Government Response to Coronavirus 3: Locked Down

[CarrotCake]

1 hour ago, laPapessaGiovanna said:

Well it depends. If an elderly person refuses care (as many do) nobody is going to force them to go through with it. If the elderly patient doesn't express any such wish then they'll be cared for in the best possible way and this may even mean that they aren't going to intubate someone who isn't going to survive the procedure, especially now.

But if said elderly person is otherwise healthy and strong as they can be at their age it's fair to give them the best possibility to fight. My grandma is 89 and, quite uncommonly at her age, has no underlying conditions beyond a slightly underfunctioning thyroid that she has been successfully treating for 30 yrs. I would expect her to be given a chance to fight should she fall ill (knocks on wood).

These people are also treated here, if they want to. It is just very common for people to say that they don't want to.

Like my grandfather, a few years ago he got sick at 87 and could get treated to live 5-10 more years but he could then no longer take his daily long walks, go golfing and go on far holidays. So he said: meh, my life has been nice enough, goodbye!

I think that it is easier to make a decision like this if it is quite common. So it is not that the doctors are actively pushing or even asking the elderly. It is just the case that a lot of them make this decision which probably encourages others as well.

[clueliss]

Not to worry - Koch is working from home now.

 

[HerNameIsBuffy]

1 minute ago, CarrotCake said:

These people are also treated here, if they want to. It is just very common for people to say that they don't want to.

Like my grandfather, a few years ago he got sick at 87 and could get treated to live 5-10 more years but he could then no longer take his daily long walks, go golfing and go on far holidays. So he said: meh, my life has been nice enough, goodbye!

I think that it is easier to make a decision like this if it is quite common. So it is not that the doctors are actively pushing or even asking the elderly. It is just the case that a lot of them make this decision which probably encourages others as well.

I have respect for anyone who is making their own health decisions based on their quality of life.  I can certainly see instances where I could see myself making the decision not to fight and to opt for palliative care only.

It's when the ...klootzak (my new favorite word ever) in Texas starts his ...I need a stronger word for bullshit...about how grandparents should be just fine with sacrificing themselves for the economy is when I panic.

We cannot allow others to devalue and dehumanize people based on their age.  Or any other demographic.  The sanctity of life for me absolutely allows people to make decisions about their own care, but not for politicians to deem some honorably disposable.

[GreyhoundFan]

Third grader as POTUS. How professional.

 

[fraurosena]

It takes a whole world to create a new virus, not just China

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When I get stressed, a patch of annoying red eczema appears on the inside of my upper right arm. The doctor gives me some cream to rub on it, but I also know that to stop it coming back I have to deal with the underlying problem.

Too much information, you’re thinking, but let me make the analogy. The reason we shouldn’t call the Sars-CoV-2 virus causing global misery the “Chinese virus” is the same reason I shouldn’t blame my eczema on my upper arm: there is clearly a superficial weakness there, but the real cause lies elsewhere.

All the evidence gathered to date suggests that the now notorious Chinese “wet markets” – places selling live and dead animals for human consumption – provide an opportunity for coronaviruses to jump easily from animals to people. It happened with the Sars-CoV virus in 2002-3 – which was contained before it caused a pandemic – and it has happened again with its close relative, Sars-CoV-2.

But to understand why the emergence of such zoonoses – human infections of animal origin – has accelerated in recent decades, you have to understand the forces putting those viruses in our path. They are political and economic. They have to do with the rise of industrial-scale farming concerns in China and the resulting marginalisation of millions of smallholder farmers. In order to survive, those farmers have moved into the production of more exotic species – animals that were once eaten only for subsistence. But the bigger operations have pushed the farmers out geographically too, as they have taken up more prime farming land. The smallholders have been forced closer to uncultivable zones such as forests, where bats – reservoirs for coronaviruses – lurk. The stars have aligned, and not in a good way, to channel bat viruses through intermediate mammalian hosts such as pangolins, and into humans.

Even so, to play devil’s advocate for a moment, the problem could still be regarded as uniquely Chinese. But there are two reasons why that’s not true. First, with the opening up of China, its agribusiness has ceased to be wholly Chinese-owned. It is a big recipient of foreign direct investment. Second, as the American pandemic expert, David Morens, and his colleagues pointed out last month in the New England Journal of Medicine, we’ve been watching a similar drama unfold over a much longer timescale with influenza – the disease that has caused more pandemics in the history of humanity than any other.

