outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

Not sure if this has been posted already--pretty amazing story.

http://interestingengineering.com/101-year-old-man-who-survived-spanish-flu-and-world-war-2-now-beats-coronavirus-too

Re the social distancing scoreboard divide between rural and urban, it seems to be most in states where there are few cases. Given that the apocalypse is headed their way, I can imagine that there would be folks needing to drive long distances to stock up on provisions before hunkering down.

Ugh, do I really want to be arguing with a sanctimonious PR woman on Twitter who is having the vapours about farmer’s markets being open this weekend in London? The kind of person who despite a career in words misuses ‘literally’, and won’t accept that they’re on the essential service list, are taking serious lockdown precautions (and it’s been masks/gloves/tongs since early March), and that farmers to table is a much shorter supply chain than that offered by supermarkets? Muted her, obvs.

This is some end of days apocalyptic horror movie shit

Francis, alone in the rain in St. Peter's Square, praying for the world. pic.twitter.com/6DE7YU2Irv

— Joshua McElwee (@joshjmac) March 27, 2020

anyway, i'm just wondering if, for example, the most popular radio host in italy is telling everybody that it's an overblown hoax and not to trust public health officials

The most popular radio host in Sydney / NSW state is telling everybody it’s an overblown hoax, but is not doing so by commuting from his downtown apartment to his downtown radio station. He has moved to a house in the southern highlands, in a town with a population of 200, and his 58-years-younger alt-right “personal driver” is remaining in the city.

A billionaire mining company magnate and shitposter from Queensland who repeatedly runs for office so that he can spend millions on advertising is bragging that he will pay for a million doses of hydroxycloroquine.

Sydney last week also allowed five cruise ships with infected passengers to dock downtown, and untested passengers to simply walk off and hop onto trains four minutes walk away.

I read a "but what about the landlords?" piece earlier that defined "mom and pop" landlords as those with between 2-4 units.

For those curious how well their locality is practicing physical distancing,

since I never go outside idk

I read a "but what about the landlords?" piece earlier that defined "mom and pop" landlords as those with between 2-4 units.

― Andrew Farrell, Friday, March 27, 2020 8:54 PM bookmarkflaglink

even a friend of mine did that today, but because he's a landlord.

I had to fight my estate agent to offer my tenants a rent freeze.

This is objectively true & impossible to deny now. The Q moving forward is, is this (1) uniquely the fault of Trump, (2) existential to the nature of the US system or (3) as I believe it to be: a combination of both.

Lot of money will be poured into convincing you it’s only (1) https://t.co/xobWiEQeG2

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) March 27, 2020

well considering the President is withholding aid to California and New York who coincidentally have Governors he doesn't like.....

I mean trump is kind of the ultimate embodiment of all the worst aspects of the US system, so splitting hairs there.

it took me a second to figure out what the direction of that tweet is.

and now i am like, 'no shit, dude.'

america is like the 1960s band that once ruled but it kept going and still and live and selling out tours somehow

so like...America?

Sydney last week also allowed five cruise ships with infected passengers to dock downtown, and untested passengers to simply walk off and hop onto trains four minutes walk away.

So far 162 passengers from just one of these ships have been diagnosed with the ‘vid: that’s 11% of cases in the entire state* getting off one boat, in the middle of the city, in half an hour.

*(the state is twice the size of California, or six times larger than England)

not seen the end of market volatility yet with this thing - not going to be pretty when US has to face into full lockdown

thanks everyone who asked about my husband - he’s fine now. i’m encouraging him to stop paying so much attention to the news and he’s distracting himself by cooking and cleaning a lot (which I’m grateful for). the main thing we took away from this is that diagnosing covid is trickier if you have anxiety or related disorders, which really isn’t helpful in the current environment.

Meanwhile, just what the world needs, a potential baby boom: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-malaysia-karex/condom-shortage-looms-after-coronavirus-lockdown-shuts-worlds-top-producer-idUSKBN21E1OJ

Glad to hear it Roz! tbph I have been wondering if my own mysterious short-lived illness might have been anxiety-related as well - the thing it reminded me most of was coming down off bad drugs

america is like the 1960s band that once ruled but it kept going

Cf. "We Built this Country" byJefferson Spaceforce

This is objectively true & impossible to deny now. The Q moving forward is

Having just come from an idle google of coronavirus+pizzgate, the similarity of tone is quite something.

sic nailing the Oz zeitgeist effortlessly in a couple of sentences, Walkley Award territory

withholding aid to California and New York

Now Michigan too - https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/trump-gretchen-whitmer-michigan-coronavirus-feud-032411002.html

this really needs to be a bigger controversy but everybody's too distracted atm with, y'know...tryin to fuckin' eat

I can't fucking believe we have this piece of shit running things. He knows damn well the states can't procure the shit on their own and that innocent people will die, but hey, it's their fault for living in a fake news state, amirite

I'm sure the people of Michigan who defected from Dem party in 2016 are going to show up for him in droves when 25% of their families die due to this

I was gonna say Michigan is lost to him now

2021 is gonna be awesome.

