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Author Topic:   Coronavirus and Pandemics
dwise1
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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!).

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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.

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


Message 108 of 955 (873905)
03-21-2020 7:03 AM
Reply to: Message 106 by Phat
03-21-2020 5:22 AM


Re: My Trip to the Grocery Store
As a grocery store professional, perhaps you can provide some insight.
Early on at Trader Joe's, I was told that they restocked the shelves as best as they could before the store opened and then the shelves would get depleted during the day.
Basically, I'm assuming that most of the stores' supply lines are still operating. Is that a safe assumption? What I would fear would be the disruption of those supply lines.
My first decade in the Navy Reserve was in warehousing units, therefore in supply (I came in as a Data Systems Technician, DS, based on my Air Force training and experience as an Electronic Computer Systems Repairman (AFSC 30574)). One of the principles of supply is that they have tracked supply and demand within the supply system for years, from which they have defined "high-water marks" and "low-water marks" which (in conjunction with lead-time) tell them when they will need to order more materiel and how much (I even attended a course on the computer system, UDAPS, which worked all that out).
I would assume that grocery stores have worked out a very similar system. In addition, there's the "just in time" inventory model notably championed by Japanese car manufacturers in which you try to minimize the amount of inventory you hold in order to avoid the extra costs of having bought parts that sit idle in warehouses for long periods of time (plus the overhead of warehousing). Capitalism inevitably evolves into a very efficient beast that minimizes expense as much as possible (even and usually at the cost of the workers' welfare).
So, hopefully, grocery stores' supply systems remain intact. But those systems were fine-tuned over the years based on normal conditions. Conditions are no longer normal. With all the panic buying, the old rates of demand for each item no longer apply. For example (pulling figures out of the air, out of a hat, or out of far less savory places), when pasta consumption might have been about 20% of inventory, now suddenly it's at 100%. The same with canned soup. The tried and true rates of replenishment no longer apply. So even if the store's normal supply systems continue to function normally at their normal rates, those items will not be able to keep up with demand.
Now if those normal supply lines and rates were to start to fail ... .
FWIW, I am a military retiree, but in the 8 years since my retirement I have yet to go onto a military base. It suddenly occurred to me before waking up in the middle of the night (an occupational hazard of being an old person) that base commissaries should be more immune to panic buying that civilian stores. Maybe it's time for me to visit the commissary so that I can buy some eggs. And canned soup.

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


Message 134 of 955 (873975)
03-22-2020 8:22 PM
Reply to: Message 131 by Percy
03-22-2020 1:38 PM


Re: About masks, some examples of extraordinarily bad advice
Just a random thought, not to be taken too seriously.
The basis of vaccines tend to be based on exposure to dead virii or greatly weakened virii which in turn trigger our immune systems to learn about those virii and produce antibodies against them. As I understand it, serum from a previously infected individual which thus contain antibodies could also be used -- please take into account the effects of fictional accounts about pandemics.
So if the virus can survive on surfaces for a particular period of time, at the end of which they die (become inert, whatever), then what would happen to someone who became infected through contact by a dead or nearly dead virus? Might they not gain immunity through that contact?
 
Just a random thought. But novels and movies have depended on such possibilities, though mostly as a deus ex machina device (ie, an omnipotent being, such as a god or a king ruling under Divine Right, suddenly steps in to correct an otherwise impossibly disasterous situation).
For example, there's Michael Crichton's 1969 novel, The Andromeda Strain (he had written a few before that one, but this one is what made him famous). The "deus ex machina" solution in that story was a well-known fact about the evolution of viral diseases. When a viral disease first appears, it is very virulent because the population has no defenses against it and so it spreads ... virally. Strictly Darwinian, a virus relies on a living host that is able to infect the most other individuals before killing its host. The more virulent a virus is (eg, the quicker it kills its host or exhibits symptoms of the disease), the fewer new victims it can infect. The less that it kills its victims and the slower that it shows symptoms the more it can spread. Thus Darwinian selective pressure tends to reduce a virulent deadly virus to a seasonal nuisance.
I've seen a reverse analysis. I seem to recall that it was syphilis that was a fairly casual disease in the Caribbean spread through skin contact. But once it entered the European community with a lacked lack of skin-to-skin contact except during sex it evolved into a much more virulent disease.
 
