Coronavirus 2

[PreciousPantsofDoom]

Interesting hearing about social distancing measures in various places. We are shopping only 1x per week. It would be less, but I'm getting groceries for my MIL too and it has been a challenge to get her down to that. She normally shops daily (I've seen her grocery bills and can't imagine how much she must have to throw away.)

There were already lots of people wearing masks before the lockdown (we have a very large Asian population here,) but now masks are much more common, particularly older people. Still plenty without though.  I've been inconsistent in wearing one,I'll have to admit.  I used an N95 one when I had to take my MIL into the hospital for an appointment for x-rays, having her cast off, and meeting with the doctor and physiotherapist.  I used a cloth one the 2 times we have done restaurant pick up (more to make  them more comfortable really, since cloth mask doesn't protect me!  I also used it once at the grocery store, but haven't done so every time.  I did wear it when I had to go to the bank to sign a document this week.  It felt very weird to go into a bank wearing a mask.  Felt much like that cartoon posted on the other thread where the bank teller was getting the Covid masked people to line up on one side and the bank robber masked people to line up on the other. ?

I am wearing gloves at the store, even the though there is a sanitizing station where they wipe down your cart before you take it now.  Stores all have marks on the floor to space out line ups as well as one way arrows in the aisles and signs up all over reminding people to keep their distance (announcements too) as well as signs up limiting people to two of any item. Stores are controling how many are allowed inside  (I'm going much earlier than I ever used to so that I don't have to wait to get in. ) All have plexiglass between the cashier and the customer.  Most employees in the stores are wearing masks. Not all. People stocking shelves are mostly trying to stay away from customers, but is clearly a challenge.  There is always an employee busy wiping down surfaces like fridge door handles. Businesses without automatic doors have been propping then open so you don't have to grab the handle. Some smaller stores are not taking cash, only carMajority of people are being very respectful of each others space, but every trip  to the store has at least one idiot. Yesterday it was a woman who was freaking me out. She had one child (girl, 3 or 4 years old) in a stroller. Her other child (boy, 8 or 9 years old) was wandering off in all directions.  I gave them a very wide berth and went off to another part of the store.  Then I came upon them again.  She was obliviously loitering next to the milk  while her son  and daughter were chasing off in another aisle.  I was not liking this at all (the two kids were moving around in unpredictable directions and she wasn't supervising) so I did say something to her.  I asked her to please keep her children with her.  The woman just looked at me and asked what was the reason for that.  Wtf! I said that everyone was trying to keep away from each other and the children were making that much more difficult because they were wandering.  I would have said more, but realised 2 things.  1,I didn't really want to get in a fight with an idiot and 2) She had moved much too close to me and  I wanted to get away from her crazy ass.

I actually have been finding people in stores a bit friendlier  than usual. I've had a lot more random conversations with people (mostly about the oddness of the whole situation. )  This is only when I go early enough that the store isn't too busy.  If it is busier, then  everyone looks stressed and doesn't talk.  Too worried about getting around the aisles while staying 2m apart.

Pasta supplies seem to be gradually getting better stocked. I did find flour 2 weeks ago, but the baking aisles  are still getting wiped out. Cleaning products and TP similar. You can find them, but sometimes needs more than one store and a bit of luck. That does feel a bit like my Mum's stories of wartime shortages. Also the thing that if I suddenly see they have a rare item,I buy some on the spot. I did that this week when I noticed they finally had some packages of chocolate chips. 

Parking is easy since not as many people out (gas is cheapER than it had been in years, but I filled up just before the lockdown and have been out so little that I still have more than 3/4 of a tank full. ) The city has taken off most parking restrictions since it doesn't need extra road capacity during rush hour anymore, plus they don't want people having to handle  parking meters. 

People in the neighborhood are out walking and biking far more than normal. The weather has been nice, but is mostly just that people are a bit stir crazy, plus the gyms are closed. The are are not many cars, so easy to walk in the street if you need to get around somebody. Again people are mostly maintaining their distance.  They have had to close playgrounds and the city closed parking at the beaches and at our largest city parks because people were being idiots and those areas were getting too crowded. I did notice that they put up big signs at the entrances to trails in a nearby forested area. They have silhouette of a large bear  with the slogan," Do your part, stay 6m apart. I think the bear is meant as an example of how far 6 m is.  People walking are majority not wearing masks. Bikers even less likely.

Stores are temporarily not taking back bottles and cans for recycling, so these are starting to pile up at home.  They are also not letting you bring your own bags, so we are back to disposable plastic ones again.

I was happy last week when my local fish store reopened. Fresh tastes so much better. They had closed until they figured out how to reconfigure their store to make enough space to keep everyone safe.

There are some businesses  that hsve a more of a challenge. Nobody wants to have stranger into their home if they can help it. We have some electrical stuff that needs doing, but it's not an emergency, so that will have to wait.

Turning into a novel here! 

 

Couple of pics from one of my early ventures out shopping. Note the bottom of the sign where it says that out of stock stickers are out of stock ?

Edited April 22, 2020 by PreciousPantsofDoom
Forgot pics

[nst]

guess who is going back to the office June 15

one year to the day i started. 

wee wee 

[Ozlsn]

From patient zero to the world

Article looking at how we got to here.

Spoiler

Imagine being the one. The very beginning. The man or woman struck down with the very first COVID-19 symptoms.

There wasn't a name for it then. The person infected might have just thought they had the flu.

They wouldn't have known that the virus would go on to infect 2 million people worldwide, leading to 170,000 deaths and sparking economic chaos.

