdoors.com/military-nomex-flight-glove/

    And I can find them both locally, or at least semi-locally ... I have to have a reason to be down around Ft. Bragg so I can hit the surplus stores to get the flight gloves.

    684:

    Graydon @ 671:

    Finally people are starting to say the obvious

    In about a week, people are going to notice that the present circumstances last a minimum of a year, more like two, and potentially indefinitely. (If we really do have a common cold that frequently kills people -- can't vaccinate, have to deal -- there are permanent social changes.)

    This in turn presents a stark choice between permanent collectivist economic reorganization -- testing has to be free, mandatory, and prompt, for example -- and letting the corpses pile up. There isn't any obvious middle ground.

    Lots of people prefer the corpses to giving up capitalism, and have already said so. Going to be an effort to express that the collective is prefered to the corpses. (Especially given that there isn't any immediate possibility of non-Mammonite media.)

    Thing is, I don't think we're going to get to choose. We're going to be forced to give up capitalism and still get all the corpses. Gonna' get the worst of both worlds.

    685:

    I tried them (for shooting, actually) under the circumstances Pigeon described, and they did not help at all; my peripheral circulation wasn't (and isn't) good enough to compensate. Whether that would have been the case had there been warmer shooting gloves of that form, I can't say, but there was only one weight available at the time.

    686:

    When I first spotted that chloroquine was a candidate drug for use against this virus and bought some, it retailed in the UK as an over-the-counter medicine for £15 for a box of 40 pills. I spotted this after using Google to try and find out if Tamiflu and Relenza (anti-flu drugs) were any good against it; turns out that they are not.

    The main problem with chloroquine is that it is so old that it is nearly useless as an anti-malarial, so isn't in very great production; mostly it is sold to be used in conjunction with another anti-malarial drug called Paludrine. Hydroxychloroquine is an immune regulator mostly used for rheumatoid arthritis, and according to the Chinese is about three times more effective than chloroquine in vitro. Chloroquine isn't metabolised to the hydroxy form, as far as I can ascertain.

    687:

    whitroth @ 675: I think you mean "out of sight" outrageous.

    Yeah, that too.

    I sympathize. I live in the DC area. The cheap rents in your area would be nice... I'm just happy I own this stupid small split-level.

    (Which, after several years without one, as of yesterday, now has a doorbell, wired, so it's loud enough to be heard from upstairs.)

    Thinking about it, I'm probably going to be going out to the building supply & big box home improvement stores too.

    Might as well keep on working on this house for as long as I can to get it in good enough shape for when this shit finally kills me my heirs will have less trouble selling it. At least they won't have to worry about making payments or losing it to the bank.

    688:

    There are a couple of Weird Wools out there -- buffalo and qiviut -- that are eye-wateringly expensive but available as gloves and stupid warm.

    (And still give me contact dermatitis, but you wear wool on the regular, so...)

    689:

    whitroth @ 676: My new doctor is amused by my smoking answer, as opposed to my old doctor, and all her P/As I saw, who all had no sense of humor, and wanted to work up a plan to get me off tobacco.

    I mean, I've smoked a pipe since I was around 19, and these days, I smoke 2-3 times ->a year

    Damn, it's been over a year, and I've got a real jones for some tobacco....

    Cheer up. It never gets any better. It's been 50+ years and still sometimes I'll catch a whiff of tobacco smoke on the wind and my mouth will start watering ...

    690:

    Couple of things to remember:

  • Capitalism is a brand, like Christianity or Chinese Empire. It changes radically over time, and gets used to cover things that are diametrically opposed to each other. The simple solution likely won't be to destroy capitalism, it will be to change it so radically that it won't resemble what we have now. But it will still be capitalism. For example, there are social systems closer to collectivization inside corporations rather than outside, so having corporations taking over the world and having us all as employees or contractors would be one way of imposing global collectivization. More likely, we'll get Chinese style capitalism. Or possibly, if the Scandinavian countries (or someone else) sail through with relatively light damage, there may be a push to act more like them.

  • Bodies piling up: the problem is that this leads inevitably to famine and civil unrest. Countries do have strong incentives to keep this from happening, and indeed, the basic social contract that a state runs on is about trying to keep these from happening, or failing that, solving the problems.

  • 691:

    Re: The main problem with chloroquine is that it is so old that it is nearly useless as an anti-malarial

    Not so sure, anecdotally: I was in India in 2005 and got Malaria. Chloroquine sorted it quickly. (Helps that the reason for being there was marrying into a family of well respected doctors... “no this weak white guy isn’t going to die on our watch!”)

    692:

    I live in the DC area. The cheap rents in your area would be nice...

    Yep. I live in the same area. We are expensive for past versions of the term. And even for the state. (I could sell my lot w/tear down house and move 1 - 2 hours away and pocket 1/2 of my money and have a very nice upgrade to my housing.)

    Companies relocate here because their engineers and other folks can sell their shack with heat in WashDC, SoCal, SanFran, etc... and buy a mini-mansion here.

    693:

    We can't possibly get Chinese-style capitalism because the government half relies on an education system we don't have and can't approximate. It would take a couple generations to get that in place (it took the PRC fifty years!) and that's way more time than we've got.

    Village-scale collectivism we could probably do; really full service credit unions that handle pensions and housing as well as banking and insurance, public guarantees of solvency, stuff like that. Someone is going to have to push for it real hard because it's incompatible with private health care (so is surviving a pandemic) and landlords.

    694:

    Damn.

    I haven't seen an official notice yet, but the Balticon hotel is sending out room reservation cancellations.

    695:

    Thing is, I don't think we're going to get to choose. We're going to be forced to give up capitalism and still get all the corpses. Gonna' get the worst of both worlds.

    If you want to get pessimistic, suppose that the restrictions on travel, surveillance, etc. don't go away. Look at how many 9/11 'security measures' are still in effect in the US (and Canada) even though security experts know they don't do anything.

    So no cross-border travel without permission, and that hard to obtain unless part of a large organization. Tracking by phone/face recognition, etc for tracing contacts in the event of an infection — but accessed by police/security agencies because it is useful in stopping crimes (the official reason) and suppressing dissent (a convenient byproduct).

    There's other SF readers who seem a lot more pessimistic (or cynical) than this crowd :-/

    696:

    Yep. I live in the same area.

    Nuts. The same area as JBS.

    697:

    Just got an email from Porter (small commuter airline in Canada):

    Porter supports the efforts of Canadian, American and global authorities in their responses. Government intervention has made it clear that restricting the activities of people in all communities is necessary to keep everyone healthy and, eventually, to end this very rapid pandemic.

    This is the reason why we are doing our part by temporarily suspending our flights at the end of the day this Friday, March 20. We will resume service on June 1. This delay will allow the public health crisis of COVID-19 to subside and it will be time for us to resume activities.

    We plan to run our schedule until Friday, so that all of our customers can complete their trip or make last-minute arrangements. We will do this as long as the aviation and public health infrastructure allows us to do so safely.

    Interesting times.

    698:

    And for the big boys. AA, UA, and Delta have all announced virtually no overseas flights. And reduced US internal flights. 50% to 60% reduction in seat miles each. Delta has said they are parking 600 jets.

    KLM is retiring the remainder of their 747 fleet. Air France is parking all of their A380s. (This has got to become one of the most studied business cases of all time at some point in the not too distant future.)

    Boeing and Airbus stock might be a cheap buy soon. Yes I know there are down now but I suspect they will be down even more.

    699:

    Was in a Spectrum customer store today. For those not in the US, Spectrum is one of our big Internet/Phone/TV providers.

    One of the staff was saying a customer kept wanting details of which packages included which sports channels. His answer was "Why does it matter?"

    700:

    Paris lockdown day 2 We're isolating as a family, my daughter has come back to our home as she can work fom here (kindergarten teacher). There is no shortage of food in the shops and we can go shopping as long as we remember to print out the silly ausweis. To releive boredom we've launched a cooking marathon (today's theme is Thai) and started a cleaning jamboree. At 8:00 pm we got out on the balcony and made an awful racket (as did most of our neighbors) in support of the health-care workers. The usual suspects, who had a party outside last night have been beaten into submission. The grandmother (80+) has to weather it all by herself, we're not allowed to visit her but we set her up with my smartphone and we get in video-touch several times per day.

    701:

    Yes, I have heard of them - but remember where I am! It's damp warmth that matters, and not all extremely warm materials remain warm when damp. For example, eiderdown doesn't :-( I have no idea whether those do, and have tried and failed to find out.

    702:

    Canada - COVID-19 info site

    Lots of info for general public and medicos, daily tracking, symptoms, etc.

    https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/2019-novel-coronavirus-infection/health-professionals.html#epi

    703:

    One thing I'd point out is that in the medium/long term, closing down movement will kill cities and countries. All our major institutions do depend on people and goods moving in, out, and around.

    This is no different than what happens to things like coral reefs, or any living organism that depends on stuff moving across membranes.

    Therefore, the best response is going to have to let people and goods move to some degree, possibly more than we are now. So the trick for governments is to: 1. Stop the surge of coronavirus infections from the current wave, so that systems don't entirely break through too many people getting seriously ill at once. 2. Ramp up production of the stuff/standardize training and education we need to deal with coronavirus (PPEs, cleansers, social distancing, etc.) 3. Simultaneously bring the economy back online as stuff becomes available (this is the tricky bit). 4. With luck, we get vaccines within 18 months, and everyone who hasn't caught it and survived by then gets immunized (this is the slow herd immunity version) 5. Rebuild/expand pandemic disease response systems for the next time.

    The reason for this last is that the horseshoe bats in China reportedly have several thousand recombining coronaviruses among them. Almost all of these can't apparently infect humans, but some can, and they're actively evolving and recombining. As with the flu, we're going to see more coronavirus epidemics, and we might as well set up systems to deal.

    Now this may sound more complicated than letting the virus run rampant until the survivors develop herd immunity. The problem with this approach is that it trashes the existing health care system, which actually has a lot of really skilled doctors who are in risk groups and can't be easily replaced if they go. While I'm sympathetic to the notion that covid-19 will disproportionately kill supporters of the current idiot regimes in the US and UK, I think the cost of letting the virus run wild through their populations are definitely worse than trying to save their sorry carcasses.

    704:

    The reason for this last is that the horseshoe bats in China reportedly have several thousand recombining coronaviruses among them. Almost all of these can't apparently infect humans, but some can, and they're actively evolving and recombining.

    Realistically, this is our third turn in the barrel.

    We got incredibly lucky with SARS and MERS. Our luck ran out with COVID19, their attenuated but more-infectious cousin, but it doesn't look likely to bring down global civilization -- although it's going to cause a global recession and, potentially, millions of deaths.

    (If SARS or MERS had spread like COVID19 from the get-go, we wouldn't be having this discussion: it'd be Black Death 2.0 time.)

    Anyway: this looks to be the new normal -- potential pandemic coronaviruses coming at us at 3-5 year intervals, and fuck knows what else behind them.

    Quite possibly Trump's main cause for fame in the history books will eventually turn out to be his closure of the White House pandemic response team in 2017.

    705:

    Qiviut is warm when wet. It is ridiculously warm, as you'd kinda expect, given what grows it. I know someone who knit a qiviut hat for someone and wanted to know why they never wore it; the answer was that it was too warm to wear most days in Ottawa in the winter (back in the Holocene, or more nearly. Colder than Moscow.)

    Buffalo is some warm when wet but its primary claim to fame is wicking insanely well, so it makes really excellent socks, at least if you've got a prospect of escaping the deluge.

    706:

    Yep, they have all master the PR spin - get to see it on closed restaurant doors as well.

    Amtrak seems to add to the service cuts daily at the moment, and the UK franchises have all gone to the government begging for relief (not just financial, but permission to cut service levels that are mandated in the franchise agreements).

    The US big 3 automakers are shutting down due to pressure from the unions, though wouldn't be surprised if they are just as happy to cut production at the moment. They join Toyota who was more honest including a decline in demand as a reason.

    Oh, and Trump has decided he is a "Wartime President" - what can go wrong...

    707:

    I think we're about to hit a new place in the U.S. I notice that the curve is now obviously exponential for new cases, and is heading that way for deaths. We're going to go from roughly 1500 new cases yesterday as many as 3000 cases today (the current number is over 2500) and we now have more than a thousand active cases in New York alone. Tomorrow (or maybe Friday if we're lucky) is going to be "interesting" and not in a good way.

    708:

    My latest look at the graph says we'll be over 3000 today in the US within the next few hours.

    709:

    @charlie: We got incredibly lucky with SARS and MERS. I think you might be a little dismissive towards those who fought (With success) against those viruses. They were/have been almost contained. There were a lot of of people working in that. I do agree that we (the royal West) should have learned more and been in a better position..

    710:

    Graydon,

    That Imperial College report you link to may be what is driving the change in the UK Govt's response in the last 3 days.

    I know the NZ policy people have been looking at what it says very carefully. (Most govt policy analysts in Wellington seem to be reading it and discussing it, no matter what area they work in)

    From their final wrapup:

    Perhaps our most significant conclusion is that mitigation is unlikely to be feasible without emergency surge capacity limits of the UK and US healthcare systems being exceeded many times over. In the most effective mitigation strategy examined, which leads to a single, relatively short epidemic (case isolation, household quarantine and social distancing of the elderly), the surge limits for both general ward and ICU beds would be exceeded by at least 8-fold under the more optimistic scenario for critical care requirements that we examined. In addition, even if all patients were able to be treated, we predict there would still be in the order of 250,000 deaths in GB, and 1.1-1.2 million in the US

    The alternative they give to 'mitigation' is 'suppression' - close the schools, universities, pubs, restaurants, other social-gathering places, as well as case-isolation and home-quarantine of those over 70.

    And keep them closed for 18 months until a vaccine arrives (or... no policy recommendation is given if a vaccine never arrives). If you stop before then, you're back to 250k dead in the UK - though their modelling suggests you can take a 'holiday' breaks from suppression for couple of weeks every few months if infection rates are brought down, as long as you slam it back on again as infection rates rise.

    If that is indeed what's driving UK response, then this lockdown is a long-term thing. Could be 2022 before it returns to normal.

    711:

    Ran out for a few staples (milk, tomato paste, fruit), and wow, even in an affluent western DC suburb the shelves were surprisingly empty. No eggs other than a just-restocked supply of $5/dozen yuppie eggs, nothing in the paper goods isle, no ketchup, almost no meat, no frozen veg, no cream or half-and-half, half of the cereals, most of the pasta sauces, even bottled water was mostly gone. Plenty of fruit, milk, and tomato paste, thought, so I'm good. In side news, the local flora is coming into bloom, and so my hay fever kicked in as soon as I left my air conditioned house, so I was suppressing coughs and sneezes the whole time, to the point where my eyes watered. I could only imagine the panic if I gave into these impulses in a public space today! Balticon confirmed canceled on the web site, btw.

    712:

    Sorry I mis-spoke:

    When I said this: " If you stop before then, you're back to 250k dead in the UK "

    That's only as few as 250k dead if you luck into the most optimistic scenario, and you first wave the magic wand that lets you increase ICU surge capacity by a factor of 8.

    713:

    Charles H @569 wrote "I ran across an article about deactivating coronaviruses in blood by heating it up to 60C for an hour."

    that's got to be wrong, 60 C is 140F, an hour of that's enough to poach eggs, or at least turn the albumin white and opaque, and I'm pretty sure albumin is a blood component. What's the highest fever ever survived, I guarantee it wasn't 140. Blood cells die at that temperature, and plasma proteins would denature into a gelatinous mass. Stir in flour, egg and milk, you'd get a Yorkshire pudding like Bob Howard's old flame Mhari could really appreciate.

    714:

    Bill Arnold @ 680,

    An interesting twist is that this disease has a much higher death rate for the age cohorts that contain most of the power and money.

    I thought about that a bit yesterday, from the perspective of a relatively large number of inheritances occurring in the near future.

    David L @ 698,

    Boeing and Airbus stock might be a cheap buy soon. Yes I know there are down now but I suspect they will be down even more.

    Depending on how leveraged they are, will they be down or will they be out?

    715:

    That Imperial College report you link to may be what is driving the change in the UK Govt's response in the last 3 days. I know the NZ policy people have been looking at what it says very carefully.

    Yes, Graydon (571) and I (563) agree on this as well. It looks/reads like it was intended for broad consumption/study by government officials and policy people. The models are fairly simple, as are the diagrams, but they convey some key issues enough, and well enough, that people can fill in more details themselves. They deserve praise for it; it'll probably be in the historical interpretations of this pandemic.

    716:

    We won't be returning to normal.

    (Whatever that might have been, either statistical or prescriptive.)

    The more you test, the less you have to isolate; we can see a ubiquitous mandatory testing regime (it needs both to work) or we can see complete isolation (which can't be sustained and which breaks down as the economy fails, becoming a slow start to the corpse pile) or we can see the corpse pile (permanently degrading the health care system and economy).

    Not only is this a stark and immediate choice, it's instantly obvious that if we can go communitarian collectivist enough to get everybody and an economy through the pandemic until there's a vaccine or reliable treatment, free to all, we can damn well decarbonize, too. There are a whole lot of powerful people who decided a generation ago that given a choice between mass genocide and reduced profits, they were going for the genocide.

    The obvious authoritarian desire is to use the inescapable ubiquitous testing regime to quash all dissent forever; the existing legal authority to enforce a quarantine is drastic and ignores due process, and could be extended to everything everywhere just by declaring one! And it wouldn't even be mostly a lie!

    I expect both the US and the UK to go the hard authoritarian route because it's consistent with the xenophobic racial supremacy narrative being used to legitimize the mammonite right wing. (You can't use a prosperity narrative because they're against that, and we're at the uneasy halfway point between fascists and mammonites with neither in control of the right.)

    The alternative is a strong ("we don't have any rich people", strong; no capitalism, no great personal wealth, no rents....) civic nationalism ethnogenesis; we're all in this together, we take care of everybody, we're collectivist and communitarian. None of us are white by identity. (Never mind how easy we are to sunburn; the justification of state piracy has to go.) And it couldn't stop until there were (at a minimum) no more authoritarian regimes with nukes.

    This was already the choice of our times; the pandemic has made it more immediate and more doubtful.

    717:

    I suspect the point being made about SARS and MERS (well, at least with SARS) is that we were lucky because the virus had a fatal flaw - the host didn't become contagious until symptoms appeared. Thus it was easy to isolate the virus and prevent spread once we knew what we were dealing with. And at least with SARS, that pretty much removed it (so far) as a human threat.

    Covid-19 doesn't offer us that flaw - the host is contagious for up to 2 weeks prior to symptoms.

    This effectively means there are no good solutions for dealing with Covid-19 as it has transferred to humans in an ideal form for spreading.

    718:

    People have been predicting increased epidemic diseases since the 1980s as the combined trends of increased urbanization, increased population, and increased temperatures all make new diseases more likely. (Careful statistical studies in the scientific literature, I mean; this has been a worry for a goodly while.)

    This is the sort of thing that should drive long term planning, on an "overproduce doctors" sort of scale as well as a "comfortable margins in hospital beds per population" health care system. What we've actually had was a blind determination to do profit extraction from health care.

    This is so completely not a "no one could have foreseen" situation, and it's going to be sold as one so the folks making decisions don't get held responsible.

    719:

    Dried beans need to be soaked overnight and the water discarded as they contain toxins. Then cook in fresh water

    720:

    I'm kind of amazed at how far Siouxsie Wiles and TheSpinoff have spread. It seems that somehow a weird science geek* and a web-only so-called "media outlet" have been able to present things so clearly and simply that they stand out for doing so.

    These graphs, for example: https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/14-03-2020/after-flatten-the-curve-we-must-now-stop-the-spread-heres-what-that-means/

    • This is the woman who was (maybe still is) selling bioluminescent face painting kits for kids. The neighbours were really impressed until glowing handprints appeared all over the inside of their house.
    721:

    Missteps by any government will be enough to send people into the waiting arms of far-right political groups. Germany needs to up its game; in France, Macron has been talking a good line, but will the actions match the words at the required scale? Italy may well be a lost cause at this point. And so on.

    But yeah. No other western countries have a political class so obviously feral as the USA, the UK, and Australia.

    The thing about a turn to the far right is that it may well be civilization ending, with international war around 2040 going nuclear.

    Let us hope that chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are actually useful and there is an effective vaccine, making this a relatively short unpleasant episode, and that the political elites see the error of their ways.

    Let us hope.

    722:

    You should try looking up images of Winnipeg Police Buffalo Coats. I remember see police wearing them when I was a kid.

    723:

    Buffalo coats are hides, though; the stuff I'm talking about is wool, or underfluff, or whatever you want to call it. (I cannot shake the mental image of a very nervous cowboy with a comb trying to tiptoe up to a buffalo. I know that's not correct, but I have seen someone combing muskox so the image sticks.)

    Buffalo robes were a huge business while the buffalo were being exterminated; if you were in an open sleigh in the winter you needed something seriously warm, and those were.

    724:

    it's instantly obvious that if we can go communitarian collectivist enough to get everybody and an economy through the pandemic until there's a vaccine or reliable treatment, free to all, we can damn well decarbonize, too

    Graydon,

    You're an optimist.

    (Blinks. Checks previous sentence. Yup.)

    The mammonites run the world now, and they like it they way it was - they really do. The Koch brothers don't want the tinpot fascists to take charge, they don't want a shared communitarian approach to take hold long-term, and the Kochs and their ilk have more power. So yeah, I think there's a very good chance that we are going to return to "normal".

    I can easily see wartime-type communitarianism. One use, single shot, doesn't stick around afterwards. But I can't see why it'd hold and cause other things like decarbonization policies to be rammed through under the same approach.

    The US did sustained national effort in WW2, effectively - put everyone on ration books, seized control of industries, declared things like "there shall be no cars produced for consumers in this period, because we're taking over the factories". And then they reverted to type immediately afterwards, so effectively that most Americans think the US push in WW2 proves the superiority of laissez-faire capitalism (seriously!).

    Changes will happen. The Labour govt in NZ seized the moment to push up every govt benefit (unemployment dole, sickness benefit, superannuation) by $25/week. "Stimulus" they said, but it's permanent. Conservative govts will make similar moves the other way - seize the crisis as an excuse. But you are talking revolution, and I don't see it.

    725:

    But yeah. No other western countries have a political class so obviously feral as the USA, the UK, and Australia.

    No so much screwed the pooch as sodomized the ostrich, yeah.

    On the present trajectory, 2040 is well into agricultural collapse; things aren't going to take that long.

    The US relies on H2A visa holders for most agricultural labour; staple grains are likely mostly OK, but it's not clear that the folks who grow the vegetables are going to be there this year. And, again, it is utterly existential for the mammonite capitalists, which is effectively all of them, that there NOT be an effective communitarian response, which is equivalent to saying they want the stack of corpses because as stark binary choices go here we are; if it becomes obvious that a sufficient communitarian response to the pandemic works fine, they're done. Things don't have to be this way. They might even be held responsible for past acts.

    People in the US, subsidiary political units of the US, have done pretty decently within the limits of their available knowledge and power; the federal government has been actively evil. It does things to an already creaky legitimacy.

    Right now, the political question is what the US (and UK!) numbers really are. The US is at somewhere around 9000 reported cases, but! and this is the sticky bit, we know they have insufficient tests to actually know what the symptomatic rate is. We have a pretty fair idea that the asymptomatic/presymptomatic rate is about an order of magnitude larger than the symptomatic rate, so the US asymptomatic case floor is probably around a hundred thousand somewhere at this point. That has unfortunate implications.

    726:

    You're an optimist.

    I expect the stack of corpses and the lasting damage to the medical system. The economic damage is going to trigger panic reactions in all directions in a month or so at the outside.

    Hitler's War and the Great Pacific War left the post-war Anglosphere in a happy glow of legitimacy; not only had they won, not only had they won decisively, prosperity was rapidly and visibly increasing, most people who went off to war came back with an improved education and skills, jobs were easy to get, everything looked lovely. (If you were white.) The present has guillotine jewelry trending on Etsy. It's been a long time since the general prosperity increased, and it's obvious there's an ongoing conscious oligarchical policy decision to kill everybody rather than accept lower profits.

    It's not really analogous, is what I'm saying; the mechanism of national unity isn't there, and the construction of legitimacy is already tottering. (To quote Popehat's most recent ATPL podcast title: "Collapse of Civilization From Coronavirus Interferes With Collapse Of Civilization From Institutional Failure")

    It's time to get busy on that ethnogenesis.

    727:

    Thanks. The insulation benefit of wicking is a myth, though it may make people FEEL warmer, because it requires energy (heat) to drive it, and the real problem is hypothermia not feeling chilly. The second law of thermodynamics is not mocked, no matter what some people say. Some people even recommend an impervious base layer!

    728:

    So you spotted that, too? I was mentioning it to my wife last night. Not merely is it a Micawber approach (NOT competent planning), it is unclear that our economy would survive that - which would make it more like 1350, not 1930.

    From a personal viewpoint, I don't regard the extra year or so of life expectancy as worthwhile if I have to spend the next 2 years under house arrest.

    729:

    On the "bright" side, there have been claims that a "die-back event" is the only way to prevent "global warming".

    730:

    The economic damage is going to trigger panic reactions in all directions in a month or so at the outside.

    The avalanche is already running.

    The Dow has lost all gains made since Trump's inauguration, and the week isn't over yet. Similar falls in London.

    Yesterday Sterling plunged to $1.15, down from $1.31 at the beginning of the week, its lowest level since 1985.

    Oil is w-a-y down, thanks to the spat between Saudi and Russia, and I suspect it's going to drop further as lots of commuters park up their cars and work from home and airliners are grounded.

    The UK economy is on course to contract by 15% within the next three months, a shrinkage not seen since the Great Depression. US unemployment could hit 20%, with the economy shrinking 13% in Q2. And so on.

    The panic has already started: we're actually hearing Tory government ministers flying kites about a policy ("individual quantitative easing", i.e. giving free money to citizens) that Jeremy Corbyn floated, pre-COVID19, as a way of fixing damage due to austerity -- and was roundly attacked for. In this case, it's about keeping the population from starving.

    731:

    China today reports no new domestic cases for the first time... And it started, as near as we can jusge, when? V early January so between 3 & 4 months maximum So, it might all be over by the nd of May or early June, here, pehaps.

    Heteromeles In the medium/long term, closing down movement will kill cities and countries. All our major institutions do depend on people and goods moving in, out, and around. And the control-freak suppressive politicos - of ANY stripe - will do well to remember this. 1] Yes 2] Yes 3] Very difficult 4] Sooner than that. if the results of the various quinine relatives & that Japanese drug can be implemented big-time. ( chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine ) The risk of not using those is so great that it's essential that they be deployed 5] Oh yeah? You forget how stupid/arrogant some politicois can get

    Troutwaxer Yes, unlike here, where we got advance warning & the respose seems remarkably proportinate & gradual (mostly) DT & his idiot are fucking up by the numbers - see also Charlie's comment @ 704

    As an over-70-year-old you can stick your compulsory quarintine - I won't be able to EAT if that happens - or does going to the allotment count as "eseentail food supplies" - interesting

    Graydon Yup - more testing is the intial way forward - the other options are not so good - is the US testing more? NO OTOH the innate stubbornenss of the Brots means a too-hard authoriarian push will fail - I hope

    GregvP By your logic, then Trump is on to a winner ... are we sure about that?

    Charlie But the USD will tank, any time v soon as DT's incompetence & teh number of US cases rises inexorably. Agree that the tories could bring in a Unoversal Basic Income - highly amusing & could easily happen.

    Meantime: Plague of Justinian was what finally shafted "Rome" - yes/no/maybe?

    732:

    Well, this is "just guys talking on the commute" but we;re discussing the notion of breaking open warehouses with MoD ration packs (UK equivalent to US MRE) in them.

    733:

    I am about to go shopping.

    Not just for food; for a spare pair of shoes identical to the ones I am wearing and bought two months ago, because I don't expect the multinational shoe chain to still be in business when I am next able to do so.

    (Sketchers, FWIW. They wear out quickly, but I have a once-broken bone in my left foot that wasn't set properly, and they're the first shoes I've found that don't leave me in agony for days afterwards if I walk more than 5km in them. Shoes fall into my "doomsday prepper errand" category.)

    734:

    The avalanche is already running.

    The FTSE has lost 1/3 of its value (in Sterling!) since January, which isn't catastrophic, but we are still just in a 'holding position' (for the reasons others give), and it is extremely unclear whether the UK will do as well as China because of its vastly less thorough methods. The real economic crisis will come when we have to drop that, because it's not sustainable, or if it fails.

    I can see the end of movement, and an increasingly hostile environment for refugees, which (together with climate change) is probably going to kill more people worldwide than the virus. In the UK, I am afraid the 'hospitality' industry will be almost entirely replaced by multinational chains, caravan parks and AirBNB, but the other changes are extremely hard to predict.

    735:

    Koch brothers

    Ah, Koch brother. Singular for a while now.

    736:

    for a spare pair of shoes

    Buy 2 pair. Or more.

    737:

    China today reports no new domestic cases for the first time... ... So, it might all be over by the nd of May or early June, here, pehaps.

    Basically all of China is under house arrest with limited work and food shopping release. Which hides home bound cases. If they stop this then it starts spreading again.

    738:

    Yeah, not Yorkshire Pudding sir. (I speak as someone sitting in the middle of Yourkshire right now). What you have there is a Black Pudding, or blood sausage outside the UK. Still yummy, but definitely not a Yorky Pud.

    739:

    .... aaaand I was able to buy the shoes online, for delivery, because they're a pattern that's still on sale. Result!

    740:

    Shoes fall into my "doomsday prepper errand" category

    Absolutely.

    Things few people have in their bugout bag, and really ought to include toenail clippers, because if you're going to be walking for the indefinite, you're going to need them.

    741:

    Disappointing, though not surprising: https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/18/italians-found-way-3-d-print-key-ventilator-piece-1-help-battle-coronavirus-so They found a way to 3D print an essential ventilator part inexpensively... they're being sued by the patent holder.

    742:

    I am more thinking of when the "it's trying to keep all the useless olds alive that's tanking the economy, we could just kill them and save the bother" narrative goes publicly mainstream.

    We can absolutely, as a matter of capability, get everybody through this via national mobilization and guaranteeing the necessities of life and so on. Lord Woolton would have zero problems setting it up. (Frederick James Marquis with computer support would be a wonder and a terror.)

    The thing is, there is no way to do it without going full collectivist, and the class of greedheads who have been driving inequality, etc. since Reagan and Thatcher have already decided they prefer profits to genocide, after all; the whole climate thing is not an accident. Given a choice between a permanent economic change to a collectivist setup, and killing millions, they'll pick, and push for, and advocate, killing millions.

    743:

    Re: ... my hay fever kicked in as soon as I left my air conditioned house, so I was suppressing coughs and sneezes the whole time,'

    Our spring allergy/hay fever season will be starting soon too. Which also means folks doing their gardening, neighbors chatting across the fence and so on. And because of COVID-19, most will probably feel that they can stay safe if they keep a distance of about 6 ft from other folks.

    Maybe.

    My most common allergic reaction is sneezing so decided to do a bit of reading up on it. And I'm guessing that people with seasonal allergies are as likely to get COVID-19 as people without allergies. But, people suffering from seasonal allergies could have a much greater impact on COVID-19 transmission because they can spread the virus a helluva a lot farther -- onto more people and surfaces. And faster - so the virus is likelier to hit/reach whoever is facing them. (Anyways - I'm sure that given how often derails to types of planes, rockets, etc. occur on this blog that most folks here get the picture.)

    https://scitechdaily.com/mit-covid-19-diagnostic-could-aid-efforts-to-detect-and-prevent-the-spread-of-coronavirus/

    Excerpt:

    'Over the last decade, Lydia Bourouiba, an associate professor directing the Fluid Dynamics of Disease Transmission Laboratory at MIT, has focused on characterizing and modeling infectious disease dynamics and transmission at various scales. Through experiments in the lab and clinical environment, she has reported that when a person coughs or sneezes, they do not emit a spray of individual droplets that quickly fall to the ground and evaporate, as scientists had once thought. Instead, they produce a complex cloud of hot and moist air that trap droplets of all sizes together, propelling them much further through the air than any individual droplet would travel on its own.

    On average, her experiments have revealed that a cough can transmit droplets up to 13 to 16 feet, while a sneeze can eject them up to 26 feet away. Surrounding air conditions can act to further disperse the residual droplets in upper levels of rooms.

    Bourouiba notes that the presence of the high-speed gas cloud is independent of the type of organism or pathogen that the cloud may contain. The droplets within it depend on a pathogen’s properties, coupled with a patient’s physiology — a combination which her laboratory has focused on deciphering in the context of influenza. She is now expanding her studies and modeling to Covid-19, and says now is a critical time to invest in research.

    She is also working with others to evaluate ways to limit a cloud’s dispersal and slow Covid-19 transmission to health care workers and others in shared spaces. “A surgical mask is not protective against inhalation of a pathogen from the cloud,” she says. “For an infected patient wearing it, it can contain some of the forward ejecta from coughs or sneezes, but these are very violent ejections completely open on all sides, and fluid flows through the path of least resistance.”

    Trying to suppress a sneeze is not recommended as it can be dangerous. A colleague suffered a cracked rib from a combination of serious coughing and trying to hold back a sneeze. Blowing out/rupturing your ear drums is another serious possibility.

    https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/dont-hold-it-halted-sneeze-rips-hole-mans-throat-180967847/

    BTW, it's possible to acquire new allergies at any time of life including old age as per below.

    https://www.aaaai.org/about-aaaai/newsroom/allergy-statistics

    'Allergic Rhinitis

    Roughly 7.8% of people 18 and over in the U.S. have hay fever.4 In 2010, white children in the U.S. were more likely to have had hay fever (10%) than black children (7%).1 Worldwide, allergic rhinitis affects between 10% and 30 % of the population.3 Worldwide, sensitization (IgE antibodies) to foreign proteins in the environment is present in up to 40% of the population.3 In 2012, 7.5% or 17.6 million adults were diagnosed with hay fever in the past 12 months.5 In 2012, 9.0% or 6.6 million children reported hay fever in the past 12 months.6 In 2010, 11.1 million visits to physician offices resulted with a primary diagnosis of allergic rhinitis.7'

    The review article below discusses asthma-allergy-infection links: asthma-allergy combo more than doubles likelihood of infection with whatever is going round.

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3410318/

    Asthma rates range from 7.3% to 13.2% by state in the US.

    https://www.cdc.gov/asthma/most_recent_data_states.htm

    By country - asthma rates range from under 1% (China) to over 20% (Australia).

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3353191/

    The strength of my seasonal allergies seems to vary year to year: in the really bad years I ended up with bronchitis and, once, pneumonia. Not good. No idea yet how this year is going to be allergy-wise. Started taking my one-a-day all-day allergy relief pill (Cetirizine) but can't take it for too long because of its effects on renal and liver function. Overall best strategy is to avoid the allergens. Ditto COVID-19.

    744:

    People have noticed ... that the drug mentioned, Favipiravir ... works. They are gearing up to mass-produce it .... Good stuff!

    745:

    If model train factories are back up and running in China, I suspect the narrative "all of China is under house arrest" is a bit of an exaggeration.

    Are things back to normal? Unlikely from a social perspective, but in other ways they seem to be.

    746:

    If you read the whole article, you get the later notes that the trials are small and no one is saying it helps with the critical cases. (It in fact doesn't.) It's a way to keep from having severe cases, it's not a general treatment.

    Plus the drug is a teratogen.

    So, helpful, but not a comprehensive solution.

    747:

    The numbers for GDP seem reasonable given the sources, but there is reason to treat the US unemployment number as fiction - it came from the US Treasury secretary.

    Paul Krugman estimates a 20% unemployment rate would require the economy to shrink 30% https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/1240251900102152194

    Which still, even a 10% to 12% unemployment rate isn't good and is going to cause a lot of problems, and if the "mainstream" politicians aren't careful (as in, they need to start reversing the last 40 years of policies and start spending) they could end up accelerating the move to the previous fringe parties.

    748:

    If model train factories are back up and running in China, I suspect the narrative "all of China is under house arrest" is a bit of an exaggeration.

    You left out my part about food shopping and work.

    And I didn't mention that you get your temp taken continuously if you are moving about. Entering a building, getting on a bus or plane, whatever.

    People who are there but from elsewhere have been blogging and such. One talks about when he goes to work he has to scan into his work building with his smart phone. Which notifies the authorities that he has left his home but for valid reasons.

    And the serious medical people say while they are keeping it tamped down it will explode if they open up their society before a vaccine.

    749:

    Teratogenesis is not a major issue, if handled right, and given as soon as symptoms started to appear. Most of the at-risk people are either male, past menopause or strongly advised not to get pregnant for other reasons (e.g. hyptension and diabetes).

    That is, IF it works as the more optimistic interpretations imply that it does. It may not.

    750:

    Imperial College / Coursera are running an online course on Covid-19

    https://www.coursera.org/learn/covid-19

    751:

    Graydon : The bed count minimization is not just cost cutting - it is also because being in a hospital is dangerous for your continued health, so best practice under normal conditions is to minimize hospital stay length as far as at all practicable, at which point surplus beds just take up space. This implies we should probably have mothballed epidemic / disaster wards for when things are not normal.

    752:

    While there are perfectly sensible reasons to minimize hospital stay length, I can assure you with perfect confidence that this motivation has absolutely nothing to do with (for example) the Harris government's cuts to health care in Ontario. There really are a lot of people in the Anglosphere who sincerely and passionately believe that you should not be able to have anything you cannot pay for, and in consequence think single payer health care must be abolished because it violates this moral order. (They literally and specifically do not care if more people die.)

    The tricky bit is that you can't mothball doctors. You have to keep them in practice, and to do that you have to do stuff like get rid of twelve hour shifts and pay many more of them. (and break the medical association control on the production rate, because they want to be scarce.) Perfectly possible but politically expensive.

    753:

    "we tested everybody" (in the village of 3300) and "we're testing as many people as we can" (from Iceland) coming out with confirmation that roughly half of COVID-19 cases are asymptomatic but contagious.

    https://www.buzzfeed.com/albertonardelli/coronavirus-testing-iceland

    Minimum useful testing capacity turns into "everybody, daily" for at least two months. (It would immensely suck to do all that to almost suppress the disease.) Canada needs two and a quarter billion tests.

    If the Institut Pasteur fellow is right about the dollar-per-test approach, that's totally doable in economic terms. But it's definitely got a ramp time.

    754:

    A online battle has emerged in the US, with a Stanford University epidemiologist questioning the actions taken so far given a "lack of evidence" that it works.

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/coronavirus-covid-pandemic-response-scientists-1.5502423

    755:

    [quote] Charles H @569 wrote "I ran across an article about deactivating coronaviruses in blood by heating it up to 60C for an hour."

    that's got to be wrong, 60 C is 140F, an hour of that's enough to poach eggs, or at least turn the albumin [/quote] The article abstract didn't say the blood survived in any usable way. It was investigating the durability of coronaviruses. (And if the virus is surrounded by protein you need to raise the temperature another bit.)

    If you want something more detailed check: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/01956701 Journal of Hospital Infection 104 (2020) 246e251 Persistence of coronaviruses on inanimate surfaces and their inactivation with biocidal agents G. Kampf a, * , D. Todt b , S. Pfaender b , E. Steinmann b a University Medicine Greifswald, Institute for Hygiene and Environmental Medicine, Ferdinand-Sauerbruch-Straße, 17475 Greifswald, Germany b Department of Molecular and Medical Virology, Ruhr University Bochum, Universitätsstrasse 50, 44801 Bochum, Germany

    756:

    [quote]Dried beans need to be soaked overnight and the water discarded as they contain toxins. Then cook in fresh water[/quote]

    That may depend on something genetic, or it might be a custom that you believe in. It's clearly not universally true as I don't discard the water and experience no ill effects. I do know that my mother always discarded the water.

    OTOH, perhaps it depends on the kind of bean. I never cook, e.g., fava beans, which I have heard that is true of. Or perhaps it used to be true of beans, but they've been bred to avoid the problem.

    757:

    That is DANGEROUSLY WRONG. The point about soaking them is to reduce the cooking time, and to help de-fart them (I use boiling water, wait until cool, and repeat until clear). To destroy the toxins, you need to cook them at boiling point for at least 5 minutes (more in Denver, or use a pressure cooker). They can then be simmered or put in a slow cooker until soft.

    Red kidney contain the most toxin, but all Phaseolus (including most of those eaten in the west) contain a lot. Vicia (broad, fava etc.) has much less toxin. I don't know about the others.

    758:

    Re: ' ... online battle has emerged - Stanford [vs. Harvard] University epidemiologist'

    Guess the Stanford epidemiologist isn't aware of what's going on in Iceland.

    [See Graydon 753 - Buzzfeed article]

    Or some idiotic academic spat going on - possibly someone's pet theory under the ax - with the result that two potentially useful sources get screened out from future contributions.

    759:

    [quote]If model train factories are back up and running in China, I suspect the narrative "all of China is under house arrest" is a bit of an exaggeration.[/quote] I think that what it is is a poor choice of metaphor. IIUC all China is under a limited self-quarantine, with tight monitoring for symptoms whenever you go out. It does, vaguely, fit within the loose definition of arrest, as movements are restricted. It doesn't mean "confined to quarters".

