The Coronavirus Thread

LA county and USC released their preliminary antibody test results yesterday.
https://news.usc.edu/168987/antibody-testing-results-covid-19-infections-los-angeles-county/

Like Santa Clara, it points to many more people than previously thought have the antibody.
LA has a 2.8 to 5.6% rate, so LA's range is a little higher than the Santa Clara one of 2.5-4.2%.
For LA, that extrapolates to 221 to 442 thousand people

I would take this to be good news, but I think they (government) may treat it as bad news and a reason for more lockdown.

 

This new flu is tricky. It can start mild and over time hit the lungs and the surrounding organs.

Be careful.

 

@Zampotech I'll echo @Deep Funk, there's a trend towards it having a double curve on the individual level when it gets severe - you feel bad, then you feel OK, then 1-2 weeks later you feel *really* bad.

 

Went and got fish and chips today, small hole in the wall place here is run by a Chinese family who also has a large Chinese food menu so I also got hot and sour soup.

I went in, ordered at the table they had setup by the door. Was told it would be around 15 minutes, so I went back outside and waited in my car.

After 15 minutes, went back inside and saw two small kids in the area where they would have people dining in. The kids went in karate robes and had an iPad in front of them and were practicing their kicks and punches. Took me a minute to realize the kids were on Zoom with their karate teacher who had on his karate pads in front of the camera.

It was pretty adorable, the younger of the kids had on a karate belt that slipped off while she was doing a kick. But it seemed like she was having such a good time she didn't notice.

Fish and chips were nice, hot and sour soup was little watery.

 

Singapore, up till recently the poster child of "how to sanely handle a pandemic outbreak," has gone nuts. It all seems to be related to their government mass labour policies, which involves importing workers from nearby poorer countries and housing them in cramped dormitories. From what I've read, this dorms involve 20 people per room using shared bathrooms.

3 weeks ago (months into the pandemic for Asia) they were at 200 cases. Today they are past 9000.

 

Bill Gates ' report to the Pentagon

On the fight against the Taliban with the help of viruses.

I can't say anything about the authenticity of the video. Found on Youtube

 

Definitely happy to see a local peak in NY, but I fear it's only a local peak. This thing isn't going to be over until something like 60-80% of the population in every region is immune (ie, has had it and survived). When restrictions in NY are lifted somewhat, there will be another round of infections, and another peak. Hopefully we can keep the peak low, but we don't know yet. The "flattening the curve" thing is basically the goal, but it's not like it's going to be a smooth bell curve like is used to explain the concept.

Hopefully treatment is going to get better so that hospital stays are shorter, and there are fewer deaths. Hopefully testing gets better, so progression can be caught earlier, and more fine-grained quarantining is possible. Maybe we'll get lucky and a less-severe mutation becomes prevalent (although with the long latency period before symptoms, I'm not sure how much selective pressure there would be). If we're lucky the peaks will become progressively easier to deal with.

But I seriously doubt NY is over the hump. We're hoping for a controlled burn through the population, but there are going to be flare-ups.

 

I begrudgingly recognise that he is spending some of his fortune on philanthropy, but hey, so did the slavers.

 

Went to my local Vietnamese place, got some Vietnamese Sausage Fried Rice for lunch. I always like that they have some Navy stuff hanging up on the wall, since Jax has two Navy bases (sorry for poor pic).

But it also shows another story that people don't like to talk about it here: A lot of White Navy Men/Asian Women marriages here in Jax. It's a pretty common joke with my friends who are mixed: Mostly White Navy guys who retired married someone who is from Vietnam or from the Philippines and they perma live in Jax. A lot of them are very happy in their marriages. Of course their Asian spouses bring their families over via chain immigration, and of course they need to find work. Some of them open restaurants locally here in Jax. The joke is the White Husband sucks at doing his job so he deals at the cash register while his Wife and the family runs the restaurant. End of the day, Wife family mostly escaped their poorer living in Asia and they are very happy with the marriage of their relative marrying a White guy. Then when they have children they become American like everyone else and just roll their eyes at the White Man/Asian Women stereotype. Can't blame them, it is kind of funny but also that's how their cousins/uncles/aunts came to the Stateside.

