OT: Corona virus

[Cap Mandrake]

Lab-grown meat has a lot of benefits all over the economy, if/when we get there, particularly for allocation of resources on farms.

I don't believe for a second that could be economically done. IT'S A TRAP! It's not magic. You have to have a substrate. Where are the amino acids going to come from? You would have to have a high quality protein source. It's not practical to synthesize 20 amino acids de novo and just throw them in a big pot. Suppose you get pure amino acids in the right ratios and now you want myocytes to reproduce infinitely without dying. You know what that is? Meat cancer, that's what.

The minute you close the last ranch the factory suddenly burns down. [:D]

[JohnDillworth]

Spoke to a co-worker by phone today. He got Covid 5 weeks ago. He works on the same floor as I do and we travel in the same spaces including data centers, hallways, bathrooms, doors, pantry's ect but since we were working alternate days I didn't come into personal contact. 2 other people on the floor got sick but had relatively mild symptoms. Marcos was in the hospital for 4 days, 103 fever, oxygen, no vent, discharged with an oxygen tank, ran a fever for 3 weeks, lost 18 pounds and can now barely walk. He is expected to make a full recovery, in time. Right now he is afraid to ride public transportation and is too weak to drive. He is just working up to walking around the block for now. Haven't been any cases among the reaming essential personnel in my agency in a month and we have had most of the sick ones come back so today was a good day. Things are looking up

[JohnDillworth]

The consumer price index took a big drop. Food and rent are up. Everything else is down. On paper it sounds like a good thing but what it means is people are not spending money. Maybe some of that is travel, hotels and entertainment or, more troubling, people either don't feel secure spending money or they don't have it to spend. Here is the big worry. Consumer spending makes up 70% of the U.S. economy. 70%. A big drop in the CPI is not good news for the economy. As with all things these day, I hope it is a temporary blip. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ly-decline

[Canoerebel]

Links to separate sites provided in recent days by Lowpe and John Dillworth both have Georgia Ro rate at less than 1 (one was at 0.92, the other at 0.84, as of this a.m.). Every statistical category that I've seen has been trending down for weeks. Significantly, on the 10th the IHME projection for mortality dropped from 4,900 to 3,500.

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

IHME's updated US mortality projection is 137k by August 4, if that's what you're looking for (I may not be comprehending the point you're making).

Georgia may be the bellwether for all this. We began gradually easing countermeasures 18 days ago. So far, so good. From my seat it seems like the easing wasn't premature. I gather from Chickenboy's post a few hours back that he feels the same about Texas. My daughter and son-in-law feel the same about Tennessee. But there is no doubt there are jurisdictions where easing wouldn't be prudent right now.

Yes, that's the number I was looking at.

The state-by-state transmission number over on rt.live appears to be good data, although the confidence interval for recent dates for Texas and Georgia includes values higher than 1.0 (it looks like the data is refined over time as well and is about 7-days delayed).

[Canoerebel]

Is this discussion about synthetic meat, actually created/grown/cultured in a lab? That's not going to fly nearly anywhere in the US.

ORIGINAL: Cap Mandrake

Lab-grown meat has a lot of benefits all over the economy, if/when we get there, particularly for allocation of resources on farms.

I don't believe for a second that could be economically done. IT'S A TRAP! It's not magic. You have to have a substrate. Where are the amino acids going to come from? You would have to have a high quality protein source. It's not practical to synthesize 20 amino acids de novo and just throw them in a big pot. Suppose you get pure amino acids in the right ratios and now you want myocytes to reproduce infinitely without dying. You know what that is? Meat cancer, that's what.

The minute you close the last ranch the factory suddenly burns down. [:D]

[Canoerebel]

This is weird. IHME apparently just issued yet another revision for mortality in Georgia. On Saturday the projection was 4,900. Last night, it was 3,500. This afternoon it's 2,000.

And no longer are we projected to have a seemingly interminable "table" on the chart. We're projected to drop each day, so that we're on the downside of the bell curve.

US projections revised again, too (up to 147k).

IHME is revising so often and so sharply that there may be serious doubts about its utility.

