Re: Coronavirus data and events as they come in

[Juana]

200 dead in Italy in the last 24 hours.

do we know the demographics of the dead?

[tyrannosaurus vex]

200 dead in Italy in the last 24 hours.

do we know the demographics of the dead?

A recent survey of them yielded no responses

[Doktor Howl]

200 dead in Italy in the last 24 hours.

do we know the demographics of the dead?

Apparently almost entirely the elderly.  Italy has the oldest population, IIRC.

In any case, they are using the word "triage" here and there.  Which is awful, but also necessary.

[Cramulus]

"What this pandemic reveals, is that health and wellbeing have to be placed outside of the laws of the market"

- Emmanuel Macron, 3/12/20

The above quote makes me both upset and optimistic. If there is a moment when things like socialized health care, UBI, can be discussed and taken seriously, it's in moments like this, where the deficiencies of the current system are in the foreground. The system-failure is visible.

I feel like we're living through another 9/11-like moment, in that all of our lives are going to change after this. It's a time of change, for better or worse.




Rep Katie Porter, HERO, badgers Trump's CDC chief into agreeing to make Corona Virus testing free.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/12/politics/katie-porter-cdc-coronavirus-testing-white-board/index.html
(here's the tweet with the video)

Katie Porter points out that the CDC head has the authority to waive testing costs. And that because costs are high, people without insurance just aren't gonna get tested, which will make everything worse for all of us.

She's awesome, the whole line of questioning is sharp and hard-hitting. He tries to dodge, ("we're gonna look at it", "our goal is to make sure everybody can get coverage") and she backs him into a corner until he submits.


Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez demands the government distribute a universal basic income and implement 'Medicare for all' to fight the coronavirus

The democrats, predictably, aren't including any of her ideas in the bill they're propsing. They advocate for expansion of unemployment benefits, but as AOC points out, people like tipped workers are not gonna see any of that money.

So the dem bill is a half measure. And even that is getting blocked by McConnell in the senate, who says it's a partisan, ideological wish list that doesn't match what's actually happening. We all should have learned from the Obamacare debacle, that with this GOP, you don't start from a position of compromise, you gotta start out from the far left, because they're gonna haggle and water it down and we'll ultimately get a dessicated, gollum-like version of the bill.



Angela Merkel, ever the straight-talker, lays out the hard to hear facts that most world leaders are afraid to say: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-germany-merkel/merkel-says-coronavirus-situation-more-extraordinary-than-banking-crisis-idUSKBN20Z3NR

Though the quote doesn't appear in the above article, she basically presents the worst-case scenario, that 2/3rds of germans will eventually get the disease. A vacciene is a long ways out, and we may have to buckle in, as this isn't gonna be neatly resolved in 2 weeks.

Forbes, of course, has a really bad take on this. Discussing the pandemic only in terms of economic damage, they frame Merkel's message is "taking a bazooka to her own economy". What? They quote a bunch of fucking stock traders about how her numbers must be wrong. 

[Doktor Howl]

Pima county (Tucson, Vail, etc) is now considered infected. 

[chaotic neutral observer]

Forbes, of course, has a really bad take on this. Discussing the pandemic only in terms of economic damage, they frame Merkel's message is "taking a bazooka to her own economy". What? They quote a bunch of fucking stock traders about how her numbers must be wrong. 

This is called technical analysis.  It's the art of predicting tomorrow's weather by going out to the parking lot and counting puddles.

[Cramulus]

out of curiosity, been reading foxnews's coverage... you know shit's getting weird when they do a whole article about AOC's recent fox news appearance and don't say anything critical about it.

Same with Katie Porter's questioning.. the fox article mentions that Katie Porter is a Dem but doesn't say anything snarky.

I wonder - are they hedging their bets?

[Cramulus]

[Juana]

200 dead in Italy in the last 24 hours.

do we know the demographics of the dead?

Apparently almost entirely the elderly.  Italy has the oldest population, IIRC.

In any case, they are using the word "triage" here and there.  Which is awful, but also necessary.

That's what I suspected, and yeah, sometimes that's just how it needs to happen.

Pima county (Tucson, Vail, etc) is now considered infected. 

Fun times. We don't have a *confirmed* case yet here, but the state medical board is saying on the down low that it's been here for a while.

[Doktor Howl]

200 dead in Italy in the last 24 hours.

do we know the demographics of the dead?

Apparently almost entirely the elderly.  Italy has the oldest population, IIRC.

In any case, they are using the word "triage" here and there.  Which is awful, but also necessary.

That's what I suspected, and yeah, sometimes that's just how it needs to happen.

Pima county (Tucson, Vail, etc) is now considered infected. 

Fun times. We don't have a *confirmed* case yet here, but the state medical board is saying on the down low that it's been here for a while.

The safest way to handle this is to assume that your area is already affected.  We've been doing that for two weeks at work, probably too late.

[Juana]

200 dead in Italy in the last 24 hours.

do we know the demographics of the dead?

Apparently almost entirely the elderly.  Italy has the oldest population, IIRC.

In any case, they are using the word "triage" here and there.  Which is awful, but also necessary.

That's what I suspected, and yeah, sometimes that's just how it needs to happen.

Pima county (Tucson, Vail, etc) is now considered infected. 

Fun times. We don't have a *confirmed* case yet here, but the state medical board is saying on the down low that it's been here for a while.

The safest way to handle this is to assume that your area is already affected.  We've been doing that for two weeks at work, probably too late.

Yep. I've been operating on that assumption since I heard the thing about it being here already on the DL in idk January and so is my school district at this point, given that they're cancelling everything but team practices and classes. The school I was at yesterday asked all the teachers to clear off any surface they wanted sanitized, even.

It's only a matter of time before somebody tests positive here and frankly, I'm pretty sure that the reason reported rates are so low thus far is the lack of available testing. I'm hearing that every infected person can infect up to four others. If that's the case, it's more infectious than the flu and that's a goddamn plague.

[Doktor Howl]

200 dead in Italy in the last 24 hours.

do we know the demographics of the dead?

Apparently almost entirely the elderly.  Italy has the oldest population, IIRC.

In any case, they are using the word "triage" here and there.  Which is awful, but also necessary.

That's what I suspected, and yeah, sometimes that's just how it needs to happen.

Pima county (Tucson, Vail, etc) is now considered infected. 

Fun times. We don't have a *confirmed* case yet here, but the state medical board is saying on the down low that it's been here for a while.

The safest way to handle this is to assume that your area is already affected.  We've been doing that for two weeks at work, probably too late.

Yep. I've been operating on that assumption since I heard the thing about it being here already on the DL in idk January and so is my school district at this point, given that they're cancelling everything but team practices and classes. The school I was at yesterday asked all the teachers to clear off any surface they wanted sanitized, even.

It's only a matter of time before somebody tests positive here and frankly, I'm pretty sure that the reason reported rates are so low thus far is the lack of available testing. I'm hearing that every infected person can infect up to four others. If that's the case, it's more infectious than the flu and that's a goddamn plague.

Bleaching bathroom and class doorknobs is a thing.  That is the single largest vector for the flu, and probably would help with this.  We are doing that now.

[chaotic neutral observer]

Someone left the doors to one of the stairwells propped open, so when I took a different stairwell, I left one of its doors propped open, as well; it's one fewer doorknob to touch.

Later, when I went to the washroom, all the stairwell doors had been propped open; and the outer washroom doors, too.

This is starting to feel weird.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

Protip: hot sauce belongs on your list of emergency supplies.

[Suu]

The Navy has locked us down. Jephph can't go anywhere beyond work and home and necessary stops for at least six weeks. All of our events have been cancelled. WELP.