Florida and Covid

@sammydog01 you mean the one that sounds like she can barely breathe? Yeah, she’ll be in great shape if she catches it.

@RiotDemon @sammydog01
yeah, and what is with the “handheld teleprompters”? I am sure those speakers wrote those lines themselves before they had their turn at the mike…

@Cerridwyn That’s bullshit. Being a judgemental asshole is counterproductive. There’s a lot of that going around.

People don’t believe anti-vax nonsense because they’re unusually evil or unusually stupid. They believe it because belief in general is socially based and because humans in general strongly prefer to maintain existing beliefs instead of adopting new ones, so they’ll cling to these lifelines of contradictory information instead of trying to evaluate from scratch, over and over, what is true in a broad sense.

Not only is there a social cost to changing your mind, it really throws you into this unknown liminal space – if you let some random group drag you in a direction, you don’t know what the results will be of pulling on that thread. You may find that your new beliefs imply bad things about you and your people, or they could get you kicked out of your tribe.

Having your sense of stability and self unmade is uh, an acquired taste.

@Cerridwyn @InnocuousFarmer I saw an article about antivaxxers. It said there is a vocal minority of conspiracy theorists that will refuse to believe data and a lot of very scared parents reading stuff that looks legit.

The scared parents can be reached not by bullying but treating their concerns seriously and gently educating them. No one wants to be told they’re a homicidal moron. That stops them from listening to anything you have to say.

@Cerridwyn @InnocuousFarmer @sammydog01 oh god, some of the bat ass crazies in my neighborhood say they won’t get the COVID vaccine because it is a way for the government to inject tracker chips into them. There’s multiple of them.

@Cerridwyn @InnocuousFarmer @sammydog01 @willdavi
Wait. Hol up. Why does the gubmint need to inject multiple tracker chips?

@Cerridwyn @mike808 @sammydog01 @willdavi You think the NSA is going to share their tracker chips with the FBI (nevermind the CIA)?

Plus, of course you need redundancy. Two is one and one is none.

@OldCatLady Nah Nah we got it kicked further south. You should spend a coupla weeks in the mountains while that is going on. That’s what I was gonna do.

@OldCatLady @RiotDemon Yeah Florida, Texas and a few other states are quickly headed into deep shit. And it is beyond me why no one apparently is thinking about why they shut down when the numbers were lower and now that they are exponentially exploding shutting down again is out of the question. Economics trumping people (yeah deliberate bad pun). Beyond fucking stupid.

We aren’t where you are yet but are headed there fairly quickly. Never had a plateau, fully reopened, cases have basically doubled from a week or so ago and each day is a new record. Apparently the state (if the evening news is to be believed) is approaching ICU bed capacity in many counties. I hear the helicopter going over my apt building to the hospital across the street far more frequently now. And many MD’s there are wearing cloth masks due to not enough decent ones. Of course in the grocery stores around here maybe 15% of the customers are wearing masks, however about 1/3 of the employees have them around their neck or just covering their mouths or in one case I saw today, hanging off of one ear. Of course this is rabid trump country where all of this is a myth, fake news, democratic plot, etc. Trump is going to have far fewer voters in this state if they keep it up.

When I was in Houston at MD Anderson last week on the radio they said they were running out of ICU beds there. The medical center area (a bunch of different hospital systems) where I was is the biggest medical complex in the world apparently. The children’s hospital is taking in non covid-19 adults to try to make room in the other hospitals for the covid-19 ones. I can’t even imagine how many patients that would be.

@Kidsandliz @OldCatLady @RiotDemon Totally agree. The Deniers need to step into a Covid unit and see what the hell is happening. Be a patient & lay on your belly for days , months on end on a ventilator and see. Even if you are deemed “recovered” really there are long lasting issues. Millions of people testing positive for Covid-19, how is that not a pre-exisiting condition, that can be used to deny medical coverage or higher rates,if the the Affordable Care Act, aka Obama Care gets tossed by the Supreme Court. Wake up…

@cranky1950 heh, I have family in Brooksville. Wrong county.

@haydesigner FL governor was doing the right thing. Dying of Covid should not be counted the same dying with Covid but dying of some other reason.

In NY, and probably elsewhere, car accident victims are being counted as Covid deaths.

Do you not find it curious that the number or regular flu and pneumonia deaths have dropped to almost zero? From around 35K in 2019 to almost none in 2020?

@haydesigner @sjk3 The flu is technically not a reportable disease in most of the U.S. However, the CDC has estimated anywhere from 24k to 62k deaths between October and April attributed to influenza.

If you think DeSantis has been doing the right thing, yet you think Cuomo has not, you’re an even bigger idiot than you’re proving yourself to be here.

@cinoclav @haydesigner @sjk3 Yeah, forcing nursing homes to take in Covid patients in NY was a real Einstein move.

@haydesigner @macromeh @sjk3 What they did originally was follow the Chump administration’s policies regarding admitting patients to nursing homes. What Cuomo did a few weeks later was announce their own policy not allowing Covid + patients to be discharged to nursing homes.

So Einstein tried to fix what this administration screwed up…

@haydesigner @sjk3 noone dies of “AIDS” either only “with AIDS” by your definition.

You can have a heart attack or a stroke caused by COVID 19. This absolutely should be counted even though the death is heart attack: COVID caused it. Covid causes death by other means.

It is not at all strange that flu deaths have gone down. People have been social distancing, in quarantine, etc. No doubt lots of deaths by all sorts of communicable diseases have gone down. I wouldn’t expect much flu right now. We could have light flu seasons if we social distance every year and always wear masks… Lol.

Besides it isn’t really flu season yet. Flu season was wrapping up by the time Covid got going here. The tests for flu and coronavirus are different. You don’t test positive for covid if you have the flu or vice versa. (Other than normal rate of false positives with baseline population).

Now all that said, for the vast majority of people Covid isn’t obviously bad… Most people don’t have major obvious symptoms

But it has the potential to overwhelm hospitals with people who are vulnerable to it… And when beds are taken by coronavirus patients then more people will die of other things who needed those beds.

Right now most of the country is fine for hospital beds but numbers are going up. I think some cities in Texas have over 90% bed occupancy. Where I am 60% occupancy is the norm but it’s up to 75% bed occupancy because of coronavirus. It’s not panic time here yet but those numbers are going up and need to be watched.

Even people who are asymptomatic might not be in the clear though.

2/3 of asymptomatic carriers show signs of lung damage and lung lesions… That’s just the people who appear asymptomatic.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see an upswell in lung cancer deaths 10 years from now… Who else knows what else it is doing. It gets in the blood and invades your whole body. I bet as the years go by having had covid 19 will be linked to things we don’t know about yet.

Back to your original point though about people dying “with” instead of “of” covid 19. The overwhelming odds are more people die BECAUSE of it than we are possibly counting. We are finding new ways it impacts the human body every week. People may be dying in ways we’re not yet connecting.

Yes, we could act like China and Russia and artificially lower our numbers by ignoring some deaths or ignoring people who test positive but are asymptomatic, but that doesn’t really help anything. Obscuring data just to make ourselves look artificially better is not a helpful tactic. We should be above silly nationalistic propaganda in this country.

A useful statistic that I haven’t seen is number of total deaths this year vs total deaths up to this point in previous years. I’d be interested to see if there is any significant difference. Wouldn’t necessarily prove anything either way… But it would be interesting.

@OnionSoup I have read several articles where they are estimating uncounted covid deaths using the metric of other years vs this year and this year is way up.

@haydesigner @sjk3

Actually it should be counted. When determinations of death are done, they list every possible cause. The reason is for further tracking and review. The numbers for deaths might go up temporarily for the week but they will be readjusted within a month. Plus, if analysis of covid-19 shows that it messes with depth perception in high stress situations, it can be classified properly as a true covid causing death.

Watch about various medical related murder cases and you will find out that before they tracked all possible means there were a lot of ways to cover up deaths.

@kdemo Here they claimed “computer program problems” as the reason why we had NO reporting at all for several days. Then finally reporting again and numbers are way up. I’d guess there is more than one state pulling stunts like this.

/giphy holy shit!

@kdemo but you can’t “delete” numbers. Anyone claiming such is not understanding of how national databases work. Once a Covid statistic has been recorded, it exists in a database that state politicians / authorities do not have access to modify.

I cannot speak as to whether numbers are being withheld from reporting, but “deleting”? No. Because numbers are reported by hospitals in near real-time, the state - at best - could withhold that data, but you can’t retroactively “delete” it.

@danlo - But recorded where? To credit your comment, it’s probably semantics. Doesn’t say they deleted “reported” cases. Maybe they just don’t report them?
Anyway, considering how bad the reporting is now, imagine if it is actually much worse?

Don’t ask me, ask Ms Jones:
https://www.ocala.com/opinion/20200710/rebekah-jones-covid-19-data-reporting-by-florida-is-unreliable-raises-too-many-questions

@kdemo Yeah, therein lies the rub. If it never gets reported, it is essentially the same result.

Hopefully, somewhere between [the hospitals themselves, local/state auditors, patient advocate groups, insurance companies, and database administrators], anyone tampering with the data for any reason will be found out and held accountable.

@danlo @kdemo

Once a Covid statistic has been recorded, it exists in a database that state politicians / authorities do not have access to modify.

What are you basing this on? Are hospitals reporting directly to a national database? Does a national database even exist? Or is it counting on the state reporting to populate a national database?

Unless hospitals are reporting directly to a national database then I don’t see how this would be true. A brief perusal looks like data is reported to the Florida Department of Health, but I haven’t looked very closely at all, but that looks like a Floridian database, not national.

@danlo @kdemo @Limewater In MS I think it is reporting to dept of heath and then they claimed “computer problems” to stop posting reports for several days. And even if it is in a national database hackers could get in… or a loyal political appointee could pressure the “right” person.

@kdemo @Kidsandliz @Limewater Wow. That’s insane.

@Limewater What I mean is that once a stat is recorded (and subsequently relayed), the stat cannot be deleted - at least, not without being noticed. If the state health dept decided to erase specific data, there would be discrepancies between that database and the databases kept by the hospitals / care centers.

It is even more visible if deleted after the fact: There are currently many aggregators in use that pull data from the state/local databases. When you look at Covid figures on a site like worldometers.info, you’re not looking at real-time views of every entity’s database, but a recorded ‘snapshot’ of each database. Each reporting aggregator collects (and uses) its own snapshots for reporting, graphing, trending, etc… If a state reported last week that 100 people died from Covid-19, then this week ‘deleted’ several records from the state database, it would have zero effect on aggregator databases, as the snapshots have already been taken and published. It would actually cause glaring proof that someone altered data after the fact. Worldometers appears to publish roughly-daily (I’ve found it’s about every 4 to 6 hours) updates to the numbers. There are sites I’ve seen that publish updates about every 5 minutes.

The only way to ‘get away with it’, would be for data to be altered before it was sent off for reporting. Even this would be risky for an entity to attempt, with this virus being so heavily covered and reported.