We can only imagine, because we don't know for sure who that patient zero is or was.

But we do know they came from Hubei province in China and most likely lived in the city of Wuhan.

From there, the virus slowly, quietly spread.

As the world got ready to ring in the New Year on December 31, China alerted the World Health Organisation that it had been noticing some strange pneumonia cases in Wuhan since December 12.

The disease resembled SARS. People were struck down with a dry cough, a fever, body aches and malaise.

Another disease outbreak would be unfortunate — SARS had killed 770 people worldwide between 2002 and 2003 — but Asia was well prepared to tackle it once more.

Initial reports from Chinese health authorities to the WHO were that human-to-human transmission wasn't a feature of this mysterious new virus.

They could have not been more wrong.

While it's not nearly as deadly as SARS, it is incredibly infectious — as we are all now painfully aware.

The mystery of the Wuhan wet market

On January, officials closed the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market because two-thirds of the early cases were traced to the popular live-animal wet market.

But theories that this is the place where COVID-19 jumped from wild animals to humans remain speculation.

A study by Chinese researchers claimed the first person to be diagnosed with COVID-19 was identified on December 1, 2019 and that person had "no contact" with the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market.

Wu Wenjuan, a senior doctor at Wuhan's Jinyintan Hospital and one of the authors of the study, told the BBC Chinese Service that the patient was an elderly man who suffered from Alzheimer's disease.

"He lived four or five buses from the seafood market, and because he was sick he basically didn't go out," she said.

If he was patient zero, then the genesis of the virus linked to bats likely lurked somewhere else.

Where and how it started really does matter.

Director of the infection prevention and healthcare epidemiology unit at Alfred Health Allen Cheng says it's important to know how this began for future lessons.

"From an epidemiological perspective, knowing the source of this outbreak will have important implications for how we might keep an eye on future animal-associated diseases ("zoonoses"), and what we might do to stop future ones," he said.

But he also makes the point that for now "the origin is less important than the need to control transmission globally".

Dr Steven Wylie, an expert in virus evolution at Murdoch University, said the virus may have been amongst us for longer than we think.

"The chances are that this coronavirus could have been in humans for some time, adapting to its new host from a wild animal," he said.

"The first cases were identified in Wuhan in November but it might have been in people before that, learning how to reproduce and spread within the human body.

"Only when it learned to spread from person to person did it become a problem."

The Wuhan lab conspiracy: wild rumour or valid theory?

The US Government is currently investigating another, far more controversial theory.

Some in the Trump administration — supported by right-wing media organisations like Fox News — are giving credence to unsourced intelligence reports that the coronavirus was accidentally released from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Asked about the theory by a Fox News journalist, US President Donald Trump said: "More and more we're hearing the story … we are doing a very thorough examination of this horrible situation that happened."

Vice-President Mike Pence went further, demanding China "come clean".

That's a sentiment echoed by our own Home Affairs Minister, Peter Dutton, who said China "owed" it to the Australians killed and sickened by the virus to provide answers.

Both the Chinese Government and Wuhan lab officials have vehemently denied the Institute was in any way connected to the outbreak.

Implicit in the theory is the suggestion that the virus was somehow manipulated by Chinese scientists.

"There is no evidence that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 in humans, originated in a laboratory in Wuhan," Professor Edward Holmes, a Sydney University evolutionary virologist, said.

Professor Holmes said the abundance, diversity and evolution of coronaviruses in wildlife suggests this disease came about naturally.

"However, a greater sampling of animal species in nature, including bats from Hubei province, is needed to resolve the exact origins," he said.

But Professor in the College of Medicine and Public Health at Flinders University Nikolai Petrovsky says while there is no hard evidence so far that the virus was manipulated by "gene jockeys", it deserves further investigation.

Lunar New Year helps send coronavirus global

It was the perfect storm.

A new and highly virulent virus quietly and effectively going about its deadly business spreading amongst the densely populated city of Wuhan and surrounding region.

At the same time, Lunar New Year fell on January 24.

If you had set out to spread a disease around China and the world, you couldn't have timed it better.

Hundreds of millions of Chinese people travel home or abroad during the holiday.

When it was clear this virus was new and dangerous, authorities tried to contain it — shutting down transport and cancelling public events.

But it was too late to stop many millions who had already completed their journeys.

The lockdowns that followed were the most draconian in the world, but already tens of thousands of people were infected and hospitals were being overloaded — unable to cope with the seriously sick and dying patients.

The world watched in horror but, so far, this was a "Chinese problem".

Countries like Australia started to take notice and to act, but in places like Italy and South Korea, the damage was already being done.

Prosperity and a globalised world ensured the rest of the planet would soon feel China's fear and pain.

The ripples of infection spread out quickly

A woman in Thailand who had travelled from Wuhan was the first person outside China to contract the coronavirus.

The 73-year-old said she didn't go to any marketplace. She insists she only ate at restaurants but noticed people coughing around her.

Then, in South Korea, a member of a secretive religious sect, who had never been to Wuhan, caught the disease.

The woman was nicknamed "Public Harm Auntie" after she went to lunch with friends, got a scrub at a spa and argued with public health officials before finally submitting to a COVID-19 test.

South Korea has reported 10,638 cases and 237 deaths so far.

In the US, a man who had been in Wuhan province returned to his home in Washington state on January 19.

He was still asymptomatic when he arrived home, but he'd read about coronavirus in the news and when he started feeling ill, he reportedly took himself straight to a doctor.