At my job I worked with this retired Navy Master Chief who is now RIP. This really older white guy who smokes a pack a day and get his cigs duty free at the local base. One day he came in the office with a shit ton of Lumpia. I told him how the f**k you made Lumpia this good. His answer was he learned it from his wife who is from the Philippines and they met while he was on duty.

During the virus situation you can find some hidden stories, stories that not everyone wants to talk about because well it is borderline offensive. As a mixed immigrant heritage child born in the US these stories always interest me. No wonder some guys on the right want to stop chain immigration. Then again, most Filipinos here in Jax (the ones I know) are mostly registered Republicans.

So @Lyander try to find an American women via Green Card fishing, then move to the US and you win the lottery and earn USD to buy audio. Ok Ok I kid!

But......Light-Skin Asian boys is a fetish with some American Women, and I wish I was lying. Back in college I know too many white college girls who had a fetish for Light-Skin Asian boys. Then again, when I go to Jollibees I only see Light-Skin Filipinos on their ads, even when I know a few Dark-Skin Filipinos. Colorism blows.

 

Well this thread's taken an odd turn.

Yeah, there're more than a few stories of people here (often women) looking for foreigner boyfriends/husbands. Don't need to explain why I suppose, but it's given rise to a massive... industry. The joke you made was definitely not SJW-safe, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't see the truth in it.

And yes colourism is a thing here. Very prevalent. I f'ing hate it, and that's coming from someone who's supposed to be more socially desirable for having pasty-ass skin; trust me when I say there's discrimination that runs both ways, which only serves to deepen divides.

For those curious how things are on this end, lockdown does seem to have greatly helped mitigate the spread of cases and we're currently just at 6710 total cases with 446 dead and 693 recovered; these numbers are expected to swell dramatically once lockdown is lifted. One side-effect of global quarantining procedures appears to be a massive spike in domestic abuse cases (which I had to write about— really f'ing stressful).

Oh, and news of plans to enact martial law was denied following the leak. Naturally.

Fun tidbit, a local senator said China should foot the bill for CoV-related costs in exchange for damaging Philippine reefs. The Chinese embassy's response was as expected: https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/04/22/20/china-blasts-hontiveros-over-call-for-coronavirus-costs

 

I dunno, sounds close to Gates but not quite right, and also doesn't look quite right. I call BS, it's some other dweeb.

 

Totally off topic, but whaaa? Isn't like half of Asia light skinned (i.e. east Asian)? It's not exactly a rare thing.

 

That doesn't even sound close to him. And doesn't look like him or move like him. And didn't draw a crowd to the auditorium like him. And even ignoring the absurdity of the subject matter, and glossing over any reasons for Bill Gates to have been studying it, that's not how he presents or talks about scientific research. Watch two minutes of any actual video of him to see.

The video is obviously fake, or fictional, but it doesn't look to me as though the filmmakers were trying to deceive anyone into thinking that the actor was Bill Gates -- I think they intended for that character to be just a non-famous random scientist.

 

I can't say anything about the video, I don't know Bill Gates at all. I think this video should be checked.

About delusions: In 1981, I saw a primitive neurocomputer made on 64 pieces of 8080 processors. It was called " a computing device with random information connections" I thought it was a delusional and dead-end study at the time, we had very few 8080 processors and they were expensive and rare. And this computer at that time could only distinguish large letters. I was struck by the reckless use of processors. In those years, we used a single 8080 processor to make homemade simple computers.
I don't know what happened to this neurocomputer, I never visited this lab again.

 

It was more about the issue of Colorism on that part. Some cultures put a focus that Light Skin is better than Dark Skin. Or maybe I was drunk posting (which I was not).

This virus situation brings up some hidden truths where I live. The good news is where I am at it is easier to get TP and PT now.

I'm a weird person. To be honestly I can't blame people in other parts of the world who want a foreign boyfriend/husband. Then again, a lot of the older generation where I live are in very happy marriages. Without them I wouldn't have the friends that I have who are super cool.