Maybe I’m just naive. In CFL, we have two major health groups - AdventHealth, and Orlando Health (which is far larger than the name “Orlando” implies). Each of these groups have dozens of hospitals and care centers around Florida, and each has at least one hospital (that’s individual complexes, not counting the entire group properties) here in FL that ranks in the top 10 largest hospitals in America .

Anyway, that little seemingly unrelated bit of info to stress this: both of these organizations bring in $1B+ every year, and their data reporting has to be insanely precise (billing may be another story, I’m sure) to meet state health/insurance guidelines. If the state records differ from these two groups after they have been reported to the state, then auditors will find out. It would just be a matter of time.

It’s feasible to think that postmortems (no pun intended) will be assessed for at least the next few years with regard to everything that has transpired with and during Covid-19 in terms of healthcare (or the lack thereof). history will ultimately be the judge here.

Remember that it wouldn’t just be entities that need to be willing to falsify records like this - people would need to be complicit. In a perfect world, people have consciences. People change their minds and regret their actions (hopefully). If any data-mismanagement or outright altering is taking place, hopefully those involved would eventually speak up.

@danlo @kdemo @Limewater Issues across states is that reporting isn’t using the same criteria and some data, presumption of having covid, etc. then isn’t in one state’s report that would be in a different state’s report. Someone posted something about that earlier. I’d guess any falsification would be done prior to the data actually being put in the actual official report.

@danlo

. . . anyone tampering with the data for any reason will be found out and held accountable.

That hasn’t been working out too well lately.
(Understatement)

@danlo @Limewater - According to the op-ed link I posted today, the depts within Florida are not even sharing/compiling data. The numbers that are reported are not necessarily chronological - it is a huge mess.

I would not trust ANYTHING from federal gov’t at this point - unless it’s a leak from a scientist or similar with ethical motives.

@mike808 You can say the same thing about NY, NJ, MI, & MN. Blue states that are utterly incompetent and killed so many people because of their incompetence. Also Democrat de Blasio is literally Hitler in his oppression of Jews.

Florida is paradise compared to Totalitarian Socialist Blue states.

No sane reasonable person would vote Democrat. Democrats are literally the party of death, oppression, racism, and CNN misinformation.

@mike808 @sjk3 delusional. Step away from Fox “News”.

@cmarbaker @mike808 @sjk3 drink the Kool Aid

@sjk3 fuck off

@sjk3 moron

@jmoor783 @robson Go back to CHAZ. Please do society a favor and put DNR on your medical record.

@mike808 @sjk3

Hello from Michigan here. Our curve has been flattened and most people are actually happy with how things have been especially given how bad some states (FL, TX) have handled it after us. This includes a decent amount of people who complained about how the governor originally handled it.

@ruouttaurmind Why were you getting less than 2 m from someone at a gas station? I don’t wear a mask to get gas. If everyone minds their own business, they should be at least 2m away. Yes, I use hand sanitizer afterwards because who knows whose hands touched that gas pump handle.

@ruouttaurmind @sjk3 wearing a mask also protects the next person to use that pump from you in case you are presymptomatic or asymptomatic

@sjk3

Why were you getting less than 2 m from someone at a gas station? I don’t wear a mask to get gas. If everyone minds their own business, they should be at least 2m away.

This person went into the convenience store to pay, back in to collect their change and get a fountain drink, all without wearing a mask. To be very clear, the recently passed emergency order here requires a mask be worn in all public places outside a private residence or a private vehicle. This includes gas stations while pumping gas.

Also, you seem to be an intelligent person, and certainly recognize that the virus doesn’t carry around a tape measure to make sure it doesn’t travel beyond 2m. If Scoffy McScofflaw coughs, sneezes, hacks out phlegm, airborne particulates could potentially travel well beyond 2m. Especially in a leeward direction.

@ruouttaurmind @sjk3

and get a fountain drink

Damn… they haven’t sold self-serve fountain drinks around here in months…

@chienfou About the middle of June most convenience stores even reopened the self-serve food items like the hotdog rollers and fresh donut cases. I wasn’t a patron of those things before, I can’t imagine anyone would use them now.

There is still a restriction on using personal containers/refills at the soda fountain and coffee stations, and the bulk condiments like relish and onions and such are not offered in favor of individual packets. I guess that’s their interpretation of “safety”.

@ruouttaurmind
/giphy yikes

@ruouttaurmind @sjk3 Leeward? I’d stay upwind; the Great Unmasked are too aromatic for me.

@chienfou @ruouttaurmind We’re on our way to get a hot dog at 7-11.

@sammydog01

@sjk3 it is not red vs blue states
Coverage is aimed at states experiencing the largest spikes and increases.

@sjk3 Education only works if people are open minded and stop getting their “data” from places like Facebook.

@sjk3
Sorry, your position is complete bullshit. There is no evidence to support any of it. That’s not “canceling”, that’s calling bullshit bullshit.

You’ve obviously never been a victim of domestic violence with your “honey vs vinegar” thinking.

Bullies, rapists, racists, terrorists, and sociopaths can never be slaked or magically transformed with kindness. They get off on infliciting suffering on others. Why else would the GOP be hellbent for decades on taking away from Americans our healthcare, education, equal representation, and exercising our right to vote?

Education, not assault or jail, is how to bring people to your side.

If that were true, the GOP-controlled state legislators, Governors, Congresspersons, POTUS, and Betsy de Vos would be doing everything in their power to fully fund free education for every American, Native, DACA, or immigrant, yes?

In Florida, you can’t fix stupid. And jails are for criminals. People that knowingly (by choosing not to wear a mask) wander around infecting their fellow Americans is not a “right” nor a “freedom”. It’s willful disregard for human life and depraved indifference, and it is sociopathic criminal behavior.

Lock them up!

You also sound like someone that has enjoyed white privilege all of your life. What have you done with that privilege for the good of anyone that doesn’t share that privilege, since you’re waxing all noble…

@mike808 I was going to respond to him/her/it earlier, but my first thought was, “I’ll just wait for mike808 to do so. It will be more fun.”

@sjk3 No you are wrong-you are a world class a-hole.

@Felton10 @sjk3 Calling people assholes is so helpful when trying to convince them to do something.
/giphy eyeroll

@sammydog01 @sjk3 He already said he was one so I was just agreeing with him. Besides name calling is the only thing this type people understand.
They don’t respond to facts, reason or common sense or they would have abandoned supporting tRump a while back.

@Felton10 @sjk3 Nice stereotyping. Also so helpful.
/giphy eyeroll

@sjk3 You realize you’re just a different colored version of the people you complain about. Neither of you are right. The solution is in the middle.

You’re also ignoring the science and the stupidity/idiocy of the common people and their ability to follow the rules. Apparently you never had kids otherwise you would know that sometimes you have to implement a harsher rule because you know that the envelope will be pushed at every moment. But it’s easier with kids because I have the right to punish them and take things away if they don’t do what I tell them to. Clearly the American public is more hellbent on doing what it wants becuase it’s their right and freedom. And truthfully it is their right to be as vacuous and moronic as they desire, which as we can see, they are exercising that right.

So, the majority red states with significant populations / tourism destinations were “open for business” and largely ignoring the recommended practices because of their right and freedoms, blah blah blah. Now they have to deal with scientific, party-less, consequences of a virus that doesn’t give 2 craps about what you think about society, government, the flag, your rights, gay marriage, universal healthcare, the anthem, skin color, what lives do or don’t matter, or whatever other issue you can muster up.

I’m a republican and Cuomo is doing a MARVELOUS job. Balancing the scientific realities of the effective measures needed to combat a pandemic while trying to keep his economy afloat is not easy. Governor Baker in MA (a republican) has had our state on one of the harshest lockdowns in the country and wouldn’t you know it, our numbers are among the best in the country. Fancy that, when you listen to the data and do the responsible thing, you get good results.

Stop being a jerk. Is the left taking some of this too far. Sure, but it’s also a PANDEMIC. I don’t know, maybe, grow some thick skin and tolerate some stuff that rubs you the wrong way and do it because the scientists think it might work and in this environment you should be trying ANYTHING reasonable.

@sjk3 @zinimusprime This is an election year. As in every election year past, EVERYTHING is about the election.

@sjk3 - Know what? Biden would work to protect you despite your ill-conceived rhetoric. He would care for everyone. He believes in the “United” States. He believes in science, and he will take federal action to fight covid with zero attempts to gain profit for himself or his cronies.
That’s the difference with the current resident, and thankfully there are signs many are beginning to see the truth.

@sjk3: “ after a month of Covid-free CNN news coverage”

Uuh, you obviously don’t watch CNN at all, as that is not even REMOTELY true. And since it is obviously, clearly, and unimpeachably untrue, then you really need to stop believing the places you hear/read that from.

@sjk3 both the House and Senate in Michigan is controlled by the Republicans. They could easily have passed a law to limit the governor’s power, however they chose not to because they would have someone to blame ( they did initially ) if things did not work out.
They just do not have the balls.
I am an independent and have voted for both Republicans and Democrats as well as the third party candidate when neither side is good enough.

@OnionSoup wears socks with sandals.

@PooltoyWolf The last time I went to an actual store was the end of February.

We’ve been to the vet’s building a couple of times since then, the guys come get the pet in the carrier, all of us wearing masks, communicating with the vet via phone.

They recently started allowing one person in the examining room. The bench was marked off with painter’s tape (don’t sit here), the floor was marked as well (don’t go beyond this point).

An exception is made when the pet is being euthanized. (Like us saying goodbye to Rachel a week ago yesterday; when it was official, I called my husband in - he was in the car.)

We go for walks, but there’s no one around at that time of the morning. We still have our masks available.

@lisaviolet I’m so sorry for your loss :C

@lisaviolet
Sorry for your loss. We said goodbye after 15 years of joy to one of our two cats last weekend.

@mike808 Thank you. She was the only office cat left, she was always in here. I keep turning around to check on her.

Rachel was 16, she was born under our bedroom window to a feral mom on April 4, 2004.

@PooltoyWolf Thank you. We miss her mightily.

@cinoclav How 'bout we send them some thoughts and prayers? The belivers seem to really like that solution to lots of problems.

@cinoclav @mike808 You make all of your points about him not being an idiot a little weaker when you start lumping “believers” into one group too. The only difference is you’re on the opposite side.

@cinoclav @mike808 Instead of t&p, send wine. I need it.

@cinoclav @mike808 @OldCatLady Why not all 3!?!? Now that’s my kinda party!

@OnionSoup And yet that same population demands government interference to enforce their system of white privilege.

@OnionSoup Around here it is more than just that demographic that behaves that way - although VERY surprisingly MS just voted to do something about the state flag (the governor, after weaseling about it, finally said he’d sign although he hasn’t yet). Should be “interesting” to see what happens next considering the majority of the voters voted to keep it not 10 years ago.

@sammydog01 No problems with NC, the main outbreak is in the Charlotte area. The northern counties are pretty disease free. Go to Rural King it’s more fun.

