totm april 2020 Coronavirus

[Shpaget]

Since May 15, inclusive, Croatia had a total of 9 deaths 25 new diagnosed cases (3 cases/4 deaths since May 23), and as of yesterday 55 active cases. That is all good and dandy, but leads to talks about opening the tourist season for foreigners. The economic pressure is high. While Slovenia is doing fine Coronawise, the situation in Germany and Italy (three countries that provided most foreign tourists last year, and are traditionally in the top list) is still far from perfect, and last year we had about 4 million tourists just from Italy and Germany. I'm kind of concerned that with all the efforts Croatia has put into preventing a major spread (and was quite successful, if I might say so), it will all be for nothing if (potentially) thousands of infected come over.

[mikegarrison]

12 hours ago, Shpaget said:

Since May 15, inclusive, Croatia had a total of 9 deaths 25 new diagnosed cases (3 cases/4 deaths since May 23), and as of yesterday 55 active cases. That is all good and dandy, but leads to talks about opening the tourist season for foreigners. The economic pressure is high. While Slovenia is doing fine Coronawise, the situation in Germany and Italy (three countries that provided most foreign tourists last year, and are traditionally in the top list) is still far from perfect, and last year we had about 4 million tourists just from Italy and Germany. I'm kind of concerned that with all the efforts Croatia has put into preventing a major spread (and was quite successful, if I might say so), it will all be for nothing if (potentially) thousands of infected come over.

This is the story everywhere that tourism is a big deal. Whether it's a beach town, a mountain resort, a city, or a whole country, people are worried about what happens if tourists come but also worried about what happens if tourists don't come.

[magnemoe]

On 6/3/2020 at 12:22 PM, kerbiloid said:

A rule of thumb.
If you hear a strange thing, first have a look, isn't it already used in the Red Army.
if no - it's an actually strange thing.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Just a modern remake of the classics:
https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/ТМС-65

The jet from turbojet can dry the air and objects, warm the ground, spray a disinfectant, set smokes.

So, just get this to the yard and blow.

***

And btw, they need it on Mars, to clean the base.

Yes they used jet engines mounted on tanks to clear out fires after the first golf war. 
The Iraki forces touched all the oil and gas wells before fleeing, just to point out they was the bad guys I assume. 
The Russian jet powered tanks was very good at blowing them out. 

[Cavscout74]

I just saw a news headline saying 40% of Americans surveyed by the CDC tried to use bleach to disinfect their food to prevent Coronavirus transmission.  I've always been proud to be an American, regardless of our faults, but seeing that article, I may have to move. 

 

The only saving grace is that only 502 people took the survey.  I just need to figure out how 196 people (39%) that are obviously too stupid to live managed to turn on a computer, connect to the internet & fill out a survey. Oh, wait, facebook, that's how.

[kerbiloid]

Think positive. Next month some company will start producing an edible "Organic Food Bleach" made of natural components.

Edited June 6, 2020 by kerbiloid

[farmerben]

8 hours ago, Cavscout74 said:

I just saw a news headline saying 40% of Americans surveyed by the CDC tried to use bleach to disinfect their food to prevent Coronavirus transmission.  I've always been proud to be an American, regardless of our faults, but seeing that article, I may have to move. 

 

The only saving grace is that only 502 people took the survey.  I just need to figure out how 196 people (39%) that are obviously too stupid to live managed to turn on a computer, connect to the internet & fill out a survey. Oh, wait, facebook, that's how.

Using bleach to disinfect drinking water is actually a thing.  Here are instruction from the US EPA

https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-drinking-water/emergency-disinfection-drinking-water

[kerbiloid]

11 minutes ago, farmerben said:

Using bleach to disinfect drinking water is actually a thing.  Here are instruction from the US EPA

https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-drinking-water/emergency-disinfection-drinking-water

This makes to recall Gen. Ripper.

Spoiler

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

Edited June 6, 2020 by kerbiloid

[magnemoe]

15 hours ago, Cavscout74 said:

I just saw a news headline saying 40% of Americans surveyed by the CDC tried to use bleach to disinfect their food to prevent Coronavirus transmission.  I've always been proud to be an American, regardless of our faults, but seeing that article, I may have to move. 

The only saving grace is that only 502 people took the survey.  I just need to figure out how 196 people (39%) that are obviously too stupid to live managed to turn on a computer, connect to the internet & fill out a survey. Oh, wait, facebook, that's how.

Lots of stupid surveys, also lots of people like to troll them. This even extend to censuses who is way more serious as it can be illegal to post fake information unlike official polls and news paper polls tend to be click bait material. 
How weird well the first census in Russia, Hobbits was an minority ethnic group edible for dedicated schools and probably other stuff. In Australia Jedi came up in the top 10 perhaps 5 in an census.

