[QUOTE=ewmayer;540518]Burr wasn't the only SSCI member to sell stock this way ... and the 2013 loophole introduced via 10-second-floor-discussion amendment to the 2012 STOCK Act which allowed him to do so passed both houses of Congress by unanimous consent, and was signed into law by then-president Obama. Again, the scandal is what's legal, and the fact that it's only legal for the same clique of lawmakers who made it legal for themselves and their cronies.[/QUOTE]

Yes. :furious: Kick 'em all out!

I think what we have here is a dispute over meaning.

To me, "elements of truth" are [i]factual[/i] occurrences whose explanations are being sought.

In the 9-11 attacks, for example, the collapse of the twin towers is a fact. I have indicated [i]subsequent interpretations[/i] of that fact, and other non-elements or non-facts in red.

[quote=ewmayer;54057]9/11: [color=red]Extremely symmetric, near-simultaneous[/color] stack-of-pancakes-collapse of both main towers [color=red]which a professional demolition team would have been hard-pressed to match[/color], while some nearby buildings were '[color=red]suspiciously[/color]' unscathed. ([b][color=red]Alleged[/color][/b]) lack of impacting-plane debris at the Pentagon. [color=red]Bush administration seeking a ready pretext for its War on Terr[or|a][/color], with Orwellian mass domestic surveillance a bonus.

JFK: Zapruder film [color=red]seems to indicate[/color] some weird physical reactions to a bullet coming from the direction of the book depository Oswald used. Kennedy had [color=red]allegedly[/color] been mulling a major drawdown of the Vietnam war effort, thus the DoD warheads and MIC profiteers had him taken out.[/quote]

Call me willfully obtuse, but I don't recognize things "alleged" or that are subsequently characterized by "seems to" as "elements." I also don't recognize post hoc, ad hoc [i]interpretations[/i] as either "elements" [i]or[/i] "truth." Especially when they willfully ignore [i]other[/i] facts, like the planes crashing into the towers.

(Mis)interpretation is also key to some "evidence" that the Apollo landings were studio fakes. The photographs of the astronauts on the lunar surface show a perfectly black sky. The "landings were faked" crowd howls, [i]Where are the stars?[/i] As anyone who ever worked with photographic film could tell you, the absence of stars from the images is an artifact of how photographic film works (or "worked," since the stuff is now considered obsolete). If it had been exposed enough to show the stars, everything on the lunar surface would have been overexposed to "polar bear eating a marshmallow in a snowstorm" white.

So accepting the absence of stars as "evidence of fakery" depends on [i]ignorance[/i] of facts.

Perhaps "elements of truthiness" would be more apt here.

I'm trying an experiment. I happened to have a large, wide-mouthed plastic container I'd used, washed, and, for reasons that were not clear to myself at the time, refrained from recycling.

I suddenly thought of a possible use: Do-it-yourself hand wipes!

I cut up some paper towels, put the pieces in the jar, and poured in a small amount of my precious store of rubbing alcohol.

The critical thing is to avoid evaporation loss. I put a folded piece of plastic wrap over the top, and screwed on the lid.

So far, not even the faintest smell of rubbing alcohol.

[QUOTE=kladner;540565]Thanks for the link.

I suspect that the higher NY numbers are, in part, from having large high-density and population centers, as well as better testing capabilities. At this point the latter has to be dominant, though just having more subjects to test is bound to run up the numbers when so little is known.

My partner is able to work from home, as are the rest of his working group. He started this past week.

My job is necessarily on-site. I did not go to work in that period either. On Weds, it was an offer to take the night off from the manager I was going to be working with. Things at the Center on Halsted were already seriously curtailed, so there was not much to do except to keep the homeless youth and young adult homeless patrons from hiding out in stairwells and restrooms. This sounds harsh, but we can't fix the general tragedy, and can't have people inhabiting internal fire escape stairs and the garage.

The Center is now officially shut down, though we still have to have someone there to control the lobby, which we share with our Whole Foods tenant. Staff has been told that if we are not working we will be paid what we would have made until the end of March. After that, we can use up accumulated personal, sick, and vacation time. Then we can file for unemployment. We have been given detailed instructions on the last procedure. I have accumulated hours to get me past the middle of April.

At 67 years old, I guess I should be glad to shelter at home, even if work was available. The Center has way over a thousand people pass through the lobby every day. Must state that many are on their way through the lobby to get to WFMarket. The point is that there a very many to cough and sneeze in the course of the day. It is good not to be in the line of fire.[/QUOTE]


Sorry to hear how your employer handles the crisis. The middle of april does not sound realistic with regard to the climax of the crisis, I fear. At 67, are you thinking about retirement?


My case is different, I can do home office and there is no sign yet that my salary could not come anymore.


Good luck to you!

[QUOTE=CRGreathouse;540575]NY has the best testing in the US. But NY also has two of the hardest-hit places in the nation -- NYC and Westchester.[/QUOTE]

Correct me if I'm wrong on this, but wasn't NYC slow to shut down various key sectors of its tourism/social-scene industry, like Broadway? It's a tough choice - shut down a huge % of your economy or not. Can't have an economy without people, but can't continue to provide essential public services without the revenue from the economy.

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;540599]I suddenly thought of a possible use: Do-it-yourself hand wipes!

I cut up some paper towels, put the pieces in the jar, and poured in a small amount of my precious store of rubbing alcohol.[/QUOTE]
Shouldn't you be savings those precious [strike]bodily fluids[/strike] ounces of rubbing alcohol for making up your next batch of Ernst's patented Miracl-Nuke Nasal Spray™?

[QUOTE=ewmayer;540638]but can't continue to provide essential public services without the revenue from the economy.[/QUOTE]You can do what some municipalities do, issue "Revenue Anticipation" bonds. The rates might not be great and the pay off period will be stretched out more than normal. They are commonly used because income and expenses don't sync during the year.

[QUOTE=Till;540625]Sorry to hear how your employer handles the crisis. The middle of april does not sound realistic with regard to the climax of the crisis, I fear. At 67, are you thinking about retirement?

My case is different, I can do home office and there is no sign yet that my salary could not come anymore.

Good luck to you![/QUOTE]
I hope for more developments on unemployment insurance, though the Beast in Washington, DC does not have real concern for working people.

I'm not sure what my employer could have done differently. Illinois has gone to "shelter in place" and unnecessary travel and group association are strongly discouraged. A community social services agency can't do much except over the phone. The middle of April is when I will have to change over to Unemployment.

I have not been intending to retire as my job is important to me in serving the LGBTQI community.

Thanks for the kind thoughts. I wish the best for you and everyone.

[QUOTE=Uncwilly;540640]You can do what some municipalities do, issue "Revenue Anticipation" bonds. The rates might not be great and the pay off period will be stretched out more than normal. They are commonly used because income and expenses don't sync during the year.[/QUOTE]

Good point - and in a crisis as at present the federal government can backstop such bond issuance since, unlike states and municipalities, it has the power to create money as needed for such purposes. The Fed (as in Federal Reserve, a.k.a. "the crooked financier's best friend") [url=https://mersenneforum.org/showpost.php?p=540644&postcount=40]is already doing it for the overleveraged-institutional-speculator class[/url] - like I keep asking in their general direction, "where's our bailout, assholes?"

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;540563][URL="https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/03/21/exclusive-rich-russians-are-hoarding-ventilators-to-protect-themselves-against-the-coronavirus-a69703"][B]Exclusive: Rich Russians Are Hoarding Ventilators to Protect Themselves Against the Coronavirus[/B]
Meanwhile, doctors worry that Russia’s regions don’t have enough.[/URL][/QUOTE]No problem; Ford, GM, Tesla et al will be happy to sell them as many as they'd like, [B]eventually[/B].

