outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

Although the Iceland data is a small sample to date, mass testing has to be the global objective now.

"A high proportion of asymptomatic infections could partially explain the high attack rate among cruise ship passengers and crew. SARS-CoV-2 RNA was identified on a variety of surfaces in cabins of both symptomatic and asymptomatic infected passengers up to 17 days after cabins were vacated on the Diamond Princess but before disinfection procedures had been conducted (Takuya Yamagishi, National Institute of Infectious Diseases, personal communication, 2020). Although these data cannot be used to determine whether transmission occurred from contaminated surfaces, further study of fomite transmission of SARS-CoV-2 aboard cruise ships is warranted."

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e3.htm

That doesn't mean the active virus was present (I learned a couple of hours ago).

Ah, I did not know that.

The worldometer chart I check obsessively added a new column today: total deaths/million population (Italy, 101).

So how about that Hantavirus eh

yes make sure you socially distance yourself from rats

i ain't changing my life for no virus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWzGoIs2KE0

Unimportant question I think about anyway: how far in advance are commercial buys for television made? I find it very strange these days watching ads for a world that's not the same.

Just talked to my wife, who is in advertising, and she told me some interesting stuff I never considered. For one, right now there is literally *no* production of commercials going on. Nada. Anything being made is all being cobbled together from stock footage or being farmed out to, like, popular youtubers or whatever. But more interesting to me was her observation that because of that, there are millions and millions of budget-dollars not being spent right now. No sports means no ads, no ads means all that money that would have been spent on ads is just sitting there. Looking ahead, an even bigger challenge (for advertising) is that should this resolve by, say, fall (possible/likely), that's election season, so that even when advertisers are ready to spend again, a lot of the airwaves will be taken up by political ads. Her guess is that companies will spend that time and money in the interim shoring up their businesses for when, well, business resumes.

I've seen this extremely ill-timed spot a couple of times now, legit shocked that it doesn't seem to have been pulled yet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYuyS1Oq8gY

this is from today's toronto star. i've written and backspaced four different jokes about it but honestly maybe it doesn't need any. pic.twitter.com/GjgkUjzNsa

— raina douris (@RahRahRaina) March 24, 2020

But it was... in the stars to crowd together! #fallsfrombelief

we can see into the wrong future

galaxy brane

need help contextualizing this nyc attack rate thing for my partner who thinks this means it's going to be as bad as italy here

Some testimony from an intensive care doctor at my local hospital who's recovering from it:

His symptoms started "innocuously", he said, with a "burning sensation" in his nose and a loss of the sense of taste.

He did not develop a cough – one of the two most typical symptoms of the virus (along with a fever).

But this was followed by "a week of just feeling absolutely terrible – aching muscles, aching bones, unable to get out of bed and sleeping 16-18 hours a day", he said.

would take that right now if offered tbf

NEW DELHI (AP) — India’s prime minister decrees lockdown of country of 1.3 billion for 21 days.

— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) March 24, 2020

Has he blamed Muslims for coronavirus yet?

Sleeping 16-18 hours a day sounds better then being fully present in the moment for most of it, frankly.

jfc, lockdown of 1.3 billion people by a single decree

these are crazy fucking times

xpost But did he develop a fever? It drives me nuts when these accounts leave out useful information, or elide over important facts. I keep seeing stuff like "At first I felt fine, no warning at all except a lingering fever that ... " The fever is the warning! It means you are not fine!

define 'lockdown' imo

i.e. london is supposedly in 'lockdown' but the Tube is packed and people are copulating in front of B&Q using coronavirus for lubricant

wut abt indias economy

apparently the brokerages are making sure their outsourced back offices there are allowed to go to work lol

The last 2 days have been sobering after showing some promise over the weekend:

https://i.imgur.com/vwdP6Wa.png

less reporting on the weekends innit

I could see how after Mar 21, a politician might be able to draw some conclusions that distancing has begun flattening the mortality curve and that hope/relief was on the way, but the acceleration back to exponential death rates is a bit unnerving.

this is why i'm not too concerned about trump rolling back isolation in just a week. since it will take at least 2 weeks for any flattening to show in the figures that would require him to reopen restaurants when the death toll is at its highest and seemingly in exponential incline

that should buy us 2 more weeks i think -- at that pt we'll reevaluate and hopefully should have more masks, more/better testing, better prepared/equipped hospitals etc so even if we do relax measures it won't be as costly as doing so in a week.