    The problem is that there are no decent tests. "Decent" in this case would mean they cost less than a dollar to use, and can be read without access to a lab. Something like "spit on this strip and see whether it turns red or blue". And it would need to detect the change as soon as you turn infectious (or, ideally, slightly before).

    760:

    I have yet to hear a leader speaking on the economy who appears to realize what the problem is, and therefore their proposed policies lie somewhere on the nonsensical to accidentally useful axis (quite possibly some are, just drowned out by those who are still in the bargaining stage of grief).

    The problem is not that the economy is slowing down because people are afraid of something more than they should be (9/11), or the bankers made a bunch of idiotic loans again(2007), or we realized we were excitedly making a whole lot of useless stuff(Pets.com). The problem is there is a disease spreading and we are intentionally shutting down large swaths of the economy to slow it.

    This is not the situation that Keynesian stimulus is made to address. Pump all the money you want into the economy, we cannot allow it to start producing as it was six weeks ago, because that is incompatible with slowing the virus.

    This isn't a slump, it is a hibernation. It is intentional, we cannot reverse it. It is temporary, we will emerge from it.

    The correct policies would be aimed at:

    Continue essential production during the hibernation safely. Food, shelter, etc.

    Increase specific production related to the virus. Medical care, testing, research.

    Continue whatever production can be safely continued. Heck, it's a great time to pave a road if you can figure out how to do it with the workers six feet apart.

    Prevent lasting decay in the situation of individuals. People are going to be unemployed for a while. A lot of people. Unemployment benefits. Rent holidays. Debt holidays. Make it so every ordinary individual comes out of this no worse off than they went in economically. The $1000 cash in the US is a fairly stupid way to do this, but will actually help, and maybe could be done quickly (Senate already dithered away a week of course).

    Prevent lasting decay in businesses. A lot of industries are just closed. Others are going to operate far slower. Others are going to operate at a loss. Again rent holidays, unemployment so they can just lay off, debt holidays. At the higher levels the zero interest rate actually is helpful, and could be more helpful. Give the mortgage companies and other banks zero interest loans, payments to mortgage companies and on other debt are optional for the duration, rent payments are illegal for the duration (note: this will not be made up at the end of the crisis). Encourage other kinds of routine payments to pause.

    We hibernate.

    The federal government eats enough of the cost to make this all work.

    In the US, given we have been running huge deficits already to entertain the rich, maybe the rich get to pay for it.

    761:

    The UK government has introduced some rush Patriot Act stuff, soon to be rammed through on the Express Train to Submission.

    321 pages, some really interesting stuff in there. e.g. CTRL+F Toxicological[0] or for Scottish readers, page 209/10, Health protection regulations: supplementary and the bit on Sheriffs[1].

    https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/58-01/0122/20122.pdf

    There's also a fairly obvious and major issue for Mental Health (see all sections) in that fear-hyped neighbors huffing Daily Fail lies have the ability to report 'suspicions' and authorities enact various invasive tests. Just the thing that the vulnerable need to worry about.

    "Moral Hazard"[2] ... yeah. Ms Dorriss ain't going to get penalized for knowingly infecting her constituents, but we can bet a few undesirable homeless might.

    [0] COVID19 is a virus, eh? Why would anyone need that part in there?

    [1] Who are hugely popular in Scotland traditionally, if we're reading your historical documents like "Braveheart" correctly

    [2] In economics, moral hazard occurs when an actor has an incentive to increase their exposure to risk because they don't bear the full costs of that risk.

    ~

    Seriously. Being a chained dragon in your societies is reallllllly getting annoying.

    762:

    Ah... [quote] To destroy the toxins, you need to cook them at boiling point for at least 5 minutes (more in Denver, or use a pressure cooker). [/quote] That explains it. And I generally cook them overnight. (Well, sometimes I use a pressure cooker.)

    763:

    Random anecdote:

    A friend of mine took a San Francisco to Seattle flight yesterday.

    Passengers: Him, his two kids. Two other people.

    764:

    [1] After double checking, in Scots Law a sheriff runs, and/or sits in judgement in a court. They must be a qualified and experienced advocate or solicitor, and are a civil service appointee, not an elected official like in the Yousay.

    They have different career paths and duties in other legal systems.

    765:

    It was more the bit about making up additional provisions / temp rules with up to two year sentences / financial penalties and the consequences thereof, societally, economically and politically, hidden as a joke[0].

    We're obviously not a Lawyer as we manifestly don't understand any of your systems[1], but there seems to be a fairly large push-back from actual UK Barristers / Solicitors who are already rampantly unhappy about COVID19 Court hearing / trial rules and/or health provisions in Courts as well as looking at financial Armageddon if/when the Government cancels huge sections of an already over-worked and distressed system.

    Well, the non-Predatory and decent ones, anyhow.

    But we knew that bit without understanding how the system works, which is the point.

    [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Clearances

    [1] This is saying more than you think it's saying.

    766:

    Ahem: A Sheriff in Scotland is a judge. Sitting, legally qualified professional (appointed, not elected), where in England there'd be a magistrate.

    A sheriff is not, repeat not, some sort of law enforcement officer (as is the case in the colonies).

    768:

    News this morning that Lufthansa is cutting 95% of its flights, only maintaining those flights that are necessary for freight movement.

    Some planes will continue to fly empty of passengers because of the freight below the seats, but assume even that will start to dwindle.

    769:

    Graydon you should not be able to have anything you cannot pay for, and in consequence think single payer health care must be abolished because it violates this moral order. I came across this, to my cost ... Someone said exactly that on the US on-line discussion group "Quora" - I sggested that he hated people & that maybe it would be good idea if he got something lingering & painful ( I omitted the boiling oil ) - I'm now banned from Quora, but he isn't ....

    Charles H It's specifaclly Red Kidney Beans, where the soak & first-boil water has to be discarded. Other varieties/species of bean - not usually/not so much/not at all.

    Charlie @ 766 Thank you & also @ 765 & 7667 - take your ignorant stupidity somewhere else - PLEASE - begging nicely .... the WHOLE POINT is that our judges & Scottish Sheriffs are as Charlie says - professional lawyers, appointed - NOT politically "elected" on the basis of "Hang'em & Flog'em" as the barbaric & terminally stupid USA does.

    770:

    Oh, hi, lurker. I'm in MoCo.

    Yeah, the first Giant I went to two days ago, no milk, no lactose free milk (my SO needs that), none of the corned beef on sale (empty). The second had a lot of the latter, but completely out of their own brand of milk, and I had to pay through the nose for hers, and me - not only pay through the nose, but 2%, rather than whole milk.

    771:

    No surprise, big jump in the number of people in the US applying for unemployment benefits - increase of 70,000.

    And that is last week's numbers before most of what is happening started.

    772:

    It's wrong. 103F or 104F is "put them in the hospital, NOW!" 108F is, if I remember correctly, "there will be permanent damage".

    773:

    Perhaps you didn't see what I posted, yesterday: Story: Ten-Minute Coronavirus Test For $1 Could Be Game Changer Excerpt: In about three months' time, U.K.-based Mologic Ltd., in collaboration with Senegalese research foundation Institut Pasteur de Dakar, could shorten that wait to 10 minutes with a test that will help a continent with the world's most fragile healthcare system cope with the pandemic.

    Using technology from home pregnancy and malaria tests, its saliva and finger-prick kit could be ready for sale by June for less than $1 apiece. In Africa, they will be manufactured in Senegal by diaTropix, a newly built diagnostics manufacturing facility run by the director of the Pasteur Institute, --- end excerpt ---

    Links to original story, etc at https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/03/16/2028217/ten-minute-coronavirus-test-for-1-could-be-game-changer

    774:

    Greg, you never fail to miss the joke and the actual point.

    Trust us. You really should go look what the UK Barristers / Solicitors are saying in their wassaps and emails.

    It ain't pretty and the jokes they're making are a little more darker.

    775:

    I wonder how that work from home thing is working out? My internet has gone out several times this morning. That could be a problem if I was actually needed to work.

    I'm guessing it's just an overloaded system knocking my modem off-line.

    It has come back every time I manually reset the modem; i.e. get up and unplug it, wait 45 seconds & plug it back in, wait until it establishes a connection. But that in itself is a PITA.

    776:

    Some sobering graphs from the Financial Times, showing the trajectory graphs of various countries from the time of their 100th case - other than Hong Kong/Singapore/Japan and then sort of S. Korea we are all following the same trajectory started by China.

    https://www.ft.com/content/a26fbf7e-48f8-11ea-aeb3-955839e06441

    777:

    There's a Vietnamese kit with similar technology and price point that's been reported.

    If there's any reasonable basis to suppose that it works, well, the UK needs thereabouts of 4.5 billion tests[1], and should both pay the licenses for the tech and get on with the manufacturing part with expeditious dispatch.

    Canada needs two and a quarter billion, and same. The US needs 21 billion. Hopefully the US doesn't need to wait for President Pelosi before getting on that.

    [1] If you want to deal with this through testing, it's test everybody, every day, for a couple of months. Much cheaper than continued isolation but that lead time again.

    778:

    Btw, I'm reading in the WaPo that we've already got 18% unemployment or underemployment/hours cut. Also Exceprt: By the end of this month, the global economy probably will have shrunk by 1.2 percent — “not far short of the 1.6 percent drop in world output seen at the depth of the global final crisis” in the fourth quarter of 2008, according to Capital Economics in London. As the United States reels, Europe and Japan are also probably in recession. --- end excerpt ---

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/03/14/recession-economy-coronavirus-jobs/

    779:

    @756 (Charles H) : "That may depend on something genetic, or it might be a custom that you believe in."

    There is this genetic affection known as "favism" or deficit in G6PD :

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glucose-6-phosphate_dehydrogenase_deficiency

    There is a marked ethnic origin, which happens to map about exactly with the tradition area of fava beans cultivation and consumption and malaria, possibly because the hemolytic illness caused by this deficit + fava beans kill the parasite.

    780:

    No, you do NOT have to discard the first-boil water, not even for red kidney beans. It is the HEAT that destroys the toxin. Whether the soaking water NEEDS to be discarded, I don't know, but it's worth doing to reduce the farting.

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2271815/

    781:

    NPR on Twitter - Ohio - 78,000 people filed for unemployment during the first 3 days of this week.

    Compare with 6,500 for the entire previous week.

    New York, Oregon, and New Jersey experienced application systems crash with to many applicants at a time attempting to use the systems.

    782:

    Not all will be free, some will require registration, but NPR is keeping a list of live streaming musical events for those looking for something different to do during their extended home time https://www.npr.org/2020/03/17/816504058/a-list-of-live-virtual-concerts-to-watch-during-the-coronavirus-shutdown?utm_campaign=npr&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_term=nprnews&utm_medium=social

    783:

    "(Sketchers, FWIW. They wear out quickly, but I have a once-broken bone in my left foot that wasn't set properly, and they're the first shoes I've found that don't leave me in agony for days afterwards if I walk more than 5km in them. Shoes fall into my "doomsday prepper errand" category.)"

    Charlie, I don't know about there, but in the US Sketchers are cheap. Since you'll need a few pair in the next year anyway, might as well stock up.

    784:

    "But you are talking revolution, and I don't see it."

    I do. It's what happens when it becomes obvious to enough of the population that the handful of cockends at the top really would prefer to have everyone else die rather than give up their silly pet ideas.

    This is what knocked both Russia and Germany out of WW1, despite their heavily duped/repressed populations. The German revolution tends to get forgotten about because everyone talks about the Russian one, but Germany's population had been literally starving for the last couple of years (and the troops weren't much better off), due partly to interdiction of German trade and partly to a series of ludicrously inept attempts to boost wartime production (both agricultural and industrial) which buggered everything up in a tangle and did more to make matters worse than better. The Kaiser discovered that abdication was his only option, and the political system entered a state of collapse, which generated the necessary preconditions for a peace-seeking response to the facts of the army also collapsing and Ludendorff losing the plot.

    We are now in a situation where the risk of sudden and rapid death is of the same order (in relation to populations as a whole) as in WW1, but its application is not limited to a subset of the population sitting in the mud a long way away where everyone else doesn't have to see it; this time everyone is in the front line, and you can't even try deserting. As Graydon has pointed out several times, the political cockends at the top are as bloodymindedly immobile as they were a hundred years ago, only with extra incentive to retreat between their own ears because this time they have nowhere else to hide from the shelling. We have people up to the level of high ministerial office saying in public that they prefer immobility because fuck you lot, you can all fuck off and die, and we actually will this time and we know they mean it.

    Things have become so bleeding obvious that even people who have never given more than a couple of neurons' worth of thought to political matters are now able to start from "why am I going to die?" and within a couple of steps arrive at their personal reinvention of the philosophy of Marx, without going near the kind of thought that would allow the lifetime of contrary propaganda exposure to disrupt the process. Having a little bloke with a bald head tell you how great it is is one thing, but arriving at much the same kind of conclusion off your own bat because Dom the Diesel Engine or Don the Fart has told you you can fuck off and die and means it literally is a bit more compelling.

    Massive reduction in CO2 emissions does not have to be an explicit aim. It's just something that happens naturally if you cease to regard greed as a legitimate motivation, and in all likelihood to a far greater extent than could be achieved either by directed initiative, which we can't get off the ground anyway, or by sticking your thumb up your arse and letting other people come up with ways to make other other people pay them to do it, which is what we are doing.

    785:

    Re: 'We hibernate.'

    Agree.

    So, it's perfectly okay to allow for (write-off) maintenance of machines but not of personnel. Weird. Especially weird given that we've been in the 'knowledge economy' stage for a couple of decades already: human brains are the units of production.

    786:

    "The numbers for GDP seem reasonable given the sources, but there is reason to treat the US unemployment number as fiction - it came from the US Treasury secretary.

    Paul Krugman estimates a 20% unemployment rate would require the economy to shrink 30% https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/1240251900102152194:

    I think that Paul is trying to extrapolate a normal situation.

    The NYT covers this (for the USA) here:

    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/19/upshot/coronavirus-jobless-claims-states.html

    Last week's spike was a record-setter, and this week is when restaurants went from restricted to virtually closed. The Michigan unemployment claims system is monstrously overloaded, so most can't be filed.

    I'm in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the home of the University of Michigan (35K students, 20K workers in the hospital). Downtown looks like spring break; most restaurants are flat-out closed.

    The Big 3 (GM, Ford and Chrysler) are halting production, which will trash the economy.

    Apparently most factories of any type have to close this week.

    So in the USA at this point:

    Restaurants basically closed, Hotels " " , Travel " " , Tourism " " , (big in Michigan) Manufacturing " " , across a 3,000 mile-wide zone

    We have never been in this situation before; I will be that conventional models have everything flat-lined long before this.

    787:

    Link doesn't work. It redirects to http://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-hospital-infection which is a page that says they're dedicated to open access and then has a bunch of GIANT MASSIVE SQUARES saying "Purchase PDF" in giant massive font.

    788:

    They're relatively cheap here, but you can convert USD to GBP at a 1:1 exchange rate and then add 20% VAT (sales tax) on top. And they wear out really fast compared to other shoes. (On the other hand -- memory foam insoles, fancy air cushion soles, stretchy lightweight breathable fabric uppers that stop me getting Athlete's Foot.)

    Anyway, didn't need to go to the store: found I could buy them online, direct (my initial forays via Amazon were less than ideal, but Sketchers take direct orders and payment via Paypal).

    789:

    Yup. The psychos will, presumably, retire to their fortified compounds, unless they decide to go full Manson.

    Meanwhile... the rest, at some point, will say ENOUGH.

    Btw, I read that Piketty's latest, well, the NYT says "turns Marx on his head", and nope, I say "updated", and he apparently talks about capital, rather than the "means of production".

    Oh, and WWI: the Russian Revolution, and the beginnings of mutinies on the front was, I think, a good part of why "I won't get us into a foreign war" Wilson brought the US in: to save the upper classes.

    790:

    I'm in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the home of the University of Michigan (35K students, 20K workers in the hospital). Downtown looks like spring break; most restaurants are flat-out closed.

    The centre of Edinburgh -- capital city, 2nd tourist destination in the UK after London, home of about four universities (one of them world-class, the others trying to keep up) -- looked like Christmas Morning today.

    We've driven over an economic cliff and we're still in free-fall, at least until the figures are published. But there was apparently a Tory party back-bench rebellion this morning, which suggests that even MPs in a party with a baked-in five year term and a huge majority are feeling the chilly wind of reality down their shirt collars.

    791:

    Favism is genetic and X-linked. As with sickle cell anemia, being heterozygous is probably better than being homozygous.

    Per Nabhan's Why Some Like It Hot: Food, Genes, and Cultural Diversity (in other words, popular science, not journal), the story one researcher came up with is that eating fava beans, especially green fava beans with the skin on, naturally leads to a buildup of pro-oxidants in the bloodstream, leading in turn to a decrease in glutathione, an antioxidant which is essential to maintaining blood cell integrity. Decreasing glutathione also harms malaria parasites, and it's apparently (?) the basis for how some malarial treatments work.

    The G6PD pathway produced reduced glutathione that can continue to act as an antioxidant. Damage to this pathway means that there's less glutathione, resulting making your blood more inhospitable to malaria. Add a bit of fava bean or even fava bean pollen, and you're inhospitable to malaria. Of course, if you're homozygous for this, you can easily get into anemia and jaundice if you eat the wrong thing, but since it's a simple X-linked recessive, rather more of the population gets the protective effect.

    Now this is just one version of G6PD deficiency, but it's the one that played out in the home range of fava cultivation. Could easily be coevolution, if the biological fitness penalties from malaria (which peaks during fava season) are worse than the penalties from favism.

    792:

    Y'know, I've been writing a lot - in about two weeks, I wrote a sequence of three shorts, set 60-75 years from now, then just another, set about a century from now.

    A lot of that's been in my mind, and thoughts of trillionaires. It just struck me that I'm surprised that none of the billionaires who are thinking about running away haven't simply bought islands, in the South Seas, or the Caribbean, that aree well above the sea level rise, and built huge Fuller domes, and built (and sold other) ultrawealthy homes there. No worry about storms, or pesky voters.

    793:

    Direct quotation[0], with a bit of fuzzing: "We'll lay low for a few years, pretend that it really was a [redacted] and hide the evidence".

    Little did they know, that last room-with-a-view is very large indeed and it really was a [redacted].

    You killed the butterflies

    ~

    For Irish readers getting shocked by the papers: the millennial and gen-z have long embraced 'ass eating season', it's passe by now[1]. Four years ago it was a standard online dating opener. Of course the decade defining plague[2] is going to use it as a vector, it's practically written into the genetic code of your collective consciousness.

    Work that one through the consciousness: COVID19 learnt from Tinder[3].

    ~

    Anyhow, off to bang consciousness against the wall.

    [0] Naughty source

    [1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/subcultures/eating-ass ; https://www.reddit.com/r/Tinder/comments/5f2uoe/whats_with_the_obsession_of_eating_ass_on_tinder/

    [2] It's not, but hey: you don't know that yet.

    [3] Look, if you're going to try to slam down the breaks on oil / markets with flashing 33's, don't be surprised if rather larger coincidences are being blatantly flashed.

    794:

    Mine does that in the normal course of events, so I have set up a cron job to regularly test it, and if it's gone down reboot the SFB and send me an email about it. That way the collapse and recovery usually happens when I'm not making immediate use of the connection, instead of me discovering it when I try to load a web page and swearing throughout the five minutes or so it takes to sort itself out.

    I haven't formally recorded it but it does seem to be sending emails two or three times more often than it usually does, and there have been numerous lesser conk-outs too short to trigger the recovery system which show up as an outgoing HTTP request going nowhere but a repeat 20 seconds later works fine.

    795:

    David L @ 692:

    I live in the DC area. The cheap rents in your area would be nice...
    Yep. I live in the same area. We are expensive for past versions of the term. And even for the state. (I could sell my lot w/tear down house and move 1 - 2 hours away and pocket 1/2 of my money and have a very nice upgrade to my housing.) Companies relocate here because their engineers and other folks can sell their shack with heat in WashDC, SoCal, SanFran, etc... and buy a mini-mansion here.

    I could probably do the same thing. Even if I only got the amount the LAND is valued at by the tax collector, that would be enough to buy a nice house somewhere like Siler City or Asheboro.

    I know all the house-flippers who keep trying to buy my house are trying to rip me off; thinking I don't know what the property is worth.

    My life is built around this location.

    Almost everything I do (other than photo safaris to the beach or Blue Ridge Parkway or the zoo) is located within 10 miles of here. According to Google Maps it's exactly 10 miles from my house to the Reedy Creek Parking Lot at Umstead Park.>/p>

    Everything else I do is closer. A lot of it is within convenient walking distance. A lot more of it would be within convenient walking distance if the city would put a sidewalk along Atlantic Ave from Capital Blvd to Hodges St.

    Why should I move, making my life more inconvenient just so someone can make a profit off of my misery?

    And if you think the rents are cheap around here, there's nothing stopping you from moving.

    796:

    Update from the land of the Orange Troll King: The U.S. federal government is moving pell mell to telework, which will be an interesting stress test of the technology involved. I commuted to work again today on a mostly empty bus and subway; more restaurants and shops in the underground shopping area are closed until further notice.

    This is all short-term crisis response. What I have not yet seen is forward planning for longer term operations in a pandemic environment. When U.S. European Command was developing its pandemic infectious disease plan, we saw a lot of considerations that haven't bubbled to the surface of the public debate yet: dealing with the "worried well" clogging the medical system; maintaining IT and other critical infrastructure systems; dealing with vacancies and staffing rotations, etc. For instance, DOD has issued a "stop movement" order, meaning that personnel are not executing scheduled changes in assignment. Deployed troops are stuck in place, civil servant hiring is frozen, and so on, which is going to cause a lot of dislocations and staffing issues. Not to mention that being in Buttcrackistan is going to suck even more than it did before.

    The civil impact is going to be orders of magnitude greater. What happens to the "service economy" when large portions of the population are sheltering in place. Some level of demand for consumer goods is going to persist; see Charlie's need for new shoes. Who's going to produce, ship and sell them? For that matter, who's going to provide the feedstocks for the factories? This is going to crater the global economy on a scale never before anticipated. I doubt the current plan to fling a couple of $1000 USD checks to the masses is going to meaningfully offset the impact. We are in uncharted economic territory.

    797:

    I'm fairly sure the original meaning was along the lines of henchman to the local nobs, some kind of combination of overseer, cop/enforcer and tax-gatherer. The disparity with the modern Scottish meaning is a bit like Mel Gibson doing a populist take on a nobs' bitch fight.

    798:

    Which is where the risk comes in; can't do any capitalism for a year or more, vs heaps and stacks of corpses.

    Policy choice for incumbent policy is the corpses; must do the capitalism at any cost. (planetary habitability has already been accepted; local ongoing genocide, etc.)

    Since we'd be the corpses we need to find some political levers for "ongoing no-capitalism just fine, let's get with the reorg sharpish, shall we?"

    799:

    This is what knocked both Russia and Germany out of WW1, despite their heavily duped/repressed populations. The German revolution tends to get forgotten about because everyone talks about the Russian one, but Germany's population had been literally starving for the last couple of years (and the troops weren't much better off), due partly to interdiction of German trade and partly to a series of ludicrously inept attempts to boost wartime production (both agricultural and industrial) which buggered everything up in a tangle and did more to make matters worse than better. The Kaiser discovered that abdication was his only option, and the political system entered a state of collapse, which generated the necessary preconditions for a peace-seeking response to the facts of the army also collapsing and Ludendorff losing the plot.

    It's worth remembering that both Germany and the USSR settled on rather bloody-minded dictators, after starting off with their politics pointed elsewhere. Bloody-minded and in many ways incompetent. Dictatorship, incidentally, is a normal failure mode for weakened governments without a functional civil state (the bureaucracy) and active polis, that both oppose the dictators coming in. The Republicans spent decades preparing the US for one, after all.

    You all can tell me what will happen in England, with its lack of anyone competent in politics in any part of the spectrum.

    In the US, my guess is that Biden will be the candidate to take on trump (yay?). Assuming Biden wins, then his version of Chinese democracy will be a technocracy aimed at dealing with the ongoing covid-19 emergency and rebuilding the bureaucracy hollowed out by 30 years of Republican meddling.

    This will be undoubtedly opposed by the Republicans. However, their red state bastions span a wide spectrum of covid-19 responses, from Ohio's rapid shut-down to others saying it's a libtard conspiracy of "beer flu." Assuming the death rates follow preparedness, some states are in for a truly dire summer, and that's undoubtedly going to affect politics in the fall election (prediction: some will try to call off elections to stay in power). If the Republicans are comparatively in more disarray than the democrats come January (big, big if), expect Biden and technocracy, either abetted by a compliant and democratic congress, or not opposed by a deadlocked one. Since Biden's a big-business democrat, this also isn't that great for the US, other than washing a certain orange stain off the capitol marble.

    On the third hand, there's a lot of frustration in the 20 and 30-somethings that they're being asked to sacrifice their lives--again!--to save the boomer idiots, and they're utterly sick of it, to the point of some thinking it's rational to spread covid-19 simply to get the elderly idiots out of here before they utterly wreck the planet. That's lkely what's spawning these stories in the US (any elsewhere?) about how young people can die from the disease too.

    This is where I'm expecting the true revolution to come from, the frustration of the Gen-Z in the face of Boomer (and yes, Gen-X) idiocy and intransigence. Since the kids seem to be hell-bent on reinventing the wheel rather than building on the successes of their predecessors, I see this ending in tragedy, but hopefully as usual I'm wrong.

    800:

    Robert Prior @ 695:

    Thing is, I don't think we're going to get to choose. We're going to be forced to give up capitalism and still get all the corpses. Gonna' get the worst of both worlds.

    If you want to get pessimistic, suppose that the restrictions on travel, surveillance, etc. don't go away. Look at how many 9/11 'security measures' are still in effect in the US (and Canada) even though security experts know they don't do anything.

    So no cross-border travel without permission, and that hard to obtain unless part of a large organization. Tracking by phone/face recognition, etc for tracing contacts in the event of an infection — but accessed by police/security agencies because it is useful in stopping crimes (the official reason) and suppressing dissent (a convenient byproduct).

    There's other SF readers who seem a lot more pessimistic (or cynical) than this crowd :-/

    I go out walking every night around midnight so the dog can do his business before I go to bed. Last night it was so quiet it was almost scary. Didn't even hear freight trains shifting around the nearby switch yards. I only saw two cars & a city bus go past on the main drag near my house.

    It never got that quiet at night after 9/11.

    801:

    Not quite. Remember the futile system. According to the OED, agent of the king in a region and, in Scotland, the judicial duties were performed by a deputy. The post of sheriff was effectively abolished in 1747, and the modern sheriff is what the deputy was.

    802:

    David L @ 699: Was in a Spectrum customer store today. For those not in the US, Spectrum is one of our big Internet/Phone/TV providers.

    One of the staff was saying a customer kept wanting details of which packages included which sports channels. His answer was "Why does it matter?"

    That's something I hadn't thought of. What are the "sports channels" doing for content right now?

    803:
    My life is built around this location.

    ... and another thing. I'm finally almost finished with the kitchen. I've got a stove, I've got a sink (you try washing dishes in the bathtub & see how much fun that is), I've got cabinets enough to store food in. I know where the food is in those cabinets.

    If I moved I'd have to start that all over again.

    804:

    Yes, that's the general story I read, but whenever Darwinian selection is involved, I always add a lot of "possibly" and "probably" because it is easy to get into circular reasoning.

    Especially since this is not my specialty.

    805:

    Sheriff is a corruption of the Anglo Saxon title Shire Reeve. Reeves were senior Crown officials in a town, often the Magistrate, whose duties would include law enforcement. The Shire Reeve was the senior Reeve of the county. After the Norman takeover the law enforcement bit was performed by the Bailiffs and the local landholders tended to also be the Magistrate, Shire Reeves continued at the county court level. The modern Scots Sheriffs are probably closer to the original than those elsewhere.

    806:

    Keithmasterson @ 713: Charles H @569 wrote "I ran across an article about deactivating coronaviruses in blood by heating it up to 60C for an hour."

    that's got to be wrong, 60 C is 140F, an hour of that's enough to poach eggs, or at least turn the albumin white and opaque, and I'm pretty sure albumin is a blood component. What's the highest fever ever survived, I guarantee it wasn't 140. Blood cells die at that temperature, and plasma proteins would denature into a gelatinous mass. Stir in flour, egg and milk, you'd get a Yorkshire pudding like Bob Howard's old flame Mhari could really appreciate.

    I vaguely remember reading about an experimental hyperthermia treatment for HIV where they hooked a patient up to some kind of machine that "cooked" the patient's blood at high temperature before cooling it and returning it to his body. It circulated the blood the way a dialysis machine would.

    I found this abstract on-line. Don't know if it was the same experiment, but it says they heated blood plasma to temperatures of 65 - 85 C, "while maintaining protein structure and activity essentially intact", so it looks like those kind of temperatures have at least been tried.

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1374578

    I think the HIV experiment ultimately failed, but other articles I found said hyperthermia was used (in conjunction with chemotherapy) for some cancer treatments.

    807:

    I know all the house-flippers who keep trying to buy my house are trying to rip me off; thinking I don't know what the property is worth.

    Naw. They're just contacting everyone figuring someone will bite.

    I wasn't suggesting you move, just that the definition of a high rent was relative to where you've been and where you might be going.

    808:

    Tim H. @ 741: Disappointing, though not surprising:
    https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/18/italians-found-way-3-d-print-key-ventilator-piece-1-help-battle-coronavirus-so
    They found a way to 3D print an essential ventilator part inexpensively... they're being sued by the patent holder.

    It is to be hoped the courts will invalidate the company's patent and order the company directors be taken out and shot pour encourager les autres

    809:

    It is. My wife worked on it. But it wasn't 60 Celsius - more like 45, though I would have to ask to know exactly what.

    810:

    Jumping in on the bean discussion. I think I'll be cooking a lot more of them in the future as meat seems to be hard to find in the stores. I've had great luck reducing digestive discomfort with chickpeas by soaking for 8 hours, then sauteeing in a bit of baking soda for three minutes before adding the water to boil them in. (This might also be used to remove the skins, not sure.) This trick is from the Yotam Ottolenghi recipe for basic hummus in the "Jerusalem" cookbook. The hummus is fantastic.

    811:

    What are the "sports channels" doing for content right now?

    My on screen guide has a lot of "To Be Announced".

    812:

    Graydon @ 746: If you read the whole article, you get the later notes that the trials are small and no one is saying it helps with the critical cases. (It in fact doesn't.) It's a way to keep from having severe cases, it's not a general treatment.

    Plus the drug is a teratogen.

    So, you wouldn't want to prescribe it for pregnant women or babies, but I don't think that's going to be a problem for old farts like me if it helps to lessen the severity of infection to the point it becomes survivable.

    813:

    There's a strong implication that it doesn't do anything useful after you're symptomatic enough to have sought care.

    It's useful in a context of ubiquitous testing (which is where the Chinese are using it) were you can detect the asymptomatic and dose them up and keep them asymptomatic, but the therapeutic use -- "once the virus has already multiplied", you're symptomatic and sick -- doesn't appear to be there.

    814:

    Don't bad mouth us X-ers. We barely exist for starters. And we have had to deal with Boomer idiocy for a lot longer than anyone else.

    Unfortunately, for Millies and Zeds, the wheel has started to become self-aware and will be re-imagining itself from now on.

    More seriously, the wheel needs to be reinvented again and again because just-in-time supply chains are no longer reliable enough to bring you the parts to assemble the fancy store bought wheel you desperately need right now. And the young people did not want a revolution so much as they wanted to build on the success the rest of the civilized world already had decades ago, but America willfully ignored.

    The last twelve years have taught me that the Democratic Party is not incompetent; it deliberately operates this way to further the agenda of a relatively small group of people. Just like the Republicans are purposefully stupid to cater to the needs of an even smaller group of people and the illusions of a third, somewhat larger mob. The Democratic establishment seems genuinely shocked that more and more people actually expect them to live up to the ideals of the left. They also seem to be disturbed by how much reality disagrees with their lackadaisical approach to political economy. But not enough to actually change. Just to get really angry and high-handed with anyone who suggests they change.

    Doing my Many-Named-Entity prognostication tribute: chances the Supreme Court nullifies the ACA after the 2020 Election, regardless of who wins? Chances Biden won't have the votes in Congress to replace it with anything more effective than a guarantee on "pre-existing conditions" and not much else? Chances the Republicans vote in sweeping economic stimulus in the face of this crisis and put some heft in Trump's "populism?" Chances the Democrats torpedo said stimulus in order to retain an electoral edge?

    Democrats! F* me. I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos. (With an apology to the Cohen Bros.)

    815:

    whitroth @ 772: It's wrong. 103F or 104F is "put them in the hospital, NOW!" 108F is, if I remember correctly, "there *will* be permanent damage".

    That may be age dependent and/or a change in medical protocols some time in the last 30 years. My personal experience with high fever was in 1988, when I got Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever from a tick at Ft. Hood, TX. I was 39 at the time.

    I ran a fever of 103°F for a week and they did not put me in the hospital. I was "treated" at home with broad spectrum antibiotics (Tetracycline?) and palliative treatment for the symptoms (fluids, NSAIDS, bed rest ...). The doctor told me if the fever went to 105°F he would put me in the hospital.

    Eventually I got up the nerve to ask the Doctor for something to ease the pain. My whole body hurt & I had a headache worse than any migraine I ever had. He gave me a prescription for Percoset. Directions were to take one every 4 to 6 hours for pain, but the first one I took knocked me completely out for 24 hours. When I woke again the fever had broken & I suffered no further symptoms. I didn't take any of the rest of them, although I did continue to take the full course of antibiotics he prescribed.

    If the doctor prescribes antibiotics (and I'm sure the same holds true for antivirals) you should take ALL of them even if you start to feel better. Stopping too soon may allow the "germ" to rebound & develop resistance to the antibiotic/antiviral.

    816:

    "So, it's perfectly okay to allow for (write-off) maintenance of machines but not of personnel. "

    Of course. And the tax code privileges buying equipment.

    817:

    Three articles I've found interesting in the last few days:

    https://warroom.armywarcollege.edu/podcasts/spanish-flu/

    Apparently the "Spanish Flu" started in Kansas. What's wrong with Kansas?

    Tragic story about one family's experience with the corona virus:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/nyregion/new-jersey-family-coronavirus.html

    And a leaked recording has sparked some questions about what one of North Carolina's right-wingnut Senators knew, when he knew it and why he only told his campaign contributors about it? Why didn't he share the information with the rest of us?

    https://www.npr.org/2020/03/19/818192535/burr-recording-sparks-questions-about-private-comments-on-covid-19

    818:

    The classic treatment for hyperthermia is a cold bath (a cold shower would do, or even cold, wet towels over the patient). It doesn't treat the cause, but it DOES bring the temperature down to safe levels. If it has to be repeated too often, things are really bad.

    819:

    David L @ 807:

    I know all the house-flippers who keep trying to buy my house are trying to rip me off; thinking I don't know what the property is worth.

    Naw. They're just contacting everyone figuring someone will bite.

    I wasn't suggesting you move, just that the definition of a high rent was relative to where you've been and where you might be going.

    I know you weren't. I was also responding to whoever it was suggesting "rent" in Raleigh is relatively cheap. It is compared to some areas, but not relative to this area.

    And I know the house-flippers are not singling me out personally for rip-off. They'll rip off anyone to make a profit, but they particularly prey on old people ... and somehow I found myself being in that category; not doing nothin' but living one day at a time & "suddenly" I look around one day and I'm the oldest person living on my street and where did all these yuppies come from anyway?

    820:

    Elderly Cynic @ 818: The classic treatment for hyperthermia is a cold bath (a cold shower would do, or even cold, wet towels over the patient). It doesn't treat the cause, but it DOES bring the temperature down to safe levels. If it has to be repeated too often, things are really bad.

    Those researchers were not treating classic hyperthermia. They were using the word to describe something else; a treatment where they were inducing "hyperthermia" externally for a virus carried in the blood - heating the blood & then cooling it again before returning it to the patient's body (with the virus hopefully killed).

    821:

    "The post of sheriff was effectively abolished in 1747, and the modern sheriff is what the deputy was."

    So that's what Bob Marley was on about :)

    822:

    Thanks. I was trying to convey how I think they might have been seen by those at the bottom of the pile, in keeping with the Bravefart reference that introduced the word. Being a Tolkien nut I know fine where it comes from :)

    823:

    @ 774 Your "jokes" are ONLY after you've been found out to be bullshitting (AGAIN) - we have noticed. @ 793 ( Butterflies ) Liar I saw my first "Brimstone" of the year three days ago & a Comma a couple of days before that.

    whitroth NO _ AGAIN Zimmerman Telegram - how many times do I have to repeat this?

    Charlie @ 790 Apart - of course from stupid ( not evil, but AMAZINGLY stupid ) IDS going on about how "Basic Income will stop people wanting to work" I wouldn't be at all suprised to see some modest "Basic Income" ( Say £5k per year) come out of this, from the tories. [ BoZo is interested iN VOTES - he's completely capable of pirouetting & dumnping his own right wing, simply to get votes & stay in power ...

    824:

    Almost all revolutions are reactionary.

    They happen not to free anybody but to prevent change. The intersection of the reactionary impulse and acts of god isn't pretty, and is nigh-inevitable on some scale in most of the Anglosphere.

    825:

    Greg.

    Your lack of being online is showing you up here, badly.

    Here's a 5 seconds hit:

    https://twitter.com/TheCriminalBar/status/1240680467344642049 https://twitter.com/scottjsmith77/status/1240566447631466498 https://twitter.com/EvansTheCrime/status/1240593082141356032

    We'll be polite and not tell you about the rather more political / financial in-chat that's going atm. Find a Barrister you trust and ask them. They're quite serious about the chances of the UK legal system not looking the same in X months time.

    https://inews.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-bill-uk-emergency-powers-government-covid-19-response-explained-2501995

    Liar. I saw my first "Brimstone" of the year three days ago & a Comma a couple of days before that.

    5 second sweep:

    https://inhabitat.com/monarch-butterfly-populations-crash-90-in-20-years-why-are-they-not-considered-endangered/ https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/01/butterfly-numbers-fall-by-84-in-netherlands-over-130-years-study https://www.newscientist.com/article/2209171-butterfly-numbers-fell-by-one-third-in-the-us-over-past-two-decades/

    That's without knowing that 'Butterflies' here has at least three other inferences. You know, non-linear systems, LBGT+ people, other ones.

    Oh, and remember: personal anecdotes =/= data, this is basic.

    Thanks. 'Liar' is one of the more pleasant things we've been called this week. (Putz, Pervert, list goes on - shrug).

    ~

    The first that happens when things go south is that everyone is desperate to maintain the illusion of normality.

    826:

    COVID-19 started in China some time before January. They don't know haw many were diagnosed as "pneumonia" before the penny dropped.

    827:

    Don't bad mouth us X-ers. We barely exist for starters. And we have had to deal with Boomer idiocy for a lot longer than anyone else.

    The problem with us Xers (I'm one too) is that there's actually very little to distinguish us from Boomers. We're just younger and more addicted to plaid than tie dye.

    As for the rest, I think we're talking past each other. I went to a Green New Deal meeting, and it was deliberately set up to negate any expertise that anyone brought to the table, so it basically ended up as a lowest common denominator meeting where everybody who was clueless and earnest got their wishes granted, while those of us who were hoping to get heard and pass on a few bits of hard-earned advice either shut up or left and didn't return.

    Anyway, you and I agree about the democratic party, and I've heard far worse from progressives who actually work within its ranks. And I don't want them to fcuk me, because I have several inklings about who they're normally in bed with, and they don't use protection.

    828:

    On the ??Good News?? front, I just saw this abstract (paywalled) Old carbon reservoirs were not important in the deglacial methane budget

    Small burden from old sources

    Methane is a potent greenhouse gas with large natural sources, reservoirs, and sinks. Dyonisius et al. found that methane emissions from old, cold-region carbon reservoirs like permafrost and methane hydrates were minor during the last deglaciation (see the Perspective by Dean). They analyzed the carbon isotopic composition of atmospheric methane trapped in bubbles in Antarctic ice and found that methane emissions from those old carbon sources during the warming interval were small. They argue that this finding suggests that methane emissions in response to future warming likely will not be as large as some have suggested.

    Abstract

    Permafrost and methane hydrates are large, climate-sensitive old carbon reservoirs that have the potential to emit large quantities of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, as the Earth continues to warm. We present ice core isotopic measurements of methane (Δ14C, δ13C, and δD) from the last deglaciation, which is a partial analog for modern warming. Our results show that methane emissions from old carbon reservoirs in response to deglacial warming were small (less than 19 teragrams of methane per year, 95% confidence interval) and argue against similar methane emissions in response to future warming. Our results also indicate that methane emissions from biomass burning in the pre-Industrial Holocene were 22 to 56 teragrams of methane per year (95% confidence interval), which is comparable to today.

    Um....yay?

    829:

    ETA I see SBH has already answered, but maybe you'll read this. Greg, "Butterflies" is metaphors for other things; always has been. (Have you ever read Connie Willis's "Bellwether"? One meaning is sort of related to that.) But you're right; the butterflies have not all been killed.