@cranky1950 We had a farm and tractor store where I used to live. They sold baby chicks and I got the best pair of farm boots ever. There’s not one here though.

@zinimusprime Right… but that’s not a problem, is it? I’m in Illinois and went to the DMV today. Masks were mandatory for everyone inside the building. Nobody is making the argument that “It’s crazy to have a driver’s license that doesn’t show your face!” because… you take your mask off to be identified and have your picture taken. That’s it.
Browsing a (shop) with a mask on? No issues. Want to make a purchase? Please show your face while not coughing or talking at me. Thank you. Enjoy you’re purchase.

Hahaha

@CaptAmehrican yep. Just saw the update. Holy shit balls.

@cristysue Hey-I’m an old fart in Florida also. As long as he doesn’t go crazy and wears a mask when he goes out, he’ll be fine. Just grocery, warehouse clubs, doctors app’t, getting what little hair I have left cut app’t for me.

@Felton10, ALL of those carry risk and exposure. There’s not some magical field protecting those places.

Not to mention, masks really don’t protect the wearer… it protects everyone else from the wearer… which is why it is so important for EVERYONE to wear them.

@Felton10 @haydesigner Depends on the mask. A n95 will really help the person too. A cloth mask will help others around them. If everyone wore some kind of mask, and social distance, we could actually beat this. Sadly, too many people don’t care and has made it political.

@cristysue Find their local newspaper online, and read it.

@Felton10 Thank You. I appreciate the reassurance!!

@AZnatural1 Just be firm in your resolve to continue to protect them and signal you practice social distancing by wearing your mask. It’s not about what shit birds they are for not giving a damn about anyone else but themselves.

If they don’t wear a mask you don’t know how many infected people they have been exposed to before they rolled up to you, so you’re sure as shit going to stay the fuck away from them, like they had the plague … because they do.

@Felton10 Pray Kentucky gets rid of Moscow Mitch in November.

Kentucky is the #2 “welfare state” leeching off the backs of taxpayers in CA, NY, IL, and the other blue states for decades.

@narfcake - I’ve been hearing on the news today, from multiple sources, that the real infection number could be 10 times higher than reported. Nationally.

@narfcake, this is what I was referring to in my own comment up above. People should go to jail for the stuff… it‘s basically negligent homicide!

@kdemo @narfcake And then the problem, from some recent science articles that came out, is that they are seeing that the antibody level in many people who had it are very low to undetectable after about 3 months. And many of the folks with no symptoms but were positive didn’t have much in the way of antibodies to begin with. Now this doesn’t mean that the immune system doesn’t respond when exposed again (that won’t be answered easily or quickly) but the current thinking is that this is one disease that isn’t likely going to confer life time immunity. In that I hope they are wrong.

@kdemo @narfcake

real infection number could be 10 times higher than reported. Nationally.

I think it’s been that way ever since Feb.

How many get very ill and need serious care seems to be related to how intense and constant the exposure is, in addition to medical risk factors.
They think. Maybe.

Which might explain why initial US hot spots were in dense population environments.
And current hot spots are where life went “back to normal” quickly without much in the way of precautionary measures against extensive virus transmission.

I say seems in regard to our state of knowledge, because the US govt and health bureaus have chosen, as they are driven by political considerations, not to collect reliable nationwide data about virus spread, asymptomatic populations, and COVID-19-related disease/deaths;
along with choosing not to even recommend a set of coherent nationwide long range safety practices that would seriously slow transmission rates while allowing as much normal human and economic activity as possible.

/Clusterfuck.

@f00l
The fish rots from the head down.

@mike808

Noted.

@haydesigner @narfcake Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? The weasels are in Toad Hall, and evil stalks the land. (I’m feeling literary, and gloomy.)

@Fzero That’s yesterday’s news. Wait for today’s count!

@Fzero @OldCatLady
/giphy over 9000

@Felton10 that’s funny. There’s an amazing deli in my town with a sandwich called the Trump Tower and it’s fantastic. It’s his o ly good contribution to the world that I’m aware of…

@Felton10 @zinimusprime
That’s some interesting flavors. Bet it still tasted like a shit sandwich. You sure they didn’t do a substitution on you?

@Felton10 @mike808 haha, not for the one in our town. The one that we have is half a pound of pastrami, Cole slaw, mustard, and Swiss cheese. And it’s served hot.

@mike808 @zinimusprime Anything that has anything to do with the Orange Skidmark aka Bunker Boy you know is shit.

@macromeh similar size. We have a little higher cases because we are a crossroads between two higher density areas vs a pure rural county. But never been high. Cases have always been low and dropping

Granted I already worked from home. About all that’s changed is I shop less and avoid Walmart. And that’s mostly because they close at 830 or something silly. Higher population density over there too. Kroger is open till 11 and there’s basically no one there after 9 when I’ve been there. No crowds to spread it. In and out in 15 minutes no one you need to talk to.

People in cities are most at risk… And the level of stupidity in that video is shocking. But so is the level of flooding beaches and bars the second they are allowed to open.

There is nothing political about this situation. Heaven forbid politicians stop playing games and deal with shit.

@kdemo
that goes both ways…

@RiotDemon hope he stays safe

@RiotDemon I kind of have to ask did he SEE moltov cocktails and grenades? We do know how news sensationalizes things.

If that really going on it shouldn’t be.
No one should be destroying property.

Regardless that restaurant should be closed because Florida is blowing through the roof on cases. Once thing is not the other.

The argument should be dead. No one is scared of protestors more than the pandemic.

@unksol he saw the aftermath. He was not there during the riots. He’s not an idiot.

They aren’t closing restaurants. They have stopped alcohol sales at bars again.

DeSantis says he is not going to close up everything again.

@RiotDemon well. Either way I wouldn’t want to be going to a restaurant during this mess. But then I wouldn’t go to a restaurant normally either. So I guess my opinion is irrelevant. I know this is a CF for small business owners. Hope they make it through.

@RiotDemon @unksol Heck if DeSantis closed things down again the 3 month running average of the state’s unemployment rate might finally end up high enough that in October (that’s when they determine the number of weeks people in that state get for the next 12 months) they’d be forced to up the number of weeks people get from the 12 weeks they currently get (not to mention he was one of the last ones to sign on to the extra federal 13 weeks). Cripes even MS, where they’d rather kill the poor (no medicaid expansion, over the top work food stamp rules…), the unemployed get 26 weeks (of course the cap on how much they get/week is one of the lowest in the nation). The rule is also that if FL ups the number of weeks in October, those who ran out prior to October and are still unemployed won’t benefit. That, of course, will mean that a huge number of folks will be shit out of luck. Never mind forcing people to work when it is unsafe is disastrous too. That apparently doesn’t matter to him (or plenty of other politicians either).

@Kidsandliz @RiotDemon have they put in for PPP? I know that’s sort of a mess but at least it’s something

@RiotDemon @unksol I think more small business owners didn’t get that business loan than got one. A cousin of mine owns a store in FL. She applied both times for the loan and didn’t get anything. Of course the first time around a bug chunk of the money went to businesses that weren’t eligible to get them (don’t know about round two).

@Kidsandliz @RiotDemon @unksol Filled out/help fill out the applications for two of my clients and they both got the PPP loans-one for 171k the other for 255k. Not easy. Rules were fucked up and kept changing daily. Much easier to get if you deal with a small locally owned bank.

@Felton10 I’ll tell my cousin that in case they have another round of loans. Thanks

@Kidsandliz As of last week, there was still money left from the first go around-tell him to check with his bank-if they are still taking applications and processing them then there is money left. One of my clients missed the first batch of money and he was first in line for the second batch as the bank kept his already submitted application.

@Felton10 Thanks. I contact her today and let her know.

@RiotDemon @unksol

No one is scared of protestors more than the pandemic.

Not true. I have little concern for myself over the pandemic, even though I am on the edge of the vulnerable age group. But I will not set foot in Portland (aka antifa central). Parts of it are like a war zone and the local politicians are encouraging it. I know several residents who are pulling up stakes and moving out.

@macromeh @RiotDemon maybe we should start with state level assistance for people who lost stores . As well as finding the looters who brag on Facebook

@macromeh @RiotDemon I shouldn’t have said no one. It you live in the area it’s a little rough. But being disbanned. If you think that was a warzone woo come on. You’ve never seen a warzone. Or are confused

@unksol Yeah maybe I was confused because the masked looters throwing molotov cocktails while attempting to burn down the North Portland police precinct just two days ago didn’t really look like disbanded peaceful protesters.
https://pamplinmedia.com/pt/9-news/471622-381521-fire-looting-erupts-overnight-near-portland-police-north-precinct

@macromeh assholes firebombing an empty building are not enemy combatants . Peaceful? Maybe not. Warzone? What are you smoking

@unksol If you get shot or beaten or burned up, I don’t think it matters much if the perps are wearing a uniform or not. JMO

@macromeh @unksol However having seen a war aftermath not 2 even years after the Khmer Rouge surrendered in Cambodia, the systemic destruction of everything in the country and the long term fall out from that is very different than rioting burning a small section of town, etc. Yes if someone is shot they are shot whether in a war or in a riot. Medical care though is usually a lot faster and better in a riot that takes place in an otherwise still functioning society than in a war zone.

Heck while I was in Cambodia if you got in a car accident, had a serious other kind of accident or sudden serious illness you’d better hope you can call a helicopter to take you to Bangkok or Singapore for medical care if it is anything major. That takes time. Plenty of time. Why? Because 3/4 of the meds in Cambodia were (and still are) counterfeit, hospitals didn’t and still don’t have much in the way of needed equipment, there are no level one trauma ER’s, the parallel health system that westerners/other foreigners had set up back then was more like urgent care and primary care than anything else…

And good luck with walking off the beaten path. Landmines for one. My daughter’s father stepped on one, lost his leg and died to tetanus. Talk about a preventable death. People were living in buildings with an entire side wall gone - 4, 5 stories up with just the red cross blue tarps tied across the missing walls to keep people, kids, pets, etc. from falling out. Families were living under grass lean tos against a barb wire fence next to the road. Why? Because there wasn’t anywhere else to live.

Gun fire and everyone hits the ground. I saw that in a Buddhist temple in Dallas one year celebrating Cambodian New Year. A helium balloon hit the ceiling fan and broke. Everyone, including my daughter, hit the floor pulling down the little kids (too young to have lived through the war) with them. The only 2 people who didn’t do that were the two non Cambodians there. Me and someone’s husband. Widespread PTSD.

That is the result of a war zone. Not a riot.

@macromeh please show me someone getting shot/burned. For what a warzone is please see kidsandliz above.

Just for the record you can’t have a war if the other side backs off to deescalate. Who are you fighting?

Should it have gotten there? No. Should it continue to exist? No. Don’t say it’s a warzone and try and escalate. Let’s de escalate

@Felton10 @Kidsandliz @RiotDemon @unksol - I shared a tip I heard with my son, and it worked to get a PPP loan early in the second round.