America's probable patient zero and his caregivers may have done a lot of things right, but it did not stop an explosion of cases in the US as others returned from overseas bringing the virus with them.

The ripples of infection spread out quickly.

The land of the free has now become the number one source of COVID-19 infections and deaths.

Super-spreaders, 'biological bombs' and cruises

In Italy, a man in his late 30s developed a strange case of pneumonia and went to hospital in the northern region of Lombardy on February 18.

Patient One, as he is known in Italy, had COVID-19 but was asymptomatic for close to a month — playing soccer, going jogging, attending dinner parties.

But the man had no known contacts with someone from China, and probably caught the disease from someone else in Italy.

Patient One may well have been Patient 10 or 20 or 100.

Coronavirus soon became a catastrophe in Italy: ripping through the country's older, frailer population, killing at least 24,000 people and infecting about 180,000 others.

In Australia, the first confirmed case of COVID-19 came from a man in his fifties who'd travelled from Wuhan to Melbourne on January 25.

But the country's biggest clusters came not from outside our borders, but from within our own communities.

Images of a packed Bondi beach in March went viral as people ignored recommendations to stay home. In the following days, dozens of backpackers in Bondi tested positive.

The fateful decision to let the Ruby Princess cruise ship dock in Sydney on March 19 spread more than 400 cases of COVID-19 into Australia — at one point that accounted for 10 per cent of all Australian infections.

In fact, mass events seem to have acted as an extreme accelerant creating huge case spikes across the globe.

A football game between Northern Italy's Atalanta and Spain's Valencia was described as a "biological bomb" spreading the virus across two of the hardest-hit countries.

A third of all cases in India have been linked to an illicit gathering of Sunni Muslims in Delhi.

Can we prevent another pandemic in our lifetime?

There was nothing inevitable about the emergence of COVID-19.

The spread of today's scourge may seem breathtaking in its scale and carnage, but in one way we are lucky.

Imagine if COVID-19 was as lethal as SARS and MERS, but with its infectiousness.

In that scenario, without a vaccine, we would be dealing with a modern-day plague with global deaths measured possibly in their hundreds of millions.

Some experts suggest the coronavirus exposure comes mainly from our desire to eat meat and the risk of transmission and mutation of viruses that comes with raising animals.

Combined with a globalised world where people and goods flow freely, any nasty bug or germ can hitch rides to all ports in no time at all.

If prevention of new animal-derived viruses is not possible, then preparedness for the next potential pandemic is vital.

The ability to test and trace has proven pivotal in the fight to control, suppress and possibly eliminate any new threat.

Transparent political systems at times of crisis are lifesavers.

There were concerns many might have failed to appreciate the risk in China in the early days due to an attempt to underplay COVID-19.

And the speed and effectiveness of decisions by countries can save or condemn thousands.

Even the richest country in the world failed to act fast enough to prevent a disaster.

In New York, the pits filled with coffins tell a story of failure.

In Britain, too, a Prime Minister who joked about shaking hands with COVID-19 sufferers nearly died.

What does life look like in a post-coronavirus world?

If and when this virus is history, what of our old lives will it take with it?

Who knows when a handshake with a new acquaintance will once again happen spontaneously.

When will we go back to the beach and lie on the sand among strangers without feeling nervous?

It's hard to imagine going to the supermarket and giving an avocado an inquisitive squeeze without immediately worrying about what we've touched or what we've left behind.

But along with our new trepidation, perhaps we will hold onto some coronavirus-induced gratitude.

We'll be thankful for visits with elderly relatives and beers at the pub, for our jobs and our security, for shelf-stackers at supermarkets and for our health workers.

We might also further appreciate our own fragile health, which we've been reminded can be lost in an instant.

It's possible the old rhythms will quickly resume once the storm passes.

But it really feels like this might inspire a reset, a long, hard, isolation-induced look at ourselves, our community, our planet.

And from the horrors of COVID-19 might just emerge something better for us all. Maybe.

One thing about the 'escapee virus' theory - there are Nature papers out which looked at the sequence of various coronaviruses, including covid-19 and SARS. The differences they've found are much more likely to have arisen from spontaneous mutation - unfortunately for us the mutation meant that covid-19 could more easily enter human cells and then replicate.

Spoiler

Viral origin and structure

A pair of papers in Nature report additional crystal structures for the SARS-Cov-2 RBD bound to ACE2. Lan et al. infer convergent evolution of SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 RBDs, indicative of selection in the passage to humans. Shang et al. use surface plasmon resonance to show that the RBD from SARS-CoV-2 binds more strongly to human ACE2 than does the RBD from SARS-Co-V. Interestingly, Shang et al. propose that a related bat coronavirus, RaTG13, may also use ACE2 to enter human cells―a finding with worrying implications for the ability of bat coronaviruses to directly invade human hosts. In a third report in Nature, two separate sub-lineages of coronaviruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2 were identified in the suspected intermediate host, the Malayan pangolin.

Short version: there are bat viruses out there who also have that mutation, we probably got unlucky in that a virus that could already replicate in our cells changed in that spot.

(Also Dutton is a racist xenophobic arsehole, and also the minister in charge of Border Security - who are at least partly responsible for the Ruby Princess fiasco - and there is certainly some blame deflection going on.)

[clueliss]

About 10% of Pork Production in the US is shutdown.