[QUOTE=ewmayer;540570]9/11: Extremely symmetric, near-simultaneous stack-of-pancakes-collapse of both main towers which a professional demolition team would have been hard-pressed to match, while some nearby buildings were 'suspiciously' unscathed. (Alleged) lack of impacting-plane debris at the Pentagon.[/QUOTE]
Buildings are by design "statically indeterminate" structures. Many members carry the gravity load, wind load, live load, etc, in parallel. You can within limits sever a member and the structure still stands. What you can't do is heat all the structural steel or a large proportion of it to glowing red. The metal doesn't have to melt to become weaker than its share of the load.
Some things are quite unintuitive, and being able to take hold of a compressively loaded steel i beam and move its middle by inches with little effort of one hand is one of them. And that's a memory of an engineering mechanics lab from the 1970s, at room temperature.
The planes went into the towers at altitude, but with many stories above where they splashed their full fuel load. The fires had lots of time to heat and soften the structural elements of the towers. Likely the center area of the floors with fires were the hottest. Those columns would buckle first. When they buckle, they are subtracted from the columns holding the rest of the building above against gravity. The flooring acts like a membrane, pulling on them laterally. Eventually the loss of too many columns to buckling and the inward tug from the center subsiding sets off failure in the outer columns too, and down it all starts to go. After that, every floor below gets hit with a progressively bigger hammer dropped a full floor.
As to why it essentially all ended up in the building footprint, the membrane action of the flooring helps explain that, and the gravity vector is the definition of down. One might better ask, where's the driving force and energy to come from to send it OFF the foundation, either laterally, or radially outward? Second order effects, such as debris collision, wind, and the outrush of air between floors as the collapsing floor descends toward the next.
After a jet fuel fire of some length, I would not expect to find much aluminum. Given enough ventilation and heat, metals like steel and aluminum burn quite well. See [URL]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermite[/URL]
There is photographic confirmation of wall column buckling. [URL]https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2056088/Footage-kills-conspiracy-theories-Rare-footage-shows-WTC-7-consumed-fire.html[/URL]

The towers' collapses were far from simultaneous. After one collapsed, news crews had time to get on site and commence broadcasting live, well before the second tower went.

[QUOTE=CRGreathouse;540574]The problem with test kits was that the CDC messed up the first generation and prohibited state labs (and others) from using theirs. There's no lack of reagents anywhere I know of[/QUOTE]There is projected to be a shortage of reagents once the other more limiting constraints are addressed. Maybe the breweries can help.[QUOTE]
There's no national stockpile of toilet paper; you'll just have to wait for this one to wend its way through the supply chain. The experts I've heard say we'll be swimming in it soon as orders have all gone through and people won't buy once they've stockpiled. :lol:[/QUOTE]The raw material is stockpiled all over. We call them forests and tree farms. This will be good for what's left of Wisconsin's paper mills. [url]http://www.paperstudies.org/millsonline/wisconsin.php[/url]

[URL="https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest"]FT analysis[/URL] now outside the paywall.

US seems to be running at a significantly higher rate than most other places which are showing ~33% increase per diem.

[QUOTE=xilman;540690][URL="https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest"]FT analysis[/URL] now outside the paywall.

US seems to be running at a significantly higher rate than most other places which are showing ~33% increase per diem.[/QUOTE]

Hard to say what fraction of the US case count increase is due to underlying spread and what is due to the much-belated ramping-up of testing. We can only hope the latter is a major component...

More on my earlier Q re. NYC - of course there's also stuff like this:

[url=https://nypost.com/2020/03/19/cuomo-panel-recommends-400m-in-hospital-cuts-as-coronavirus-pandemic-rages/]Cuomo panel recommends $400M in hospital cuts as coronavirus pandemic rages[/url] | New York Post
[quote]A panel appointed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo backed a plan that would slash Medicaid spending to New York’s hospitals by almost $400 million as the facilities scramble to address the coronavirus epidemic. The Medicaid Redesign Team overwhelmingly backed the slate of proposals at its Thursday meeting, which aim to slash spending on NYC Health & Hospitals — the Big Apple’s public hospital system — by $186 million in the fiscal year beginning April 1. The vote was unanimous with three abstentions. It will be forwarded to state lawmakers and Cuomo for consideration. The governor’s budget director, Robert Mujica, told the commission beforehand that implementation of some of the proposed cuts could be delayed thanks to federal aid for coronavirus. These are the latest in a two-decade-long pattern of budget cuts and insurance overhauls that played a key role in the Empire State [url=https://nypost.com/2020/03/17/new-york-has-thrown-away-20000-hospital-beds-complicating-coronavirus-fight/]losing 20,000 now-badly needed hospital beds to fight the coronavirus[/url].[/quote]

Coronavirus research
 

[URL]https://www.globalresearch.ca/china-coronavirus-shocking-update/5705196[/URL]
[QUOTE]The Western media quickly took the stage and laid out the official narrative for the outbreak of the new coronavirus which appeared to have begun in China, claiming it to have originated with animals at a wet market in Wuhan.
In fact the origin was for a long time unknown but it appears likely now, according to Chinese and Japanese reports, that the virus originated elsewhere, from multiple locations, but began to spread widely only after being introduced to the market.
More to the point, it appears that the virus did not originate in China and, according to reports in Japanese and other media, may have originated in the US.
[/QUOTE][QUOTE]In February of 2020, the Japanese[B] Asahi news report[/B] (print and TV)[B][URL="http://en.people.cn/n3/2020/0223/c90000-9661026.html"] claimed the coronavirus originated in the US, not in China[/URL], [/B]and that some (or many) of the 14,000 American deaths attributed to influenza may have in fact have resulted from the coronavirus. [/QUOTE]Then there is a follow-on piece : (my emphasis)
[URL]https://www.globalresearch.ca/covid-19-further-evidence-virus-originated-us/5706078[/URL]
[QUOTE]As readers will recall from the earlier article (above), Japanese and Taiwanese epidemiologists and pharmacologists have determined that [U]the new coronavirus could have originated in the US since that country is the only one known to have all five types – from which all others must have descended[/U]. Wuhan in China has only one of those types, rendering it in analogy as a kind of “branch” which cannot exist by itself but must have grown from a “tree”.

The Taiwanese physician noted that in August of 2019 the US had a [U]flurry of lung pneumonias or similar, which the Americans blamed on ‘vaping’ from e-cigarettes[/U], but which, according to the scientist, the symptoms and conditions could not be explained by e-cigarettes. He said he wrote to the US officials telling them he suspected those deaths were likely due to the coronavirus. He claims his warnings were ignored.

Immediately prior to that, the CDC totally [U]shut down the US Military’s main bio-lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland, due to an absence of safeguards against pathogen leakages, issuing a complete “cease and desist” order to the military.[/U] It was immediately after this event that the ‘e-cigarette’ epidemic arose.
[/QUOTE]Of course, every country wants to point fingers elsewhere. For the US, it might be said that the chickens of denial are coming home to roost. The numbers of infected and the scientific evidence are both piling up. I also think there are a lot more 'chickens' still in transit to these shores.

Tonight's numbers:

Globally:
cases 378601, deaths 16505, recovered 100982
CFR1 = 16505/ (16505 + 100982) = 0.1405 = 14.05%
CFR2 = 16505 / 378601 = 0.0436 = 4.36%

US:
cases 43901, 522 deaths, recovered not given
CFR1 = ?
CFR2 = 522/43901 = 0.01189 = 1.19%
[url]https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6[/url]

[url]https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/[/url]
world 378842 cases, 16510 deaths, 102064 recovered
USA: 43734 cases, 553 deaths, 295 recovered; 42886 active cases of which 1040 are serious or critical

[QUOTE=kladner;540713][URL]https://www.globalresearch.ca/china-coronavirus-shocking-update/5705196[/URL]
Then there is a follow-on piece : (my emphasis)
[URL]https://www.globalresearch.ca/covid-19-further-evidence-virus-originated-us/5706078[/URL]
Of course, every country wants to point fingers elsewhere. For the US, it might be said that the chickens of denial are coming home to roost. The numbers of infected and the scientific evidence are both piling up. I also think there are a lot more 'chickens' still in transit to these shores.[/QUOTE]
The demographics of vaping cases don't fit the demographics of COVID19. Male/female yes, but not age distribution. [URL]https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/health/vaping-illness-tracker.html[/URL]
Also, we're supposed to believe as part of this conspiracy theory that thousands of cases occurred all across the US and all the medical staff including coroners either missed the pathogen or were part of the conspiracy, for several months. It took the Chinese about a month to identify the issue and draw the adverse attention of law enforcement.
It would require further that all the medical staff and government officials went along with not preparing for an increase in COVID19 cases, for several months.
Now compare that to the FACT that the Wuhan BSL4 lab published, in Nature, the successful genetic engineering of a bat coronavirus with the ability to infect cells of the HeLa human cell line,by combining it with some SARS genetic material, in 2015. [URL]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology#Coronavirus_research[/URL] "even before the outbreak of the pandemic, some virologists questioned whether previous experiments on creating novel coronaviruses in the lab justified the potential risk of accidental release."

I suppose someone could test the theory by exhuming some bodies and looking for traces of COVID19 RNA in vaping fatalities prior to mid December.
Blaming all of vaping's deaths on COVID19 originating in the US is a hard sale to make. Some of the deaths are from e-cigarette EXPLOSIONS. [URL]https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/08/23/vaping-death-illinois-man-who-recently-used-e-cigarette-dies/2096212001/[/URL]

[QUOTE=kladner;540713][QUOTE]As readers will recall from the earlier article (above), Japanese and Taiwanese epidemiologists and pharmacologists have determined that the new coronavirus could have originated in the US since that country is the only one known to have all five types – from which all others must have descended. Wuhan in China has only one of those types, rendering it in analogy as a kind of “branch” which cannot exist by itself but must have grown from a “tree”.[/QUOTE][/QUOTE]Welllll, doesn't the USofA have many people of many different nationalities that live there and travel "home". Also, doesn't the USofA have people traveling all over the place? So, sure it may have all strains. But, wouldn't you expect it to for the reasons above?