How less serious will an newspaper poll asking an idiot question been taken, how many would troll them, more an facebook poll offering an reward. And again its click bait material and you can make it so you want to troll it. 
Obviously people making the polls never agree its any significant error margins, remember polls at the railway who was kind of 10 pages of boring questions you wanted to finish as you could win an price but at the end you just tagged randomly especially it it was close to your exit. 

This is bit of an pet hot take for me as I seen its abused so much an generation ago and in an click bait world its just worse. 

Edited June 6, 2020 by magnemoe

[mikegarrison]

6 hours ago, farmerben said:

Using bleach to disinfect drinking water is actually a thing.  Here are instruction from the US EPA

https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-drinking-water/emergency-disinfection-drinking-water

Yes, but it's tricky. Easy to add too much or too little, or to not wait long enough before drinking. Iodine is bit easier, but it flavors the water more.

A strong bleach solution is good for cleaning out water bottles.

[Cavscout74]

6 hours ago, farmerben said:

Using bleach to disinfect drinking water is actually a thing.  Here are instruction from the US EPA

https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-drinking-water/emergency-disinfection-drinking-water

True, but its only a few drops per gallon, not covering your food with it.  The article indicated at least some of these idiots made themselves sick trying to keep from getting sick.

Actually, it reminds of me a little of one little chapter of Stephen King's The Stand - after the epidemic, there was a mini "epidemic" that killed off survivors of the superflu who were incapable of surviving on their own. 

[DDE]

23 hours ago, magnemoe said:

In Australia Jedi came up in the top 10 perhaps 5 in an census.

Now why did you have to read my mind about the example I was going to make?

23 hours ago, magnemoe said:

How weird well the first census in Russia, Hobbits was an minority ethnic group edible for dedicated schools and probably other stuff.

Their numbers dropped sharply between 2000 and 2010. On the flipside, Moscow too has 64 Jedi. Entire star systems were 'liberated' with less.

 

...oh, gee, we have a census planned this year. This is going to be interesting.

[magnemoe]

On 6/6/2020 at 8:08 PM, Cavscout74 said:

True, but its only a few drops per gallon, not covering your food with it.  The article indicated at least some of these idiots made themselves sick trying to keep from getting sick.

Actually, it reminds of me a little of one little chapter of Stephen King's The Stand - after the epidemic, there was a mini "epidemic" that killed off survivors of the superflu who were incapable of surviving on their own. 

Saw an shot of some spraying an motorcyle and driver with some alcohol based based solution like the hand sanitizer in an Asian city making an fireball. Luckily the driver wore lots of clothing so don't think he was hurt. 

[StrandedonEarth]

On 6/6/2020 at 10:34 AM, magnemoe said:

In Australia Jedi came up in the top 10 perhaps 5 in an census.

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/american-jedi-documentary_n_5a355dfae4b01d429cc943c2?ri18n=true

People trying to follow the Jedi way is (or at least was) a real thing...

Back on topic, um.... nope, nothing new to report.

[EchoLima]

I wonder how a sudden surge of mass gatherings across the world will affect coronavirus containment...

Not that I'm against them, but the consequences can't be ignored.

[mikegarrison]

10 minutes ago, EchoLima said:

I wonder how a sudden surge of mass gatherings across the world will affect coronavirus containment...

Not that I'm against them, but the consequences can't be ignored.

In my area, some public health officials came out and defended the protests, saying that it was one public health issue versus another one.

[kerbiloid]

They said nonsense, as this is "one issue vs multiple ones", and the one has already happened, while others could be prevented.

Edited June 8, 2020 by kerbiloid

[AloE]

[snip] & relative to even the basics looked at in the undergrad program in HumBio core (Stanford) 'way back' in the 1990's, my take is that we are 'fortunate' that SARS-2 is 'relatively modest' so far relative to what can happen even just considering the initial SARS or MERS or influenza strains (e.g. H5 & H7 lines).  Airborne or surface transmissible viruses thrive with global travel between dense populations...unless we figure out reasonable ways that we as a global community choose to adopt for daily life & travel that mitigate common ways problematic viruses spread.   In consideration of Marc Lipsitch's 2014 points, my encouragement is to take moments of this time as an opportunity to be mindful about informing ourselves regarding types of research being done, what risks are involved, & which risks we each personally are willing to accept or not for both protection regarding 'natural viruses' as well as the rather serious 'strategic' implications if some group discovers an actual way to create a 'universal vaccine technology'...the image below links to the actual NYT article which should be freely accessible:

Edited June 12, 2020 by Vanamonde

[Vanamonde]

Please use this thread to share your experiences and commiserate. This is not a place to attack each other, put forth rumors or conspiracy theories, nor try to refute conspiracy theories, or debate the details of the scientific method. Those may all be valid things to discuss, but please do it somewhere other than our friendly little space game forum. 