Spoiler

 

Oil Price jumped 18% (18% of what though)

Spoiler

 

 

Harvard decides not to take Federal aid (after the interwebs/social media spends a day or so screaming about them)

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Atypical symptoms in Older adults (which I personally interpreted as later stage dementia like based on experiences with my mother) 

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[fraurosena]

Today's update:

• There were 123 corona-related deaths reported yesterday in the Netherlands, bringing the total up to 4177. The number of reported deaths has been hovering around 150 for two weeks now. It's been pointed out that there is a lag in reporting deaths, and can include deaths that occurred in the past four days.
  There were 137 new hospitalisations; a continuation of the downward trend since last week, when the average daily number of hospitalisations was 200.
  The number of corona patients in the ICU has gone down with 37 to 1050 total. 
  About a third of all care homes has at least one Covid19 patient, according to the RIVM. Important to know is that there haven't been many new care homes with corona patients. The spread of the virus does occur within the care homes. Corona patients in care homes have a higher chance of dying from the virus than others. Their death toll remains high.
• An additional 4.4 million Americans have applied for unemployment benefits in the past week, bringing the total number since the second half of March up to about 27 million unemployment applications.
  There are eight felines confirmed with the virus in New York. After a tiger tested positive at the beginning of the month, now an additional four tigers and three lions in the Bronx Zoo have tested positive as well. In a statement the zoo said that the group of felines had had symptoms such as a dry cough for a while now. The animals were tested by testing faecal samples for the virus. One of the tested tigers did not have symptoms. All 8 felines are doing well. They are behaving normally and eating well, and they are coughing less.
  Speaking of felines, two house cats in New York have also tested positive for the virus, according to the CDC. As of yet there is no evidence cats can spread the virus. The two pets were tested because of respiratory problems. The owner of one of the cats was also infected. It's unclear how the second cat was infected; it's surmised someone in the house may have been asymptomatic. 
  The number of reported corona related deaths in the US went down by a large margin yesterday, when 1738 deaths were reported, whereas 2751 were reported the day before. 
  The total number of deaths in the US is now 46.853, the highest number of any country in the world. 
  There are more than 830.000 confirmed cases; almost 4.5 million people have been tested.
  There is a record number of oil tankers lying along the Californian coast. Jointly they are carrying about 20 million vats of crude oil on board, enough to fuel 20% of the daily global consumption. Because of the collapse in demand for oil, storage facilities are scarce and the tankers can't berth anywhere.
• Malaria medication can be perilous, as they can cause serious arrhythmia in corona patients, sometimes even resulting in death. The European medication board EMA and medicine authority CBG are advising doctors to monitor corona patients receiving chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine extremely closely, especially patients with known heart disease who are sensitive to arrhythmia. The CBG emphasises that it hasn't been proven that these medicines actually work against Covid19 and there is still ongoing research into the matter.
• Finnish prime minister Sanna Marin will be working from home for the time being after coming into contact with someone who was possibly infected with the corona virus. "The chance of infection is extremely low," a statement said. "the prime minister is feeling well and does not have any symptoms."
• Germany's chancellor Angela Merkel said in a speech to parliament: "There is no decision in my time as chancellor that was as hard to make as the one restricting personal liberty. But especially now the numbers are hopeful, I feel obligated to say: this state of affairs is fragile. We are on very thin ice. You could even say: the thinnest ice."
  The restrictive measures in Germany will remain in place until May 3.
  The number of corona related deaths rose with 215 up to 5094.
• Because of the corona crisis, international passenger flights are expected suffer the loss of 1.2 billion passengers in the period up to September, according to the International and Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO). 
• Stephen Hawking's heirs have donated his personal ventilator to a hospital in Cambridge. Daughter Lucy Hawking said they want to aid the British healthcare system during the crisis. 
• Greece has prolonged its corona measures until May 4, but that next week an easing of the measures will be announced by prime minister Mitsotakis. This will be done slowly and in phases. It's unknown what the measures will look like after May 4. Decisions will be made after scientific advice. 
• The number of corona-related deaths in Spain was 440, slightly more than the day before. In total more than 22.000 patients have died. 
  The number of confirmed cases rose with 5000 up to more than 213.000.

[Ozlsn]

Covid-19 may cause strokes in younger patients

"In a research paper due to be published next week by the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr Oxley and his colleagues said the hospital had seen five cases in people under the age of 50 in the last two weeks.

One of the patients had previously had a stroke.

"For comparison, our service, over the previous 12 months, has treated on average 0.73 patients every two weeks under the age of 50 years with large vessel stroke," the paper said.

It went on to say "the association between large vessel stroke and COVID-19 disease in young patients requires further investigation"."

If you think you are having a stroke seek medical attention as quickly as possible.

Edited April 23, 2020 by Ozlsn

[JMarie]

On 4/22/2020 at 2:25 PM, PreciousPantsofDoom said:

Interesting hearing about social distancing measures in various places. We are shopping only 1x per week. It would be less, but I'm getting groceries for my MIL too and it has been a challenge to get her down to that. She normally shops daily (I've seen her grocery bills and can't imagine how much she must have to throw away.)

There were already lots of people wearing masks before the lockdown (we have a very large Asian population here,) but now masks are much more common, particularly older people. Still plenty without though.  I've been inconsistent in wearing one,I'll have to admit.  I used an N95 one when I had to take my MIL into the hospital for an appointment for x-rays, having her cast off, and meeting with the doctor and physiotherapist.  I used a cloth one the 2 times we have done restaurant pick up (more to make  them more comfortable really, since cloth mask doesn't protect me!  I also used it once at the grocery store, but haven't done so every time.  I did wear it when I had to go to the bank to sign a document this week.  It felt very weird to go into a bank wearing a mask.  Felt much like that cartoon posted on the other thread where the bank teller was getting the Covid masked people to line up on one side and the bank robber masked people to line up on the other. ?

