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Author Topic:   Coronavirus and Pandemics
AZPaul3
Member
Posts: 8513
From: Phoenix
Joined: 11-06-2006
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 91 of 955 (873828)
03-19-2020 11:50 PM
Reply to: Message 90 by hooah212002
03-19-2020 9:03 PM


Re: A Question About Masks
made some sentences a tad less cromulent
And, my friend, it did not go unappreciated.
Edited by AZPaul3, : made this sentences a tad more cromulent

Eschew obfuscation. Habituate elucidation.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 90 by hooah212002, posted 03-19-2020 9:03 PM hooah212002 has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 92 of 955 (873829)
03-20-2020 2:10 AM


Blast from the Past: Vaporware
From Wikipedia, here is a definition of vaporware:
quote:
"Vaporware", sometimes synonymous with "vaportalk" in the 1980s, has no single definition. It is generally used to describe a hardware or software product that has been announced, but that the developer has no intention of releasing any time soon, if ever.
I first encountered it in an 80's article or editorial in BYTE magazine. Their example was a British PC manufacturer who had an idea for a new product, so here was their development and marketing cycle:
  1. Come up with the idea.
  2. In order to see if there was any market for the idea, announce it as a finished product and solicit orders for it.
  3. Take orders (and payments) for that non-existent "new product".
  4. If you got enough orders (and payments), then proceed with designing it and, ultimately, manufacturing it, if ever. If not, then oh well.
  5. If you do get around to manufacturing it, finally ship it. If not, then oh well.
What I don't remember of that business model was whether any customer ever got a refund. Oh well.
As the Wikipedia article describes, some businesses would announce their next new computer model or operating system long before it was ready in order to deceive customers into waiting for the next greatest new thing instead of buying from their competitors.
There was a case of one computer company, KayPro (as I recall), which reportedly brought about its own demise through vaporware. The KayPro Osborne was a luggable computer (not portable, since it was the size and weight of a hefty suitcase) which ran CP/M (or MS-DOS, depending on which systems floppy you used -- ie, no hard drive). It was very successful -- I used one when I tripped into the field to support one of our customers.
The thing is that they were coming out with a much better computer, the KayPro II, which they started advertising too long before it was ready -- ie, the KayPro II was vaporware. With the KayPro II about to be released, nobody wanted to buy an Osborne which was about to become obsolete. So everybody stopped buying KayPro computers in anticipation of their new KayPro II. So sales cratered and the company went out of business (at least as per industry scuttlebutt).
 
So what does this have to do with this topic?
Trump deals in vaporware. He makes promises that he never keeps and could never keep.
He promised the best healthcare plan ever that would only cost everyone about $18 per month. But he wouldn't give any details about it until after the 2016 election. After the election, nothing except for his lame excuse of "who ever knew that health insurance would be so complicated?" -- uh, literally many thousands of people with first-hand experience! Along with millions of Americans who don't have their heads buried ... in the sand.
Earlier in his re-election rallies, he again promised the best healthcare plan ever, but he wouldn't give any details until the 2020 election. As that great American philosopher, Gomer Pyle, said: "Fool me once, shame on you! Fool me twice, shame on me!"
Trump's healthcare plans have always been and will never be anything other than pure vaporware.
Trump's promises of releasing his tax forms but only after the elections also proved to be nothing but vaporware.
And there are so many other examples of Trump's vaporware.
 
Now with the pandemic, Trump's vaporware has diversified.
He promised that everybody could get tested. No, that was just vaporware.
He promised millions of masks and ventilators. No, again just vaporware.
He announced treatment for the coronavirus. No, yet again just vaporware. Plus it's just an outright lie!
In sharp contrast to Trump's lies, many of which contradict his own experts, there's New York Governor Cuomo's daily press conferences in which he speaks directly and sincerely and humanly (something that Trump, having been raised by weasels, cannot fake) to his constituents giving them the truth of the situation and letting them know what they must do to come out of this.
 
Tonight Rachel Maddow interviewed the former head of our international pandemic response team which Trump got rid of two years ago. I cannot find it on YouTube yet, but it should appear.
In the meantime, there's this SNL redoing of a scene from the movie, Love Actually, in which Hillary is at the door with placards imploring the swain to vote for anyone, even a rock, instead of Trump, because he will kill us all! :
Of course, most thought it would be because he finally decided to use a nuclear weapon ("Well, why have them if we don't use them?" -- paraphrased from his actual question), but now it's through doing nothing after having pulled out all the established safeguards. Though that nuclear option (literally) is still not off the table.
Think about it, boys and girls. We have a full-blown emergency here. What better excuse to suspend the Constitution of the United States of America and declare a dictatorship-for-life? That's what Hitler did with the Weimar Constitution (praise Godwin!).