Oh yes, Colorism blows.

 

It's been over a month since I last posted, and as I suspected, the process been a bureaucratic nightmare.

Turns out my employer was nice enough to do a mass unemployment filing for all its employees. But they bungled the process and had to re-do the entire thing, which took weeks. When it finally came time for us to request payment, we couldn't do it because of some glitch. A bunch of us ended up calling on our own and the lucky ones who were able to get through (which is nearly impossible, as the phones are always jammed, and even if you get through, you may sit on hold for hours only to be unceremoniously hung up on... woops). I got through and the lady (who was pretty nice) said my company had fucked everything up, so she had to re-do it for me on the phone via some loophole by declaring me hard of hearing or something (ha!), and once it was straightened out, said I would receive my back 2 weeks of unemployment (plus the extra $600 the govt stipulates per week) via my direct deposit within 48 hours. It was the same process other employees mentioned on our company facebook page... bungled filing, but payout in 48 hours...

That was last Friday, and I have yet to see a red cent.

So of course I've been calling, usually getting a busy signal. Yesterday I was lucky enough to get through, but unlucky enough to sit on hold for nearly 2 hours, and then, you guessed it... hung up on. Fun times. This is happening to tons of other people... the NYT even did a story on it: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/17/...ndemic-unemployment-assistance-ny-delays.html

And that $1,2000 stimulus check the govt was supposed to be sending everybody? More wonderful govt incompetence. I filed 2019 taxes, but did not set up my direct deposit because I owe money to them, and wont be able to pay for a while (luckily they extended the deadline to July)... doesn't matter though, the stimulus is a tax credit and isn't affected by money owed. The IRS set up a web portal for people to put in their banking info for direct deposit. I've been checking it for over a week, and always get a "payment status not available" error. This is happening to millions of other Americans as well.

On the bright side, work did set up a relief fund issuing $500 to employees who qualify and I got that payment (after dealing with a few bungled processes), but half of it went out the door immediately, as my phone was stolen last week and I had to buy a new one. And even THAT was a nightmare, as fedex refused to deliver the phone because the company for some reason labeled my address as a business rather than the a resident and businesses are supposed to be closed, so fedex wouldn't even bother. More sitting on the phone dealing with red tape and it was finally delivered, but damn....

And evidence is growing that the shutdown may have been entirely unnecessary as new data shows the infection rate is WAY higher than previously thought, which makes the mortality rate WAY lower than previously thought, closer to flu levels (still higher, but not the catastrophic numbers they were touting before), and with nearly a quarter of a billion people set to possibly starve to death from famine as a result of the economic downspiral: https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/22/africa/coronavirus-famine-un-warning-intl/index.html the whole thing is looking worse by the day.

I have been listening to alot less music lately, in a kind of netherworld of dealing with my own demons and the constant stream of "where's my money?". @Joshvar was kind enough to loan me his HD600, which is actually an amazing match with the Starlett, but I am left wondering what the future holds for me... rent is due at the end of the month, and I have no idea when my job is reopening. I don't think I mentioned that I'm a server at Alamo Drafthouse as a day job in lieu of pursuing a film career (which has begun to take shape in recent years, but its a long, difficult process)... Drafthouse is a restaurant/movie theater combo that shows a mix of Hollywood movies and indie stuff... theaters are not expected to open until June at the earliest, as there are literally no new movies expected until then. And work has stated that even when they do re-open, not everyone will be working right away, for obvious reasons.

We shall see...

 

@ColtMrFire, your story really pulls on the heartstrings. Two thoughts. Property owners large and small don't have much of a choice as so many of their renters will simply not be able to pay. Explain to them you will have it when you have it. They really don't have the usual options (eviction, etc.) as it would be a peculiar situation of they had someone lined up to take your place. Also, perhaps you could set up a "rent" situation with your DNA with someone like me who is medicine (business is what it always is, with a slight uptick recently ) to help you in a small way to get you through.