I am wearing gloves at the store, even the though there is a sanitizing station where they wipe down your cart before you take it now.  Stores all have marks on the floor to space out line ups as well as one way arrows in the aisles and signs up all over reminding people to keep their distance (announcements too) as well as signs up limiting people to two of any item. Stores are controling how many are allowed inside  (I'm going much earlier than I ever used to so that I don't have to wait to get in. ) All have plexiglass between the cashier and the customer.  Most employees in the stores are wearing masks. Not all. People stocking shelves are mostly trying to stay away from customers, but is clearly a challenge.  There is always an employee busy wiping down surfaces like fridge door handles. Businesses without automatic doors have been propping then open so you don't have to grab the handle. Some smaller stores are not taking cash, only carMajority of people are being very respectful of each others space, but every trip  to the store has at least one idiot. Yesterday it was a woman who was freaking me out. She had one child (girl, 3 or 4 years old) in a stroller. Her other child (boy, 8 or 9 years old) was wandering off in all directions.  I gave them a very wide berth and went off to another part of the store.  Then I came upon them again.  She was obliviously loitering next to the milk  while her son  and daughter were chasing off in another aisle.  I was not liking this at all (the two kids were moving around in unpredictable directions and she wasn't supervising) so I did say something to her.  I asked her to please keep her children with her.  The woman just looked at me and asked what was the reason for that.  Wtf! I said that everyone was trying to keep away from each other and the children were making that much more difficult because they were wandering.  I would have said more, but realised 2 things.  1,I didn't really want to get in a fight with an idiot and 2) She had moved much too close to me and  I wanted to get away from her crazy ass.

I actually have been finding people in stores a bit friendlier  than usual. I've had a lot more random conversations with people (mostly about the oddness of the whole situation. )  This is only when I go early enough that the store isn't too busy.  If it is busier, then  everyone looks stressed and doesn't talk.  Too worried about getting around the aisles while staying 2m apart.

Pasta supplies seem to be gradually getting better stocked. I did find flour 2 weeks ago, but the baking aisles  are still getting wiped out. Cleaning products and TP similar. You can find them, but sometimes needs more than one store and a bit of luck. That does feel a bit like my Mum's stories of wartime shortages. Also the thing that if I suddenly see they have a rare item,I buy some on the spot. I did that this week when I noticed they finally had some packages of chocolate chips. 

Parking is easy since not as many people out (gas is cheapER than it had been in years, but I filled up just before the lockdown and have been out so little that I still have more than 3/4 of a tank full. ) The city has taken off most parking restrictions since it doesn't need extra road capacity during rush hour anymore, plus they don't want people having to handle  parking meters. 

People in the neighborhood are out walking and biking far more than normal. The weather has been nice, but is mostly just that people are a bit stir crazy, plus the gyms are closed. The are are not many cars, so easy to walk in the street if you need to get around somebody. Again people are mostly maintaining their distance.  They have had to close playgrounds and the city closed parking at the beaches and at our largest city parks because people were being idiots and those areas were getting too crowded. I did notice that they put up big signs at the entrances to trails in a nearby forested area. They have silhouette of a large bear  with the slogan," Do your part, stay 6m apart. I think the bear is meant as an example of how far 6 m is.  People walking are majority not wearing masks. Bikers even less likely.

Stores are temporarily not taking back bottles and cans for recycling, so these are starting to pile up at home.  They are also not letting you bring your own bags, so we are back to disposable plastic ones again.

I was happy last week when my local fish store reopened. Fresh tastes so much better. They had closed until they figured out how to reconfigure their store to make enough space to keep everyone safe.

There are some businesses  that hsve a more of a challenge. Nobody wants to have stranger into their home if they can help it. We have some electrical stuff that needs doing, but it's not an emergency, so that will have to wait.

Turning into a novel here! 

 

Couple of pics from one of my early ventures out shopping. Note the bottom of the sign where it says that out of stock stickers are out of stock ?

The board in your second pic is super helpful! It would be great if every store did something similar.

I went to Home Depot (big box hardware/home improvement store) today.  They were letting customers in 10 at a time. There was about a 10 minute wait to get into the store, and about a 10 minute wait to pay for my items.  Masks are mandatory here, there was a sign at the entrance that said a mask must be worn to enter the store.

[Cartmann99]

 Mike Huckabee continues to be an insufferable jackass.

 

 

 

 

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[JMarie]

1 hour ago, Cartmann99 said:

 Mike Huckabee continues to be an insufferable jackass.

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How in God's name is the IngrahamAngle tweet not racist? And with so many positive replies?!?

[JMarie]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/health-news/meet-the-icu-nurse-who-silently-stood-in-protest-at-rally-to-reopen-arizona/ar-BB136Srq?ocid=spartanntp

Quote

On her day off from working at a Covid-19 unit in an Arizona hospital, ICU nurse Lauren Leander threw on a pair of clean scrubs and headed to an anti-lockdown protest at the state Capitol.

She was determined to be a voice for her patients through silence.

Leander, a Banner Health nurse of five years, joined an intimate group of healthcare workers on Monday to counter protest at the Capitol, where people gathered to urge the governor to reopen the state.

Standing up straight, her arms crossed and face mask on, Leander stood on the Capitol steps, with a handful of healthcare workers lined up by her side. She said she only spoke if someone encroached on her personal space, despite people raising their voices at her.