E-cigarettes were invented in China. [URL]https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/electronic-cigarettes-reports-commissioned-by-phe[/URL]
[URL]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_cigarette#History[/URL]
It would not surprise me if many were still made there.

Just putting stuff out there. Thanks for the links and responses. I will look at the links.

[QUOTE=xilman;540690][URL="https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest"]FT analysis[/URL] now outside the paywall.

US seems to be running at a significantly higher rate than most other places which are showing ~33% increase per diem.[/QUOTE]Latest appears to show the US still out-performing much of the rest of the world but there is some indication that the growth rate in the UK is leveling off.

Still far too soon to be confident that this is not just an artifact of differing testing regimes.

[quote=kladner;540641][quote]As readers will recall from the earlier article (above), Japanese and Taiwanese epidemiologists and pharmacologists have determined that the new coronavirus could have originated in the US since that country is the only one known to have all five types – from which all others must have descended.[/quote][/quote]
"Could have" originated in the US? Oh, please.

If the novel Coronavirus [i]had[/i] originated in the US, it would surely have broken out in the US first. It didn't.

The pneumonia associated with E-cigarettes has not, AFAIK, shown any sign of being contagious. Also, patients were tested to rule out infection as a cause.

[url=https://apnews.com/fc044c3fa987a60534a804046215f3de]Tokyo Olympics postponed to 2021[/url][quote]TOKYO (AP) — The IOC announced a first-of-its-kind postponement of the Summer Olympics on Tuesday, bowing to the realities of a coronavirus pandemic that is shutting down daily life around the globe and making planning for a massive worldwide gathering in July a virtual impossibility.

The International Olympic Committee said the Tokyo Games "must be rescheduled to a date beyond 2020, but not later than summer 2021, to safeguard the health of the athletes, everybody involved in the Olympic Games and the international community."

It was an announcement seen as all but a certainty as pressure mounted from nervous athletes, sports organizations and national Olympic committees — all forced to deal with training and qualifying schedules, to say nothing of international anti-doping protocols, that have been ruptured beyond repair.[/quote]

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;540762]"Could have" originated in the US? Oh, please.

If the novel Coronavirus [i]had[/i] originated in the US, it would surely have broken out in the US first. It didn't.[/QUOTE]Not if delivered to the intended target with due care.

[QUOTE=xilman;540761]Latest appears to show the US still out-performing much of the rest of the world but there is some indication that the growth rate in the UK is leveling off.

Still far too soon to be confident that this is not just an artifact of differing testing regimes.[/QUOTE]


The UK hit a new death record today, 87 so far.
[url]https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries[/url]


IMHO, death vs. confirmed cases rate suggests that there is too little testing in the UK.


But here in Germany the testing rate is too low as well; without evidence of havin gone to a "high risk area" recently, you hardly get a test. So the approach of following infection chains seems to have been abandoned.

An important message from the Prime Minister
 

I received this earlier today.

The forum doesn't allow MP4 video attachments so you will need to download it and change the extension form .zip to .mp4

Well said. Only problem being that he needed several weeks to take the situation seriously.

Spotted on the Interwebs today:
[quote]Apparently, there was still Covid-19 virus on surfaces in Diamond Princess cabins at 17 days after disembarkation: [url]https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/cruises/2020/03/24/coronavirus-diamond-princess-cabin-surfaces-contaminated-cdc-report/2905924001/[/url]

Take interior disinfection very seriously, especially hard surfaces like plastics, metals, and finished woods. Porous organic materials (paper, cardboard, unfinished wood, cotton) are more likely to interact with the virus components and break them down sooner, but tests indicated it could still be present on cardboard up to 24 hrs. UV radiation exposure outside is a pretty good disinfectant.[/quote]
“UV radiation exposure outside is a pretty good disinfectant” — but leaving stuff in sun for 2 days not exactly a good option for most things. I’m thinking maybe a quick blast of hot air from a heat gun, hot enough to get surface temp above ~200F but not long enough to damage the items. Even plastic and electronics (turn off first just to be safe) should be OK with a quick superficial heating.

[QUOTE=xilman;540764]Not if delivered to the intended target with due care.[/QUOTE]
Intended target?

[QUOTE=ewmayer;540797]I’m thinking maybe a quick blast of hot air from a heat gun, hot enough to get surface temp above ~200F but not long enough to damage the items. Even plastic and electronics (turn off first just to be safe) should be OK with a quick superficial heating.[/QUOTE]People in a different forum that I haunt were worried about mail. My first post was that it was several days old, thus had time for the nasties to die. After people kept worrying, I suggested putting it in a covered dish with a ramekin of water in an oven at about 120C for an hour, then turning the oven off and removing the lid for a few minutes (leaving it cool off in the oven). It is not an autoclave, but will do in most little nasties.

Another issue is how to get any nasties out of one's clothes - As with hand-washing, the main antiviral property of any kind of laundry soap likely lies in it lifting contaminants off the item being washed and allowing them to be washed away. But of course fabrics have a huge amount of surface area, nooks and crannies on those fibers. So “heat is your friend”, and the dryer has both that and, uh, dryness – from a [url=https://www.treehugger.com/cleaning-organizing/laundry-time-covid-19.html]Treehugger article[/url] about this:

“When using a communal washer and dryer, wash at the warmest water setting that your clothes can handle and dry for at least 45 minutes.”

----------------------

[url=https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/what-the-government-needs-to-do-next] What the Government Needs to Do Next to Tackle the Crisis[/url] | James K. Galbraith, Institute of New Economic Thinking -- The son of famous economist/historian John K. Galbraith

[QUOTE=Uncwilly;540801]People in a different forum that I haunt were worried about mail. My first post was that it was several days old, thus had time for the nasties to die. After people kept worrying, I suggested putting it in a covered dish with a ramekin of water in an oven at about 120C for an hour, then turning the oven off and removing the lid for a few minutes (leaving it cool off in the oven). It is not an autoclave, but will do in most little nasties.[/QUOTE]Paper will act like cardboard; virus life ~ a day. You might point out to them that stress is bad for them. The real germophobes could invest in a lab bench with copper work surface and exhaust hood, using a letter opener, gloves, lab apron, and goggles. Then shower afterward and burn the clothes they wore, after handling them like hazardous waste.

Tonight's numbers:
global:
cases 417966, deaths 28615, recovered 107705
CFR1 = 18615/(18615+107705) = 0.1474 = 14.74%
CFR2 = 18615/417966 = 0.0445 = 4.45%

USA:
cases 53740, deaths 686, recovered 348
CFR1 = 686 / (686 + 348) = 0.663 = 66.3%
CFR2 = 686 / 53740 = 0.0128 = 1.28%
[URL]https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6[/URL]

[URL]https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/[/URL]
global: 422566 cases, 18887 deaths, 108388 recovered
USA: 54808 cases, 775 deaths, 378 recovered; active cases 53655, of which 1175 are serious or critical

[QUOTE=Uncwilly;540801]People in a different forum that I haunt were worried about mail. My first post was that it was several days old, thus had time for the nasties to die. After people kept worrying, I suggested putting it in a covered dish with a ramekin of water in an oven at about 120C for an hour, then turning the oven off and removing the lid for a few minutes (leaving it cool off in the oven). It is not an autoclave, but will do in most little nasties.[/QUOTE]If only the old CRT TV sets and monitors were still around! You could just swipe the envelopes across the screen. Anybody who ever swiped their hand across a CRT screen would remember the crackling of static, and the unforgettable smell it left on your hand. Ozone!

Maybe if you have have a blacklight handy...

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;540818]Maybe if you have have a blacklight handy...[/QUOTE]
Most consumer ones are not the right spectrum nor strong enough. When I used to run coliform tests we had a UV sterilizer (for the funnels). It had an interlock so that it would not run when open. You didn't want that in your eyes or on your skin.

AI and their personal-assistants have been here for some time now. Much less complex (they don't necessarily have to have voice/image recognition) robotics are later to arrive than most would have expected, unfortunately. It could have been of great value right now. Where are the Boston-Dynamics products when you need them?

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;540762]"Could have" originated in the US? Oh, please.

If the novel Coronavirus [I]had[/I] originated in the US, it would surely have broken out in the US first. It didn't.