Flu viruses that infect animals, including poultry and pigs, have periodically spilled over into humans ever since we domesticated those animals millennia ago. But the factory farms that produce our food today ratchet up the virulence of those flu viruses just before they spill over. This ratcheting up has been documented in Europe, Australia and the US more than it has in poor or emerging economies, and it’s what gave rise to the last flu pandemic in 2009. The first cases of that pandemic were recorded in California, but nobody calls it the American flu – and it’s right that they don’t, if only because American farms aren’t wholly American-owned either. China, for one, has invested in them.

It’s not just the industries that produce our food that are creating the conditions in which new zoonoses emerge. Logging, mining, road-building and rapid urbanisation are also contributing, and the profits from those are shared internationally too. “We have created a global, human-dominated ecosystem that serves as a playground for the emergence and host-switching of animal viruses,” wrote Morens et al. The resulting diseases are suffered locally at first, as is reflected in their names – Ebola and Zika virus diseases and Bolivian hemorrhagic fever, to name just three – but the irony is that some of them, such as HIV and Covid-19, go on to become global. It’s hard not to see a terrible natural justice in that.

In 2015, the World Health Organization issued guidelines on how to name diseases, which stipulated that such names should not single out particular human populations, places, animals or food. Names that commit those sins often turn out to be wrong anyway, but by the time that becomes clear the damage has already been done. Gay-related immune deficiency or Grid, the first name given to Aids, stigmatised the gay community while stymying research into how the disease affected other groups. President Trump’s labelling of Sars-CoV-2 as the “Chinese virus” is also unhelpful. At a time when the main centres of Covid-19 infection are outside China, and Americans and Europeans could be learning valuable lessons from the Chinese, he is exchanging insults with Chinese politicians who have accused him of racism and hinted – just as preposterously – that the US military brought the virus to China. The slanging match suits Trump, distracting from his mishandling of the epidemic at home, but it does the rest of us no favours.

That doesn’t mean China shouldn’t be held accountable for its shortcomings. Americans know where their weak points are – they include agricultural fairs, where pigs and humans come together – and they police them ferociously. Their infectious disease experts can detect a virus circulating in a herd and generate a vaccine to it within hours. The Chinese have got better at this lately. They now vaccinate their poultry flocks against a dangerous flu virus, H7N9, which first infected humans in 2013, for example. But nearly 20 years after Sars-CoV spilled over in a wet market, those places still appear to be a liability.

Controlling that animal-human interface is obviously important, but it shouldn’t blind us to the bigger problem, which is those globalised industries. Economists use the term “tragedy of the commons” to describe a shared resource – common grazing land, say – that is spoiled by individuals acting in their own self-interest. It has been applied to the climate crisis, but as University of British Columbia geographer Luke Bergmann and his colleagues have pointed out, it doesn’t quite fit what has happened here. In the case of these industries, it would be more accurate to say that they have excluded the nearly 8 billion of us who depend on the commons from participating in their governance. Yet we are bearing the costs of their industrial exploitation, in the form of pandemic disease.

We have our share of responsibility, as individuals, in the foods we choose to eat and the lifestyle choices we make generally. There are a lot of us on this planet and sustaining us is costly. But as has become increasingly clear, these industries have decoupled themselves from consumer choice; they’re driving it rather than responding to it.

It’s time we took back the commons, which means voting for politicians who will hold those industries accountable, rather than ones who deflect the blame. We need leaders who understand that the treatment for this particular eruption cannot only be topical, it has to be systemic too.

 

[clueliss]

This is about Greene & Christian Counties in Missouri.  Springfield and I believe Branson

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Of course Pompous Pompeo has to parrot his master's racist crap:

 

[clueliss]

And Perry County MO

And KCPD warns that they are NOT asking for your essential paper work and if someone does ask for it - call 911.

Quote

 

 

[Dandruff]

29 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Of course Pompous Pompeo has to parrot his master's racist crap:

I don't believe naming the virus for China is constructive, especially from this Administration, but if filthy market conditions that are allowed in China likely helped the virus to mutate then why shouldn't they be held accountable?

[fraurosena]

NYU seeks to graduate medical students early to fight coronavirus

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New York University said it will allow its medical students to graduate early so the newly established doctors can help in the fight against the coronavirus.

The private university said that the unprecedented move is "in response to Governor Cuomo’s directive to get more physicians into the health system more quickly," according to NBC New York.

A graduation ceremony for Grossman School of Medicine students was expected to be held in May. Only students who receive the approval of the state's Department of Education and other regulatory bodies will be allowed to finish early, the outlet reported.

The New York City area has become the center of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States, with more than 26,300 confirmed cases and 271 deaths as of Wednesday afternoon.