"It was heated, people were very fired up about what they had to say," she said. "A lot of the top comments we got were about us being fake nurses, there was a huge majority of them that still believe this virus is fake, that it's a hoax and not real at all. They were convinced that we're fake nurses and that's why we weren't talking."

 

[Ozlsn]

Australia is up to 6,667 cases with 13 new ones detected overnight. The bulk of them were related to a private psychiatric facility in Melbourne. Apparently our current transmission is at 0.84, which is good - but we obviously still have ongoing transmission occurring. There is discussion between Australia and NZ about reopening borders with each other, as both countries seem to be managing cases. It would be helpful if that can happen, although reopening state borders would also be useful!!

Personally we're past week 2 of distance learning... not much formalised learning (we tried!) but he had a go at climbing a tree. Close enough. 

[clueliss]

Those nurses are badass!

and we have disinfectant manufacturers (probably afraid of a lawsuit) announcing NOT to consume.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-24/reckitt-warns-against-using-disinfectants-to-treat-coronavirus

[GreyhoundFan]

Because the tea baggers just have to fuck with everything: "How a tea party-linked group plans to turbocharge lockdown protests"

Spoiler

The Convention of States, an activist network with tea party origins, did not originate the coronavirus lockdown protests across the country. But it’s got a plan to take them to the next level.

Publicly, the group claims no affiliation with the organizers agitating for state governments to lift social-distancing measures. Yet behind the scenes and on their social media channels, the group’s leaders have made no secret of their desire to boost the protests, if not elevate them to a bigger, more professionalized and media-friendly network with a more broadly appealing message.

Over the past several weeks, the group has scooped up dozens of URLs for sites aimed at organizing future protests in key states — OpenWINow.com, opencalifornianow.com, openfloridanow.com, openarizonanow.com. On private forums, activists affiliated with the Convention of States are coordinating their own protests. And in Facebook livestreams, the organization's leader has been advising protesters to avoid divisive features that marked some early lockdown protests: stand apart from each other, bring hand sanitizer, and, most importantly, do not openly carry guns, even if you’re protesting in an open-carry state.

“You want to create a narrative that says, ‘Those people look like they're using common sense. I want to be one of them,’” said Mark Meckler, president of the Convention of States, in a Tuesday livestream.

The group is also directing protesters to channel their energy into political activity, launching a website, “Open the States,” which allows users to send automated petitions to the White House, Congress, governors and state legislators. The site also links to Facebook groups across the country that are organizing protests, with the largest ones — boasting membership rates into the hundreds of thousands — targeting states run by Democrat governors.

The protest organizers appear to be taking the cues. Many of these Facebook groups include rules that reflect Convention of States recommendations, like not posting coronavirus memes or conspiracy theories.

Taken together, it’s a slate of tactics that indicates protests in the coming weeks may only grow in size, sophistication and coordination. And it reveals an effort among conservative leaders to tap in to growing anger as lockdowns across the country have forced over 26 million Americans to file for unemployment. As the debate intensifies over when and how states should gradually reopen their economies, groups in more than a dozen states are planning rallies for the coming days.

The tactics are reminiscent of the early tea party movement, an inchoate collection of populist anger following the 2008 recession that quickly coalesced into a professionally organized, if loosely built movement fueled by money from conservative donors. Meckler himself was a co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, and pioneered many of these tactics.

“It kind of feels like deja vu to me,” Meckler told POLITICO in an interview. “There's all these groups independently doing their own thing, but at the same time doing the same things and taking cues from each other, clearly”; such as giving themselves the same names, like “Reopen” and “Liberate” these states. “That’s the very definition of a movement—that people start to pick up the same ideas, same terminology.”

All he was doing, he said, was giving them tools and advice.

“When people are engaged in politics, the question is: Do they want to accomplish their goals, or they just want to go out there and do crazy stuff? And so you can have the right end goal, but you can still act crazy in pursuing that goal. I'm not in favor of that.”

But while this push is similar — leveraging an American suspicion of big government and elites dictating individual behavior — it’s a radical departure for the Convention of States. Since its founding in 2014, the group’s goal has been to get Republicans in power in at least 34 state legislatures, persuade them to call a “convention of states” — as outlined in Article V of the Constitution — and rewrite the country’s founding document to reduce the federal government’s power.

“It does strike me as very strange that a group that claims to be devoted to turning power back to the states is protesting in an area where the states are leading rather than the federal government,” said David Super, a constitutional law professor at Georgetown University who has written about the Convention of States’ efforts.

Meckler pushed back against the idea that the group was acting differently. “We've always believed in taking power away from centralized government and returning it to the citizens. And one method for doing that is to take power away from the federal government and return it to the states. But we've also always promoted that people could be involved in their state politics and reclaim their power at the state and local level as well.”

This time, he added, the states were playing the role that he always worried the federal government would. “Unfortunately, the state legislatures and mostly the governors and the municipalities have overstepped their bounds and are doing things that a lot of the people really don't like. “

The Convention of States’ efforts are among several national conservative groups, such as FreedomWorks, that have helped organize anti-lockdown protests across the country. Others, such as the Koch family juggernaut Americans for Prosperity, have declined to participate. “The question is — what is the best way to get people back to work? We don’t see protests as the best way to do that,” Emily Seidel, CEO of Americans for Prosperity, recently said in a statement.

Meckler said he and the groups he supported were not working with the Kochs, and understood why they would publicly decline to be involved, citing his early, underfunded experience in the Tea Party Patriots.

“What happens is when people see something is becoming successful, that's when the wealthier people invest in it. They're smart and they don't invest in something nascent because they're worried it's going to go off the rails,” he recalled, adding that he wouldn’t be surprised if they changed their mind: “At some point, they're going to take advantage of the momentum.”

At the White House, President Donald Trump has mostly backed the protesters, declining to express any concerns about the large rallies, which have not always adhered to the government’s social-distancing guidelines. He has even tweeted out calls to “liberate” certain states, like Virginia and Minnesota, that have had protests targeting Democratic governors.

“They seem to be protesters that like me and respect this opinion, and my opinion is the same as just about all of the governors,” Trump said during a recent briefing.

The medical community, including Trump’s own scientific advisers, have been less sanguine. Public health experts worry that lifting social-distancing guidelines now would result in another spike in coronavirus cases, and, ultimately, an even longer economic recovery period.

“So what you do if you jump the gun and go into a situation where you have a big spike, you’re going to set yourself back," said Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease specialist and a main medical voice on the White House coronavirus task force, during a recent appearance on “Good Morning America.”

The Convention of States officially encompasses several tax-exempt, 501c(3) nonprofit groups that Meckler runs. It was founded with a $500,000 assist from the conservative megadonor Mercer family. Since then, the organization has received significant funding from Donors Trust, a conservative fundraising network primarily affiliated with the Koch family. And it has gathered a slate of endorsements from high-profile conservative politicians like Sens. Ron Johnson and Rand Paul, popular conservative pundits like Glenn Beck and Ben Shapiro and former Republican Govs. Bobby Jindal and Mike Huckabee, according to a recent copy of their activist handbook.

The group aims to build vast political networks in at least 40 states, across at least 3,000 state legislative districts, each captained by a district coordinator responsible for recruiting at least 100 people to their cause.

Though their regularly stated goal is to relentlessly petition their state legislatures to call for an Article V convention, the coronavirus crisis presents a unique opportunity for their movement, said Jay Riestenberg of Common Cause, who has monitored the group and its involvement with other right-wing groups focused on state legislatures.

“The Convention of States is interested in showing any type of image or anything that shows that people don’t like their government. I mean, that is their end goal, to overthrow the federal government and rewrite the Constitution,” Riestenberg said. “So this is a perfect opportunity for them to show that.”

And Convention of States repeatedly hammers home to its activists that a message goes across better with a degree of professionalism. In recent days, Meckler and his deputies have been dispersing tips on how to protest effectively and present a good image.

During a recent livestream on the Convention of States’ Facebook page, Mark Ruthenberg, executive vice president for the affiliated Center for Self-Governance, told viewers that it was crucial that they maintain a 5-foot distance from each other.

“It looks so much bigger when people are so far spread out,” he said. “So it just makes sense that we maintain our distance, that we show common sense because then the government will most likely say,‘Oh yeah, I guess these guys know what they’re doing.’”

 

[fraurosena]

Update time again:

• The number of deaths is going down in the Netherlands, but it is still about 1000 more than the 'normal' number per week.
• These are the reported deaths in the past 48 hours in a few European countries:
  Country                 Wed.         Thu.         Fri.
  Netherlands           138           123         
  Denmark                 384           394
  Belgium                   264           228.         190
  Germany                                   215          227
  Switzerland               31              40 
  United Kingdom     763           638
  France                      544           516
  Spain                        435           440          367
  Italy                          437           464 
• The total number of deaths in the US has passed 50.000, according to Worldometer.
  Trump has ridiculously suggested injecting disinfectant into patients, saying it could kill the virus within a minute. Medical experts all over the world are condemning his suggestions. They urge people not to try it at home.
  Robert Reich, professor at the university of California said: "His press conferences are a danger to public health. Boycott this propaganda, listen to the experts. And please don't drink disinfectant."
  John Balmes, pulmonary physician in San Francisco said: "Inhaling disinfectant would be the worst thing for the lungs. Not even a low dose is safe. it's a completely ridiculous concept."
  Deborah Birx, medical leader of the corona team, did not react to Trump's statements, but watched on in silence.
• Hungary is going to ease its corona measures next week; it will follow Austria's example. Schools and businesses will be open, and in the near future so will restaurants and other establishments. "I am not one of the optimistic people," said Orbán on state radio, "but I'm also not a pessimist. I'm expecting a swift recovery."
• The minister of Health in the UK has said that the country is now at the height of the epidemic, and the lockdown will remain firmly in place for now.
  Boris Johnson is doing well and will resume work next week, possibly as soon as next Monday, according to The Telegraph. Johnson has requested that his assistants start planning meetings with his cabinet ministers next week, so he can be brought up to date about the current situation in the country.
• Researchers in the UMC in Amsterdam are going to investigate if breastmilk from confirmed corona positive mothers who have recently given birth contains antibodies against Covid19. If so, they might be able to make medicine against corona from it. The researchers are basing their theory on the fact that in 2003 a pregnant woman was infected with SARS and gave birth to a healthy baby at 38 weeks. Her breastmilk contained antibodies against the SARS virus. "Knowing that the corona virus is very similar to the SARS virus - they are of the same family - then it's possible that corona antibodies will be found in this breastmilk too," according to the researchers.
• The mayor of Osaka in Japan is under heavy criticism for suggesting it would be better if men did the grocery shopping instead of women during the corona crisis. Mayor Ichiro Matsui told reporters that men could best take this chore upon them. "Men can get things that they need quickly and leave again," he said. "That's why I think it's good if they do the groceries and avoid human contact. Women take longer while they look around and waver between this and that."
  Disrespectful and sexist, many people on social media are saying. Matsui reacted that his comments may be labelled as outdated, but they are applicable in his own family.
• Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau has said the military might be deployed to help in care homes. Although it's not an ideal situation, deploying the military is conceivable in this emergency. "This is not a long term solution," Trudeau said in his daily speech. "We shouldn't have to rely on the military to care for our elderly in Canada." Circumstances may force his hand. Almost half of the 2200 corona related deaths in Canada are elderly patients in care homes. "That is a terrible tragedy that is unacceptable," Trudeau said. "These are our parents and grandparents. This is the generation that built this country."
  What the military aid would look like is unclear at the moment. 
  Canada has 43.000 confirmed corona cases.
• The number of confirmed cases in Ecuador has doubled up to 22.000. This jump is caused by registering lagging test results all at once.
  "There is no new outbreak, it's simply because all the tests have been analysed," said Health minister Juan Carlos Zevallos. It concerns about 24.000 delayed test results. Zevallos did not speak about the new death toll. There are 560 reported corona related deaths in Ecuador. According to the New York Times, Ecquador is possibly one of the worst hit countries in the world; an analyst for the paper said the death toll is possibly 15 times higher than the official numbers. 
  Because of the doubling of confirmed cases, Ecuador is the worst hit country after Brazil on the South American continent. Brazil has almost 50.000 confirmed cases.