The pneumonia associated with E-cigarettes has not, AFAIK, shown any sign of being contagious. Also, patients were tested to rule out infection as a cause.[/QUOTE]
Did you bother to read, or are your prejudices* in full control?
*pre-judgements

Unc Willie's remarks were far more to the point.
[QUOTE]Welllll, doesn't the USofA have many people of many different nationalities that live there and travel "home". Also, doesn't the USofA have people traveling all over the place? [/QUOTE]Don't other G-whatever countries have high levels of globe-trotting? Japan's Patients 0 are currently identified as being infected in Hawaii. This conclusion can certainly change, but Japan is far ahead of the US in testing for and controlling the outbreak. Their data is more comprehensive for their own citizens, at least. However, they are also comparing to available world date.

It will be interesting to see if more than one strain shows up in other countries. However, the point of the article and the research is that all strains are found in the US. Are we to suppose that there were contemporaneous outbreaks of different strains, in different countries, which over time all got transported to the US? If that were the case there should be multiple strains in other countries, given the similar time frames.

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;540798]Intended target?[/QUOTE]Think about it.

At present, certain types of shop are required to remain closed in Belgium to combat the virus but are allowed to open in the Netherlands.
In [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baarle-Nassau"]Baarle-Nassau[/URL] they have such a shop straddling the border.
So the staff have put up a tape down the middle of the store,

keeping one half closed and the other open.

[QUOTE=xilman;540831][quote=Dr Sardonicus;540798]Intended target?[/quote]Think about it.[/QUOTE]I did. And at this point, it's hard to think of anywhere that's [i]outside[/i] the "target area."

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;540842]I did. And at this point, it's hard to think of anywhere that's [i]outside[/i] the "target area."[/QUOTE]Sigh.

It could well have originated in a US bioweapons lab and then been delivered to, say, Wuhan.

If that is the case, and I do not believe that CT, the outbreak would NOT surely have broken out in the US first, again under the assumption that it had been delivered with due care.

One reason I do not believe that CT is that the US quite clearly does not have the capability of keeping friendly fire casualties to an acceptable limit.

[QUOTE=xilman;540847]<snip>
One reason I do not believe that CT is that the US quite clearly does not have the capability of keeping friendly fire casualties to an acceptable limit.[/QUOTE]Precisely! That absolutely blows any idea of the virus being "targeted" by the US clean out the back door.

I further note that Iran has [i]also[/i] officially speculated that [i]they[/i] were the "target."

Oh, I know. There is [i]one[/i] country that claims it has [i]no[/i] cases of COVID-19 -- DPRK. And they are known to have an extensive bioweapons program. Then too, a lot of people have looked with wonder at the small number of cases reported by Russia...

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;540849]I further note that Iran has [I]also[/I] officially speculated that [I]they[/I] were the "target."

Oh, I know. There is [I]one[/I] country that claims it has [I]no[/I] cases of COVID-19 -- DPRK. And they are known to have an extensive bioweapons program. Then too, a lot of people have looked with wonder at the small number of cases reported by Russia...[/QUOTE]Nations have been subjected to "shock and awe" level ordnance expenditures for less than what is the likely outcome of this occurrence. Not a recommendation, just an observation.

[QUOTE=kladner;540825]Did you bother to read, or are your prejudices* in full control?
*pre-judgements[/QUOTE]
According to some of those reports, "some or many" of the 14,000 deaths in the US attributed to seasonal flu were actually from COVID-19.

If [i]that[/i] were true, it would mean that the virus had been running untrammeled through the US population for a good part of the flu season. In which case, it's a wonder that, at this point, there's anyone left to infect.

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;540818]If only the old CRT TV sets and monitors were still around! You could just swipe the envelopes across the screen. Anybody who ever swiped their hand across a CRT screen would remember the crackling of static, and the unforgettable smell it left on your hand. Ozone!

Maybe if you have have a blacklight handy...[/QUOTE]Re old CRT TVs, they ARE still around. Millions of digital converters were produced to keep them useful after the US changeover to digital broadcast. I have 3 CRT TVs and 2 converters here. They do take a bit of power.
Re UV light sources ("black light" in common parlance) ordinary compact fluorescents will leak a bit, and it will be a mix of mercury vapor lines. Older bulbs will leak more as the fluorescent coating wears. The 254nm line is close to the ~260nm absorption peak of DNA and presumably RNA. [URL]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury-vapor_lamp[/URL]. [URL="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=dna+uv+absorbance+spectrum&t=ffnt&iax=images&ia=images&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.researchgate.net%2Fprofile%2FChristophe_EKLOUH-MOLINIER%2Fpublication%2F281243983%2Ffigure%2Fdownload%2Ffig1%2FAS%3A284461615861766%401444832342919%2FUV-absorption-spectra-of-native-DNA-black-and-glycated-DNA-incubated-for-1-day-with-01.png"]https://duckduckgo.com/?q=dna+uv+absorbance+spectrum&t=ffnt&iax=images&ia=images&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.researchgate.net%2Fprofile%2FChristophe_EKLOUH-MOLINIER%2Fpublication%2F281243983%2Ffigure%2Fdownload%2Ffig1%2FAS%3A284461615861766%401444832342919%2FUV-absorption-spectra-of-native-DNA-black-and-glycated-DNA-incubated-for-1-day-with-01.png[/URL] LEDs have broader emission curves than vapor lamps, with the peak determined by the band-gap, which is in turn determined by the composition of the semiconductor. Band gap must increase with photon energy as wavelength reduces. (Other technologies such as frequency doublers following a visible light source are also possible.)

Many so-called UV Leds are purple at the dominant wavelength, with the short-wavelength tail falling in the UV, just as a lot of "infrared" LEDs such as used on consumer surveillance systems produce some visible red. Quite powerful LED arrays on ceramic substrates are available down to ~365nm dominant wavelength. Emission power declines drastically with wavelength. The wavelength limit is ~207nm for AlN LEDs. See s-et.com etc.
[URL]https://www.intl-lighttech.com/applications/uv-leds[/URL]
[URL="https://www.intl-lighttech.com/applications/uv-leds"]https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1707/1707.04223.pdf
[/URL]A good survey is at [URL]https://www.intechopen.com/books/light-emitting-diode-an-outlook-on-the-empirical-features-and-its-recent-technological-advancements/recent-progress-in-algan-deep-uv-leds[/URL]

Optical output power levels expressed in microwatts are common for short-UV sources.

Since UV and blue light can cause both corneal and retinal damage, anyone experimenting with UV or blue or purple light sources should wear protective eyewear. See cataracts, macular degeneration, and partial or complete blindness. Blue light hazard [URL]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-energy_visible_light#Blue-light_hazard[/URL]
There's also the prospect of "sunburned" hands, face, neck, etc. and possibly skin cancer. Melanoma can be deadly. [URL]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanoma[/URL]

An item of good news.
 

Applicable only to UK members, but perhaps other parts of the world may take note.

[URL="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52033260"]Off-licences are essential businesses[/URL] and may stay open for business if they wish.

The compound noun "off-licence" is a technical term meaning that the holder of that licence may sell booze but that consumption of the merchandise may take place only when the purchaser is off the premises of the licencee.

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;540852]According to some of those reports, "some or many" of the 14,000 deaths in the US attributed to seasonal flu were actually from COVID-19.

If [i]that[/i] were true, it would mean that the virus had been running untrammeled through the US population for a good part of the flu season. In which case, it's a wonder that, at this point, there's anyone left to infect.[/QUOTE]

Unless an earlier strain of the virus mutated into a much more virulent and infectious form in the past several months, that seems unlikely - I mean NYC cases have been doubling [b]every 3 days[/b].

But maybe the CDC should exhume some of those earlier flu-or-not victims and look for viral RNA.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;540874]... NYC cases have been doubling [b]every 3 days[/b].[/QUOTE]At the very least, all that is known, is that the number of people [b]identified[/b] has doubled each 3 days. But that probably has very little relation with the number of people that have contracted the virus.

According to the Beeb

[I]Jodie Whittaker, who plays Doctor Who, has posted a reassuring message for fans who are currently in lockdown around the world.

The Doctor prescribes telling bad jokes, being kind, listening to science and staying positive.[/I]

I am very strongly in favour of the first of those recommendations and support the other three.

My feeble attempt at the first is to point out that, even today, life expectation remains the same as it always has been. One each.

Perhaps inspiration will strike and I will be able to up my game.

UK appears to be following the Chinese trajectory.
Spain. France and US growth is still worryingly above the trend.
Italy appears to be levelling off.

[url]https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest[/url]

[QUOTE=retina;540875]At the very least, all that is known, is that the number of people [b]identified[/b] has doubled each 3 days. But that probably has very little relation with the number of people that have contracted the virus.[/QUOTE]

Yes, it's possibly partly due to ramped-up testing - but the [url=https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa/coronavirus-sweeps-across-new-york-california-fears-it-could-be-next-idUSKBN21B1EC]exploding need for hospital beds[/url] is telling a similar tale:

Getting back to the issue of the origins of the virus, we've heard way to much evidence-free speculating and conspiracy-theorizing of late. So how about some actual science?
[url=https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-origins-genome-analysis-suggests-two-viruses-may-have-combined-134059]Coronavirus origins: genome analysis suggests two viruses may have combined[/url] | The Conversation, March 18, 2020
[quote]In the space of a few weeks, we have all learned a lot about COVID-19 and the virus that causes it: SARS-CoV-2. But there have also been a lot of rumours.