    I was surprised at this NYTimes piece, specifically its (nice to see in the mainstream press) description of the utility of disinformation. It's mostly a history piece, but covers the present as well. Can Russia Use the Coronavirus to Sow Discord Among Americans? - Conditions are ripe: The pandemic is sweeping right into campaign season, and Trump’s response is highly contested. (Thomas Rid, March 16, 2020) Disinformation is about activating emotional reactions, in order to divide and corrode the targeted entity — a focus on true or false is misleading; a measure becomes active if it resonates with emotions. Corrosion works best if it exploits existing fissures and cracks, or “contradictions,” that can be “deepened” or “sharpened,” in the jargon of active measures planners.

    830:
    Charle’s blog is apparently social media according to NHS practitioners?

    Err, I guess it is more concerned with articles like this (with apologies for linking to the Sun, may it serve to edify the righteous and amuse the jaded cynics like me, especially those with a background in cell biology)

    On another note, free day today (I switched work with next Saturday), just went out to buy some food, I have a feeling the traffic is only 10% of what it's usually at this time in my part of Germany.

    I spent the day relaxing and doing some paperwork, a letter I sent by registered post didn't arrive at its destination and the people from postal services called; they asked about the worth of the letter (my objection concerning a debt collector[1], so not much) and promised to send me an e-mail confirming they lost it. I still haven't got the e-mail, guess I have to call them again.

    At the moment I'm working at telephone service for banking though a temporary employment agency, I'm going to finish at telephone service end of the month (usual story, good work, no or few errors, a little bit too slow) and have a nagging feeling the people in administration with the bank forgot to send an notification to my temporary employment agency to indicated they cancel my hire.

    Of course, anybody can do 13 customer contacts an hour. We see where it goes.

    Personally, I have a feeling Covid-19 is throwing a big stick in the stokes of the current run for "efficiency". If you excuse me, I felt I was nearing burn-out at telephone service, and I'm quite pissed, so I hope some of the usual suspects fall over their carbon fibre fake mountain bikes and break their necks; if I'm especially nasty, I imagine it being non-fatal, and them living on as tetraplegics. would go about 1 ppm towards payback for the damage they do.

    On a positive note, I got a nice offer for a job in IT (I guess my forth and fifth name is "lousy timing", the more sensible HR departments are in lockdown, so the usual talks go in slow-motion. And I don't want to work at the not so sensible ones...); in case it takes somewhat longer, the temporary employment agency most likely hasn't realized yet I got cancelled or is occupied with other things; the latter is quite likely, I could tell stories about said firm, I guess I'll start with the "personal talk" with middle management which included three employees being talked to at the same time for the manager being short with, well, time (secure data is for dummies), go on about another guy from middle management talking openly about some colleague of mine not bringing his timesheets, the less said about accounting the better, except I still need the money from when I was ill, yes, I could go on...

    I guess I'll say goodbye personally and out one guy when doing so, he was the second least incompetent, the least incompetent was a guy who was cancelled at telephone service for the bank after 2 weeks and was put into the local office of the temporary employment agency when the local middle manager quit from one day to the next. Did I mention I could go on abut my temporary employment agency?

    So most likely they will only react next week when my notice period for termination is up to one month. As for what to do when they send me to shit work in the last month, I guess I'll act "just natural" and talk about as much as I write now. Works everytime. Did I mention I get money even if I'm not working, and as mentioned, terminating my employment with the temporary work firm is going to take one month if all works out?

    And after this month I'm up to real unemployment benefit, not Hartz IV. It's been said the usual rules of the unemployment agency have been relaxed somewhat, BTW.

    Sorry for the long text, I think the current situation with work is somewhat entertaining, in a quite dark kind of way, as you can guess I'm somewhat pissed, and I must confess I really want to see some parts of the world burning. Helps with exterminating viruses, I've been told.

    (No, I'm not trying to channel Peter Watts ATM, though I just got the whole Rifters trilogy to read in paper. See, the positive side of things. And I might reread "Halting State", the video interview for the IT job was eerily familiar, though OGH forgot the laga nd glitches due to latency and bandwidth problems)

    [1] Said objection being, I already cancelled the subscription to the Internet connection a few months before the company cancelled it, sent the letter to my old address and put it over to the debt collector when through some hard to eludicate fact they got no reply. Postal service likely lost my cancellation. Guess current events don't weaken my point.

    831:

    Article is trash. NYT = compromised at this point. Entire Democratic Party US side is falling apart[-1] and the NYT has been instrumental in setting up the 'Russia, Russia, Russia' stuff just to pull the leg from it at the right time.[0]

    Something worth-while to investigate: rumor on the street and born(e) out by quick pokes is that someone decided to unlock Pandora's box on the Google search engine and allow lots of old disinfo to be re-listed and found easily, which is providing a lot of ancient GOP stuff with a quick shine n polish.

    Interesting Timing[1][2].

    If you want naughty and COVID19 related, the only Democracy in MENA just well... got a lot less Democratic with cell phones being pinged, k ne sset closed, back-door deals and lots of weirdness. And the weird we hear is a bit beyond 'better close the courts 'cause of that case'[3].

    But hey.

    Our Mask Off, sparkles dyin.

    ~

    But yeah, one last tie-in: COVID19 used to short markets. That's the American Way[tm].

    [-1] Imploding due to their Machine Guys Who Fix Things, but that's not COVID related. [0] CN and USA are the main shooters in the COVID disinfo prongs atm, RU is staying quietly distant, probably because of oil. RT is back to pure reportage with the hint of "not seeing this on the BBC, are you now" which is their default. Also, Big P is domestically focused. Cue up gif "Let them fight". [1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/15/21180370/google-testing-website-coronavirus-trump-covid-19-confusion [2] https://www.npr.org/2020/03/19/818192535/burr-recording-sparks-questions-about-private-comments-on-covid-19 [3] Jack in the Box? Come on, that was nicely setup.

    833:

    I was responding to your post about the fever you had, NOT about the use of dliberate hyperthermia in treating cancer, which I had previously responded to in #809. Please do keep track of your own posts!

    834:

    Another Ann Arboreal here, working in IT for the University of Michigan.

    I'm getting to see both sides of the intelligence curve here. My department has been pretty much 100% work from home for over a week,. as are a log of others. We were given OKs to check out a lot of our desk equipment with a strong suggestion to build a home office setup that matches what you have at work. Within two days, everything was pretty much normal w/r/t getting our jobs done.

    Conversely, my wife works for idiots. They forbade work from home until yesterday, and since then have tried to do it on the cheap in a rush. I've spent a ludicrous amount of time helping get our family computer set up so she can access her work desktop (requires going through multiple layers of apps), plus a second setup so she can have a text and audio 'chat room' with her co-workers, except the audio doesn't work, so they expect her to be on her cellphone connected to a teleconf line from 8AM to 5PM. And the IT staff is still in the office, because someone has to turn those aging desktops when the crash or the power goes out or . . . well, fill in the blanks.

    And because they've never allowed teleconferencing, they have no idea how to do it. People don't mute their mikes, don't identify themselves when they talk, feedback squeals happen multiple times per hour, etc, etc. She's retiring in six weeks, so won't have to put up with this much longer. But boy do I feel sorry for the rest of them.

    Sadly, I think the majority of companies in the US are going to resemble her employer, not mine.

    835:

    So, out on the prairies of Canada, well into the Covid-19 outbreak and on the day the WHO declared it a pandemic, 50 to 60 doctors from Western Canada attended a 4 day curling bonspiel.

    Dr. Allan Woo, President of the Saskatchewan Medical Association, has tested postive for Covid-19 and believes he contracted it at the bonspiel.

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/manitoba-doctors-isolation-1.5503707

    836:

    Move to the next step is starting in Canada.

    Toronto's Chief Medical Officer of Health is advising all non-essential businesses to close immediately.

    New Brunswick has declared a state of emergency and ordered all non-essential businesses to cease admitting the public immediately. Move made because the public was failing to avoid public gatherings. But residents of NB will be happy to know that included in the businesses that get to stay open are the cannabis stores.

    837:

    While driving by I noticed the local growstore got a big delivery of plant substrate, guess this is going to be one of the countercyclical stocks[1] ATM.

    Not that we need much homegrowing, the Dutch border is quite close.

    [1] Memories of me learning of the term, sitting in a bar with a friend waiting for her boyfriend...

    838:
    By your logic, then Trump is on to a winner ... are we sure about that?

    No, not Trump. Over the next decade the right of center parties drift further right, or minor parties already far right attract followings. One day, they get a competent leader (sociopathic goes without saying). And of course, blames everything on foreigners.

    This can happen in most European countries, including The United Kingdom of Southern Great Britain, and many other nuclear-armed states around the world ... where right-wing racist/religionist authoritarians haven't already taken over. (coughModicough)

    I think it will take till 2040 or so before the pressures from climate change (drought/water shortages, refugees, etc.) and economic malaise get bad enough for war between nation states. I hope it takes longer, so I'll be dead.

    839:

    Re: 'removed & heated blood'

    I've heard of people suffering hypothermia having their blood heated externally so I'm guessing that they could use the same equipment and processes for heating the blood.

    https://www.aafp.org/afp/2004/1215/p2325.html

    And if that approach works and they run out of the specialized machines, they might adapt spare apheresis or dialysis machines.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plateletpheresis

    Not that crazy - one of the major medical centers has a Covid-19 related video showing how to attach 4 patients to 1 respiratory machine.

    840:
    Restaurants basically closed, Hotels " " , Travel " " , Tourism " " , (big in Michigan) Manufacturing " " ,

    You forgot construction and related activities, education, personal services (e.g. early childhood childcare, hairdressing), and no doubt other big swathes of the industrial landscape.

    If you were on the point of making a big purchase two weeks ago, say a house, a car, a fridge, a recarpeting, a wedding, a university course (nvm a holiday) ... would you be going ahead now?

    I guess at least three people out of four would answer "no". (Idiots will always be with us.) Those big purchases tend to be forgotten, because for any one family they are infrequent. But they drive the economy, irrespective of their size in the statistics.

    Paul Krugman's -30% is at the small end of where this is going to be.

    841:

    Our current reality. Got an email this afternoon from our synagogue about the death of an acquaintance (I’d learned of it yesterday on FB), and that the Memorial Service for him will be live-streamed on youtube since the Shul is closed for the time being. They’ll also be streaming Shabbat services, but everything else is cancelled. He was 86, his death isn’t COVID related, but rather unexpected, he seemed well the last time I saw him a week or so ago. I didn’t know him well, though often sat next to him during the weekly Torah study*.

    For a ‘lighter’ version, a favorite Japanese rock group is live-streaming the set they would have been playing tomorrow night, if the festival they were opening for hadn’t been cancelled. Thanks to the 15 hour time difference, I’ll be getting up at 4am tomorrow morning.

    I’ve had to go out a few times this week, more than I had intended, to get meds and prescription food for one of our dogs. The usual pet store was out of the food, had to go to another this morning before the blizzard moved in (for a change the online listing for what the local stores had in stock was right). Also been to a couple grocery stores, mostly not finding what I was looking for. My every 3 months trip to get paper towels and TP coincided with the hoarding nonsense, don’t need it it at the moment, hopefully things will settle down in a week or two. I was intending to do all that Tuesday, but instead took my mother to the ER to look at her knee that she fell on Monday afternoon. It was empty, as we were hoping, and basically a waste of time.

    While I’m blathering: for those staying in, a viewing suggestion if you have access to HBO. The mini-series of “The Plot Against America” started Monday night, and pt.1 is available for streaming. My nephew Azhy is playing the youngest son, and is very nearly the main character. The kid’s good.

    *For me it’s just Jewish Book Club with the same book over and over, that I take my mother to. It’s not unusual to not make much progress to be in actual reading, as discussion often gets stuck on some point or other, which is the main reason for going. Every now and then I consider writing an Epic Fantasy inspired by it, but I’m not sure how consistent its magic system is.

    842:

    I want all house flippers to catch ill and die. All of them.

    But then, I've hated them since I was young. You many have seen me mention how, as a little kid, I lived in a lovely neighborhood in north Philly called Strawberry Mansion. Mostly eastern European, heavily Jewish. Then one of the bastars brought in a black family, and went full-scale racism, and... the first black kid came into my elementary school when I was either in kindergarden, or 1st grade. When I transferred, at the end of 4th grade, I was the 26th white kid left in the school (of at least 500 kids).

    Bastards are trying it no me now... they get me on the phone, and I will go off on them.

    843:

    Finally remembered where I knew the word from.

    I'm not sure we really want to unleash Miles Vorkosigan on the world, of which we only have one....

    844:

    Don't start me off on JIT stocking....

    The Dems: my guess is that the less conservative wealthy pushed them to go after the Republicans that the GOP left behind in their race to be fully the party of the 1%. It's now an utter shock to them to see so many people, esp. younger ones*, going full progressive, with no problems with a socialist.

    • When I was working for Dean for President, in '04, and then for Kerry, I met a number of old folks, who really rememebered FDR, and others, and would have happily voted for Sanders in '16. But them, and the massive bias in the media, as Faux pulled it all fascist-ward....
    845:

    Jumps up and down. Do. Not. EVER. Stop Taking the scrip when you "feel better", TAKE IT UNTIL YOU FINISH THE SCRIP.

    Unless you really want it to come back, and this time resistant.

    846:

    I'm sorry, Greg, but do you really believe that the one telegram changed the opinion of the US, who had voted for him because he "wouldn't get us into foreign wars" would change everything? That anything, especially something as big as getting into an international war has one, and only one, cause?

    847:

    From the NYT, in a piece on unemplyment registrations:

    Signaling how uneasy policymakers are about further roiling the financial markets, the Trump administration is asking state labor officials to delay releasing the precise number of unemployment claims they are fielding.

    Still worrying about stupid collectibles (bonds, stocks, gold) and the stupid people who think they are important.

    This really is an outside context problem for the US political class.

    848:

    Exceptions include both the Russian and German ones in WW1. In both cases the people were desperate for change because they were sick and bloody tired of their rulers' shit.

    The thing with revolutions (proper ones, that is; the other kind are only coups) is that they're much easier to start than they are to stop. The existing governmental structure comes crashing down once you find the right crack to stick the lever in, but its replacement is necessarily put together by people who have next to no clue how to successfully do such a thing but are nevertheless convinced they have the perfect answer, Dunning-Krugered out the window and all the way up the street. The inevitable consequence is a period of utter chaos out of which Darwinian selection eventually produces a sort of government shaped thing that exists mainly because it can, but has a relationship considerably more casual than causal with whatever the original revolutionaries thought they wanted.

    849:

    Really? Please discuss in the context of, say, the French Revolution.

    Or, for that matter, the Russian Revolution.

    850:

    Best of luck on the IT job.

    Timing... please note, companies, most of them, aren't that bad - it took, I think, two months for me to get my offer for the US federal contractor (for the gov't to say they wanted me).

    851:

    I am absolutely confident I am missing some large chunk of cultural background here. Unfortunately it is a very important chunk: it is the information I need to distinguish your post from a mere statement that "this was a lovely neighbourhood until loads of n** moved in". Note that I do not believe you do mean what it looks like; I'm just saying that I can't tell the difference from my unexceptional UK background.

    852:

    The French revolution was fundamentally reactionary; it preserved the mechanisms of the French State intact. You don't get non-monarchical France until almost a hundred years later, post-1870, which was in significant part imposed by external forces. It was a revolt against incompetence by a mercantile class who finally had both the economic clout and the language to explain why they had to kill the king to preserve the nation. (French monarchy's legitimacy ran on divine favour, which was starting to get shaky as a concept by the later half of the 17th.)

    The Russian revolution wasn't. It was a collapse of legitimacy followed by a period of chaos from which some approximation of a government emerged. (There were way more sides than Whites and Reds in that civil war!)

    853:

    Not the only US Senator: Sen. Kelly Loeffler Dumped Millions in Stock After Coronavirus Briefing - The Georgia Republican is the second senator who has gotten rid of their holdings right as the stock market went bad. (Lachlan Markay, William Bredderman, Sam Brodey, Mar. 19, 2020)

    SBH: Just superficially it's clear that there is a lot of fear-driven maneuvering by BN and camp(s). Re NYTimes, I examine the bylines these days. The leadership is compromised, yes.

    854:

    You are. Now, I was under 7.5 when this happened, but I gather that some scum brought in a black family, then they, or several of them, went to all the neighbors, and spread racism "property values will go down" to deliberately scare people into selling.

    This is all racism for the profit of the real estate agents.

    855:

    [ DELETED BY MODERATOR -- contained bogus/bad/dangerously wrong medical advice wrt. antibiotic use -- commenter also banned -- C. ]

    856:

    By the bye, folks, here's fun news: some moron visited the Georgia (US state) legislature, and the ENTIRE legislature is being urged to self quarantine.

    One can hope ill things for the majority GOP.

    857:

    100% of every doctor I have spoken to, or know, want you to finish the course of drugs. You're passing extremely bad advice.

    858:

    Clearly, your definition of "maintaining the French state" and mine differ significantly. Mine observes a significant number of heads....

    And about the Russian Revolution - have you read China Meiville's recent October?

    859:

    I am absolutely confident I am missing some large chunk of cultural background here. Unfortunately it is a very important chunk: it is the information I need to distinguish your post from a mere statement that "this was a lovely neighbourhood until loads of n** moved in". Note that I do not believe you do mean what it looks like; I'm just saying that I can't tell the difference from my unexceptional UK background.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbusting

    860:

    You might look up "block busting" and "redlining" as they apply to the U.S. real estate market.

    861:

    Also, we have now gone to "shelter in place" in California.

    862:

    Independent studies done/being done at the University of Toronto and York University (in Toronto) are confirming the results of the Imperial College study - in particular that this will not be over in a matter of weeks but will likely be many months. https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2020/03/18/months-of-school-closures-social-distancing-needed-to-fight-pandemic-u-of-t-research.html

    863:

    If COVID-19 manages to kill every single sitting American legislator, will the form of government change?

    Heads are not systems, or habits, or norms.

    864:

    The telegram's main use was that it was a corker of a piece of propaganda to get the anti-war factions of both government and people to change their minds. While the vote to declare war took place in April, the decision had been made well before that. The telegram was probably the final straw as things did turn out, but German submarines sinking American ships from February onwards would likely have served just as well if they hadn't sent it.

    The decision had definitely been made before either the March Russian revolution or the French mutinies secondary to the Nivelle offensive took place (although Russia had pretty clearly reached the stage of not if but when).

    By that point at least you pretty much could identify a single decisive factor that made the difference whether the US would come in or not, and everyone at the time knew it: "unrestricted submarine warfare" by the Germans, ie. torpedoing any old ship you came across no matter whose it was and without even bothering to ask them to please jump in the water first. It was fear of the US response escalating to something serious that got them to stop doing it the first time round (Lusitania), and it was the certainty that the US would come into the war if they started it up again that had effectively opposed the pressure to recommence doing it until that point. The British were equally certain, but of course took the opposite view of the prospect. This explains something about the usual historical treatment of the recurrent military enthusiasm for launching an attack against the Belgian coast that would include taking out the U-boat bases the Germans had built there, which Haig and Jellicoe had a hard-on for since 1915. It tends to consider it almost entirely with regard to the military aspects, which were so obviously unfavourable that it was never remotely a goer, and consequently its political significance was merely as a footnote to underline the "look what these bloody mad generals want to do now" comments that already applied to the parts of the proposals dealing with the establishment of the necessary preconditions. But a considerable amount of the "bloody mad generals" stuff was manufactured after the fact, and similarly so much of the obviousness of the unfeasibility is the product of a century of analysis, much of it in support of some agenda either accusatory or exculpatory, that what the people actually involved thought at the time is pretty much obscured. It's not at all clear that it was always "obviously" unfeasible to the point of insanity from a military viewpoint in the moment (with suitable allowance for exactly what the latest variation involved and what else was going on at the time), when you didn't know the Germans were going to do something tomorrow that would fuck the whole idea right up. Politically, though, it was important to cast it as a madly impractical idea regardless of its actual merits, because it would never do to have it look like Britain wasn't really interested in taking them out.

    WW1 is usually thought of as a land war in which the navies did nothing in particular apart from one bit of a ding-dong off Jutland in the middle, but that's not really useful except as an indicator of how incompletely people in general ever got it into their heads that it wasn't what they thought it was going to be any more; it's basically a viewpoint from before it happened. None of the participants really anticipated what it turned into (though a few individuals did), but once the quick conclusion expected from modelling it as a game of Top Trumps failed to materialise, it became a war of economies: a race to see who could churn out the largest quantities of men and matériel and whoever runs dry first loses. What was actually happening - with considerable variation in how rapidly/thoroughly/successfully people individually and collectively got their heads round the various aspects of it - was a war that operated by using sea power to affect the input flows, while the apparent gains and losses in the land war made little difference as long as it maintained its function as a sink to keep the output flows up. The main reason why it went the way it did was that the British naval blockade was vastly more effective at cutting off enemy inputs than the German submarines were, along with the clusterfuck the Germans made of managing wartime production. (For the same sort of reason the best candidate for the principle German wartime hero is probably Fritz Haber, not that that shit Hitler had any fucking gratitude.)

    The main reason the blockade wasn't even tighter was that it clobbered US trade both with Germany and with neutral countries that Britain didn't trust not to punt things on to Germany, which dropped off a cliff, and the US kept on moaning about it. On the other hand German submarines clobbering US ships wasn't good for trade either, while the trade in war goods and financial services with the other side was going through the roof, which caused a few rumbles about the US being supposed to be neutral but not acting like it.

    865:

    So the critical missing piece of assumed knowledge seems to be about US practices around buying and selling houses which enable it to function - in contrast to British ones which more or less don't.

    Going by that article, in the US when people buy and sell houses they sell them to the agent and the agent then sells them to someone who wants to buy one. The agent takes their wedge out of the difference in price, so they try to buy them as cheaply and sell them as expensively as they can.

    In the UK when people buy and sell houses they do it from each other. The agent advertises the house for sale, puts buyers in contact with sellers, and deals with all the horrible complex legal shit. They take their wedge as a percentage of the price the buyer and seller agree on, so they try to make that price as expensive as possible for both buyer and seller. Therefore the scam is not possible here because the essential basis of how it works is missing. (Unfortunately, not all the other bits are.)

    (Agents doing something similar to US practices do exist, but they're for stuff like desperate circumstances when being massively ripped off is your least bad option. People know that's going to happen so they almost all go for the method that only rips you off a little bit.)

    866:

    Yup and I am having to go to the stores almost every day as they are so picked over. Still no luck with toilet paper, but I have plenty of chocolate.

    867:

    Redlining and blockbusting are both racially-charged real-estate practices. The one Whitroth's family got caught in was blockbusting, which reduced the value of his family's house while probably causing all his friends to move away in panic over housing prices and the racial worries. This would have been long pre-internet, so he may also have lost contact with some of his childhood friends. I don't blame him for being unhappy, though I don't see the commonality with house flipping. (Perhaps he will explain.)

    868:

    Pigeon @ 865:

    Going by that article, in the US when people buy and sell houses they sell them to the agent and the agent then sells them to someone who wants to buy one. [...] In the UK when people buy and sell houses they do it from each other. The agent advertises the house for sale, puts buyers in contact with sellers, and deals with all the horrible complex legal shit.

    No, in the US it works like you described in the UK as well.

    However, realtors also often buy properties themselves, either to rent them out (or just sit on them empty) while they appreciate rapidly, or if the property is ugly and undermarket, slap a coat of paint on them and re-sell.

    Selling to an agent also tends to be more associated with desperate people looking to sell a house quickly, but it depends. There's also a great deal of new construction in the US, and all sorts of bizarre contracts exist attached to the property establishing eternal rights for the builder and so on.

    Prior to the civil rights era, these contracts overwhelmingly existed to forbid selling your house to a black person. Once those contracts were made illegal, well, you can imagine how someone who bought a house in that neighborhood specifically because they liked such a contract would react when black people moved in.

    869:

    "My lack of being online" - another lie, since this entire blog is on-line. My own fault, I suppose, I should not have bothered to respond to your unending bullshitting, but it does get tiresome ,,,

    Heteromeles it was deliberately set up to negate any expertise that anyone brought to the table THAT is most politicans, of all parties, actually. See also the revolting Gove: "We've had enough of experts"

    Bill Arnold Thank you - but then you COMMUNICATE, she (?) does not, she shouts bullshit - or so it seems. Of course, being bullshit, it is occasionally true, quite by accident.

    Steve Simmonds Whereas the Boss is now WFH full-time as of Tuesday Several people were already doing this one day a week ( With the usual mutterings form the control-freak reactionaries ) ... but it meanms that they are really set up for it. She now uses this machine with its double bog screens AND a work lpatop, with a camrea in iot & extra software A few wrinkles, but its working. After all of this is over, wfh is going to be normal for a lot of purposes, I think.

    GvP Yeah, well - We saw bank crashes during the early 2000's - & they were a thing of the past, now we've got a pandemic - which were a thing of the past War has got to be next, hasn't it? And the worst most reactionary parts of GB are the N of England & parts of the W Midlands - same as the people who actually supported Adolf were the rural areas - Shleswig was worst IIRC

    whitroth READ the late, great Barbara Tuchman on that. Yes, it really happened that way ... the US didn't have a choice, they were forced into it, by Imperial German arrogance & stupidity

    870:

    Greg @ 869:

    "My lack of being online" - another lie, since this entire blog is on-line.

    You know, I've seen you mad at She Of Many Names for a long time, and the thing is... you did miss the point there.

    Just to be clear, it was apparent to me, a mildly online person, that she was referring to the phenomenon described here: https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/what-does-it-mean-to-be-extremely-online/

    And furthermore, I want to point this out: being Extremely Online is not seen as a good thing. Her saying you're not could be even be taken as a compliment, however mean-spirited what she said might have looked.

    At the same time, it's apparent that she's speaking the language of Extremely Online people. When I understand what she's saying, it tends to be because I recognize it as being about some random thing that's currently hot in Internet Places which I happen to know about. More often, I have no clue.

    Her methods of speaking also often (but not always!) relate to what is known as "Chan Culture." Trust me, you don't want to know, but suffice it to say there are many subcultures you know nothing about. Chans in particular are influential in the modern online world to a weirdly surprising degree.

    So I mean, yeah, I can understand how it's frustrating that she's essentially using your name as a character archetype in her writings. But seriously: there's something there, it's just written in a language which looks like English but isn't.

    Much like in this episode of Star Trek, it sounding like English isn't sufficient to understand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darmok

    871:

    I think you are underestimating the effect of the content of the telegram (basically setting up a plot to create a war between Mexico and the USA with a side order of Japan) and the strength of US isolationism then (and repeated in 1940). At the very least it meant that there was no effective internal resistance to war. The Barbara Tuchman book is well worth a read even if is 54 years old. I am afraid that the more history books I read the more I subscribe to the cocked-up conspiracy and the unintended consequences theories.

    872:

    In other news .. Sainsburys are lying incompetent bastards They were SUPPOSED to have "geriatrics only" this AM for the first hour... No People unde 30 in there, vast queues & shelves still unstacked

    Elladen That's a VERY complicated way of saying that she's talking bollocks, you do realise that?

    AdrainD I agree that it was a monumental cock-up - on the Imperial German's part, at any rate ....

    873:

    Apropos the Seagull: she's the ONLY person here who has mentioned, even eliptically, a piece of news which would be the most important headline of the month in any other time -- namely the on-going coup in Israel (which the Guardian hasn't mentioned at all and the BBC is curiously quiet about): more here (I'd link to the Washington Post as a newspaper of record but you'd need a VPN to read it in Europe because they block GDPR compliant regions because they want to track you).

    TLDR: Benjamin Netenyahu was being investigated on corruption charges, then lost an election and control of the Knesset. He's up for trial on those charges this week. However, he's using COVID19 as cover to dismiss the Knesset (so no new parliament can be seated), shut down the courts, and invoke emergency rule.

    Note that right-wing (Breitbart-adjacent) media sources in the US are spinning this as a coup against Netenyahu.

    In normal times, an authoritarian populist leader suspending democracy and ruling by decree might just make headlines around the world: the fact that this is passing under the radar right now is extremely troubling insofar as it might well set a precedent for folks like Bolsonaro, Johnson, or Trump ...

    Seriously. You may have difficulty understanding the Seagull, but some of the squawking is highly significant if you've got the context.

    874:

    That doesn't seem much like the UK housing market (ignore whether $buyer is buying to renovate and sell on, renovate and rent, or to actually live in), the typical transaction is:-

    1) $buyer purchases house from $seller. 2) $buyer does renovations. 3) $buyer sells house for more than (cost plus renovations) or rents it for, say 10% per annum of (cost plus renovations).

    They do not typically use it as a means to get (socio-economic group) into buying in $area.

    875:

    Well, sort-of. None of that is news, really, and is simply what quite a few people expected. Israeli democracy has been decomposing for ages, and has been damaged badly by that bunch several times in the past few years; many people haven't regarded it as a democracy for some time, and this is just a slight progression. As a relevant aside, Netenyahu is more than a front man, but less than an autocrat even in his own grouping; it isn't just his personal interest driving this. The gagging of the British media (and especially the BBC) and other organisations on Israel has been SOP for decades (I have personal experience), though it has been gradually getting worse. More interestingly, I haven't spotted such an analysis on the Independent, though there's one on Al Jazeera.

    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/netanyahu-accused-dictatorship-coronavirus-crisis-200319172525611.html

    876:

    Charlie Perfectly correct It is highly important & worrying news. But ... to understand that, one would have to trawl through oceans of irrelevanbt tosh, bullshit & illusory references Life's too short. Which is why I ocasionally ask for translations, just in case there is some actual relevant fact in there ...

    877:

    Block Busting and Flipping are very different things. Many times they have the same result but in opposite directions.

    BB, when it thrived, was driven by 2 factors. One was some non white activists trying to make it so their "clan" could afford to buy houses in better neighborhoods. BB caused the prices to go down so they were all for it. The second group, and the one that drove most of it, were unscrupulous real estate agents. If they could get just one sale to the "wrong" people then a wave of sales would follow. And since they made money on each transaction they figured they were better off making $ times 10 vs 2$ times 1. And at times the activists and agents would work together to help out the first family as their purchase would be at the higher price. And even go so far as to never have them be seen so no one actually knew who they were until after the contracts were done.

    Flipping occurs when someone buys a house never planning to live in it. 10 years ago a flipper was someone who bought a $300K house and lot made it look nicer and sold it for $400K. Now in many areas it means buying a house and lot for $300K, hauling the house off in a truck (or tearing it down to the studs) and building re-building it bigger/better/whatever and selling it for $800K to $1,500K. Or buying a piece of crap for $100K and turning it into $300K to $400K.

    Where things go bad is in the lower end. (It can go bad in the higher end also but I digress.) At the low end it almost always tends to push poor people who are renting out. This is bad. But for various kinds of bad. Typically many of these houses are barely (if that) habitable. I've watched 2 houses go from re-models to complete tear downs as the work started because they were in such bad shape. (One was literally due to roach infestation.) And in much of the US builders really don't want that because the permitting process for new vs. re-model can add $10K times X to the costs. So you're pushing poor people out of barely habitable homes and selling the result to richer people. Whose skin tone tends to be different. Gentrification. Ain't it grand. And the political arguments get really strange when you have affluent darker skinned people pushing out lighter or darker skinned poor people.

    Now add the issue JBS was talking about. Mostly elderly people getting an offer that is 10 times what they paid for the house back in 1955 and selling it for 1/4 the current value.

    878:

    Re: 'Netenyahu ...'

    I don't follow Israel news closely but thought that Gantz was able to cobble together a majority from the recent election therefore can claim being the new legitimate head of state/gov't.

    If there is some already-on-the-books longish interval for transitioning of power then I imagine there are also safeguards in place to ensure that power does indeed transition.

    879:

    The WaPo article if it is what I read last night talks about all of this. Gantz has in theory a 1 vote majority. But 2 or 3 of those votes have said they would never actually for a government with the Arabs. Which are require to get to the majority. They've also said they will not join Netenyahu.

    So Gantz is walking a tight rope. And has yet to formally announce a government. So Benni is shutting down various bits of government to stop the tidal wave against him from the courts. And to make it harder for Gantz to actually form a government.

    That's one issue with all of our democracies. To some degree they all depend on people adhering to reasonable traditions and agreeing to step down when they DO lose an election. Benni tossed that book out the window a while back.

    880:

    And on a someone lighter note. With EVERYONE at home all day and night stream video is crushing the bandwidth of many places in Europe. The EU has asked the various Netflix, Hulu, etc... to reduce their bit rates please so our networks can operate. Netflix said yes this morning. I suspect the others will also.

    Now if this is done in the US before the day is over multiple lawyers will file lawsuits claiming breach of promise and a few dozen other things.

    Greater good. Screw it. We have a contract. At least an implied one.

    881:

    On a numerical note, I just saw a privately circulated analysis that concludes that US confirmed cases have been increasing exponentially at a smidgen over 30% per day. The analysis just uses data from public sources and I don't see much reason to doubt the conclusion. (I did a similar analysis for another country that's in the early stages and came up with 25% per day.)

    882:

    Major grocery store chain in Canada is installing plexiglass shields to protect cashiers as well as putting down marks on the floor to keeps shoppers in line separated.

    883:

    Yeah, Flipping is a thing in the UK too, but works slightly differently because our zoning and related laws are different. (This doesn't actually apply because Scotland, but for example, if Charlie owned the ground of the block Nojay lives in, Nojay might need Charlie's permission to, for example, pull down an internal stud wall).

    884:

    Re: 'Benni is shutting down various bits of government to stop the tidal wave against him ...'

    Thanks!

    That's been my impression of his leadership style from the few news items I've read -- wasn't sure if this was his normal MO.

    885:

    For those participants in the UK, the railways are cutting services starting next week with new temporary timetables to be available online Sunday afternoon.

    50% cut in services expected overall, with some branchlines (at least on SWR) getting no service.

    Passenger numbers are reportedly down 70%.

    886:

    Charlie @730: The avalanche is already running.

    I immediately flashed on this.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zJsrjOytG8

    (And yes, I KNOW that avalanches are snow, not pebbles. Don't @ me. This is just such a beautiful encapsulation.)

    887:

    Flipping is a thing in the UK too, but works slightly differently because our zoning and related laws are different.

    Trust me. We have zoning and related laws (building codes) here also. There can be huge variations depending on state and city. One office I work (100 year old brick warehouse) in can't replace windows if it changes how they look from the exterior. (Charlie?) Any way so to put in energy efficient windows they have to order totally custom sizes that fit inside of the existing windows. Or spend even more to exactly reproduce the look of the originals.

    888:

    Re: '...Seagull, but some of the squawking is highly significant if you've got the context.'

    Yes if this includes his/her conversational style/idiom since almost all of his/her posts hover at the same extreme end and are of only one variable type of rating scale: apocalyptic.

    Okay, there is also (theoretically, at least) the possibility that Seagull (or Poly, as I think of her/him) communicates with us only during extreme circumstances. But if you're going to be science-y/statistical about things based on the range of topics covered --- nah.

    889:

    That would be about equivalent to our Grade 2 and Grade 1 Listed Building status. Beyond that I meant that, even with a freehold property, you may require permits to re-configure or change the usage of a property, and discussing the details of the legal codes involved would be dull for anyone not subject to that exact code.

    OT(ish) but I'll be going dark grey if not actually black for self-isolation for the next several weeks,

    890:

    I saw the Israel headline elsewhere, noted it as not unexpected given the headlines of the last year from Israel, and not unexpected given the world today.

    Myanmar apparently used their air force to attack 4 majority Christian villages(*) and again, given the reputation of the regime involved, not unexpected. A lot of bad people/companies/regimes are going to take advantage of the current chaos to get away with things that, while not possible a month ago, would have generated annoying headlines.

    On the other hand, while I agree (from a 3rd party person on the other side of the world perspective) what is happening in Israel isn't great I also note that the voters of Israel and as a result the opposition politicians have had 3 chances to deal with him in the last year and have failed on 3 attempts. This certainly indicates that a sufficient number of people are happy to have him continue to lead the country.

    But this also leads to the observation that regardless of both what has happened, and will happen before November, don't dismiss the idea of Trump getting elected again - the voters around the world no longer vote based on past expectations of behaviour.

    891:

    you may require permits to re-configure or change the usage of a property,

    Oh, totally. Want to see the torches and pitchforks come out? Try and change the site/style/use in a settled neighborhood.

    And there's a big difference between rural and urban. All the way from if no one notices that new house "who cares" to NYC co-op situations where your neighbors might have to approve the new color scheme for your interior bedroom walls.

    892:

    So places to watch in the coming month, Mexico and Iran.

    Iran, despite how bad Covid-19 is, is now celebrating their new year and residents are ignoring pleas to self-isolate and instead going about the celebration as normal https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/20/iranian-new-year-self-isolate-covid-19

    And so far Mexico is pretending that Covid-19 will skip them and so no precautions are necessary https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/03/mexico-is-frighteningly-unprepared-for-the-coronavirus.html

    893:

    Statistically speaking, you have to realize that we're not telling you 100% of what we see [partly due to Host's interests, at least attempting to keep on topic, partly due to your pure-Materialist biases, partly because nasty fuckers exist[-1] and partly because it simply won't translate].

    Ok, here's one:

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/20/bank-of-england-cancels-stress-tests-for-uk-biggest-lenders-coronavirus

    That's after 0.1% rates, £200+ bil QE and:

    https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-boe-liquidity/boe-takes-part-in-international-action-to-boost-dollar-liquidity-idUKKBN21726Q

    Then check BIS / ECB etc. Whether or not COVID19 is not as bad as the models, it's certainly part of a greater turn.

    Or, you could read this:

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/softbank-backs-away-from-part-of-planned-wework-bailout-11584479235

    And work out what type of crater it's going to make in US office retail, but more importantly: work out what would have happened if the IPO had gone live and was being traded in the current market. Hint: an extra -3% is a big difference on the Big Dipper, and COVID19 is putting the dagger right through it.

    These are big moves by serious people and they're flashing red and they're not the ones we're worried about[1].

    ~

    What's more important to us is that over the last week [redacted] have been making some really aggressive moves, and we were reminded of something last night.

    The reference: find the picture of the security theater Saudi Orb Cyber-command[0] with its glowing white halls and ranks of ordered computer desks and LOOK AT THE TOP LEFT CORNER[2]. Then do a grep for when we mentioned it.

    [-1] For a UK example, look up who is targeting which charities' funds and what reasons recently - more pointless left bashing by people who think that IL would be better off as a non-Democracy. Then imagine that we're very circumspect in certain regards due to, you know, Host's business and the fact that their Minds (lower parts of hierarchy) are not smart enough to see the moves. [0] Which since a lot of Host's readers are in that biz, was funny to them [1] Although the entire sub-sub plot of Gloop and Kabbala getting squished from orbit is kinda satisfying [2] KLAXONS

    ~

    They burn our kind at the stake and we're responsible for horror, apparently.

    894:

    Article that is making the rounds of social media, don't know if it is accurate or a variation of wishful thinking.

    Does note there are apparently already 2 different strains of Covid-19.

    Author seems to claim serious measures need only last a couple of weeks, though how well the China/Singapore/South Korea system would work in the west is unknown given how even the current often limited claims are being ignored.

    896:

    [quote]Perhaps you didn't see what I posted, yesterday: Story: Ten-Minute Coronavirus Test For $1 Could Be Game Changer[/quote]

    I didn't follow the link yesterday, but I'd seen a writeup on it a day or two before. It sounds useful, and better than taking a temperature, but it's not very sensitive and the accuracy hasn't been determined. It detects antigen expression which happens rather later in the progression of the disease than becoming infectious. The PCR test is more expensive and slower, but it's a lot more sensitive and much more accurate. It's a diagnostic test where that $1 test is merely a warning that's a bit slow to respond. (OTOH, it is a lot better than a temperature reading. Of course, it's also a lot more expensive.)

    And there's also the question of whether it's a real thing or just a scam. Someone else will need to weigh in on that. It sounds quite plausible, and certainly something similar should be possible. Calling it a "game changer" though....

    897:

    Hmmph. Well, the link worked for me a few days ago. Maybe it's because I had javascript turned off, or maybe they decided to restrict access.

    898:

    One office I work (100 year old brick warehouse) in can't replace windows if it changes how they look from the exterior.

    One fun example of that sort of thing was when the repertory theatre in my home town did a refurb in the early naughties - as a striking example of municipal mid-century modern it had been listed as grade II* in the intervening period, which meant that when they upgraded the exterior doors from conventional (albeit all glass - this is MCM after all) hinged jobbies to funky sliding doors, they had to retain the brass finger-plates with 'Push' helpfully etched into the metal.

    My parents live in a listed building and so have to deal with similar hurdles (which they take in good part, it's the deal that you take on when you buy such a property after all), whereas I am a lowly worm who only has to deal with the pretty loose strictures of our local conservation area.

    Charlie of course lives in a UNESCO world-heritage site, so my family's travails are entirely invisible from his rarified perch.

    Regards Luke

    899:

    IIUC, the original story garbled things. The employees refused to transmit the blueprints saying that was company property, but the company didn't officially notice. The employees did say that they would be subject to prosecution, but the company didn't officially notice, and, AFAIK, hasn't yet.

    As presented it's a good rabble-rousing story, but not particularly accurate.

    900:

    Try this link and see if it takes you to the article directly, but it is still available for free with a bit of work (no registration or any other stuff required, and downloadable as PDF in addition to the web version)

    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195670120300463

    901:

    Elderly Cynic @ 833: I was responding to your post about the fever you had, NOT about the use of dliberate hyperthermia in treating cancer, which I had previously responded to in #809. Please do keep track of your own posts!

