[Trinidad]

PassedOut, on 2020-July-03, 09:50, said:

Although the EU is clearly right to ban travel from the US, Brazil, and Russia, my youngest son hasn't been able to be with his fiancée for several months now. She lives and works in Berlin and they have a place there. Last year he had been able to be in Berlin three of every eight weeks. For a time it looked like things might loosen up at the beginning of July, but that's not happening.

He's looking at meeting her in a responsible country where they could quarantine together for a couple of weeks and then be eligible to travel to Berlin. But that means finding a safe way to travel to meet her.

I'm really irritated with the folks who voted to put an irresponsible moron in the White House. That it would turn out badly should not be a surprise.

There is an article today in the Dutch newspaper NRC.

It deals with the problems along the US-Canadian border where families have been separated for months now, e.g. around Seattle-Vancouver and Detroit-Winsor. According to the article, it is easier to cross the border legally through an airport than by road. People who could walk over to see their relatives are actually planning on flying.

Link to article (in Dutch)

Rik

(The readers of NRC are typically well-educated, urban professionals. It is the newspaper for "the elite" as in: "the group of people who, according to populist parties, have lost touch with the reality of the common man." )

[Winstonm]

Quote

GOP Sen.: Obama 'Failed' on Ebola, Trump Stepped Up on COVID

Of course, who can forget the great Ebola pandemic of.......when was that again? This is the type of nonsense we in the U.S.A. are having to deal with on daily basis at the national level - in a two-party system of governance, the Repubican party spokespersons openly lie and spread disinformation and propaganda as much and as often as does Putin's Russia. And to those who are apostles of that party, those lies and that propaganda are the only messages they hear.

Rather than banning us from travel to Europe, it might be wiser to banish us to Siberia - many of us would probably feel at home.

[cherdano]

Quote

An epidemiologist, an ICU doctor and a scientist all walk into a bar.

I’m just kidding, they know better.

https://twitter.com/...462355575771136

[johnu]

Dr. Fauci says coronavirus immunity may be 'finite,' duration remains uncertain

Quote

In response to a question about how long antibodies might offer some protection against infection, Fauci said Monday "we do not know."

"With this spike protein that's being presented in the way that we do it with primes and in some cases boosts, we're going to assume that there's a degree of protection, but we have to assume that it's going to be finite," he added during a Q&A discussion with Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health. "It's not going to be like a measles vaccine."

Recently, a number of articles have touched on the same theme, that a potential coronavirus vaccine may not provide permanent protection, and possibly not even long term protection. You might need booster shot(s) after the initial vaccination to maintain protection.

With 7+ billion people in the world, by the time everybody is vaccinated the 1st time, it may be past the time when the 1st recipients need to get a 2nd shot, etc.

[barmar]

johnu, on 2020-July-06, 23:37, said:

[url="https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/dr-fauci-says-coronavirus-immunity-may-be-finite-duration-remains-uncertain/ar-BB16pwIb?li=BBnb7Kz"]Dr. Fauci With 7+ billion people in the world, by the time everybody is vaccinated the 1st time, it may be past the time when the 1st recipients need to get a 2nd shot, etc.

Eek, this is starting to look really bleak.

Lately I've started thinking about what life was like before "modern medicine". In those days, when people got sick, they often died. Women frequently died during childbirth, and many children didn't make it to adulthood.

This was all just an accepted fact of life, people didn't go to extreme measures to try to avoid it. Families had lots of children so that they would be ensured that some would make it. They knew that many diseases were infectious, even though the mechanism (bacteria and virus spread) wasn't known, but they didn't practice "social distancing".

Probably the only reason there weren't enormous pandemics was that few people travelled outside their local areas.

Have we become so spoiled by modern medicine that we can't imagine a life like that? Are we going to be stuck wearing masks and staying 6 feet apart from each other because of this?