And while the number of scientific articles on this virus is increasing, there are still many grey areas as to its origins.

In which animal species did it occur? A bat, a pangolin or another wild species? Where does it come from? From a cave or a forest in the Chinese province of Hubei, or elsewhere?

In December 2019, 27 of the first 41 people hospitalised (66 percent) passed through a market located in the heart of Wuhan city in Hubei province. But, according to a study conducted at Wuhan Hospital, the very first human case identified did not frequent this market.

Instead, a molecular dating estimate based on the SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequences indicates an origin in November. This raises questions about the link between this COVID-19 epidemic and wildlife.

[b]Genomic data[/b]

The SARS-CoV-2 genome was rapidly sequenced by Chinese researchers. It is an RNA molecule of about 30,000 bases containing 15 genes, including the S gene which codes for a protein located on the surface of the viral envelope (for comparison, our genome is in the form of a double helix of DNA about 3 billion bases in size and contains about 30,000 genes).

Comparative genomic analyses have shown that SARS-CoV-2 belongs to the group of Betacoronaviruses and that it is very close to SARS-CoV, responsible for an epidemic of acute pneumonia which appeared in November 2002 in the Chinese province of Guangdong and then spread to 29 countries in 2003.

A total of 8,098 cases were recorded, including 774 deaths. It is known that bats of the genus Rhinolophus (potentially several cave species) were the reservoir of this virus and that a small carnivore, the palm civet (Paguma larvata), may have served as an intermediate host between bats and the first human cases.

Since then, many Betacoronaviruses have been discovered, mainly in bats, but also in humans. For example, RaTG13, isolated from a bat of the species Rhinolophus affinis collected in China's Yunan Province, has recently been described as very similar to SARS-CoV-2, with genome sequences identical to 96 percent.

These results indicate that bats, and in particular species of the genus Rhinolophus, constitute the reservoir of the SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 viruses.
...
RaTG13, isolated from a bat of the species Rhinolophus affinis collected in China’s Yunan Province, has recently been described as very similar to SARS-CoV-2, with genome sequences identical to 96 percent.

However, the coronavirus isolated from pangolin is similar at 99 percent in a specific region of the S protein, which corresponds to the 74 amino acids involved in the ACE (Angiotensin Converting Enzyme 2) receptor binding domain, the one that allows the virus to enter human cells to infect them.

In addition, these genomic comparisons suggest that the SARS-Cov-2 virus is the result of a recombination between two different viruses, one close to RaTG13 and the other closer to the pangolin virus. In other words, it is a chimera between two pre-existing viruses.

This recombination mechanism had already been described in coronaviruses, in particular to explain the origin of SARS-CoV. It is important to know that recombination results in a new virus potentially capable of infecting a new host species.

For recombination to occur, the two divergent viruses must have infected the same organism simultaneously.

Two questions remain unanswered: in which organism did this recombination occur? (a bat, a pangolin or another species?) And above all, under what conditions did this recombination take place?[/quote]
The "another species" of the last sentence presumably includes the possibility of an exotic-species-eating or exoctic-species-catching-and-selling human.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;540878]Getting back to the issue of the origins of the virus, we've heard way to much evidence-free speculating and conspiracy-theorizing of late. So how about some actual science?
[URL="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-origins-genome-analysis-suggests-two-viruses-may-have-combined-134059"]Coronavirus origins: genome analysis suggests two viruses may have combined[/URL] | The Conversation, March 18, 2020

The "another species" of the last sentence presumably includes the possibility of an exotic-species-eating or exoctic-species-catching-and-selling human.[/QUOTE]Or lab work. [URL]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology#Coronavirus_research[/URL]
They published, in Nature, successfully genetically engineering a bat coronavirus to infect the HeLa human cell line in 2015.
Anyone care to pick an explanation for this? [URL]https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2020/03/24/21-million-chinese-cellphone-users-disappear-in-three-months-of-pandemic/[/URL]
Note also the extreme privacy issues with the phone tracking software required to do almost anything.

And on that FT link, NY state is shown to have just over HALF of the USA cases known.

a1call will be interested to hear this:

[url]https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00895-8[/url]
[quote]Hospitals in New York City are gearing up to use the blood of people who have recovered from COVID-19 as a possible antidote for the disease. Researchers hope that the century-old approach of infusing patients with the antibody-laden blood of those who have survived an infection will help the metropolis — now the US epicentre of the outbreak — to avoid the fate of Italy, where intensive-care units (ICUs) are so crowded that doctors have turned away patients who need ventilators to breathe…..As early as next week, at least two hospitals in New York City — Mount Sinai and Albert Einstein College of Medicine — hope to start using coronavirus-survivor plasma to treat people with the disease…[/quote]
Recalling our earlier subdiscussion (page 20 of the thread) re. passive immunity, in the context of the above, further thoughts. Recall one major issue with passive immunity is that the recipient of the antibodies (allegedly) does not develop immune-system memory of their own. But wait - that sounds like what happens when antibodies are given as a *preventive* measure. OTOH, using blood plasma (where the antibodies live) of recovered patients to help *sick* patients fight the virus while their own immune system ramps up antibody production could work - I just don't know how labor-intensive such treatment is, especially the antibody-extraction part. But might be something that could help the sickest patients.

[QUOTE=xilman;540876]Perhaps inspiration will strike and I will be able to up my game.[/QUOTE]Trump wants to open up the nation by Easter because he clearly observes Christian holidays. For example, he gave up your grandparents for Lent.

Not original, alas, but worth propagating.

UK readers might like to head over to [url]https://www.goodsamapp.org/[/url]

I signed up several hours ago.

Added in edit: might be appropriate elsewhere in the world. YMMV. HTH. HAND. TTFN.

[URL="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52029877"]Now over 500K registered[/URL]. Roughly 1% of the English population.

[QUOTE=xilman;540881]Trump wants to open up the nation by Easter because he clearly observes Christian holidays. For example, he gave up your grandparents for Lent.

Not original, alas, but worth propagating.[/QUOTE]

Easter is a Christian hijacking of much-older pagan Rites of Spring - just consider the definition - only the 'Sunday' part sounds non-pagan:

"...held (in the Western Church) between March 21 and April 25, on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the northern spring equinox."

[QUOTE=xilman;540882]UK readers might like to head over to [url]https://www.goodsamapp.org/[/url]

I signed up several hours ago.

Added in edit: might be appropriate elsewhere in the world. YMMV. HTH. HAND. TTFN.[/QUOTE]
There is this in the colonies:
[url]https://www.pulsepoint.org/[/url]

It also allows one to know about what is going on around them.

Thank you very much for the heads-up [B]ewmayer[/B].
I hope it all works out. According to the Chinese researchers the Plasma-Treatment approach does not always work and AFAIK so far they have not published any official papers on the subject.

o [url=https://www.fastcompany.com/90479846/the-untold-origin-story-of-the-n95-mask]The N95 mask: The untold origin story[/url] | Fast Company -- Really interesting history.

o [url=https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/24/massive-scandal-trump-fda-grants-drug-company-exclusive-claim-promising-coronavirus]'This Is a Massive Scandal': Trump FDA Grants Drug Company Exclusive Claim on Promising Coronavirus Drug[/url] | Common Dreams -- Hopefully bad publicity causes the Admin. to walk this one back. Sunlight is the best disinfectant!

Couple of more pennies:
In the hindsight, obviously humanity has been one step behind/too-late in containing this pandemic, moving to more and more extreme isolation measures such as closing boarders and banning travel only after significant local/within-boarders infections, thus rendering these measures ineffective. IMHO this might be a classic case of Garbage-in-Garbage-out based on the (perhaps) wrong assumption that asymptomatic-infected individuals are not major transmitters of this disease. There was a time not that long ago that health authorities would confidently/authoritatively state that asymptomatic individuals [B]could/would not[/B] infect others. As more and more community-spreading is observed in many locales some of these same health authorities would state that such transmission while possible is not considered to be a major method of transmission. I think that until such time that the health authorities realize that asymptomatic transmission is possibly very much one of the main modes of transmission, they are doomed to fail to reverse the existing quarantines if the asymptomatic-transmission-assumptions are false. Otherwise containing the outbreak would have been easily achieved by now.
As such the outbreak could easily be contained within any given area by moving pairs of boarders/limits/lines of impenetrable nature, along the said area. People could only pass from a hot-zone to the intermediate-zone if they are asymptomatic. People could only pass through the intermediate zone to the free-zone if they have stayed asymptomatic for long enough to have recovered from the disease if infected. The lines could be systemically moved to shrink the hot-zone/s to 0 span. The more number of intermediate zones, the more reliable such an approach will be.
Such an approach could eradicate Covid-19 in a matter of weeks rather than dragging it out for months.
IMHO:smile:

[QUOTE=a1call;540899]Couple of more pennies:
<snip>[/QUOTE]Have you heard of [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoid_Mary]Typhoid Mary[/url]?

