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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 287 of 955 (874267)
03-28-2020 2:37 AM


Collecting Nominees for This Year's Darwin Awards
You know how the fundamentalist pastors are telling their flocks that the corona virus is just a hoax and they are specially protected by God and all that? So the entire congregation must ignore those atheistic scientists and medical doctors and gather together in large(ish) crowds pack tightly together and shaking each other's hands.
From an old acquaintance I follow on Facebook, there's report of a second such pastor who has died from that "hoax virus":
quote:
Another pastor dies from COVID-19 after claiming the coronavirus was a hoax.
Pastor Ronnie Hampton of the New Vision Community Church in Shreveport, Louisiana died after calling coronavirus a ‘mark of the beast’ conspiracy.
Worker threw exception | www.rawstory.com | Cloudflare
The first one he reported on Facebook: Virginia Pastor Who Said COVID-19 Was Anti-Trump Mass Hysteria Dies of Virus :
quote:
Yesterday, one of the first deaths of a Virginia resident from COVID-19 was a Christian musical evangelist who, believing the pandemic response to be anti-Trump mass hysteria, took his family to New Orleans to wash it from its Sin and debauchery.
quote:
A Gretna man who had double pneumonia and tested positive for COVID-19 in Concord North Carolina died around 4 a.m. Wednesday, the family reports.
Landon Spradlin, 66, was an accomplished blues musician who pastored several different churches over the years.
Spradlin was in New Orleans with his wife, Jean Spradlin, when he started getting sick. On their way back to Gretna on March 17, his condition worsened to the point where he could hardly breathe
The Roanoke Times described Spradlin as a traveling musical minister and fine guitarist with a powerful soul-blues voice, at one time a significant part of the Roanoke-area blues scene.
On his Facebook page, Spradlin had posted many photos and videos of his family, his band, and himself performing and sightseeing in New Orleans beginning on what seems February 21 through March 10. Much of his time appeared to be in crowded Jackson Square, where his band played in what he called his Jackson Square Ministry. Other locations included performing in intimate music clubs, dining in restaurants, and walking on Bourbon Street.
On Feb. 28, he posted We had an awesome Mardi Gras outreach this year. Many were touched by the power and love of Jesus!!
Spradlin was likely already infected when, on March 13, he posted a highly misleading meme comparing COVID-19 and swine flu deaths, suggesting that the current virus response was mass hysteria created by the media for no reason other than to hurt Donald Trump:
quote:
This Facebook post is no longer available. It may have been removed or the privacy settings of the post may have changed.
That image contains information spread by Tiffany Fray, a devoutly Christian Trump supporter. It’s complete misleading to the point that fact-checkers for Facebook marked it as partly false. PolitiFact, which said the statement is mostly false, explains more here.
That same day he shared a post telling a true story of a missionary who cared miraculously for bubonic plague victims without himself succumbing to the illness. That post explained that As long as I walk in the light of that law [of the Spirit of life], no germ will attach itself to me.
Spradlin was pastor of New Wave Ministries International, whose mission statement is taking the Light of the gospel into the darkest regions of the earth.
According to the ministry, his wife Jean Spradlin was, as of March 24, in quarantine with pneumonia in both lungs, awaiting test results. She told her local paper that they visit New Orleans every year and seemingly always catch some sickness while they’re there, explaining that a plethora of organizations have been working with her to get her information, ensure that she is safely quarantined, and provide such necessities like food, extra clothes and internet. She also stated that the family has set up a GoFundMe account.
Spradlin’s official music page says only that they will see him again in the other side of glory.
There’s no mention of how they could’ve prolonged his life through sensible precautionary measures.
Of course, the petri dish of infection vectors that they had waded through in NOLA is the reason for NOLA's current status of being the next hot-spot in this pandemic.
This pandemic might end up doing some good. But at what cost?