Replies to this message:
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LamarkNewAge
Member (Idle past 737 days)
Posts: 2236
Joined: 12-22-2015


Message 93 of 955 (873855)
03-20-2020 2:00 PM


Italy is over 4000 deaths now.
Thursday saw a slight drop to 427 which made for 3405 deaths.
But Friday deaths are at 627, so 4032 total.
And we don't have knowledge of where Italy or any other place is at in terms of where we are in the exact time stage of this pandemic.

  
LamarkNewAge
Member (Idle past 737 days)
Posts: 2236
Joined: 12-22-2015


Message 94 of 955 (873856)
03-20-2020 2:13 PM
Reply to: Message 92 by dwise1
03-20-2020 2:10 AM


Re: Blast from the Past: Vaporware
I first heard the term used in 1991 when Nintendo kept promising a CD drive for its last truly good system, the Super Nintendo. It never came and instead we all got that piece of crap in 1996, 5 years later, the Nintendo 64. I bought and sold the thing in one day. Have not been a gamer since. The Mario Kart game was bought and sold by me the same day. The Mario Kart 16 bit game was amazing, the 64 bit game was garbage. Like all of the 64 bit sequels.
As for the Democratic Party getting a boost from the virus, just remember that impeachment did not work the way Democrats planned, as I warned a friend of mine that is a county chair of the party. I said that long before the actual impeachment. The virus issue is real but the problem is the boy already has been crying wolf. The Democrats need to keep the public from smelling political sleeze. Best to be careful in the talking point noise. The Democratic talking heads will not.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 92 by dwise1, posted 03-20-2020 2:10 AM dwise1 has not replied

  
LamarkNewAge
Member (Idle past 737 days)
Posts: 2236
Joined: 12-22-2015


Message 95 of 955 (873858)
03-20-2020 2:28 PM


See Sarah Newey Telegraph article just released March 20
She asked why 8 percent of the infected in Italy die when death rate is 4 percent in China and 0.3 in Germany.
The answer is that Italy is not considering the infected to be succumbing to some other illness. The older argument that mild cases are not being recorded and added to the infected tally is also thrown in to explain the difference in death rates.

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22388
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