[akwoo]

barmar, on 2020-July-08, 20:03, said:

Lately I've started thinking about what life was like before "modern medicine". In those days, when people got sick, they often died. Women frequently died during childbirth, and many children didn't make it to adulthood.

This was all just an accepted fact of life, people didn't go to extreme measures to try to avoid it. Families had lots of children so that they would be ensured that some would make it. They knew that many diseases were infectious, even though the mechanism (bacteria and virus spread) wasn't known, but they didn't practice "social distancing".

Probably the only reason there weren't enormous pandemics was that few people travelled outside their local areas.

Have we become so spoiled by modern medicine that we can't imagine a life like that? Are we going to be stuck wearing masks and staying 6 feet apart from each other because of this?

First of all, if you look at ancient history, you'll find that almost every Roman emperor has a plague named after them, and the longer serving ones have two or three. There were enormous pandemics. (Most of them probably were not the plague; they were different diseases, though we don't always know which one.)

Second, when you don't have much and your life is mostly miserable, death is in some ways quite welcome. In a less wealthy society, life is simply not considered nearly as valuable, and preventing death not worth resources on the same scale. Even the poorest countries today are wealthy compared to medieval Europe.

Third, older societies were generally much more profoundly unequal. If you are a serf and your lord demands that you keep providing him his food even at the risk of contracting the plague (while he isolates himself in the castle), you are lucky if you have the choice of running off into the woods, where you are almost certain to starve to death if you don't first get eaten by a bear. If you are a Roman work slave, you probably prefer the plague to being worked to death, and punishment for attempting to escape is being worked harder to death even faster.

I'm basically happy to be wearing masks and staying 6 feet apart forever. I know a few people who would rather accept the higher risk for themselves. I know of a lot more people who would rather have others accept a higher risk.

[awm]

barmar, on 2020-July-08, 20:03, said:

Have we become so spoiled by modern medicine that we can't imagine a life like that? Are we going to be stuck wearing masks and staying 6 feet apart from each other because of this?

The way we think about children has shifted massively in the last 200 years or so. Most people can’t even imagine a world where around half of children died of disease by the age of 3. This has some unfortunate effects today like the anti vaccine movement (“people didn’t need these vaccines 200 years ago” being a common refrain). It’s just hard for modern families to imagine.

Work has changed a lot in 200 years too. Modern jobs often require some amount of travel and frequent close interactions with clients or coworkers in ways that running a small family farm (a common job 200+ years ago) doesn’t.

More directly related to Covid, often significant sacrifices are being asked of young/healthy people who face little direct risk but need to protect older/sicker people they come into contact with. Humankind has never been as good at empathy or community spirit as we’d like to think we are! One can definitely see cultural differences taking hold here though.

[Winstonm]

barmar, on 2020-July-08, 20:03, said:

Eek, this is starting to look really bleak.

Lately I've started thinking about what life was like before "modern medicine". In those days, when people got sick, they often died. Women frequently died during childbirth, and many children didn't make it to adulthood.

This was all just an accepted fact of life, people didn't go to extreme measures to try to avoid it. Families had lots of children so that they would be ensured that some would make it. They knew that many diseases were infectious, even though the mechanism (bacteria and virus spread) wasn't known, but they didn't practice "social distancing".

Probably the only reason there weren't enormous pandemics was that few people travelled outside their local areas.

Have we become so spoiled by modern medicine that we can't imagine a life like that? Are we going to be stuck wearing masks and staying 6 feet apart from each other because of this?

FYP and the answer is yes. Spoiled, in this sense, to me means not being able to look past your own desires. It is a self-serving approach that is common to adolescence and childhood - when we all think we are our personal center of the universe. It requires real growth to understand that we are all part of a community and that what is best for the community is more important that an individual want.

[pilowsky]

The question of life before modern medicine is well-documented. Here is a post I made a little earlier and also put on Facebook. It includes a book/Masters thesis by a US academic concerning the influenza pandemic. The stories resonate through the decades.