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


Message 288 of 955 (874268)
03-28-2020 3:22 AM
Reply to: Message 261 by Percy
03-27-2020 7:51 AM


Re: Today's Cuomo Press Conference
To everyone: Ignoring the Trump razzing, ...
Uh, what "razzing"? I was just stating factual observations. It is a solid fact that Trump has screwed the pooch royally, so how does pointing that out amount to "razzing"?
And I think that I raised a very valid point about what Trump's objectives might possibly be.
Decades ago, I read something like: "Never attribute malfeasance to something that could be explained by complete ignorance and incompetence and utter stupidity."
And yet, despite all the ignorance, incompetence, and utter stupidity, there is still a kind of genius to Trump. That genius is in part knowing how to deceive his followers, but the other part is how to cash out on whatever is happening. Despite all his other massive failings, he is still a prime opportunist.
The questions I raised in Message 259 involved his objectives. This is very basic operations. Like so many other similar evolutions, your first question is what your objectives are, just what are you trying to accomplish? Then you need to identify what your own sub-objectives are. That is your goal, so now you need to plan out how to achieve your objectives.
Now mind you, this identification of objectives and evaluations of strategies for achieving those objectives functions on many different levels, with the top-most level planning for the overall movement of all troops and the ultimate objective while the lower-most is for your squad to take and hold that hill (review Little Roundtop at Gettysburg: "The flank must hold. Gentlemen, we are the flank." And completely out of ammunition, they charged down the hill and they held the flank ).
So just what are Trump's objectives? That was the question I raised. There is the short game and the long game.
Well, today we have the new bill that Trump just signed into law for economic relief during this pandemic.
About 2 trillion (1012) USDollars to companies to keep their employees on the payroll, etc. No increases to paying their CEOs (as happened before) and no layoffs. What the Democrats had to fight hard for and finally got was Congressional oversight over the distribution of those 2 trillion dollars by Trump toady Steven Mnuchin.
Trump's immediate statements were to the effect that the bill that he had just signed into law did not make Congressional oversight mandatory, whereas it did. Oh, yeah, it really did!
So Trump wants his toady, Steven Mnuchin, to disburse all that money before any congressional oversight can even know what had happened. Maybe even to Trump-owned businesses ... why not?
And of course, the truly long-term planning would be to somehow invalidate the 2020 National Election. Or to keep it from even ever happening under some kind of emergency powers.
Edited by AdminPhat, : fixed broken link

This message is a reply to:
 Message 261 by Percy, posted 03-27-2020 7:51 AM Percy has replied

Replies to this message:
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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 334 of 955 (874351)
03-29-2020 2:23 PM
Reply to: Message 328 by Percy
03-29-2020 1:45 PM


Re: Hysteria about lifting the lockdown is just more irrational Trump-bashing
There are no state or federal quarantines anywhere in the country. Trump spoke of opening up large and largely unaffected portions of the country by around Easter, despite his advisors' opinion that Easter was way too early and that the entire country would eventually be affected. It was dangerous to the country for Trump to say anything that might encourage people to cease mitigation practices early.
Netflix has a documentary series, Pandemic (2020).
One of the sites covered over most episodes is a rural hospital. The local outbreak strained that hospital to its limits, but they just barely held on thanks to the extraordinary efforts of the medical staff. If it had been just slightly worse, that hospital would have been overwhelmed.
Republican healthcare systems mismanagement on the state level (eg, refusing federal Medicaid expansion under the ACA) has resulted in the failure and closure of many rural hospitals. That leaves so many red states far less able to handle the surge of patients that's coming -- coincidentally, MSNBC right now (1111 PST) is reporting on how rural hospitals are already becoming overwhelmed. And when the virus moves through the countryside, those victims will flood into the city hospitals which are already being overwhelmed.
The MSNBC report had hospital management saying that while they had been able to just barely hold on up to this point, this pandemic will destroy them and force them to close after it's over. That will leave far more areas of America without healthcare services.
Removing mitigation measures even in the most "unaffected" areas is a guarantee for disaster.