(1)
Message 96 of 955 (873866)
03-20-2020 3:37 PM


My Trip to the Grocery Store
Over in my Message 5506 of the The Right Side of the News thread I announced that I was going to the grocery store today:
Percy writes:
Afterward I'll be doing the grocery shopping and I'll be wearing a bandana. I'd wear a mask if I could find one. When I return home the grocery bags will sit in the garage for 48 hours. Bags of groceries requiring refrigeration will be placed in the garage fridge (cold doesn't affect the virus). My clothes will be thrown in the washer and I'll take a shower.
I've now returned from this little southern New Hampshire excursion. I did find a mask - we had three N95 masks left over from when we repainted a bedroom a couple years ago. What follows includes a litany of complaints about how foolish we're being and how terribly, terribly bad and even contradictory the advice is.
Only three people were wearing masks, and I was one of them. I felt very self-conscious, and one lady made a little harumph as she walked past, no way to tell if it was serendipitous or meant for me. I detected no other hostility. I'd estimate there were around 150 people in the store.
While some were in plastic packaging, most fruit and vegetables were just lying out in bins. Any exhaled virus would deposit on them. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has a cononavirus FAQ that says:
quote:
We are not aware of any reports at this time of human illnesses that suggest COVID-19 can be transmitted by food or food packaging.
I believe they are telling the truth that they "are not aware of any reports," but this is very misleading as it suggests that coronavirus can't be transmitted by handling or eating contaminated fruits and vegetables. It most certainly can.
If you're worried about coronavirus on fresh produce, you don't need to be, especially if you follow these tips for washing fruits and vegetables. quotes Dr. Jennifer Ling, an infectious disease specialist, on how the coronovirus spreads:
quote:
Typically, patients acquire COVID-19 through close contacts with others who transmit droplets that land on another’s mouth and/or nose. It is also possible to acquire it if you contact a surface with the live virus, then touch your mouth, nose or eyes.
The second sentence about surfaces agrees with both the CDC and the WHO, but the first sentence about airborne transmission contradicts the WHO, which claims it is not easily transmitted through the air.
I'm sure the WHO is wrong. While it is true that larger droplets do fall immediately onto surfaces, smaller droplets around 5 microns in diameter can persist in the air for up to a half hour, and smaller droplets longer.
I have seen it described several times how the virility of the coronavirus diminishes rapidly with time and distance because the concentration of live virus diminishes, but a virus that can still be detected on some surfaces after 48 hours is not diminishing rapidly, so this, too, seems very questionable. I also question that viral concentration can drop to safe levels. There can be no safe level. All that diminishes with viral concentration is the probability of infection. It takes only one infected cell to manufacture and spew a horde of viral copies.
The advice to maintain a distance of at least six feet from other people is nonsense, for a couple reasons. First, there is nothing sacred about a six foot difference. All that can be said is that the further you are from an infected person who breathes or coughs the less likely it is that you will be infected.
Second, try maintaining a six foot distance in a grocery store. If you're doing your weekly shopping and are visiting most or all aisles you will probably come closer than six feet to people at least a hundred times.
These products were pretty much wiped out, except for store brands: paper products, rice, flour, soup, pasta and pasta sauce.
Checkout lines were long today. There were seven people in my line and it extended back to the aisle, one right behind the other, even though I was the only one with a cart and so everyone else took up very little space (I couldn't use a basket because I had to buy two larger items). I doubt anyone trying to keep the persons in front and in back six feet away would have been unsuccessful.
I used my own bags, figuring they had less time to accumulate any virus than the plastic store bags.
I made several mistakes as I returned home. I pulled the mail out of the mailbox at the end of the driveway, I touched the doorknob of the door from the garage into the house, and I touched the bottom of the banister on my way upstairs to take a shower.
We put the mail in a plastic bag where it will stay for a couple days, and my wife wiped down the doorknob and banister. The rest of it went fine. The freezer goods went into a bag in the freezer of the garage fridge, the refrigerated goods into the fridge portion, and the rest are in a bag next to the snowblower. I left the mask there, too. We'll fetch them all in a couple days.
But the food I purchased and the bags I put it in were in my car, so now my car is potentially contaminated and I have to use it again tomorrow. Much of the interior is plastic and it is predicted that only 10% of coronavirus survives eight hours on plastic, so while that's not perfect it will have to do.
When I entered the house, after touching the aforementioned doorknob, I stripped and threw all my clothes, including my winter jacket, into the washer. I put my wallet, phone, glasses and watch atop the washer. The glasses I'll sterilize with alcohol, and I think my wallet is fine since it never left my pocket (Apple Pay, though with the mask on it couldn't do facial recognition and I had to enter my passcode). But how do you sterilize an iPhone (I used it a lot, not just paying, but checking with my wife about appropriate substitutes)? I'll look it up when I post this message.
Then I went upstairs, touching the aforementioned banister, and took a shower. I touched a light switch, another mistake. As soon as I was in the bathroom I washed my hands with soap and water so that I could stop worrying about touching things. Then I took a shower.
I'll be making another trip to the grocery store next Friday. We'll see if only three people are wearing masks.
--Percy

Replies to this message:
 Message 97 by caffeine, posted 03-20-2020 6:07 PM Percy has replied
 Message 100 by AZPaul3, posted 03-20-2020 8:46 PM Percy has seen this message but not replied

  
caffeine
Member (Idle past 1024 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


(1)
Message 97 of 955 (873872)
03-20-2020 6:07 PM
Reply to: Message 96 by Percy
03-20-2020 3:37 PM


Re: My Trip to the Grocery Store
Sweet heavenly Jesus. May I suggest simply ordering a grocery delivery and staying home if you're this concerned?
I'll be making another trip to the grocery store next Friday. We'll see if only three people are wearing masks.
Well, if it reassures you, it was only about ten days ago when I saw maybe one or two people wearing masks in town, at most. On Wednesday I was almost the only person out without a mask; since yesterday it's a legal requirement to cover your mouth outside.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 96 by Percy, posted 03-20-2020 3:37 PM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 98 by dwise1, posted 03-20-2020 6:53 PM caffeine has replied
 Message 99 by Faith, posted 03-20-2020 6:54 PM caffeine has seen this message but not replied
 Message 116 by Percy, posted 03-21-2020 11:21 AM caffeine has replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 98 of 955 (873874)
03-20-2020 6:53 PM
Reply to: Message 97 by caffeine
03-20-2020 6:07 PM


Re: My Trip to the Grocery Store
In the US, good luck finding a mask.
Either on Facebook or Youtube there was a video showing how to make a face mask by folding your underwear. And, no, I didn't watch it.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 97 by caffeine, posted 03-20-2020 6:07 PM caffeine has replied

Replies to this message:
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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 99 of 955 (873875)
03-20-2020 6:54 PM
Reply to: Message 97 by caffeine
03-20-2020 6:07 PM