[JohnDillworth]

Not sure if this report is accurate or not but an unreleased White House report, while less optimistic than the official position, shows Georgia as "stable". There are some concerns for Texas and Wisconsin seems to have problems. It seems this thing is getting out of the big cities and spreading around middle America (whatever the hell that is ) a bit. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white- ... s-n1204751

[Chickenboy]

ORIGINAL: JohnDillworth

Not sure if this report is accurate or not but an unreleased White House report, while less optimistic than the official position, shows Georgia as "stable". There are some concerns for Texas and Wisconsin seems to have problems. It seems this thing is getting out of the big cities and spreading around middle America (whatever the hell that is ) a bit. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white- ... s-n1204751

This thing has been spreading around big cities, small cities, rural farmland small towns, vacation cities and towns and every other iteration you can think of for the last 2 months. It's not a recent thing. There have been some hotspots here and there periodically, but they haven't seemed to translate into a dumpster fire, like NYC.

The report talks about % increase as being 'areas to watch' and absolute numbers of cases, without accounting for the denominator. Texas has seen 7,000 cases in 7 days! Yup. We've also more than doubled testing in about that time frame. The overall % of positives has been dropping. People that are of 'high interest' with appropriate clinical signs or in at risk environments where this thing could induce community spread are still less only positive ~5% of the time. When you compare to New York City's 35-40% attack rate in the height of their problem or New Jersey's >50% attack rate, this is a very different disease dynamic down here than it is / was for you guys.

[Lowpe]

ORIGINAL: Cap Mandrake

Lab-grown meat has a lot of benefits all over the economy, if/when we get there, particularly for allocation of resources on farms.

I don't believe for a second that could be economically done. IT'S A TRAP! It's not magic. You have to have a substrate. Where are the amino acids going to come from? You would have to have a high quality protein source. It's not practical to synthesize 20 amino acids de novo and just throw them in a big pot. Suppose you get pure amino acids in the right ratios and now you want myocytes to reproduce infinitely without dying. You know what that is? Meat cancer, that's what.

The minute you close the last ranch the factory suddenly burns down. [:D]

I so want it to be magic. I want to print up a porterhouse steak on meatjet at home.

[Lowpe]

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

ORIGINAL: Lowpe

Anxiety From Reactions to Covid-19 Will Destroy At Least Seven Times More Years of Life Than Can Be Saved by Lockdowns

https://www.justfacts.com/news_covid-19 ... oyed_saved

Huh?

Compared to what, the baseline without the existence of COVID? That's a dumb comparison. It's not like COVID wouldn't exist if there weren't lockdowns (quite the opposite in fact).

This "article" sets off my BS alarms.

That is my thought too. I especially was concerned about the very difficult measurement to prove.

Although, I am also skeptical about the efficacy of lock-downs.

[Lowpe]

California State University campuses to remain closed through fall semester

https://abc7.com/csu-fall-classes-cal-s ... n/6176291/

[Lowpe]

L.A. County stay-at-home order likely to be extended through July to fight coronavirus


https://ktla.com/

I think LA County has a population larger than 30 states.

[Lowpe]

Nonpharmaceutical Measures for Pandemic Influenza in Nonhealthcare Settings—Personal Protective and Environmental Measures

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/5/19-0994_article

EID Volume 26 Journal No 5 May 2020

Hot of the presses

Interesting reading on the efficacy of washing hands, wearing masks, and cleaning surfaces. I really wish they would study vitamin D supplements and deficiencies, as some other countries have done with I think promising results (and I linked to some of them in previous posts).

I am amazed by how little we actually know about how the influenza virus is transmitted given our long history of it.

[Lowpe]

The Impact of
COVID-19
on children

https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/fil ... l_2020.pdf

[RangerJoe]

ORIGINAL: JohnDillworth

Not sure if this report is accurate or not but an unreleased White House report, while less optimistic than the official position, shows Georgia as "stable". There are some concerns for Texas and Wisconsin seems to have problems. It seems this thing is getting out of the big cities and spreading around middle America (whatever the hell that is ) a bit. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white- ... s-n1204751

"Middle America" is the part of the United States between the coastal states. Some people refer to it as "flyover country" since they have no reason to stop there.