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


Message 364 of 955 (874402)
03-31-2020 5:28 PM
Reply to: Message 362 by Percy
03-31-2020 3:29 PM


Re: Chloroquin and Hydroxychloroquin
As I recall, it was reported that the fish tank cleaner was chloroquine phosphate, implying that it was not the same stuff. However, Wikipedia says that "chloroquine phosphate" is another name for chloroquine, so they actually are the same thing. More specifically on that page:
quote:
Formulations
Chloroquine comes in tablet form as the phosphate, sulfate, and hydrochloride salts. Chloroquine is usually dispensed as the phosphate.

So then actually what went wrong was that fish tank cleaner is an industrial/commercial form of the compound, not a medical form.
Since Faith will not understand the difference, let's consider another important medication: nitroglycerin:
quote:
Nitroglycerin was written about as early as 1846 and came into medical use in 1878. It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines, the safest and most effective medicines needed in a health system. ... The drug nitroglycerin (GTN) is a dilute form of the same chemical used as the explosive, nitroglycerin. Dilution makes it non-explosive.
So then what do you imagine would happen if you starting feeling chest pain and decided to self-medicate with some industrial strength nitroglycerin? Well, it most certainly would stop the chest pain, though I'm unsure whether it would have gotten down far enough to take out the chest in addition to the head.
Now to continue that analogy, imagine a public figure with a large following that believes everything he says no matter how obviously false. That public figure ignorantly advises his followers that nitroglycerin is a cure for heart attacks, but he neglects to specify the medical form only (along with other medical considerations). So a number of his followers, who are similarly ignorant, use the explosive to treat themselves with the expected consequences. The message should not have been "Use nitro", but rather "Seek medical advice and care." And for that, that public figure's best audience would not be the general public, but rather medical professionals (who would already know far more about the subject than that public figure).
So, back to chloroquine, rather than present it to the general public as a sure cure, Trump should be advising the medical community to look into it and, far more important, listen to the medical experts' responses and learn from them.
The true tragedy is that Trump does not listen, nor is he capable of learning, so he will continue to place the public in totally unnecessary danger with his ignorant public pronouncements.
 
I've heard that the wife in that self-poisoning tragedy survived, though not yet recovered, and is warning everybody to not listen to what Trump tells them. At least there's one positive consequence.

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


Message 368 of 955 (874411)
04-01-2020 1:50 AM
Reply to: Message 366 by Minnemooseus
03-31-2020 11:10 PM


Re: Will coronavirus delay the general election? All of your 2020 questions, answered
First, I'll make my own predictions so we can compare mine with your article's. Besides which I feel reluctant to follow a blind link (or whatever it's called here), since you have told us nothing of its contents.
  1. The social effects of the virus are already disrupting primary elections, causing them to be postponed, possibly indefinitely depending on the infection curves that each region is experiencing differently. That could be mitigated by those states resorting to mail-in ballots, but undoubtedly the states that practice voter suppression will ensure that that will not happen.
  2. The disruption in each state's primaries would also affect each party's convention, let alone whether the primaries could even be held post-social-distancing (assuming that that would happen).
    First, the postponing of various states' primaries would necessarily postpone the party's convention. Any state's indefinite postponement would similarly postpone the party convention indefinitely. That could very well result in a certain party ending up with no officially sanctioned candidate since no official convention had ever been held (and we all know full well which party that would be).
    Second, even if all primaries could eventually be held, there's still the matter of the convention itself. If social distancing is still in place, then how could a convention even be held?
    The only alternative would be a procedural one in which delegates can vote remotely. However, to the electorate that would come off as rather sterile (extremely important when dealing with diseases) and not at all exciting. After all, one of the really important parts of a party convention is to stir up excitement within the electorate in order to motivate them to get out there and vote! That crucial factor would be missing in this scenario.
    Please note that there will be and need not be any actual GOP convention. Trump is their candidate by default.
    The Democrats are in an entirely other kettle, so they do need to have an actual convention.
    Thus, the lack of ability to have an actual convention will more greatly affect the Democratic Party and not the GOP.
  3. The general election itself would be vulnerable, especially if infection rates were to re-appear in the Fall as is suspected.
    The traditional use of physical polling places would need to be replaced by other means, such as mail-in ballots. Of course, that is a matter of state-level election laws and procedures. As a result, voting will be far more vulnerable to state-level voter suppression activity.
  4. If it starts to look bad for him, Trump could just simply invoke emergency powers and postpone the 2020 Election ... indefinitely. Who's to stop him, since the GOP-dominated Senate just gave him the absolute power to violate any and all laws and the absolute power to do just whatever the fuck he wants to? Don't delude yourself: that was the outcome of the GOP Senate's vote on the Impeachment, damn their mangy hides for all Eternity (though not Mormon Mitt Romney's mangy hide)!
    Please suspend Godwin for a tick.
    The Weimar Republic had one of the most progressive constitutions that had ever existed, one that guaranteed so many rights for its citizens. It remained in effect, technically, until around early May 1945, when Nazi Germany finally fell.
    So what went wrong? Basically, the wrong person, Adolf Hitler, came into power and he was able to invoke, under the Weimar Constitution, emergency powers that gave him absolute power. From that point on, even though the liberal Weimar Constitution was officially in power, Hitler's emergency powers were able to override all constitutional guarantees and keep him in absolute power.
    So then, under this, the most incredible emergency our nation has ever faced, what is there to keep Trump from assuming absolute emergency powers? Powers that would enable him to postpone national elections indefinitely. Thus guaranteeing himself from ever being properly prosecuted for his many crimes.
    President For Life.
So how did my own predictions match up with your article's?