Just some random thoughts to throw out there. Pearls before those who think in evolutionary terms. Pearls before swine for the others.

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


Message 180 of 955 (874075)
03-24-2020 1:46 PM
Reply to: Message 176 by DrJones*
03-24-2020 11:52 AM


Re: You might want to consider using dilute Cl bleach
I just came back from Trader Joe's.
The first week they quickly ran out of a lot of items, including most fresh produce (eg, no onions, but they did have shallots), no eggs, no pasta nor sauces. Today, the shelves were well stocked, plenty of eggs, plenty of produce, decent quantities of pasta, etc. The first week the bottled water normally near the checkouts had been emptied, but today pallets of bottled water were out on the floor. I didn't check out the frozen today, but it appeared to be well stocked.

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


Message 190 of 955 (874093)
03-24-2020 4:26 PM
Reply to: Message 188 by Percy
03-24-2020 3:53 PM


Re: The Quinine Drugs Problematic Miracle Cure?
I told you not to get your health advice from talk shows (which includes Maddow, too) but from health professionals.
That is most certainly true.
However, there is a clear pattern to Rachel Maddow's interviews with health professionals (including those formerly involved in the pandemic task force which Trump disbanded). Her very first question to each of her professional medical guests is whether anything she had just said was incorrect or inaccurate. IOW, she shows concern that the information that she presents is accurate.
I doubt very much that the talk show hosts that Faith listens to share her concern for accuracy and hence I would be very surprised to hear that they also request that what they had said be fact-checked.
It's difficult to ignore someone blatantly parading error and ignorance.
Especially when that error and ignorance has gotten people killed and will end up killing so many more.
Faith writes:
By the way these guys have HUGE audiences.
So does The Bachelor, so what? Ratings are a reflection of entertainment value, not truth and accuracy.
The informal fallacy that Faith just deployed is the every popular argumentum ad populum, "appeal to the people". As if reality were subject to a majority vote.
A counter to her "argument" that comes immediately to mind is an old graffito: "Eat sh*t. 500 billion flies cannot be wrong."
Are you sure you're a Christian?
A "true Christian", most certainly. An actual Christian? Now that is open for debate.

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


Message 193 of 955 (874096)
03-24-2020 5:58 PM
Reply to: Message 189 by jar
03-24-2020 4:04 PM


Move Along PPeople. Nothing To See Here
Double Post
Edited by AdminPhat, : double post by dwise1

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


Message 195 of 955 (874098)
03-24-2020 6:58 PM
Reply to: Message 189 by jar
03-24-2020 4:04 PM