Apply with the smallest bank you can find that accepts applications. Their list of applicants will be shorter, and a business can move to the top sooner.

@kdemo @Kidsandliz @RiotDemon @unksol I agree but unless you had a preexisting relationship with that bank (as my client did) the banks were flooded with so many loan requests that they were only accepting applications from current customers (and some only current customer who had loans with them).

@Kidsandliz @unksol So you seem to be saying that the difference is just a matter of degree. Not very compelling.

@Kidsandliz @macromeh @unksol

Very compelling.

@Kidsandliz Just saw on the news this morning that there was 134 billion left and today is the last day for the program so if she didn’t apply she either had bad advice or the wrong bank.

@Felton10 I texted her and she said she applied again. Thanks for all the info!

@Kidsandliz You’re welcome. Glad I could help.

@Felton10 How long does it take from application to approval? She never heard a word yea or nay with her other applications.

@Kidsandliz It basically starts out as a regular loan from the bank based on her application so the bank should be able to give her a yes or no pretty quickly or at least the status of it especially with the program having ended today although all banks probably work it a little differently. The fun comes after she spends the money according to the rules (60% for payroll rest for other expenses) and has has to submit documentation to get the loan forgiven (basically so the bank can get paid back by the SBA)

@Felton10 Thanks. I’ll pass that on.

@Kidsandliz Hey the Senate and the House both passed an extension of the PPP program and send it along to tRump for his signature to use up the unused portion of the PPP funds. So if there was an issue with your cousin’s application maybe she can find out what it was and correct it. My client has been dealing with this bank for 20 years (and having in excess of 1 million dollars in their checking account didn’t hurt either) so they had a contact person at bank who they could call with any questions.

@Felton10 Thanks!

@RiotDemon Cops are the ones killing people, not the protestors

@jmoor783 I didn’t say that they weren’t.

@jmoor783 @RiotDemon

Cops are the ones killing people, not the protestors

well… maybe not in the CHOP…

@Felton10 I don’t know if it bothers anyone else but I doubt your use of tRump and orange skidmark and other toxic terms help. You are sinking to his level. Where it’s going to change is the middle. You just push the other side in the hole. How about having a discussion instead of straight up hate that they both want us to do. It’s possible to have a discussion about how awful Trump is without calling names like he does

@unksol I agree with you completely but name calling is the only thing that gets the people who still support Trump’s attention. Why else would he make up a name for everyone he doesn’t like. You can’t reason with the 33% of people who still support him. Quite frankly they are idiots. They are too stupid to see that Trump inherited a recovering economy and made it better by giving tax breaks to the wealthy which increased the national debt that our grandchildren are going to have deal with and gutted regulations which protect our environment and financial well being. You can’t argue with people who are that stupid. The only thing these goobers understand are insults and name calling as distasteful as it is.

@Felton10 @unksol I’m not a fan of name calling either. If you don’t like how he insults people, then you shouldn’t insult him in the same manner. And I refuse to comment on his appearance. His actions are much more noticeable.

Whoopi Goldberg got it right by not using his name and using other ways to refer to him such as “You Know Who” and “The Guy In The White House”.

But I am a fan of nicknames. I like when during the Stormy Daniels scandal, some people called the president “Spanky”.

Jon Stewart recently suggested calling him “Swampy Don”. I prefer Steven Colbert’s response: “Swamp Ass”.

I was calling him “DonTCare” for a while (his wife wore a “I Really Don’t Care …” jacket so it was fitting). But I found the perfect word to describe “The Donald” which I have been using for many months to say his name without saying his name:

Derp.

Definition: Used as a substitute for speech regarded as meaningless or stupid, or to comment on a foolish or stupid action. Foolishness or stupidity.

Sometimes I might say “Donald Derp” or “Derpity Derp” when he does something when people around him show disgust. I think of “Derp” in the same way Homer Simpson says “D’oh”.

@JT954 @unksol The three names I use now are Orange Skidmark, Bunker Boy and General Bone Spurs Draft Dodger.

@Felton10 @JT954 @unksol - My go-to names are ‘the resident’ ‘tilted traitor’ and ‘traitor tot’, all of which are too polite for the circumstances.

@Felton10 @JT954 @kdemo you all confuse the fuck out of me. Why can’t you just say I disagree with Trump because he said xyz? Name calling is Trump’s MO. Do facts not names. You buy into his his obvious bullshit.

@JT954 @kdemo @unksol Trump calls names because that it what turns on his low information supporters so the only way to get their attention to to call names. Most Trump supporters are closed minded people-plus they don’t have the mental capacity to understand and evaluate facts.

@Felton10 @JT954 @kdemo and there you go. Just calling everyone names because they do not see your point of view. I cannot believe you don’t see how destructive that is and how you are just driving the wedge further which is that he wants. That is where he gets his base. He says bullshit. You react at the same level. If all you do is attack and call everyone morons we are all fucked. What the fuck fuck fuck fuck ever happened to focussing on policy and a way forward. God damn we are not at fucking war

@JT954 @kdemo @unksol It is you that doesn’t get it. His racist idiot base can’t be reasoned with. One of his followers stoked by the overt racism of our POS president just vandalized the synagogue I belong to with swastikas and Trump graffiti.

As to your comment about not being at war. Yes-we are. We have someone at the helm that cares more about himself and getting elected than he does about the country he was elected to serve. He is letting people die rather than change his stance on the virus that is spread through out our country. He might even start a war if he thought it would help reelection chances. It is you who should recalabrate
your thinking on what type of people we are dealing with.

@Felton10 @kdemo @unksol The real problem is the “all or nothing” and “one way or no way” mentalities and it goes towards pro and anti Trump supporters. Just because a Republican does one bad thing doesn’t mean all Republicans are bad. Just because a Democrat does one bad thing doesn’t mean all Democrats are bad. Derogatory name calling doesn’t improve matters so you won’t see me joke about physical appearances or diseases linked to a person. If you don’t like to be picked on for those reasons, then don’t do it to others.

I like nicknames that use an event to describe the action ( i.e. Bunker Boy, Gaffe Machine, Permit Patty). It personally amuses me and takes away from the sting from the person’s foolishness hence why I like “Derp”. Let me be clean that I say Trump does and says stupid things (as it happens since he doesn’t do this all of the time); I am not saying he is stupid since he wouldn’t have any kind of success if he was. My critique is based on actions. A lot of what he does is for attention and distractions from other things that aren’t going well for him. It’s really not that hard to find faults, but the way they are discussed shows people’s character for who they really are.

@Felton10 @JT954 can you guys please go make the Trump thread now?

@Felton10 @JT954 @unksol - I generally avoid appearance criticism as well, but that is what he understands. All that seems to matter to him is his appearance, “ratings”, and personal profit.
Why would he work so hard to hide his school records if he was a “stable genius”? Why go to such extremes to hide his taxes if he were innocent?

Edit: Sorry, RD. I’m out.

@Felton10 @JT954 @kdemo @unksol

Note re name calling in politics

Different groups respond differently to various arguments and political gestures.

This is highly verified by research.
IE: the Fox network knows what it is doing.

“Name calling” of the “insult variety” often works ok or works well (as do other fear provocations, gratuitous insult provocations, and straw-man-accusations), when used by extreme conservative it alt-conservative groups; whether if used against fellow conservative and Republican types, or when used against centrist, independent, progressive, and other opponents).

If that stuff didn’t work on that demographic, then Trump would not have won the nomination.

Name calling and other “cheap insult” remarks of a similar sort, when used by centrists, progressives, independents, and the most respected “deep-and-careful-thinker type conservatives”
does not work.

In fact, it’s very very counterproductive. It convinces no one who isn’t a knee-jerk-type of anything, and it energizes the knee-jerk-types and the pro-Trumpers and gets them going strong for the culture and political struggles to come.

In other words, name calling just helps the candidates, officials, and causes that the name caller is targeting.

There is much evidence and many studies backing this up.

Basically, centrists and progressives don’t get to use the same techniques that far conservatives snd the alt-right use. Because it hurts the advocates’ cause, and helps the targeted opposition candidate.

There are mountains or research on this. Don’t you think that centrist and progressive groups focus test messaging?

And there are reasons why successful centrist and progressive candidates and centrist or progressive groups never touch this conduct publicly.
Mostly, because they don’t wanna hurt their own side.

People of the centrist or progressive variety who name call in public are often just helping the opposition, and hurting their own POV.

The people who would agree with the political POV are often repulsed, and usually tune out. The people who have opposition POVs love it, and are spoiling for the next fight.

Just check with anyone who works or has worked professionally on messaging for centrist or progressive candidates or issues.

Apologies, @RiotDemon.

I’m wishing that excessive over-the-top partisan stuff leave this topic also. And maybe I should not have posted this.

(Altho many people think that the COVID topic is inherently political at this point [tho that’s tragic in itself].)

But esp the name-calling and over the top partisan stuff and insults ought to go. I hope.

I hope this post doesn’t fan the flames. If it does … then I fucked up.

@unksol I kind of hope the 5G freak out is true. That way when a troll says something extremely hateful that involves physical harm, “the power of 5G” pinpoints who they are so they can be exposed for the evil person they are.

Or else karma gets them. Which also works.

@OnionSoup Hmm wonder what else he was “wearing” on his face while he was gone from home.

@OnionSoup Malaria Tramp never wears a mask. How else can she ply her special talents which got her designated as an individual with extraordinary skills worthy of citizenship. She does wear her knees pads though ready to do tRump bidding at a moments notice.

@f00l can I unlike (thumbs down) this post…so sad/frustrating

@f00l @tinamarie1974 But some of their overflow is adults (without covid) at the children’s hospital and tent hospitals. Neither of those are ideal for those shuttled to them. And of course it will cut down again on care people need (both those who travel there for the specialized care available few other places and those who live there who use those facilities); care that was just being reopened. And July 6th, when they anticipate hitting overflow capacity isn’t far off (couldn’t read the rest of it due to a fire wall that told me I had reached my limit - hum limit must be zero articles).

I knew it was coming when I was there last week as the news was talking about as was MD Anderson. I had my fingers crossed my apts wouldn’t be cancelled out again at the last minute. This escalating catastrophe was completely preventable and now is going to impact a zillion cancer patients and other patients who won’t be able to get the care they need at the level they need in a time frame they need - not to mention the risk to the folks who work in health care. There are so many out of state and out of country patients who go there. That is also going to spread what is going there back to their towns and countries.

As nothing much has been done to stop this other than close bars, when they exceed ICU capacity and their overflow capacity then what? And if a hurricane comes through with the tent hospital beds- then what? They outdoor overflow will blow over, be flooded out. Where will those hospitalized folks be parked then? Hospital lobbies, hallways and the cafeteria? If back up generators can’t handle all those ventilators and related machines then what? This is a disaster waiting to happen. Good thing the dust cloud lowers hurricane risk for a short while anyway.

@Kidsandliz

I don’t love the politics of the situation: nationally, or in Texas.