Maybe this virus can remain contagious after someone has contracted it, displayed symptoms, and subsequently diagnosed as recovered. I don't know, does anyone know yet? Has such scenario been provably ruled out?

[QUOTE=retina;540901]Have you heard of [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoid_Mary]Typhoid Mary[/url]?

Maybe this virus can remain contagious after someone has contracted it, displayed symptoms, and subsequently diagnosed as recovered. I don't know, does anyone know yet? Has such scenario been provably ruled out?[/QUOTE]
Unless all people stay contagious indefinitely like Mary was the multiple intermediate zones between the hot-zone and the free-zone should work, again with better possibility of success with the greater number of intermediate zones.

OTH if (all) people stay contagious indefinitely, then there is not much that can be done. But I don't think that is a very likely scenario considering results from China and South-Korea.:smile:

Tonight's numbers
Globally (173 nations)
cases 470973, deaths 21276, recovered 114012
CFR1 = 21276 / (21276+114012) = 0.1573 = 15.73%
CFR2 = 21276 / 470973 = 0.0452 = 4.52%

US:
cases 68572, deaths 922, recovered 593
CFR1 = 922/ (922+593) = 0.6086 = 60.86%
CFR2 = 922 / 60572 = 0.0152 = 1.52%
[URL]https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6[/URL]

[URL]https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/[/URL]
globally, 471036 cases, 21283 deaths, 114218 recovered
USA: 68203 cases, 1027 deaths, 394 recovered, 66782 active cases of which 1452 are serious or critical; 206 cases/million pop, 3 deaths/million pop
US breakdown by state, territory, & DC [URL]https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/[/URL]
In Wisconsin, about 6% of >10,000 tests conducted were positive;
Washington state, >34,000 tests, 7% positive
California, 66800 tests, 3154 confirmed cases, 4.7% positive

It would be good to have some randomized testing, rather than symptom-based testing, to assess the prevalence of infection and of antibodies in the general population. Pseudorandom selection from census data is a way to go; shoot for 10,000 selected, 20% response, still gives 2000 which is pretty good for polling.

[QUOTE=xilman;540877]UK appears to be following the Chinese trajectory.
Spain. France and US growth is still worryingly above the trend.
Italy appears to be levelling off.

[URL]https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest[/URL][/QUOTE]
Very nice site! Love the graphics, especially the small thumbnails, and the presentation.

Looking to South Korea, one can't stop wondering if the real target wasn't indeed their northern cousins... But eventually, the only parties who will gain from this are the big banks and the internet sharks. Gugu, seesaw, online educational platforms. How many schools and universities switched to "distance learning" or "remote teaching" or whatever is called?

Millions of new accounts for teachers, kids, parents...

Paid, of course...

OTOH, imagine you are parent and have 3 kinds at home, and have to teach them from what the teachers send on seesaw, like music scores, dance class, swimming (?!) class.. not talking about math, physics... and they are haunting the house, the kitchen, play on their phones and don't give a flux of what you are saying...

Swmbo use to joke that if this continues for a while, [COLOR=Blue][B]the parents will find a cure before the scientists[/B][/COLOR]. :w00t:

[YOUTUBE]j0SF9pwqK3s[/YOUTUBE]

[QUOTE=Uncwilly;540823]Most consumer ones are not the right spectrum nor strong enough. When I used to run coliform tests we had a UV sterilizer (for the funnels). It had an interlock so that it would not run when open. You didn't want that in your eyes or on your skin.[/QUOTE]What about the UV lamps they use at tanning parlors?

[QUOTE=retina;540901]Have you heard of [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoid_Mary]Typhoid Mary[/url]?

Maybe this virus can remain contagious after someone has contracted it, displayed symptoms, and subsequently diagnosed as recovered. I don't know, does anyone know yet? Has such scenario been provably ruled out?[/QUOTE]
Dunno about that, but the similarly cheery prospect of people spreading the disease [i]before[/i] showing symptoms seems to be looming larger.

A true carrier, though, [i]never[/i] shows symptoms, and remains infected (and contagious) [i]indefinitely[/i]. This is the case with typhoid carriers.

I don't know about human carriers of viral infections. However, it is well known that other animals are asymptomatic carriers of viral illnesses, like bats with rabies.

If there turn out to be large numbers of true carriers, the only real solution would seem to be [i]everybody[/i] being infected or, eventually, vaccinated.

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;540915]What about the UV lamps they use at tanning parlors?[/QUOTE]
Not in the same class as the lamps used in this:
[url]https://www.fishersci.ca/shop/products/emd-millipore-ultraviolet-sterilizer/xx6370000[/url]

Note the warning here for this.
[url]https://www.atlantalightbulbs.com/uv-germicidal-lamp-advisory/[/url]

Those operate at 254 nm (UV-C)

Here is a spectrum for tanning bed lamps. They tend toward UV-A
[url]https://sep.yimg.com/ty/cdn/tan4less/cleartech-756x340.gif[/url]

These are not the same class.

No, the coronavirus wasn’t made in a lab. A genetic analysis shows it’s from nature
 

[URL]https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-covid-19-not-human-made-lab-genetic-analysis-nature[/URL]
[QUOTE]The coronavirus pandemic circling the globe is caused by a natural virus, not one made in a lab, a new study says.

The virus’s genetic makeup reveals that SARS-CoV-2 isn’t a mishmash of known viruses, as might be expected if it were human-made. And it has unusual features that have only recently been identified in scaly anteaters called pangolins, evidence that the virus came from nature, Kristian Andersen and his colleagues report March 17 in [I]Nature Medicine[/I].

When Andersen, an infectious disease researcher at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., first heard about the coronavirus causing an outbreak in China, he wondered where the virus came from. Initially, researchers thought the virus was being spread by repeated infections jumping from animals in a seafood market in Wuhan, China, into humans and then being passed person to person. Analysis from other researchers has since suggested that the virus probably [URL="https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-questions-covid19-symptoms-deaths-spread"]jumped only once from an animal into a person[/URL] and has been spread human to human since about mid-November ([I]SN: 3/4/20[/I]).

But shortly after the virus’s genetic makeup was revealed in early January, rumors began bubbling up that maybe the virus was engineered in a lab and either intentionally or accidentally released.[/QUOTE]

Gleaned from the [url=https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/03/26/coronavirus-in-russia-the-latest-news-march-26-a69117]Moscow Times[/url]:

03/23/20 Russia confirmed 71 new coronavirus infections on Monday, bringing the country’s official number of cases up to 438.

03/24/20 Russia confirmed 57 new coronavirus infections, bringing the country’s official number of cases up to 495.

03/25/20 -- I didn't see the number of new cases in Russia for March 25. However, if I did the subtraction right, there were 163 new cases on the 25th.

03/26/20 Russia confirmed 182 new coronavirus infections on Thursday, bringing the country's official number of cases up to 840

Also...
[quote]Moscow will close all shops except for pharmacies and grocery stores, the city's mayor Sergei Sobyanin said. This measure, which also includes the closure of restaurants, cafes and bars, will last from March 28 until April 5, a period that President Vladimir Putin declared a paid holiday.[/quote]

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;540915]What about the UV lamps they use at tanning parlors?[/QUOTE]Mostly UVA and a little UVB, no UVC which is the sterilizing type, but still presents a cancer risk and the possibility of eye damage. [url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indoor_tanning#Ultraviolet_radiation[/url] Further, they may actually harbor and communicate disease: "Tanning beds can contain many microbes, some of which are pathogens that can cause skin infections and gastric distress. In one study in New York in 2009, the most common pathogens found on tanning beds were [I][URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudomonas"]Pseudomonas[/URL][/I] spp. ([I][URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudomonas_aeruginosa"]aeruginosa[/URL][/I] and [I][URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudomonas_putida"]putida[/URL][/I]), [I][URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacillus"]Bacillus[/URL][/I] spp., [I][URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klebsiella_pneumoniae"]Klebsiella pneumoniae[/URL][/I], [I][URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterococcus"]Enterococcus[/URL][/I] species, [I][URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staphylococcus_aureus"]Staphylococcus aureus[/URL][/I], and [I][URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterobacter_cloacae"]Enterobacter cloacae[/URL][/I]." They don't provide sanitization; they require it.