Re: we need to test everybody.
So today FEMA proudly announce that soon they will have 60,000 test kits available.
What an absolute joke. What's needed is 2 or 3 hundred million test kits.
What is needed is the widest possible use of both kinds of tests.
For the most part, our attention is focused on the swab test for whether you are currently infected, which is needed to identify cases that need to be isolated (including those Typhoid Marys who are asymptomatic and hence don't realize they need to self-quarantine).
But perhaps much more important is the blood test for antibodies to the virus. That would mean that you had been infected but you fought it off and should now be immune and are no longer a carrier.
Those are the people that we need to come out and work to keep our social systems functioning. And healthcare professionals with those antibodies are needed all the more.
About a week ago, I saw an interview with Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont where he was begging for test kits for 200 nurses who were self-quarantined as a precaution. He had an immediate need for all the nurses he could get and if most of those nurses were not infected then they were being withheld for no good reason, provided they could get tested. Which they can't.
Every morning MSNBC carries NY Gov. Cuomo's daily address, where he shows a helluva lot more leadership and understanding of the situation that we could ever hope to get from Old Orange Stain. He's talking about the massive need for ventilators within the next 14 days, so ventilators promised a few months out will do him absolutely no good.
We've seen the pattern elsewhere, so we know what to plan for. We have a curve of increasing infections culminating in increased hospital loading which happens over about a 15-day period. Every state is at a different place on this curve that every state will end up fighting. New York appears to be the first on this curve.
Cuomo's proposal is to concentrate efforts (and ventilators) on New York first -- HHS still has 20,000 ventilators stockpiled, just sitting there doing nobody any good. There are even experiments to set up one ventilator to service two patients at the same or concurrent time(s). Then when New York has handled its critical hospital surge, it can ship those resources to the next states that need them.
Trump is just trying to wish this entire shitshow away. Cuomo is trying to do something about it. The contrast could not be any starker (yet the likes of Faith will remain forever blind to that).
On that last, there was an epic sci-fi show, Babylon 5. Here is a truly epic scene:
The Vorlon is an ancient race of which nobody knows nothing. And yet they present themselves in whatever form the other races can handle.
The kicker came later with Londo Mollari, the Centauri ambassador. After the Vorlon ambassador, Kosh, basically revealed himself before everybody to be basically every single religious icon of all the races assembled, but all that Londo Mollari could honestly say was that he had seen absolutely nothing whatsoever. Absolutely nothing.

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


Message 200 of 955 (874103)
03-24-2020 9:53 PM
Reply to: Message 196 by Faith
03-24-2020 9:02 PM


Re: we need to test everybody.
At the very least, Gov Cuomo is directly addressing his constituents about the realities of the situation.
He is looking at the realitites of what he's going to need to do and have to handle. Certainly none of the total BS from Trump which now includes conspiracy-theory nonsense that will get a lot of people killed.
This curve has a 15-day lifetime. Any "solution" which is 3, 4, or 8 months out is no solution at all. Why are you not able to understand that?
While meanwhile businesses have been retooling their factories in order to produce the stuff he and the rest of the entire world need right now. Seems to me THEY are "doing something about it" while Cuomo is just bleating to no purpose. No CONSTRUCTIVE purpose anyway, though possibly a partisan politifal purpose perhaps.
No. Not yet.
Capital. Capital. It all takes capital. And workers. Nothing happens by magic, instead within your own private universe, Faith.

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


Message 202 of 955 (874106)
03-25-2020 12:53 AM
Reply to: Message 201 by xongsmith
03-25-2020 12:42 AM


Re: interesting article:
Kinda grim in that it seems what the US is doing is WRONG. We should be doing both lines of attack with the full kitchen sink of strategies,
Trump is in charge. Nu? And your point is?

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


Message 203 of 955 (874107)
03-25-2020 1:13 AM
Reply to: Message 199 by Faith
03-24-2020 9:33 PM


Re: The Quinine Drugs Problematic Miracle Cure?
You also say you"doubt very much" if any of the people I listen to care about the truth, obviously knowing nothing about any of it, yet you accuse ME of this kind of crap?
SO PROVE ME WRONG!
That should be very simple, if you had any possible position to argue from.
I very much doubt that you can do so.
So prove me wrong, already.
Should be so simple for you to do. So why won't you?