Quote

I just discovered a Masters thesis by a Vanderbilt English student. "THE 1918 INFLUENZA PANDEMIC IN LITERATURE AND MEMORY" by Caroline Hovanec" It concerns literature written at the time of the influenza pandemics between 1918 and 1935. The thesis was written before this pandemic. It makes a fascinating read. I think it may have been published in the journal 'Literature and Medicine' 29:1 Spring 2011. as "Of Bodies, Families, and Communities:
Refiguring the 1918 Influenza Pandemic" Here is a link. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/449360/pdf Outstanding piece of work.

It is interesting to recall that during that pandemic, everything was made worse because there was no scientific evaluation of data. Statistics had not been invented. Neither had computers (or Bridge). Large ships had been invented and troops were packed into them like sardines. They were given cigarettes bad food and many contracted influenza and died as a result while their families and friends socially distanced at home. Remind you of anything? Cruise ships? At the same time, the White house Surgeon-General was recommending LETHAL doses of aspirin as a treatment for influenza (great). Which would have the added benefit of causing kidney disease and high blood pressure later on. The subsequent obesity epidemic in the United States has caused an epidemic of metabolic syndrome (AKA Syndrome X) characterised by obesity, hypertension, lipid disorders and diabetes. All of which attenuates ones ability to cope with the disastrous effects of reduced oxygen-carrying capacity associated with COVID-19.
But don't worry, like a miracle, it will all go away with the heat. And some disinfectant...

[barmar]

Winstonm, on 2020-July-09, 06:49, said:

FYP and the answer is yes. Spoiled, in this sense, to me means not being able to look past your own desires. It is a self-serving approach that is common to adolescence and childhood - when we all think we are our personal center of the universe. It requires real growth to understand that we are all part of a community and that what is best for the community is more important that an individual want.

Where did you get the idea that my post was from a selfish point of view like that? If we were to stop these extreme measures, I think I would be just as likely as anyone else to catch the virus.

[Winstonm]

barmar, on 2020-July-10, 16:49, said:

Where did you get the idea that my post was from a selfish point of view like that? If we were to stop these extreme measures, I think I would be just as likely as anyone else to catch the virus.

I didn't. My comment was directed at the wording only - "spoiled by modern medicine". I beg to differ. "Spoiled"without qualifier is more accurate.

[johnu]

Patient Dies After Going to 'COVID Party,' Thought It Was a Hoax: Official

Quote

"This is a party held by somebody diagnosed with the COVID virus and the thought is that people get together to see if the virus is real and if anyone gets infected," Appleby said. "Just before the patient died, they looked at their nurse and said 'I think I made a mistake, I thought this was a hoax, but it's not.'"

If this was a Republican politician, I would nominate them for a Darwin award.

[hrothgar]

johnu, on 2020-July-11, 16:05, said:

Patient Dies After Going to 'COVID Party,' Thought It Was a Hoax: Official


If this was a Republican politician, I would nominate them for a Darwin award.

I've seen that same article

I am extremely skeptical.
It's just too precious.

It's not just the whole COVID party meme (there's been a lot of fake claims about this), but the whole dying last words thing...

I can potentially believe that there maybe something similar to COVID parties (bunches of idiots who believe that they're immune, who are having a party, and acting like jack assess). But random person gets COVID at one such party, then dies, then makes a deathbed convention with those words...

Nah

[pilowsky]

hrothgar, on 2020-July-11, 16:23, said:

I've seen that same article

I am extremely skeptical.
It's just too precious.

It's not just the whole COVID party meme (there's been a lot of fake claims about this), but the whole dying last words thing...

I can potentially believe that there maybe something similar to COVID parties (bunches of idiots who believe that they're immune, who are having a party, and acting like jack assess). But random person gets COVID at one such party, then dies, then makes a deathbed convention with those words...

Nah

Hilarious, You must have lived a very cloistered life. Although it is true that 10% of the population is really clever. This, of course, means that at the other end of the normal distribution people can have some incredibly strange ideas. And they believe them very strongly.


It used to be a 'thing' when I was a child to send your children to the home of someone infected with measles or mumps. The idea was if they caught it when they were young it was less of a problem. I suspect that something similar may be happening here. Unfortunately, COVID19 is completely different. As I noted earlier many young people in the United States already have severe co-morbidities.

Here is a link to the CDC data showing that more than 20% of US youth is obese. For a long time, this was politicised and there was talk of 'fat-shaming'. Unfortunately, Post-modernism will not improve your oxygen-carrying capacity when a virus destroys your lungs. Being obese means that your body has a lot more work to do to get oxygen to the tissues. Your fitness is low and you will probably have diabetes and hypertension. It's like smoking, but heavier. Coupled with the USA being a failed state where 27.5 million citizens have no health insurance and for most of the others having health cover is dependent on being employed, this means that most US citizens are indentured slaves to their employers. No wonder they all want to go back to work even at risk of catching a potentially lethal disease.

So, combine a lack of competency in understanding the problem with economic frailty and social insecurity, is it surprising that the USA is in the situation it finds itself in now? Normal 1st world countries provide free healthcare to their citizens. This is a social contract that is anathema to the USA. There is no point in being puzzled, there are structural problems with the US as it is currently constituted that prevent it from operating as a normal adult society where the weakest, poorest and neediest are cared for, nurtured and protected.

Basically the "Framers" that everyone seems to love *****ed it up. The place needs a rethink. The white men that wrote the constitution were heroes for a different time and place. Not this one.

[hrothgar]

pilowsky, on 2020-July-11, 18:40, said:

Hilarious, You must have lived a very cloistered life. Although it is true that 10% of the population is really clever. This, of course, means that at the other end of the normal distribution people can have some incredibly strange ideas. And they believe them very strongly.


It used to be a 'thing' when I was a child to send your children to the home of someone infected with measles or mumps. The idea was if they caught it when they were young it was less of a problem. I suspect that something similar may be happening here. Unfortunately, COVID19 is completely different. As I noted earlier many young people in the United States already have severe co-morbidities.

Learn to read ***** for brains...

I did not claim that COVID parties do not exist.
I did not claim that some people at COVID parties are contracting the virus.
I didn't even claim that some of them have died

For example, the following was well reported in the US
https://abcnews.go.c...ory?id=71647393

Rather, I am claiming that the combination of

1. Person goes to coronavirus party
2. Person contracts coronavirus
3. Person gets hospitalized
4. Person succumbs to the disease
5. Person's dying words are "Oh I guess it wasn't a hoax after all" or some such

is incredibly unlikely

The fact that this is incredibly unlikely + the fact that this makes for a great news story to feed to gullible idiots makes me believe that it is much more likely that someone took liberties with actual events than that this actually played out as described.

Back in the early days of the virus, we had a bunch of health care professionals here in the US misrepresenting the effectiveness of masks in preventing the spread of coronavirus in an attempt to stop runs on masks / preserve capacity for critical responders. This is a great example of the so-called "noble lie" or "Socratic lie" at work.

What we're seeing here might easily be another example there of.

[pilowsky]

Do you get really angry about everything? Chill Bill.
You should hear the things I've heard. Some people are really smart - they say clever things when confronted with great peril. Other people have the intelligence of mouldy hamburgers.
When my Father emerged from anaesthesia after his first brain tumour operation and I asked him "How are you" he replied "I gave that Surgeon a piece of my mind" - I'm not kidding. I suspect that he prepared that as a system check before the operation, but he was a Professor of Psychiatry so who can tell.
At the other extreme, I once visited a house as a Doctor and found a nearly lifeless eight-year-old child on the sofa. He could barely breathe or make a sound his asthma was so bad. The room was full of cigarette smoke. The TV was blaring. A small dog was shagging my leg. When I asked the parents and their friends to please stop smoking while I tried to simultaneously call an ambulance, give the child an injection and stop having congress with the ***** dog they told me to ***** off.
The problem was, there was an important show on TV. These people give each other Hallmark cards. They smoke during COVID19 pandemics. They are as thick as sticks, and they say the most ridiculous things - even when they just about to die.
If you had seen me play Bridge, you might understand what I'm saying.
But, don't talk to me about things in the real world that are unlikely.
Save your **** for someone who cares.

