1. I am interested to hear what Ydnew and others can tell me about it.
2. I added the apostrophe to flu just to be cold, pretentious, and in glasses.
It's going to be worse than flu because people don't feel the need to quarantine themselves for two weeks after they've been in the same hotel as someone with flu. That's where your economic and social impact comes from. They're closing every school in Japan as of Monday. I mean, good grief.
In terms of lethality, it's probably a few hundred percent worse than flu, but flu kills a load of people every year as well.
Wash your god-damned hands, people.
Either after I sneeze or after I shit. Not both.
"It's not as bad as the flu" doesn't match my casual understanding so far. Maybe it's less bad in most people, but overall it seems to be substantially more lethal. It does seem like our understanding of the probabilities is full of a truckload of uncertainties, though.
"Not as bad as the flu" could mean any of three different things, though:
1. If you catch SARS-COV-2, your chance of dying is less than if you catch flu
2. COV-2 will not kill as many people as a normal flu season does (say half a million)
3. The COVID outbreak will not be as damaging, in economic, social and human terms, as a normal flu season
Now, 1) is probably not true - it looks like it is 2% lethal. Flu is more like 0.2% lethal for those who seek medical attention (obviously most people don't).
2), well, who knows but it sounds likely unless a lot of cases are being hidden.
3) is probably already not true.
Argh. Japan just closed all its schools for a MONTH. And I fly there in 9 days.
Were you planning on seeking school children?
related: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/
CDC screening protocol apparently required (until February 12) that a patient have been exposed to someone recently in China, otherwise hospitals could not themselves decide to send a sample to CDC for testing.
There a few treatments right now, though efficacy against this coronavirus not yet clear.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/615284/what-are-the-best-coronavirus-treatments/
Last link there is to in vitro characterization of chloroquine against the virus. Cheap, rapidly scalable treatment.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41422-020-0282-0.pdf
The Diamond Princess had 1100 crew, looks like about 170 of them were infected.
8: Which part(s) are you going to? Some prefectures have no reported cases at all yet. Tracker here.
Abe has been under great pressure to do something decisive-looking, after the Diamond Princess debacle and the criticism of the lack of testing. The basic assumption is that he's doing this to try and keep the Olympics in Japan this summer. But closing schools is a pretty half-assed measure if you don't shut down offices and factories as well. Apparently he didn't consult the government's Expert Committee before making the announcement, and it's going to create real hassles for working mothers (sexism intentional and accurate) and/or mean that a lot of young kids get left on their own all day.
Riken, the Japanese government research institute, says it's developed a test for the virus that gives results within 30 minutes.
If they can scale it, it'll make a huge difference to the ease of testing, and so presumably to the numbers of confirmed cases. At the moment testing is by PCR and takes a couple of hours, so samples have to be sent to large institutions or testing companies and the results take a day or two to come back.
The PCR test also has only 30%-70% sensitivity, giving a high proportion of false negatives, and is outperformed diagnostically by CT. But as many patients don't develop pneumonia, CT is going to miss an awful lot of mild cases, too. Who of course are still spreading the disease.
The vice-president of Iran has been diagnosed with COV-2.
12: Our three lodgings are in Kyoto-fu, Ishikawa-ken, and Tokyo-to. None of them blank on that map. And Tokyo is likely to bear a good cross-section of whatever the country ends up with, I'd imagine.
15: Kyoto actually has far fewer cases than I would have expected, given the number of Chinese tourists who visit. But yes, given its size, Tokyo is likely to end up with a lot.
Maybe if it gets worse we'll spend a greater share of time in Kanazawa, which I understand is very nice. (Not metropolitan, but not animals-all-around rural, so probably as safe as anywhere.)
Kanazawa is very pleasant. I don't know if it's still snow crab season in March, but if it is, and you like seafood, enjoy!
1) is probably not true - it looks like it is 2% lethal.
I think the thing that lodged in my mind was "Patients who reported no pre-existing ("comorbid") medical conditions had a case fatality rate of 0.9%." and I heard it in some context where someone said that was about the same as the flu. But maybe I've oversimplified things in making those leaps.
19: It's tough to say because the reported fatality rates vary by region. Even within China, the last numbers I saw said that the death rate was estimated at ~2% in Wuhan and one other region, but at ~0.7% everywhere else.
My conspiratorial co-worker says it isn't that the flu is so lethal, it is that everyone will have it all at once.
My mind was eased when I saw that it doesn't seem bad for kids.
Won't somebody think of the children?
I believe that COVID-19 is the future. Teach it well and let it lead the way.
20: I think NHC numbers on that early this month were higher, nearly 5% in Wuhan - have they been updated? They also had about 2% country wide, but highly skewed to Wuhan and Hubei.
23: and feed it on your dreams; the one they fix, the one you'll know by.
I decided long ago never to walk in anyone's shadow
If it fail, if I succeed, at least I made them internally bleed.
