The Coronavirus Thread

We have a dark joke.
To discipline the population, it is necessary to exchange the text with the German police. Russian police cars will sound a warning text in German, and in German cities the text will sound in Russian.

 

I work for a supermarket retailer that does that. They are doing well during quarantine crisis.

 

That project is a sort of umbrella for multiple other projects, including the ones that I mentioned, but also including a number of others that use centralized databases or are otherwise not as protective of user privacy.

 

I still do not understand how the web project can stop the spread of the virus. In my opinion this is fraud on fear.

Or is there something I don't know?

 

What fraud do you suspect?

The Google/Apple project will allow a person who has tested positive for the virus to inform all the people to whom they may have transmitted the virus. Then those people can take action (for example, self-quarantine) to avoid spreading the virus further.

 

I may be as dense as a dinosaur, but I am sure that a person with a positive infection test should be in the isolation ward of an infectious disease hospital or in a hospital camp.

The entire circle of his acquaintances should be in quarantine. And it may not be entirely voluntary.

Usually, the actions are as follows: a list of all contacts is obtained from the patient. All contacts receive a quarantine order from the police and medical supervision.

In the 60s, the black plague epidemic was prevented by police action in Moscow.

 

In the 1920s-1950s, of course, polio was handled the same way in the US. And small outbreaks of other diseases have been contained that way since then.

But the current situation is different, both with the disease (transmissibility, morbidity and mortality rates, etc.) and with the population (no recent experience with shared sacrifice for the sake of winning a world war, less blind obedience to authority in general, different demographics of the most-vulnerable, etc.). Plus, at this point the virus is so widespread in most countries that draconian measures to contain it are impractical.

 

Slightly revamped, the "Confirmed by Population" on the U.S. Map tab is the most interesting to me. The World Map tab shows the eastern half of the U.S. completely engulfed, but there's a new Hospitalization Rate tab.

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/us-map

 

CV-19 is different and traditional tracking methods seem too slow to stop it spread. Also, persons who do test positive don't necessarily know all people they've been in contact with during the last few days. Do you know who sat next to you on your half hour bus ride yesterday?

*** The virus that is causing the pandemic, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, poses a particular challenge, says Oxford infectious disease epidemiologist Christophe Fraser. So far, it appears that nearly half of transmissions happen before an infected person has symptoms. That means the virus can spread for days before health authorities even learn of a spreader. “No matter how many resources you put into [contact tracing], it’s never going to keep ahead of the virus,” he says. “It’s always going to be one or two generations ahead.” ***

*** To stop the epidemic, health officials must reduce the virus’ reproductive number—the average number of people each infected person transmits the virus to—to less than one. When the team modeled a scenario in which contacts were notified the instant a person tested positive, it was possible to push the reproductive rate of the virus below that threshold ***

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/202...ld-help-stem-spread-coronavirus-privacy-price

 

A great idea, but it will only work among 100% of disciplined citizens. In the real world, this will only worsen the panic.
In case of crisis situations (an epidemic is also a crisis situation), you need to act according to a certain Protocol of actions. It is very naive to hope that an ordinary person who is suddenly under stress will act according to the behavior Protocol
Usually it will rush around and spread panic. There is a paradox: the more civilized a person is, the more prone they are to panic. I can't imagine the panic among the Afghan Pashtuns, but I can imagine the panic among the residents of the Moscow district.

Sorry for the forced cynicism.

 

Nice to see the state governors step up and form coalitions to work together because of the lack of leadership from Trump. That press conference Trump held yesterday was painful to watch. Trump claiming he has absolute power and can override the governor's decisions was bizarre.

 

We have exactly the same situation. But made worse by the fact that our leader just hid.

the moment of truth is coming. "Who's who"

 

One interesting thing for me and my family during this whole thing is food. We eat lot's of it and not really that healthy. Mostly comfort food and such. Not a lot of salads and lean meat/chicken at our house. My wife has now started ordering pickup fairly regularly. I suppose that she is tired of cooking and cleaning (not her forte).

I am still nervous about ordering takeout. I'm thinking if one person involved in the food preparation process is sick, or even asymtomatic, I'm screwed. We are within walking distance of the downtown Woodstock historic area which has a fantastic collection of really good places to eat. They do lot's of farm to table stuff and there is a seafood place that will make your mouth water just thinking about it. These places are hard to resist.

Golf remains my only diversion that gets me out of the house. I'm very grateful for it. I'm hoping that there are not state mandated golf course closings on the horizon. All courses here are following very strict guidelines. You can only pay online. So there is no going into the proshop to pay or mingle. There are no water dispensers, ball washers etc on the course in an effort to make the experience contactless and one person per cart. The ball no longer goes down into the cup when putted. There are bumpers that keep the ball on the surface of the cup. The flag stay in at all timesI feel safer playing golf than eating take out.

Unfortunately, several months ago we made a decision to move. There is no stopping this process as the wheels have been in motion for some time now. We have to be out of this house by May 1st and in the new house. It's a decision that we love to have back if we knew what was coming with CV-19.

 

I would never eat out/take out during these times. Not worth the risk.
The fact is that we know to little as of yet. For all we know, the virus could go into hibernation, and return later with not so fun effects. Like Hepatitis B, which can cause liver cancer years later, or ebolavirus, which have caused blindness in people.

Its simply a virus you want to avoid at all risk, even for healthy people.

 

I think caution and concern is entirely appropriate with takeout. We've got a Thai place we're trying to help keep afloat and it's been really helpful to clarify with them what their safety practices are. They're thorough: Wear masks, disinfect surfaces and POS equipment etc. A blind yes or no to takeout seems unnecessary and unfortunate in different ways. Having that conversation has actually brought us closer to the people we've done business with for a couple of years. I now know where they're from, the pressures they're under and where they're finding support, and what they're trying to do with their lives long-term. It's been humbling to know that these circumstances have actually opened the door to that.

 

We know it's not a hepatitis or ebola virus, but a new variant of coronaviruses, which have been researched for years.

*** "While COVID-19 is new to us, coronaviruses are not, and with all the studies done on these viruses, there has never been any information to implicate food-borne transmission," says Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of medicine in the department of infectious diseases at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tenn. ***

IMHO, this article offers pretty level-headed advice on takeout:
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/04/08/822903487/how-safe-is-it-to-eat-take-out

 

Interesting. Given I had to quit my old job, go job-hunting and take into account a bad financial month I have been rationing. I got my box of instant noodles and extra bag of coffee beans when I had the cash.

Until I have surplus cash-flow, I am not going to party.

 

Wow, 20 hours since the last post here. Is that a good sign?

 

This is probably a good sign. People go about their business quietly.


We have news that Trump and Prosecutor Barr denied the bill gates Foundation a project for total worldwide vaccination of a new type using chips. I can't find the original of this news. Does anyone know the source of the news?