[Guest]

On 6/11/2020 at 10:13 PM, AloE said:

[snip] & relative to even the basics looked at in the undergrad program in HumBio core (Stanford) 'way back' in the 1990's, my take is that we are 'fortunate' that SARS-2 is 'relatively modest' so far relative to what can happen even just considering the initial SARS or MERS or influenza strains (e.g. H5 & H7 lines).  

Actually, that it's "relatively modest" is the reason it spread so far, as opposed to petering out like SARS or MERS. There are many deadlier, just as virulent diseases out there, but they tend to be localized in their outbreaks. I would say, SARS-2 hit the "sweet spot" for societal disruption, being just deadly enough to cause serious concerns among the vulnerable groups, while not being so serious as to immediately disable the carriers, to the point of being asymptomatic in many cases. A deadlier disease would have a hard time becoming this nasty.

[AloE]

8 hours ago, Dragon01 said:

petering out like SARS or MERS

Indeed something "more scary in the minds of more people" might induce a more effective social response for containment & or even 'die out' more quickly.  Additionally worthy of note are a given virus' specifics of transmission...excerpts below suggest that at least MERS appears to have spread via close direct contact = repeated animal to human transmission...not via sustained human to human transmission....as more sequences become available I am interested in what (if any) signs/rates of recombination events are detected using just the normal drift mutations as markers... 

in any case, Kerbal is one way I remind myself that Earth & Kerbin are cool places in space that have many moments of beauty & fun even if Earth has some not so nice human infecting viruses ;-)

Spoiler

for example, having a virus that induces a similar level of symptom cluster to MERS but that acquires a prolonged airborne human to human transmission phase before people get too sick to move around may require a much more significant human intervention to prevent a 'deadlier' situation...and ''widespread transmission' & 'deadlier' unfortunately can occur with some types of viruses (at least if we are not prepared) as was encountered with influenza around 1918...(& smallpox was rather a big mess maker as well...)

excerpts from article at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9.pdf

"...if there had been many prior zoonotic events that produced short chains of human-to human transmission over an extended period. This is essentially the situation for MERS-CoV, for which all human cases are the result of repeated jumps of the virus from dromedary camels, producing single infections or short transmission chains that eventually resolve, with no adaptation to sustained transmission(25)"
...
"Six RBD amino acids have been shown to be critical for binding to ACE2 receptors and for determining the host range of SARS-CoV-like viruses(7).
Five of these six residues differ between SARSCoV-2 and SARS-CoV (Fig. 1a).
On the basis of structural studies(7–9) and biochemical experiments(1,9,10),
SARS-CoV-2 seems to have an RBD that binds with high affinity to
ACE2 from humans, ferrets, cats and other species with high receptor homology (7)"

Wuhan Institute of Virology et al made a relevant "human serology survey" recommendation back in 2017:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5708621/pdf/ppat.1006698.pdf

In addition, we have also revealed that various SARSr-CoVs capable of using human ACE2 are still circulating among bats in this region. Thus, the risk of spillover into people and emergence of a disease similar to SARS is possible. This is particularly important given that the nearest village to the bat cave we surveyed is only 1.1 km away, which indicates a potential risk of exposure to bats for the local residents. Thus, we propose that monitoring of
SARSr-CoV evolution at this and other sites should continue, as well as examination of human behavioral risk for infection and serological surveys of people, to determine if spillover is already occurring at these sites and to design intervention strategies to avoid future disease emergence.

 

 

Edited June 13, 2020 by AloE

[Guest]

Influenza of 1918 was a problem because we didn't yet have means of countering the ensuing cytokine storm. Any flu could, and often did, before vaccines and anti-cytokine medication, be a life threatening disease. The 1918 one was unique in that it came at the tail end of WWI, and had unprecedented opportunities to spread, because people at the time didn't travel nearly as much as we do now. It was worse than the other strains, in that it caused the cytokine reaction more reliably, but it would have never become global if it came at any other time. Had the vaccines did not come before mass air travel, we'd have had a lot more deadly pandemics.

MERS is only still extant because people can and do get it from camels. However, it'd rather unusual for a respiratory virus to be deadlier while having a significant incubation period. It's not just about being "more scary", but about reliably causing symptoms that would encourage (or even force) the infected to stay home.

[DDE]

When you trade scientific rigour for sheer chutzpah.

 

[Guest]

Well, I suppose that's good news in terms of side effects, at least. He'd have noticed if there were any showstopping ones. Of course, it remains to be seen whether it'll actually provide any sort of immunity. If it works, it'll be very good, if it doesn't, well, most vaccine candidates fail in the trials. At this point, even a crappy vaccine would greatly improve things. Even a month's worth of immunity would be a great boon to medical personnel. 

Edited June 21, 2020 by Guest

[DDE]

"Treatment effects"

[sevenperforce]

Lovely: