Coronavirus General Discussion

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Maddy
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by Maddy » Tue Mar 03, 2020 5:44 pm

I've found these three links to Reddit subforums to be especially good ones for keeping abreast of the latest developments on COVID-19. Most of the contributors appear to be health care professionals and academics. Without spending a lot of time, just perusing these three threads is enough to keep you very well informed.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/
https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/
https://2019ncov.us/
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Kriegsspiel
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by Kriegsspiel » Tue Mar 03, 2020 8:22 pm

Why don't we all take a minute and consider which forumite's current avatar appears to be the most prepared to deal with coronavirus.
You there, Ephialtes. May you live forever.
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Maddy
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by Maddy » Tue Mar 03, 2020 8:23 pm

That's hilarious! We're quite a bunch, aren't we?
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by dualstow » Tue Mar 03, 2020 10:56 pm

Kriegsspiel wrote:
Tue Mar 03, 2020 8:22 pm
Why don't we all take a minute and consider which forumite's current avatar appears to be the most prepared to deal with coronavirus.
O0 You’ve got the mask and Maddy has the cabin, both excellent, but Smithers has Bill Gates who will cure the rest of us.
RIP Marcello Gandini
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Ad Orientem
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by Ad Orientem » Wed Mar 04, 2020 1:52 pm

Coronavirus has mutated into more aggressive disease, say scientists

Snip...
Coronavirus has mutated into two strains, one which appears to be far more aggressive, scientists have said, in a discovery which could hinder attempts to develop a vaccine.

Researchers at Peking University's School of Life Sciences and the Institut Pasteur of Shanghai, discovered the virus has evolved into two major lineages - dubbed ‘L’ and ‘S’ types.

The older ‘S-type’ appears to be milder and less infectious, while the ‘L-type’ which emerged later, spreads quickly and currently accounts for around 70 per cent of cases.

Genetic analysis of a man in the US who tested positive on January 21, also showed it is possible to be infected with both types.

The finding comes just days after government health experts warned that the virus could hit Britain in ‘multiple waves’, and led to fears that some vaccines might not work on mutated strains.

Dr Stephen Griffin, of the Leeds Institute of Medical Research and chair of the virus division at the Microbiology Society, said that two of the changes between the ‘S’ and ‘L’ lineages were in crucial protein called ‘spike’, which plays a key role in the infection process and is a target for vaccines.

Dr Griffin said developers would need to test whether their prototype vaccines would still neutralise viruses with the changes, but added that the variations were ‘fairly limited’ and may not be a ‘huge hurdle.’
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/202 ... cientists/
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Smith1776
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by Smith1776 » Wed Mar 04, 2020 2:28 pm

The guy who has the avatar to beat all others is Tyler.

It's Nicolas Freakin' Cage.

One look at this face and Coronavirus is gonna be a runnin'.


0-1-e1490268908256.jpg
0-1-e1490268908256.jpg (31.97 KiB) Viewed 22857 times
I still find the James Rickards portfolio fascinating.
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by Tortoise » Wed Mar 04, 2020 2:36 pm

Smith1776 wrote:
Wed Mar 04, 2020 2:28 pm
The guy who has the avatar to beat all others is Tyler.

It's Nicolas Freakin' Cage.

One look at this face and Coronavirus is gonna be a runnin'.
MediumTex’s avatar is up there, too: Ash from Evil Dead. In the zombie apocalypse, you want Ash on your team.

Image
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Ad Orientem
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by Ad Orientem » Wed Mar 04, 2020 7:16 pm

I miss MediumTex.
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by Cortopassi » Thu Mar 05, 2020 9:16 am

Why, with the greatest healthcare system in the world, can the US not have testing kits readily available yet after watching this go on for weeks now in China, S Korea and Italy?

I keep reading it was tried to be made more complicated, there was lab contamination, and agencies can't seem to work together.

This is going to be quite a test of our healthcare system compared to other supposedly inferior ones.

<sarcasm> But boy, if we need to 50,000 troops somewhere in a couple days to blow the crap out of something, damn, we are good at that <sarcasm off>

:-[
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Maddy
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by Maddy » Thu Mar 05, 2020 9:27 am

Cortopassi wrote:
Thu Mar 05, 2020 9:16 am
Why, with the greatest healthcare system in the world, can the US not have testing kits readily available yet after watching this go on for weeks now in China, S Korea and Italy?
I'm thinking the same thing. As fate would have it, a good friend of mine had a medical/surgical emergency this week, and I got a close-up look at a very dysfunctional system masquerading as a "world class" hospital. In an out of ERs, six-hour waits in waiting rooms full of hacking people with no attempt to mask or isolate them (my friend is immune compromised, by the way), a seeming inability to get basic diagnostic work done or to get the needed specialists on site, etc., etc. While all this was going on, I kept thinking: Here we are, nearly a decade into the "Affordable Care Act." Insurance premiums have tripled, deductibles have skyrocketed, and the system seems broken like never before. When I was in my 20s, I had a lot of hospital jobs, and things were never like this.
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by dualstow » Thu Mar 05, 2020 9:43 am

Is your friend ok, Maddy?
Last edited by dualstow on Thu Mar 05, 2020 9:48 am, edited 2 times in total.
RIP Marcello Gandini
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by WiseOne » Thu Mar 05, 2020 9:45 am

Maddy's got it right. The health care system has been so screwed up by Obama's various reforms that it's almost impossible for anything to work as well as it did before he took office. And it's now beyond fixing. Medical centers have spent untold millions on new EHR systems and they're not going to back out of them, plus they've introduced a huge pile of requirements and a large new layer of administrators, none of which would go away even if all the Obama-era regulations vanished tomorrow.

