outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

“Two semi-trailer trucks, cleverly marked as food-service vehicles, met us at the warehouse. When fully loaded, the trucks would take two distinct routes back to Massachusetts to minimize the chances that their contents would be detained or redirected.” #COVID19

— NEJM (@NEJM) April 18, 2020

We got a box of n95 masks in from China at my work; no idea how they swung that, I guess somebody has a connect? I nabbed a couple which I put in ziplock bags & will reuse. We are used to wearing particulate respirators for operating mills so know how to wear them, this one feels like a much better fit than those (for my face at least) and I feel way more secure wearing this - certainly more than with my homemade effort

I do feel bad that I have one while my cousin who is a nurse is posting that they are about to run out and my dad works in a supermarket and has nothing (except that perspex screen they put up I guess, big whoop) and I’m gonna get it anyway from rubbing my eye or whatever, but I tell myself I’m doing my part to stop it spreading by wearing one

that's the real to look at it really. if you have them, you can use them to stop spread

really not feeling mega confident after I had to go to a Walmart to get a bathroom commode and just about everybody there wasn't wearing masks, was ignoring the arrows (which clearly said on them SHOP THIS WAY on one side, and DO NOT ENTER on the other), and weren't about to give me no six feet.

xp: The paper Morbs pointed to. It's mostly geared to labs that want to conduct SARS-CoV-2 rtPCR testing with only BSL-2 biosafety protocols (hoods+ordinary PPE+lim. access), who want to inactivate the virus in tubes before handling them. In solution, 92°C-15min reduced viral counts more than 1 million fold (below detection limits) but damaged the RNA; 56°C-30min and 60°C-60min reduced counts about 100,000 fold. Solutions with guanidinium thiocyanate inactivated the virus but didn't damage the RNA.

It's perhaps not so relevant for either mask disinfection (where repiratory droplets/aerosols would become dessicated) or for Trump's idea that summer heat will end the pandemic. The crazy wave 2 Singapore is experiencing in their foreign worker dorms pretty much nixes the latter idea.

The Danish Government has just become the 1st to announce that companies that are registered in tax havens won’t be eligible for bailout. 👍https://t.co/BlAd6ZUE1b pic.twitter.com/gqPyUXaNFM

— Economics in Bricks (@econinbricks) April 19, 2020

Way to go, Fred!

that’s my shit

antibody "test" clusterfuck

The Food and Drug Administration has allowed about 90 companies, many based in China, to sell tests that have not gotten government vetting, saying the pandemic warrants an urgent response. But the agency has since warned that some of those businesses are making false claims about their products; health officials, like their counterparts overseas, have found others deeply flawed.

Tests of “frankly dubious quality” have flooded the American market, said Scott Becker, executive director of the Association of Public Health Laboratories. Many of them, akin to home pregnancy tests, are easy to take and promise rapid results.

And the federal guidance that does exist is so confusing that health care providers are administering certain tests unaware that they may not be authorized to do so. Some are misusing antibody test results to diagnose the disease, not realizing that they can miss the early stages of infection.

“People don’t understand how dangerous this test is,” said Michael T. Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota. “We sacrificed quality for speed, and in the end, when it’s people’s lives that are hanging in the balance, safety has to take precedence over speed.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/19/us/coronavirus-antibody-tests.html

Some test only for a transient antibody that spikes while the body is in the throes of an active infection. An antibody that peaks about four weeks after infection and marks longer-term immunity is a separate target. There are tests that look for both antibodies; others also look for a third involved in respiratory infections.

The most reliable ones involve a laboratory technique called Elisa that can indicate the amount of antibodies a person may have. Higher levels generally mean a stronger physiological response, but it is unclear what levels are needed for immunity to the new coronavirus — or how long it would last.

“We’re really far from that,” Dr. Osterholm said. “We’re not even in the second inning of a nine-inning game at this point.”

Most of the tests offered are rapid tests that can be assessed in a doctor’s office — or, eventually, even at home — and provide simple yes-or-no results. Makers of the tests have aggressively marketed them to businesses and doctors, and thousands of Americans have already taken them, costing a patient roughly $60 to $115.