^ I could see that happening.

As with so many other things that he doesn’t know about, it’s kinda disturbing that such a successful businessman doesn’t understand exponential growth, but I’m not surprised

define 'lockdown' imo

i.e. london is supposedly in 'lockdown' but the Tube is packed and people are copulating in front of B&Q using coronavirus for lubricant

― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, March 24, 2020 10:26 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

“There will be a total ban of coming out of your homes,” Mr. Modi said.

“Every district, every lane, every village will be under lockdown,” he said. “If you can’t handle these 21 days, this country will go back 21 years.”

“The only option is social distancing, to remain away from each other,” he said. “There is no way out to escape from coronavirus besides this.”

Left unclear was how Indians would be able to get food and other needed supplies. Mr. Modi alluded vaguely to the government and civil society groups stepping in to help, but offered no details.

“If you can’t handle these 21 days, this country will go back 21 years.”

this is a good line for prominent sane ppl in the U.S. to start parroting right now

what if all this is a prequel to a time travel event to 21 years ago

if they time the warp right, it would go back to...just before Y2K

I'll take it

is modi threatening india with partying like it’s 1999

man can't we relive some better 20 year period

If India's reporting was remotely accurate (atm: 519 cases, 10 deaths), at this stage the SK/HK/SG approach of aggressive testing, contact tracing, quarantine of individuals, and encouraging hygiene/physical distancing would seem to make a lot more sense. India is adeveloping nation, but it does have substantial biotech and healthcare resources to do this sort of mobilization. And any country will need to do this for a year + to guard against imported cases and new clusters, in any case.

What I infer from Modi's lockdown is that India's situation is much worse than they've reported.

indeed the late 90s seem like some kind of amusement park now, though to enjoy it we'd need to have knowledge of the impending doom erased

oops out of time

“If you can’t handle these 21 days, this country will go back 21 years.”

this is a good line for prominent sane ppl in the U.S. to start parroting right now

― Webcam Du Bois (Hadrian VIII), Tuesday, March 24, 2020 12:46 PM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

what if all this is a prequel to a time travel event to 21 years ago

and then during the prequel part (which we're doomed to repeat forever(?)) there's a montage of a bunch of smart people and thomas friedman talking about globalization and growing interconnectivity of the world, but they didn't realize how literally that was true. India goes back 25 years, but as it slips down the time-space continuum it pulls in Pakistan as well, and then afghanistan, iran, etc. so all of asia and africa and europe get pulled through within a few minutes of the event.

BUT THEN when the warp hits the edges of the continents, it stops. so iceland isn't affected, or australia or japan, or NA and SA. but THEN in the alternate 1999, the inverse is true, with the other continents gone missing.

Someone should point out the logical flaw in my thinking if it's wrong, but I don't find any comfort in the idea that "the death rate may be lower than we think because we are not capturing all of the cases due to lack of testing." The only thing that matters to me is the raw numbers of severe cases and deaths, those numbers in comparison to the overall population, and those numbers in comparison to hospital beds. If (making up numbers for argument sake) 75% of the US gets coronavirus, but a third of that 75% never show any symptoms whatsoever, and another third present mild cold symptoms, and another third present more serious symptoms (anything from flu-like to death) that's a quarter of the US population with a relatively serious illness. If 10% of those require hospitalization, that's 2.5% of the US population requiring hospitalization. If 20% of those die, that's .5% of the US population dying, i.e. more than 1.5 million deaths.

These numbers may be wrong, but it just illustrates the problem with the "oh most people never even know they have it" security blanket.

otm. cuomo laid this out very well today i thought.

Going back 21 years would probably be a 30 or 40 year positive for the UK post Brexit

This was a fun way to kill a minute:

covidnearyou.org

Confirmed case on Easter Island.

“I would love to have the country opened up and raring to go by Easter,” Trump said during a Fox News town hall broadcast from the Rose Garden at the White House.

So close!

this is a good line for prominent sane ppl in the U.S. to start parroting right now

― Webcam Du Bois (Hadrian VIII), Tuesday, March 24, 2020 10:46 AM (thirty-two minutes ago)

nobody should be parroting any lines ginned up by Narendra fuckin Modi