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


Message 259 of 955 (874222)
03-26-2020 10:09 PM
Reply to: Message 228 by JonF
03-25-2020 3:45 PM


Re: Today's Cuomo Press Conference
I wouldn't be comfortable with hooking up another patient on my wife's ventilator other than some last resort.
That is exactly what it is. It's a desperate last-resort measure where the alternative is a patient's death.
Rachel Maddow is discussing the situation tonight. In the medical emergency of treating large numbers of shooting victims at the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting, the ER room had to resort to Macgyvering ventilators to treat two patients instead of just one. Because the only alternative was the death of a patient.
Large mammal vets (never could figure whether that described the vet or his patients) are volunteering their ventilators, though my understanding is that many of those need to worked manually. Hospitals are looking into emergency conversion of anaesthetic machines into makeshift ventilators. Because that's what every hospital in every individual state has to do because of the near-total lack of any leadership at the federal level.
Early in the hour, Maddow reports on several governors who all tell the same story. They cannot get the medical equipment they need (eg, protective equipment, ventilators) because they are literally bidding against all the other states and even the federal government for that vital equipment. With the companies operating on a purely voluntary basis, they are applying free market principles of supply and demand to sell to the highest bidder, which also is driving up the price for everybody else.
Right now, Trump has dumped everybody in an "every man for himself" fuster cluck that is a sure-fire guarantee for disaster. He has the Defense Production Act to use, but he won't use it. What is vitally needed a week ago is for the federal government to direct industry to produce what's need, to place orders for the needed equipment, and then to use the federal government's logistics capabilities ("we're not shipping clerks"? -- hasn't Trump ever heard of the Defense Logistics Agency? Or that true military professionals study logistics, not battles?) to get the needed equipment where it needs to be when it needs to be there (and then to the next place it needs to be).
Every state is on a different curve, each of which will peak at different times. Gov. Cuomo has described the scenario as first putting the resources to fight the first peak, then shift those resources to the next hot-spot to deal with it, then on the the next hot-spot, etc. Right now, that will never happen. But if the federal government were to do its job then it could plan out where and when each of those hot-spots will peak and hence plan out the logistics required to get that needed equipment redeployed where it needs to be in time to be effective.
Leaving every state entirely on its own competing with each other and with the federal government with absolutely no coordination within the entire national system is sheer madness, if your goal were to deal with this pandemic. So what is Trump's actual goal? Is there some kind of money-making scheme in play? Or maybe he wants this to explode into a complete disaster such that he can declare absolute emergency powers, including postponing the November elections indefinitely?
One of Rachel Maddow's guests tonight was the Commanding Officer of the US Army Corps of Engineers. Watch it! He knows what his troops need to do and they are preparing for immediate mobilization. All he needs is the Word from the White House to move and directions of what needs to be done. How many more weeks have to pass before Trump can get up from sitting on his thumb and finally give the Word?

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


(1)
Message 277 of 955 (874244)
03-27-2020 3:03 PM
Reply to: Message 264 by Chiroptera
03-27-2020 8:48 AM


Re: Sports Betting Turns to Trump
I'm pretty sure someone must have created a drinking game based on Trump's press conferences.
Something like it during the 2016 campaign. A progressive radio talk show host talked about watching Trump's rallies with friends and they all had to take a drink every time Trump lied. They had to stop it, though. For fear of dying from alcohol poisoning.

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


Message 283 of 955 (874254)
03-27-2020 4:39 PM
Reply to: Message 281 by JonF
03-27-2020 4:22 PM


Re: REALLY REALLY GOOD NEWS
Jared "Slumlord Millionaire" Kushner is covered in Season 2 of Dirty Money on Netflix.
Faith was so worked up trying to identify a leading Catholic as the Anti-Christ, when the A-C has been hiding in plain sight right in front of her. It's no coincidence that Kushner owns 666 Fifth Avenue.

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


Message 285 of 955 (874256)
03-27-2020 4:45 PM
Reply to: Message 282 by JonF
03-27-2020 4:24 PM


Re: I am sure the governments 2 trillion wont finance immune boosting food
We have reports of some states constructing temporary hospitals in sports stadiums, etc.
A few days ago, I drove past a local hospital and saw them constructing a large tent-like structure right outside the emergency room entrance. I figured that they were creating extra wards. But then an interviewee on TV mentioned temporary morgues being erected in front of hospitals.

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