 

6 minutes ago, Dandruff said:

I don't believe naming the virus for China is constructive, especially from this Administration, but if filthy market conditions that are allowed in China likely helped the virus to mutate then why shouldn't they be held accountable?

@Dandruff, if you haven't already,  I suggest you read the article (It takes a whole world to create a new virus, not just China) I posted above. I believe it answers your honest question. 

[HerNameIsBuffy]

28 minutes ago, Dandruff said:

I don't believe naming the virus for China is constructive, especially from this Administration, but if filthy market conditions that are allowed in China likely helped the virus to mutate then why shouldn't they be held accountable?

Changing the name doesn't hold them accountable, why is Pompeo holding up a G7 statement to make a point on the name?

[fraurosena]

@thoughtful, I think you will appreciate this one! 

Not 'The Beatles' singing I gotta wash my hands.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxOJ7hh3H-I&feature=youtu.be

(sadly, YouTube won't let it embed)

 

[fraurosena]

Their humaneness is palpable. /s

Handful of GOP senators threaten to delay Senate coronavirus bill over unemployment payments

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A handful of Republican senators on Wednesday threatened to delay the $2 trillion coronavirus spending bill over a proposed increase to unemployment insurance.

In a statement, Sens. Tim Scott, R-S.C., Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Ben Sasse, R-Neb., said that the bill could provide a "strong incentive for employees to be laid off instead of going to work" because some people could theoretically make more by being unemployed.

"This isn’t an abstract, philosophical point — it’s an immediate, real-world problem," they continued. "If the federal government accidentally incentivizes layoffs, we risk life-threatening shortages in sectors where doctors, nurses, and pharmacists are trying to care for the sick, and where growers and grocers, truckers and cooks are trying to get food to families' tables."

They added, "We must sadly oppose the fast-tracking of this bill until this text is addressed, or the Department of Labor issues regulatory guidance that no American would earn more by not working than by working."

The final details of the bill have yet to be released but Senate negotiators came to an agreement overnight that includes an additional $600 per week payment to each recipient of unemployment insurance. The benefit also extends to those who typically do not qualify, such as gig economy workers, furloughed employees and freelancers. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the boost "ensures that laid-off workers, on average, will receive their full pay for four months."

Senators are expected to vote on the bill later Wednesday.

At a press conference Wednesday, Graham, Scott, Sasse and fellow GOP Sen. Rick Scott of Florida said they hoped an amendment could be passed that would limit unemployment benefits to 100 percent of a worker's salary.

"We'll know in about an hour whether this is a drafting error," Graham said, adding that he's afraid it is not and that very few people would choose work over unemployment benefits that provided moderately more money.

"Our goal is to help this bill get to the finish line," Scott of South Carolina said, adding that while he supports the bill, "We cannot encourage people to make more money in unemployment than they do in employment."

The effort received swift pushback from Democrats.

"Let's not over-complicate this," Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., tweeted. "Several Republican Senators are holding up the bipartisan Coronavirus emergency bill because they think the bill is too good for laid off Americans."

"Republicans right now are holding up COVID relief package because the unemployment insurance is TOO GENEROUS," Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, tweeted. "I’ve heard zero business leaders or workers ask me to not make too much money available. My advice is: Ask anyone in your home state. They will tell you to pass the bill."

MSNBC's Garrett Haake asked Scott of Florida, one of the Senate's wealthiest members, if he understood the optics problem of having one of the richest lawmakers holding up the massive stimulus package over a moderate financial gain for less wealthy Americans who find themselves out of work.

"I want to make sure that all of our businesses ... can make sure people want to come to work," he said.

 

[fraurosena]

The author of this article really doesn't get it. It's not meant to be hilarious, dipshit. It's not meant for anyone's entertainment. He's deadly serious. Which is why I'm posting the article anyway; it contains the mayor's post in its entirety, and that's a message everyone should read.

"Listen up dipsh*ts": NKY mayor goes on hilarious rant about coronavirus

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A local mayor is turning some heads after an online rant he posted to Facebook made many people laugh, and others not so much.

Fed up with the apparent apathy some of his citizens showed towards the coronavirus pandemic, Walton, Kentucky Mayor Gabe Brown took some time to attempt to convey that he thinks that the coronavirus pandemic is a "serious ordeal". "In fact," he says, "it’s a big f**cking deal. Stay at home."

His whole rant is certainly worth the read, and instead of trying to piece it apart, it's probably best to get it all in one go. So here you go! Enjoy:

Listen up dipshits and sensible people. I might not have the best bedside manor. I might not put you at ease like the Governor does, but I don’t care. You need to realize that this is a serious ordeal. In fact, it’s a big f**cking deal. Stay at home.