And I don’t love this recent PR and information choice the Texas Medical Center made, as reported in this article.

But … there are actual competent and dedicated professionals working in and running these hospitals and providing care within.
They do have full sets of contingency plans for many possible future situations. They are doing whatever they can to prepare for very bad situations and still provide care.

They are going to make some errors. Most of those errors will be of the “recoverable” variety.
No need to rush to catastrophize well beyond current situation just yet.

Texas has pulled back from “re-opening” in the Houston area (and in many of most other large TX cities), and has returned back to stringent anti-transmission measures. And many Texas small towns and rural counties are going in that direction.

We can’t absolutely predict this future.

I’m for doing our best to contain this spread; not playing public or private talk/worry games of “chicken little” (which would gain us nothing except noise); and going forward as best we can.

@f00l this is the first data I look for in the covid data… What’s the hospital occupancy percentage… That’s what wearing the masks and shutting things down was supposed to protect.

Chances are the vast majority of us will get the virus eventually, I don’t think it is possible to completely eliminate…

But… As long as we don’t overwhelm hospitals we can keep the deaths to a minimum. When occupancy gets near 100% it means we’ve failed somewhere along the way.

@OnionSoup

Exactly. Iceland and NZ, for instance, have completely, or almost completely, eliminated new cases.

Those are first world countries (thereby having decent tech and medical facilities) and are islands, and they essentially closed their borders and impose strict quarantine of those few allowed in.

And their economies are going to tank, to some notable degree. Both countries are highly tied to tourism.

More diverse and larger countries with land borders or highly active cargo trade, where the virus is already established (I presume it’s everywhere except arctic areas), won’t be able to do this.
There’s no way I know of to completely stop exposure spread, and some who are exposed will be infected.

Since we have not collected adequate and usable data, we know far less than we ought about how this virus and potential immunity to it work. And know far less than we ought about extreme vulnerability based in non-medical factors such as exposure load and pop density.

We are getting better at treating acute instances. That’s a real gain. I suppose politics is less influential re treatment practices, once the pt is in the hospital.

We need to get some idea of “best anti-spread practices”, open or sustain as much of the economy as we can, make whatever changes we need to make, and then ride it though until we have enough knowledge to have some idea what the future holds re this virus.

It’s possible that notable transmission prevention efforts such as mask wearing will be sufficient to let much of the economy go forward.

For instance, the Y daycare is still up and running. They have unique rules designed for child-intensive environments, and are not having hotspot problems.

Also we need to offer serious support to business owners, employees, contractors, and anyone else who has lost major income. And have a coherent policy about pt and testing cost. The alt is a recession that’s far worse.

So far we have lost 6 months or more to politics, here and abroad (esp China).

We (our nation and our “leadership”) have really fucked this up.

Don’t you love that so much of the publicity around COVID-19 is focused on mask-wearing requirements in crowded places being seen as an insult to personal freedom?

@f00l I think the biggest mistake we made in slowing down the virus was not having a plan at a national or regional levels.

Towns, cities and counties each devised their own shutdown plans. My town for instance for a couple of weeks in March/April shut down and you were under curfew. Stay home unless you had essential work.

But all the interstates remained open and you could travel anywhere outside your community no questions asked. So you were free to spread your virus to OTHER cities and OTHER states.

That to me was the big mistake. They had it almost backwards… Sure local shutdowns are useful, but if you prevent long distance travel you keep the virus in isolated communities where you can contain it better (still eventually would get out, but the spread would be slower).

In the early days they should have shut down the interstates for all except freight delivery and essentials in any state that had coronavirus cases confirmed.

By not having a national policy and only local policies the virus was allowed to free spread from community to community. Instead of having problems in certain hotspots, the whole country became a problem.

@OnionSoup

A coherent and rational national policy from the beginning would have been a huge gain.

I would disagree about closing the interstates at that time tho.

I had the “essential” exemption at that time and was going city to city quite a bit (related materially to the provision of medical services). Many times a week, often enough.
The roads and interstates were practically empty of cars compared to the normal situation; trucking (big-rig and freight ) remained close to normal levels.
This was during the height of the lockdown.

And the virus spread was well controlled in environments that weren’t exceptionally dense and weren’t already hotspotting.

Altho there are far more vehicles on the road now, almost all the current chart-topping seems to be related to “ people wanting their lives back”.

Not just shopping, but somewhat crowded maskless shopping (I have done this a few times but at least I always stood 6 feet from everyone. But I’m ashamed of having gone maskless into a store even once).

Restaurants and bars re-opened. People didn’t just start going back to parks; they started partying. You’ve seen the pix of folks hanging out at crowded beaches. I’ve seen parks and street parties from a couple of weeks ago that looked like that re density.

That caused the surge. Not the interstates being open.

Locally, now, everyone is pulling back into caution mode. A larger number of cities and businesses are strongly encouraging or requiring masks.

Maybe there is a sane level of caution-conduct that will let us operate as economic beings, and somewhat as social beings, while not creating a viral infection firestorm.

Hope so.

@f00l interstates were busy in my area. I remember after my way to work one day (also essential ) calling my wife and telling her how the roads are deserted until you get to interstate and then they’re the same as normal.

@f00l Competent professionals in charge is not going to keep hurricanes from affecting tent hospitals. Cities will have them precisely because they don’t have space inside their medical facilities or other good places to handle the load. If there were other good alternatives hospitals would be using them prior to putting up tents. And while they may have back up plans, those will be the back up to the back up plans as the first back up plans would already be in use (eg tent hospitals).

And of course there are, in some places (certainly not all), people in charge making incredibly stupid decisions.

You said,

No need to rush to catastrophize well beyond current situation just yet.

It is worth thinking about these things well in advance of this happening (as I am sure actual competent people in charge are and hopefully their plans will not be obstructed by politics, lack of resources or “reality” considerations…). That is not rush catastrophizing. And, of course, you are correct that this isn’t happening yet. But we are in the middle of an explosion of cases with some hospitals at or beyond capacity in some hurricane zones.

Sure there is no hurricane now but we are just entering hurricane season in the middle of a huge growth of cases that are already overwhelming hospitals where they are already using some of their first line back up plans.

@f00l
You said,

And their economies are going to tank, to some notable degree. Both countries are highly tied to tourism.

Their economies will also tank to some degree because economically speaking the “world is flat”. The economies of the world are intertwined in ways that are not easy for, probably not even possible for an individual country to completely extract itself from. Off shored along with being outsourced manufacturing (which, depending on the industry and country, may mean that industry just isn’t in taking place in the country that is off shoring it) and its impact on supply chains is just one example. There are numerous other ones due to the globalization and interconnection of most countries’ economies.

@Kidsandliz

your previous comment looked exactly like catastrophizing to me, and still does.

Houston does have massive indoor spaces used occasionally and unused currently during the pandemic.

And plenty of commercial real estate close in to that area that’s available for instant conversion. .

The real estate situation in Houston does not at all resemble NO during Katrina or Brooklyn or similar.

Most of this indoor space with heavy electrical capacity already has backup generator setups installed.

Houston has massive generator capacity unused and available for emergency use.

Most of this capacity was never in danger of flooding during the worse of Hurricane Herman.

There would likely be no tent hospitals in Houston even if the pandemic were much much much worse.
If there were tented areas, there would likely be short-term use only: for triage and as pre-assignment holding areas. Lightly occupied, easily evacuated.

If the pandemic gets much much worse, then the real acute shortcomings will likely be ventilators and personnel.

It’s true the Houston had huge probs during Herman;
largely due to the Texas Gulf Coast never having encountered a hurricane that behaved like Herman, which did not move for weeks on end
(at least that sort of hurricane had never seen that during interval since there have been Gulf Coast cities).
Houston emergency services now plans for events like a Herman.

I’ve heard from Houston locals that all the possibilities you mention plus others are included in current pandemic planning and have been under discussion for months.
The people who do this sort of prep don’t go public about it all the time; they leave the PR/spin arena to the governor.

Those people aren’t stupid. They can think of all those probs just as easily as you or I or anyone else. They do think about this all day long. And they have all the plans they can get funding/resources for.

If the pandemic gets much worse in that area, there will be errors and probs of all sorts. I suspect every loc in the US faces this.

It wouldn’t go any better In Houston if you or I were in charge.
Or if you or I were talking heads.

There nothing you or I have thought of that the emergency planners aren’t thinking of.

Yes it makes sense for people to plan for that sort of thing. That’s why they (the professionals in those assignments) are doing their job every day and have been working on this every day all along.

You just won’t see them on TV right now.

Ok course, the pandemic could get worse than that: could go to Black Death levels or similar. Right now that appears to be extremely unlikely.

However, if Houston or any other US city goes to that degree of pandemic: whole diff ball game. And prob not only in Houston.

@f00l You are welcome to your opinion, that was not my intent and I don’t agree with you. I am not dreaming up a far fetched catastrophe to try to panic people. I was just thinking about the complications that could happen when you mix a pandemic with patient overflow. I wasn’t commenting on Houston planning as I have no first hand familiarity with that. I was not talking about us being in charge or that somehow you or I would somehow be better at planning than the people whose jobs this is. We also both know politics can get, and has gotten, in the way of the best laid plans meticulously laid out by professionals who know what they are doing. Heck the current administration dumped the Obama plans for a pandemic rather than use that guidance and then had to reinvent the wheel all the while having in appropriate political interference with the process. When thinking about situations I tend to look at the overall picture, anticipate problems that one hopes never comes to pass, etc. That is just how my mind works.

And I had presumed those folks in charge in Houston had thought about those things. That doesn’t mean I can’t mention them and wonder. If I had talked about hurricane impact in a city far from the coastline with a minimal likelihood of catastrophic damage that would be one thing. I wasn’t. Heck MD Anderson, even with their flood gates they have build that they can open and close, had some water in some of their buildings on the first floor. I saw a photos of the Aquarium main entrance and halls with several inches during a recent hurricane and they said there was more water in the basement too. While the main entrance floor has things like the cafeteria, billing, chapel, some clinics, offices, etc. and not direct patient care, that still interrupts how things are done.

Some people couldn’t even get to work with the flooded streets and some slept at the hospital to be sure they could be at work, worked a lot of overtime, etc. to compensate for that. Those things, if they were to happen, does not make dealing with a pandemic any easier and likely could impact the care of some of the sick. With luck no one will ever need to know if their plans for something like this actually worked as they were supposed to.

@Kidsandliz

Some people couldn’t even get to work with the flooded streets and some slept at the hospital to be sure they could be at work, worked a lot of overtime, etc. to compensate for that.

That happens during every hurricane. Everyone who is not a newbie kinda understands how things work during a named storm.

Also re ground floor flooding. They’re used to it.
They can’t just pick up the city and move it, so if they can see it coming, they prep for it and deal with it if possible.

The comment I didn’t care for not only mentioned hurricanes and tent cities, it gave no currency or mention to the idea that there might be local prep for that. As tho your mention of that possibility was the first ever.
And just sounded over the top to me.

