OT: Corona virus

[MakeeLearn]

Coronavirus updates: Navy hospital ship reaches COVID-19 epicenter New York
March 30, 2020

https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/co ... 020-03-30/


"More than 143,500 people have tested positive in the U.S. — almost a fifth of the roughly 740,000 cases worldwide. Doctors and nurses in New York, the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak, continue to face shortages of vital protective equipment and ICU beds. To help ease the burden on New York's beleaguered health care facilities, the U.S. Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort docked at New York Harbor Monday with 1,000 more beds.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has warned the disease is spreading "like fire through dry grass" at senior care facilities across the country."

[Zorch]

ORIGINAL: MakeeLearn

ORIGINAL: Cap Mandrake

A machete is especially effective.

Machete, lots of history and styles for such a simple tool/weapon

https://www.machetespecialists.com/products/machetes/

The Gurkhas have the Kukri knife. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kukri

[MakeeLearn]

ORIGINAL: Zorch

ORIGINAL: MakeeLearn

ORIGINAL: Cap Mandrake

A machete is especially effective.

Machete, lots of history and styles for such a simple tool/weapon

https://www.machetespecialists.com/products/machetes/

The Gurkhas have the Kukri knife. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kukri

Very Macedonian/Greek.

[MakeeLearn]

US coronavirus cases top 139,000 as Trump extends social distancing guidelines until April 30
Updated 10:51 PM ET, Sun March 29, 2020

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/29/health/u ... index.html

"US has the most cases worldwide

Sunday, Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a key member of the White House coronavirus task force, said on CNN's "State of the Union" that, based on modeling, 100,000 or more could die from the coronavirus in the United States.
Fauci reiterated that comment in that evening's White House briefing, telling reporters, "What we're trying to do is not to let that happen."

The United States surpassed China and Italy this week, becoming the country with the most confirmed cases worldwide. And the growing number of cases has also revealed new demographics facing severe illness.

Cases of young adults developing severe illnesses have been more widely reported, but children were thought to be avoiding the harshest effects.

On Saturday, state officials reported the death of an infant under age 1 who tested positive for coronavirus and is believed to be the youngest person to die of the virus in the United States.
An investigation is underway to determine the cause of death, the Illinois Department of Public Health said. "

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

ORIGINAL: Encircled
We as a family now eat about 1/2 as much meat as we used to, and make stews/curries/bolognese type dishes with lentils and meats.

Aye. Ours too. That's great. But it's a far cry from 'diversify your diet' to 'meat=murder' and 'big=bad'. Unfortunately, the militant vegan screed preys on an uncertain public to opportunistically promote their drivel.

They are seizing the moment, and others are as well.

ORIGINAL: Scott_USN

Climate change? Yeah throw that in there right now. Revolution? Give me a break.

Increasing evidence to the contrary, only emotion and personal attacks on the unholy. The dark side of human nature.

[Cap Mandrake]

The observation about the supermarket is funny and true. I was looking for frozen pizzas and burritos but the only thing left was frozen vegetarian crap like "Organic vegetarian lasagna with compressed and formed dehydrated zucchini noodles. GMO free! Gluten free!" The entire section was untouched.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe

ORIGINAL: RFalvo69




I just read the news, and the government is doing just that: 400 millions Euro are being set aside to provide food for families everywhere. They devised a scheme that gives more money to the needy (basically, if your family income is lower that the national average you get more money for food).

I can't comment on the numbers. My feeling is that 400 millions Euro is too little - but it is a step in the right direction.

And I still wonder what this will mean for illegal workers. Can they honestly say that they are maintaining a family with - officially - zero or close to zero income?

At least it is a start. Once they get a better idea of how much is needed, then they can provide more money.

As far as the illegal workers go, maybe they will have to start being legal. Maybe going through a temporary agency to get a record of the earnings. Of course, the criminal element will still be criminal. I read about that community north of Naples where the African immigrants are.

This whole economic mess has been building for decades because of two global factors:
1. The global population has been growing at an accelerating rate with more people living longer. That in itself is an economic demand on food/clothing/shelter and services like health care.

2. Economic disparity has been growing exponentially as a few powerful people concentrated more and more wealth in their hands while wiping out the median income middle class. This is NOT a cry for socialism - it is an observation that these people broke the capitalist system envisage by Locke and Adams and Smith.

The concept originally was for small, local businesses to compete with one another in a fair market for the ultimate benefit of the people. When the millionaires of last century decided they should be billionaires, they used their power to wipe out competing business by throttling the supply chain (demanding suppliers only deal with the big business or else) and buying up any small business that had innovative ideas (Microsoft did this extensively). And of course, they used political influence to ensure that the anti-trust laws were weak or not enforced.

So now we have a world disaster that requires financial resilience everywhere and it doesn't exist because the very rich hold the money that is needed and governments have to hope they can borrow from them. The masses have fewer financial reserves than they should because their well paying jobs have been eliminated and most are paid just enough to get by. This means greater dependence on the government which cannot handle the demands.