[clueliss]

CDC Recommendations for Sioux Falls SD Smithfield Plant (738 cases)

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/23/us/cdc-report-smithfield-plant-south-dakota/index.html

This dandy though... (bolding mine)

Quote

Plant employees speak 40 different languages, managers say

One part of the report focused on the poor communication between management and employees there, who speak 40 different languages, according to Smithfield's managers.

Plant managers told the CDC team "that communicating messages to their diverse staff presented challenges due to the number of languages spoken," according to the CDC's report. The languages spoken at the facility include English, Spanish, Kunama, Swahili, Nepali, Tigrinya, Amharic, French, Oromo and Vietnamese.

If an employee was found to have a fever or symptoms consistent with Covid-19, they were given an informational packet in English only and instructed to return home, according to the report.

 

[HerNameIsBuffy]

55 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Deborah Birx, medical leader of the corona team, did not react to Trump's statements, but watched on in silence.

And for that she should lose her license.

He is advocating for harm with substances every one has in their homes.  This isn't a perscription they need to badger their doctor into giving them.  And she sat there with a look of horror but said nothing.

Every doctor on that stage that didn't immediately rebut that should be barred from practicing medicine ever again.  They clearly care more about placating Trump than saving lives.

[fraurosena]

9 minutes ago, HerNameIsBuffy said:

And for that she should lose her license.

He is advocating for harm with substances every one has in their homes.  This isn't a perscription they need to badger their doctor into giving them.  And she sat there with a look of horror but said nothing.

Every doctor on that stage that didn't immediately rebut that should be barred from practicing medicine ever again.  They clearly care more about placating Trump than saving lives.

On the one hand, I really agree with you. On the other hand, I can't help but think that if she and Fauci weren't there, how bad would it be then? Who knows what they manage to prevent behind the scenes? Because they still have Trump's trust, they also have his ear -- to an extent. And that maybe saving more lives than we can know right now.

[HerNameIsBuffy]

19 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

On the one hand, I really agree with you. On the other hand, I can't help but think that if she and Fauci weren't there, how bad would it be then? Who knows what they manage to prevent behind the scenes? Because they still have Trump's trust, they also have his ear -- to an extent. And that maybe saving more lives than we can know right now.

You're right.  You are a much needed moderate voice (by which I mean level headed, not the political scale) in these infuriating times.

I have no words for the level of anger I felt when I saw her sit there.  I thought of all the idiot followers who will listen to him and her lack of action seemed to me like an adult watching a toddler about to drink bleach and sit there and do nothing.

Some of his followers are vile people, but I don't want people to die because they aren't smart enough to protect themselves from him.

[Howl]

Aaaaaand, here we go: 

 

[clueliss]

FDA warns against taking drug Chloroquine OUTSIDE the hospital

 

New symptoms added to the list by CDC

Spoiler

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[therulesofjinx]

I hope all those doggies have wonderful, happy, loving lives outside of the shelter.

My fiancé and I adopted a rescue dog on March 1st, so before we knew the turn our lives would take, and it ended up being the best time. We had to go to work the first 2-3 weeks we had him, but then  I started working from home followed by my fiancé 4-5 days later. Our dog is living the BEST life right now- multiple walks every day, trips to the park, belly rubs, and lots of treats. To be fair, he'd get all that anyway; he's just getting MUCH MORE of it now. And he's helped to keep us active and sane while we are staying home. 

[GreyhoundFan]

Bad penny Rudy showed up again. The fact that cancer, heart disease, and obesity are not contagious, thus do not require contact tracing is beyond his addled mind:

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

The Onion is future news...

 

[clueliss]

I need a tissue - An aging farmer from NE Kansas sent Gov. Cuomo one of his 5 n95 masks to give to a healthcare worker.  (wife is ill)

 

Spoiler

 

Missouri State health department adds 300 new cases & 44 deaths - sounds like a technical issues.  

and pardon while I follow the tweets from the gov's daily presser

State of Emergency will extend thru June 15 in Missouri - this is not the same as the stay at home order.  His plan is to still open the state on May 4.  His office will put out a detailed plan for with guidance for personal care businesses & religious services next week (me reading this:  well I'm going to stay away from those places for at least 2 weeks so I see what happens with local case levels but thanks)