Also the comment ignored just about everything re existing Houston buildings and infrastructure. Since much of this infrastructure is quite visible to anyone who travels the streets and highways, and you visit there, I thought you were somewhat aware of it.

Houston is no superhero city with magic powers. If the situation worsens, there will be profound problems.
But Houston will handle those as well as most cities; better than many.

The people who work at and run those hospitals, and who work in emergency planning and services, will, with few exceptions, have non-political priorities foremost.

Whatever. It’s cool.

@RiotDemon Sorry. Think of it as eating a live toad first thing: nothing worse can happen that day.
/giphy eating live toad

@RiotDemon I find it amusing how much some people assume what happens in our country is all about our country.

Like a global pandemic is all about us, nah, did he not see Italy and Spain struggle with it recently… Or before them China and South Korea.

Or a recession or boom is all about our government. Typically you can only look at how we’re doing vs other countries… But if the global economy tanks, so will ours. If the global economy booms, so will ours. Even back in the 1930’s when the US economy wasn’t as big compared to rest of the world as it is now, the great depression here caused economic collapse all around the world.

So no… The coronavirus isn’t about us. The current recession isn’t about us (it’s happening even in countries not hit hard). The recent economic expansion wasn’t about us, economies have been growing everywhere.

It’s not all about us. The last thing on the mind of whoever boinked a dead pangolin*1 in a wet market on the other side of the world was “I bet this impacts the American election… Tee hee hee”

*1 That’s probably not what happened

@OnionSoup yeah. I forgot to mention that they also made remarks about how China had their big new year celebration in China Town New York and look what happened in New York.

@OnionSoup @RiotDemon Oh, come on, some think the libruls have some sort of super power that makes the entire world do their bidding, it’s all one big conspiracy.

Damn, if that were true, we wouldn’t be living in a live shitshow right now.

@lisaviolet @OnionSoup @RiotDemon

I think this version of the coronavirus family has been soundly genetically linked to bat viruses from the Wuhan area that were cataloged by medical researchers several years ago.

Apparantly there is something about bats (and potentially any flying mammal) which makes them more at risk for rogue virus mutations. Something about the physical/bio requirements for a mammal to be able to fly making them more susceptible.

And bats are close enough to humans than transmission is possible.

For decades (I think), ever since true detailed genetic research became possible, paand epidemiology specialists have been studying bats and their viral load, as the most likely non-human pandemic bell-weather.

@f00l @lisaviolet @OnionSoup @RiotDemon From what I understand the bat link is a big maybe. And pangolins are still in the mix.

@f00l @lisaviolet @RiotDemon well, bats live in really close proximity to each other in huge numbers so if a mutation does occur in a virus, its got a really good chance of having a nearby host to jump on… So that probably helps spread viruses quickly.

If a random mutation occurred in a cheetah, or other solitary animal then chances are it would never spread beyond it’s original host. Bats live in caves with hundreds and thousands of their relatives.

@lisaviolet @OnionSoup @RiotDemon @sammydog01

I’m not really up on anything past whatever news or articles I’ve encountered. So I could well be way off on whatever current knowledge holds sway.

However; I seem to remember an article a few months back that groups of researchers in full protective gear (including US researchers) made regular visits to bat caves in central China and elsewhere to collect virus samples; that program was ongoing since the mid 1990’s at least;

And that these researchers had previously collected near perfect matches to the Wuhan virus during one or more of those visits.

Also the article contained some long explanation of why bats were such a powerful vector for virus transmission and infection (to do with flying); and how collected virus samples from bat caves yielded an large set of new specimens of virus every time.

That’s my current limit more or less - my dim memory of that article.

@f00l What other flying mammals are out there?!!

@OldCatLady

I don’t know. Quite the “ uneducated innocent” in the area of species proliferation etc.

All I can think of are bats. And I’m not looking that q up for the present.

@f00l @lisaviolet @OnionSoup @RiotDemon @sammydog01 @OldCatLady
There’s a new one out there. From pigs.
It’s not dangerous.
Yet.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53218704?fbclid=IwAR1Nh93j9WIS863VGRIYzAthWdKHuoOYaAMZuI8EYovgk0bkPk8r4r4Qvz0

@f00l @kdemo @lisaviolet @OldCatLady @OnionSoup @RiotDemon @sammydog01 The article I just read about the new swine one indicated that modifying existing flu vaccinations to cover it shouldn’t be that hard. Fortunately.

@f00l @kdemo @Kidsandliz @lisaviolet @OldCatLady @RiotDemon @sammydog01 yeah and fortunately we know what flu does, how it acts, and how it impacts us. Can still be deadly as in 1918, but we know more about it.

Covid we’re still learning what it is doing to us. It was only a month or so ago doctors really started treating it as a blood borne virus more than just a respiratory sickness.

6 months just to figure out how to categorize it properly.

@lisaviolet stuck behind a paywall. Can you copy the text or give us the gist? Thanks.

@lisaviolet @RiotDemon This?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/this-coronavirus-mutation-has-taken-over-the-world-scientists-are-trying-to-understand-why/ar-BB166pjJ?li=BBnb4R7

@narfcake @RiotDemon Yes, that’s it. Wapo is supposed to have the covid stuff available for free. Maybe it’s just the way I linked to it.

@lisaviolet @narfcake @RiotDemon NY TImes has all COVID coverage free.

@lisaviolet @RiotDemon Opening links in Chrome’s incognito mode will often defeat paywalls.

@OldCatLady I don’t see a problem.

/giphy silent panic

@OldCatLady And of course doubling daily isn’t a problem. Right? Sigh.

@Kidsandliz @OldCatLady
Once everyone has it, the survivors we will have herd immunity, right?

@Kidsandliz @mike808 @OldCatLady yes but herd immunity requires at least 75% having had it for much at all and 95% for good protection Lets do math
Population of USA is 328 million(slightly over )
75% is 246 million infected

Lowest estimate death rate is 0.5%
0.5% of 246 million is one million two hundred thirty thousand
Waiting for herd immunity is waiting for one million two hundred thirty thousand to die in the usa.

I just can’t imagine we are at 126k dead and I am already apauled.

@CaptAmehrican @mike808 @OldCatLady And, of course, the math gets far more complicated if, in fact, it turns out to be true what early studies are starting to think might be the case - that immunity only lasts 3 or 4 months. Of course the level of antibiotics (what they are currently measuring) may nor may not be a good indicator of how our immune system responds after antibiotics are no longer measurable in our blood. A lot of this is early research so a lot may change as more is found out about how this virus affects us both in the short and long term.

@CaptAmehrican @Kidsandliz @mike808 @OldCatLady And not only that, they don’t know the lasting effects.

Don’t forget, herpes is a virus (cold sores forever). HIV is a virus (the lasting effects could kill ya). Chicken pox is a virus (shingles).

Best to wear the mask and hope to hell the others around you do the same.

@CaptAmehrican @Kidsandliz @lisaviolet @OldCatLady

Best to wear the mask and hope to hell the others around you do the same.

Start charging people who don’t wear masks with aggravated assault or attempted manslaughter. And for the folks that intentionally spit or cough or sputter on someone else, add a charge of depraved indifference and up it to attempted murder. Add in hate crime charges for the Karens and Kens.

@CaptAmehrican @Kidsandliz @lisaviolet @mike808 @OldCatLady Hey, let’s make speeding aggravated assault too. You might possibly kill someone, right? And running a stop sign? Definitely attempted murder territory.

@CaptAmehrican @Kidsandliz @lisaviolet @OldCatLady @sammydog01
So your position is a proud defense of assholery and you are in favor of sociopaths?

You must be a real catch.

@mike808 There you go. I said maybe charging people with attempted murder isn’t the correct way to get people to wear masks and you think I’m a fan of sociopaths. And you followed it up with a personal insult.

There are people that are misinformed. People that have been told their civil rights will be gone forever if they don’t take a stand. People that somehow believe that the government will actually start chipping and tracking them.

And instead of finding a way to convince them that masks are for the greater good we call them sociopaths and idiots and assholes and want to put them in jail. No wonder they push back.

@mike808 My husband thinks I am. Oh, wait, you weren’t talking to me.

Never mind.

@CaptAmehrican @mike808 @OldCatLady meant to say measuring antibodies not antibiotics. Opps. Bad typo under the circumstances.

@sammydog01

@mike808 She said that a customer started shouted obscenities at her. Maybe she’s lying. Maybe the mask policeman should have spoken to a store employee instead of verbally attacking her. Maybe she’s mentally ill.

Maybe a single example isn’t a good reason to condemn an entire group of people.

Maybe people should just be more understanding and try to come together instead of tearing each other down.

@sammydog01 Sorry, that woman lied about everything else she said in her rant. Stop perpetuating the false both-siderism lie in pretendjng that if yhat one lie were true, it justifies the rest of her behavior.

She does not have the right to endanger the public, nor to shop at Trader Joe’s or any other private business that refuses entry to idiot sociopaths in the interests of every other customer.
Full. Stop.

@mike808 I think a lot of the problem today is that people take rigid stances just because they need to feel smarter than everyone else.

@mike808 @sammydog01

Apologies I didn’t hear you clearly

I was distracted - busy sticking a pole up my butt so that I could be rigid and better than everybody else and know everything and be absolutist and superior and “judging” and always be right

It feels wonderful

@f00l Whatever would your grandmother say?

@mike808 @sammydog01 Spoiled brats demanding attention…

@f00l
I aspire to be as intelligent and rigid as you. All I got is snark. And perky. I’ve been called perky.

You don’t fuck with rigid. I like that.

@OldCatLady

Whatever would your grandmother say?

My grandmother wore corsets sometimes when young. She would no doubt prefer I use a corset.

And she disliked “vulgarity”, as the word was used in back then. She I suspect she would want me to be a bit less graphic.

She was Always-Right, of course, but she had manners.

/giphy corset

@f00l And the thus “missed” point is - we ran out of ICU beds. Now we had to make more. Oops.

@Kidsandliz

They didn’t run out of beds. They are close, around 93% or thereabouts of the original bed count if I remember. . That’s not good.

But Houston is mask-required now. There are other major social contact restrictions back in place, but I don’t know all the details. Perhaps the acute case rise can be contained.

Then the Center decided to update the web info to include info on the pre-arranged beds that are instantly convertible to ICU beds in the count.

They made the error (or perhaps they deliberately “made the error”) of not announcing their intentions and not saying why they went quiet on data for an interval.

There is local Houston gossip to the effect that they went quiet on the web data precisely to cause a local news kerfuffle.

In that’s true, then the likely targets of the news blips are some specific persons in Austin.

@f00l @Kidsandliz it’s far from ideal before you get to 100%.

Even at 90-something percent you have logistics issues. OK, so there are free beds in the county but hospital A has the new patient but the free beds are at hospitals B and C.

The sick person is going to go to their local hospital not the hospital with the spare beds. Once you get to 90 something unless the patient load is split efficiently between hospitals, that probably means one hospital is full and another has space.