[barmar]

https://skeptics.sta...ly-get-infected

[y66]

Quote

After the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officially recommended widespread use of face masks to help slow the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus, the minimalist medical mask quickly got reimagined as a fashion accessory. Then model Naomi Campbell—a famous germaphobe—and musician Erykah Badu stepped it up a notch, sporting custom hazmat suits for stylish social distancing. Now, with the novel coronavirus pandemic showing no sign of slowing, travelers are taking note.

Yezin Al-Qaysi says haute hazmats are just the thing to make flying feel safe again. In mid-April the co-founder of VYZR Technologies, a Toronto-based company specializing in personal protective gear, launched a new product called the BioVYZR via crowdfunding site Indiegogo. The $250, futuristic-looking outer layer resembles the top half of an astronaut’s uniform, with anti-fogging “windows” and a built-in hospital-grade air-purifying device. Paranoid flyers were quick to scoop it up, pre-ordering about 50,000 suits and raising $400,000 for the nascent company. The first batch is set to be delivered by the end of July.

...

Brooke Berlin, founder of Karoo Consulting, which focuses on business development for African travel companies, spends a lot of time in the air but isn’t sold on the BioVYZR. “I’ve been 1K with United for the past five years,” she says. “I will always wear a mask in public, but I have no interest in spending money—which could otherwise be used to support conservation and community efforts—on a protective suit, or playing into the fear of being around people or traveling by wearing something so extreme.”

Hillary France, founder of Brand Assembly, a business platform built to accelerate fashion and lifestyle brands, believes the fancy hazmat suit will have a moment and then fade quickly. “I don’t think this will replace the face mask as the garment we will put into the Covid-19 time capsule, but it is nice to be able to see someone’s smile,” she says.

The celebrity buy-in of stylish protective suits has others thinking that this hazmat suit is more than a fashion fad. Meredith Del Bello Zec, a mother of two young children who works as a New York-based buyer for Erica Wilson, a fashion boutique in Nantucket, Mass., says she’d invest in a BioVYZR.

“We’re in a moment where supermodels are traveling in full hazmat suits, so function and safety are, thankfully, the focus over all else—aesthetics included,” she explains. “That said, fashion will embrace this as it did with masks, and we will likely start to see versions of this type of gear evolve from designers at every level. I personally would look forward to a version that would be easy to wear when wrangling children on airplanes and through airports.”

Source: Jen Murphy at Bloomberg

[cherdano]

cherdano, on 2020-July-02, 10:01, said:

Anyone want to make a bet when pubs will get closed again in large parts of England? No matter how long I look at https://coronavirus-...a.gov.uk/deaths, it doesn't scream "OPEN THE PUBS" to me...

Update: A few weeks later, I have been staring at case counts to figure out whether opening pubs was a good idea. I really can't decide.

[pilowsky]

cherdano, on 2020-July-24, 17:18, said:

Update: A few weeks later, I have been staring at case counts to figure out whether opening pubs was a good idea. I really can't decide.

Either you have not been following current affairs, or you are under the influence of alcohol and your cognitive abilities are mildly impaired.
The graph clearly shows that:

• As soon as restrictions are lifted, caseload increases.
• The incubation period is 2 weeks.
• Alcohol causes a dose-related disinhibition of all function.
• It's a bad idea.
• More people will die,
• What is hard to decide?