Re: My Trip to the Grocery Store
I don't do the shopping for myself, my brother does. He COULD take me and if I really want to go and put pressure on him, he will, but I slow him down too much. So right now he is going to the store as usual. Fortunately I was already pretty well stocked before the panic buying started but still he comes back without certain items that were bought out. When he brings in the groceries I wipe down the packaging with a Cloros wipe, and if I remember I go around wiping whatever he touched while he's here too, but it seems silly since just his breathing could tansmit the virus to me and besides the last thing I want is for him to get sick since he's my shopper and I don't have any other connection. Besides which I'm fond of him of course and I'd cry if he died. Oh I'm sure there are services around who would help out with the shopping, but if he gets sick I'll probably get sick and maybe we'll both die, being elderly types. Who knows.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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AZPaul3
Member
Posts: 8513
From: Phoenix
Joined: 11-06-2006
Member Rating: 5.3


(1)
Message 100 of 955 (873884)
03-20-2020 8:46 PM
Reply to: Message 96 by Percy
03-20-2020 3:37 PM


Re: My Trip to the Grocery Store
Since you are in that older demographic I suggest that if you do not wake up in the morning with a headache and a dry cough that you use bleach and alcohol in a two-to-one mix, wipe down every place you touched when you got home the day before then burn down to house.
If you do wake up with a headache and a dry cough then use bleach and alcohol in a two-to-one mix, wipe down every place you touched when you got home the day before, burn down the house and move into the nearest ICU.
Of course, if you don't wake up the next morning then none of the above will be productive so nevermind.

Eschew obfuscation. Habituate elucidation.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 96 by Percy, posted 03-20-2020 3:37 PM Percy has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 101 by Coragyps, posted 03-20-2020 9:44 PM AZPaul3 has replied

  
Coragyps
Member (Idle past 734 days)
Posts: 5553
From: Snyder, Texas, USA
Joined: 11-12-2002


Message 101 of 955 (873889)
03-20-2020 9:44 PM
Reply to: Message 100 by AZPaul3
03-20-2020 8:46 PM


Re: My Trip to the Grocery Store
But please don’t really mix bleach and alcohol. Way better than mixing bleach and ammonia, but still not at all good.
Edited by Coragyps, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 100 by AZPaul3, posted 03-20-2020 8:46 PM AZPaul3 has replied

Replies to this message:
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 Message 104 by AZPaul3, posted 03-20-2020 10:25 PM Coragyps has not replied
 Message 119 by Hyroglyphx, posted 03-21-2020 2:57 PM Coragyps has not replied

  
Dogmafood
Member (Idle past 348 days)
Posts: 1815
From: Ontario Canada
Joined: 08-04-2010


(1)
Message 102 of 955 (873890)
03-20-2020 9:50 PM
Reply to: Message 101 by Coragyps
03-20-2020 9:44 PM


Re: My Trip to the Grocery Store
Not all hazards are marked and it might be time to weed out the weaklings.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 101 by Coragyps, posted 03-20-2020 9:44 PM Coragyps has replied

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Coragyps
Member (Idle past 734 days)
Posts: 5553
From: Snyder, Texas, USA
Joined: 11-12-2002


Message 103 of 955 (873891)
03-20-2020 10:03 PM
Reply to: Message 102 by Dogmafood
03-20-2020 9:50 PM


Re: My Trip to the Grocery Store
You might be correct there...

This message is a reply to:
 Message 102 by Dogmafood, posted 03-20-2020 9:50 PM Dogmafood has seen this message but not replied

  
AZPaul3
Member
Posts: 8513
From: Phoenix
Joined: 11-06-2006
Member Rating: 5.3


(1)
Message 104 of 955 (873892)
03-20-2020 10:25 PM
Reply to: Message 101 by Coragyps
03-20-2020 9:44 PM


Re: My Trip to the Grocery Store
better than mixing bleach and ammonia
I had alcohol on/in my mind. I missed that one. Talk about squandered opportunities.
Just to make it official ... no, don't do either. This was a joke. It was only a joke.
If it was meant to be serious it would have come from reddit or twitter or Alex Jones.

Eschew obfuscation. Habituate elucidation.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 101 by Coragyps, posted 03-20-2020 9:44 PM Coragyps has not replied

  
caffeine
Member (Idle past 1024 days)
Posts: 1800
From: Prague, Czech Republic
Joined: 10-22-2008


Message 105 of 955 (873901)
03-21-2020 5:11 AM
Reply to: Message 98 by dwise1
03-20-2020 6:53 PM


Re: My Trip to the Grocery Store
In the US, good luck finding a mask.
Either on Facebook or Youtube there was a video showing how to make a face mask by folding your underwear. And, no, I didn't watch it.
We also have a national shortage of surgical masks and respirators. We actually had a couple at home so we donated them to the pharmacy. Been sewing masks for our own use.
The rules only say you have to cover your nose and mouth, so some people are just wrapping a scarf around their face.
I'm wondering if people would still whine about burqas as much as they used to.
Edited by caffeine, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 98 by dwise1, posted 03-20-2020 6:53 PM dwise1 has not replied

  
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