This message is a reply to:
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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 378 of 955 (874422)
04-01-2020 2:18 PM
Reply to: Message 376 by jar
04-01-2020 12:41 PM


Re: the relief check
If your bank doesn't know what your account number is, then find another bank that's competent.
IOW, that is obviously a scam. We're going to see a lot of scams like that.
Besides, what I'm hearing is that it will take a few weeks for Munchkin to get around to disbursing those checks. Talk about lack of competence.

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


Message 383 of 955 (874427)
04-01-2020 3:50 PM
Reply to: Message 380 by jar
04-01-2020 3:17 PM


Re: the relief check
I almost never use a link provided in an email and even then only if I have very high confidence that it's legit. Instead, I go to the bank's website and log into my account there. Or I get on the phone and call the bank with the number that I look up on my own, not the number provided in the email.
Unfortunately the elderly are common victims.

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


Message 398 of 955 (874444)
04-02-2020 11:06 AM
Reply to: Message 397 by jar
04-02-2020 10:44 AM


Re: the relief check
Reminds me of a request for help on a C programming forum that I used to contribute to.
The request was for C code to implement a "Barber poll". Well, obviously this was some kind of statistical analysis technique that we hadn't heard about, so we asked for more information and a more complete description of what he was trying to do. He replied with, "you know, that twirly thing in front of a barber shop."
The forum was international with the foreign members for whom English was not their first language. That idiot was obviously a native English speaker, since he had no clue how to spell -- the most atrociously bad English was committed by native speakers. A non-English speaker would not have made such a stupid mistake, but instead would have slightly odd sentence structure or wordings or would have chosen the wrong word from the dictionary. But other than that, their English would be far superior to native speakers' (especially the SMS kiddies).
For example, a student in Portugal wanted to know how to use "lights" in multi-threaded programming. That made absolutely no sense and nobody could figure out what he was talking about. Knowing some Spanish, I had a hunch which I followed in Wikipedia, switching between languages. In multi-processing, the processes' access to common resources is coordinated (AKA "synchronized") through various software mechanisms including semaphores (ie, signals as in signal flags, etc). The word in Spanish for traffic signal is "semforo" and that also turns out to be the word in Portuguese. When he looked up semforo in his dictionary, it translated that to "lights" which is what we call our "traffic lights".