Rapid tests are by far the easiest to administer. But they are also the most unreliable — so much so that the World Health Organization recommends against their use.

Murdoch turns on Boris:

There has been an extraordinary, almost unprecdented attack on Boris Johnson this morning in the Sunday Times, ie his own side: pic.twitter.com/vYqnnMF05O

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) April 19, 2020

Thanks Nixon

more on that in the uk politics thread

it's the uk equiv of the big nytimes article about trump's february. both of these guys were just MIA.

Hence the extensive coverage on the BBC... oh, hold on...

Sorry can’t search on phone. I assume the latest Ed Yong piece has been linked here? https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/pandemic-summer-coronavirus-reopening-back-normal/609940/

It’s very good on the facts (he always is) but the last section on resilience is particularly good imo.

Sort of settling in to the idea that even if certain activities resume there’s no good reason for me/anyone who can to stop working from home before a vaccine exists.

I will work my way thru that article after my chores. It looks excellent.

Meanwhile just want to share a post showing that anti-quarantine protests are centrally coordinated.

"There's an imperial ton of astroturfing going on, and it's quite visible in how those groups popped up literally overnight."

https://www.reddit.com/r/maryland/comments/g3niq3/i_simply_cannot_believe_that_people_are/fnstpyl/

Have any major outlets investigated this?

i'd love it if we could get those people arrested

That Ed Yong article is fucking grim. People who are already made anxious by the State of Modern Pod/Bunker Living are gonna flip the fuck out by the time we hit Months Six through Twelve. Me, I'm trying to figure out what kind of argument I can make for continuing to work remotely if my employer does ask people to start showing up again. Maybe I'll have to tell them I'm a diabetic (true) and therefore especially vulnerable.

I am deeply skeptical of these astroturf accusations, dummies on the right make these same accusations all the time when there's a protest they don't like—"it's George Soros!"

The really sad fact is that "astroturfing" isn't necessary. That's what's scary. They have the entire weight of FOX behind them, maniacal talk radio, the president cheering them on. The fact that people are making the same signs and circulating the same copy is meaningless—that's how these things unfold on FB Twitter etc., which also makes it very easy to coordinate things at teh drop of a hat.

A random chiropractor sparked the madness in Michigan.

It's just kind of stupid to think that the Koch Brothers or whatever must be financing and organizing these idiots. They're perfectly capable of being stupid on their own—they elected this asshole in the first place.

And it doesn't really matter anyway if news orgs are going to take them seriously either way

The DeVos and Koch families, et al, have ALWAYS worked by funding secret actions. It's so in character it's practically unnecessary to point it out. As usual, the right (mostly) falsely accuses the left of doing exactly what it, itself, is doing.

What a world we live in

Incredible images of two nurses who launched a counter protest by standing in front of a car parade of protestors in Denver (via Alyson McClaran) pic.twitter.com/PgR74Sj5QE

— Don Moynihan (@donmoyn) April 20, 2020

There's a mountain of evidence behind the astroturfing of the Tea Party, a reasonable start here (between the DeVos clan and the weirdo collecting open state X domain) - and zero evidence of Soros or anyone else fomenting BLM or Occupy. The closest thing to 'both sides do it' is some astroturfing against Medicare For All.

A cautionary tale from Singapore on relaxing lockdowns too soon as well as a lesson on how to treat migrant worker populations:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/18/asia/singapore-coronavirus-response-intl-hnk/index.html

Thanks, Roz. I was astonished to read about the migrant workers---how they live, how they are treated bureaucratically by the government---and it's spurred me to learn more about their situation (independently of the virus).

sadly, exploitation of migrant workers is common across all of Southeast Asia, not just in Singapore but also Malaysia and Brunei, as well as ME countries like Qatar and Saudi. The situation is the same everywhere - cramped, unhygienic living conditions, little to no access to health or medical services, extremely low pay, debt bondage, etc.