The equipment in room X, Y, and Z need replacing but we can’t update/upgrade them because the beds are being used.

You need some spare beds.

Obviously 90% is better than 100% but I imagine you run into problems before you got 100%

@OnionSoup

In this one case, the data we are talking about is all from one ginormous indoor-connected hospital complex that has many hospitals within it: the Texas Medical Center.
Which eats up a huge portion of Houston s of downtown, inside 610 (the innermost loop).

In this specific case, moving a patient is not difficult compared to a typical hospital-to-hospital move.
Tho a 90%+ original-ICU-beds-in-use load is very much not a good thing.

The people who run this complex were prob not heavily consulted when political authorities decided to announce it was fine to open things up.

That “open-up” decision was a political- and econ-pressure choice straight from the Governor’s mansion.

However, the data in the news story re ICU bed counts is not County or metro area bed count data. I don’t know how Houston/Harris County is doing on those scores.

@f00l Well cool! Finally a decision that makes sense - although why they have money left over is problematic.

@RiotDemon Someone is a fan of Alex Jones.

@RiotDemon i’m not sure what upsets me more, his conspiracy views or the audio being out of sync. i can laugh off his conspiracy rambling, but damn that a/v sync really grinds my gears.

@carl669 @RiotDemon At least it wasn’t filmed in portrait mode.

@RiotDemon He has a broad definition of the word terrorist.

@sammydog01 my favorite thing is these people screaming about their rights and what not… These businesses are private property. They can refuse entry. There’s a ton of videos of people at Costco being refused entry and they are losing their minds.

@RiotDemon For conservatives they have a poor understanding of property rights. I HAVE A RIGHT TO BUY FOOD. I bet they wouldn’t let him buy food if he forgot his pants either.

@sammydog01 exactly. Not to mention you can still buy food without stepping into a store.

@RiotDemon “Fuck me, I don’t give a shit!” lol great attitude

@Felton10 but leave it to the local counties so no one agrees on anything… Just like the federal government leaves the states alone so no one agrees on anything.

@RiotDemon That is the difference between other countries successes in dealing with this and its spread. No leadership from the top-mixed and confusing messages. Never about what is best for the country-only about how it makes him look.

@OldCatLady oh no. I currently have a friend of mine and my brother’s gf waiting for results of tests. Stressful.

@RiotDemon

@RiotDemon So that’s like 1,000+ deaths too, since its running about 10% mortality rate, right?

Or is the mortality rate declining because of factors like treatments getting more effective or the populations getting it are no longer the old, infirm, and weak?

@mike808 @RiotDemon mortality rate has always been 1 % give or take a % . It is 10_20% of those who get hospitalized and over 50% of icu people

@mike808 I’m not sure the point of your question. Are you trying to start an argument? Yeah, younger people are getting it more. They might not be dying as much, but being sick for weeks on end and we don’t know the long term effects, it still sucks.

@CaptAmehrican @RiotDemon
That 1% mortality rate sounded off, and the CDC says (as of last week ending June 27) that it has been in the 10% range, is now in a dip to 6%. Whether that will hold as the holiday mask-free revelry idiocy continues, is doubtful. It ain’t “around 1%”, so you’re a bit on the magical/wishful/FUD thinking side there, Cap.

Based on death certificate data, the percentage of deaths attributed to pneumonia, influenza or COVID-19 (PIC) decreased from 9.0% during week 25 to 5.9% during week 26, representing the tenth week of a declining percentage of deaths due to PIC.

I did say “because of things like [insert list of reasonable postulates]”. I wasn’t looking to find or identify one cause over another. Just saying those appear to be risk factors - mortality is driven by who has it and who they spread it to.

@mike808 @RiotDemon you are getting % mortality and mortality rate confused .
About 10% of all deaths in us last month were due to covid-19.
1 in 10 people who get infected do not die.
It is about 1 in 100.

@RiotDemon “…The daily rate of positive tests in Duval County stayed below 5% throughout the month of May but has averaged 10% or above since mid-June and was 15.4% on Wednesday…” Jax news station News4jax

@CaptAmehrican @RiotDemon
Um, not sure where you’re getting your numbers from, or whether you are quoting global rates thinking they apply to the US.

In my state, Misery, we have about a cumulative 5% ratio of covid deaths to covid cases. Not 1% as you claim. The numbers don’t lie.

5% of the people who have covid die from it.

From the MO Dept of Public Health:

| Confirmed | Deaths |
| 23,504 | 1,059 |
| +356 | +5 |

1059 / 23504 = 4.5%
Today’s rate is about 1.5%, but that’s a lull before this weekend’s burst in two weeks brings it back to the average of 5%.

That’s 1 out of every 20 people these mask-free covidiots expose will die from their recklessness and selfish entitlement.

@mike808 @RiotDemon yes but not everyone who is infected is getting tested and diagnosed. The virus is not more virulent in the usa we are simply not testing enough to be diagnosed all the cases

@CaptAmehrican
So you’re just making up however many cases we haven’t diagnosed and adding it in to make the impact of the morbidity lower.

How do you know your imaginary not based on anything other than your wild ass guess of 10 times as many cases are “really there, but we just haven’t any actual data to back that claim up” isn’t really 100 times as many and the “rate” is “really” 1/10th of 1%?

I mean as long as you’re going to quote made up numbers, go all out.

@mike808

Just, oh wow.

@f00l

we are simply not testing enough to be diagnosed all the cases

So the claim Cap is making here is that the actual numbers of diagnosed cases is not accurate and that instead, Cap is substituting some made up replacement for “all the cases” that works out to self-referentially validate his “1%” claim.

Wow. Do you even Science?

@mike808

You don’t seem to “science” so, why are you asking me if I do?

You may be a engineer or coder, you may have done a science BS or similar, but you’re clearly no scientist. You appear, based on my reading of you, to tend to reason in ways typical of an engineer.

That’s not the same thing as thinking as a scientist or logician does (there are differences, of course).
I assumed you knew that.

Your data may apply to your state (I wouldn’t know, and don’t intend to look that up), but it is highly incomplete; and global death/infection ratios I’ve read of don’t match 10% or 5% as far as my reading goes.

We don’t know what the true death/infection ratios are (either US or global), because we lack the data.

But my “oh wow” referred to something else.
figure that out, if you care to bother.
If you don’t: fine.

Usually I respect your arguments, even if they are often highly incomplete. But lately, for me, reading your arguments is like engaging a game of betting on who is going to get the next gratuitous personal insult.

It’s gone from “often illuminating” to “just tiresome”.
including when you and I would draw similar conclusions.

If I were your therapist, I would wonder what the fuck was going on. you are coming across as “being emotionally near some sort of breaking point“.

If you’re happy to put across that image of your state of mind, just throw me another personal insult or three and just keep going on from there.

Or conclude, if you like, “that it’s all other people’s projection”: that I or anyone else thinks so. That’s cool by me also. Suit yourself.

FWIW: if you are under unusual stress, my sympathies.
If that prev sentence seems pompous or arrogant, I apologize. Was not my intent in so saying.

@f00l
The data doesn’t support the applicability of global infection rates to the U.S… The responses have been entirely different between the US and the rest of the world, and support the conclusion of a much higher infection rate here, not lower. Apples and oranges.

I provided the source of my data to support my claim. I questioned Cap’s source. Crickets. When relying upon the alleged 1% lower risk by an order of magnitude, it seriously misrepresents the harm being done to others in spreading Covid. That lack of personal responsibility, I believe to be a contributing factor to the higher rates (and deaths) demonstrated by the numbers we see (and sadly, continue to see).

Both-siderism is a false equivalency, and in this case, does serious harm to the public health. Pretending it doesn’t won’t change that, or the data. Or the deaths that could have been avoided.

I stand by the claim that the risk of “death by covid” is closer to 10%. I agree it is trending downward, but not through merely achieving more testing, but through (at least in March/April) isolation, social distancing, and wearing masks - what has demonstrably worked in all of the other countries with lower case and death rates than the U.S…

If testing alone would bring down the rates to support less restrictions on our interactions in public spaces, why aren’t we instituting mandatory testing across the board? We, as a nation, certainly have the resources to make that happen.

@mike808

I wasn’t arguing the death-infection rate, other than to say your 10% figure didn’t match what I’d read to date.

I don’t follow this stuff except as I come across it in general reading re COVID-19.

But here is a recent journalism article quoting a (pre-published on the web) academic study based on US data.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/07/coronavirus-deadlier-than-many-believed-infection-fatality-rate-cvd/

(Warning: the National Geographic website was a total pain for me to use on mobile. I had to repeatedly re-load this article to read it in a browser. The article was far easier to read within the Apple News app.
Also, the site wants an email address from the person visiting, but seem to be fine w a fake email.)

They go into case-fatality rates (confirmed cases), serology-infection-fatality rates (includes those who test + for antibodies), and estimated-infection-fatality rates They admit that, due to haphazard data collection, the latter is guesswork.

The Nat Geographic article also discusses some of the difficulties with data collection.

Some quotes:

According to their data, the COVID-19 infection-fatality rate is 1.46 percent, or twice as high as earlier estimates (and much higher than a misinformed rate being widely shared on social media). This risk varies by age, with those older than 75 having the highest infection-fatality rate, at 13.83 percent.

Using the handful of studies that have calculated infection-fatality rates for seasonal flu, Meyerowitz-Katz determined that somewhere between 1 and 10 people die for every 100,000 that are infected.

For COVID-19, that number ranges between 500 and 1,000 deaths per 100,000 infections. By his calculations, the coronavirus is likely to be 50 to 100 times more deadly than the seasonal flu, which supports the Columbia University findings.

The actual academic article is here: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.06.27.20141689v1

From your post

why aren’t we instituting mandatory testing across the board? We, as a nation, certainly have the resources to make that happen.

We have the medical and technical resources or can develop them. The cultural/political resources are apparently at risk tho.

My opinion is that political preferences got in the way of medical/scientific information flow and tended to corrupt, distort, or deny the flow of solid information and sensible anti-transmission information and recommendations, and disrupted the recommendation of sensible data collection protocols.

https://www.businessinsider.com/cdc-denied-permission-to-brief-public-about-coronavirus-yahoo-2020-7

https://news.yahoo.com/after-months-of-being-silenced-the-cdc-is-easing-back-into-public-view-090053863.html

@f00l Agree on the NatGeo site usability on mobile.

@mike808

Here’s an Apple News link to the same Nat Geo article, for those who have an Iphone or iPad around:

https://apple.news/A0yC4ljWwSumukdBqETPW3Q

Easier to read the article there.

I wonder why Nat Geo expects anyone who reads news on a mobile device to subscribe to Nat Geo for digital access, given the horrors of trying to read articles on their mobile site tho.

that’s one PITA website.

@RiotDemon Huh, I see these every time I venture out. I stay home mostly.

@OldCatLady the first video (part 2) says it was filmed in central Florida. Part one was filmed in fort Lauderdale and Miami, maybe others.

This state is fun wherever you go, lol.

