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Coronavirus


Xd the great

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11 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

I don't know if I should weep for Corona, or Humanity.

I think I'll weep for both just to be safe.

A friend of mine is a planetarium manager who gives presentations to visiting elementary students. Yesterday's presentation was about the sun. Things went off-course with panicked questions after the presentation described the outer portion of the sun's atmosphere, the "corona".

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25 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Well, I assume that class of virus is called “coronavirus” because all those bumps (“attachment” points? Proteins? Receptors?) on the surface resemble the Sun’s corona...

Or maybe the virus and sun are both similar to a crown/halo. Corona = crown in several languages.

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18 minutes ago, tater said:

I now refer to the common cold I have as "mundane coronavirus" publicly just to freak people out.

 

Common colds are caused by a rhinovirus IIRC. So you have a corhinovirus

Just now, DeadJohn said:

Or maybe the virus and sun are both similar to a crown/halo. Corona = crown in several languages.

That makes more sense, also fits with the beer

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18 minutes ago, tater said:

I now refer to the common cold I have as "mundane coronavirus" publicly just to freak people out.

 

A WHO report mentioned that a runny nose is *not* a symptom of the new virus. Everyone's going to start standing next to snotty people; avoid the ones who look healthy.

 

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24 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Well, I assume that class of virus is called “coronavirus” because all those bumps (“attachment” points? Proteins? Receptors?) on the surface resemble the Sun’s corona...

yes, 'corona' means crown in latin.

It's worth noting that the per capita case load in South Korea is now higher than China, and Italy & Iran are not far behind.

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5 hours ago, StrandedonEarth said:
5 hours ago, DeadJohn said:

Or maybe the virus and sun are both similar to a crown/halo. Corona = crown in several languages.

That makes more sense, also fits with the beer

and protuberances from nose.

6 hours ago, DeadJohn said:

A friend of mine is a planetarium manager who gives presentations to visiting elementary students. Yesterday's presentation was about the sun. Things went off-course with panicked questions after the presentation described the outer portion of the sun's atmosphere, the "corona"

If he was a doctor, he would scare them more, telling about the coronary blood vessels right i the heart.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronary_circulation.

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14 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

Lesson of the day: Don't name your product a Latin word. Eventually (if not already) it will be the scientific name of something terrible.

Or make it delicious, like Guinness.

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6 hours ago, VoidSquid said:

In general, be careful with naming, I remember the Mitsubishi Pajero SUV and how it did not sell well in Spanish speaking countries :D 

Not to mention the diet candy Ayds that came out just months before a certain virus was discovered. Their commercial was literally "Why take diet pills when you can enjoy Ayds?"

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Moscow government is going full Italy despite no cases in the wild. Supposedly. Mandatory, enforced quarantine of all new arrivals from most of Eurasia, mandatory work from home for anyone with a fever, and a ban on suspected COVID cases walking into hospitals.

https://www.mos.ru/upload/documents/docs/12-YM.pdf

I am grimly curious to see how they are going to implement mandatory daily temperature checks of every employee in every workplace. Our office of thousands of people seems to only have one airport-style temperature-measuring 'gun', and the facilities guys might have a few more.

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From today's local newspaper:

Spoiler

Ten things you shouldn’t say

By Dieter Stamm

First, don't say that people who are hoarding are idiots, as a member of the Singapore government did. Even if you're sure that's true. You can't be completely sure that these people will not end up laughing at you.

 

Second, do not be sneering when passengers of a cruise ship are being held captive because the monster steamer has docked in a wrong port. Above all, do not say that it serves those climate destroyers right. For God punishes immediately - for example with quarantine in Prêles (small town in the middle of nowhere).

 

Third, do not argue that the slump in air traffic is a blessing for the environment. Virus and climate have nothing to do with each other. And where would it lead if we started playing one disease off against the other?

 

Fourth, do not stare with silent joy at falling stock market prices just because you are one of those who sold their shares at a profit in time or because you are speculating on being able to stock up on new ones later at favourable prices. You know very well that for once, this is about empathy and not about making money.

 

Fifth: Don't tell anyone if you don't think it's bad that there won't be any mass events for a while, just because you have long been of the opinion that the world has become much too busy and much too loud. It could be that the world hasn't gotten much louder at all, but that you've just grown a little older.

 

Sixth: Don't say that this virus has a cleansing effect just because people finally wash their hands and don't come too close to you all the time. By doing so, you are only unnecessarily betraying what you have always hidden well: that you have a hygiene bug.

 

Seventh: Do not spread conspiracy theories, but remain rational. In particular, don't spread the idea that the virus is patented so that the vaccine manufacturers will make a lot of money. Or that the virus has escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan. Or that mobile phone radiation caused the virus. Even if all this is true, of course.

 

Eight: Never and under no circumstances mention that the virus is life-threatening only for old people. Your completely value-neutral statement would immediately be misunderstood and classified as cynical. And you can be sure: We at the “Bund” would condemn your words immediately and severely because they would be tantamount to an attack on our readership.

 

Ninth: Never say that many more people would die from a normal flu than from the corona virus. Even if that is the case. No one wants to hear that their fear is exaggerated and irrational.

 

And tenth: Don't let on when you are sick and tired of all the fuss about this virus and you don't want to hear anything more about it. You'll only spoil people's enjoyment of all the beautiful hysteria.

 

The author of this column is an erudite student of the Federal Council's recommendations for the containment of the virus: he has decided to give up coughing and sneezing with immediate effect. And in his hasty obedience, he soon doesn't want to go to work either.

source

 

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10 hours ago, VoidSquid said:

You don't have a situation like in Italy.

9 hours ago, Kerbart said:

Implementing containment measure before getting to that situation might not be unwise though.

So, it turns out they are also running the red tape needed to get the authority for Wuhan-grade containment - curfew, troops on the street, the works.

https://www.vedomosti.ru/society/articles/2020/03/04/824469-borotsya-s-koronavirusom

Apparently we're still in the very early stage of Plan B, triggered by the arrival of that one infected guy from Milano. We've got promises of entire schools being sent away on quarantine, heavy use of the city's facial recognition networks, and a Singapore-style website tracking infectees and indicating known hot-zones.

Edit: oh, and for good measure.

SPIEF is a big deal.

Edited by DDE
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9 hours ago, Kerbart said:

Implementing containment measure before getting to that situation might not be unwise though.

Secure. Contain. Protect.

aka

Special Containment Procedures.

Edited by kerbiloid
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Good overview.

A few tidbits. There's a paper that estimates that only 5% of the actual cases in China have been tested/reported.

While the case fatality rate is defined as deaths/tested cases, the "true" chance of death would be the deaths/actual cases. If that paper is right, divide the CFR values you see by as much as 20. Stats of other pandemics of course likely change in a similar way, so perhaps the relative risk is still the same for COVID-19 vs seasonal flus, for example. But the absolute risk of course is lower.

The thing that is wrong-headed, IMO, are stories we see that suggest that if X million people are infected, then 0.03*X will die. That is, using the CFR to predict deaths, when you really need an estimate of the actual fatality rate to do so. Divide that number by 10-20, probably.

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