YAY, we're finally free of Trump! now we can go back to our lives!

oh we're in another bad recession! millions of people died!

thousands of positions are unfilled in various government sectors!

I mean....I'll still be happier than the opposite, but it feels like the new normal is every time a Democrat gets elected, they inherit a gigantic crisis.

Glad everything is ok Roz.

Meanwhile.

Things you didnt realize were true until they stopped - A South African refinery has stopped shipping gold to London because of a lack of commercial flights, adding to the disruption that’s upending the physical bullion market. @FelixNijinihttps://t.co/iCE7lccKaR pic.twitter.com/vklQWpDcq7

— Adam Tooze (@adam_tooze) March 28, 2020

IMO the US and other countries should do a reset, seize everybody's funds, then start everybody over with 20,000 dollars in their accounts.

including billionaires.

I think I remember reading that in U.S. distribution of GDP (obv different than redistributing assets) would be 50-60K per person

but rn i wld be down with 20 and my debt scrubbed

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/could-chloroquine-treat-coronavirus/

just FYI the hydroxychloroquine stuff isn't quackery (UMN started investigating it a couple weeks ago), it's just unproven and trump should have kept his mouth shut

Anyway first consult of the day was a capacity evaluation for a PUI and my second consult just now was identified as a PUI, so today's going well

O_o

The Washington Post reports:

In a gaggle with reporters, President Trump said he is considering a quarantine on New York, parts of New Jersey and Connecticut. He said he might make a decision later today. It comes as the United States has become the epicenter of the novel coronavirus pandemic, with more than 100,000 confirmed infections and nearly 1,600 deaths.

but first he has to follow through with his important plan to categorize the country into "high, medium, and low" risk areas. that way he can spend 5% of his time talking about quarantines and the other 95% focusing on how perfect the low-risk areas are

US have fucked it

utterly fucked it

some were asking could any country do worse than the UK's callous, lazy Herd Immunity bullshit.

trump: hold my steer

Just to be contrarian, it seems like plain fact that the "natural" level of spread is going to be different in differently structured places, and that given that we are not going to maintain this level of lockdown for six months I don't think there's any reason to think it's optimal to have the entire country on the exact same level of lockdown.

Is the big dummy sort of having to work now?

Does he still get hours of “executive time”?

xpost Yeah, really, it's best to think of each state as its own country. There is no one size fits all solution, different states (and their cities) will have different problems, to different degrees, at different times, calling for different solutions.

And maybe eventually enforced borders between them

In many cases, fingers crossed!

Sitting down to breakfast and perusing the weekly local papers that have accumulated. This one's from Feb 19th.
https://ibb.co/qJcWNJz

I like looking at the thread bump:

this seems scary: https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/19/asia/china-coronavirus-spike-intl-hnk/index.html

― JoeStork, Monday, 20 January 2020 21:03 (two months ago) bookmarkflaglink

We all gonna die and no one gives a fuck?

― nostormo, Friday, 24 January 2020 20:32 (two months ago) bookmarkflaglink

the population of the wuhan metropolitan area is like 20million and we're talking about only a few hundred cases currently, seemingly all or mainly from tainted meat consumption. i'm not worried

― bidenfan69420 (jim in vancouver), Friday, 24 January 2020 20:34 (two months ago)

Savage.

Gothamist:

When asked about Trump's remarks, Cuomo was disdainful and dismissive, telling reporters, "I didn’t speak to him about any quarantine... I haven’t had those conversations. I don’t even know what that means.​"

Another reporter asked if a "tri-state quarantine" was "a sound policy from your perspective or would you advise against it," Cuomo repeated, "I don’t even know what that means."

"I don’t know how that could be legally enforceable and, from a medical point of view, I don’t know what you would be accomplishing, but I can tell you I don’t even like the sound of it," he said. "Not even understanding what it is, I don’t like the sound of it.​"

Cuomo wasn't meant to like the sound of it. That was more Trump talking to his rural base who hate NY and the east coast, assuring them that he'd build them another wall to keep those China-virus-infected bastards away from The Real America (tm).