@OnionSoup Could be that with the mass unemployment of mostly men (despite efforts to close the gender gap and the destruction of the nuclear 1-wage-earner families), all the gold-diggers are holding out.

@mike808 you okay?

@mike808
remind me again where you live?
Alabama has 75% more cases and less total COVID related deaths than Missouri

@chienfou I’m sure Alabama will catch up. In Missouri, it disproportionately wiped out the elderly, in assisted living and poor communities, so we had a head start.

Texas is looking hungry for the title, though.

@tinamarie1974 Yes, it is. However, it has only affected something like 140 people since the 1960s.

It’s just grocery store tabloid false equivalency schtick to sell web ads.

@mike808 like CNN??

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/07/04/us/naegleria-fowleri-case-florida-trnd/index.html

@tinamarie1974 Every southern state has this problem with warm water. A few years ago a girl died from this after being exposed at the white water rafting center in Charlotte. River Country at Disney was shut down because of this. It happens.

@cranky1950 I had no idea! I guess I am a “sheltered” midwestern girl who had never heard of the issue before.

@RiotDemon

Here is an interesting article I happened upon

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html#click=https://t.co/AcY62E8L2L

@RiotDemon @CaptAmehrican @f00l
Looks like the current deaths to covid cases ratio is at 4.5%.

NYTimes as of 07/05: 129,859 deaths and 2,895,800 cases.

That means 4.5% of the people who have COViD die from it.

@CaptAmehrican @f00l @mike808 @RiotDemon That means that 4.5 % of people diagnosed with COVID die from it.

@CaptAmehrican @f00l @mike808 @RiotDemon @sammydog01 yes, they don’t really know how many people have it. At one point they were saying for every confirmed case they estimated seven people who never got tested.

I don’t know if that’s still the current estimate or not.

Real death rate is probably significantly below 1%… and when you hear less than 1% it doesn’t sound very scary, especially if you’re not old or at high risk…

But death isn’t the only thing to worry about. For every person that dies there will be many more who have unpleasant hospital stays, high medical bills, and even long term medical problems that we don’t even know the extent or spread of yet.

@CaptAmehrican @f00l @mike808 @OnionSoup @RiotDemon One percent is pretty freaking scary to me.

@CaptAmehrican @f00l @mike808 @OnionSoup @RiotDemon @sammydog01 And as the more people get it the more medical systems run out of beds, etc. That will increase the death rate. And the death rate for other causes will go up because treatments for cancer are put off, people don’t get the routine follow up they need, etc.

@OldCatLady Love it!!

@Kidsandliz @OldCatLady if ONLY he was sleeping on the job things would be safer.

He’s doing worse than nothing, he’s out there telling lies about the virus being over and encouraging his base to break laws and not wear masks.

Didn’t he make some demand to impeach Cuomo when all this started and Cuomo declared state of emergency?

I’m not a political person but he’s an absolute nightmare.

@Vrysen you don’t have to pay medical bills for the deceased. She needs to know that.

@RiotDemon They did that last week for my county with fines if you don’t. And of course then there was a shooting when an employee wouldn’t let someone in who wasn’t wearing one. Our states can be so fucking stupid. It’s science dumb ass politicians.

@Kidsandliz yeah, that was a shame. I’ve talked to other states in my organization and they are saying “we are not the mask police.” But I’m hoping it helps. At least if we put up a sign at the front door and I put a sign at my desk, we’ll see. I’m curious how it’ll be when I go to work tomorrow.

@RiotDemon I hope people listen especially since your place of work, it sounds like, won’t be enforcing it.

When I was in Houston a couple of weeks ago and went to Trader Joes to buy chocolate for the person taking care of my cats they had a line outside, with 6’ tape markings that went way the heck down the sidewalk, had a big sign up that they wouldn’t let you in without a mask on. Absolutely 100% compliance even in the line. No one had it just over their mouth either. I was amazed so decided it was actually safe to go in there to get my cat person’s chocolate payment. Of course that was Trader Joes. I didn’t go into any other store but the grocery store while I was there and compliance was good, but not as good.

Not in my state though. Even with the rule right now more than 1/2 the people aren’t wearing one and so many who are aren’t wearing them over their nose. And no one does much of anything about it either despite the alleged ticket and fine. No one is, at least at the grocery store (only store I have been in here), is stopping folks from entering and our county is the worst in the state for infections with local hospitals being overwhelmed. A bunch of our stupid state lawmakers (I live in the capital) tested positive the other day - serves them right though since they chose to open the state with no flattening of the curve. Tells you about the lack of intelligence and political party that is operating this state. Sigh.

@Kidsandliz @RiotDemon At this point, I believe Florida still holds the “Hold mah beer” trophy.

@OldCatLady @RiotDemon Yeah it does unfortunately. Just saw a curve and the percent increase is over 1000. TX and AZ are a distant second.

@Kidsandliz @OldCatLady @RiotDemon I live in central Florida, and all stores that I have been to in the past month or so have mandatory masks, spacing marked on ground and at lines, one-way aisles throughout stores, and the employees wipe down everything constantly.

My aunt lives in Palm Beach County. She says nobody appears to realize anything is happening in the rest of the world. No masks; no distancing; plenty of parties. Just another summer like any other.

@JT954 hah, yeah, I remember seeing that lady. I picked that video because it was pretty concise and still showed how idiotic people are. I’m not too far north of you. Treasure coast. I kept my 954 when I moved from Coconut Creek.

I slowly lose more faith in humanity every day.

@JT954 the other day on the news they said the new average of people testing positive in Florida is 21 years old.

I have a bunch of coworkers in their 70s. All the people that caught it at my job were between 28 and 62.

I have customers of all ages. It is scary how many kids I see without masks… And how much shit they touch.

@RiotDemon Are you noticing people wearing the masks wrong? Just the other day I saw a few people wearing them without covering their nose. I also notice more face shields being worn. It was enough to make me consider wearing eye protection.

@JT954 yeah. People have been wearing them wrong since the beginning. It’s like wearing your underwear with your dick hanging out, lol. Just this morning I walked by a customer that had it on his chin. Like wtf is the point.

My favorite is when a customer is wearing it and pulls it down to talk. STAHP.

I already wear glasses otherwise I’d probably wear safety glasses.

@f00l bummer. Can’t read the whole article.

Honestly, I wish they’d scare more people. Maybe they’d take it serious.

@RiotDemon

I thought WaPo wasn’t firewalling their coronavirus coverage.

But that link went, I think, thru google amp, which may make some sort of diff. I’ll test it in a bit.

@RiotDemon

Ok, this new link to the “CDC being under political pressure” story goes directly to the Washington Post instead of going thru Google Amp.

Try opening the new link in a private browsing tab, and then, I hope, you can see the full story if you wish.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/trump-sidelines-public-health-advisers-in-growing-rift-over-coronavirus-response/2020/07/09/ad803218-c12a-11ea-9fdd-b7ac6b051dc8_story.html

If you are interested: you can get a pretty hefty discount on a digital sub to WaPo by purchasing thru Amazon, and I think the sub starts with a free month or something.

After the freebie period, when they start charging, I think it’s about $6 a month maybe? Billed thru amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/The-Washington-Post-Digital-Access/dp/B072MHQFJ1

@f00l @RiotDemon They keep offering $29/year right now (directly from WP).

@OnionSoup wears socks with sandals.

@Felton10 I just don’t know. Look at all the support in Florida:

@Felton10 @RiotDemon

According to 538 and Nate Sulver, if the presidential election were held today, Trump would lose many key states he won in 2016, including Florida.

But I’m making no predictions re Nov. i only predict that 2000 will continue to be politically batshit crazy in the run-up to voting day.

Of course “batshit crazy” is about right for this year, given that there’s evidence we humans got coronavirus from contact with a bat virus.

@f00l @Felton10 @RiotDemon There’s a hell of a lot more enthusiasm among Trump supporters than the Joe Biden. Hillary was also way up in the polls at this part of the race last time. Also, who knows what will happen if covid cases are still sky high; will states be able to be able to deal with the number of people who are absentee voting? Or will Republican state governors and legislators prevent absentee voting for covid (like they are doing in Texas)? There’s so many unknowns and 4 months to go until the election. Trump is absolutely horrible but Biden is a huge turd of a candidate. Running your campaign as “not Trump” is not exactly a recipe for success, just ask Mrs. Clinton.

@RiotDemon

Ouch.

@RiotDemon That’s a lot!

@RiotDemon And with Disney World reopening yesterday …

@narfcake I’m actually watching a video right now of someone that went to Disney. Looks like they have figured out the social distancing… At least on the passholder day. The park isn’t crowded because they limited guests. One of my coworkers is going next month. I’m curious to see what he says. It looks like they’ve put up a bunch of barriers and there’s social distancing markers everywhere.

I pulled up my universal studios app and it looks like the wait times for the rides are really low, so obviously people are not traveling like they normally do, or they are limiting entry enough to keep it low.

@narfcake

@RiotDemon They may be taking safety precautions, but it’s also reconfirming a message that “well, if they can reopen, we can too”. I mean, the governor already said schools can reopen because Walmart and Home Depot are open.

@narfcake yeah. Walmart and HD never even closed.

The governor is an idiot, that’s all I can say.

@RiotDemon Idiot is an understatement.

Islands of Adventure video:

Universal studios:

@RiotDemon you know what’s sadder about that number? Weekend numbers are often undercounted the next day.

@RiotDemon Almost empty Disney with no lines sounds like an awesome time, but it seems so dead and the magic is gone.

EVERYTHING IS AWESOME!

@RiotDemon Also:

Japanese themse park asks you to “Please scream inside your heart,” and not out loud. The unusual ask is meant to reduce the risk of spreading the coronavirus.

@ELUNO @RiotDemon

Im hoping that Disney can, and that we can … well …

/youtube we can work it out

Watching that vid: they obviously didn’t give much of a fuck, and had fun with it, when they were just lip syncing to the studio version for a vid promo.

John’s facial expressions are priceless.
I miss John. : (

@ELUNO @RiotDemon @narfcake @nifjan @f00l - What kind of person would go to Disney or any public entertainment venue now? Extremely illogical except in those with death wish or cult indoctrination.

I fear for their children, they don’t get to choose.

@ELUNO @kdemo @narfcake @RiotDemon

I wouldn’t go. And would not accompany children to any such. I think Disney is opening way too soon; esp since the parks are in FL and CA, both already struggling with the case load rise.

The only “public places” I’ve been in since this started are pickup locations for packages, and gas stations, groceries, and hardware stores.

Am worried about the economy. But will be far more worried if we get an ongoing nationwide situation of acute shortages of hospital beds are medical personnel.

I hope Disney can work it out, but they should have waited. Possibly many months.

@ELUNO @RiotDemon

“Please scream inside your heart”

I have been screaming inside my heart since 11/8/2016.

@OldCatLady

They’ll have a fun time in the schools if many teachers don’t show.

Perhaps the governor can do a bit of substituting.