[RangerJoe]

ORIGINAL: JohnDillworth

Spoke to a co-worker by phone today. He got Covid 5 weeks ago. He works on the same floor as I do and we travel in the same spaces including data centers, hallways, bathrooms, doors, pantry's ect but since we were working alternate days I didn't come into personal contact. 2 other people on the floor got sick but had relatively mild symptoms. Marcos was in the hospital for 4 days, 103 fever, oxygen, no vent, discharged with an oxygen tank, ran a fever for 3 weeks, lost 18 pounds and can now barely walk. He is expected to make a full recovery, in time. Right now he is afraid to ride public transportation and is too weak to drive. He is just working up to walking around the block for now. Haven't been any cases among the reaming essential personnel in my agency in a month and we have had most of the sick ones come back so today was a good day. Things are looking up

I once lost 50 pounds in 5 weeks and was water bloated at the end of that time. Tell your co-worker to take it easy on the physical therapy part. Don't overdo it as it can make some things worse. A person loses 80 percent of their fine motor control when the are bedridden for one week. That is why it is so hard to walk and the risk of falls is higher. The fall is not the problem, it is the sudden stop at the end of it. It is better to do a lot of short exercise periods rather than an intense workout.

[RangerJoe]

ORIGINAL: Cap Mandrake

Lab-grown meat has a lot of benefits all over the economy, if/when we get there, particularly for allocation of resources on farms.

I don't believe for a second that could be economically done. IT'S A TRAP! It's not magic. You have to have a substrate. Where are the amino acids going to come from? You would have to have a high quality protein source. It's not practical to synthesize 20 amino acids de novo and just throw them in a big pot. Suppose you get pure amino acids in the right ratios and now you want myocytes to reproduce infinitely without dying. You know what that is? Meat cancer, that's what.

The minute you close the last ranch the factory suddenly burns down. [:D]

Not just the amino acids in the correct ratio, you also have to have all of the essential minerals, vitamins, and other chemicals in the precise amounts otherwise it will not work.

[RangerJoe]

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe

What do you do with all of the animals if it all became meat from a factory? How about the over population of deer? There is a lot of agricultural land that is not suitable for crops, instead it is used for animals.

And there is a lot of land that is suitable for crops but is instead used for animals or the crops to feed them. Here are stats just for Iowa (offered without independent vetting of their claims and obviously not every acre used for pigs could be converted to crops, but a large portion of them could be - Iowa just isn't that geographically diverse):

https://www.iowapork.org/news-from-the- ... ork-facts/
6200 pig farms
22 million pigs at any one time (that's a lot of grain being used to feed pigs)
25% of all corn/soybean acreage in Iowa is used just to feed these pigs

https://www.lhf.org/learning-fields/cro ... arm-facts/
Per 2012 numbers, produces the most eggs and pork of any state (and corn/soybeans)
1.3M acres of pastureland (not all of this is used for food-animal production obviously)
30.6M acres of farmland, of which 26.25M acres are crops (so perhaps as much as 6.5M acres are used to feed pigs alone)

Lab-grown meat has a lot of benefits all over the economy, if/when we get there, particularly for allocation of resources on farms.

It might improve the odor in Iowa. But will you be first in line for your daily ration of Soylent Green?

[Lowpe]

According to wikipedia, this guy is considered center right. What exactly that means, I don't know.[:)] But I can guess a bit.

But at the link, are links to his weekly articles during the coivd pandemic. I found them interesting reading. You might too, if you have a spare half hour to hour.



Fraser Nelson is the editor of The Spectator and a columnist for The Daily Telegraph. He is also a member of the advisory board of the Centre for Social Justice and the Centre for Policy Studies.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/authors/fraser-nelson/

[RangerJoe]

ORIGINAL: JohnDillworth

The consumer price index took a big drop. Food and rent are up. Everything else is down. On paper it sounds like a good thing but what it means is people are not spending money. Maybe some of that is travel, hotels and entertainment or, more troubling, people either don't feel secure spending money or they don't have it to spend. Here is the big worry. Consumer spending makes up 70% of the U.S. economy. 70%. A big drop in the CPI is not good news for the economy. As with all things these day, I hope it is a temporary blip. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ly-decline

For those on fixed incomes, a drop in prices in not a bad thing. The only problem is the food but the price of eggs is back to normal here and instead of meat for protein, drink more milk and eat cheese to help the dairy farmers.

I want there to be a nice price drop on computers as I need a new one. Unfortunately, if more people start working remotely as a permanent thing, then the price of computers may stay higher.