Re: Coronavirus data and events as they come in

[The Wizard Joseph]

Oh, we're doomed.  But that's no reason to turn into beasts.

Except for QG, but she was always a beast.

[The Wizard Joseph]

[The virus is durable and this is primarily because it resists dessication in an unheard of way compared to just about any virus I'm aware of.

[size=78%]I think this means that it does NOT aerosolize easily AND that it probably not equipped to survive very long in that state. Just sayin'.[/size]

What is the basis of your belief?

Physics and logic.

Please be specific.

I just know I'm not going to watch you get baited by LuciferX.

If he's baiting me he had better be ready for what comes out of the water.

[Doktor Howl]

tmw your health care professionals have a thousand yard stare.

[minuspace]

[The virus is durable and this is primarily because it resists dessication in an unheard of way compared to just about any virus I'm aware of.

[size=78%]I think this means that it does NOT aerosolize easily AND that it probably not equipped to survive very long in that state. Just sayin'.[/size]

What is the basis of your belief?

Physics and logic.

Please be specific.

If we take your statement to be correct, a resistance to desiccation means that it is difficult to aerosolize. Because of this resistance, it would not make sense for the pathogen to divert precious evolutionary resources to protect a base it already has covered, primarily because it would have never been given the opportunity to do so. There is still A probability of it having done so randomly but that is low.

[Faust]

It is not about the coughing into someone's mouth or whatever at all. At that point you're essentially directly sharing a body fluid and medical staff taking the slightest precaution would be unlikely to be getting infected. Instead trained professionals in full ppe are still getting infected VERY commonly.

Not very commonly, as commonly as would be expected from a virus that can transmit on surfaces or by being coughed or sneezed on.
If it was airborn masks and gloves would not be sufficient, and infection would be near total in hospitals, which its not.
The evidence isnt there to support your more complex, unlikely scenario

The virus is durable and this is primarily because it resists dessication in an unheard of way compared to just about any virus I'm aware of. The virus evolved a nearly perfect method of attachment to the receptors in a human and so it's super virulent. These two factors would barely be noticed if the virus were benign or like a cold, but it's not.

If it can remain active on a bare, nonporous surface for three days or more purely because it resists dessication logically that durability transfers to both aerosol and aqueous mediums. The corpses are infectious. Water that has recently been contaminated and not subsequently sanitized is almost certainly a vector nobody is considering. It absolutely can go aerosol under the right conditions. The conditions necessary for that are rare in a hospital by design and air pressure methods are used to keep such contamination in one room if it happens. Out in the real world such conditions and safeguards are not at all in play.

I'm not arguing because I want to be right here. In fact I'm done arguing at all. I will continue to present information and my analysis as I see something to be relevant. Continue to check me and offer counter evidence because I do need that, but I will continue to say uncomfortable things because this is a virus so dangerous that desire for comfort is now a liability, intellectual comfort itself is something nobody can afford at this point.

None of the evidence supports your theory, I'm looking at 20 healthcare workers infected to 1000 patients. They are using gloves and masks, "It absolutely can go aerosol under the right conditions", if possible they are the outliers, the unlikely cases, and not the way the virus is propagating.
If it is possible to transmit as airborn, that figure would instead be the majority of the front line health care workers, and not a handful.

[Doktor Howl]

Just the R0 rate says it's not aerosol.

[altered]

I stopped engaging with this because panic brain and an offensively large push of outright misinformation have made it just about impossible to change TWJs mind.

Normally this would be bad, but, you know what, fuck it. It's the fucking plague, goddamnit. It's not harmful misinfo for him. As long as he's keeping what we are saying is misinfo contained to here, it harms nothing at all: he will not be a vector for this thing, he will spread advice that is Actually Pretty Good. If he IS spreading it, he's just panic-mongering and honestly, fuck it, we don't have enough people freaking out about how bad it really is. Maybe some absolute bullshit will get them to stop fucking autoDarwinating at the expense of the rest of us. It's bad but I have to deal with pointing out to my real life people that their unexamined prejudice is showing and maybe they shouldn't talk utter fucking nonsense like "it's a virus so it's immune to hand sanitizer" which is the fucking stupidest thing ever said in my presence by someone I respect.

I'm not saying that anyone else should follow my lead, just that my stepping back was a calculated move. He isn't spreading racist or biowar bullshit, I have bigger fish to fry, it will take too much effort to change his mind and there is no point except to Be Right and allow him to do the same.

[The Wizard Joseph]

[The virus is durable and this is primarily because it resists dessication in an unheard of way compared to just about any virus I'm aware of.

[size=78%]I think this means that it does NOT aerosolize easily AND that it probably not equipped to survive very long in that state. Just sayin'.[/size]

What is the basis of your belief?

Physics and logic.

Please be specific.

If we take your statement to be correct, a resistance to desiccation means that it is difficult to aerosolize. Because of this resistance, it would not make sense for the pathogen to divert precious evolutionary resources to protect a base it already has covered, primarily because it would have never been given the opportunity to do so. There is still A probability of it having done so randomly but that is low.

The first sentence will require you to  explain to me how its ability to retain water makes it more difficult for a droplet of water to break up in an agitated medium. The rest is a weird supposition contingent on an assumption of the initial assertion, and a tacit acceptance of the fact that it can tied to a situationaly variable assertion of absolute low probability when such conditions as necessary to vibrating a droplet are in fact quite common and it is still the virus itself that is rare, and pretty much invisible to real statistical analysis due to insufficient testing being done and a long incubation period.

I will concede that the data currently does not support my concerns here, yet. Conditions will certainly change, especially if they do something silly and break social distancing and other protocols declaring it "over."

Altered I DID change my tune about the rather foolish engineering theory. I'm glad that you are willing to at least consider that the fact that I could be wrong in this case could cause people to take vital precautions as a worst case scenario. But I have reason to believe that the r0 will rise over time dramatically as more testing is done and more bodies pile up. Maybe I'm wrong. I hope to christ I'm wrong.

Next time please talk to me rather than about me like I'm not right here, but rather a subject to be spoken of.

Faust I acknowledge the truth of your statement and don't doubt your good faith. I merely believe that the data will change radically in time. Again I hope I'm wrong.

That said the matter is now closed as far as I am concerned pending more data, and there will be A LOT more data coming in very soon indeed. Even as it comes in I will not push this theory. If the data in fact conclusively excludes common aerosol some months from now I will accept it at face value and hope to be the first to report such.

[Juana]

We need a emoticon for "bait taken"

[Doktor Howl]

Hmm.

[minuspace]

On an unrelated note, I can't get this image out my head of EATRs consuming corpses piled up on the surface of the moon. It's all brutally elegant Kubrick style with that waltz music in the background.

[The Wizard Joseph]

Hmm.

I bit down pretty hard.

[altered]

Just to be clear, TWJ, I was talking about you and not to you because I didn't want to turn it into a challenge, just a statement.

"You just aren't going to listen" comes across as a confrontation. Worse, as a shitty "come at me bro" confrontation, picking a fight for the sake of the fight to be had, because, well, you just aren't going to listen, right? Saying it out loud, directly at the person it's true of, serves no purpose but shittiness.

The entire point is that the damage being done by you being wrong is, at worst, limited to you being wrong in public. I'm not confronting you on it anymore because I have limited time and energy in a day and google searching citations because you are wrong in the most harmless way online... that is a bad use of it. I'm sure you appreciate not having to digest paper after article after graph that you won't believe stacks up to your chosen authority, because that's a bad use of your time and energy too.

I wanted to address the matter because I was doing a lot of the correcting-you stuff before, and then I just stopped. It could come across any number of ways (including "lalala not speaking to you," which for the record is NOT the idea) and I wanted to shut all of that down before it started.

Thus, talking about you and not to you was the right move, from my admittedly horrible grasp of How To Human. Your reaction is a hell of a lot more mild than it would have otherwise been, from my experience saying things like "I am done with this discussion" to people in the past, so I might even use this in the future: it seems to work. It can come across as mildly shitty, but at least it's not immediate hackles-up TIME TO FUCK YOU UP shit.

I can recover from mildly shitty. It's very hard to recover from "you DARE say that to me? Peasant! Exiled! Banished!"

[The Wizard Joseph]

In my experience "how to human" as I think you use the term is a situational improv art because humans are so diverse. In my case I prefer to be directly spoken to if someone is being critical of me because it otherwise seems to me like a very rude tactic speaking to a crowd about me negatively that reads lije an attempt to poison the well and also, as such, it provokes my sense of honor because only a punk would just sit there and let shit get talked about them with disdain, and I did definitely read a bit of distain, or malice. Knowing your particular methods of humaning might be gently called somewhat non standard and believing in your good faith of intent I asked you politely to stop. And so with your explanation I fully forgive any percieved intent in the slight, real or not. Moreover I thank you for being upright in your response to that stated request.

Just remember that I'm not in this to be right according to some preconceived outcome or to parrot some shit I heard elsewhere. I don't go many other places. I am, even at my most wrong, reacting obly to what I think is relevant data and my own interpretation of it. I have learned to rely on my own competency and it has many times saved my life and occasionally safeguarded others effectively as well. I need to steadily move away from my paradigm in that regard and towards mutuality, but it is maddening to try to do so while having to accept that most people have no reason to believe that competency anywhere nearly as hard as I and a few close, personal "IRL" friends who have witnessed me do and seemingly spontaneously know uncanny things. I'm not wrong a lot and I just have to get past my own nose on the subject and sometimes let the fact that a contradicting other may be also right, or even that on occasion I'm flat wrong.

Except LuciferX. He's either straight up disingenuous or.. Kinda like rainman without the counting. Or the likability. Or the benefit of being actually Dustin Hoffman giving an amazing performance. Or pants.

*looks to camera at the spag behind the tag*

I like your poetry though
LuciferX.
But when it comes to text
Of a rational kind
Your mind
Is... Unsuitable.
And I see
Among your
corruPT filez
Many executables.

[minuspace]

I has no pants... no pants!!!