outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

woke up at 3 in the morning with constricted airways, been that way since. No fever, no exhaustion. I think it's a mix of pollen, stress and a sinus infection that's been hanging out for a month or two so I got flonase and amoxycillin. Hopefully I will be better in a day or two but it's a bad moment to feel this way.

Good to hear you're on the mend, Tracer.

Great news. The one huge change since the early days of this is learning, after thinking "Well, if I get it, I'm young enough at 58 that it's no big deal," how wrong that is. I've encountered so many stories, including your posts, that make it clear how awful it can be for the duration.

I can relate to your fears ulysses

I NEED THIS CHEERING BULLSHIT TO FUCKING STOP

STOP MAKING NOISE

FOR FUCK'S SAKE THIS IS REAL LIFE NOT INSTAGRAM

be QUIET

outliers attempting to counter global consensus around this pandemic with amateur reporting or unverified sourcing are not collecting data. breaking news stories that only relay initial findings of an event are not collecting data. we have to be careful in our media consumption

— Steak-umm (@steak_umm) April 7, 2020

2020 is here

that tweet is very abstract

wow that is weird.
kinda of appreciate that clearly someone human is behind the account but also wish they would use more capitalization

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/30/las-vegas-parking-lot-homeless-shelter

Just wild.

Gov @GovPritzker confirms that the federal ‘Air Bridge’ flights from China, organized by the White House taskforce, are bringing PPE back from China which are then turned over to private companies. The states then have to bid against each other to purchase from those companies. pic.twitter.com/QG62dWtQuc

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) April 7, 2020

India has bowed to pressure / threats from the US and lifted its ban on the export of hydroxychloroquine.

The US is now forcing its own companies to sell medical supplies domestically and forcing other countries to not follow suit.

My neighbour sent me a link to a David icke video about 5g, smh

The whole "5G created coronavirus!" is such... a thing of this time period we're in

5G creating modern malaise and chaos has been a going tinfoil hat concern for a few years now.

Even intellectual giants like Naomi “death recorded” Wolf are susceptible I’m told

Ahhh, to experience the calm, peaceful splendor of [checks notes] 1970's Belfast. pic.twitter.com/8xfXFHAbIo

— Staymas Insidely (@shockproofbeats) April 5, 2020

This is interesting:

https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2020/04/04/1586015208000/Imperial-s-Neil-Ferguson---We-don-t-have-a-clear-exit-strategy-/

Trying to get to grips with the UK government’s real strategy is problematic, despite the fact that a great deal of virtual ink has been spilt in trying to “explain” it. Indeed it hasn’t seemed totally clear to us whether they are deliberately not giving us the full picture, or whether the government does not actually know what the strategy is beyond this initial curve-flattening stage.

Which probably goes for most western governments.

...implies the government was aware of the potential death toll – or the one being projected by the scientists on their advisory committee, anyway – but had not considered a drastic lockdown strategy until it became clear that the likely number of deaths from any other strategy would not be seen as politically acceptable. It seems, therefore, that the paper was published at that time partly to help justify a change in the messaging. A “U-turn” doesn’t seem like quite the right term, therefore, for what happened.

And when we suggested to Ferguson that some in government might be pursuing some kind of watered-down version of herd immunity, or at least might be considering it a back-up option (in case a vaccine is not found in 18 months), he didn’t totally dismiss the idea.

Instead, Ferguson noted that there was actually no definite exit strategy in place at this point, though testing and contact-tracing might help.

It doesn’t seem clear to us, though, that we can rule out the idea that at least some in government are still pursuing the idea of herd immunity in the background, even if it is just a fall-back plan.

In Paris it is now forbidden to go out for exercise between 10:00 and 19:00, because of joggers fucking things up. I haven't witnessed this myself (jogging is done by the well-off, so not for people in my quartier), but apparently it was serious enough to go for the ban.

Masks are likely to be obligatory soon as well; apparently a washable version will be provided to city residents soon.

If you die at home from the coronavirus, there’s a good chance you won’t be included in the official death toll, because of a discrepancy in New York City’s reporting process. The problem means the city’s official death count is likely far lower than the real toll taken by the virus, according to public health officials.

It also means that victims without access to testing are not being counted, and even epidemiologists are left without a full understanding of the pandemic. As of Monday afternoon, 2,738 New York City residents have died from ‘confirmed’ cases of COVID-19, according to the city Department of Health. That’s an average of 245 a day since the previous Monday.

But another 200 city residents are now dying at home each day, compared to 20 to 25 such deaths before the pandemic, said Aja Worthy-Davis, a spokeswoman for the medical examiner’s office. And an untold number of them are unconfirmed.

https://gothamist.com/news/surge-number-new-yorkers-dying-home-officials-suspect-undercount-covid-19-related-deaths

great so the real number of deaths is almost twice what's being reported daily?

That’s true everywhere, I think.