I didn’t give you information to induce panic. I gave you information, so that you’d be informed.

Maybe, just maybe, I am privy to information that you aren’t. I’m sorry for being the gossiping Mayor.

I’m tired of Covid-19 conference calls. I take 3 a day, plus one extra on the weekend with Kenton County. If you don’t like what I’m telling you, then go buy some toilet paper.

I pray every night that the State, County and region that I love with all of my heart will stop doing nonsensical things. Treat this seriously. If you don’t, then screw you (f#ck you is what I want to say, but I can’t).

This will pass. Take it seriously. It is here. Act like you have the virus and don’t spread it to other people. I have no doubt that it hasn’t already been here, but testing had been limited. More cases are coming. If you ignore this problem, the worst thing that could happen is that your mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, aunts, uncles could die.

Be responsible. If you don’t, then screw you.

Warmest regards,

Mayor Gabe Brown

 

[thoughtful]

33 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

@thoughtful, I think you will appreciate this one! 

Not 'The Beatles' singing I gotta wash my hands.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxOJ7hh3H-I&feature=youtu.be

(sadly, YouTube won't let it embed)

 

Loved it, ant this comment below it, as well:

Quote

 

Richard Todd 1 day ago

It's like Schoolhouse Rock.. for adults. COMING SOON:

Jimi Hendrix: All Along the Wash Basin
Billie Eilish: Good Time To Wash
Aerosmith: Wash This Way
TLC: Some Scrubs
Pink Floyd: A Bar of Soap On The Sink, Part I
Backstreet Boys: I Wash It That Way
Rolling Stones: (I Can't Get No) Sanitation
Taylor Swift: You Need To Wash Up
Led Zeppelin: Whole Lotta Suds

 

[fraurosena]

 

[clueliss]

And the US is putting a freeze on troop movements.

Spoiler

 

 

[fraurosena]

 

[Dandruff]

1 hour ago, fraurosena said:

I suggest you read the article (It takes a whole world to create a new virus, not just China) I posted above. I believe it answers your honest question. 

I did read the article.  It struck me as trying to deflect blame off China by pointing out very broad, contributing political and economic factors.

1 hour ago, HerNameIsBuffy said:

Changing the name doesn't hold them accountable, why is Pompeo holding up a G7 statement to make a point on the name?

Because this is toddler-level, name-calling bullshit...as we have learned to expect.

[Ozlsn]

1 hour ago, clueliss said:

And the US is putting a freeze on troop movements.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

Influenza infection is linked to a higher rate of heart attacks in men aged over 60 as we discovered when my father had a mild heart attack last year. Lungs and heart are (unsurprisingly) very linked - anything that puts pressure on the lungs puts pressure on the heart as it works harder to force blood through inflamed tissue and keep oxygen circulating. So yes, this doesn't surprise me. Worries the crap out of me, but doesn't surprise me.

28 minutes ago, Dandruff said:

did read the article.  It struck me as trying to deflect blame off China by pointing out very broad, contributing political and economic factors.

So, ok, we blame China. Then what?

[HerNameIsBuffy]

Channel says press briefing is live, but nothing is happening.  Does anyone know if the time changed?

 

[Emma]

My radio says they’ll carry it as soon as he is on, but he’s not on yet.

apparently trump is running late. As usual.

[fraurosena]

22 minutes ago, Dandruff said:

I did read the article.  It struck me as trying to deflect blame off China by pointing out very broad, contributing political and economic factors.

I don't agree. It's not only in China that animals are kept in appalling and unhygienic circumstances. Nor is China the first place where zoonoses directly caused by man ever took place. Remember mad cow disease in the eighties? The origins for that horrific illness was a disease in sheep called scrapie. However, man, in his ultimate wisdom, decided that it would be a good idea to mix ground sheep remains into cow feed. And so man facilitated the disease in jumping from sheep to cows, where it mutated to bovine spongiform encephalopathy -- mad cow disease. When people then ate those cows, the disease crossed over to people, where it manifested itself as a new variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. And this first happened in Britain.

Did COVID-19 originate in China? Yes. But putting a blanket blame China for causing zoonoses is incorrect.  

[HerNameIsBuffy]

2 minutes ago, Emma said:

My radio says they’ll carry it as soon as he is on, but he’s not on yet.

apparently trump is running late. As usual.

We have a president on Duggar time.

[fraurosena]

5 minutes ago, Emma said:

My radio says they’ll carry it as soon as he is on, but he’s not on yet.

apparently trump is running late. As usual.

He's too busy tweeting.