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;540960]Gleaned from the [url=https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/03/26/coronavirus-in-russia-the-latest-news-march-26-a69117]Moscow Times[/url]:[/QUOTE]

FIDE stopped the chess Candidates Tournament 2020 in Russia, and postponed the 2nd half of the tournament:

[url]https://chess24.com/en/read/news/fide-candidates-tournament-stopped-at-halfway[/url]

[QUOTE=kriesel;540964]Mostly UVA and a little UVB, no UVC which is the sterilizing type, but still presents a cancer risk and the possibility of eye damage.
<snip>[/QUOTE]
I knew about the skin cancer and eye damage angles, and think tanning parlors should be closed for that reason alone. That list of pathogens is impressive! :sick:

I did run across one type of bulb they use (high-intensity discharge), which requires a "blue glass" filter because it emits UVC.

Perhaps if they replaced their UVA-UVB bulbs (or removed the filters on the UVC emitting bulbs) they could recreate their businesses as a service, sterilization for various items. Just plop 'em into the tanning bed, close it up, and turn on the light for a short time!

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;540972]
Perhaps if they replaced their UVA-UVB bulbs (or removed the filters on the UVC emitting bulbs) they could recreate their businesses as a service, sterilization for various items. Just plop 'em into the tanning bed, close it up, and turn on the light for a short time![/QUOTE]Right. And then one of their regulars stops by for a tan, or the cosmetologist wants one herself. Off to the ER or hospital burn unit she goes. [url]https://rockymountainurgentcare.com/how-to-treat-a-severe-sunburn/[/url]

[QUOTE=kriesel;540974]Right. And then one of their regulars stops by for a tan, or the cosmetologist wants one herself. Off to the ER or hospital burn unit she goes. [url]https://rockymountainurgentcare.com/how-to-treat-a-severe-sunburn/[/url][/QUOTE]Those things are a stupid idea anyway. Pure vanity, zero brains.

[QUOTE=kriesel;540974]Right. And then one of their regulars stops by for a tan, or the cosmetologist wants one herself. Off to the ER or hospital burn unit she goes. [url]https://rockymountainurgentcare.com/how-to-treat-a-severe-sunburn/[/url][/QUOTE]
I did say, "recreate" their businesses. The tanning salon would close up shop, notifying all its customers. No more cosmetologists on the payroll.

But I suppose some modification of the tanning beds would be in order, just to prevent anyone trying to sneak a quick tan in them. A hard surface with a pattern of reasonably sharp peaks would probably do the trick.

[QUOTE=retina;540977]Those things are a stupid idea anyway. Pure vanity, zero brains.[/QUOTE]
:goodposting:

[quote]We care about the elderly. We value life in this country and when you start devaluing life, then you're in trouble.[/quote] -- Glenn Beck, 2009

[quote]I would rather have my children stay home and all of us who are over 50 go in and keep this economy going and working. Even if we all get sick, I would rather die than kill the country. Because it's not the economy that's dying, it's the country.[/quote] -- Ibid, 2020

Die for Economy? You First, RW Politicos
 

[URL]https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffsb&q=die+for+economy&atb=v167-1&ia=news[/URL]

Also:
[URL]http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/22403/coronavirus-economy-reopen-workers-trump-stock-market[/URL]

[QUOTE]“We must reopen the economy,” you say. “It is vital that we send people back to work,” you say. Well, it sounds important. By all means—you first.

The cure must not be worse than the problem, the president says. It is important that we not disincentive work, right-wing economists say. Keeping things closed could devastate the economy, business leaders say. These things are a [I]tradeoff[/I], you see.

Yes, some people will die if we put everyone back to work sooner than the health experts say. But these things are inevitable. And the economic damage could be awful if we don’t.

Okay. All of you line up, to report to work.
Lloyd Blankfein, the reasonable [URL="https://twitter.com/lloydblankfein/status/1241907502662418437"]cheerleader[/URL] for restarting commerce, you can be a doorman, throwing open the doors of your Manhattan office building for all the bankers to return to their desks. The doorman, who prefers not to die, can be the CEO of Goldman Sachs. That office is sufficiently large for social distancing, I’m sure.
[/QUOTE]

Chicago [i]Tribune[/i] column: [url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/rex-huppke/ct-coronavirus-pandemic-trump-covid-deaths-world-huppke-20200326-e5usw727bbe75aawrddb3q5j2m-story.html]Donald Trump's coronavirus pandemic death cult — everyone's welcome![/url]

Enjoy!

[b]EDIT:[/b] Oh, and the young are also being recruited into the death cult:

[url=https://apnews.com/326b67255b5436bd2a6bf2443ae5be96]Mayor: Liberty U. 'reckless' to let students back amid virus[/url][quote]RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Officials in Lynchburg, Virginia, said Tuesday they were fielding complaints about the hundreds of students who have returned from spring break to Liberty University, where President Jerry Falwell Jr. welcomed them back amid the new coronavirus pandemic.

"We could not be more disappointed in the action that Jerry took in telling students they could come back and take their online classes on campus," Lynchburg City Manager Bonnie Svrcek told The Associated Press.[/quote]

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;540978]I did say, "recreate" their businesses. The tanning salon would close up shop, notifying all its customers. No more cosmetologists on the payroll.

But I suppose some modification of the tanning beds would be in order, just to prevent anyone trying to sneak a quick tan in them. A hard surface with a pattern of reasonably sharp peaks would probably do the trick.[/QUOTE]
You mentioned a couple of steps modifying the tanning bed machine, and nothing else. Now it's more like kill the existing business, and replace it with an entirely new one. If this repurposing works at all, I think the way is to sell the beds to places with competent staff, such as hospitals and clinics for treating things that don't autoclave well, like say PPE. Which may not respond well to UV either; plastics tend to get brittle and discolored on exposure to UV. Most fabric or thread is polymer these days. (I've had leather gloves come quite undone, when feeding a wood stove with a hot bed of coals, because some of the thread MELTS from radiant heat transfer.)

[QUOTE=kriesel;541001] Now it's more like kill the existing business, and replace it with an entirely new one.[/QUOTE]
What part of "recreate" didn't you understand?

Re. surface disinfection, Blast of hot air from a hair dryer should suffice to get that temp up to ~100C. I’ve also been using on e.g. package deliveries.

NC's Colonel Smithers has a [url=https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/03/links-3-26-2020.html#comment-3326954]sitrep from the UK[/url]:
[quote]Readers, not just those in Borislavia, will be delighted to hear that it’s not all gloom and doom in Borislavia. The rich and powerful are cashing in, so us plebs can expect some trickle down. When, I have no idea.

Let me summarise from well placed sources:

Tory and Brexiteer donor, Sir James Dyson, has just been given a contract to build ventilators, likely to be built in his Malaysian factory. Dyson, who was at school with NC’s Synoia, has amassed over 50,000 acres of farm land in East Anglia, the Thames valley and West Country, getting ready for the disruption in food supplies from the continent. His holdings surpass the Queen in England. That disruption of farm production has been signalled a bit in France, but not picked up elsewhere. My parents and I are aware due to our small holding overseas. Perhaps, Arizona Slim and other farming readers can chime in.

Tory MP and former minister, Liam Fox, collects £100,000 p.a. in dividends from a firm selling covid 19 test kits at £120 apiece.

Private hospitals have about half of their beds reserved for NHS patients. As non emergency operations have been postponed, these hospitals, which are overrated according to my military doctor dad, were looking at big losses. Their use by the NHS in this emergency is a bail out by stealth.

Yesterday, two dozen children were taken into emergency care in Buckinghamshire alone. All of them are being placed through investment firm intermediaries. Depending on the child’s needs, the firm, often a hedge fund based in Mayfair, can collect £500 – £5000 per week and give the individual carer a tenth of that. These activities are kept under the label “special situations” funds. Corporate welfare / socialism for the rich is alive and kicking.

The CEO of NHS England, Sir Simon Stevens, was at Balliol College, Oxford, with Johnson. After Oxford, he joined United Health in the US as a lobbyist. According to the civil service grape vine, at crisis committee meetings, the pair are often ashen faced, look lost, seem out of their depth and wondering what they signed up for.

The supply of escorts is down. Why? About a quarter of escorts are nurses. Another quarter are teachers.

Last, but not least, and the icing on the cake, the Blairites will be back in charge of the Labour Party next month. That nice remainer Sir Keir Starmer is funded by, amongst others, the vultures who want to loot the NHS and other public services. Labour’s health spokesman, Jonathan Ashworth, speaks of “Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition”. Although not a colonial, the colonials here will recognise his cringe. He was one of the jerk offs undermining Corbyn, but Corbyn did not have the nous or courage to attack his enemies. The vultures are smart enough to get / co-opt Labour to do their dirty work and not push through a full privatisation, so the process will be gradual and by stealth. Get ready for the MSM narrative that the state failed when the crisis has eased and the public wants answers.[/quote]

Venezuela’s Coronavirus Response Might Surprise You -By Leonardo Flores
 

Leonardo Flores is a Latin American policy expert and campaigner with CodePink.
[QUOTE]These media outlets painted a picture of a coronavirus disaster, of government incompetence and of a nation teetering on the brink of collapse. [/QUOTE]You would think that this was a description of our abyssal situation here in the GOUSoA. I believe that psychologists call this "projection" to assign one's own failings to others.