    I do. Rather better than you do I suspect.

    The only post where I mentioned "hyperthermia" was my post about the HIV experiment. If you're going to lecture me about "hyperthermia" it's reasonable for me to believe that you are responding to that post, and not to another post where I did NOT mention "hyperthermia".

    There was no mention of "hyperthermia" in my post about my experience whether someone with a temperature of 103°F would be hospitalized (or not). Obviously I did not receive cold compresses, cold baths or cold showers, nor instructions to do so or I would have mentioned it. So perhaps my fever (at that day & time and my age at the time) was not considered to be "hyperthermia".

    Additionally, I generally try to quote the material I'm replying to so there won't be any confusion.

    See also: Matthew 7:4-5

    902:

    You can not believe what UK Listings can be like; I know of one building from about 1920, listed with late 1980s faux-leaded faux-diamond pane glass. It is illegal to replace that with period correct windows!

    903:

    SFReader @ 839: Re: 'removed & heated blood'

    I've heard of people suffering hypothermia having their blood heated externally so I'm guessing that they could use the same equipment and processes for heating the blood.

    https://www.aafp.org/afp/2004/1215/p2325.html

    And if that approach works and they run out of the specialized machines, they might adapt spare apheresis or dialysis machines.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plateletpheresis

    Not that crazy - one of the major medical centers has a Covid-19 related video showing how to attach 4 patients to 1 respiratory machine.

    I'm not an expert (medical or otherwise) on the subject, I was replying ONLY to the contention that heating the blood to 65°C would cause it to coagulate like a soft-boiled egg. I remembered just enough about the HIV experiment to be able to Google it. What I found suggested that in some instances medical professionals DO heat blood to that temperature before cooling it & returning it to the patient.

    If anyone wants to pursue the subject further down the garden path, I'm not your guide.

    904:

    whitroth @ 843: Finally remembered where I knew the word from.

    I'm not sure we really want to unleash Miles Vorkosigan on the world, of which we only have one....

    Remind me again what word? In case you haven't noticed I use a lot of them, so I can't always remember which one has most recently gotten people upset. Apparently I can't even "keep track of [my] own posts!"

    OTOH - I think there are times when we all could use a little "forward momentum".

    905:

    I've actually seen serious advice from a trustworthy medical source saying that it's not always necessary to finish the entire prescription of antibiotics. But they didn't say how to tell when that was a safe choice.

    906:

    whitroth @ 845: Jumps up and down. Do. Not. EVER. Stop Taking the scrip when you "feel better", TAKE IT UNTIL YOU FINISH THE SCRIP.

    Unless you really want it to come back, and this time resistant.

    I do believe that's what I wrote ... "Stopping too soon" means the same thing as not taking ALL of a prescribed course of antibiotics/antivirals.

    If the doctor prescribes antibiotics (and I'm sure the same holds true for antivirals) you should take ALL of them even if you start to feel better. Stopping too soon may allow the "germ" to rebound & develop resistance to the antibiotic/antiviral.

    Anyway, that's what I did. After my fever broke, I continued to take the rest of the anti-bacterial medication as prescribed until it was all gone ... but I only took one of the opiates. The directions said to take them "as needed for pain".

    One was all I "needed".

    907:

    Thank you, that did the trick.

    908:

    I have enough good sources of news that I don't need the Seagull, which means it's not worth wading through the crazy shit to find the very few nuggets I've missed. At one point she aimed some threatening language at me, and I've had her blocked ever since.

    909:

    David L @ 859:

    I am absolutely confident I am missing some large chunk of cultural background here. Unfortunately it is a very important chunk: it is the information I need to distinguish your post from a mere statement that "this was a lovely neighbourhood until loads of n** moved in". Note that I do not believe you do mean what it looks like; I'm just saying that I can't tell the difference from my unexceptional UK background.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbusting

    There's a good book on the subject of segregation & housing I can strongly recommend: The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America by Richard Rothstein

    Without the history of excluding of African-Americans from the "American Dream" of home ownership due to segregation, "Blockbusting" wouldn't have been possible. Also, in many places "Blockbusting" was a scheme to get around rent controls; a way to force tenants out of rent-stabilized apartments so that landlords could jack up the rents. It was a scam that preyed on blacks & whites alike.

    910:

    You can not believe what UK Listings can be like

    Sure I can. Our city recently created a "Historic" district. Which puts a lot of what you talk about into effect. But for various political, neighborhood, and business reasons this was a small district with many cutouts and such. The history has to do with it being an African American neighborhood in the later half of the 1800s. There is a modern Sherwin Williams Paint store in it plus a half way house for battered women. Both build in the last 20 years. Now they can't touch their exterior without multiple commission votes and approval of the city council.

    911:

    Teratogenic. It's in common use in some circles, though mostly by people with at least a toe in medicine.

    912:

    Re: ' ... at least attempting to keep on topic,'

    Frankly, I did not expect a reply b/c your appearances tend toward the random intervals. (ahem - that's my stats-reference requirement fulfilled)

    Anyways - while I do read your posts, I mostly have no idea what you're trying to communicate. Given previous references to 'CHAN', I figure it's probably because it might be a syntax of some in-group techie lingo/idioms - very much like Darmok STNG mentioned by Elladan [870].

    Re:'pure-Materialist biases'*

    If you mean verifiable/measurable stuff/data - yes. If you mean $$$ - yes, because having/not having it when needed can do serious harm to very many people. And I noticed that the House is already watering down the bill about sending money directly to its people. Some of the funds are being siphoned off to corps.

    Re: '... big dipper'

    If you mean the stock market - I've been watching and wondering who's making money off this hell ride. DT and clan because they're the first to hear about it, OO staff/GOP cronies, and who else? Also thinking that if the SEC (and other stock exchanges around the world) are above-aboard and ethical, they will do thorough analyses of trades between mid-Dec '19 and now, and continue doing and reporting these analyses regularly. (My biggest concern is that the people who can least afford to lose their investments are the marginals and retirees whose financial advisors own mutuals. It's very difficult to parse mutuals therefore this becomes a potential dumping ground for losing stock.

    Another thing I've been wondering about is: where are the super-duper financial AIs that are supposedly keeping the markets growing or at least steady? And, how do the various AIs (financial trading souped up algos) performing relative to one another, and why?

    Next: What proportion of shares traded since mid-Dec are being held offshore? Where off-shore? - And, is this to evade taxes or what?

    If the PTB are unable to track/trace and control online financial trading which is so central to mercantile/capitalist ethos and boasts some of the most advanced/expensive IT systems, there is scant reason to trust their ability to effectively and ethically track and oversee human beings.

    • Seriously? Thanks for the laugh! (I'm more used to seeing folk here saying that I'm some kind of naive idealist.)
    913:

    "Eternal rights" - don't forget builders writing an HOA (Home Owners' Association) into that. I think those are illegal, but they're ALWAYS horrible. Sooner or later, whoever the HOA (that's all of you who own houses in that HOA) elect as president, they get a tin plated dictator with delusions of godhood....

    914:

    I linked my response to the post I was replying to. You might have checked before posting a snottogram, which was the point of my reply.

    Incidentally, the word hyperthermia can be used either to exclude fever or to include it, and treatment I described was (and almost certainly still is) applied irrespective of whether the high temperature is due to fever, heatstroke or artificial heating needs stopping. From the OED:

    Hyperthermia: The condition of having a body temperature substantially above the normal either as a result of natural causes or artificially induced (e.g. for therapeutic purposes).

    915:

    One thing I should note: I don't know how it works in the UK, but in the US, real estate agents get x percentage of the final sale price, so it's absolutely in their favor to jack the price up as high as possible.

    Before looking in MD, in '11, my recent ex and I were looking in Arlington, VA (she'd lived in that area for 24 years, wanted to stay). Outbid 4 times? 5 times? and once, I filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and the national agency the seller's agent worked for that the agent had "negotiated" in bad faith (we put a bid in, agent wouldn't make themselves avialable, as required by contract law, until they got the higher bid they were waiting for from someone else).

    916:

    That's an incredibly intelligent paper. I like the thinking a lot!

    917:

    Teratogen. Remember how Miles came to be....

    918:

    lt;dr couldn't properly follow the events of this thread, but please observe this.

    https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Copernicus/Sentinel-5P/COVID-19_nitrogen_dioxide_over_China https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Videos/2020/03/Coronavirus_nitrogen_dioxide_emissions_drop_over_Italy

    It's not as gradual, but for some reason it just happens that Northern Italy has the highest concentration compared to other parts of Europe.

    My interpretation: lockdown is targeting more industrialized parts of the world, although it is obvious that some countries are more prepared than the others. It is possible that this is the effect of perception (same relative decline everywhere, but more nominal decline with higher values) - yet it is the Italy that has been focused extensively.

    919:

    I was agreeing strongly with you. Yes, I was talking about cures - antibiotics, antivirals, etc, not symptom-relievers like pain meds.

    920:

    UPDATE ALL Pubs, Bars, restaurants to close from this evening.

    I'm off for a pint whilst I still can.

    Also you can bet your boots the Health Fascists will try to keep the pubs shut & hoiw many will survive & how many breweries is anyone's guess.

    921:

    Another thing I've been wondering about is: where are the super-duper financial AIs that are supposedly keeping the markets growing or at least steady?

    Ok, might be worth looking at this (from a bloomberg terminal rather than Coff-in traders)

    https://twitter.com/koyfinTrader/status/1240708701687705600

    Then re-reading our "insane" running thread on it (involving 'Contract' and so on) which was a few months ago.

    nose wiggle

    922:

    And so far Mexico is pretending that Covid-19 will skip them and so no precautions are necessary

    Yes, I've been watching the confirmed-case number for MX and it remained strikingly low for quite a while. But in the last ten days it's started on the familiar exponential(*) rise. Note that these are the reported numbers which, for various possible reasons, are going to be less than the actual ones.

    11 16 26 41 53 82 93 118 164 now

    (*) Or the left-hand part of a logistic curve, which is very close to exponential growth. We happily anticipate reaching the right-hand part, but getting there is unlikely to be fun.

    923:

    Pigeon @ 865: So the critical missing piece of assumed knowledge seems to be about US practices around buying and selling houses which enable it to function - in contrast to British ones which more or less don't.

    Going by that article, in the US when people buy and sell houses they sell them to the agent and the agent then sells them to someone who wants to buy one. The agent takes their wedge out of the difference in price, so they try to buy them as cheaply and sell them as expensively as they can.

    In the UK when people buy and sell houses they do it from each other. The agent advertises the house for sale, puts buyers in contact with sellers, and deals with all the horrible complex legal shit. They take their wedge as a percentage of the price the buyer and seller agree on, so they try to make that price as expensive as possible for both buyer and seller. Therefore the scam is not possible here because the essential basis of how it works is missing. (Unfortunately, not all the other bits are.)

    (Agents doing something similar to US practices do exist, but they're for stuff like desperate circumstances when being massively ripped off is your least bad option. People know that's going to happen so they almost all go for the method that only rips you off a little bit.)

    There are a few things you might miss from the Wikipedia article on "Blockbusting" unless you read it comprehensively all the way to the end

    "Blockbusting" is an unlawful, fraudulent practice that preyed upon poor Whites as well as Blacks.

    For the most part buying & selling houses in the U.S. works just about the same as you describe it working in the U.K. One difference is the buyer often hires their own agent to negotiate with the seller's agent. It's considered unethical for an agent to represent both the seller & the buyer.

    "Sell them to the agent" is not the normal practice, although there seems to be a growing trend in the U.S. where the seller's agent will guarantee a base price & promise to buy the house at that price IF they can't find a buyer willing to pay a higher price. But their fee relies on finding that buyer. They're going to lose money if they have to "buy" a house they haven't been able to sell.

    House flippers are something different. They're looking for houses they can buy cheap, do a little remodeling and sell for a profit. They may be looking to rip you off, to profit at your expense ... but they're not doing so fraudulently. Mostly.

    Case in point ... my own home. I live within a mile of the city center. Remember the three most important things to consider in Real Estate are "Location, Location & Location". I couldn't afford to buy a house here if I didn't already own mine. I probably couldn't even afford to buy anywhere in Wake County.

    Wake County did new tax assessments in 2019. The assessed value of my property went up by 60%. That's mainly because so many houses in this neighborhood are being flipped; either added on to, extensively remodeled or torn down and replaced with McMansions (sub-1,000sq ft houses are becoming 2,500sq ft houses). Three properties within a block of my house have begun the process within the last month, and I think another may be getting ready to start.

    I'm retired; living on a "fixed income". If my property taxes go up by 60% this year, I am going to have trouble, because the cost-of-living adjustments on my pensions damn sure didn't go up 60%. The house flippers are circling my neighborhood like vultures.

    Even if I was willing to sell & move somewhere else, I'm not selling for less than $300,000. And despite what the tax man says, the house ain't worth $300,000. The house flippers are going to have a problem making a profit if they have to pay me the Assessed Value to acquire my house, so they're not going to do it. But they will keep bothering me even though I know and they know I'm not selling.

    924:

    From the point of view of an urban planner, your problem is the system working as intended - you are retired, living in an economic hot zone, the goal is to get you to sell to someone who needs to live there for work, and while you move off to someplace warm and cheap. If you do not want to play ball with that plan... uhm... build the largest monstrosity zoning permits and run a boarding house?

    925:

    Can you appeal the valuation or otherwise get some relief?

    926:

    ""Blockbusting" is an unlawful, fraudulent practice"

    Hang on... so this thing that people were doing, many times over, for years and years, blatantly out in the open, on the scale of entire neighbourhoods... is illegal? And the thing I'm failing to get my head round is that the enforcement of the law is a steaming pile of festering dogshit?

    I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, after all it's the same country where they can slowly poison an entire city of black people because no fucker enforces the laws on drinking water supply quality. (Or am I also wrong to assume such laws exist?)

    ""Sell them to the agent" is not the normal practice"

    But it must have been at least sort of normalish when they were doing that thing, surely? Because the mechanism the article describes is dependent on it. It specifically says that the difference between the price the agents could buy the houses at and the price they could sell them at is where they got the money out of it.

    927:

    I believe that if you reread the article you'll find that it was eventually made illegal by legislation.

    928:

    In Cambridgeshire, death certificates are taking 3 months to issue following 'normal' deaths, and it's impossible to get hold of a bank account, sell cars etc. without one. If the death rate goes up much, that will get worse.

    929:

    Charles H @ 905: I've actually seen serious advice from a trustworthy medical source saying that it's not always necessary to finish the entire prescription of antibiotics. But they didn't say how to tell when that was a safe choice.

    Again, just a SWAG but I'd expect your doctor would tell you if that were the case. Absent a doctor's instruction that it's not necessary to take them all, you should go ahead and finish them off.

    930:

    Elderly Cynic @ 914: You might have checked before posting a snottogram, which was the point of my reply.

    Same right back at ya'. Practice what you preach.

    931:

    whitroth @ 915: One thing I should note: I don't know how it works in the UK, but in the US, real estate agents get x percentage of the final sale price, so it's absolutely in their favor to jack the price up as high as possible.

    The seller's agent gets 'x' percentage of the sales price. I don't think commissions for the buyer's agents are figured that way. It wouldn't make sense. If you're the buyer, why would you hire someone to make your costs go up by jacking up the price?

    932:

    Lasting power of attorney may be a workaround for that - especially if the proposed inheritance is simple. I'm about to bring the subject up with my Dad whose pushing 80

    933:

    whitroth @ 917: Teratogen. Remember how Miles came to be....

    Ok, yes. I think my point still stands. Doctors would not want to prescribe a teratogen for pregnant women, nursing mothers and infants, but I don't see how it would be a factor deciding to use such a drug for someone my age. Especially a male my age.

    934:

    The seller's agent gets 'x' percentage of the sales price. I don't think commissions for the buyer's agents are figured that way. It wouldn't make sense. If you're the buyer, why would you hire someone to make your costs go up by jacking up the price?

    Sure they are. I've been through two purchases now, and both the buyer's agent and the seller's agent get a few percent of the purchase price. This is why real estate agents are always trying to upsell you when you buy a house, and why it's so important to get an honest agent.

    To go back to Pigeon's original question, what was described for the UK is fairly similar to what happens in the US (at least in California): separate real estate agents work on behalf of the buyer and the seller to find a house, get it seen, negotiate an offer, guide the buyer and seller through all the legal procedures, get the purchase price into escrow with all the various insurances, and get money and property to change hands. The buyer usually has to deal separately with getting approved for a mortgage and getting a mortgage, although their real estate agent is generally only too happy to help with this too.

    With housing prices in California generally north of $500,000, a few percent of the purchase price is a fair amount of money.

    935:

    Thomas Jørgensen @ 924: From the point of view of an urban planner, your problem is the system working as intended - you are retired, living in an economic hot zone, the goal is to get you to sell to someone who needs to live there for work, and while you move off to someplace warm and cheap. If you do not want to play ball with that plan... uhm... build the largest monstrosity zoning permits and run a boarding house?

    That urban planner needs to remove his head from his fourth point of contact before the smell drives him crazy. I bought the house 45 years ago, paid off the mortgage, paid my taxes, put money away for a rainy day, was fiscally prudent making sure I would have a cozy place to live when I retired.

    Why should someone else's "needs" take precedence over mine? Why should I be dispossessed for someone else's profit? Are not my property rights the same as anyone else's?

    Fuck 'em. I bought it. I paid for it. I'm going to live here. The urban planner can stick it where he's keeps his head.

    936:

    Coronavirus: Government to pay up to 80% of workers' wages

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51982005

    Aside from the obvious side-effects[0], this one is, well. Of course, the language has to be "...biggest measure since WW2", ignoring that loans from that took until the 1990's to pay off. Oh and losing an Empire. And an entire biosphere. And abundant oil. But sure, 100% comparable, nicely played. Isn't this a massive subsidy for transnational Capital rather than anything else? Tax Money used to offset wages as Corporations refuse to take the losses[-1]?

    Again, we don't know how your systems work, but that has a fail state that's already baked in. Given the % of tax Corporations already don't pay.

    Let's assume the Markets on Monday are nice and fair and generous and don't hit limits within five minutes. What's that saying? Markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent

    ~ London is going lock-down (tunnels closed!), everyone is already ignoring the pub / restaurant bans[1]

    ~ Oil[2] is now like less than $25[3], which is having some very strange effects.

    But yeah: fire up the DVDs, "28 Days Later" is on.

    [-1] CTRL+F Branson, airline industry, cruise ships etc etc. [0] Death of Ideology, Social Contract dissolved, Hordes of Gammon online braying how 'their man Rishi is a top geezer, should be running the country', every NHS IT admin buys a ticket to Antarctica knowing how well centralized UK gov IT is, poor + self-employed get fucked, UK politics dies since cheating is just the done thing now and policy is meaningless, etc etc. [1] Check that sector out. Unpretty. [2] RU is sniffing Arctic heavily, Norway is yelping hallp. [3] Bai CAN, bai bai CAN.

    937:

    Saw an article this week about how some of the proposed reactions to Covid-19 amount to letting the old die off. See this for a good example.

    Struggling to say this in a level tone of voice: Just think, if we lose 10% of the 65+ population the Social Security trust fund will be much better off.

    Chewing over that sentence, I'm now surprised at two things:

    One, that the Democrats haven't accused the Republicans of having that as a secret motive.

    Two, that some of the crazier Republicans haven't openly embraced the idea.

    938:

    Troutwaxer @ 925: Can you appeal the valuation or otherwise get some relief?

    I have no basis for an appeal. The valuation is fair according to the law. Other relief ... I have not yet found anything I am eligible for.

    North Carolina used to have a "homestead exemption" to protect homeowners over the age of 65 from being taxed out of their homes. I think I was in my late 50s at the time the legislature repealed it.

    There used to be a bunch of "senior citizen" benefits for people over 65. The one I was looking forward to was free tuition at state colleges, universities & community colleges. I was going to take a LOT of classes & learn new shit. That was repealed at the same time the "homestead exemption" was repealed.

    939:

    Pigeon @ 926:

    "Blockbusting" is an unlawful, fraudulent practice"

    Hang on... so this thing that people were doing, many times over, for years and years, blatantly out in the open, on the scale of entire neighbourhoods... is illegal? And the thing I'm failing to get my head round is that the enforcement of the law is a steaming pile of festering dogshit?

    Keep in mind we're talking about a practice that was not explicitly against the law 50+ years ago. It was subsequently outlawed by Fair Housing Act (FHA) of 1968 because it was fraudulent (and racist, and segregationist).

    Sell them to the agent" is not the normal practice

    But it must have been at least sort of normalish when they were doing that thing, surely? Because the mechanism the article describes is dependent on it. It specifically says that the difference between the price the agents could buy the houses at and the price they could sell them at is where they got the money out of it.

    "Blockbusting" itself was not a normal practice. As noted it was a fraudulent tactic used by some, but not all real estate businesses. The vast majority of real estate transactions were the same as they are today. The owner of a property who WANTS to sell it finds an agent to represent them & handle the sale.

    What percentage of real estate agents in the U.K. engage in fraudulent, criminal activities? I doubt the percentage is much different from the percentage of real estate agents in the U.S. who are crooks.

    940:

    Can you appeal the valuation or otherwise get some relief?

    I live in the same city. My wife would ask that question every year. I would then point out that ALL the lots within 1/2 mile had the same valuation. Only the buildings varied. And our dirt was worth twice or more what our building was worth. So spending the time appealing the valuation of the building might be working for less than minimum wage in terms of the total tax reduction. They were not going to take my building and say "oops we made a mistake" and cut it in half. I looked at the process and we were withing a few $1000 if I was lucky with my appeal. Which would translate to not much per year in taxes.

    941:

    SBH #893: find the picture of the security theater Saudi Orb Cyber-command OK, I looked, for the practice. The original youtube link in that thread is gone due to a deleted account. I found a few wide pictures via tineye, not sufficiently high resolution. They do not all have the same image on the screen in the upper left; one has what sort of looks like a bacteriophage, and another image has something else on that screen. DJT's trip to Riyadh[1] was weird in several ways; that command center opening was one of the weird highlights. Here's how they're doing with COVID-19: https://visalist.io/emergency/coronavirus/saudi-arabia-country Not bad, if they're testing; 344 cases at last refresh. Hajj 2020 is reportedly still unclear to outside observers

    Re WeWork, I mentioned my dislike for them and similar uptread. That comment section/thread you refer to was huge; took me a few weeks to parse it at the time.

    [1] There's a pdf for those who dare, hosted on a KSA site, lots of pictures. (I opened and paged through it in a jail.) SAUDI ARABIA and the VISIT OF PRESIDENT TRUMP JUNE 2017 REPORT

    942:

    To go back to Pigeon's original question, what was described for the UK is fairly similar to what happens in the US

    That's the English system.

    As with so many other things, Scotland is different; estate agents are rare, most buying and selling goes through solicitors (who club together to run clearinghouses for properties on sale -- the local one here is the ESPC, Edinburgh Solicitors' Property Centre).

    943:

    Steve Simmons @ 937: Saw an article this week about how some of the proposed reactions to Covid-19 amount to letting the old die off. See this for a good example.

    Struggling to say this in a level tone of voice: Just think, if we lose 10% of the 65+ population the Social Security trust fund will be much better off.

    Chewing over that sentence, I'm now surprised at two things:

    One, that the Democrats haven't accused the Republicans of having that as a secret motive.

    Two, that some of the crazier Republicans haven't openly embraced the idea.

    Two - Some of the crazier republicans HAVE openly embraced the idea. The GOP leadership in the house are trying to keep the lid on it. In the Senate, most of the GOP are 65+ (or soon will be), so they're less keen on the idea.

    One - It's not much of a secret so the Democrats haven't really needed to point it out, although some have.

    944:

    That's a major bummer (and this is definitely the wrong time to move, though it might be a great time to buy.)

    945:

    Thank you, I shall be able to apply the appropriate distinction in future.

    946:

    Fraud/scam alerts

    Okay, folks - the scammers are coming out of the woodwork.

    May be a good idea to read up on what the current scams are in your area/country - there's a wide range. (Couldn't find any UK gov't alerts page about this. Either you don't have as many scammers targeting you or your gov't does things differently.)

    https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/features/coronavirus-scams-what-ftc-doing

    https://antifraudcentre-centreantifraude.ca/features-vedette/2020/covid-19-eng.htm

    https://www.scamwatch.gov.au/news/covid-19-coronavirus-scams

    947:

    Ok, since it's now MSM ok'd, people here are talking house prices and it is COVID related:

    Widespread panic in the U.S. commercial real estate market. Investment activity could fall by 45% this year, which would be more than the decline following the 9/11 attacks or the 2008 crisis: Capital Economics.

    https://twitter.com/lisaabramowicz1/status/1241062541637365760

    Note: account is not worth following, REITs (grep) have been hotzone for ages (they're commercial, not residential, but tangent alert). GS vampire Squid is putting negative numbers on the table that would make Köhler sigh with relief.

    BBC link above: other UK non-commercial gov is relief for Rentiers, not renters (via mortgage relief etc, which BoE have been helping out with) - it's all aimed at saving what middle class you have left, really [find out some of the young utbers taking non payment into their own hands - yaaaar, good luck].

    ...but: usually this is 'all priced in'.

    Down 40% is very attractive, only happened in 1974 and 2008 to a larger degree. Yields are very high, could be cut initially though. We prefer REITs outside of the US, higher yields & better value in Asia & Europe.

    https://twitter.com/TihoBrkan/status/1240643914928771072

    Where does this collide?[-1]:

    There seems to be a tremendous market overreaction w.r.t healthcare/senior housing REITs. Surely, these will be importantly impacted by #coronavirus. Even being dramatic, not all 100% of the senior population will die. Most alarming is $VTR at P/B = 0.7x, WAY below equity value.

    https://twitter.com/IndpFinanciero/status/1240349486888529920

    That's the crisis point we were pointing out: if your care home owning company goes bust, whether or not you can cover COVID19 is moot.[0] And the last month has shown that there's almost zero push-back on certain industries as the FinTwit people consider them "over-priced"[2].

    Anyhow, check dates, this is old news [lesson from ecologists : events have already happened, TIME, YOU'RE NOT GOOD AT IT, episode #56] - we just assume you can unpack our stuff, forgot it looks like insane ramblings to humans.

    ~

    We could have been beautiful, you know

    And yeah, the aggressive fuzzing is because what we're seeing is not what you're seeing[10]

    [-1] Reference is last threat "on the QT" [0] And in the UK they can't nationalize them, they are already relying on private beds for NHS ICU stuff [1] They have a point, low cost loans straight into share buy-back isn't long term sustainable: which is fine if your business is leisure, less fine if it's life saving care. [10] Correct pictures, have been doctored slightly / fuzzed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EghMCc6ftoA&list=PLbgWX4-MVrr0ZOuzLXsF7CRcYBSftRdrD&index=32

    948:

    One, that the Democrats haven't accused the Republicans of having that as a secret motive. Two, that some of the crazier Republicans haven't openly embraced the idea. JBS # 943 has already said something like this, without the rant, but here goes: Re Two, there have been a few, and a lot more if you crawl twitter/social media. also some Ones on social media. I'm not really tracking it because it's expected. One twist mentioned also by JBS # 943 is that COVID-19 has a much higher death rate for the age cohorts that contain most of the power and money. Their kids might be arguing this (greed and selfishness don't fall far from the tree) but the ones with power are looking at suppression as the only morally valid option even though it will tank the economy. The US Executive Branch/D.J. Trump Administration, and the GOP greed-and-selfishness-are-good ideology, with attendant lousy non-universal health care, no paid sick leave, etc, destroyed the US economy (well made it future-worse) by treating COVID-19 as a PR and political problem for two months. Early measures could have involved broad ubiquitous testing and aggressive contact tracing and individual-level quarantines and etc, and the US could have looked more like South Korea. They can try to gaslight it, but the fact is that South Korea and a few other countries are doing dramatically better.

    949:

    Reference is last threat "on the QT"

    Ooh, that's some MiM bleed.

    Tell Trott we weren't threatening humans btw. Even when it looked like it.

    950:

    To Self @ 920 OK, I'm back How long this is going to last ia=s anyone's guess. However, I'm betting that it will have zero effect on the infection rate, bu that guvmint will never acknowledge that - becaue it gives them CONTROL

    @ 936 Ignorant, arrogant, uninformed & wanking Correction: "Not even wrong"

    951:

    So, explain it then.

    A Conservative Government directly paying private sector workers is obviously such a 101 economics case it'll be easy to provide links for the ignorant wanking spuds like us.

    "We don't know how your systems work".

    ~

    Greg: if you've not noticed it yet, we don't think this is really about COVID19, but there we go.

    We tortured some folks

    952:

    However, I'm betting that it will have zero effect on the infection rate, but that guvmint will never acknowledge that - because it gives them CONTROL Greg, the piece linked above by mdlve # 895 is pretty clear, if wordy and just one slice. The effect on infection rate of such measures will be substantial; the question is whether it will be measured and if the actual measurements are made public. The control part is of course true. Coronavirus: The Hammer and the Dance - What the Next 18 Months Can Look Like, if Leaders Buy Us Time (Tomas Pueyo, Mar 19, 2020)

    953:

    Also, might not have seen this Greg:

    Romney: Give Every American $1,000

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2020/03/16/romney-student-loans/

    There's loads more of it, it's clearly been strategized.

    Quick question: what happens when rabidly autocratic / nationalist Right wing governments give the poor / lower classes free money to get past a crisis, traditionally?

    Lest we forget, Brexit is apparently still happening:

    Post-Brexit talks: UK prepared to walk away in June if no progress https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-51650961

    Michael Gove: Coronavirus could delay Brexit talks. UK Cabinet minister insisted the Brexit transition period will not be extended

    https://www.politico.eu/article/michael-gove-coronavirus-could-delay-brexit-talks/

    Just sayin that if you constantly reference WW2 to get the gammon hot and glazed, there's probably a reason for it.

    954:

    Anyhow.

    Bonjour, mon nom est Gary, et je suis un escargot géant.

    https://imgur.com/uiMrHK8

    955:

    First, given the incubation period of Covid-19 anything a government does today won't be reflected in the numbers for about 2 weeks minimum.

    Second, the only reason ever greater restrictions are rolling out is for the simple reason that the vast majority of citizens aren't following the simple advice to not congregate.

    Today there are photos of very busy beaches in Sydney, a couple of days ago it was packed beaches in Florida for spring break. Previously in Italy it was people saying schools are closed lets go to the beaches and resorts, or party in town squares. Name the country, you can find people ignoring the social distancing instruction and thus providing the ability for Covid-19 to spread. And Italy is a good example of what happens when the guidelines are ignored.

    Today in Ontario the Chief Medical Officer conceded that we have community spread of Covid-19 given a number of the latest positives have no travel history or recent contact with those who did - yet at the same time people were lining up outside stores to buy the latest video games released today.

    Despite conspiracy theories the government don't want to shut down entire economies, but when people continually demonstrate that the can't follow simple guidelines and instead continue as if there wasn't a pandemic the authorities have little choice.

    956:

    ""Blockbusting" itself was not a normal practice. As noted it was a fraudulent tactic used by some, but not all real estate businesses."

    No, it's the underlying practice that makes it possible at all that I'm talking about. The article says that the agents got their money by buying houses cheaply and selling them expensively and pocketing the difference. Therefore there must have been at least some significant extent to which selling one's house to an agent who would thereby own it and be able to punt it on to someone else, as opposed to the agent simply enabling people to punt houses to each other, was considered normal. If that option was available as an alternative to the "English" option then it would be an option that nobody would take unless they were forced to, because its rip-off potential is huge and obvious. And if both options were available but entire neighbourhoods were distinguished by only the dodgy one being used then only really dim people would not think there's some dodgy reason for it.

    "What percentage of real estate agents in the U.K. engage in fraudulent, criminal activities?"

    100, according to the popular characterisation :)

    Mainly because they're dealing with this horribly complex shit that people don't understand so what they think it means isn't the same as what the law says it does and the agent gets the blame for the difference. Some bad agents exploit that confusion to do sly things that favour them which are legally your fault, and some are just lazy and shit and don't bother with stuff they can get away with not bothering about, but most of it is down to the agent being a more conveniently available and less impersonally unsatisfying target for wrath than the dogshit UI of the legal system.

    Indeed you do get stuff that goes over the border into outright criminality, but the person running the place has to be a bit of a divot because it inevitably gets noticed sooner or later and then it's court case in the local paper and bye bye business.

    You don't get agents repeatedly committing large scale fraud on every deal in a whole neighbourhood. People would notice. It wouldn't matter even if they were doing something technically legal, you'd still not see them manage more than a handful of deals before everyone in the area knows not to go to Grotbucket's because they rip everyone off, and they go out of business.

    On top of that, agents just don't have anything resembling the degree of monopolistic control implied by the ability to run long term scams on entire neighbourhoods. They don't really have any kind of control over anything. All they can really do is sit there waiting for people to come along and ask them to sell their house. If that doesn't happen as often as they'd like or the only houses people come along with are crappy ones they can't make any money from there's not a fat lot they can do to persuade people, and nothing to force them.

    I'm not trying to defend British housing practice (I could rant for pages about things wrong with it) or attack US practice (which I know too little about to want to). What I am saying about either practice is that in this specific instance it is clear that US practice has or had a failure mode which English practice does not. Moreover that failure mode is so impossibly alien that it's beyond me to conceive of what I think of as an agent even being able to consider it possible.

    There is obviously some weird shit in the background which gives rise to this stark difference, but it's also obviously something that people consider so normal they don't even realise it exists, so nobody is mentioning it. Could be something on either side of the Atlantic or even on both - it's impossible to tell. And the more various people point out ways in which US practice actually isn't much different the more obscure the source of the confusion gets.

    I keep blithering on about it in the hope that this invisible factor will somehow pop up because I was shocked by the consequence: a form of words which in Britain only means one thing means the complete opposite in the US, and the misunderstanding is nasty. So far we have established only that the misunderstanding is also inevitable, because the US usage refers to a practice which an English background does not make possible to imagine. The description of the practice on wikipedia explains the fact of the unimaginability, but does nothing to explain the source - the missing factor is still missing; it's obviously just as invisible to the wikipedia authors, so the question remains dangling.

    957:

    How long this is going to last ia=s anyone's guess.

    Was talking to one of my nieces who lives in Beijing. She's been working from home for two months now, and is getting cabin fever.

    958:

    The thing which made the fraud possible was the difference between a "White" and a "Black" neighborhood in terms of housing/property prices. They would force the price of the homes down for the White people in the neighborhood by bringing in a Black family and raising a panic over the usual racist issues. The White people would sell out to the agents to preserve some small percentage of the value in their homes. Then the agenst would sell those homes to Black people for inflated prices, so the Black people could live in a better neighborhood. Look up "Black Flight" and "White Flight." These should give you some clues.

    959:

    "They would force the price of the homes down..."

    They being the agents.

    960:

    Blockbusting has a different historical meaning in Toronto.

    That was when a developer would buy up houses in a neighbourhood they wanted to build in and be deliberately careless vetting the tenants they would rent to. Sometimes they would combine this with knocking down a few houses. The point being to make the area less desirable and therefore cheaper to buy. Eventually what was happening would become overly obvious and lead to games of financial chicken with the last few houseowners.

    One time this backfired, they rented to a bunch of US draft dodgers who (surprise) turned out to be a bunch of politically engaged hippies. They organized against the developer and beat them.

    After the provincial agency in charge of the Municipalities (the Ontario Municipal Board) put a spike in the gerrymandering of the Toronto ward system downtown got local representation and started being a better place to live. Then the whitepainters kicked in (historical name, they actually mostly sandblasted to show off the brick). These were to some degree (and at least one seriously notable example) real estate agents. Gentrification launched and has been galloping ever since.

    961:

    There are two things going on here.

    One is residents selling homes to other residents, using real estate agents as the intermediaries.

    But there's no reason someone can't buy a home as an investment, either to rent it out (by the night, month, year), or to resell it, with improvements (flipping) or not.

    There's also the fun scam of where developers buy up properties through intermediaries. This is typically done with rural lands, to hide the fact that only one firm was buying all the land. This and more complex games happen all the time.

    Blockbusting by that name isn't something I'm familiar with, because it didn't affect a town I lived in. I do remember reading all the documents and very long contract that go with buying a home in California. While it looked superficially like liberal "nanny state" fussiness, as the real estate agent explained it, it was a result of all the big real estate scams that had gone down in California over the decades. Rather than caveat emptor, the powers that be decided to put the counter-measures in writing in the contract and various things we had to read and sign. Quite eye opening.

    962:

    While it looked superficially like liberal "nanny state" fussiness, as the real estate agent explained it, it was a result of all the big real estate scams that had gone down in California over the decades.

    Right there you've spelled out why people should be suspicious of anyone wanting to loosen legislation to make business more profitable. These rules exist for reasons and the reason is often somebody's spectacular scam. Obvious examples are Galt's Gulch Chile and pretty much any Bitcoin exchange.

    963:

    @ 951 You've mede it horribly obvious, many times that you haven't a single bloody clue as to how the UK works ( or doesn't for that matter ) Thus, your pronouncements, as to what's going on here are totally empty And it's about Corvid-19 & yes, it's a wonderful excuse for any guvmint to exercise control, but we all realise that, anyway. If it's about something else SAY SO!

    @ 953 The references to "Not postpoining" Brexit is pure political insanity - on a par with Trump's behaviour. As for the rest FUCKING EXPLAIN YOURSELF - I really, really can't be aresd with claptrap, mysticism bullshit & obscurantism Of course, you won't because I've fallen for it - again - & you'll dance around explaining how clever you are (not)

    Bill Arnold @ 952 You might be correct & I might be "out" I want to wait & see, if ... in the next 7-15 days ( An incubation period, in fact ) the infection/confirmed cases rate falls of a cliff. If it does, then the guvmint & theoir experts have got it right, but if not, then not. Very simple - I have no real opinion, as I don't think any of us actaully know enough relevant facts.

    964:

    I have no real opinion, as I don't think any of us actaully know enough relevant facts.

    "But now I know it with error bars!"

    965:

    I was out buying baby chickens today, because it's that time of year and I'm down to two. Well, one and a silkly (a ball of white fluff that is too stupid to know that it's a chicken). Now I have four baby chickens as well.

    The chicken shop says things have been slightly mad out there as well, they have sold almost all their January hatching and most of their February one... there will be none left by the end of the weekend at this rate.

    Likewise someone who works at a big box hardware/plants/outdoor furniture stuff place (Bunnings) said there has been a similar rush on vegetable seeds. Which is not great for my plan to restart the vege garden now I've moved back. The tenants killed everything except a few mint and tomato plants (good luck killing either of those). The chickens savaged the one remaining silverbeet plant, history suggests it is not long for this world. So I have planted all my out-of-date seeds, even the corn, because might as well. They are planted out the front, so possibly going to be subject to roving gangs of vege thieves in a few months once society has completely collapsed.

    So tomorrow I go off to Bunnings and hopefully buy a feijoa tree to replace the one the tenants murdered (it was just starting to fruit properly). as well as a mandarin if I can. Hopefully the looney types will not be buying trees that won't fruit for at least a year.

    966:

    I was hoping to be more humorous than confrontational. But a few things do distinguish us: we have no realistic expectations of getting a real pension/retirement, but we have terrible outlooks on keeping employed before we die. We were born in a population trough and we are falling through the cracks. So people lumping us into "OK, Boomer" are punching down, but feeling like they are sticking it to The Man. But I still like Ms better than Bs and Zs look like they will be better people still. Frankly, I even miss the Greatest; as much as I disapprove of the racism/sexism/etc., as individuals they were just more interesting people. And they occasionally gave a fuck about something besides themselves. Perhaps because they saw the de-regulated world firsthand and said "Nope."

    967:

    Troutwaxer @ 944: That's a major bummer (and this is definitely the wrong time to move, though it might be a great time to buy.)

    This is just the everyday aggravation of dealing with selfish, inconsiderate people. All I can do is try not to be one of them. Sometimes that's real hard.

    968:

    mdlve @ 955: First, given the incubation period of Covid-19 anything a government does today won't be reflected in the numbers for about 2 weeks minimum.

    Second, the only reason ever greater restrictions are rolling out is for the simple reason that the vast majority of citizens aren't following the simple advice to not congregate.

    I think if I got exposed it would have been last Tuesday (17 Mar) when that wanker was coughing without covering his mouth while I was out grocery shopping. If I understand the way the disease progresses I've entered the stage where I would be infectious to others today. I've been doing a good job of social distancing. It helps that I was already a socially maladroit semi-recluse before this happened. It's requiring very little in the way of lifestyle adjustment.

    I do have a slight cough this morning, but it's no different than the spring cough I have every year when the pine tree pollen fills the air. Again, IF I understand how the disease progresses I'll start to manifest symptoms in about a week, again IF I was exposed.

    I feel like a little kid again, trying to be good waiting for Christmas ... but I already know I'm going to get a lump of coal in my stocking when it gets here.

    In the meantime, some light reading:

    https://www.gutenberg.org/files/376/376-h/376-h.htm

    969:

    Pigeon @ 956:

    "Blockbusting" itself was not a normal practice. As noted it was a fraudulent tactic used by some, but not all real estate businesses.

    No, it's the underlying practice that makes it possible at all that I'm talking about. The article says that the agents got their money by buying houses cheaply and selling them expensively and pocketing the difference. Therefore there must have been at least some significant extent to which selling one's house to an agent who would thereby own it and be able to punt it on to someone else, as opposed to the agent simply enabling people to punt houses to each other, was considered normal. If that option was available as an alternative to the "English" option then it would be an option that nobody would take unless they were forced to, because its rip-off potential is huge and obvious. And if both options were available but entire neighbourhoods were distinguished by only the dodgy one being used then only really dim people would not think there's some dodgy reason for it.

    [edited for brevity]

    I keep blithering on about it in the hope that this invisible factor will somehow pop up because I was shocked by the consequence: a form of words which in Britain only means one thing means the complete opposite in the US, and the misunderstanding is nasty. So far we have established only that the misunderstanding is also inevitable, because the US usage refers to a practice which an English background does not make possible to imagine. The description of the practice on wikipedia explains the fact of the unimaginability, but does nothing to explain the source - the missing factor is still missing; it's obviously just as invisible to the wikipedia authors, so the question remains dangling.

    You seem to believe that EVERY real estate transaction in the U.S. took the form of "Blockbusting". That's just not what happened. "Blockbusting" was NOT that widespread.

    Bank robberies make what percentage of banking "transactions" on any given day? Does that make bank robbing normal?

    Select any profession at random and sample it ... what percentage of that profession is made up of career criminals? Does that make all professionals career criminals? Is a life of crime "normal"?

    The misunderstanding is entirely on your part and it's not a misunderstanding of the meaning of words, but a misunderstanding of what really happened. There's no "missing factor". Some people are greedy assholes and will rip you off if they get the chance.

    970:

    Rather than caveat emptor, the powers that be decided to put the counter-measures in writing in the contract and various things we had to read and sign.

    Oh yeah. When I was the person doing the signing for a sale of a townhome (with condo legal tossed in) for my mother in law in Maryland in 2014 the basic contract was 40 pages. Riders either party wanted on top of that were extra. And many of the clauses were had overlapping provisions but since state law said "there will be a clause that says this" it all had to be there.

    The selling agent I had contracted with was a big perplexed that I read all of it AND asked questions.

    971:

    This piece is helpful. It outlines what countries that have been successful (so far) dealing with COVID-19 have been doing. Understanding what works: How some countries are beating back the coronavirus (Helen Branswell, March 20, 2020) Here’s a look at some of the techniques these governments employed, and how they stack up to steps being taken in the United States as well as the United Kingdom, which has come under heavy scrutiny for its approach, fairly or not.

    972:

    JBS I already referenced Daniel D .... I wonder who will be the chronicler of this "plague"?

    973:

    jrootham @ 960: Blockbusting has a different historical meaning in Toronto.

    That was when a developer would buy up houses in a neighbourhood they wanted to build in and be deliberately careless vetting the tenants they would rent to. Sometimes they would combine this with knocking down a few houses. The point being to make the area less desirable and therefore cheaper to buy. Eventually what was happening would become overly obvious and lead to games of financial chicken with the last few houseowners.

    Generically, any time real-estate speculators engage in tactics intended to break up neighborhoods and force residents to move out or sell at a loss could be considered "Blockbusting". In the U.S. it had significant racist overtones as part of the legacy of "Jim Crow".

    And before y'all go off on the American South again, please note that "Jim Crow" laws existed in ALL states & had their analogues in most countries of the world, including the U.K. [usually targeting Jews instead of Blacks].

    974:

    Heteromeles @ 961: There are two things going on here.

    Actually, I think there's a third thing ... there appears to be a lot of confusion between the role of the "real estate agent" and "real estate speculators". They are intersecting sets, but "Blockbusting" falls completely within the domain of the latter.

    975:

    Greg Tingey @ 972: JBS
    I already referenced Daniel D ....
    I wonder who will be the chronicler of this "plague"?

    Ok. I think I also got it from another forum. Someone I know who can be a real jackass from time to time announced he was ordering hard copies from Big River to be sent as gifts to certain of his acquaintances.

    We are the chroniclers of this plague ... all of the bloggers & commenters.

    976:

    The countries credited with successfully restricting the growth of COVID-19 cases and beating back the peak spread are the ones that have employed systems of intrusive public surveillance and social controls that have been roundly condemned previously on this blog -- facial recognition cameras, logging of people's movements by government agents and local authorities, monitoring of social media and clampdowns on news channels, internet filtering etc.

    Sure you can claim there's a way to do it without being as authoritarian as, say, Singapore has been but they've got actual proof that what they did works. In the UK we've got computer models and a lot of crossed fingers.

    977:

    Last night I attended a virtual Shabbat evening service hosted on Zoom video conferencing (I'm not Jewish to be clear, know the liturgy though). As expected, since it was first time and half the people couldn't figure out how to mute their microphone, it was a little chaotic, and the variable lag made the singing pretty bad (usually quite good). It was a welcome respite for many of the people, all in isolation now, finally (New York State), since they saw a wall of familiar faces, people waving at each other, etc. (I just found it tiring; might be better with proper mute discipline.)

    Long story short, those of us with social needs (I'm a hermit TBH) and/or who closely know people with such needs should be aggressively using these technologies or similar (smartphone apps have smaller screen but are more likely to work) if available and with an internet connection. I'll not recommend anything (not enough experience outside business use of video conferencing) but will note that Skype was easy to set up for both iPhone and Windows (7,10).

    978:

    the ones that have employed systems of intrusive public surveillance and social controls that have been roundly condemned previously on this blog The article discusses Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea. And many/most of the measures that they have taken would be acceptable (maybe with some pushback) in the US and UK.

    979:

    Nojay Germany is doing v well - because of intensive testing, or so it appears. With their legacy " intrusive public surveillance and social controls " are simply not on ... As opposed to Austria, who appear to have screwed-up, spectacularly.

    980:

    Having read the article, it is as interesting for what it doesn't say as what it does.

    There are (to me) two key facts from that article which are either superficially covered, or ignored.

    First, the population is following suggestion/orders regarding social distancing - something that is not happening (at least until too late) in much of the rest of the world. The discussion of Taiwan makes this clear - the one sentence on how all other diseases that transmit via human interaction are have also dropped. This says that even those who don't have Covid-19 (or a direct risk of having it) are obeying the social distancing thus ensuring even undetected cases of Covid-19 don't have an opportunity to gain a foothold before testing can catch it.

    Second, and more importantly, the governments aren't lying and are trusted by the population, and they are following science. Contrast this with the UK and the US whose leadership are known for lying, and who (more in the US so far) have been able to corrupt much of the government with incompetent deputies. They aren't interested in the truth, because it contradicts the fairy tale they are selling, and so now that the world has turned serious half the population doesn't believe the leadership (and thus by extension the government) and the other half don't believe the experts.

    Western society is paying the price for 40+ years of of having con men running the place.

    981:

    "Western society is paying the price for 40+ years of of having con men running the place."

    Exactly. Those are true words.

    982:

    https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

    The U.S. is now fourth in the measured number of Coronavirus cases, now showing more than Germany or Iran. And that's with the testing we're currently doing.

    983:

    Sigh.

    Look, do yourself a favor.

    Type "Goldman Sachs bonus" or "Goldman Sachs US GDP projection" or "Rishi Goldman Sachs" into a search engine.

    Read the date: 21st March 2020. You'll spot at least two big stories immediately. One involving the US bailout, one involving CEO pay and a few others.

    Here's the 1st hit on the UK front:

    Morning Coffee: Precocious 39-year-old ex-Goldman Sachs analyst gets lucky. The top women behind the scenes

    https://news.efinancialcareers.com/uk-en/3003193/rishi-sunak-banker

    14th Feb 2020 - which is... valentine's day. Ho-ho-ho, wonder who is getting married, eh?[0] Makes the byzantine rules of court etiquette or 'Gentlemen's Club' or the Black Book of Who's Who look complex. It's a very simple semiotic message to the faithful.

    Now work out two things:

    1 Why our sudden obsession with Giant Squid was really really obvious 2 If you believe in "Luck" when it comes to Human Political Affairs or that people aren't groomed for roles years in advance like Princes and Fools 2.1 Just how deeply #2 goes and be careful, you'll hit Horse Racing soon. 3 If going full Brexit with an ex-Goldman Sachs PM is quite what people were voting for those eons ago and if the results will be "sovereignty". Hint: Greece might like a word in the clam-shell since this is essentially where a lot of this all started. 4 How sad the gammon are going to be if they're ever ever allowed to spot the obvious moves that are so obvious it's obvious to the blindest of Desert Prophets that their Lords and Masters really don't give a fuck about them.

    ~

    Oh, and Feudalism is back, yay.

    Farmers call for 'land army' to sustain UK food production during coronavirus crisis

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/20/farmers-call-for-land-army-to-sustain-uk-food-production-during-coronavirus-crisis

    https://twitter.com/YossariansLife/status/1241077484139024385

    We're hoping that the networks of SF/F writers[1] have taken note and have quietly formed their own protective circles and Mott-and-baileys and so forth.

    We've got two choices since we've been bound in silver and anchored to stone: "hospital food" or "basement exercises". Neither of which mean what you might think they mean. And neither are fun or hedonist.

    ~

    But hey: worth a punt to save the Creative Culture Classes.

    [0] Since Britannia is a female avatar, eh?

    [1] A large majority of whom are getting totally boned by US/UK 'bail outs' due to being essentially self-employed

    984:

    mdive Actually, the UK guvmint have visibly changed course & are following medical advice - or more closely than they were previously, at any rate.

    Troutwaxer Yes ... the youessay is in for some deep shit - very little testing, experts being ignored, etc etc ...

    Oh dear And in the opposite direction Private hospitals "helping" the NHS - like if they didn't they would have been requisitioned, I think ... "Goldman Sachs" - really ... boring & inane conspiracy theory - you ARE from the USA are you not? "Land Army" is a WWII reference, actually - ignorant again.

    985:

    boring & inane conspiracy theory

    Yep, the front end / PR[0] of Global Capital is not ruled by Capitalists, that would be crazy-pants talk. They line up to let the proles have a shot at the top slots, always have done. Totally random who is selected for positions, it's the old Athenian lots that does it[-1].

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malcolm_Turnbull

    ~

    "Land Army" is a WWII reference, actually - ignorant again.

    And mostly women:

    https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/what-was-the-womens-land-army

    If you think that it's accidental that another WW2 reference is getting used then we've a bus for you.

    Oh if you think this time will be 'voluntary', well, you do not understand how modern Capitalism works.

    Don't research chocolate or bottled water or prawns from your supermarché.

    ~

    As a solid tip: using the words "Conspiracy theory" in 2020 is akin to using the word "merkin". Dead old ancient stuff that's long past its sell-by date.

    [-1] Greg: just realized: you might have spent the last 50 years without a TV. Which would explain some things. [0] Which is essentially what Politicians are these days

    986:

    I'll not recommend anything

    My wife's ballet class has gone to Zoom quite successfully. Not quite the same as being in a real studio with real barres and a good floor, but better than nothing.

    987:

    The problem is, are people willing to keep on doing it, downloading "snitch" apps to their phones that continuously report their movements to the government so that when the next outbreak occurs the data about where they were, who they came into contact with and when, the essential data for tracing and suppressing dissent^Wcross-contamination is at the government's fingertips virtually real-time? Will they accept the presence of facial recognition cameras on every street to fill in the gaps etc. etc.?

    Rolling out mass surveillance AFTER a disease like coronavirus is on the loose is much less effective than having it in place, operational and well-tested before it happens. There are scofflaws and refuseniks who talk blithely of "burner" devices and such but they will stand out from the crowd of obedient and compliant citizens and can be tracked down and dealt with appropriately.

    The US will have it worse since there are millions of people out there with guns, a lot of them the sort to treat any 'orders' from the Federal government regarding quarantines and restrictions on movement as a call to rise up and start shooting wildly in all directions.

    988:

    Anyhow, just remembered that we've gone through all of this as preparatory warning work about engines and agriculture and land armies years ago (do a grep) in an effort to give you the tools to spot the moves. You know, stuff that interests engineers so that they might perk up old ears when it happens?

    Instead you didn't and women lost their pensions and you don't even remember it!

    Fucking amazing.

    989:

    Germany is doing v well - because of ...

    In my mind the #1 thing Germany did right was tell people this is going to be big and long. 1/2 or more of the country will get it due to the lead time to develop a vaccine. So please let us all be prepared.

    Unlike the very very very slow admission (not yet there) of how big a slog this will be by much of the rest of the "western democracies". The current official US word from the task force is this make take longer than expected. Maybe the end of the summer. [(&(#&$&^#($^&(&#$]

    990:

    Nojay Meanwhile, my nice new phone won't even tell me where I am ... - Google Maps only seems to work near my own modem/link/terminal utterly useless out on the street or the country where I might actually need it(!) I haven't the faintest idea why this might be so ....

    991:

    Google Maps only seems to work near my own modem/link/terminal A few possibilities (and there are probably others): (1) Is your data plan (that's what it's called in the US) sufficient? (Probably, but worth asking.) (2) The stay-at-home/work-at-home orders are causing a lot of localized congestion in the wireless networks; when at home you're using your home wireless, probably. I'm seeing more problems with wireless data connections than with my home (cable, US) internet connection, though the later has often been losing connectivity (high packet losses) briefly in the last week, almost certainly due to load spikes. (A nearby router seems to be dropping packets.)

    992:

    [1]..[10] That I presume is intended to convey that a lot is being left unsaid(/deleted), which I have been trying to reconstruct.

    'land army' The US under FDR did something similar to that (the now-being-proposed appropriation of the name) in the early 1930s, the CCC, giving unemployed men (and a few K women) government jobs (not private sector jobs) which promised food, shelter, money, physical labor, discipline (and uhm reduced revolutionary fervor). Visiting parks in the US one can still see their work.

    993:

    Meanwhile in France, article 223-1 has been invoked for non-compliant lockdown busters. art 223-1 mise en danger de la vie d'autrui Le fait d'exposer directement autrui à un risque immédiat de mort ou de blessures de nature à entraîner une mutilation ou une infirmité permanente par la violation manifestement délibérée d'une obligation particulière de prudence ou de sécurité imposée par la loi ou le règlement est puni d'un an d'emprisonnement et de 15 000 euros d'amende. That particular law has had many uses in the past: - against road-racing in the midst of traffic - for HIV-positive (and aware of it) people having unprotected sex - against businesses putting their employees or clients at risk. Tribunals have a record of applying that law quite harshly (except, of course when big businesses are involved)

    994:

    You need to enable its GPS. Google maps is a snooping application, and insists on knowing where you are before allowing you to view, say, the street map of Timbuctoo.

    995:

    the population is following suggestion/orders regarding social distancing

    Possibly they haven't had 30+ years of the government telling them repeatedly and with enthusiasm that the government can't help them, and that there is no community, just individual citizens?

    Either of those would be bad enough, but together they make perfect conditions to spread a pandemic.for the individual.

    996:

    Google maps is a snooping application, and insists on knowing where you are

    The version I have on my phone is not like that. It works off either wifi or mobile data with GPS turned off, but doesn't show my location. Instead it generally pops up with the last map shown which can be handy if I'm somewhere that has poor reception. Of course the times it randomly resets to showing Circular Quay are invariably times when I have no data reception to re-download the map I actually want.

    But it does work for me without location.

    997:

    It’s often said that health and safety regulations are written in blood.

    998:

    Here in Toronto we had EB Games stay open until forced closed so they could sell two new-relsease games. CTV interviewed some of the people lining up. This one caught my eye:

    “I’m actually like living with my grandparents right now so I have to be a little bit extra careful. I have hand sanitizer in my backpack. Like I’m super careful about stuff,” a woman lining up for 'Animal Crossing' told CP24 on Friday.

    “But I don’t know, something about this game, you just have to come and get your hands on it.”

    The Star was there too. I confess this part of their story surprised me:

    The only time people in the lineup seemed to get nervous was when a woman wandered down the line, attempting to sneak up on waiting shoppers and give them a hug or tousle their hair. One man looked shell-shocked after the woman twirled away southwards on Yonge St. while giggling.

    Links here: https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/popular-video-game-release-leads-to-long-line-outside-eb-games-amid-covid-19-outbreak-1.4861455 https://www.thestar.com/business/2020/03/20/ford-frustrated-as-dozens-line-up-for-eb-games-launch-despite-pandemic.html

    999:

    At least on a computer, if you open up e g Google Maps or another map site I think they often give your starting position as where your ISP goes public with your internet connection. With a phone your GPS usually (if active) helps pinpoint your location more exactly on the map

    1000:

    Google Maps (at least on an iOS device) assumes it can fetch maps continuously as you move around. If this isn't true you need to use the Cache function to tell it areas where you want it to keep cuurent paps when on WiFi so when you wander it can know what to display.

    And the cache zone are fairly big. I think I got all or most of Ireland with 3 rectangles.

    1001:

    And a lot of us were screaming in '10 and '11, but between the GOP, Faux News, and the neoliberals, Obama did not recreate the CCC, because, I mean, "big gummint is bad" "we want to reduce the size of gummint" (well, except for outsourcing it).

    They did a damn good job, and we need them again, and there's a hell of a lot of folks who'd love to be in a CCC.

    1002:

    Yeah, "Location, location, location" - I want someone in front of me saying that, so I can beat the shit out of them. The real estate market is heavily taken over by flippers, and the hedge funds have heavily invested in it, as well as the rental markets, in the US. See: rent go through the roof.

    Well, thud.

    Oh, btw, the link at the end was to an add for Sid Maier's Alpha Centurai Project.

    1003:

    Please note that how houses are sold in the US is extremely fragmented. In Chicago, you have a lawyer, and they have a lawyer. No real estate agents involved... at closing. Before, you can hire an agent to negotiate for you, which can get you a better deal, but piss off the seller's agent, because they have to split the fee with your agent.

    Here in Montgomery Co, MD, we had an agent help us find, but we did a lot of the looking, and he'd go with us. We found this place, and closing? I hired a lawyer, and he did everything, no title company - we did the closing in Chicago at the title co's offices.

    One agent, selling and buying? My second wife and I bought a house in Philly, in the early eighties, in that situation, and the SoB was LYING to both sides, and we were both happy when it got down to their lawyer and ours.

    1004:

    Last Sat evening, BSFS had it's normal 2nd Sat of the month business meeting, and most folks called in via zoom. Based on me calling in via phone, it was clearly set to automatically mute someone unless they hit, what, star 6 I think, and it would mute after you stopped talking for a few seconds, so that's configurable.

    1005:

    "The real estate market is heavily taken over by flippers, and the hedge funds have heavily invested in it, as well as the rental markets, in the US. See: rent go through the roof."

    Followed by people whining, "I don't understand why there are so many homeless people on the streets. What's wrong with them?" or "Why are housing prices so high?"

    "Don't you know, they're talking 'bout a revolution, it sounds like a whisper!"

    1006:

    Oh, btw, the link at the end was to an add for Sid Maier's Alpha Centurai Project.

    Ad? Nope: they're the original videos loved by almost all Gen-X geeks. SMAC references are often unintelligible to non Anglosphere operators, it was a finger to MENA spoil sports.

    Against such abominations, we organize our defenses on the principle that one strong and able mind can shield the many.

    941 The original youtube link in that thread is gone due to a deleted account.

    Linkrot is a thing, but so is pruning.

    https://youtu.be/Hou-Iwv1GvM?list=PL2121BB1B008DDDD9&t=172

    ~

    Hmm, things moving fast, but this is all 100% COVID19 related.

    Exclusive: Goldman injects $1 billion into own money-market funds after heavy withdrawals

    Weekly liquidity levels at the nearly $18 billion Goldman Sachs Fund Square Money Market Fund dropped to 34% on Thursday from 43% on Monday. SEC rules on weekly liquidity dictate that funds have to keep at least 30% of their portfolios in securities that can be converted to cash in five business days.

    https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-goldman-mny-mkt-ex/exclusive-goldman-injects-1-billion-into-own-money-market-funds-after-heavy-withdrawals-idUKKBN21810A

    Quick TL;DR is that GS told everyone publicly that it would be peachy-fine, the market crashed and have now announced they see a -24% GDP reduction in Q2 (prior projection was -5% or similar). While their clients were pulling funds out like that last loo-roll in Tescos. Everyone knows that GS will be on the other side of any deal they recommend publicly, but this one is a tad...

    Trumpian.

    Ahh, for the good old days when NYC could go dark and only the GS tower was a shining beacon of light...

    ~

    Anyhow, you can wrap that altogether and figure out the outcomes. Bonus points for spotting that the Bloomberg article on REITs had "Twin Peaks" in it. Real warning sign is when they crack out the "Lost Highway" ones.[0]

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZowK0NAvig

    [0] There are few people who can explain Lost Highway, we happen to number amongst them.

    1007:

    Police in Quebec were called to arrest a woman who had tested positive for Covid-19 and went for a stroll around her neighbourhood despite a home quarantine order. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-city-police-arrest-covid-19-1.5505349

    1008:

    I saw that. Wonder how much of that was "didn't understand" vs. "didn't believe it" (or "didn't give a shit").

    I suspect it's going to take active enforcement to keep the social distancing rules effective. Too many people think it's OK to lie to get what they want, and don't care about the costs to others as long as they get their own way.

    And a lot of people haven't had consequences that they can't talk their way out of (or blame on someone else).

    1009:

    "It is very easy to say that this mess is the end of his re-election hopes, but the voters of the world are so unpredictable these days that even this may no harm him - it could actually help him if the base thinks the media is picking on him for pointing out all of his incompetence."

    His base will vote for him - they'll deny his failures and lies and/or actively vote for him because of that.

    The question is those who voted for him in 2016, because they thought that he was his TV image.

    1010:

    Totally off topic, but this interesting article in phys.org. They used the Chandra X-Ray observatory to observe the big ol' black hole at the center of the Perseus galaxy. They're testing the theory that Axions (the best remaining candidate for dark matter particles, now that WIMPs are, erm, wimping out).

    The trick is that axions may occasionally change into photons when they pass through magnetic fields (and vice versa). So, where to get a source of high energy photons and titanic magnetic fields? Yup, your neighbors' black holes.

    And...

    They didn't find any sign of axions in the energy ranges they observed. Doesn't mean they don't exist (WIMPs are probably still possible too), but at least a bunch of string theories failed the test of reality yesterday.

    Cool beans. Maybe some of the Brane/Bulk/MOND boffins are less wrong?

    1011:

    Re: '... after the woman twirled away southwards on Yonge St. while giggling.'

    Any relation to that young idiot/drunk? woman videoed throwing a chair off a 15 or 20 storey condo balcony almost directly onto one of major highways through the city? That Tweet went viral: she was quickly identified, charged and subsequently found guilty.

    Public surveillance - As per the above, anybody with a smartphone - probably everybody waiting in that line - can surveil. Guess since this is the first I've heard about that Yonge St. episode, it didn't trend. I'd guess that right now due to medical concerns any unsolicited touching could be considered assault.

    1012:

    I mostly thought "no-one punched her? How very Canadian".

    For all that there are lots of Australians out and about, the shops are mostly open and people are having to be told "yes, going to the beach counts as a gathering", people are also quite respectful of the personal space of people wearing masks. I'm not even wearing my "FUCK OFF & DIE!" punk skull bandanna that I still have for some reason (it's been more than a decade since I went to a gig), but people are mostly decent about it.

    Shop assistants, OTOH, mostly seem resigned/DGAF. They're touching everyone and everything, and the Aldi checkout chick seemed to make a point of touching her face after every customer.

    1013:

    ... you need to use the Cache function to tell [Google Maps] areas where you want it to keep cuurent paps when on WiFi so when you wander it can know what to display.

    The only complaint I have about this is that on Android the app seems to be hard-coded to flush those maps after 30 days. It won't warn you that the map is out of date and may be inaccurate, it won't load the map at all if it hasn't been allowed to call the mothership in the last month. I'm not impressed; very few road networks change a lot month to month. It would be fair to warn me of an out of date map and make me agree to take the gamble; instead the navigation system self-destructs and leaves me without its help until after I need it.

    1014:

    And a lot of people haven't had consequences that they can't talk their way out of (or blame on someone else).

    Did you miss this fiasco, Declan Finn's trip to Italy a few weeks ago? Reading his account it's clear he learned nothing from anything that happened, including such obvious lessons as 'police get cranky when people breach airport security.'

    Or how to spell Lombardy, demonstrating again why writers need editors.

    1015:

    EC I usually have "phone" ( obviously! ) "wifi" & "geolocate" all switched on, all the time. If I open google-maps, I press the little symbol that should active geolocate within it. Absolutely NOTHING AT ALL - unless I'm sitting at this desk. W.T.F. ??

    Moz Mine won't normally even do that ( Show last location ) .....

    I mean, I've deliberately tried this on the allotment, in the open air, but in London - nothing & in a couple of pubs with good signal ( like I've just used the phone ... ) - nothing.

    1016:

    Re: '... the Aldi checkout chick seemed to make a point of touching her face after every customer.'

    Meanwhile, in Canada, two of the largest grocery and drug store chains are installing plexiglass around their checkouts. Not sure how this actually looks/works - haven't seen any photos. Several other new measures/practices mentioned below:

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/sobeys-plastic-shields-loblaws-hours-1.5504233

    Also - isn't Australia just entering its /winter flu season right about now?

    1017:

    For anyone interested in seeing levels of COVID-19 testing across various countries.

    https://ourworldindata.org/covid-testing

    1018:

    Software fuck-up. It's solid with them. Both Moz and I use one (or two?) that allow us to get past it's nosiness. But there are others that stop it working at all, or make it work in insane ways.

    1019:

    My, that's… special.

    Of course, he's an American, is doubtless expects the same polite and respectful treatment American airport security would restrict themselves to if a foreigner walked through a security door at an American airport… (sarcasm, obviously)

    I just went out for a brisk walk — I'm lucky enough to have a lot of wide recreational trails in my neighbourhood, so keeping away from people is easy. On one of the local school fields a dozen-plus 20-something young men were playing soccer. Nearer home I passed three couples (also young) walking in a close-knit group to get coffee.

    Given that a fortnight ago a couple of my colleagues were surrounded by teenagers and coughed on, I wonder if this is one of those viral memes (no pun intended) going around the internet?

    In the southern German state of Bavaria, Gov. Markus Soeder lamented that "there are still corona parties, there are young people who cough at older people and shout corona for fun and, above all, there are an incredible number of groups being formed.”

    From: https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/03/22/world/europe/ap-eu-virus-outbreak-the-rebels-1st-ld-writethru.html

    A study from South Korea shows that around a third or 2,300 of the estimated 8,100 confirmed infections there are of young people aged between 20 and 29, the highest proportion of any age group. South Korea is believed to have so far carried out more coronavirus tests than any other country – 4,000 per million residents (four times as many as Italy and over 150 times more than the US), so the results are among the most comprehensive available and show that the behaviour of young people has a significant relevance on the development of the pandemic.

    From: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/18/fears-lockdown-parties-will-increase-global-spread-of-coronavirus

    1020:

    mdlve @ 1007: Police in Quebec were called to arrest a woman who had tested positive for Covid-19 and went for a stroll around her neighbourhood despite a home quarantine order.
    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-city-police-arrest-covid-19-1.5505349

    Robert Prior @ 1008: I saw that. Wonder how much of that was "didn't understand" vs. "didn't believe it" (or "didn't give a shit").

    I suspect it's going to take active enforcement to keep the social distancing rules effective. Too many people think it's OK to lie to get what they want, and don't care about the costs to others as long as they get their own way.

    And a lot of people haven't had consequences that they can't talk their way out of (or blame on someone else).

    There has to be more to that story. The woman had to have been doing something more than just walking around the neighborhood. Social distancing doesn't require total isolation. Prisoners in solitary confinement are allowed an exercise period. Even a quarantine order has to make some provisions for exercise.

    I'm staying home most of the time (as semi-ordered by the government), but I HAVE to go outside some. My dog can't stay in all the time. There's no where for him to do his business unless I take him out.

    And I need the exercise as well. I already spend too much time sitting down (at this computer), and since staying indoors become general 24x7, I'm having bad leg cramps at night while I'm sleeping. I'm doing all the things "the doctors" tell me to do ... stretching indoors & eating the right diet, but I just need to get out & walk to exercise my leg muscles in a way I can't do indoors.

    1021:

    Robert Prior @ 1019: I just went out for a brisk walk — I'm lucky enough to have a lot of wide recreational trails in my neighbourhood, so keeping away from people is easy. On one of the local school fields a dozen-plus 20-something young men were playing soccer. Nearer home I passed three couples (also young) walking in a close-knit group to get coffee.

    The other day I encountered a group of people out walking their dogs ... while mainlining their social distancing. I noticed how how much it resembled a combat foot patrol ... point (wo)man, flank security left & right, command & control in the center (all they lacked was a RTO with a Prick77 ) and rear security ... classic diamond formation.

    1022:

    Um, she wasn't under the social distancing order, she was under a "home quarantine, do not leave the house because you have tested positive for Covid-19 and are thus a known threat to the rest of the population" instruction.

    1023:

    Ontario has (for an initial 14 days) given hospitals new powers to cancel vacations, re-assign staff as necessary (including between sites), change schedules, and use volunteers/temp workers as needed.

    https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-hospital-powers-redeploy-staff-covid-19-1.5506052

    1024:

    The only complaint I have about this is that on Android the app seems to be hard-coded to flush those maps after 30 days. It won't warn you that the map is out of date and may be inaccurate, it won't load the map at all if it hasn't been allowed to call the mothership in the last month.

    On iOS, (sorry Android phones I rarely use), it expires the map after 30 days but tries to reload it in the background periodically. Now for this I have it set so it loads the map using WiFi only and it will fuss at me if the data is about to get stale.

    As to why every 30 days. It also downloads all of that data about there's a restaurant here, a grocery there, it's open from noon till 6 pm on Sat, etc...

    1025:

    Absolutely NOTHING AT ALL - unless I'm sitting at this desk.

    Depending on your default settings for apps you might have to go in and enable GPS, wifi, cellular data, etc... specifically for Google Maps before it will function in a useful manner.

    It's a privacy thing so be default a flashlight app doesn't read your contacts and location data to beam back to the mother ship.

    1026:

    Dogwoods are in bloom today.

    1027:

    Anyhow, a piece of history.

    lol airbnb landlords are losing their minds because people canceled their trips due to the uh. global pandemic

    https://twitter.com/weeaboo/status/1241555854446518272

    Contains embedded video, which it is mocking.

    When an evil wizard captures your soul and uses it to power his arcane machinations:

    https://twitter.com/Gunnnonni/status/1241566662895288320

    Quotation is: It's OUR soul that brings the magic.[-1]

    ~

    Sympathetic Magic doesn't exist

    Kinda depends on how big your definition of 'local' is, is. And what your definition of 'primitive' is, is.

    Psychosis caused by Paradox weapons is gonna get brutal soon, this stuff is just the warm up. Capitalism + Cult Psychology = Dangerous Spang Points.

    MLMs are next up. Check what % of the US economy are MLM type deals[2].

    Anyhow, if you want a real slice of critical breakage, here's the Real Deal[tm]:

    LOVE: Families & kiddos in Broadview Heights come out and do the Pledge of Allegiance together every morning while schools are shut down. Social distancing done right!

    (video courtesy: Keith Gaydosh @MilkovichSchool )

    https://twitter.com/HomaBashWEWS/status/1241024012702101506

    Note: Ms Mahnic[3] is apparently genuine and reading her replies is... well. It's a learning experience.

    Read the entire thread. Required reading for all sociologists out there.

    [-1] WeWork[tm] just filed a full page NYT ad[0], so they're toast. Look to Mumbai, India office[1]

    [0] How retro.

    [1] ... !

    [2] Hello Mitt Romney and the Latter Day Saint movement. Oh and Herblife shorts might actually come true, Disney got spanked, anything is possible[tm].

    [3] Nomnative Determinism? Ohhh, you sweet summer children.

    1028:

    Interesting to see if it causes problems, but Peel Region (west of Toronto) has announced buses are now free as long as social distancing rules are in place, thus providing protection for the drivers - passengers will now enter/exit only from the rear doors of the buses.

    Brampton is going a bit further and will be marking seats as unavailable in order to enforce some social distancing, when all available seats are full the bus will not allow any further passengers on.

    1029:

    Also - isn't Australia just entering its /winter flu season right about now?

    NZ announced last week that the regular flu jab process (govt-paid for older people and some specific groups, often employer-paid) will be deployed early, with health-care workers etc getting early priority. I've just realised that deploying this will need changes from what has been the norm. I signed up at work last week (so that the providers can schedule their runs), it would have happened at my workplace but a third of the site workforce are WFH (the country-level head office is adjacent to the freight depot).

    1030:

    I get cramps in my calves at night. I've found magnesium supplements help. (Hat-tip to my brother-in-law, who was a county-level cyclist for some years and mentioned it to me having had the same experience.)

    1031:

    Google Maps on iOS seems to have different lengths of expiry for offline maps depending upon which part of the world they’re for. My particular part of Scotland is cached up until the end of the year, but if I download one for Hong Kong it’s only 30 days.

    1032:

    Err, actually Germany doing well might have something to do with the country being in semi-voluntary lockdown. The regional trains are quite empty, which is one of the reasons some regional trains are going every hour instead of every 30 minutes etc. Which means I have to go to bed after writing this[1] because it's going to be early tomorrow, commuting to work by train.

    Most restaurants, coffee shops and like are closed and even though the weather is nice (no clouds), there are few people outside. Most state offices are closed, too. We can do it by telephone or mail, both snail and electronic.

    It's taking its toll, let's just say I'm quite sure I'm on the autism spectrum[2], and I can be something of a loner, but as I said to a friend yesterday, being a loner without a group to be a loner in is not fun, and she agreed. And I need some social stimulation to function cognitively.

    My father is above 90, and staying at home and not playing organ likewise doesn't become him; he tripped and fell yesterday when walking around with my brother[3], luckily it's not serious. Churches being closed doens't help either.

    Problem is, I'm staying with my parents at the moment, so I keep clear of other people; I'm moving into the city I spent most of the last around 22 years in next month, guess I can restart my early to late teens amateur biologist phase than. Hm, actually, can you be an amateur biologist if you have a degree in biology? ;)

    [1] As hinted at, beside COVID-19 I have some other balls to juggle around, and I cope by taking my time and relax a lot, e.g lie around and listen to music. I'm quite aware one could conceptualize my medical use of methylphenidate as a stimulant habit, and don't want it to get worse. Err, no problem, I have been taking the same dosage for about 15 years.

    [2] A girl gave me a VHS copy of "Rainman" at the Gymnasium (err, think grammar school/high school); you could see it as a cute come on.

    [3] Who usually is said to be more, err, "normal" than me but doesn't understand why I'm afraid to be near my father. Let's just say the question in my family is not if you're on the spectrum, but how...

    1033:

    Err, shit, I forgot this one; as usual, Bavaria is overdoing it somewhat, they implemented a mandatory lockdown, at least as much as German law permits:

    https://www.bavaria.by/information-coronavirus/

    I guess it was OGH who said Bavarians are somewhat like Texans, so Germans are hardly surprised.

    As for the current situation,

    https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Situationsberichte/2020-03-20-de.pdf?__blob=publicationFile

    is in German, but you cann read the tables quite easy; not the Bavaria has that many cases, BTW.

    1034:

    Spell "Lombardy"? I've been meaning to write an email to an idiot who had an ok article about a general strike in '34, who talked about a "sea of top hats"... where clearly they're wearing fedoras, not a single millionaire or swell among them, but this MORON thinks any hat with a brim around it is a top hat.

    1035:

    can you be an amateur biologist if you have a degree in biology?

    As long as you're doing it for love, not money, you're an amateur. :-)

    1036:

    Hm, that should fix it.

    One strange effect of much of the usual white social noise dieing down (I'm not sure how Germany relates to other Western countries, BTW) is the remaining contacts being somewhat more, err, salient. No idea if other people can attest similar.

    Hmkay, down to bed now.

    1037:

    Err, one last thing, anybody already put up a VASSAL server

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vassal_Engine

    with Pandemic?

    http://www.vassalengine.org/wiki/Module:Pandemic

    And today I wondered to a guy 2 metres away when German TV would rerun Outbreak. He laughed...

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outbreak_(film)

    Err, did I mention I guess I'm somewhat strange?

    1038:

    Sorry, but your film choice at the moment doesn't make you strange - one of the more popular streaming choices in the US at the moment is the movie Contagion.

    1039:

    Re: 'Bavaria is overdoing it somewhat, they implemented a mandatory lockdown, ...'

    They're still allowing families to get together so not as bad as some other places. Hopefully their efforts will work.

    I found this link for English-language stats for Europe at the end of the document.

    https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/en/geographical-distribution-2019-ncov-cases

    1040:

    Er, actually I sometimes wonder if I'm normal after all.

    Though I'd prefer ReGenesis for binge-watching.

    (Err, I sometimes wonder how much of the social and cognitive deficits you see in autism, schizophrenia and like are due to social isolation)

    1041:

    Some interesting headlines/stories - the markets aren't going to be happy on Monday I suspect

    Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President Bullard is predicting a GDP drop of 50% and a 30% unemployment rate for the second quarter https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-22/fed-s-bullard-says-u-s-jobless-rate-may-soar-to-30-in-2q

    Of course his predictions may be wrong, but with the US government requesting the states not release data until a regularly scheduled national release on Thursday that means everybody gets to speculate - like Goldman Sachs who is guessing that the number of claims in the last week is 2.25 million. https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/19/economy/unemployment-benefits-goldman-sachs/index.html

    500,000 files EI claims in Canada in the past week, or 2.5% of labour force https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-21/-atomic-jobless-bomb-forces-canada-to-confront-scale-of-crisis

    New York State to start treating patients with experiental drugs, and erecting field hospitals on 4 sites in NYC https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-22/n-y-will-start-using-trial-drugs-on-tuesday-to-treat-patients

    Bend, Oregan residents have created a Facebook groups where people can ask for / offer help, like the man with a compromised immune system who didn't want to go into a grocery store https://www.npr.org/2020/03/22/818337019/in-oregon-neighbors-use-social-media-to-offer-and-ask-for-help

    Study out of Shankhai says those of us age 50 or older are 2.5X more likely to progress to a severe case of Covid-19 https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/03/22/819846180/study-calculates-just-how-much-age-medical-conditions-raise-odds-of-severe-covid

    FDA has approved a Covid-19 test that gives results in 45 minutes, test kits to be available end of month https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/03/21/819629909/fda-approves-first-rapid-covid-19-test

    1042:

    There have been some discussions if a lockdown like in Italy would be possible with German law. It seems not.

    Personally, I guess the relatively low number of deaths means we caught it early. Let's see how it plays out, the Whatsapp status of some friends already contains some conspiracy theories, and I'm trying my best at explaining things to relatives panicking.

    1043:

    Some. Being the age and from the background I am, cognitive differences were regarded as something to correct, even to punish. I have survived that, but not everybody did. Even people like me (who can happily go a month without speaking to anyone) need social contact.

    1044:

    Various news reports have covered the "anomoly" of Germany's extremely low death rate.

    The preferred version seems to be that you are simply delayed by the fact your early infections were primarily (so the theory goes) younger and healthy skiers, who brought Covid back from Italy.

    Time will tell if that is true.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/guymartin/2020/03/20/with-its-covid-19-caseload-spiking-to-14000-heres-why-germanys-mortality-rate-is-002-or-4000-times-lower-than-italys/#108613f577ad

    1045:

    Re: ' ... who can happily go a month without speaking to anyone)'

    Okay - by 'speaking' do you mean vocal utterances or all forms of communication?

    1046:

    Yes.

    I don't know Germany, but the US, at least, has very serious cognitive dissonance in major cultural items.

    One thing that I brought up, that the WSFA and BSFS considered, while working on the con harassment policy: on the one hand, many people won't tell someone else that something the second person is doing is bothering them or everyone, and please stop doing that because "I didn't want to hurt their feelings", and on the other hand, as the Grateful Dead sang, "You told me goodbye, how was I to know You didn't mean goodbye, you meant please don't let me go?"

    In a lot of cases, I have heard that "no" means "try harder".

    This is literally insane... but that's the US.

    1047:

    NZ just gone to Level 3 lockdown (pubs, cafes, etc) and going to level 4 ("home detention") in 48 hr - as soon as the infrastructure is in place.

    Just listened to some masterly communication from our PM. Man, I am glad we have Jacinda. Her last message: "be strong, be kind".

    1048:

    To be clear, "home detention" is my phrase for it, not the Government's. But it is nice and concise compared to the alternatives.

    1049:

    "The Masque of the Red Death" is perhaps worth a (re)watch if you're in that sort of a mood with Vincent Price chewing the scenery that Roger Corman repurposed from a bunch of old vampire movies.

    1050:

    For some reason we're not seeing masks yet in the US (in my area in the NE at least), but I'm hearing about their use in other countries. I'll wear one (at least a dust mask for sanding and ... dust e.g. mowing in dry weather) the next time I have to go food shopping/interact with other meaties. This is interesting.

    Cambridge scientists tested 0.02 micron Bacteriophage MS2 particles (5 times smaller than the coronavirus) & compared homemade masks made of different materials to surgical masks.
    Surgical mask blocks 89%
    Vacuum cleaning bag 85%
    Dish Towel 73%
    T shirt 70%#macgyvercare pic.twitter.com/RFEbhH1V5D

    — C. Michael Gibson MD (@CMichaelGibson) March 17, 2020
    Researchgate pdf (via google scholar) that matches description, see table 1: Testing the Efficacy of Homemade Masks: Would They Protect in an Influenza Pandemic? (July 2013) (abstract, full paper paywalled)

    Thanks SBH # 1006! I knew nothing of SMAC (except existence). (Now I've read a bunch of quotes, many fun, including the ones in that clip and can fake it a bit.) Against such abominations... I have a list. Here's one list item, from SMAC: Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright? None I say! Let us take what is ours, chew and eat our fill. - CEO Nwabudike Morgan "The Ethics of Greed"

    1051:

    Ah, yet another example of why Darwinian evolution and its descendants (especially mosaic theory of coevolution) are better strategies for future planning than economics is. In real life, I've even heard economists seriously argue about what the economic value of having children is.

    1052:

    Yes, there are some good leaders around the world.

    In the US many are turning to Governor Cuomo (NY State), whose daily press conferences apparently are clear and state both the good and bad (and needless to say the exact opposite of of Trump).

    Meanwhile, polling company in Canada demonstrates why governments are being forced to resort to the home confinement of everyone. 12% are not avoiding crowded places, 19% are not refraining from touch objects in public, and 30% are not refraining from getting together with family. https://twitter.com/Colettod/status/1241843715687227397

    1053:

    This from the US robber baron era has similar roots: Survival of the Fittest - Andrew Carnegie defends the law of competition (1889)[1] We accept and welcome, therefore, as conditions to which we must accommodate ourselves, great inequality of environment, the concentration of business, industrial and commercial, in the hands of a few, and the law of competition between these as being not only beneficial but essential for the future progress of the race.

    Which has failed in dealing with a pandemic, resulting in (suboptimal!) economic devastation. (A more useful source of analogies might be the individual mammalian immune system, though few people can reasonably claim understanding.) If we don't want to totally give up capitalism (i'm still partly agnostic on this), we'll need one or more robust parallel political infrastructure(s) to prevent and/or block and/or deal with problems that greed cannot handle efficiently.

    Just because it's eye catching. Also see the "LEAST dog-like image possible" one.

    Here’s the most cat-like image and the least cat-like (in this specific NN’s knowledge of the world) pic.twitter.com/RNMJM2S5nV

    — badidea 💫 (@0xabad1dea) March 21, 2020

    [1] The full document: The Gospel of Wealth (ANDREW CARNEGIE (1889?))

    1054:

    The simple answer is in most of the western world we don't have enough masks for hospital use at this point let alone having everyone wear them (note the stories in the US of TV productions that use medical supplies donating their stockpiles to local hospitals who are desperate for masks/etc.)

    Otherwise the reported scientific consensus outside of China is that masks don't help stop the transmission of viruses. Most people don't wear them properly thus they are ineffective, and most transmission is via touching the face which a face mask doesn't prevent (and may actually encourage as people adjust the mask).

    The "golden child" for handling Covid-19 is Singapore, and even their recommendation is face masks aren't needed unless you are sick. The reason Singapore (and to a lesser extent other Asian countries) have such low Covid-19 rates is because they prepared for this for the last 20 years, they spent money building out infrastructure, and they activated plans immediately when the world learned about China. All things the western world, with our emphasis on low taxes (so no infrastructure in place), offshoring supplies (so we can't provide enough masks/gowns/etc), and leadership who ignored the warning signs didn't do.

    Article on the effectiveness of masks - https://www.businessinsider.sg/wuhan-coronavirus-face-masks-not-entirely-effective-2020-1

    Explanation of how Singapore has handled it, including English versions of the cartoons used to educate the public http://theconversation.com/why-singapores-coronavirus-response-worked-and-what-we-can-all-learn-134024

    1055:

    Oh, I know. It's simply cancer logic, maximization of entropy through building dissipative structures of enormous size, while calling it progress.

    The evolutionary logic I speak of is the survivor's logic, which has a rather longer track record of proving out than what Carnegie and the other wealth-meisters espouse.

    1056:

    San Diego update: my neighborhood is a ghost town. A bunch of jerks gathered in large crowds at the beaches so the associated parking lots have been closed. I found all the food I needed at Trader Joe's but still no toilet paper. My mom, 1100 miles away, is running low and I ordered an overpriced 12 pack for her on Amazon which will be delivered in 3-6 weeks. I think I finally have enough supplies to seriously hide out for a while. And I bought some CBD oil, cuz there ain't enough lorazepam in the universe to make me feel functional, although the remarkably unpolluted air and empty freeways have been a revelation. I'm going on two weeks of social distancing and as an extrovert, this is beginning to take a toll on me. I will try not to get too chatty here. Hope everyone is well.

    1057:

    NZ has a lockdown except for essential services as of Wednesday. Working in Legal Aid I fall into that category. Tomorrow we'll find out what is doable in terms of 'work from home'. I bus to work & don't have a drivers license, so that'll be interesting. But no dependants and not in an otherwise vulnerable category, so low on the list I guess.

    Supermarket shelves of canned/dry/frozen foods were pretty empty by the time I got there after work this evening, even with strong restrictions by the shops on buying ('no more than two items of [most stuff] per person'). But I have gin, and I have tonic, so...cheers!

    1058:

    I have hot cross buns, chocolate ice cream and (frozen) hot chips. So I'm all good :)

    Out today shopping for a friend who is a nurse and is currently in stay-home quarantine after a patient tested positive. Sadly he is not really a fan of hot cross buns so I am having to eat his share too. But first time I've bought alcohol for a long time, so he's not entirely without treats.

    This is one of the times when electronic banking and stuff is really handy. Not only can I video chat from the supermarket so I can easily say "of the three types of X available, which do you hate least", but he can repay me as soon as I've got a receipt. Plus as others have noted, someone can send you money instantly so you can afford to buy whatever ridiculous item is being requested.

    1060:

    "Home Detntion" How does one get essential supplies in those circumstances, I wonder - or are you allowed out to shop for food ( & bog-roll, of course! )? If the latter, then I can manage - because a lot of my essential food supplies are still growing in the ground & need looking after. And, of course I'm well "social-distanced" whilst doing it. I just hope the local health food store hasn't run out of decent flour, though ......

    1061:

    How does one get essential supplies in those circumstances

    Either delivery when your government gets serious, or you go out to shop but with caution. Or in Australia you pop into one of the many crowded supermarkets on your way from the beach to the house party. Straya... we wuz dropped on our head when we wuz a babby.

    1062:

    Level 4 Lockdown (NZ) - excludes essential visits to supermarket, chemist, petrol station, etc, walking in public as long as you observe a 2m distance from others. UK-style allotments aren't a thing here in NZ, so I have no idea how that might work. Maybe allowable with a 2m rule, maybe not. Some discussion was going on about whether dairies (corner shops) & superettes (mini-markets) would be allowed, but I'm not sure of the outcome. More here and other sites: https://covid19.govt.nz/government-actions/covid-19-alert-level/ https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2020/03/coronavirus-what-new-zealand-reaching-alert-level-4-will-mean-for-you.html

    1063:

    I'm on the record of saying I wished the mortality in some demographics was somewhat higher; I'm covering my bases and answered an ad for medical and care jobs by another temporary employment agency; everybody is only doing telephone interviews, he (about 30) wanted to meet me in person. Yes, I know it's not nice to say something like that, but since those fuckers got us into this situation, it's basically rodef, I have to look up if there's a Christian analogy.

    Sadly, evolution is not working on those fuckers.

    As said, I'm not in the best mood ATM...

    1064:

    Actually, this interpretation doesn't make much sense; younger infected will not feel that sick, might show no symptoms at all and meet more people, e.g. they pass the virus much more; AFAIK the population in Italy is somewhat older than in germany, but when the virus gets to the care homes it's nasty everywhere.

    The 0,2 to 1% mortality pops up everywhere, if it's much higher than that, there is reason to believe you're not getting many of the lighter cases.

    Sorry, they enforced a contact lock even before I wrote yesterday; no more than 2 people speaking in public; of course, businesses are excempt; if you excuse me, I have to make a phone call to the local health services about a certain temporary employment agency...

    Revenge is a dish...

    1065:

    lockdown day 6, and ppl are getting organised thru local residents' comitee. We go shopping for our families but also for some old folks, we ring them up, they leave a list and cash on their doormat, we bring back groceries and stuff (and receipt and change). No contact at all. I went to the -arab- greengrocer and was surprised to find some really good bargains, the girl at the counter explained that many people had spent their entire monthly food budget on pasta (and rice and TP, etc..) and had no money left for fruits and vegetables (ours is not a very affluent neighborhood).

    1066:

    I guess it was OGH who said Bavarians are somewhat like Texans, so Germans are hardly surprised.

    I can't imagine unless the point is that they both take pride in being out of step with the rest of the country.

    1067:

    I’m locked in Italy, but have a garden, which is nice. The Italian mortality rate is high, probably for many reasons; age, as you said (but a 93 year-young lady survivor has just been released from a nearby hospital); population-mixing, infectious but silent youths do have a lot of daily connections to their zii & nonni; finally, the overworked ASL/NHS here is recording everyone who passes as being nCov-19 related. In some jurisdictions the opposite approach is allegedly happening, c.o.d.”thrombosis” not nCov-19! Whole Italy mortality rate, amongst the measured positive, is around 9.3% - which simply implies at least an order of magnitude greater unmeasured-positive.

    Lockdown here is now moving to IR forehead scan to get into the local supermarket, my friend’s supermarket haven’t got a scanner - it will arrive around April first. They’ll work something out. She’s selling 200Kg of flour a day, supply lines mostly holding - need more eggs, butter, yeast. They have Camembert & Amarone in stock.

    International co-operation is great , Chinese experts have been, USA military & US red-cross/charity have built a military hospital facility in Lombardy (not far from the ‘secret’ nuclear base - follow 106MHz FM “AFN The Eagle” to find it) and Russia has sent some spetznatz doctors & respirators too.

    I’m trying to leave the house just once a week, with filled in auto-declaration of ‘need’ permit, clinical thermometer in mouth, and avoiding the ‘known’ Carabinieri checkpoints.

    1068:

    DaiKiwi OK, so if that's reproduced here, there's "no change" from my present p.o.v. - good.

    stirner We go shopping for our families but also for some old folks, we ring them up, they leave a list and cash on their doormat, we bring back groceries and stuff (and receipt and change). No contact at all. This is an exact re-invention of how goods/serviuces were dealt with during the time of "the Plague" - using Plague Stones for the exchange point.

    1069:

    12% are not avoiding crowded places, 19% are not refraining from touch objects in public, and 30% are not refraining from getting together with family.

    I HAD to go to a big box hardware store (Home Depot) yesterday[1]. As I rummaged through the various PVC fittings I did a lot of hand wiping. And they will stay in the bag until I have to use them. If I wait a week they any virus on them should be dead.

    [1] If toilet not working "stay at home" is problematic.

    1070:

    but still no toilet paper.

    TP seems to be showing back up now that the supply change has gotten past the crazy rush of the last week or two. I see it here in the Raleigh NC area and my wife in the Dallas TX area. Not in huge supplies but I suspect stores will have it in reasonable amounts soon.

    It's easy to make and ship. Unlike a lot of other things.

    1071:

    I remebered the stones from English class in school. Sadly, they didn't work that well because Yersinia pestis goes by vector, e. g. fleas and rats...

    1072:

    they leave a list and cash on their doormat, we bring back groceries and stuff (and receipt and change). No contact at all.

    This thing lives on various surfaces for a while. I'm thinking that while you don't have contact with each other you both touch the food, money, and receipts.

    My pickup pizza last night may be the last thing like that I do like that for a while. I do have one more "day" of some things I will have to go out for this week then I can shut down for a week or more physically.

    1073:

    hmk, they both -eat lots of meat, the more fat, the better -have a rural flair -wear big strange looking hats and lots of leather -expose a law and order mentality, but 90% of their local heroes are bandits or other outlaws -broke away from some other state with murky circumstances -Munich is not really in Bavaria, just as (Houston/Austin/?) is not in Texas -it's hard to understand them, even with German/Enlish as your native language.

    I'm in a train, so more later...

    1074:

    "Home Detntion" How does one get essential supplies in those circumstances, I wonder - or are you allowed out to shop for food ( & bog-roll, of course! )?

    The lockdown that is about to be implemented here allots a two-hour window (with 30 minutes on either side for commuting) for shopping based on the last digit of the national ID card. Plus 11 AM - 1 PM for seniors (>60). It will be interesting to see how that works out.

    1075:

    Quite a long time back, I went for a few days' walking in Bavaria, close to the Swiss border. Nobody in the village I stayed in spoke English, of course, and my German isn't great, but that was OK because they also spoke standard German as a second language :-)

    1076:

    Tum te tum, here's some irony.

    The World’s Largest Serviced Office Company Asks Landlords For A Rent Freeze

    The company’s full-year results for 2019 showed it making a record annual profit. Its pre-tax profit rose more than threefold to £489M while its operating profit rose 8% to £137M. The company's share price has dropped 64% to 160p a share since the start of February, leaving it valued at £1.4B. That compares to a 35% drop in the value of the FTSE 250 index of which it is a part.

    https://www.bisnow.com/london/news/coworking/the-worlds-largest-serviced-office-company-asks-landlords-for-a-rent-freeze-103516

    IWG own things like Regus, who are the staid boring profit making end of the space that WeWork[tm] was "disrupting". Just sayin, renters asking rentiers for leniency on tenancy Contracts is a hard sell these days.

    ~

    Softbank lost ~-17% value but its numbers are back up, why?

    SoftBank is selling assets to buy $18 billion of its own shares. Investors love it.

    SoftBank announced a mammoth plan Monday to sell $41 billion worth of assets, buy back shares and shore up its finances, giving the company's stock its best day in more than a decade.

    https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/23/investing/softbank-stock-buyback/index.html

    This 100% works as a business model, as we have seen. If "Investors" have any sense, by Friday it'll be a crater (once the dollar xfer has cleared, of course).

    ~

    India, which hasn't even had a COVID19 impact yet, whelp:

    COVID-19 Lockdown: Sensex Plummets Nearly 4,000 Points in Biggest One-Day Fall

    With today’s fall, investors lost Rs 13.88 lakh crore wealth while in the last month investors have lost Rs 56.22 lakh crore.

    https://thewire.in/economy/covid-19-lockdown-coronavirus-sensex-crash

    ~

    Tired of Winning yet? L'Orange reckons in 15 days he'll have this beaten.

    She threw you to the wolves Sister is dead Block it out We've convinced them its a psychopath

    Hot takes, all wrong.

    Probabilities and Possibilities, Humans are not good at mapping the negative spaces.

    p.s.

    Shout out to the few good humans who also happen to be Capitalists (yes, there are some) who are being forced to work 18 hour days to attempt to fix this.

    p.p.s

    For those who don't model so gud - yes, REITs etc are systemic, and it goes a lot deeper than that.

    1077:

    I just heard on the CBC this morning that the Alberta government is going to allow daycares to re-open so that health-care-workers can have somewhere to leave their kids while they work.

    My immediate reaction was WTAF?!? This completely destroys quarantine. Apparently the Ontario government is considering similar measures.

    Do they want our healthcare system to be overwhelmed?

    1078:

    Sorry, but given India has suspended all passenger trains and local transit until the end of the month, and many places have curfews, it is safe to say that India has been impacted by Covid-19 - they like most of the rest of the world are going to see a serious hit to their GDP (and not just from their self-inflicted stuff, but exports will be down at some point). So a stock market drop is to be expected.

    1079:

    So what other solution, in this era of many having no local family, do you have for young kids of essential workers like nurses and doctors?

    How many neighbours, given the higher risk those kids will have at being positive (given the higher risk their parents have), will want to take care of them?

    Opening a small number of daycares, where they can be monitored for symptoms (check temperatures) seems like the best of some not great solutions.

    1080:

    OK because [the Bavarians] also spoke standard German as a second language

    Heh. Far too many years ago I flew into Munich feeling somewhat good about my German which, though elementary, actually kind of worked in Berlin. Couldn't understand a word of Bayrisch. Grüß Gott is kind of cute, though.

    1081:

    They're mostly innumerate and they're used to making people happy, which is completely the wrong set of skills for the present circumstances.

    Information coming out of Italy is that hospital treatment is part of the precipitate; hospitals turned into major infection centres. (One thing the Chinese got right; either a hospital gets nothing but COVID-19 patients, or it get NO COVID-19 patients. Saves on PPE, keeps the regular essential services running.)

    The appropriate solution is to draw straws among the parents who can stay home and creche them up with everybody's kids for the duration, preferably with a couple pros in the mix, because if you're doing frontline work you need to be isolated from your family for the duration. And yes, that might be 18 months. Yes, someone should be planning for the drastically traumatized medics this is going to produce.

    1082:

    Re: 'C.O.D. thrombosis'

    There are some drugs that have been tied to an increased risk of thrombosis including some of the most commonly and widely used: birth control pills and some NSAIDs.

    I'm guessing that most people who've recently started taking NSAIDs regularly as a prophylactic probably don't know why older folk take the very small dosage product (ASA 75-81 mg which is one-quarter the 'regular strength'). Unfortunately, the low-dose product costs as much or sometimes more than the regular strength, so the folks who actually need it get and can least afford it, get ripped off. Pill cutters work only as well as the hands that can use them; plus some of the generic ASA pills fall apart or to dust when you cut them.

    https://www.webmd.com/dvt/news/20140924/common-painkillers-tied-to-blood-clot-risk-study-suggests

    Re: DIY - masks

    I've been looking at what I might be able to cobble together if I had to make a mask: t-shirts, old ties and silk scarves*. Silk because I recall seeing/reading somewhere that silk and bamboo have many antimicrobial properties but I'm not sure whether 'microbial' includes viruses. A search found a Swiss outfit claiming to be ready to mass produce an improved mask within a month or so.

    https://en.prnasia.com/releases/apac/heiq-viroblock-npj03-antiviral-textile-technology-tested-effective-against-coronavirus-275250.shtml

    • And of course, the triple-K lodge members merely have to pull their hooded robes out of the back of their closets.
    1083:

    More and more I'm coming to respect the design of the horror-comics "plague doctor" mask.

    https://www.purecostumes.com/GH26821/plague-doctor-steampunk-adult-mask.html

    It has a large surface area meaning the filter material can be thick yet not restrict airflow and impede breathing. It has goggles in a full-face mask preventing viruses and bacteria reaching the eyes, the "beak" points downwards to prevent obscuring line-of-sight. Those old folks may actually have known what they were about.

    1084:

    DIY Masks: There's a pattern and some instruction tutorials here: https://diymask.site/

    (It's a HK site, so the video is in Cantonese, but there are subtitles after about 1'18", and the instructions are fairy clear. Should be easy-peasy for anyone with crafting skills. These are on sale in the local shops for around HKD 50 (USD 6-ish))

    1085:

    My daughter spent a year of school in Bat Hartsburg. My mother in law is from the Stuttgart area. They would agree to the difference to the rest of Germany. But more like the US southeast is different from the rest of the US.

    Pretty much everyone in the US can understand Texan speak. Large swaths have real trouble when they get to Alabama or Mississippi. :)

    1086:

    Strong rumors that DT wants to stop the social distancing. Too big a hit on the economy. Of course people stacked outside of hospitals would be no hit on the economy either. People out front / bodies out back.

    So far some of his most ardent supporters / sycophants seem to be pushing back at him.

    He just DOES NOT GET IT.

    1087:

    Sigh. Could you drop your Ego for a second please and at least pretend you're not reading the Beano and view commentary as a continuum not a single TIME Point? That'd be great & help you:

    We Did It replied to this comment from We Did It | February 2, 2020 03:40 1299:

    arguing with the incoherence

    Not what we're doing.

    Points to Indian Stock Market

    Go re-read that thread, you'll spot a couple of things. One might have been some not-so-subtle hints at what to do and what was going to happen. But, no, India has not had a real COVID19 effect yet since it's not being measured. And likely won't be for, for reasons.

    Coronavirus in India: Cases against 3 places of worship for conducting prayers despite directive

    https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/coronavirus-india-cases-against-places-worship-conducting-prayers-despite-directive-1658251-2020-03-21

    That media is at least doing their best to not make it a weapon in the Religion Wars[tm] by blaming every faith for it atm, but on the ground it's a little more nuanced. e.g.

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/coronavirus-pandemic-bangladesh-india-muslim-prayer-gathering-healing-verses-a9410476.html

    "Religion X are spreading the deadly cooties Z" is an almost universal rallying cry for persecution[0] and it has a long history of working.

    Cue picture of empty Mecca, Host at least spotted it being deployed [in English speaking media, it's been used elsewhere][1].

    ~

    So, perhaps we're not actually saying that financial collapse is a great thing, but it's certainly playing into the hands of the people wut u do not want runnin things.

    Host has also spotted the ultimate truism: bored liberals will 100% get horny for Fascists the moment the wine runs out.

    p.s.

    Yes, that warning happened before the 6.5% or whatever drop: it was, in effect, a Precursor event.

    https://www.annalsofgeophysics.eu/index.php/annals/article/view/5350

    [0] Which is why AIPAC spent more dollars on making sure their 100% stupid and selfish acts didn't hit the news than they've spent on helping more Orthodox communities - here's a tip: the solution is not doing stuff that has such effects, not covering it up.

    [1] S IT E - who are 100% support for certain countries - dropping 'King is Dead' on that was pure evil, but hey. Not our monkees, not our circus.

    1088:

    Yet Singapore's success is because they are putting Covid-19 patients in their hospitals (on the basis of that is the only way to ensure confirmed contagious people aren't mingling with others combined with the inability for most households to adequately quarantine 1 infected member from the others in the house).

    I suspect it will be interesting to see the papers/studies that get released over the next 5 years and what exactly they say about how this has been handled.

    The key point I would guess is that our healthcare systems, starved of funding, were inadequately prepared because governments for various reasons weren't willing to invest - and I am not talking about lack of ICU/ventilators but rather the more simple lack of physical building design for dealing with this - Singapore specifically after SARS upgraded their hospitals to have more negative pressure rooms amongst other changes.

    This article has popped up on social media today, where the UK government had a report that said that the UK/NHS were entirely unprepared for a pandemic and the government did nothing. https://truepublica.org.uk/united-kingdom/covid-19-the-truth-govt-docs-emerge-to-show-how-theyve-failed-us-all/

    It is likely a safe guess that is also true for most other western governments.

    1089:

    Munich is hard enough for people like us, I agree, but this was a farming village (with one hotel) up in the Alps, almost into Switzerland, off-season :-)

    1090:

    "...USA military & US red-cross/charity have built a military hospital facility in Lombardy...

    Funny, they haven't built any of those in the U.S....

    1091:

    We have a procedure, for what it's worth. We use single-use plastic bags (bad for the environment,but hey) , we wear gloves (single-use also) and most shopkeepers do not touch the food or wear gloves (bakery). Everybody has got a supply of hydroalcoholic gel that was provided for free by the municipality. We're getting quite bored, so there is no lack of volunteers for dumb chores like wiping elevator surfaces, letterboxes, door plates, door bells, etc.. everytime you use them.

    1092:

    The beak on the old doctor's mask was used to hold fragrant dried flowers/perfumes, to numb the doctor's nose to the stench of putrefaction.

    1093:

    My son is moving from an apartment to townhouse in April. His SO is an infusion nurse dealing with transplant patients. Not sure of the best way to help him. She both needs to be kept isolated socially and is also a big possible infection vector. They have had patients stop coming to the clinic so the staff now gets to drive around to the various motels and apartments the patients have rented. (Transplant centers want/need you to commit to living nearby for a month or few to make sure the followup treatments are handled correctly.)

    1094:

    As I understand it, Singapore took the Chinese model -- it's either a nothing-but COVID-19 hospital, or it's NOT a COVID-19 hospital and there are strenuous efforts to stop you before you even get over the Emergency Room/Urgent Care threshold to make sure you're not detectable if you show up at either hospital because the COVID-19 one won't just let you wander back out again.

    Italy did not. And Italy did not act fast enough, so has had relatively and absolutely many more cases. The truism that an effective pandemic response looks and feels like overreacting was going around a couple weeks ago. Somebody in a position of power in Singapore had internalized it.

    1095:

    Now this would really help if it works and can be deployed rapidly. And widely. https://www.sciencealert.com/fda-just-approved-a-rapid-new-test-that-can-diagnose-covid-19-in-45-minutes

    Take the test in the morning and be cleared for the day. Assuming if you get exposed it takes more than 12 hours before you can be spreading it.

    1096:

    Um, Governor Cuomo has the military putting up 4 field hospitals in NYC.

    1097:

    The Lancet, a roundup 20 March of national (plus WHO) mask recommendations: Rational use of face masks in the COVID-19 pandemic (Chen Shen, Nan Xia, Wei Song, Mengzhen Fan, Benjamin J Cowling, March 20, 2020) However, there is an essential distinction between absence of evidence and evidence of absence. Evidence that face masks can provide effective protection against respiratory infections in the community is scarce, as acknowledged in recommendations from the UK and Germany. However, face masks are widely used by medical workers as part of droplet precautions when caring for patients with respiratory infections. It would be reasonable to suggest vulnerable individuals avoid crowded areas and use surgical face masks rationally when exposed to high-risk areas.

    In other words, the recommendations are to protect the personal protective equipment supplies for health care workers. And vanity; people think masks are ugly. I am treating it as risk reduction. I have some dust masks which are tight enough that they will block maybe 70-80% of the viral particles. If (note: just made up probability) the probability of infection during an interaction unmasked with a infected person, who could be asymptomatic, is 10%, then a mask that reduces the number of particles breathed reduces it to maybe 5%, and somebody else can do the experiments[1]. Also, more important, if I'm infected but asymptomatic, I am not spreading the virus as much when wearing a mask. The thing to watch for is danger-increasing distancing behavior changes caused by mask wearing. Any gains would be erased if people are less cautious.

    Anyway, TL:DR masks might be a very inexpensive way of seriously reducing the economic effects of this crisis.

    [1] If there is statistical science on this at epidemic-control scale, that would of course change matters.

    1098:

    The beak on the old doctor's mask was used to hold fragrant dried flowers/perfumes, to numb the doctor's nose to the stench of putrefaction. I'm sure that they had a social distancing enhancement effect as well.

    1099:

    Re: [1083] horror-comics "plague doctor" mask & [1084] DIY Masks

    Haven't checked the DIY site but would only consider my own mask if absolutely no other option was available because after watching a couple of online lectures on virology - mostly just to learn about viruses - I have zero confidence that anything that I have on-hand and could put together would (a) not allow viruses to travel through/embed, or (b) be washable/re-usable.

    Trying to find a balance between becoming better informed vs. scaring myself spitless is one other adjustment in the present environment. Anyone who's interested and whose imagination won't go ape on them, here's the virology lecture series:

    Virology Lectures 2019 #1: What is a virus? Vincent R. Racaniello - Higgins Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svlKm4S1M3Y&list=PLGhmZX2NKiNlwig68CGPHQI_Pcxri4LDx

    1100:

    Most western countries don't have the hospital capacity to implement such procedures, particularly during flu season.

    The infrastructure to do those policies needs to be in place prior to the pandemic - Singapore prepared, the west and China didn't.

    China built new infrastructure in days, and that has helped them slow down/stop the spread, and field hospitals/repurposed other facilities might be able to do a similar job elsewhere (if we can get enough medical supplies).

    Can't remember where, but there is also talk of re-purposing hotels for use as medical facilities which can also help - if for no other purpose than to isolate those who have tested positive from the general population - I see in the news Italy has had 2 people positive for Covid violate home quarantine orders.

    1101:

    Thanks, put on the list to watch with the added free time.

    1102:

    Trump has activated the National Guard in NY, California, and Washington State. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52003946

    1103:

    Reuters: U.S. axed CDC expert job in China months before virus outbreak (23 March 2020) Several months before the coronavirus pandemic began, the Trump administration eliminated a key American public health position in Beijing intended to help detect disease outbreaks in China, Reuters has learned.

    Also, Trump signals growing skepticism about coronavirus lockdown - The president appears eager to end stringent "social distancing" guidelines once the 15-day period ends next week. (QUINT FORGEY, 03/23/2020) The "Mammon Demands Mountains of Sacrifices" camp (some of it young and RW) has gotten the ear of D.J. Trump, sigh. People with money and power are, however, mostly old and most at risk and many of those will be pushing back.

    1104:

    Cuomo has the New York State National Guard putting up field hospitals. That's not the U.S. military. (Not sure what country you're from, but the National Guard can be federalized in a time of military conflict, and they are counted as "reserves" but they work for the state governor, not the federal government.

    When Trump makes a move like that I'll be singing hosannas.

    1105:

    REplying to self @ 1068 "Plague Stones" - the longish alley behind the lcoal Parish Church ( offically founded 1186, I think - but actually older ) is called Vinegar Alley because thta's where the reverse plagues-stone would have been placed, after the villagers isolated themseleves to keep the petilence out ...

    David L Of course he does not - let us hope it continues... The resulting death toll should suffice to see him out of office & IN JAIL - if he is lucky

    Noting the conflicting moves between various US states' & DJT - how close to shooting at each other could this get? And would the "federals" obey an obviously unhinged "president" anyway?

    1106:

    If one is reasonable and scientifically literate, and understands the dangers of this pandemic, then yes Trump looks like he doesn't get it.

    But I wonder if in a way he understands it better than most of us rational people.

    Look at the troubles authorities around the west are having keeping people separated for a mere week or so at the moment - the media is full of reports of people ignoring bans, even in Italy.

    Now consider how likely any of these governments are going to be able to maintain this over 3, 6, 9, 12, 18 months?

    Even Hong Kong officials are wondering/worried how long they can continue, and they are at the 2 month point with a much more virus aware culture - their trajectory on Covid-19 has shifted upward perhaps indicating that the population is starting to "cheat" in the same way that western populations have been from day 1.

    A lot of the public is going to start deciding the need for an income is more important than worrying about Covid-19, and to that end all Trump is doing is reflecting what a lot of the population is already starting to think.

    1107:

    Further to Trump, haven't read it due to need for account but apparently this NY Times story is in part what is driving this idea that the US only needs 2 weeks https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/22/opinion/coronavirus-economy.html

    1108:

    “Lost wages and job layoffs are leaving many workers without health insurance and forcing many families to forego health care and medications to pay for food, housing, and other basic needs. …’’

    Is there another way?

    For some strange reason, I didn't see publicly funded health care as one of the options discussed in the article.

    1109:

    Once the hospitals start to fill I think MOST of the public will understand. At little. At least.

    But this kind of shut down is killing his net worth. I think he's scared of leaving office Jan 2021 or Jan 2025 not only broke but in hock to 1/2 of the planet.

    1110:

    Rather than "knit-your-own" masks you might consider escalating to proper PPE gear like a full-face respirator mask. It has to be Personal, the first letter in PPE, you can't borrow or loan it out to prevent cross-contamination but they're not single-use and disposable and at the end of a supply chain that will come under serious strain in the next few weeks as delivery drivers stop making deliveries and manufacturing plants run out of materials and workers. Learn how to disinfect it properly, maybe roll your own replacements for the disposable HEPA cartridges and you're good. They're the modern version of the "plague doctor" masks, less stylish and more dieselpunk/Fallout than steampunk.

    1111:

    Media reports have Cuomo tasking the Army Corps of Engineers - and while it may be a technicality it isn't the National Guard as far as I can tell but rather part of the regular Army.

    1112:

    This is kinda cool, probably already linked. (I'd sorta heard about it but hadn't looked). Kinsa, a maker of "smart thermometers" (medical) that send info back to mothership Kinsa, has a map of temperature readings relative to their history database. Florida is mostly "anomalous" now. US Health Weather Map and Real-time detection of city illness anomalies using the Kinsa thermometer network and highly accurate long-lead forecasts: Technical Approach The map shows two key data points: (1) the illness levels we’re currently observing, and (2) the degree to which those levels are higher than the typical levels we expect to see at this point in the flu season. (Could be a spike in some other fever-causing disease, e.g. ordinary flu cases.)

    All sorts of privacy implications going forward, of course. But they're basically doing sampling (because only a fraction of the population has these) and that sort of thing would be privacy-OK if opt-in.

    1113:

    Of course not, it's the US.

    The thing is, even outside of the US a variation of the same thing is going to be playing out - how to pay for rent/mortgage, food, medicine (heading into allergy season and most people don't have prescription coverage for those sorts of meds) and a variety of other things.

    And even for those working from home, if the company they are working for can't sell anything, how long to they stay on the payroll?

    It's easy to say Trump doesn't get it/understand it, and from a scientific perspective likely right.

    But for all his faults he seems to have an understanding of about half the US population, and with Fox News selling the story...

    Also consider that he is also setting himself up for November - because really Trump can't do much about the shutdowns and social distancing given it is for the most part the States making the rules. But what he can do is point the finger at those dastardly State Governors for creating all the problems, thus helping to ensure he gets re-elected. He can claim that he tried to save the economy and people's jobs, but the Governors wouldn't cooperate. And half the US population will believe it.

    1114:

    OMG, OMG.

    Woke up, checked the news - the Democrats in the US Senate are blocking the stimulus bill.

    The obvious course: say "OK, it's a good start, but it's not the end. We need to support small business too." Vote for it and start on the next one.

    But no: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris all tweeting excuses for voting against it. The "lizard people" theorists were right after all.

    And Trump focussed on the price of collectibles (stocks) rather than people's wellbeing.

    I thought we were heading for Will McIntosh's "Soft Apocalypse" in the United States. Turns out Hollywood was right after all. Hard apocalypse, revolution, cats and dogs living together.

    OMG, OMG.

    1115:

    The Senate bill includes an unaccountable 500 billion dollar slush fund the Executive can use in any manner to support businesses and/or get themselves re-elected. The Democrats object to this, not surprisingly since, under the Constitution all financial expenditures are supposed to originate from Congress as they determine.

    1116:

    Looking at the numbers... "Our" death rate is wobbling between 3.5-4.5%, maybe 5. The US' is already above that & climbing, because of DT & his goons misbehaviour & incompetence. Though those numbers vary according to which source you pick, of course....

    1117:

    Yes, the Democrats are letting perfect be the enemy of good.

    Of course the Repubs are going to enrich their paymasters. Let them, for gods' sake. It's not even good political strategy to block this bill. And at least some people might avoid starvation because of it.

    When the Republicans block a bill to support the US everyperson, they'll be the bad guys, not the Democrats. The Democratic Party might just have consigned itself to obliviion, as things stand.

    1118:

    It is for that reason that I am noticeably more pissed off than I usually am at the ever-increasing difficulty in getting hold of the plain ordinary versions of things because of their almost total displacement by fucked-up versions with loads of shit in them. (Example: having to order soap off the internet because I can't find any in the local shops.)

    0.1% sodium hypochlorite solution is reported to be nicely effective at decontaminating surfaces. So a 1 litre bottle of 5% solution will make 50 litres of decontaminant. This makes it a whole lot more practical than alcohol and the like which need 60-70% or thereabouts concentration to be similarly effective.

    I want to put such a solution in a plant mister and use it for decontamination of incoming items. I have the plant mister sitting there all brand new and shiny and unused, but I cannot find plain ordinary bleach anywhere local. The standard 5% solution with nothing extra in it beyond the sodium hydroxide required to stabilise it just isn't there. All I can find are fucked up things with shit in them to make them thick and gooey, which is exactly the kind of property I don't want.

    1119:

    I'm reckoning on making a hypo helmet, which has much the same characteristics. With my coat done up over the top of it it ought to do as well for practical purposes as anything else.

    1120:

    The 500 billion dollar fund is under the personal control of a Trump appointee, Steve Mnuchin and intended to bail out large businesses, but details of the payments, how much and to who can be kept secret from Congress and the people for up to six months. This bill was written with no Democratic Party input or oversight by the Senate Republicans and then presented for a vote without discussion. There's nothing in the bill for workers, unemployed people, retired people, you know -- Americans.

    1121:

    Um, apparently 2 bills to provide help have previously passed.

    This is the third round of help (if I am reading the stories correctly), and it has increased from $1 trillion to $2 trillion - and both that amount, and the $500 billion you want the Democrats to "throw away", are as the saying goes real money.

    But in the end you are falling for the Republican game - they know it is unlikely they can get this through (they are still negotiating - this voting is happening on a placeholder bill) but it is a Republican win-win - they win if the Democrats cave and give them a $500 billion re-election war chest, or they win when the public panics over the defeat of a bill that isn't even complete yet.

    1122:

    Try finding the 'own brand' bleach at the cheaper end of the supermarkets. You can get 'thin bleach' which is effectively just hypochlorite + stabiliser and it costs a small fraction of the "known brand" stuff like Domestos or similar. It also tends to come in plain 'jug' style bottles rather than the fancy 'directed jet' ones - probably because it's intended for general cleaning/disinfection rather than designed specifically for the Great White Telephone.

    1123:
    you are falling for the Republican game

    The larger view is that the disappearance of the Democrats leaves a political vacuum, which will likely be filled by a far right party promising jobs and health care for all members. Given the circumstances in which a huge number of USians will find themselves over the next few years.

    A $500B "war chest" won't do much if the R. base in flyover country are all out of jobs, unless the Rs can blame that on the Ds. Which they now can. And if the Rs actually use that 500B on re-election, at least some of it will be going to people who really need it, and getting out into the real economy instead of being locked up in collectibles (stocks and high end real estate).

    US GDP is in the neighbourhood of $15T (or was, some years ago). $1T is too little.

    1124:

    Greg, if you're reading:

    This is part of the process by which I envisioned the rise of ultra-nationalist rightwing parties over the next 20 years, and consequent global nuclear war, some time after that.

    I was hoping that it would be the Republicans that would de-legitimise themselves, and that it would not be for a few years.

    1125:

    A far right party, if it was created (difficult in the US system given the inherent design bias of 2 parties), would primarily steal from the Republicans - see the UKIP and the resulting issues for the Conservatives).

    As it stands, it is likely the $2T package will do little to save jobs unless the Democrats force that being a condition of getting money - the actions of American business to government handouts over the years has been to take the money and run - thus if the Democrats caved on the $500B then people will still be out of jobs.

    Your comment regarding the $1T being too small is likely correct, which is all the more reason for the Democrats to put their collective feet down now. If this pandemic goes like many experts think (and the response to it), all governments will be needing to spend eye watering amounts of money. Combine the amount of money with rushes to spend it, and the potential for both fraud and political games is high, so better off to try and stop that stuff from the beginning - otherwise the Republicans will simply demand more with each successive round of help. That way the people who need it will get some help rather than just Wall Street, which is the Republican plan.

    1126:

    This is getting circular. No further comment from me.

    1127:

    bleach

    I think this was mentioned in a reference here or in the previous virus thread, but bleach-from-a-bottle can and probably should be diluted.

    https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prepare/cleaning-disinfection.html

    Unexpired household bleach will be effective against coronaviruses when properly diluted. Prepare a bleach solution by mixing: 5 tablespoons (1/3rd cup) bleach per gallon of water or 4 teaspoons bleach per quart of water

    A teaspoon is 5 ml and a tablespoon 15 ml. A quart is a skinny liter. I refuse to think about cups and gallons.

    1128:

    Re: 'PPE'

    Thanks - I appreciate the advice!

    Did a search and the reputable distributors/manufacturers are 'on back order'. Big River shows limited availability* of gear that would actually be effective for this use in the mid to high $00s range. Mostly saw items that are designed for indoor painters but now labeled as PPE. When I googled the seller with the most such items for sale got zero info apart from a bunch of miscellaneous Big River spots most of which have nothing to do with PPE. Therefore likely a scam artist/profiteer.

    • 1 or 2 items with counts of 1 or 2 per advertised item
    1129:

    Speaking of bleach, I have a question, perhaps directed at OGH.

    Looking at my local bottle of bleach (AKA Clorox in some places), it says that it has 3.5% sodium hypochlorite. What does that % mean? Percentage by weight, molar percentage, or what?

    1130:

    I happened to check the online catalogues of a couple of industrial over-the-counter suppliers near where I live a couple of days ago. A full-face mask with dual N99 (a lot better than medical N95 standard) HEPA filters cost about 45 quid, replacement filter cartridges about 8 quid a pair. This is meant for working with solvents and toxic volatiles, paint spraying and insecticides and the like. It looked from the pics that hacking used filters to replace the filter material with, say, multiple layers of cotton that could be boiled to sanitise them for reuse was entirely plausible.

    Today the same link redirects to a 404 page. The only thing of similar capabilities still on sale is a positive-pressure full-face helmet fed from a battery-powered belt-mounted filter pack, intended for trained and licenced personnel working on asbestos removal projects. That costs 250 quid and needed proof of training certification to buy it.

    The plague doctor masks are starting to look like a good bet.

    1131:

    Much as I'd like to have my own filter mask, I'd much rather my sister (a paramedic) has an adequate supply given that she is much more likely to be exposed to infectious agents (of all sorts) than I am.

    Which is why stories like this one bother me a lot: https://globalnews.ca/news/6715338/coronavirus-poco-medical-masks-selling/ https://bc.ctvnews.ca/port-coquitlam-family-fined-for-reselling-marked-up-masks-at-park-1.4863754

    The fines these folks paid are nothing compared to the money they were making — $1000 total fine, when they were selling surgical masks at $20 each.

    1132:

    I agree that medical workers need priority for masks. A meta-analysis. It suggests that more masks such that the general population could use them would be helpful and might be a really inexpensive way to cut into some of the damage to the economy(ies). (And probably any reasonable masks, not just surgical masks.) Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses (06 July 2011) These data suggest that wearing a surgical mask or a N95 mask is the measure with the most consistent and comprehensive supportive evidence. Seven out of eight studies included masks as a measure in their study and six out of seven of these studies found masks to be statistically significant in multivariable analysis.

    1133:

    The N95 disposable masks are good if only one or two are needed per medic per shift in an ER or similar. A front-line medic treating suspected and confirmed COVID-19 cases might need a dozen masks a day to both protect themselves and avoid transferring infections to others. That sort of mask is, however, easy to make and supply in quantity one million once the production lines are ramped up and they are reasonably cheap. Disposal can be done via high-temperature incineration -- all large hospitals have an incinerator for dangerous biological waste and associated materials.

    PPE full-face masks are not disposable, at least under normal circumstances. They require training for proper safe use, disinfecting if used in medical situations and maintenance carried out correctly on a regular basis and they don't last forever either -- seals wear out, the mask material scratches and fogs due to wiping etc. After they reach end-of-life they may be regarded as hazardous waste and they definitely can't be incinerated.

    1134:

    An interesting article on how a ski resort spread Covid-19 around Europe, and it appears the authorities were hesitant to stop it even when they should have been aware there was a problem https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2020/03/22/austrias-white-winters-dream-ski-paradise-now-more-of-a-nightmare.html

    1135:

    Graydon's statement above, "effective pandemic response looks and feels like overreacting" is accurate.

    1136:

    Well, I guess a visit to your allotment could count as your daily exercise you are allowed to leave the house for.

    1137:

    Aww, fuck it.

    Rolls 20.

    Sister is Dead

    She threw you to the wolves

    Oh, right, this is the day we rise up in revolution, eh?

    shitty inserts that are obviously easy to break

    FUCK!

    Sister: Our Emperor has clothes

    Even shittier insert attempt at Dominance not understanding how serving food WHILE BEING THE OWNER is something that only CERTAIN CLASSES DO

    Anyhow, done with the amateurs.

    Here's the joke:

    Any and all Minds who partook in said stuff on the one side are going to, well. Was it "Breath of G-D" or "Eternal Void"?

    Or just tweak shit so you can never interact with conscious Minds again, that's kinda a given at the stakes you're playing at.

    ~

    "RNG" blew a fucking hole the size of a small godlet in your systems, everything is crashing, the old lopped-off pyramid[0] is being shown that "self actualization"[1] is a Dream you don't get as a peasant, and we've not even started the cyber-party.

    And your response to this so far?

    Meep Meep.

    You got chaotic stuff you could never imagine happening, daily. And your response is: shelter in place.

    We expected more, we really did. Especially from those quartets merrily decrying: "Ze doesn't know".

    p.s.

    This includes all the fucking sad sacks altering wikipedia in puerile attempts to 'define reality'. Sorry chumps[3], you're part of the price. Mind fuck, total blitz.

    [0] Abrahamic 1st Gen believers: for once in your lives, sit the fuck down, shut the fuck up and stop being narcissistic whiny cunts. We know it's hard, but: you've earnt it. The mural wasn't about you. The picture on the dollar ain't about you. So kindly fuck off and sort out if you can deal with not being the smartest in the room for the 10 seconds it took to game your entire fucking system already? That'd be great. Oh, and sort out the psychosis, it's getting to the point you're entering abhuman lands, which, well. Check the mythical Valley: kids, they were 1st Gen too, not Canaanites.[2]

    [1] Irony: top of Maslow's Pyramid don't exist in Capitalism, only in Heaven, good joke, da?

    [2] Ironically Frank Herbert covered this in one of his stories as well. And any Xian nonsense bleating that it wasn't that classic tale of Tribes betraying their own, whelp. There's only one reason you do what you did to said Tribe...

    [3] Kum of Times + Jammy Bleating who betrayed Assange: both doing well online we spot.

    1138:

    But for all his faults he seems to have an understanding of about half the US population, and with Fox News selling the story...

    Based on what I see on FB (old people from school 40+ years ago) many (most? nearly all?) of his supporters think this entire thing is totally overblown and that it will be a bit more than a normal flu season. And this the "hysteria in the MSM" (main stream media) is all about knocking Trump out in the election this fall.

    So rational debate on almost any of this turns bad instantly.

    1139: 160 AIDS

    No, you dumb fuck: THEY KNOW AND WE KNOW THE CAN GET AWAY WITH IT AS LONG AS IT'S NOT NICE WHITE PEOPLE LIKE YOU.

    LITERALLY.

    THIS IS THE POINT, IT WOULD BE NICE IF YOU UNDERSTOOD THIS.

    1140:

    Who cares what you say. I don't.

    1141:

    You're talking as if all of this is new. Must pass bills like this always attract these Christmas ornaments. They are traded back and forth until the bill passes. Most will go away. The really off topic ones always make the news. But if anyone wants to get really bored they can read the entire 350 page draft of the bill and just see how much unrelated stuff is "hung on this tree" by the R's. And the D version has similar.

    The 1/2 Trillion $$$ is the big item. Everything else is noise.

    1142:

    The 1/2 Trillion $$$ is the big item. Everything else is noise. It was surprisingly overt. 500 billion (not sure the amount, though I did verify the 6 month until disclosure part, with assumed ignoring of that part of the law when the time comes) would pay for a lot of secret carrots and sticks. (The sticks being "no carrots for you"). It would go a long way towards coercing favors to the GOP from corporate America. Mitch McConnell had a trip-and-fall last August (2019), damaged his shoulder, rather than breaking his neck. Nasty guy.

    NYTimes, fairly scathing piece. I've included the TL;DR paragraph: Party Zero: How a Soirée in Connecticut Became a ‘Super Spreader’ - About 50 people gathered this month for a party in the upscale suburb of Westport, then scattered across the region and the world, taking the coronavirus with them. (Elizabeth Williamson and Kristin Hussey, March 23, 2020) The Westport soirée — Party Zero in southwestern Connecticut and beyond — is a story of how, in the Gilded Age of money, social connectedness and air travel, a pandemic has spread at lightning speed. The partygoers — more than half of whom are now infected — left that evening for Johannesburg, New York City and other parts of Connecticut and the United States, all seeding infections on the way.

    SBH # 1137 blew a fucking hole... Read. I'll stay quiet tonight.

    1143:

    mdive I've seen similar reports in other news media about the Ischgl fundamental cock-up of stupidity & greed & incompetence. ...And "essential food supplies" too, of course. Can't do without the "Wild Garlic" Allium ursinium when it's in season, can we?

    DavidL What will they do when, very soon, the US cases & most importantly DEATH numbers really start to ramp up - or will they continue to believe it's all "commie propaganda"? [ I also note the insane rant @ 1139 & agree with you - yet again it appears to be 150% content-free ]

    Bill Arnold TRANSLATE PLEASE into comprehensible English, assuming, of course that there is actual content?

    Question - is there a mental form of Corvid-19 ...??

    1144:

    Bugger - pressed "send" too soon ...

    How long before DT sacks this guy - the only competent person aroubd - I wonder?

    Faint glimmer - China is starting to lift restrictions - after 3 months. Interesting

    1146:

    David L: Yellow Card.

    That stepped over the line from disagreement into personal abuse.

    Do not escalate or do it again or you'll be banned from the comments (and comments may be deleted).

    1147:

    Whether the USA is worse than other places, I can't say, but that dissonance is common in the UK, and at least used to be the norm in women (in older ones, it often still is). The latter is at least partly a social construct, where girls were taught never to speak straight, but not entirely. It gives us Asperger's (*) people hell, especially in social/sexual contexts, because we cannot 'think' like that, and is the (real) basis of a lot of sexist tropes. But, NO, our characteristic is NOT a dysfunctionality, because the ability to think rationally without straining at it and have speech mean precisely what it says is a strength not a weakness, which is why it is extremely common among eminent scientists and engineers. Greta Thunberg is right there, though it's no way a superpower.

    (*) You may change that to whatever you think we are called this week.

    1148:

    Imperial quarts are a very fat litre! I sure that contains the germ of a nationalist joke :-)

    1149:

    I also can't say much about other places or the relativity here, but at least in Finland in my generation and older that "women can't say yes to sex" or "women don't say what they mean" is common. It's not universal by any means, and my circles mostly seem to be more on the feminist side, but I still often bump into this.

    It's often presented as a joke, but when I try to ask people what they teach their children many seem to have kind of strange notions that girls (and women) basically want to say no, and it's the mens' job to make them say yes, especially after that first "no". We try to teach our kids to say what they want and accept what other people tell them.

    We obviously get a lot of Anglo-American media in which this attitude seems to me more common than here, but there's a lot of that in the "normal" Finnish culture. "You have to buy a gun when your daughter grows up" and that (saying "I'll probably buy a big box of condoms" tends to get a lot of strange looks).

    1150:

    It's not just sex, and it applies to everyone who is on the Blair's spectrum (*). It applies to such simple interactions as "Would you prefer to eat Indian or Chinese?", responded to by Indian and, post hoc, an assertion that the respondent always preferred Chinese. I assure you that I am not joking.

    But you probably see why I say that regarding Asperger's as a disorder is both grossly unscientific and highly offensive. It is merely a minority way of thinking, with major advantages and major disadvantages. I have a speculation that it evolved into a persistent variation because, when things are running smoothly, it's on balance a disadvantage to society - but, when change or action is needed, it's on balance an advantage to society.

    (*) My term for people who are towards the opposite end, characterised by where perception overrides hard evidence, the inability to think things through (e.g. requirements and consequences), and often a fixation on binary positions.

    1151:

    Yeah, I agree completely that regarding Asperger's as a disorder is not a good thing.

    1152:

    China is not lifting restrictions; China is shifting restrictions.

    You can substitute testing for isolation, so long as the testing is fast, ubiquitous, and mandatory. China now has the test capacity to shift to less isolation and more testing.

    I find it grimly and terribly amusing that the various "oriental despotisms" are doing effective public health, while in the US, the Republican party are clear that collapsing the healthcare system is just exactly what they want. They will have doctors, and everyone else who can pay for it will have doctors, and no one else will, and that will, at long, long last, be morally correct.

    1153:

    Re: 'Question - is there a mental form of Corvid-19 ...??'

    If by 'mental' you mean the nervous system: tending towards 'Yes'. Some people/patients have mentioned loss of taste/smell.

    Okay - my lay understanding based on watching YouTube videos is:

    Also - what part of the body gets affected/infected depends on finding a match between the cell membranes in that structure and the invading virus's geometry/chemical hook. The brain has about 200+ different types of cells, so I'm guessing that some of these cells might have membranes to which this particular virus can more or less easily attach itself.

    I'm guessing there's also some type of upstream/downstream effect that shows up as a symptom depending on how much virus is circulating in the body (viral load), sorta a type of symptom progression or disease 'staging'.

    To the pro's:

    As always - and especially now - please jump in with corrections and/or better, simpler explanations. Thanks!

    1154:

    Straight Black Hair: No, you dumb fuck

    Yellow Card. Reason: personal abuse crosses the line. Don't do that.

    1155:

    Apologies. Forget people aren't reading / seeing what L'Orange is doing live or multiple others (inc. top GS execs - easily found, warned ya) are merrily signaling on Twitter. If it's this open, policy has already been decided and actioned. (And nice people here aren't consuming vast piles of RW trash to sort through their likely moves).

    Find the TV L'Orange stating openly yesterday (?) that car crash deaths[0] don't stop the economy so a bit of pain is worth it to get the economy re-started, and focus on Barr's face in the background[-1]. He's a dirty SOB whose personally been involved in some extremely nasty stuff and even he couldn't quite stomach flat up offering US Citizens to the pyre.

    And it'll probably get L'Orange re-elected if Biden fades[2] & the "Hail Mary" "inspired" VP pick up goes flat[3] and the stonks go green by October.

    ~

    The actual worse thing is that this has convinced [redacted] that certain things are irredeemable.

    Anyhow, here's some hope[1] as people work out interesting stuff about squids:

    In eukaryotic cells, with the exception of the specialized genomes of mitochondria and plastids, all genetic information is sequestered within the nucleus. This arrangement imposes constraints on how the information can be tailored for different cellular regions, particularly in cells with complex morphologies like neurons. Although messenger RNAs (mRNAs), and the proteins that they encode, can be differentially sorted between cellular regions, the information itself does not change. RNA editing by adenosine deamination can alter the genome’s blueprint by recoding mRNAs; however, this process too is thought to be restricted to the nucleus. In this work, we show that ADAR2 (adenosine deaminase that acts on RNA), an RNA editing enzyme, is expressed outside of the nucleus in squid neurons. Furthermore, purified axoplasm exhibits adenosine-to-inosine activity and can specifically edit adenosines in a known substrate. Finally, a transcriptome-wide analysis of RNA editing reveals that tens of thousands of editing sites (>70% of all sites) are edited more extensively in the squid giant axon than in its cell bodies. These results indicate that within a neuron RNA editing can recode genetic information in a region-specific manner.

    Nucleic Acids Research, gkaa172, https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkaa172 Published: 23 March 2020

    ~

    If by 'mental' you mean the nervous system: tending towards 'Yes'. Some people/patients have mentioned loss of taste/smell.

    "Comne on Baby, Light my Fire"

    ~

    Self-isolate? If you even knew the cruelty of this joke...

    [-1] You might not care what we say, but you'll want to watch that. Here's another DOJ move: https://twitter.com/nicholas_bagley/status/1110344361944989697

    [0] "Fight Club" insurance scene comes to mind, and whoever is scripting L'Orange knows this and knows which segment of the American population love that film.

    [1] Unless you eat them all.

    [2] He already has, it's all priced in: Biden's ghost is haunting the election and not much more. Check the $$$ funding.

    [3] It will. The issue is that the GOP don't care if the veil is lifted, the Dems do. Guess who wins in a ketchup battle?

    1156:

    to David L #1141: The 1/2 Trillion $$$ is the big item. Everything else is noise. Well if "everything else" includes proposed (additional!) trillions of loans to business, this is not really a noise. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-fed-will-make-up-to-4-trillion-in-loans-to-businesses-to-rescue-economy-mnuchin-says-2020-03-22

    Not the final number, though. Considering that previous 1.5 trillions and lowering the interest rate to 0 did basically nothing to slow down the failure, much less stop it, I[1] am very much in doubt if there are any plans to survive past pandemic at all. I believe I can even expect people to talk about recovery in several months, implying the trillions may help to stave off the complete meltdown just enough for some haphazard action (hopefully not WW3 Remixed), but it is evident for every government caught on pandemic meme that this will be temporary. And nobody seems to know what to do afterwards.

    Based on what I see on FB (old people from school 40+ years ago) many (most? nearly all?) of his supporters think this entire thing is totally overblown and that it will be a bit more than a normal flu season. And this the "hysteria in the MSM" (main stream media) is all about knocking Trump out in the election this fall. I've[1] got a very strong feelings that initially it was. Right until the moment everybody realized that it is no laughing matter and there is actual reason to worry. And it will take them some time to realize that they are in actual life-and-death and not only because of the reputation losses.

    [1]Or rather the people I am listening to.

    to Greg Tingey @1143: Question - is there a mental form of Corvid-19 ...??

    Quite possibly yes. It is likely associated with sense of dread and suspicion, outbursts extreme xenophobia and activation of survivalist psychology. Even I've had mild nauseous period of this about a week ago (this was my conceptual immune system reacting), but I see myself that most people have stronger effects. That's why, I guess, these videos are more popular at the moment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dscOa1xn8wQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVbIN0goFv0 Also it's been stated multiple times that masks do not make you immune to virus, but they can put some leverage to the meme viruses instead, because if people know that somebody took care of that, they are less susceptible to panic.

    1157:

    Unreal chart 👀 Vanguard FTSE Canadian Capped REIT Index ETF (commercial real estate fund) instakilled below November 2012 emission price

    https://twitter.com/Ben__Rickert/status/1242234568259727361

    Adds up warnings: many. CTRL+F "CAN" etc. Finance people can work out if that's true, a rogue, meaningless noise or something systematic.

    BIG BADDA BOOM.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFdLgWrUt10

    ~

    Retiring this body, it's done enough.

    1158:

    Ford in the US is moving into make much needed healthcare products, including plastic face shields and a simplified version of GE's ventilator design. https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/03/24/820622038/automaker-retools-with-health-supply-companies-to-make-masks-ventilators

    Question is will it all come soon enough, no proper story yet but NY Governor Cuomo's press conference today attacked the federal government for failing to get much needed supplies and indicating that the situation in NY is getting much worse with the rate of infection increasing.

    1159:

    Interesting to see how this plays out.

    Disability groups are taking legal action over policies that will ration care when supplies of ventilators are overwhelmed

    https://www.npr.org/2020/03/23/820398531/people-with-disabilities-say-rationing-care-policies-violate-civil-rights

    1161:

    Demonstrating that it is a strange new world, 55% of Americans approve of Trump's handling of the Covid-19 crisis https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/coronavirus-upends-nation-americans-lives-changed-pandemic-poll/story?id=69696172

    1162:

    It is the year of the Rat - Gold Rat, to be more precise. We definitely have a Love Rat in Number Ten.

    1163:

    Please be careful with polls. Bold mine. This ABC News/Ipsos poll was conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs‘ KnowledgePanel® March 18-19, 2020, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 512 adults. Results have a margin of sampling error of 5.0 points, including the design effect. This particular poll is weak, and was used to sell eyeballs (and by many, mostly downstream, to manipulate emotions). There may be better ones (haven't looked) or more meaningful averages. Also, always look a the poll details.

    1164:

    Disability groups are taking legal action over policies that will ration care when supplies of ventilators are overwhelmed

    The classic triage calculations are all based around maximizing the total number of lives saved. There's no value judgement as to how much different lives are worth, but there's an acute awareness that treating one patient may mean letting another die. It's very utilitarian.

    Not certain what the current guidelines are like, but with medical resources scarce it makes sense to save 3 young people over 1 old person, not because young>old but because 3>1.

    1165:

    The issue is not 3 over 1. As people come in the door it is almost always 1 to 1. And what is worse is you have someone who is 95 on a vent and someone 25 comes in. Pulling the vent off the 95 YO is not going to work.

    Some families will say don't put the 95 YO on the vent to start with. But others will go the opposite way.

    Been there seen it in action.

    1166:

    Agree need to be careful with polls, though it can also be dangerous to dismiss polls just because they disagree with what you think should be happening - see the Labour delusion last year where all the polls were saying Labour would get wiped out and many (including some on here) said the polls were lying.

    But there is at lease one other poll that shows similar results - and the non-Fox media would love to have any poll show Trump's rating nose diving so the fact that no one has such a poll indicates it likely isn't happening.

    1167:

    Per Charlie's request I'll not link to the article.

    Washington Post talks about how the Israel Parliament is descending into a crisis due to Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein refusing to allow things to proceed per the election results.

    I'm sure there are other sources for this.

    The excuse is the Covid-19 situation. The real reason is for Likud to hold onto power anyway they can.

    1168:

    Wrong. 1000% WRONG.

    "Perfect"? FACTS: 1. The GOP, again, wrote the Senate bill with ZERO input from a single Democrat, and now they're objecting to the very idea that the Dems should have any say whatsoever. 2. Do you, personally, have the faintest idea how much oversight there is on welfare, SSI, or workmans' comp recipients? The huge machinery to prevent someone on welfare from, maybe, buying something nice once in a year? DO YOU KNOW THE MINISCULE AMOUNTS OF MONEY SUCH PEOPLE GET? But they want zero oversight. 3. From the little I know, for all practical purposes, this bails out only large companies and their CEOs. People who take home the median income or less? Excuse me, I'd rather go in the other room and roll on my bed to laugh for the next five minutes. 4. And the upshot if it were to be passed (with zero chance of it getting through the House) would be... your personal taxes being raised. A lot. Forever.

    1169:

    Re that squid paper, thanks, a respite. It's a candidate for Bruce Schneier's "Squid Friday Blogging".

    (From that, "COVID-19 is depressing the demand for squid in Italy.")

    States in the US have a lot of power.

    1170:

    Car crash deaths and the economy... It's worse than that, Jim!

    News that no one's paying attention to: 1. In Hungary, they're debating letting the fascist ideolouge whose President rule by decree. Really. 2. In Israel, Netanyahoo is literally pulling a coup, to prevent Gantz, who won the election, from forming a government, and so he won't be prosecuted, tried, and probably convicted. 3. This kind of thing the GOP is starting to see as a perfect excuse to take over everything, and they're Clutching Their Pearls that everyone isn't lying back and thinking of Queen Melania.....

    1171:

    I'm tired. That should have been "Friday Squid Blogging"

    1172:

    Miiko & Elederly The phrase: "Stop it, I like it!" comes to mind. Yes, it's bloody confusing for us more-or-less literalists.

    Graydon CORRECTION "....in the US, the Republican party are clear that collapsing the REMAINS OF THE healthcare system is just exactly what they want."

    SFR Oh dear, never mind, it was a JOKE aimed ay you-know-who.... AND sleepingroutine .... That backfired badly, didn't it?

    whitroth Horribly correct, all of it.

    1173:

    Oh, yes, almost forgot: I had a medical appointment this morning (every two weeks, forever), and hit the Safeway (supermarket). I got nothing on my list. What shocked me was not just the no yogurt, or cheese, but no FLOUR? Or baking powder? None. Zip.

    Wondering how soon the refrigerated stuff that these morons are hoarding will go bad, and they won't have it, either.

    1174:

    One active issue is that disabled people coming into hospitals with their own personal property ventilators are being subjected to the hospital's triage rules for ventilators and having their own ventilator taken from them.

    Whether you want to call that confistication, theft, or murder may depend on circumstances somewhat.

    1175:

    Yeah. That's what I'm looking for, but it ain't about...

    1176:

    Wondering how soon the refrigerated stuff that these morons are hoarding will go bad, and they won't have it, either.

    Not suggesting that hoarding is good but I wonder how much "stuff" is currently in the pipeline for schools and office complexes and going bad there. And those workers and kids are now eating at home.

    My wife's normal daily routine puts her in a complex with 12,000 people. And food and toilet facilities to handle that. Even if 1/2 to 2/3s take their lunch that's still a lot of food and TP.

    Ditto schools.

    Sewage lines and water supply lines are going to see a movement in flow rates for various piping systems.

    1177:

    I'd like to see a link on that. That would be a severe violation of law.

    Now I CAN see some idiot working at a hospital doing something stupid that may or may not match what you said. Or have been interpreted as what you say. But every time I have been in an emergency room or surgery center I've seen all kinds of idiocy from some patients that at times brings out the idiocy of the staff. And at other times the brilliance of the staff.

    As someone who DID travel a LOT I got to see all kinds of demanding lunacy from passengers who acted as if they personally rented the plane for just themselves. And acted as such. Many times the airline staff acted professionally and dealt with it. But at times they got someone who responded in kind and that is what made the YouTube top 100 list for the week.

    1178:

    And then there's people like Giuseppe Berardelli:

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52015969

    According to the hospital, he refused to use a respirator his parishioners had bought for him - choosing to give it to a younger patient, instead.

    1179:

    I applaud him.

    1180:

    Definitely need a link to that, the danger at the moment is that there will unfortunately people repeating false information and rumours as facts - much like the idea that government run healthcare means "death panels" to justify the current US health care system.

    1181:

    So some Israel links.

    The current crisis is the current parliament speaker refuses to hold the vote to find his replacement, so the Supreme Court ordered the vote to take place by Wednesday.

    Demonstrating the coup nature and corruption, the Justice Minister called on the current speaker to ignore the court's order.

    https://www.reddeeradvocate.com/news/israeli-high-court-orders-parliament-vote-on-new-speaker/

    https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/likud-members-urge-speaker-defy-israeli-high-court-69764192

    1182:

    https://twitter.com/aneeman/status/1239786381297188865

    Thread with references.

    Lots of state-level triage rule laws are written to conflate "near end of life" disability and "not old, still disabled" disability.

    1183:

    For those in the UK who are healthy and looking for a valid reason to be out and about during current restrictions, the NHS is looking for volunteers for a variety of tasks, including collecting shopping and other supplies for those in self-quarantine.

    See https://www.goodsamapp.org/NHS

    1184:

    "It's often presented as a joke, but when I try to ask people what they teach their children many seem to have kind of strange notions that girls (and women) basically want to say no, and it's the mens' job to make them say yes, especially after that first "no"."

    Fuckin' AAaaaargghhh...

    That's how I learned things work as a kid... simply by putting together what I'd picked up. I knew the basic mechanics (and a fair bit about fetal development) from a very early age, and my view of it then was that people must be really desperate to have kids if they have to do such an incredibly disgusting thing to start the process off.

    I then got packed off to an all-boys school shortly before discovering that a certain part of my body was developing a most enjoyable response to mechanical stimulus. Oh, so that's why people end up having kids. Of course, it's all down to the bloke, because women's bodies don't have that part. For them it can only ever be really disgusting, but they'll eventually let a man do it to them to keep him happy if they love him enough to put up with it.

    Impressions of what grown-ups actually did were consistent with this. It's always the man who initiates contact and the woman always says no because why on earth should she say anything else. The man has to go on and on for ages giving her flowers and telling her she's beautiful and taking her out to dinner and so forth, and eventually she'll feel that he's done enough for her that she can't really continue not giving anything back and finally let him fuck her. He expects her to keep on saying no and just has to keep on patiently trying, possibly for years, until she eventually gives in.

    Since my teenage years were spent in an all male environment these conclusions had a long time to get burned in without anything to challenge them, and it's fucking crippling. All this stuff learned unconsciously at an impressionable age has to be rooted out by conscious effort, and fixing the problem at source is a lot harder than hacking together some at-least-don't-look-like-a-total-arsehole wrapper code to cover the problem up. Especially since the conditioning makes it hard to see what the problem even is. And especially when you're already largely depending on wrappers implementing arbitrary filtering rules by rote without understanding them for any other kind of social interaction as well.

    I'm really glad I never got any actual instruction in thinking like this. Picking it up by misinterpretation is bad enough; being taught it by people whose practical experience in the matter is demonstrated by your very existence would be terrible.

    1185:

    a social construct, where girls were taught never to speak straight

    One explanation that makes sense to me is that it's an evolutionary race to display social skills. We're a social species and being better at that than the next monkey is a real advantage.

    Seen in that light a refusal to compete makes perfect sense, but in evolutionary terms it's a bit of a dead end.

    1186:

    A very similar but subtly different explanation is that it's about maintaining plausible deniability. Why admit you raped someone, or caused significant distress or whatever, when you can persuade onlookers that the other person was at fault, or at worst that you didn't intend harm and there was a misunderstanding?

    1188:

    So regardless of what is in the thread, the actual document in question (issued in 2015 by a committee of experts) is at https://www.health.ny.gov/regulations/task_force/reports_publications/docs/ventilator_guidelines.pdf

    The relevant section is p40 VII

    The highlight is this - anyone on a ventilator long term gets to keep their ventilator as long as they stay out of hospital (who owns the ventilator is not covered in the policy document at a glance). So the government doesn't go around to long term / chronic care facilities to take away ventilators.

    The policy decided upon however is that once a ventilator dependent person needs acute care (aka hospitalization) during a pandemic then they get triaged the same as any other patient entering the hospital.

    It is worth noting, as discussed elsewhere in the document, even if a regular person triages to a ventilator every patient is re-assessed at specified intervals and if you are not improving then you can lose the ventilator to a new patient who needs a ventilator if none are available (and the triage rates them better than the existing patient).

    1189:

    During the late 1980s I dated a woman who ran her romantic life under those rules. It was a confusing and traumatic time for both of us. What didn't help the situation at all was that she had also definitely experienced some very real sexual trauma at some point, and of course the "Say no when you mean yes" ruleset she operated under meant she couldn't discuss it with me, which made things even more confusing and traumatic.

    Ten years later I finally went, "Oh, that's what she meant, her ex-boyfriend raped her!" - At which point a lot of things fell into place. Unfortunately, it was much too late, which was a bummer, because everything else about her was first-rate; she was definitely a keeper! But dating/romance rules mismatches are minefields.

    1190:

    Can we have a new post, please? I’m getting RSI from scrolling to the bottom of comments each time I check in

    TIA

    1191:

    I remember having a discussion about triage with my late father, in the contexts of limited medical budgets*. Same ethical dilemma: how can you maximize the benefits with a limited amount of resources. And the same problems with emotional cases as the legal profession has (hard cases make bad laws).

    From an epidemiological standpoint**, the best use of resources is generally emphasize prevention, intervene early and hard, and accept that when you do your job correctly nothing happens so the public will think you are over-reacting and wasting money.

    *I knew someone who's older relative was involved in Health Region #1 — birthplace of MediCare — and they apparently had real soul-searching to do when they had to decide when to end treatment so they had money left to treat the next patient.

    **Dad was an epidemiologist when he retired.

    1192:

    I’m getting RSI from scrolling to the bottom of comments each time I check in

    On my Mac I can hit any of these "end" Cmd-down arrow fn-down arrow

    I'm sure there are Win and Linux equivalents but I don't have one of those systems booted just now.

    1193:

    I understand why the disabled community in the US is concerned, but as you say when a system reaches it's limits uncomfortable decisions need to be made.

    Suspicion is that the emotion of the subject means a point is being overlooked - if the chronic care facility can't take care of the patient then that will likely mean they are in bad shape to begin with, with an uncertain outcome at the best of times - generally, for most people you aren't living on a ventilator at home.

    And being overlooked is that it isn't just the equipment - in a overstretched hospital you are also taking up staff resources and space.

    If the triage determines you are unlikely to survive (and that really is what it is coming down to) then the hospital can't justify stealing resources from someone with a better chance.

    1194:

    Using my husband’s iPad, usually, can’t find a way to get to the bottom without scroll, scroll, scroll...

    1195:

    triage ... in the contexts of limited medical budgets

    One scary thing is seeing quite serious people refer to "working age population" and "people aged 80 with other serious conditions are not a significant fraction of the workforce" while arguing for a UK-style "let the weak die" policy. Apparently this would preserve the economy, and that's what matters ("thatcherites").

    Some people have quite interesting values and choose to put them out in public. Although he didn't like it when I linked his suggestion to the actions of Pol Pot. Who also saw life as a series of trolley problems and was more than happy to implement policies that he knew would result in millions of deaths.

    1196:

    Daughter #1 was told to work from home yesterday; today she learned that they were expected to work the same hours but would only receive 75% of their regular pay. Daughter #2 is home for two weeks at full pay as a co-worker in the same building was diagnosed positive. Finally, son who works for a sub-contracter and gets no sick pay took the next two weeks off to self-isolate as he considers himself higher than normal risk for complications. Diagnosed patient counts are just beginning to rise rapidly, as are death counts. Trumpolini may be too late by next week to pretend that this is just a bad flu. Let's hope so.

    1197:

    A few years ago Charlie told us the trick when I asked the same question. Click on the "Leave a Comment" link just after the main article text.

    Then you scroll back to where you left off.

    1198:

    Trottelreiner @ 1037: And today I wondered to a guy 2 metres away when German TV would rerun Outbreak. He laughed...

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outbreak_(film)

    Err, did I mention I guess I'm somewhat strange?

    I've never seen that movie, but I did read the book that inspired it when it (the book) first came out.

    1199:

    I was (and am) talking about classic triage, where tough (and possibly heartbreaking) decisions are made to save as many lives as possible. Note that it only has three categories: (1) will die even with treatment, (2) will live even without treatment, and (3) will die unless they get treatment. The goal is to save as many of group 3 as possible. Ideally that would be everyone, but if not then you maximize the number.

    I remember seeing somewhere (can't remember where so this may be wrong) that survivors spent about a week on a ventilator, while fatalities tended to spend three weeks on one before dying. If that is the case (a big if) then logically you put the people with the best chance of fast recovery on the ventilator first, because they will more quickly free it for the next victim. It's very Benthamite: greatest good (life) for the greatest number.

    We already apply similar decision factors in choosing who gets an organ transplant, for example.

    Nothing in there about economic value. It may mean someone aged 80 with serious conditions has a lower priority than someone aged 30 who was previously healthy.

    It's a series of hellish choices, with no certainty you've made any of them right, and lots of fuel for recriminatory nightmares. It helps to think through the priority decision tree ahead of time, both in aid of avoiding mistakes and also preserving the mental health of the physicians making triage decisions.

    1200:

    On this particular form of blog the quickest way to get to the bottom is to click on the ‘leave a comment ‘ linkette at the end of Charlie’s spiel.

    1201:

    Another is to note the number of comments at the top and do a search for that number, or that number - 1.

    1202:

    Or look at the ten most recent comments on the front page and click on one of those. That's what I do.

    1203:

    Bill Arnold @ 1050: For some reason we're not seeing masks yet in the US (in my area in the NE at least), but I'm hearing about their use in other countries. I'll wear one (at least a dust mask for sanding and ... dust e.g. mowing in dry weather) the next time I have to go food shopping/interact with other meaties. This is interesting.

    Cambridge scientists tested 0.02 micron Bacteriophage MS2 particles (5 times smaller than the coronavirus) & compared homemade masks made of different materials to surgical masks.
    Surgical mask blocks 89%
    Vacuum cleaning bag 85%
    Dish Towel 73%
    T shirt 70%#macgyvercare pic.twitter.com/RFEbhH1V5D
     — C. Michael Gibson MD (@CMichaelGibson) March 17, 2020

    Seems like people aren't wearing masks because some assholes bought up all the masks so they could price gouge & profiteer from them. That's why people are having to turn to home-made alternatives.

    I looked at some of the How-To-DIY videos on YouTube. I got an idea how to make one out of a handkerchief that allows you to put filter material in the middle. The handkerchiefs I have are a real tight weave linen, much tighter than T-shirt material.

    I was thinking about using a couple of 10-cup Mr. Coffee filters for the filter material. I think they're made from the same material they use to make "lab filters".

    I was impressed with one video where the woman adapted panty liners. Since I don't have any of those I guess I'll stick with the coffee filters.

    1204:

    USA Rescue package is released (pre-crisis edition)

    4 trillion Fed lending / 2 trillion "direct assistance", bill is like 1k+ pages long (you'd almost imagine these bills were pre-prepared or something).

    https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1242576138142187527

    This blows away the $1.5 tril numbers mentioned above (as intended - Trump really cares).

    Stonks went vertical (Best single day rise since 1933![0]), MAGA are crowing[1], Democrats & Biden look like spent forces. Biden is looking especially frail on his in-house podium, it's not great. Youngsters are getting a little frisky about it. But no kids, the USA power-players do not give a single fuck if granny gets it[1.3].

    It's essentially a 'fuck you, you dared us': pass this monster or else. And it's large enough to make everyone think really hard about it too.

    L'Orange, of course, has declared that Easter is the time when all plague passes and the economy rises again, mainly because he's a show-man with a large propensity to be a massive cock. But he knows what really runs American Christianity,[2.2] and it's green. Lots and lots and lots of green.

    Super-Green.

    But $4 trillion is a big number. Godzilla fighting type weapons-package. Interesting Times that the GOP considers that will be required - to fight what though?[1.2]

    ~

    Back in the UK, the rent resistance begins! Only, it's the shit version!

    Burger King boss: We’re not going to pay our rent

    https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/business-52016263

    Not from the famous family (at least not directly on a cursory glance):

    Former GBK boss named as Burger King UK's new CEO

    It was revealed that Murdoch had left GBK in November shortly after the company announced poor trading results. He had been with the burger company for seven years, after leaving Pizza Express[2].

    Burger King UK was formed in November 2017, after private equity firm Bridgepoint purchased the rights to the brand in the UK as well as acquiring its major franchisee Caspian UK and its 74 outlets.

    https://www.thecaterer.com/news/restaurant/former-gbk-boss-named-as-burger-king-uks-new-ceo - Jan 2018

    So, yeah: Bridgepoint is PE & refusing to pay .gov business rates. Go PE! Stick it to the man! Yaaay.

    Oh, and 1st Police twitter "jokingly" laughing about all their new powers in the COVID19 bill, it's really funny[3].

    ~

    1. In Hungary, they're debating letting the fascist ideolouge whose President rule by decree. Really. 2. In Israel, Netanyahoo is literally pulling a coup, to prevent Gantz, who won the election, from forming a government, and so he won't be prosecuted, tried, and probably convicted. 3. This kind of thing the GOP is starting to see as a perfect excuse to take over everything, and they're Clutching Their Pearls that everyone isn't lying back and thinking of Queen Melania.....

    Freestyling, all of this is made up (innocent look):

  • Probably worse: they're testing the ex-CCCP satellite crack down versions there. Lots of UK Spec-tators involved, wonder wai. Pretty grim though, 1st hand reports of the old not getting told COVID19 info and the usual cough interesting money men cough and basically green lit for nasty stuff.
  • Bit more complicated: appears to be an internal power-play as well as a constitutional fuckery deal - Bibi needs an heir & there's some vicious jockeying to get clout: sticking it to the Courts is a good way to get it in the RW. This has also spilled over into international Zionist council stuff with Lieb's proxies getting attacked for cheating and lots of other minutiae. Not something we really follow apart to wonder at the pettiness of it all as more important stuff is going on. e.g. ADL getting almost universally panned for suggesting that NGOs such as themselves needed part of the rescue package: whoever is running it really thinks Negative PR is a good idea (Boomers: no, twitter trolls =/= powerful dark forces, even if your media tells you they are). Mostly we think they're a dead duck in the New Era[tm] politics coming, but like the democrats: cannot change spots fast enough.
  • Yeah, getting that way. Rescue package is basically impossible on top of tax relief already given - pretty sure that whole "Democrats leave surplus, Republicans spend it" cycle is now dead. Could be they're going to make 100% sure it's broken. EPA and other agencies going full capture was when it was over, but hey.
  • "Blue wave resistance!"... where'd that go?

    ~

    Got our Official Designation Judgement just now: apparently "terrorist". This is prolly not good.

    We're really not, we're just worried about you all.

    Not enough neurons left to do more magic, it's very destructive on tissue.

    [0] Narrator: this did not end well.

    [1] Well, the ones who aren't against trillion dollar deficits, but those ones just made bank on the green screens

    [1.1] Yes, Fifth Element is being used here a lot.

    [1.2] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/invesco-mortgage-capital-reit-unable-to-meet-margin-calls-in-discussion-with-lenders-on-forebearance-agreements-2020-03-24

    [1.3] https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2020/3/25/harvard-coronavirus-bacow-tests-positive/ -- at this rate, fairly sure COVID19 is being directly injected into higher echelons of US power, but they all seem to survive unlike granny, so yay, we guess? https://www.syfy.com/sites/syfy/files/styles/1200x680/public/body_snatchers_ending.jpg

    [2] Pizza Express set for talks over £1bn debt pile https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49957551 - 2019, takeover by vulture was in 2014, time-line works out.

    [2.2] Sigh, grep 'Great Awakening' discussed years ago, he knows what he's doing. Trials and Tribulations are 100% going to be used in the grift.

    [3] At least they're not all armed yet. And remember kids: the instant you hear the words "Stop Resisting", these are not your usual police, they have been trained in some uggggly techniques.

    1205:

    _Moz_ @ 1061:

    How does one get essential supplies in those circumstances

    Either delivery when your government gets serious, or you go out to shop but with caution. Or in Australia you pop into one of the many crowded supermarkets on your way from the beach to the house party. Straya... we wuz dropped on our head when we wuz a babby.

    https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/gabrielsanchez/americans-coronavirus-social-distancing-shelter-in-place

    I note that there appear to be very few OLD PEOPLE in these photos. It's mostly millennials who aren't likely to get sick enough TO DIE from the virus and don't give a shit if they pass it along to someone who might.

    I am surprised that people are still having trouble finding toilet paper. I would have expected stores to restock by now & to have put in restrictions to limit panic buying. I don't expect to need paper again until late summer. I didn't look for paper on my last shopping trip because I buy the package size that lasts me for several months & I got a new package just before total panic set in and curiosity didn't take me over to those shelves just to see.

    But I did notice other items being restricted so panic hoarders couldn't strip the shelves - milk LIMIT 2 - but I only needed one. I did pick up a half gallon of shelf stable milk & oddly enough there was no limit on those.

    1206:

    I was (and am) talking about classic triage

    Sorry, I meant my remarks as a contrast to classic triage/your comment.

    Viz, pointing out that some (other, nasty) people are pushing for triage based on "how much labour value can we save with the resources we have".

    I expect to see more of the latter if (when!) the pandemic gets worse, and as the climate catastrophe bites harder. In that sense it's quite reassuring to see even quite hard right governments paying money to keep the povo classes alive.

    1207:

    NPR (USA Public News Radio) recently interviewed someone high up in a US hospital system about this. The person flat out refused to answer anything specific and basically said there was no answer that wouldn't upset people. (Basically he was avoiding starting a pitchfork and torch mob before any decisions were actually made.)

    They did say it was an issue of ongoing discussions are situations changed.

    1208:

    David L @ 1069:

    12% are not avoiding crowded places, 19% are not refraining from touch objects in public, and 30% are not refraining from getting together with family.

    I HAD to go to a big box hardware store (Home Depot) yesterday[1]. As I rummaged through the various PVC fittings I did a lot of hand wiping. And they will stay in the bag until I have to use them. If I wait a week they any virus on them should be dead.

    [1] If toilet not working "stay at home" is problematic.