I'm genuinely curious what will happen if there is truly a crisis situation. I suspect there won't be though...it'll be like a second flu season immediately on the heels of the regularly scheduled one. Tough, but manageable. Eventually it will become the new normal, because the virus will be in circulation forever probably.

In other news...several medical centers (mine included) have banned travel to meetings or any gatherings with more than "25-50" people - including events within the university. There are a couple of upcoming meetings & events that I've had to cancel out on. True to form, one of them immediately sent out an announcement that they will not cancel or modify their meeting in any way, which roughly translates as "We have your money, suckas, and you're not getting it back!".
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by Kriegsspiel » Thu Mar 05, 2020 9:45 am

Cortopassi wrote:
Thu Mar 05, 2020 9:16 am
Why, with the greatest healthcare system in the world, can the US not have testing kits readily available yet after watching this go on for weeks now in China, S Korea and Italy?

I keep reading it was tried to be made more complicated, there was lab contamination, and agencies can't seem to work together.

This is going to be quite a test of our healthcare system compared to other supposedly inferior ones.
It makes me think that the situation was complicated, if even the most technologically-capable healthcare organizations in world history didn't do it well in retrospect.
<sarcasm> But boy, if we need to 50,000 troops somewhere in a couple days to blow the crap out of something, damn, we are good at that <sarcasm off>
For essentially all of recorded history, military operations have been the purview of government, so this grocks rightly.
You there, Ephialtes. May you live forever.
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by dualstow » Thu Mar 05, 2020 9:52 am

David Faber asked an important question this morning: How do you know when to re-open schools?
RIP Marcello Gandini
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by pmward » Thu Mar 05, 2020 11:30 am

WiseOne wrote:
Thu Mar 05, 2020 9:45 am

In other news...several medical centers (mine included) have banned travel to meetings or any gatherings with more than "25-50" people - including events within the university. There are a couple of upcoming meetings & events that I've had to cancel out on. True to form, one of them immediately sent out an announcement that they will not cancel or modify their meeting in any way, which roughly translates as "We have your money, suckas, and you're not getting it back!".
Yeah my job in the tech industry has the same 20 people limitation. If anyone travels or goes to any function with more than 20 people they are supposed to report it to their manager and potentially be quarantined working from home for 14 days. We also had an in person training last week that was supposed to be a big all in one room affair and they broke us up into small groups of 20 people in different areas.... but the funny thing is every day of the week the cafeteria at around noon has at least 100 people congregated, lol. My teammates in the Kirkland office were also all told to work from home indefinitely.
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by Ad Orientem » Thu Mar 05, 2020 12:58 pm

Iranian revolutionary guard chief :'Coronavirus may be US bio warfare attack on China and Iran'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... ttack.html
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by Tortoise » Thu Mar 05, 2020 1:01 pm

dualstow wrote:
Thu Mar 05, 2020 9:52 am
David Faber asked an important question this morning: How do you know when to re-open schools?
Plot twist: People will discover that their kids are learning more while staying home from school than while attending it, so the schools will never re-open.
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by pmward » Thu Mar 05, 2020 1:19 pm

In a related note, I had already thought that seeing all these companies shutting down entire office buildings and making people work from home indefinitely might be a turning point where some companies see that they don't need as much big expensive office space and start thinking about ramping up remote work positions so they can close some buildings and save money.
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by drumminj » Thu Mar 05, 2020 1:43 pm

pmward wrote:
Thu Mar 05, 2020 11:30 am
My teammates in the Kirkland office were also all told to work from home indefinitely.
Yeah, Amazon in Seattle/Bellevue is WFH until end of month. Microsoft until 3/25.
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by pmward » Thu Mar 05, 2020 1:56 pm

Yeah, I'm actually encouraged seeing companies taking this seriously and not waiting on the government to tell them to take preventative steps like this to contain the spread.
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by dualstow » Thu Mar 05, 2020 2:01 pm

Just got a Starbucks shareholder notice that there will be no physical shareholder's meeting.
Hey, maybe San Francisco won't be alone with all the cancellations.
RIP Marcello Gandini
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by Maddy » Thu Mar 05, 2020 2:12 pm

dualstow wrote:
Thu Mar 05, 2020 9:43 am
Is your friend ok, Maddy?
Thanks for asking, Dualstow. She's pulled through one surgery and has another scheduled for today. So far so good. She's a tough lady.

And one shining display of functionality this morning: The hospital gift shop was right on top of things!
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by dualstow » Thu Mar 05, 2020 2:47 pm

O0 I'm glad to hear the gift shop was in good shape.
I'm happy for your friend! 🤞
RIP Marcello Gandini
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by Tortoise » Thu Mar 05, 2020 2:49 pm

pmward wrote:
Thu Mar 05, 2020 1:19 pm
In a related note, I had already thought that seeing all these companies shutting down entire office buildings and making people work from home indefinitely might be a turning point where some companies see that they don't need as much big expensive office space and start thinking about ramping up remote work positions so they can close some buildings and save money.
Over the past four years, I’ve worked at two companies where my bosses and many of my teammates have worked in different geographic locations and time zones than mine, and we all often work from home.

I’ve personally found it to be a bad idea. It’s less efficient than having the whole team in the same building together. There’s really no substitute for face-to-face interactions in a team environment.

And for building rapport with colleagues and bosses, you really need frequent physical face time with nonverbal cues. It’s how human cultures evolved, so it’s in our DNA.
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by drumminj » Thu Mar 05, 2020 2:56 pm

pmward wrote:
Thu Mar 05, 2020 1:56 pm
not waiting on the government to tell them
Well, I believe the companies are doing this due to guidance made by the county. But still, I agree it's a good move.
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