So what's next? What always happens when the masses cannot have their needs met - revolution by violent means, throwing out the old system, including parts of it that were working well. In Italy's example, the Mafia could take over the role of the government. Some would argue that organized crime might do that in other western countries as well. And Russia is waiting for opportunities, but might find itself busy holding down their own long-suffering peoples.

China? It has found stability in a capitalist economy by using cheap labour and adaptability to make wealthy nations dependent on it. The sudden downsize of the world economy is hurting them but they will get by for now. But if every country gets protectionist and cuts off dealing with China, we can expect all manner of troubles.

So I agree with RFalvo69 that handling this economic disaster as a worldwide wake-up call for getting away from the alligators and then draining the swamp to get a more equitable and resilient economy is crucial. And BTW, dealing with climate change might be a necessary part of that realignment of human effort. There is much work to be done, so there is money to be made and spent!

On your points 1 and 2:

1. The global population is growing at a greatly decelerating rate. It has been found conclusively that as a country's standard of living increases its birth rate decreases. The very large improvements in people's standard's of living around the world has dissolved the specter of global overpopulation as projections show the world's population leveling off far below what is believed to be the planet's carrying capacity.

2. The number of people around the world who live below the poverty line has vastly decreased in recent decades. That is according to the UN. Continuing progress has been evident and not slowed down. The current economic effects of the pandemic obviously are up in the air.

Economic disparity has not been growing exponentially. If you are referring to the presence of billionaires among us, the truth has always been that some humans have more than others. Governments/economies such as communism, etc have always had the very same and merely pretended otherwise, their real characteristic being that they oppress and economically hold down the vast majority of people. They do not limit or eliminate economic disparity, but they do hold down nearly everybody economically. That's not better.

[Canoerebel]

When Italy really, truly turns the corner - when there's no doubt left - we can all rejoice. At that point, whenever it happens, we can use the famous quote from the Battle of Guadalcanal: "It's not the beginning of the end, but it is the end of the beginning."

[MakeeLearn]

One chart shows New York City's Coronavirus cases, deaths, and hospitalizations by age bracket as the city's cases near 30,000
Mar 28, 2020, 8:10 PM

https://www.businessinsider.com/new-yor ... art-2020-3


"New York City has reported more than 25% of the US's coronavirus cases.

Nearly 30,000 people there have been infected (though that's only those who have been tested), and at least 517 people across New York's five boroughs have died — accounting for about one-quarter of all US COVID-19 deaths. The city reported its first case on March 1."

[obvert]

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

Back to the topic at hand:

https://ourworldindata.org/covid-mortality-risk


ETA: The article also does a very nice job in distinguishing between the "Case Fatality Rate" and the "Infection Fatality Rate". Very often (and the author cites a particularly craptastic piece of journalism by the New York Times) the media misstates what they're looking for and misapplies the terms.

A good read and although I wasn't clear on the precise use of terms before, I get them now, and realise most reports I've read use the two ideas whether they use the terms or not.

I just read the referenced NY Times article, which I'read a the time as well. I found the graph showing fatality rates useful as it distinguished between many known diseases in their transmission capability vs fatality rate. As far as I could tell the article steers clear of BOTH terms, probably so as not to confuse the general reader while still getting across that main piece of knowledge at the time, which is that this Coronavirus is more lethal than the flu and they show a range in the graph below.

At the bottom of the graph the term Case Fatality Rate is used with a disclaimer that these numbers "vary" and that the Covid numbers were preliminary, which seemed exactly what the writer of the outworldindata piece was trying to assert.

So I can't figure out what is wrong with trying to provide some early estimates and comparisons to more known diseases while cautioning that it was still too early to tell for sure. Seemed pretty responsible to me.

There is a lot of incomplete, irresponsible journalism out there but I don't find this NY Times article to fall in that category.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Last year, I re-read Stephen King's The Stand. It's a terrific novel about a bio-weapon escape that kills most of humanity. The few survivors begin having dreams.

Last week, there were reports in the news of people having dreams!

I did a double take when reading this. For the last two nights-I'm not making this up-I've had exceptionally vivid, graphic and disturbing dreams. I've had them from episodically over the years and wholly ascribe them to 'stress', just like anybody else who might be undergoing a stressful period. I'm sure that my dreams are no worse than combat survivors with PTSD or some other traumatic experience. And I'm certain that they're not some sort of 'sign' or call to action like they are in The Stand. But still...

How's everybody sleeping? I'm particularly interested in how the 'essential worker' cohort on this forum has been getting on (Cap?).