[URL]http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/54076.htm[/URL]
[QUOTE]
Within a few hours of being launched, over 800 Venezuelans in the U.S. registered for an emergency flight from Miami to Caracas through a website run by the Venezuelan government. This flight, offered at no cost, was proposed by President Nicolás Maduro when he learned that 200 Venezuelans were stuck in the United States following his government’s decision to stop commercial flights as a preventative coronavirus measure. The promise of one flight expanded to two or more flights, as it became clear that many Venezuelans in the U.S. wanted to go back to Venezuela, yet the situation remains unresolved due to the U.S. ban on flights to and from the country.

Those who rely solely on the mainstream media might wonder who in their right mind would want to leave the United States for Venezuela. Numerous outlets—including TIME magazine, the Washington Post, The Hill, the Miami Herald, and others—published opinions in the past week describing Venezuela as a chaotic nightmare. These media outlets painted a picture of a coronavirus disaster, of government incompetence and of a nation teetering on the brink of collapse. The reality of Venezuela’s coronavirus response is not covered by the mainstream media at all.

Furthermore, what each of these articles shortchanges is the damage caused by the Trump administration’s sanctions, which devastated the economy and healthcare system long before the coronavirus pandemic. These sanctions have impoverished millions of Venezuelans and negatively impact vital infrastructure, such as electricity generation. Venezuela is impeded from importing spare parts for its power plants and the resulting blackouts interrupt water services that rely on electric pumps. These, along with dozens of other implications from the hybrid war on Venezuela, have caused a decline in health indicators across the board, leading to 100,000 deaths as a consequence of the sanctions.

Regarding coronavirus specifically, the sanctions raise the costs of testing kits and medical supplies, and ban Venezuela’s government from purchasing medical equipment from the U.S. (and from many European countries). These obstacles would seemingly place Venezuela on the path to a worst-case scenario, similar to Iran (also battered by sanctions) or Italy (battered by austerity and neoliberalism). In contrast to those two countries, Venezuela took decisive steps early on to face the pandemic.

As a result of these steps and other factors, Venezuela is currently in its best-case scenario. As of this writing, 11 days after the first confirmed case of coronavirus, the country has 86 infected people, with 0 deaths. Its neighbors have not fared as well: Brazil has 1,924 cases with 34 deaths; Ecuador 981 and 18; Chile 746 and 2; Peru 395 and 5; Mexico 367 and 4; Colombia 306 and 3. (With the exception of Mexico, those governments have all actively participated and contributed to the U.S.-led regime change efforts in Venezuela.) Why is Venezuela doing so much better than others in the region?[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;541002]What part of "recreate" didn't you understand?[/QUOTE]
[URL="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/recreate"]None.
[/URL]
[URL]https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/recreate[/URL]

[QUOTE=xilman;540877]UK appears to be following the Chinese trajectory.
Spain. France and US growth is still worryingly above the trend.
Italy appears to be levelling off.

[url]https://www.ft.com/coronavirus-latest[/url][/QUOTE]Two more days of data shows the UK is continuing to track the Chinese experience where they have had 2715 deaths 35 days after their tenth. UK is 14 days behind on that metric. [B]If[/B] the trend continues the UK experience will be markedly better than the 20K which has been described as a good outcome and far better than the 500k predicted on the basis of an early do-nothing scenario.

The US is still keeping pace with Spain and France. Although the number of American fatalities is still less than those in Italy, and essentially the same as those in Iran and China at the same elapsed time, the rate of growth is much larger and the number of deaths will certainly exceed the latter two within two days at most and very likely Italy in a week or so.

[url=https://apnews.com/6e04783f95139b5f87a5febe28d72015]In Iran, false belief a poison fights virus kills hundreds[/url][quote]TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Standing over the still body of an intubated 5-year-old boy wearing nothing but a plastic diaper, an Iranian health care worker in a hazmat suit and mask begged the public for just one thing: Stop drinking industrial alcohol over fears about the new coronavirus.

The boy, now blind after his parents gave him toxic methanol in the mistaken belief it protects against the virus, is just one of hundreds of victims of an epidemic inside the pandemic now gripping Iran.

Iranian media report nearly 300 people have been killed and more than 1,000 sickened so far by ingesting methanol across the Islamic Republic, where drinking alcohol is banned and where those who do rely on bootleggers. An Iranian doctor helping the country's Health Ministry told The Associated Press on Friday the problem was even greater, giving a death toll of around 480 with 2,850 people sickened.[/quote]

[QUOTE=ewmayer;541005]Re. surface disinfection, Blast of hot air from a hair dryer should suffice to get that temp up to ~100C. I’ve also been using on e.g. package deliveries.[/quote]Good idea.

[quote]NC's Colonel Smithers has a [url=https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/03/links-3-26-2020.html#comment-3326954]sitrep from the UK[/url]:[/QUOTE]
Update on the UK:

[url=https://apnews.com/f5ab118e48bafb8f8919e332e0ac0114]British Prime Minister Johnson tests positive for virus[/url][quote]LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has tested positive for the new coronavirus, but remains in charge of the U.K.'s response to the outbreak.

Johnson said Friday that he was tested for COVID-19 on the advice of the chief medical officer after showing "mild symptoms" involving a temperature and a persistent cough.[/quote]

Now BoJo tests positive.

[QUOTE=xilman;541039]Now BoJo tests positive.[/QUOTE]
Will this be the thing that knocks him out of office? How old is the PM?

S and L types
 

I am not sure this has been covered in this thread... but there are two types of covid-19: [URL="https://www.timesnownews.com/health/article/coronavirus-has-two-strains-l-type-more-aggressive-and-contagious-than-s-type-says-study/561144"]S and L[/URL], the latter being more deadly.

Thomas Massie, R-KY has said he will block House approval of the creation of $2.2T out of thin air by "unanimous consent," thereby necessitating a roll-call vote, which would necessitate a quorum (majority of Members being present).

Of course, House leaders of both parties are trying to persuade him to relent. [i]Il Duce[/i] is fulminating that he should be thrown out of the R-party.

At most, WRT the bill, his tactic will delay passage. But, by forcing a large number of Representatives to convene, who knows what he might accomplish?

BTW, this guy has degrees in electrical engineering and mechanical engineering from MIT.

Ideology "trumps" all else. :censored:

[QUOTE=Uncwilly;541043]Will this be the thing that knocks him out of office? How old is the PM?[/QUOTE]55, I believe.

Symptoms are said to be mild and he is (relatively) young and healthy.

Brian is 71 and Brenda is 93. Statistically they are much more at risk.

The BBC just published a photo of Queen Elizabeth using a rotary dial phone
(turned away from the camera so that you cannot read the number).
Is pulse dialling still supported in the UK or have they just kept 1 old branch exchange
for the town of Windsor?

I think that we have only seen the start of the epidemic yet. Note that current death numbers are the result of people that were found to be infected about 3 weaks ago in average (rough guess).


Probably the western civilization is not capable to contain such a problem as effectively as some asian states.


All hopes to restart businesses should rely on antibody tests.

[QUOTE=Nick;541074]The BBC just published a photo of Queen Elizabeth using a rotary dial phone
(turned away from the camera so that you cannot read the number).
Is pulse dialling still supported in the UK or have they just kept 1 old branch exchange
for the town of Windsor?[/QUOTE]I don't know about the UK, but I would assume that the palace has it's own PBX. And many PBX systems still accept pulse dialling and convert it to DTMF for the outgoing line. Or convert it to digital coding for VOIP, or whatever connection one has.

[QUOTE=Nick;541074]The BBC just published a photo of Queen Elizabeth using a rotary dial phone
(turned away from the camera so that you cannot read the number).
Is pulse dialling still supported in the UK or have they just kept 1 old branch exchange
for the town of Windsor?[/QUOTE]
I really don't know. Wouldn't be surprised if it still works.

It may be possible for me to carry out the experiment.

Another possibility: it is still possible to purchase retro-styled telephones with current electronics inside them.

[QUOTE=xilman;541063]Brian is 71 and Brenda is 93. Statistically they are much more at risk.[/QUOTE]Prince Charles and QEII? Prince Charles has already [url=https://apnews.com/c951dd5c5dcf9cd48b2177f5c4fff164]tested positive[/url].

Announced two days ago.