outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

There is an old timer blowhard who is in a lot of my yoga classes, and I almost lost my shit when he started lecturing everyone about how flu shots cause dementia.

― Mario Meatwagon (Moodles), Tuesday, January 28, 2020 9:33 AM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

Did u ask him how many flu shots it took for him to come by this opinion

I did not want to engage at all because I knew I would get extremely angry very quickly, and also didn't want to learn about the rest of the class's insights on vaccines, I'm sure it would be a very depressing and futile conversation.

Acupuncture needles work just as well as inoculation needles against the flu, afaict, and with 100% less autism and chakra contamination.

i've heard that a knitting needle delivered directely into the brain through the eyeball immediately drops the risk of infection to zero

A 2100-year old Chinese mummy told me the trick is to draw blood, otherwise you get the coronavirus, or worse.

ehhhh

I'd like to thank the scientific community for teaching me her language or I wouldn't have been able to share this ageless insight with you.

ehhhh

My favorite sad lol flu shot story came from several years ago. I popped in to a drug store to get it, put my name on a list, and then waited a couple of minutes. There was a mother and her teen son sitting in the waiting area, too, and after I put in my info the mother declares derisively "I hear the flu shot *makes* you get sick." And then her son, lost in his phone, sort of mutters an affirmation, "uh-huh." And I turn to her and ask, why would they design a shot that purposely makes you sick? And she basically muttered some version of "well, I dunno about that ..." (Echoed years later when I was stuck next to a crazy old Trump supporter on a plane, and when we landed he started ranting about Obama - this was during the election - blah blah blah. And then he starts complaining that Obama is anti-military, and that Trump is more respectful of the troops. And I finally turn to him and say, you know Trump is a draft dodger who made up medical conditions to get his deferment, right? And he called avoiding VD his own version of Vietnam, right? And the guy just mutters "well, I dunno about that ...")

Over the Christmas holidays back in Montreal a cashier at the supermarket told me her mother fell prey to Alzheimer's after getting the flu shot and she looked at me pleadingly, saying 'that's got to be it, right?', and I had absolutely no idea how to respond save via a half-mumbled and utterly inadequate 'it must be hard, I lost my grandmother to it as well'.

Lol!

via a half-mumbled and utterly inadequate

This came out as 'ehhhh' didn't it?

lol it certainly did, although I had yet to learn the tongue of the Ancients at that point.

:D If anything you offered some consolation to the poor woman. That's something.

The extent to which people dispense with logic in a desperate pursuit of etiology is truly tragic.

You should tell these people that dementia could likely be caused by bacteria from poor dental hygiene and then stare straight at their mouth.

josh in chicago, you could get your daughter a tattoo to get her over needle phobia.

lol she doesn't seem to be afraid of (the idea of) tattoos or piercings! just medical needles.

you should make her start donating plasma for her allowance.

a woman in the supermarket yesterday was having a prolonged coughing fit near the dairy, into the seafood and then meat section. I gave her such a death stare down and kept diverting my path like I had a restraining order of 20 feet on her. I finally noticed her husband glaring at me. TAKE YOUR WOMAN OUTSIDE!

looks like we are about to have the first fatality from this in Paris, an ~80 year old Chinese tourist from Hubei province

xpost Seriously, do as the kids do and embrace the Vampire Sneeze.
https://2gm3eq3zfq5s1iqp1h2j2dit-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/15114435_web1_190118-HGO-FluUpdate.jpg

'Tis what I was taught. It feels like a North American shibboleth whenever I do it in Europe but maybe I'm making this up?

As the global death toll from an alarming new coronavirus surged this week, promoters of the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory were urging their fans to ward off the illness by purchasing and drinking dangerous bleach.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/qanon-conspiracy-theorists-magic-cure-for-coronavirus-is-drinking-lethal-bleach

drinking bleach to own the libs

you know what i'm ok with this

haha yes

take the bleach challenge, 4chan

Do we have a thread for uplifting news? If so, this should be cross-posted there.

can’t catch coronavirus if you’re dead

https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/022/138/highresrollsafe.jpg

Pour it all over each pizza slice for extra effectiveness.

Silly 4chan. Bleach doesn't work unless you inhale it.

It says purchasing and drinking dangerous bleach. maybe don't drink the dangerous stuff?

yeah, stick to "drinking bleach"

Wow. I'm fairly certain that I made a joke (perhaps more than one) about Trumpites being credulous enough to drink bleach under the right circumstances but...(sniff) but I never dared to truly dream the impossible dream.

Honestly, could care less about adults doing this to themselves. But the dark underbelly here is the tens of thousands of parents of autistic children that make their children drink bleach, thanks to the internet and boundless credulity. The same demographic as Q-Anon.

tens of thousands of parents

citation needed

oh, see, Sanpaku never repeats anything he didn’t read on the Internet first

am i reading this right parents of autistic children are the same demographic as Q-Anon?

Perhaps you haven't encountered articles like: Parents are poisoning their children with bleach to 'cure' autism. These moms are trying to stop it.

Tens of thousands is perhaps an overstatement. It's definitely in the hundreds.

Mordy, the sort of parents that engage in conspiracy-minded thinking about autism, and attempt to cure their children with bleach, turpentine, urine, chelation etc. reflect the same credulity and lack of critical thinking skills that we see in Q-Anon followers.

just a couple of orders of magnitude, nbd

lol @ "perhaps"

it’s a venn diagram, but one that increases in overlap with concern

My best friend is coming to visit me next week and I am in a place throbbing with chinese and japanese tourists right now. We do not have a very good record of trips together. She got swine flu on our trip to Belize and Mexico like 10 years ago. And that was not even in the top 3 of worst things that has happened. I should probably get some kerosene and matches.

I would say hand sanitizer and face masks but maybe you’re going in the scorched bedding and body bag direction?

these are pragmatic times!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EPct4t5X0AAofxW?format=jpg&name=large

Just saw that the number of confirmed cases of the Wuhan coronavirus has overtaken the 2003 SARS outbreak inside of mainland China.

Also a reminder (via a doctor on the radio) that face masks help prevent you from transmitting stuff, but don't necessarily prevent you from contracting stuff. You need a much higher grade of mask for that, the kind doctors wear.

I'd imagine the form-fitting N95 masks I have do a respectable job of reducing inhaled bronchial aerosols. The main problem will be that not many people have the experience from infectious medicine health care to remove them, gloves, and other protective clothing in a way that doesn't contaminate their bodies or home. The closest experience I have is cancer cell culture in a lab (ambient microbes kill human cell lines in petri dishes), which took days to learn. I imagine if it comes to a lockdown, I could set up my apt entrance with a small table, waste bin, hand sanitizer, spray bottles of Everclear and bleach. Outer garments left outside, laundry bagged, everything sprayed down with bleach and then covered with a tarp and weights to prevent air circulation.

There are already runs on masks at home improvement stores through the US. Later today I plan on seeing the situation on hand-sanitizer. 190 proof grain neutral spirits in a spray bottle will do in a pinch, though, and are just a dilution away from vodka.

I'm filling a tub with bourbon, just to be safe.

that face masks help prevent you from transmitting stuff, but don't necessarily prevent you from contracting stuff.

can you explain? does not compute that virus can go one direction but not the other. i'm actually interning in san bernardino county EHS dept. and would ask, but they're all out preparing/taking care of the flight that is arriving @ a air force base

that was a xpost.

then there's also the fact that people are gonna feel protected with the mask, like gloves in a kitchen and wear them too long and wash hands too infrequently ime.
not to mention you only get a seal with fitted masks. i wonder how eyes being exposed adds to risk also.