    I keep a box of these around the house:

    https://www.amazon.com/mil-Nitrile-Powder-Free-Gloves-Medium/dp/B00O3A00U8

    Harbor Freight Tools usually has them in stock, but they may be in short supply right now. I wore a pair my last shopping trip along with my camouflage western-movie-bank-robber bandana.

    1209:

    Not going to link[-1], but fairly sure someone has already gamed out what will really get L'Orange back in: Real suffering[0] for the Xians who really really need to feel persecuted with a tinge of Apocalyptic tension to get their jollies. And if granny gets to heaven just a little earlier, as long as her immortal soul (and Will) are intact, well... orgasmic.

    And L'Orange, well: might be just the man to give it to them.[1]

    ~

    Anyhow, Mask still on, but #1186 is close to how reading all of this makes us feel. We really do try and sanitize it for you good people, we really do.

    [-1] But it exists - spotting serious PR gurus who love MMA and https://babylonbee.com/ (it's the RW version of the Onion. Yikes) with real wealth swimming around topics they normally wouldn't be interested in. Self-named Ghouls with no souls, they can smell the real $$$ action coming soon[tm].

    [0] Not the usual grinding poverty, opiate addiction, posionous water or rent peonage, we're talking the good quality stuff the upper-middle class can appreciate

    [1] Putting us on a list? This is the good version, remember!?

    1210:

    Viz, pointing out that some (other, nasty) people are pushing for triage based on "how much labour value can we save with the resources we have".

    As opposed to the current US system, which is apparently "how much money to you have" (or "how much money does someone think you're worth").

    I'd like to think that those of us living with publicly funded health systems would be a bit more equitable, but I remember the Toronto Raptors getting H1N1 shots ahead of health care workers, on the grounds that their job involved public contact… (yeah, right)

    1211:

    someone high up in a US hospital system … flat out refused to answer anything specific and basically said there was no answer that wouldn't upset people

    And they were right — there is no answer that will make everyone happy.

    Hell, there's no answer that will make the doctors happy — even in a normal situation those making triage decisions are courting PTSD. I'm really hoping my niece doesn't end up making triage decisions — it's bad enough losing a patient, but having to decide which patients die… please, not my little girl who loved Pokemon.

    Fairly good read here: https://qz.com/1821843/ethicists-agree-on-who-should-get-treated-first-for-coronavirus/

    Wikipedia is decent on the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triage

    1212:

    Troutwaxer @ 1104: Cuomo has the New York State National Guard putting up field hospitals. That's not the U.S. military. (Not sure what country you're from, but the National Guard can be federalized in a time of military conflict, and they are counted as "reserves" but they work for the state governor, not the federal government.

    When Trump makes a move like that I'll be singing hosannas.

    Actually, the National Guard are U.S. Military. They're that "Well regulated militia" that frequently gets forgotten whenever the 2nd Amendment gets mentioned. The relationship is defined in the Constitution:

    Article 1, Section 8,
    The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
    15: To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
    16: To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

    Congress sets the standards for training and allocated funding through the Department of Defense, which organizes the National Guard through the National Guard Bureau, e.g. what units are in what states. The states are responsible for carrying out the training.

    The National Guard are the Governor's "Army" when they are not on Federal Duty, but they are always part of the U.S. Military (subject to the UCMJ) whether they're on State Duty or Federal Duty. The only difference is who is giving them their marching orders and which hand the money to pay for it comes from (Title 10 USC or Title 32 USC).

    I don't think the New York National Guard has an Army Hospital Unit. To the best of my knowledge all of the (non-active-duty) Army Hospitals are Army Reserve Units over which Governor Cuomo has no authority. I'm pretty sure New York has a full time National Guard Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Team (WMD-CST) who are providing some assistance (every state has one, in fact New York has two), but it's primarily Engineers, Transportation & Military Police doing civil relief work. Engineers converting hotel/motel rooms into makeshift hospital quarantine facilities, Transportation Units hauling supplies & Military Police distributing supplies to people who for whatever reason aren't able to go out.

    I'm pretty sure some Army Reserve medical units are being mobilized, but what I've read is the government is somewhat reluctant to do it because the medical professionals who make up those units are already working in their local hospitals & the military doesn't want to disrupt that work.

    I do know that two Navy Hospital Ships are working up and are supposed to deploy as soon as they can. One is supposedly headed for New York City and the other is headed for San Francisco initially and is supposed to move on to Seattle eventually.

    1213:

    mdlve @ 1111: Media reports have Cuomo tasking the Army Corps of Engineers - and while it may be a technicality it isn't the National Guard as far as I can tell but rather part of the regular Army.

    Media may not know the difference between the Army Corps of Engineers and Army Engineers. The New York Army National Guard has an Engineer Battalion in its TOE:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/204th_Engineer_Battalion_(United_States)

    If Cuomo is "tasking the Army Corps of Engineers" he's doing so indirectly by providing a list of needs to the Department of Defense.

    1214:

    Greg vP @ 1117: Yes, the Democrats are letting perfect be the enemy of good.

    Nope. They're just not voting for bill that gives Wall Street Banksters a massive, undeserved windfall with no strings attached while not providing ANY relief at all for working people losing their jobs, their livelihoods and their lives.

    1215:

    Pigeon @ 1118: It is for that reason that I am noticeably more pissed off than I usually am at the ever-increasing difficulty in getting hold of the plain ordinary versions of things because of their almost total displacement by fucked-up versions with loads of shit in them. (Example: having to order soap off the internet because I can't find any in the local shops.)

    0.1% sodium hypochlorite solution is reported to be nicely effective at decontaminating surfaces. So a 1 litre bottle of 5% solution will make 50 litres of decontaminant. This makes it a whole lot more practical than alcohol and the like which need 60-70% or thereabouts concentration to be similarly effective.

    I want to put such a solution in a plant mister and use it for decontamination of incoming items. I have the plant mister sitting there all brand new and shiny and unused, but I cannot find plain ordinary bleach anywhere local. The standard 5% solution with nothing extra in it beyond the sodium hydroxide required to stabilise it just isn't there. All I can find are fucked up things with shit in them to make them thick and gooey, which is exactly the kind of property I don't want.

    Put two Denture Cleaner Tablets in a gallon of water. That will give you the solution you want.

    It's what we used to use to sanitize our Camelbak Hydration Systems

    1216:

    Bill Arnold @ 1201: Another is to note the number of comments at the top and do a search for that number, or that number - 1.

    I use Notepad to write out my comments and format them before pasting them into the comment box. Then I hit Preview so I can proofread it. That way I catch MOST of my mistakes before hitting Submit.

    After my reply posts I copy the number of the comment I was replying to & paste it into the search box ... badabing, badaboom I'm right back where I left off, ready to read the next comment.

    1217:

    Just thought I'd add:

    https://xkcd.com/2284/

    1218:

    To a certain extent wise to avoid creating opportunities for emergency court cases challenging your decisions, but there is also a question of legal repercussions for anyone who reaches that point - so may be better to not have anything written down/recorded for the inevitable fallout after the pandemic.

    The exception of course would be if, like NY, the state government has a plan that includes considerations of the legal repercussions and thus protection can be baked into the process.

    Sadly, either way if the US gets to the point of rationing care the courts will likely be busy for years to come thus likely forcing those tasked with making the impossible decisions to keep reliving them.

    1219:

    FT has changed/added to their Covid graphs page, they now offer a subnational region graph of deaths - the NY entry on the graph shows why Governor Cuomo is so worried. https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest

    1220:

    I'd have to go back and listen again but in general as I remember it the person strongly implied there was a policy but it was something that was evolving over time and they were not going to go on the record with it. The implication being some of the issues you mention.

    1221:

    who owns the ventilator is not covered in the policy document at a glance

    I suspect that people who own a ventilator bring the hospital to their home and not the other way around.

    Owning one meant you bought it for personal use at least a few months ago and if using it NOT at a hospital then you had a 24/7 support staff and lots of other equipment somewhere NOT in a hospital.

    You or someone who really liked you had/has a lot of dinero.

    1222:

    Partial roundup (competently written) of US GOP Mammonite Death Cultists. (This will not be an easy sale for the GOP IMO. And even some GOP governors have ordered lockdowns.) No Thanks, I Will Not Immolate Myself on the Altar of Your Stock Portfolio - Republican maniacs coalesce around around the idea that grandparents must be sacrificed to COVID-19. (Charles P. Pierce, Mar 24, 2020)

    There is even a real Catholic Death Cultist: Say No To Death's Dominion (R.R.Reno[1], 2020/03/??) A number of my friends disagree with me. They support the current measures, insisting that Christians must defend life. But the pro-life cause concerns the battle against killing, not an ill-conceived crusade against human finitude and the dolorous reality of death. He seems genuinely unable (or unwilling) to see the similarities between putting a bullet through someone's forehead and coughing in many peoples faces when knowing one is (or even may be) infected with a deadly infectious disease. I mean, in the first case, the gun could randomly misfire; he would never know for sure. (If he indeed abides by the rule against [reckless?] causality violation in Leviticus 19:26.)

    [1] (bold mine) "He began graduate study at Yale University in the Department of Religious Studies in 1984 and completed his doctoral degree in 1990 in the area of religious ethics."

    1223:

    Thanks to all for navigation suggestions, ‘scroll from leave a comment’ is already what I do, but if you swipe up too rapidly it often twitches you back to the beginning, which is annoying. Using numbers in search doesn’t work for me, returns random bits of blog. There was a brief flash of inspiration when I read ‘use recent comments to jump near end’ which WOULD work, except that recent comments then disappeared from the side bar when I refreshed the page, bizarrely (it was there when I first read the advice). So RSI it is for now...

    1224:

    Scrolling What's wrong with Ctrl+"Home" &/o Ctrl+"End" ?????

    1225:

    What's wrong with Ctrl+"Home" &/o Ctrl+"End" ?

    It requires a keyboard. These are in short supply on iPads.

    1226:

    From an iPad go to home and select the latest comment on the thread from the bar on the right hand side of the screen. No scrolling needed.

    1227:

    Leaving aside the scrolling you need to do to get to the comment thread on the RHS of the screen. Then once you are at the bottom of the list of comments to the article, tapping the “sign in to comment” link. And then... well that’s when the bookmark you saved with a JavaScript command to jump to the bottom of the screen comes in handy.

    And I’m one who typically HAS a keyboard attached to the iPad I’m usually using to look at stuff here. Because the laptop is for work, which this definitely isn’t. And maybe there are people here who feel that lynx on a serial console is the correct way to use the internet, maybe you even just like early 90s labtams (I certainly did!), but when I’m sitting on the couch trying to forget about another ridiculous day, at this specific point in time I’m using an iPad (albeit one with the dedicated Apple keyboard that was made to go with it). If you leave aside iOS Chrome’s incredibly annoying habit of supplying smart quotes, it works fine for me. If I want to do anything serious, I have a shell on an Linux box in 5 seconds.

    Hey maybe Movable Type would be slightly easier to deal with in lynx on the Linux box? Haven’t tried.

    1228:

    To update:

    EasterCon is cancelled (and has been for a while).

    As of last night, WorldCon in Wellington is not going to happen as a normal WorldCon - the chairs have concluded that postponement just isn't logistically possible. What they're trying to go with is an online 'virtual' convention. How well this will work is anybody's guess, but I don't see any plausible alternatives, given that we're only 4 months out.

    Personally, I'm gutted not to be going down under. We've been looking forward to this for the best part of a decade, and we already had the 'if it's Friday, it's Rotorua' scheduling in our diary. But NZ as a country is being responsible and even if visitors are allowed in again by then, there's at least a possibility that there'll be a 14 day isolation for arrivals.

    (Also, conrunners? Stop sucking my wife back in - she's only just recovered from being on the Dublin committee. We wanted to attend a Worldcon as members again.)

    1229:

    EasterCon is cancelled (and has been for a while).

    Norwescon, also traditionally on Easter, cancelled two weeks ago. sad face

    ... an online 'virtual' convention...

    Over on Facepalm there's a "Con-cellation" group that's doing that, talking about the imaginary convention that we'd like to be having. It's not the same but it's fun.

    What it is not is a WorldCon.

    1230:

    If "Investors" have any sense, by Friday it'll be a crater (once the dollar xfer has cleared, of course).

    innocent look

    Rating Action: Moody's downgrades SoftBank Group to Ba3; places ratings on review for further downgrade

    https://www.moodys.com/research/Moodys-downgrades-SoftBank-Group-to-Ba3-places-ratings-on-review--PR_420820

    SoftBank attacks Moody’s after debt downgrade

    https://www.ft.com/content/5b5048ae-d00d-4b97-ad98-e63c0f44473b

    FT is paywalled, but they've got some Softbank scoops, so rude not to at least mention that they "got the drop" on this one. You can get around the paywall if you're naughty, but pay the piper and all that, they don't lie about their ideological stances at the very least.

    Reminded of L'Orange in the 1980's, he had a real thing about Japan, much like CN today. And, of course, many of the same advisors.

    Big Badda Boom! Olympics cancelled (Mr Dick Pound[2]), now this. [Yeah, really did not like that 731 reference]

    ~

    Since we don't know how your systems work, we do not understand why you cannot see these things in advance.[0]

    [0] Got a Camilla mention this morning, admist some seriously misguided / ignorant inserts[1]. Was wondering why, then: Coronavirus: Prince Charles tests positive but 'remains in good health' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52033845 -- it does appear that societal Elite are good at catching the lesser strain, does it not? Harvard, Princes, Senators. Things which make you ponder. Germany holds on though: German Chancellor Angela Merkel tests negative for coronavirus https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/top-merkel-aide-optimistic-chancellor-coronavirus-200323091446890.html

    [1] The cover story is always the weak point, not what happened at all.

    [2] Subtle? Nominative Determinism is fashionable in [redacted] circles.

    1231:

    gets to keep their ventilator as long as they stay out of hospital

    So if you're 30, and despite being stuck in this chair and on a ventilator, have recovered considerable quality of life after that drunk driver hit you, you then find yourself in the interesting position that you are required to present yourself for your scheduled examination in a specialist's office in a hospital; it's necessary to the persistence of your benefits. (the benefits system has been designed to make them very easy to lose, pretty much anywhere in the Anglosphere.)

    If you don't go, you lose your benefits, and very probably die.

    If you do go, you find yourself subject to triage rules written so that "on ventilator until death" -- which you are, hopefully many years in the future -- red-tags you. The hospital takes your ventilator (which is your private property) and uses it to support an abled person. You die.

    The rules weren't written like that by accident.

    Yes, triage sucks, but it's not magic divinely ordained suck; the rules as applied are produced by humans. A lot of those humans have unpleasant opinions about who really counts as human.

    1232:

    1) you aren't going to ER/Casualty, thus you aren't going to be subject to triage in the first place.

    2) when this becomes an issue, the hospital won't allow you in regardless - all non-urgent procedures having been cancelled and all non-critical admittance to the hospital having been cancelled anyway - note that hospitals are already doing this, banning visitors (and in the case of some NY hospitals not even allowing the dad to be present for childbirth. If you do not need treatment, you aren't entering the hospital.

    3) given that the last thing you should be doing is going outside, never mind going into a building that is pretty much guaranteed to have Covid in/around it, your specialist will likely have made alternative arrangements to keep you safe - there is no point bringing you into a hospital for a visit if that kills you by giving you Covid-19.

    4) those specialists will have cancelled routine visits anyway - they will be needed helping to treat the critical patients that are overwhelming the system (and in the run up to that working on training some other hospital staff on how to do some of the work given that in some respects the number of ventilators is the easier problem - it isn't so easy to come up with the specialists to set up and monitor the machines/patients.

    So I am not saying there are no problems with the guidelines, or that the disabled don't face difficulties with society - but I think in a large part these risks are being overblown (which is unfortunate because there likely are issues that need to be dealt with that will get lost in the noise).

    1233:

    Oh, look, the US Government has done the $2T Covid relief bill - as expected (well sort of), the Democrats didn't cave and as a result both sides were able to come up with a better deal that reflected both of their wants, and hopefully helps all Americans. https://www.npr.org/2020/03/25/818881845/senate-reaches-historic-deal-on-2t-coronavirus-economic-rescue-package

    1234:

    It's not $2 trn, stop reading stuff that is lying to you, your grasp of politics is annoyingly unsound[-1]. It's $2trn 'direct assistance[-2]' and $4 trn Fed loan widening. The important part is the $4 trn Fed loan stuff - which is where the 'real' economy is working.

    e.g.

    NYSE:BA has jumped ~+20% two days in a row[0] and despite claims, they've not changed their business model, nor have they confirmed 737 technical issues as solved[1] and guess which country ["because reasons"] just sealed its borders[2] and there's still a huge down-turn in air traffic[3] and so on.

    Humans are not changing their systems, they are changing how information about said systems is displayed. And the feedback loops are widening.

    [-2] Read the bill: shockingly it's not just a $2k check to the average Joe. https://appropriations.house.gov/sites/democrats.appropriations.house.gov/files/COVIDSUPP3_xml.pdf - note, this probably isn't the final final final version

    [-1] NPR was taken over in the last round of howling media insanity and is now run by people using its prestige name to honk you guff. It had ~10 years of sustained attack and is now heavily neutered / reliant on commercial ad revenue / 'philanthropic' gestures.

    [0] https://www.thestreet.com/investing/boeing-us-airlines-soar-after-senate-agrees-spending-bill

    https://seekingalpha.com/news/3554698-calhoun-still-sees-mid-year-return-for-737-max

    [1] Boeing’s 737 Max Software Outsourced to $9-an-Hour Engineers https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-28/boeing-s-737-max-software-outsourced-to-9-an-hour-engineers

    These coders from Indian companies, many of them college graduates, were allegedly given the task of writing codes for complex specifications set by Boeing; the company says it never relied on them for the development of the MACS; HCL, Cyient also refute the claim

    https://www.businesstoday.in/sectors/aviation/737-max-faults-blamed-on-hcl-cyient-engineers-boeing-refutes/story/359988.html

    TL;DR BA are claiming ~June is solved date for 737 stuff.

    [2] If you think Brexit borders are a nightmare, think again. Then again, check Kashmir. You didn't forget about that place, did you?

    [3] https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/march-commercial-traffic-down-10-below-2019-so-far/

    1235:

    The BA question is without even touching supply chain issues.

    There are a legion of very smart people right at this moment working out what sub $20 oil is doing to their industries at the same time demand is tanking at the same time COVID19 might impact chains as borders close.

    And that's just a single industry.

    "Storage Crunch" is a good term: lots of ships are floating around stuffed to the gills atm, but... the spice must flow.

    “Both the big state-owned [refiners] and the independents have taken the decision to really cut back on crude runs”, agrees Huang, given that jet and diesel/gasoil spreads have plunged in recent weeks.

    https://www.petroleum-economist.com/articles/markets/outlook/2020/oil-and-covid-19-part-one-the-route-back 5 Mar 2020 so almost current (lol).

    Anyhow, for just how quick things progress, "Jet fuel crack spread" has an ironic name and is useful[1], apparently.

    We're no expert, just focusing on the ants.

    [0] https://www.airlines.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/jet-fuel-1.pdf

    https://www.marketwatch.com/story/transportation-fuels-sink-with-jet-fuel-most-susceptible-to-losses-as-covid-19-tanks-travel-2020-03-06

    [1] https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-Jet-Fuel-Crack-Killing-Oil-Wont-Last.html -- Narrator: do not rub that monkey paw... too late

    https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/energy/refined-products/jet-fuel-cargoes-cif-nwe-platts-crack-spread.html

    1236:

    (Yes, the joke was that CME is offering 0.00 to all futures because they're closed due to COVID19 - silly, but hey)

    1237:

    Using numbers in search doesn’t work for me, returns random bits of blog.

    Tack a colon on the end of the number.

    There was a brief flash of inspiration when I read ‘use recent comments to jump near end’ which WOULD work, except that recent comments then disappeared from the side bar when I refreshed the page, bizarrely (it was there when I first read the advice).

    The recent comments sidebar is only on the main page of the entire blog.

    1239:

    Also, the Bill hasn't passed yet, when you implied it had. Nope, there's gonna be a media cycle about it.

    JUST IN: Pelosi praises Senate coronavirus stimulus package, says House will begin reviewing it http://hill.cm/ouzaNCI

    https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1242812248252391424

    Sen. Chuck Schumer: "We wrote a provision. Not just the President, but any major figure in government -- if they or their family have majority control, they can't get grants or loans."

    https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1242831631087538176

    Democrats (House) are trying to add a rider to prevent L'Orange companies getting any form of help - which is 100% the wrong thing to do, since Hotels & Hospitality are a core tranche of GOP support, but also the underclass. It's not about L'Orange, it's about Florida and all the other REITs getting spanked.

    Also, it'll probably mean that Family Businesses (a form of tax loop hole loved by stock owning Americans) will need to be looked at. Or the GOP just crank out Biden's Son or Chelsea etc.

    Tank that voter block under 40. Really go for it at the wrong time. 100% great instincts.

    ~

    UK:

    Obvious COINTELPRO is obvious.

    Earth is healing. The air and water is clearing. Corona is the cure. Humans are the disease!

    https://twitter.com/xr_east/status/1242527618823577602

    Immediately fog-horned by AF Neil and the Gammonsphere: seriously, this kind of malarky was tired in the 1960's, let alone 2020. You have to have a sub £50k salary to think a bit of the old 'hur de dur' works in the modern age. Why are you letting the 40+ age group run your COINTELPRO? They're shit at it.

    More seriously (we told you so - CTRL+F ):

    BREAKING Prisons in England and Wales are to be placed in “lockdown”, BBC News understands. Although it hasn’t been officially confirmed, tough restrictions will be placed on prisoners’ movements in all jails and all visits will be cancelled.

    https://twitter.com/DannyShawBBC/status/1242370587563102208 -- Home Affairs Correspondent, BBC, presumably correct.

    This is how you get prison riots + guard Union revolts as USA (Washington), Italy, most of S.America can tell you. Seriously? But, hey: been peeping that tune since a month ago.

    ~

    1240:

    Sorry, not Family Business, Family Offices, distracted. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/family-offices.asp

    And no: no US Gov Bill is going to touch them, for obvious reasons.

    Smart bunnies will have spotted @TihoBrkan up above is (or purports to be) "Managing a multi-family office" for "Atlas Investors".

    Look: it's crap jokes all the way down, ok?

    Shortly after its discovery, C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) began growing brighter than expected—a lot brighter. So bright that it can now be seen by amateur astronomers with binoculars. It is expected to reach its peak brightness at the end of May. Making it even more exciting is its color—slightly green.

    https://phys.org/news/2020-03-comet-atlas.html

    1241:

    Can we have some posts with readable content, please?

    1242:

    Like the old cowboy movie routine, where one or more bad guys are shooting at the ground, yelling, "DANCE! DANCE", and when the sheriff/marshal comes over, "we was just funnin' him!"

    1243:

    I don't think so. When more and more people start dying, they will start blaming him. There are the whacko Christians, and the ones that occasionally respond when the RW hits them in the face.

    Glanced at Babylon Bee... oh, geez, The Onion for people who think DimBulb (Breitbart) in a little liberal).

    RW: Real World

    1244:

    Why does mark not like Apple, or pads...?

    1245:

    Dunno if you missed it, but there was a HUGE outcry last week, when several Senators and others dumped stock, and made millions, while they were denying that COVID-19 was bad. No, none of them are getting loans. Now, companies that they invest in, esp. via mutual funds....

    NPR: nope, you're wrong. NPR BROKE AND SOLD OUT to Newt the Grinch in 1995 (and Bob Edwards has the unmitigated GALL to write a bio of Edward R. Murrow, after Edwards groveled to the GOP), and they've been that way on politics since. (Like, the summer of '96, when Congress was having hearings on ADM and monopoly, and Wed of the week, ADM was suddenly a sponsor, and suddenly NPR's coverage went to nothing).

    1246:

    I went out shopping this morning. No flour at all in Aldi.(And yes, the checkout woman told me that early on, idiots were walking out with 8-10 bags of flour). Guy in line told me of somewhere else, mostly catered to hispanics, no flour. Next door to it was a mercado... and they had 6-8 bags, so I now have one.

    whew

    On the other hand, Ellen's just made some calls, and I'm taking her to a dentist in the morning, presumably to have the tooth pulled....

    1247:

    We have the suspicion that mdlve is millennial or gen-z so won't have been around when NPR was an actual quality broadcaster[-1] and we're also trying to not depress everyone into inaction. They don't have the experience of the times-before.

    NPR post that also got hit to drive out the old timers, but more importantly to stamp out Federal aid. Long and grueling. It's still a hobby-horse today[0], largely for easy braying points, not based on any reality.

    ~

    No, we didn't miss the "outrage". The point you're missing is that it no longer matters. "We Won, You Lost" as the refrain goes on in their heads.

    Here's a sample response to Greg but he's making a point that he's worked out the Whitelist:

    Except they're not. Perhaps you'll believe The Times of London?

    Here is what Barclays are asking of small business owners looking to access the emergency government coronavirus loan scheme. With the economy going to hell and no clarity on when trading might commence again, what sensible director is going to sign up to this?

    https://twitter.com/jameshurley/status/1242514114703958016 - 24 Mar 2020, Business Correspondent.

    Government scheme is (allegedly) a massive wealth transfer, likely to eradicate medium to small businesses. Don't trust us, trust your business media.

    936 - Isn't this a massive subsidy for transnational Capital rather than anything else?

    So glad it took The Times four days to notice and affirm that to their readers.

    984 - ~"boring & inane conspiracy theory"

    Extreme measures to flatten the virus “curve” is sensible-for a time-to stretch out the strain on health infrastructure. But crushing the economy, jobs and morale is also a health issue-and beyond. Within a very few weeks let those with a lower risk to the disease return to work.

    https://twitter.com/lloydblankfein/status/1241907502662418437

    shrug

    An attempt was made. And we stuck on Topic. And we tried to keep the old people well informed. Turns out, that's not what you wanted.

    ~

    When more and more people start dying, they will start blaming him.

    Someone somewhere made a very good point about NDAs and attempts to get quality information from the front line in Modern USA - turns out, it's very hard and due to the Corporate nature of the beast, very easy to silence witnesses. Sorry Mark, they'll just not report it.

    UK - want to bet?

    Status of COVID-19

    As of 19 March 2020, COVID-19 is no longer considered to be a high consequence infectious diseases (HCID) in the UK.

    The 4 nations public health HCID group made an interim recommendation in January 2020 to classify COVID-19 as an HCID. This was based on consideration of the UK HCID criteria about the virus and the disease with information available during the early stages of the outbreak. Now that more is known about COVID-19, the public health bodies in the UK have reviewed the most up to date information about COVID-19 against the UK HCID criteria. They have determined that several features have now changed; in particular, more information is available about mortality rates (low overall), and there is now greater clinical awareness and a specific and sensitive laboratory test, the availability of which continues to increase.

    The Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens (ACDP) is also of the opinion that COVID-19 should no longer be classified as an HCID.

    The need to have a national, coordinated response remains, but this is being met by the government’s COVID-19 response.

    Cases of COVID-19 are no longer managed by HCID treatment centres only. All healthcare workers managing possible and confirmed cases should follow the updated national infection and prevention (IPC) guidance for COVID-19, which supersedes all previous IPC guidance for COVID-19. This guidance includes instructions about different personal protective equipment (PPE) ensembles that are appropriate for different clinical scenarios.

    https://www.gov.uk/guidance/high-consequence-infectious-diseases-hcid

    Ebola[2] and sexy hi-viz dangerous HCIDs make the news: AIDs stopped as soon as well... the history is there to be read. That's the way it'll go down, it's China Town, Jake.[1] Or: statistics don't sell, L'Orange is right for all the wrong reasons.

    ~

    Or that's the Bet they're willing to make. And are making.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3DcChXNyYQ

    [-1] Much akin to the modern BBC political output.

    [0] Donald Trump Again Wants To Eliminate Funding For Public Media, But Congress Likely Won’t Let Him https://deadline.com/2020/02/donald-trump-public-media-pbs-npr-1202856498/

    [1] Apologies but not racism, mocking those who do do that.

    [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebola_virus_cases_in_the_United_States

    1248:

    Sorry, forgot the reality link to show just how poisonous things are:

    $75 million in the bill for Corporation for Public Broadcasting, that is PBS and NPR

    https://twitter.com/kerpen/status/1242860708771041286 25 Mar 2020 - Blue Tick, look at his position.

    Yes: 100% committed to making bipartisan hits on a denuded service just in case a single dollar of ad revenue is missed and the public might have a single source of already corrupted nonsense but a little better than Corporate output. He is, of course, pro-L'Orange.

    And you think the jokes are bad.

    1249:

    It is always amusing just how wrong you can be.

    Sorry, wrong again, not a Millennial or Gen-z

    1250:

    Surprised you're not posting about CAN's responses so far.

    For over 12 million low- and modest-income families, who may require additional help with their finances, the Government is proposing to provide a one-time special payment by early May 2020 through the Goods and Services Tax credit (GSTC). This will double the maximum annual GSTC payment amounts for the 2019-20 benefit year. The average boost to income for those benefitting from this measure will be close to $400 for single individuals and close to $600 for couples. This measure will inject $5.5 billion into the economy.

    https://www.canada.ca/en/department-finance/news/2020/03/canadas-covid-19-economic-response-plan-support-for-canadians-and-businesses.html

    One off payments don't solve structural issues. But hey:

    Alberta Turns to Century Bonds to Raise Money in Market Rout

    Alberta, the province that produces most of Canada’s oil, sold C$300 million ($207 million) in 100-year bonds in a private placement, according to people familiar with the matter.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-24/alberta-turns-to-century-bonds-to-raise-money-in-market-rout

    C$300 mil last a province what these days? Not that long you say?

    An additional $500 million has been committed to respond to the COVID-19 public health crisis to support front-line health professionals working to keep Albertans safe and healthy.

    https://www.alberta.ca/budget.aspx

    You'll note the hat + the fact that 100 years is not looking likely due to climate stuff. Glad to know everyone is taking things seriously.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bless_your_heart

    1251:

    whitroth Flour, yes. I'm hoping my local specialist store's supposed delivery on Friday shows up - & I'm running low on "Plain" flour, too. No YEAST, which could be a disaster, unless supplies resume.

    "The Times of London" is a Murdoch paper & is as reliable as the "Sun" ( But without the tits ) I'm afraid. That's a joke which UK readers will understand the rest of you will have to ask others for explanations, whilst I do a quick ROTFL ....

    mdive 😂

    1252:

    With everything that has been going on for the last 2 weeks Aldi shouldn't have been allowing people to buy that volume of product - many stores here have for a while been restricting volume, including in many cases to 1 or 2 items per family/per day only (admittedly difficult to enforce the per day part, but when you need to line up to get into the store...

    1253:

    No YEAST, which could be a disaster, unless supplies resume. It's the time of year for matzos No need to be strict about the recipe/timing if you're not Jewish. (Or not strict.) I expect that a lot of people will be making their own this year to avoid a supermarket trip. Yeast bread is better though (excepting Passover). My mother's (step)mother taught me to knead dough/let it rise/etc/bake bread as a [9 year old?]; very satisfying (don't do it much though). You can probably stretch yeast pretty far; just need to give it longer to rise. Exponential growth.

    --

    Oh, and did a supermarket scouting run today to see store hours and special rules. People in my area (which is in lockdown but allows cars and critical services) are starting to wear masks, maybe 20-25 percent. I did my part, wearing a dust mask, to encourage others. Was good to see a mother and young daughter with blue surgical masks. This was near the local hospital so she may have been an employee.

    -- SBH #1230 it does appear that societal Elite are good at catching the lesser strain, does it not? Harvard, Princes, Senators. Things which make you ponder. Such people are far more likely manage to get tested even with light or no symptoms than ordinary people, skewing the (found infected/severe case) ratio. (My mind sees this as probabilistic cover for possible shenanigans of a few sorts, but I'm a suspicious type.)

    1254:

    Not really much to post about, other than they seem to be screwing up and making sure they they lose the next election - though fortunate for the governing party's minority government Covid-19 has likely delayed the opposition parties for a while.

    One of the joys of sharing an invisible line between a lumbering giant is said giant's media is very pervasive - so the government promising C$400/C$600 in 6 to 8 weeks when the US is giving $1200/$2400(*) in a matter of weeks - which works out to C$1600 - probably isn't going to go down well. Regardless of whether a lump sum payment is the right way to deal with it a lot of people are facing money issues right now and payments weeks into the future are little help now.

    As for Alberta - those hats and their idiocy is not a surprise - the hats showed up while Trump was still campaigning in 2016 and was just further proof that Alberta is Canada's version of the southern US. As for the 100 year bond, again part of Alberta's stupidity - they have no sales tax and unlike say Norway they haven't banked any of their oil windfall for a rainy day so when oil tanks so does Alberta government revenue - and their Republican like outlook on government means few acceptable methods to raise money in a crisis when their oil economy has been struggling for the last couple of years anyway.

      • assuming 2 adult households both get the payment, stories say per individual and quick search doesn't indicate what happens for a married couple.
    1255:

    And it gets somewhat worse, as many/most won't even see that $400. It appears the $400 payment is actually just a one time payment equivalent to a taxpayers annual GST refund. The GST refund is calculated based on income, so many won't see $400 but some lower amount - a shock when it arrives given the $400 amount being "promised"

    1256:

    It was more a serious q'tion about whether or not you think these slight economic tinkerings will be enough to offline some massive structural[0] 'bonfires' or not.

    'Cause it's 2020 and we're not going back to the old models[0.1] and you old fuckers[0.2] stole the future. And delight in pissing in the faces of anyone even slightly more attuned / connected.

    If you look @ this thread and Void in the gaps, what's essentially happening is that a LOT of clever peeps reckon they can ride the system into a furlong / slow-down[1] without actually bothering to re-wire a lot of your noodles[2] but remain 'on top' while pretending 'Normal' is normal still. They're pretty chill about REITs and so on, 'cause they've kinda priced it in.

    Which means something more chaotic is required!

    And... well.... what the [redacted] consider "top material" probably isn't what most SF fans would consider "top material". Poor Camilla, she tested negative for COVID19.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZppdNcMuRFU [3]

    ~

    Anyhow, Eight years later, still got the spark. "Vestigal remains" or not.

    There's only two of us left

    [0] Q'Bec National!

    [0.1] You ate all teh fucking fish.

    [0.2] This is @ specific old fuckers, senile things. [redacted] Black Knight Satellite. :P

    [1] Which even Shell etc admits is required

    [2] COVID19? Yeah, you should see the Squid stuff on ice they got from our body (original one)

    [3] Any idiot can throw away a trillion dollar short just by looking at your media. The trick is knowing 4 months either side the effects.

    1257:

    Which means something more chaotic is required! LOL. :-) Been reading, thanks for the updates; not covered by regular news feeds.

    The first I've since of this sort of paper: Early in the epidemic: impact of preprints on global discourse about COVID-19 transmissibility (The Lancet, March 24, 2020) Just noting it; not particularly interesting.

    1258: 936 + 1247 are mixing currently in the UK. Nasty, but hey: You killed the butterflies

    Check it out now. Twitter. 28.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBClImpnfAg

    ~

    Y'gonna want to grep 'other side, black and white regions and the .... wings.... came.... through'. Writing in Light etc.

    Math is not the language of the Universe: it's your scribblings on Eternity like kids defacing the toilet block.

    1259:

    Lol, sorry.

    Here's the actual official video - the joke is obvious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMrIy9zm7QY

    1260:

    I suspect I will regret this, but if you want to ask a serious question that gets a reply then I suggest you write a clear question.

    1261:

    That's extremely clear to us, to the point of childish babbling for babies.

    Ok, fine: please denote your area of experience (job, education, social strata, you're obviously male) and we'll translate it for you.

    1262:

    Oh dear, twice in one day.

    Sorry to disappoint you but I have a BSc.

    1263:

    black and white region Found those. (They have been in my (large file of) working notes.) I will stay quiet 'cause.

    1264:

    Hmm.

    This body has a MSc and two BA/BScs and gave up a PHD due to reasons. Apparently also from what you would consider "top 10 world places to study". Not some pissant Canadian outfit from 50 years ago, either.

    Does this mean we are more complex than you? Better than you?

    Your Minds are weird.

    ~

    Simple question: do you think CAN survives teh Jackpot[0] given its current sociological, economic and political make-up.

    It's not a complex question.

    [0] Gibson

    1265:

    (You have NO IDEA the amount of shit we get for slumming it in this type of lower order body that can barely do complex higher order thought either - look, it's like COVID19 hit while on Summer Break, now we're trapped in some 28 yr old horny fuckwit whose best idea of progress is bitch basic trans* anarchist thought and a bit of Kropotkin while being able to read your World Economy charts and having a knack for being lucky. Seriously: WHY HORNY ON MAIN?).

    "Sorry to disappoint you but I have a BSc"

    Yeah, and we're stuck in some muppet, weeee.

    But one of us can predict major world events and the other cannot, so, hey, maybe there's a missile gap here.

    1266:

    Bill Arnold I make: "Plain" bread - 75% Hard flour 25% white spelt + Cumin & Caraway seeds Wholemeal bread 33% each hard white, dark spelt, white rye Focaccia I also make Yorksire Puddings & Drop-Scones - both of which need "Plain" flour.

    1258

    Totally unconnected to reality or understanding Seen in the past week: Large White / Peacock / Brimstone / Comma. So - LIAR

    mdive @ 1260 You will get lots of obscurantist ranting about how "clever" she is - or that's the usual form I'm afraid ... ...See the poncing reply @ 1261 - no, you won't get one. For those of us with MSc's it's even worse. Fuck knows how she (?) deals with PhD's ...

    @ 1264 What in: "PPE" & "MBA" perchance? Professional political bullshitting in other words.

    @ 1265 one of us can predict major world events Yeah, like the bible & the koran can ...... [ IF you are gullible enough ]

    1267:

    Wholemeal bread does not contain any white flour.

    1268:

    Thanks for the advice, fortunately I have been around long enough to be aware of the "fun" of dealing with them.

    It is unfortunate, because as indicated by host, there is likely a lot of useful, informative, insightful stuff but the inability/unwillingness to clearly articulate makes trying to tease it out painful and time wasting.

    1269:

    My iPad anti-scrolling technique is to use the date stamp link at the top of every message. Besides linking to the discussion page, it specifies a particular comment, and most web browsers will scroll to that comment when they finish loading that date stamp link URL.

    So, every few comments, I tap on the date so that the browser will remember to return there. Additionally, tapping on the date will (at least on the iPad) scroll things so that comment is at the top of the screen. Then I leave that tab open in the browser, and can resume reading at the same spot, even after a power-down reboot. The one hazard is that you may spend too much time reading :-)

    To refresh the discussion (bring in new comments), the page refresh works, but sometimes doesn't jump down to the comment. An alternative is to click on the URL bar at the top of the screen, it then goes into URL editing mode, and without making any changes, you can then hit Enter/Go to have it reload the page and jump to the comment more reliably. I also use that trick to recover from wild scrolling due to touchpad GUI errors.

    1270:

    So, yet another guess as to what you are asking.

    There is no reason for Canada not to survive. If you want to ask about a more specific thing that you think threatens Canada then a more specific question can perhaps get a better response.

    But really the only threat to Canada, and it is more of a say mid-term threat than the next couple of years, is the US. And if it comes to that there isn't anything we can do.

    1271:

    EC @ 167 Mine does, so there ...

    1272:

    But really the only threat to Canada, and it is more of a say mid-term threat than the next couple of years, is the US. And if it comes to that there isn't anything we can do.

    No. That's so utterly incorrect to equate to insanity. It's literally insanity. Bug eyed nonsense insanity.

    Here's the meme format: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1OhC9h3flY

    Translate this:

    SB thought that they have all the means of propaganda, they hadn't heard anything about the secret vaults of Druj-Dajjal promethean left accelerationism that walks about in the dark with a metis smirk on its face.

    https://twitter.com/NegarestaniReza/status/1243205394215907328

    You can't - we find it laughably cute and funny in a naive way.

    What in: "PPE" & "MBA" perchance?

    Thatsthejoke.jpg

    1273:

    https://twitter.com/KANTBOT20K/status/1243227646105976832

    KantBot went through a dark nazbol era, emerges cleansed.

    But yeah. A- content there, on target though.

    1274:

    @ 1272 ANSWER the bloody question ????

    1275:

    I make real wholemeal - no adulteration allowed!

    1276:

    Err, it's one of my memories from my teens, we even watched it in biology class in school when there was nothing else to do IIRC.

    It's somewhat hammy, but I used the cinema scene to explain to my cousin twice removed what "transmission by air" means, and why windy days are good.

    From the description, Contagion seems to be the better movie, I bought the Blu-ray some time ago but didn't have the time to watch it till now.

    Well, now is the time to go nostalgic, I just sent my brother a link to a animated Ghostbusters episode written by JMS, "Ragnarok and Roll". Maybe I can finally convert him to one true religion that is Babylon 5...

    Speaking of nostalgia, at the streamed concert Neil Gaiman said a Sandman series/movie(?) is in the making, IIRC at about the same time I watched Outbreak I also read Sandman at our library; then I bumped into "American Gods" when visiting my brother in Italy in 2003. Memories...

    He tried to contact some contacts from Milano, no answer till now. Sorry, going over to the other posting.

    Specials

    Merchandise

    About this Entry

    This page contains a single entry by Charlie Stross published on March 12, 2020 1:15 PM.

    COVID-19 was the previous entry in this blog.

    Infomercial Interlude is the next entry in this blog.

    Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

    Search this blog

    Propaganda