Thanks. Do you have texts you'd recommend for learning more about this, in English or in French? I suppose in some sense I've known about this for a while, having read about workers in Dubai, but I was triggered by the comment by the Singaporean lawyer who said that these workers were "indispensable", for that seems to code a lot. I'm interested in understanding better the working conditions of these workers; how these workers see their lives in relation to their home countries and to the countries in which they work; their bureaucratic situation with respect to both countries; and how citizens of the countries in which they work think about these workers, and their roles in this exploitation.

I don't have anything specific but this recent survey by the UN on attitudes towards migrant workers in Southeast Asia is instructive: http://www.ilo.org/asia/media-centre/news/WCMS_732449/lang--en/index.html

Andy Hall is also a good person to follow on migrants rights issues in the region. He's based out of Bangkok (though heavily focused on Malaysia at the moment): https://twitter.com/Atomicalandy

thanks!

There's a mountain of evidence behind the astroturfing of the Tea Party

No doubt, atsrorturfing is real. My point was that in this case it's not necessarily top-down or conspiratorial—or even political. It's just the fruit of a fucked up system in which fear/anger can be exploited for a buck. This is a good post on the two companies facilitating/encouraging a lot of the protests:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MassMove/comments/g3toiz/a_post_by_udr_midnight_collating_information_on/fnv8j69/

astroturfing is real of course but...

Do you think that, absent provocation from moneyed interests, that these gun-nut libertarian prepper birther meatheads would have been acting like good altruistic citizens?

have there been 'reopen everything' protests anywhere else in the world?

Gun-nut libertarian prepper meatheads didn't get that way overnight, the powers who benefit from their meatheadedness have been preparing them for decades. It's not like we started with a neutral playing field and these people are just the bad apples. They've been grown this way.

xxp No of ocurse not. They'd still be getting together to own the libs.

have there been 'reopen everything' protests anywhere else in the world?

― mookieproof, Monday, April 20, 2020 5:12 PM (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol

I found the local anti-shutdown group on FB. Oh dear.

have there been 'reopen everything' protests anywhere else in the world?

― mookieproof, Monday, April 20, 2020 5:12 PM (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol

― Joey Corona (Euler), Monday, April 20, 2020 10:27 AM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Why lol? In Israel there have been, for instance.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/police-clash-with-stone-throwing-haredi-protesters-in-jerusalem-5-arrested/

w/r/t astroturfing: Around 6:30am, I spotted some freshly stenciled "Free The City" graffiti on the pavement in a park, the font was stylized to appear hand-drawn in a "hippy-ish" font, but was 100% stenciled. I live in the most leftist city in the US.

ok Israel is an exception

LOL seems fair comment tbh

i have the same question as mookie - anywhere else in the world that has to deal with this, except for lol israel?

"this" = anti-shelter-in-place truthers

Karl Malone my lol was: no, of course not. Israel is the exception that proves the rule, as one says.

the united states has a "special" idiotic relationship with israel

there was like 1000 at the one in Brookfield here in Wisconsin. I am guessing they'll be more this weekend in Madison. maybe FOX/Trump boosting these is having some effect. cool that we're all gonna have to stay inside another month because of these idiots

2000 in Olympia WA yesterday, I wish them all ill.

They wish everyone else ill too

'jesus is my vaccine'

The lead story on CNN right now claims “protests are erupting” and cites Maryland’s protests specifically throughout the beginning of the article. Gov. Hogan’s staff says there were more media requests to cover the protests than actual protesters.https://t.co/Sqmspl931R https://t.co/dLr7aHyP20

— Steve Krakauer (@SteveKrak) April 20, 2020

i understand that the media is blowing it up as much as they can, just like the tea party stuff. i'm sure that a lot of the nationwide "protests" really are just like a dozen people, framed advantageously by a photographer.

but then, there really were 2000+ people protesting in Olympia, yesterday, like silby said

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/demonstrators-rally-in-olympia-against-washingtons-coronavirus-stay-home-order/