ORIGINAL: Cap Mandrake

We are all (or at least the large majority) human and our brains have had 100-200K years to get ready for danger..and our hominid brethren before that..and their simian brethren before them. This is the most fearful time of my lifetime. Surgeries..spinning a sports car in the rain..rock climbing..getting pounded by a big-ass wave and wondering if you are going to make it to the surface..threat of getting nuked by the Russians..sliding on an icy mountain road in a bus...earthquakes..getting challenged by cholos with guns. Most of those things were at least partly fun. This is different. I think it is the sinister invisibility of the damn thing. I too am having very vivid, long lasting and exquisitely detailed anxiety dreams. Our daytime thoughts are priming our brains to be more alert at night in order to arouse when the leopard is sneaking up on us. I tried alcohol. It doesn't work. I think what works best is hard physical exercise or yard work until everything hurts. A machete is especially effective. No caffeine after noon either.

Bought a new mattress. Yesterday hiked more than 5 hours, large elevation gain, 30 pound backpack. I slept great. [:)]

Just trying to remain realistic on this disease itself; being diligent (but not nutty) about avoiding getting it; being even more diligent about not somehow giving it to loved ones, especially those in their later years (up to 87); trying to help those around me remain grounded; realize that the economic consequences are unknown to the point they are in a fog bank so don't worry just watch...

And I have TP. [:'(]

[JohnDillworth]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

When Italy really, truly turns the corner - when there's no doubt left - we can all rejoice. At that point, whenever it happens, we can use the famous quote from the Battle of Guadalcanal: "It's not the beginning of the end, but it is the end of the beginning."

Dan, I do believe that is a Churchill quote.........although I do believe this is the end of the beginning

[obvert]

ORIGINAL: JohnDillworth

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

When Italy really, truly turns the corner - when there's no doubt left - we can all rejoice. At that point, whenever it happens, we can use the famous quote from the Battle of Guadalcanal: "It's not the beginning of the end, but it is the end of the beginning."

Dan, I do believe that is a Churchill quote.........although I do believe this is the end of the beginning

After El Alamein

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. Henceforth Hitler's Nazis will meet equally well armed, and perhaps better armed troops. Hence forth they will have to face in many theatres of war that superiority in the air which they have so often used without mercy against other, of which they boasted all round the world, and which they intended to use as an instrument for convincing all other peoples that all resistance to them was hopeless....

[Canoerebel]

You're right, John: Today, the Guadalcanal campaign is memorable for two reasons. First, it was the closest the U.S. came to losing the war in the Pacific, but second, its victory put America on the offensive against Japan for the rest of the war. It was, as Winston Churchill said, “not even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/201 ... beginning/

I've always thought the quote specifically applied to Guadalcanal, though the source/quote above doesn't make that absolutely clear.

[Sammy5IsAlive]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

You're right, John: Today, the Guadalcanal campaign is memorable for two reasons. First, it was the closest the U.S. came to losing the war in the Pacific, but second, its victory put America on the offensive against Japan for the rest of the war. It was, as Winston Churchill said, “not even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/201 ... beginning/

I've always thought the quote specifically applied to Guadalcanal, though the source/quote above doesn't make that absolutely clear.

Its from November 42.

Audio is here https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/ ... beginning/

[MakeeLearn]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

You're right, John: Today, the Guadalcanal campaign is memorable for two reasons. First, it was the closest the U.S. came to losing the war in the Pacific, but second, its victory put America on the offensive against Japan for the rest of the war. It was, as Winston Churchill said, “not even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/201 ... beginning/

I've always thought the quote specifically applied to Guadalcanal, though the source/quote above doesn't make that absolutely clear.

Guadalcanal quote:

“G*dd**n it, you’ll never get the Purple Heart hiding in a foxhole! Follow me!”
USMC Capt. Henry Pierson Crowe

[MakeeLearn]

French Official Says Quarantine Should Not be Enforced in Migrant Areas to Avoid Riots
27 March, 2020

https://summit.news/2020/03/27/french-o ... oid-riots/


"A top government official in France has admitted that draconian lockdown measures being imposed on the rest of the population shouldn’t be implemented in the country’s migrant-heavy ghettos in order to prevent riots.

In a letter leaked to magazine Le Canard Enchaine, French Secretary of State to the Ministry of the Interior Laurent Nunez advises, “It is not a priority to enforce closings in certain neighborhoods and to stop gatherings.”"

[Canoerebel]

Mixed news from Italy. On the good side, no spike in cases or deaths. Even better, a sharp drop in New Cases. On the bad side, mortality remains stubbornly high.

[obvert]

An encouraging sign that US testing is nearing a million. If the US continues to test at this rate it could be so useful as a large benchmark similar to South Korea early and Germany in the middle of this outbreak.

Canada and Norway are doing a bang up job on testing, as are Australia and Germany of course still.

In all of these countries the positives/1000 are also much less than places like Italy and NY state, and it makes me think they're getting a more accurate picture of how many cases might be in the population.

[alanschu]

Wife is feeling ill (cough, aches, runny nose) and she called health service early in the morning. They feel that it's probably not Covid, but have asked us to isolate for 10 days as a precaution.

Primarily only affects her (she still had to go to work, now is not), but will mean we don't do any provision runs (we should be okay though).