Manic of a panic is geopolitical

[Dr Sardonicus]

Facing disaster, Russian businesses find Kremlin aid lacking

Desperate business owners in Russia have been pleading with the Kremlin for help in the pandemic shutdown. The response, however, has been slow and largely focused on big industries, leaving most smaller companies to fend for themselves and raising the prospect of massive unemployment and social unrest.

The Kremlin's anti-crisis measures reflect both its long-held emphasis on state-controlled companies and a fear of opening state coffers at a time when government revenue is drying up due to a plunge in oil prices and economic slump.

When President Vladimir Putin ordered most Russians to stay home through April 30 to contain the coronavirus, he said employees must continue to be paid. A joke soon went viral online: "Putin walks into a bar and declares: 'Beer for everyone. It's on the house!'"

[kladner]

Desperate business owners in Russia have been pleading with the Kremlin for help in the pandemic shutdown. The response, however, has been slow and largely focused on big industries, leaving most smaller companies to fend for themselves and raising the prospect of massive unemployment and social unrest.

Golly! That sure sounds familiar.

[kladner]

https://www.bbc.com/news/in-pictures-52380883

"I found myself pottering around, not knowing what to do and eating all the food in the cupboards," Chris says. "So the idea of tattooing myself every day was to give myself a bit of direction. Without structure people are at a complete loss."

[kriesel]

The food supply chain is breaking https://twitter.com/AnaSwanson/statu...16173854228489

[Till]

Desperate business owners in Russia have been pleading with the Kremlin for help in the pandemic shutdown. The response, however, has been slow and largely focused on big industries, leaving most smaller companies to fend for themselves and raising the prospect of massive unemployment and social unrest.

Originally Posted by kladner

Golly! That sure sounds familiar.

[kriesel]

Science says: It’s time to start easing the lockdowns https://nypost.com/2020/04/26/scienc...rus-lockdowns/

[ewmayer]

Injectable Clorox is still not a thing, but note that inside-the-body UV therapy is being studied for lung infections:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/aytu-...120000824.html

ENGLEWOOD, CO / ACCESSWIRE / April 20, 2020 / Aytu BioScience, Inc. (AYTU) (the “Company”), a specialty pharmaceutical company focused on commercializing novel products that address significant patient needs announced today that it has signed an exclusive worldwide license from Cedars-Sinai to develop and commercialize the Healight Platform Technology (“Healight”). This medical device technology platform, discovered and developed by scientists at Cedars-Sinai, is being studied as a potential first-in-class treatment for coronavirus and other respiratory infections.

The Healight technology employs proprietary methods of administering intermittent ultraviolet (UV) A light via a novel endotracheal medical device.

[tServo]

Originally Posted by kriesel

Science says: It’s time to start easing the lockdowns https://nypost.com/2020/04/26/scienc...rus-lockdowns/

The real headline here is that the NY Post has discovered "Science".

[ewmayer]

Looks like our MSM just can't help giving Trump more fake-news ammo:

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

States see spike in poison control calls following Trump's comments on injecting disinfectant

The story also notes a large increase to calls to poison-control centers since March, related to COVID-19 and pertaining to improper use of disinfectants.

In fact, simply reading those last 2 snips should raise a bunch of red flags: the NYC Daily News reports "30 cases in 18 hours" but then compares said count to an similar period last *year*. Well, it might have been similar in the sense of being 18 hours long and hopefully the same day-of-the week to account for weekday-vs-weekend effects, but you see, there's this tiny difference between this year and the last. DrS's "large increase to calls to poison-control centers since March" is key, but he failed to note the possibility of that putting the lie to the preceding quoted snip.

No, Poison Control Calls Aren't Suddenly Spiking After Trump's Disinfectant Comments | Reason.com

On Thursday, the president suggested that perhaps an "injection" of disinfectant could help cure people of COVID-19. Critics of Donald Trump went to town—and rightfully so!—while supporters scrambled to settle on a defense (both "he didn't really say that" and "he did but it was sarcasm" have been in play). By Saturday morning, social media was abuzz with articles about people calling poison control centers, each crafted to illustrate how Americans had apparently taken Trump's ramblings to heart and consumed household disinfectants like Lysol and bleach.

The problem? Articles shared as illustrations of this actually said no such thing.

One article making the rounds, from the New York Daily News, is headlined "A spike in New Yorkers ingesting household cleaners following Trump's controversial coronavirus comments." But the article makes no mention of anyone deliberately consuming household cleaners. It simply states that 30 people called the city's poison control hotline "over fears that they had ingested bleach or other household cleaners."

Fearing that you ingested something doesn't jibe with having intentionally consumed that substance.

The authors of the Daily News piece, Anna Sanders and Chris Sommerfeldt, try to circumvent this inconvenient fact by noting that over the same time period in 2019, the Poison Control Center "only handled 13 similar cases." And while this time, nine calls were about possible Lysol exposure and 10 about bleach, last year's calls contained "no cases reported about Lysol exposure and only two were specifically in regards to bleach."

The paper doesn't present any other data about calls to Poison Control for comparison. But one needn't do a detailed analysis to surmise why exposure to things like Lysol and bleach—and fears about this exposure—might be up this month over April 2019. And one needn't reach for the ridiculous explanation that it's because people deliberately consumed it en masse after listening to Trump. We are in the midst of a pandemic right now, and we were not in April 2019. Of course more people are being exposed to household disinfectants at the moment than were during this time last year.

The Daily News does note that none of the callers died or required hospitalization, which also suggests their exposure was minimal and not of the Lysol-mouthwash variety.

But the Daily News piece is far from the only poison-control story being framed misleadingly. A story out of Kentucky that's being shared as "evidence" people have been consuming household cleaners following Trump's Thursday statements is actually about calls to Kentucky poison control centers in March...

[kladner]

Originally Posted by tServo

The real headline here is that the NY Post has discovered "Science".

No. They were taking the Name in vain.

[Gordon]

Originally Posted by rogue

It appears that you accept that you might catch the virus and die from it. That is your choice. Are you willing to catch the virus and pass it on to someone else who could die from it? Whom would be to blame for that?

155,000 people a day die, none of which are down to this virus.

28,000 a day die from starvation which is ENTIRELY preventable.

Now tell me again why a few thousand dying from a flu virus is the end of the world??

It seems like the vast majority need to get a grip on reality.