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


Message 418 of 955 (874474)
04-03-2020 3:42 AM
Reply to: Message 415 by Coragyps
04-02-2020 10:09 PM


Re: To Mask Or Not To Mask.
Spitballing again, but it seems that thirty minutes in 150F/65C oven would sterilize a mask pretty well. A paper or cotton mask, anyway - one that would partially melt wouldn’t do so well.
Somehow today I caught mention of UV irradiation as a sterilization method. A few or more years ago, I saw an advert about a UV container for one's toothbrush for the same effect. No idea what it would take to obtain that.

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


Message 515 of 955 (874902)
04-11-2020 5:17 PM
Reply to: Message 512 by NosyNed
04-11-2020 2:57 PM


Re: The Latest US Coronavirus Graph
... the Russians ...
Speaking of which, what's happening in Russia? I haven't heard nor seen a single report from or about Russia.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 519 of 955 (874922)
04-11-2020 9:09 PM
Reply to: Message 516 by DrJones*
04-11-2020 6:51 PM


Re: The Latest US Coronavirus Graph
nothing is happening in Russia, everything is fine over there. Vlad wouldn't lie to us would he?
Yeah, that's what I thought.

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


Message 550 of 955 (875076)
04-13-2020 6:53 PM
Reply to: Message 549 by DrJones*
04-13-2020 6:24 PM


Re: Hydroxychloroquine
when did trump get a medical degree?
He doesn't need one. Without any kind of training or study, he knows everything about everything, much more than all those people who have actually studied such subjects.
Just like Faith.

This message is a reply to:
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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 582 of 955 (875244)
04-18-2020 12:40 PM
Reply to: Message 579 by GDR
04-18-2020 11:04 AM


Re: Canada vs US
When I was stationed in North Dakota I would sometimes listen in the car to a radio station in "The Peg". I heard them refer to Canada as "Big Lonely".

This message is a reply to:
 Message 579 by GDR, posted 04-18-2020 11:04 AM GDR has replied

Replies to this message:
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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 586 of 955 (875248)
04-18-2020 3:33 PM
Reply to: Message 584 by GDR
04-18-2020 2:04 PM


Re: Canada vs US
I was based in eastern ND (the cold part) for 5 years. The nicest people you could find, but around 1980 it felt very isolated plus the weather could get a bit much at times. That part of the state is in the region that includes Int'l Falls, MN, where arctic air masses would descend from Canada and sit on us, making Int'l Falls the coldest place in CONUS (US excluding Alaska and Hawaii). If you remember those scenes in Dr. Zhivago where he's trudging across flat empty frozen expanses, that was filmed on location in the Canadian plains (mainly Alberta, as I seem to recall from the credits). When we arrived in July, we were told a joke that they do have four seasons there: June, July, August, and Winter. Then we learned that it wasn't a joke. Another joke explains the population distribution in Canada, that they're all huddled together on the southern border for warm.
I rather liked it there, but work opportunities weren't there (software engineer) so we moved back to SoCalif which also made my wife happy. Our son chose to go back to ND for school and then decided to stay there. However, his wife is from Florida so guess where he's living now.

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


Message 644 of 955 (875568)
04-29-2020 2:00 AM
Reply to: Message 643 by nwr
04-29-2020 12:00 AM


Re: India rate low
Another point of wild speculation: India's lack of toilets.
I saw a documentary (not the Netflix "Inside Bill Gate's Mind" episode where he's funding research into third-world self-powered sanitation systems) which said that in India people basically poop just about anywhere. It's almost a cultural thing such that government efforts to promote toilets and sanitation have met with resistance. Just about everything including the water and the ground is permeated with human fecal matter.
Surviving that kind of environment might lead to a stronger immune system, given the wide range of pathogens the body gets exposed to. Sure you have a high mortality rate, especially infant mortality, but look at the herd immunities you get for it. Isn't that the plan that Faith and her crowd wanted for us? Kill off lots of people in order to create herd immunity to protect the vulnerable -- except for the fact that it's the vulnerable who will be the first to get killed off.
So one thought is that India's lower infection rate could be due in part to a generally higher immunity the population has acquired by a life-long exposure to a wide range of pathogens which killed off the weaker ones.
Just a bit of wild speculation.

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