That seems to be going on everywhere - we are only reporting deaths in hospital, not in care homes or at home, other countries have a whacking great disparity in death figures vs burials/cremations - everyone is juking the stats

Clap for Boris though.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/coronavirus-ireland-s-infection-peak-may-have-passed-toll-could-hit-400-by-august-report-forecasts-1.4223043

The study predicts 66,300 deaths in the UK, the highest in Europe. The UK’s use of bed resources is predicted to peak on April 17th and its deaths on April 20th.

It says the peak of the pandemic has passed in many European countries, including Spain, Italy and France, where 19,209, 20,300 and 15,058 deaths are predicted, respectively.

we’re number one baby! boris u legend!

"Even intellectual giants like Naomi “death recorded” Wolf are susceptible I’m told"

Naomi Wolf appears to have gone insane some time ago.

A new study from Harvard found that greater exposure to air pollution is directly correlated with higher death rates from coronavirus.

https://gothamist.com/news/coronavirus-updates-air-pollution-covid-19-death-rate

Well, that's scary news for me personally, because up until a year and a half ago, I lived in the most polluted town in the US and heated my house with a wood stove.

We just got off our wood stove about a year and a half ago and our neighborhood still has plenty of burners living in it.

when the doctor in the reddit video says lie flat on your front with a pillow "in front of you" where exactly is the pillow meant to be? under your forehead, under your face, under your chest?

i took it to mean like just that you can keep breathing, but think of massage tables when you lay down and it has a place for your face.

yeah i take that to mean as a way of cushioning your face so that you're not just mashing your nose and lips down into the bed

A retired NHS nurse in my fb feed posted this, maybe it applies?

https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/91887928_10157951932565460_6721695844841553920_n.jpg?_nc_cat=1&_nc_sid=8024bb&_nc_ohc=pZJQUGP9WFMAX-HedxV&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-1.xx&oh=bee758def81b6d0b8622c93c5c473178&oe=5EB3142E

Caution: the same person posted the flimflam about gargling with warm water like two weeks ago so I promise nothing. It sounds like maybe the "pillow in front of you" bit might refer to this, though?

I always sleep on my stomach and I just have my head turned enough on the pillow so I can breathe.

I have my pillow mostly under my forehead for breathing purposes

so that you're not just mashing your nose and lips down into the bed

Or anyone else's, just to be clear

damn, I'm all out of towles

friendly reminder in times of uncertainty and misinformation: anecdotes are not data. (good) data is carefully measured and collected information based on a range of subject-dependent factors, including, but not limited to, controlled variables, meta-analysis, and randomization

— Steak-umm (@steak_umm) April 7, 2020

the follow up is the winner imo

we're a frozen meat brand posting ads inevitably made to misdirect people and generate sales, so this is peak irony, but hey we live in a society so please make informed decisions to the best of your ability and don't let anecdotes dictate your worldview ok

steak-umm bless

— Steak-umm (@steak_umm) April 7, 2020

i had no idea they went full irony ad as of last year, the twitter account is on brand
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxLemhqG3L8

I imagine there are quotes like this all over the place, but here's Fauci a year ago:

"Now what I’ve essentially done is paint the picture of a pandemic influenza. Now it doesn’t have to be influenza. It could be something like SARS. SARS was really quite scary. Thankfully, it kind of burned itself out by good public health measures. But the thing that worries most of us in the field of public health is a respiratory illness that can spread even before someone is so sick that you want to keep them in bed. And that’s really the difference."

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/dr-fauci-has-been-dreading-a-pandemic-like-covid-19-for-years/

that video originated on Reddit iirc. There were a couple of self-described physicians arguing about whether it was good advice or not but amazingly the argument devolved into petty name-calling with no real evaluation of the advice given.

― kinder, Monday, April 6, 2020 5:33 PM (yesterday)

this has not been studied usefully in patients who are not critically ill as far as I know, but "proning" (we are calling it "tummy time" because humor is needed) is a technique that has demonstrated effectiveness in ventilated patients with ARDS (the severe pneumonia COVID leads to) that is refractory to our usual methods of improving oxygenation. it is probably zero-risk but if it is beneficial the effects are probably very small. I do wish everyone had an incentive spirometer in their house, though

btw re: the 5G thing, after a night shift last weekend I screamed at a guy in dunkin donuts who was mocking everyone in line for physically distancing, who was saying it was all radiation and a government plot, and got a free wake-up wrap for my efforts. just doing my part

man I'm gonna scream at an assload of people at Dunkin if it gets me free shit

https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/kerala-couple-elopes-gets-booked-violating-lockdown-rules-122117?

It’s outrageous that while states and cities around the country are struggling to procure masks and other PPEs the U.S. Department of Defense is giving the Israeli military 1 million masks ordered from China and shipped directly to Israel. pic.twitter.com/XvdvhcQmnN

— Jamil Dakwar (@jdakwar) April 8, 2020

This work will give a sense of undercounting:

Here's an analysis from The Economist of the increase in all causes mortality for regions of Italy and Spain. (h/t @kyle_brightnj)

Would love to see the equivalent for the US.https://t.co/e041jaL3zT pic.twitter.com/TkMuHnLTdH

— Binyamin Appelbaum (@BCAppelbaum) April 8, 2020