No matter what they take from me, I'll attack respiratorily.
Because the grea-aaaa-aaaaatest lungs of all
Are easy to invade.
2. It's not as bad as the 'flu.
Early estimates are that coronavirus is significantly more contagious than the flu -- each person with COVID-19 is expected to spread it to about 2.2 more people, as opposed to the flu, which has an R0 of 1.3.
It's also believed to be far more deadly. While it's still early and the data's not clear, it looks like COVID-19 has a mortality rate of around 2.3%, as opposed to the flu, which is under 0.1%.
So, more contagious and more lethal.
30 - agreed. Looks like it has lower mortality rate but higher infection rate than SARS, but still much higher mortality than the flu.
24: Now I can't find the site. I was googling this morning and restricted the search to the last 24 hours (which doesn't necessarily mean that the numbers were the most recent).
I feel like every time I try to put a positive spin on something here - the November election, climate change, COVID-19 - all you guys bring me down.
32 - i'm pretty sure the error bars on those numbers are still pretty wide, anyway.
If you die of COVID, you never have to hear about the election ever again.
24,32 is the data here current enough? I think updated daily from WHO feed barring bugs. https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
36: Thanks. That seems to match what I saw this morning in that once you get out of that one province the fatality rate seems to drop significantly.
I found this related discussion about data visualization (mapping, particularly) interesting: https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/product/mapping/mapping-coronavirus-responsibly/
If you die of COVID, you never have to hear about the election ever again
#COVID2020
37: So if you are there and feel sick, run away as quickly as possible.
38: That's a really good discussion of the issues involved in mapping this sort of thing.
40: My totally uninformed theory is that, since that province has an order of magnitude more cases than any of the others, the fatality rate is higher because their medical infrastructure is overwhelmed.
So maybe running to another province where more hospital beds are available would help, assuming you're still alive when you get there.
Plus, you can lick doorknobs along the way.
42: there will also, I think, be a lot of secondary deaths among people kept out of hospitals with potentially treatable conditions because the hospitals and emergency services have been overwhelmed. These won't be recorded as covid but wouldn't have happened without it. And no one is counting the effects it has had in the Xinjiang gulag. They will not have been mild.
My city is pretty dependent on restaurants and tourism. If everyone stays home this summer, our economy is fucked.
That Whitney Houston song is my least favorite thing.
46: Originally recorded by George Benson. The definitive version was my cover sung while working as a dishwasher in a bakery in the 1980s.
My least favorite thing is that song by Starship, even if the video features the most amazing '80s hair ever.
My least favorite thing is Don't Stop Believin'.
nobody brings the 80s hair like the drawn out remains of a 60s band
Yes, Don't Stop Believin' is also terrible.
42. My understanding and I may be wrong is that yeah the system gets overwhelmed most of the people dying are not dying directly of the virus that are dying of pneumonia because the virus made them vulnerable to it and the medical system can't deal with the number of cases of pneumonia they have.
I think it may be partly be a just about how many respirators there are.
42. My understanding and I may be wrong is that yeah the system gets overwhelmed most of the people dying are not dying directly of the virus that are dying of pneumonia because the virus made them vulnerable to it and the medical system can't deal with the number of cases of pneumonia they have.
I think it may be partly be a just about how many respirators there are.
I guess there's now a whistleblower report saying that the Trump administration sent untrained people to CA to help process potential coronavirus cases at Travis AFB, and that's probly why we now have community transmission that's being treated at the hospital two miles from my house. I'm trying not to overreact and I'm expecting to get another flu this year and expecting that will be fine. But if it looked like COVID-19 were dangerous to kids, I'd be besides myself with fury.
I've been pretty flippant about this stuff, and generally root for the pandemic, etc. But to add that level of stupidity to the mix is just incredible.
incredible, perhaps, but not surprising at this point.
The word COVID has appeared in this thread so many times, I am now hearing it in my head in the same way Alexis on Schitt's Creek says David.
Now that there is going to be a Diet Coke shortage, the time for flippancy is over.
Coronavirus sound less scary if you put the emphasis on the third syllable, so it sort-of rhymes with snuffleupeagus.
Do we trust the data from China? Could there be a lot of people whose illness was so mild that they aren't even being picked up in the official statistics.
Apparently there are some people infected with flu who are never sick. The same thing may exist with COVID. Maybe even more of them.
Interesting worm's eye piece on the China quarantine.
60: Almost like drawing out the first syllable of carnivorus? Caarahnivorous.
That's when it hits the carolina's, no?
Oh man, a bat signal. Now I will predict totally wildly! Predictions:
1. We don't have enough data to know about mortality rates. It looks like a cold. How many people go to the doctor for a fever and a cough? Shortness of breath, yeah, depending on severity. Or symptom duration longer than that magic 7-10 day window? Maybe. It could take a couple years to really understand this.
2. I don't think I'm ever going to understand what went so wrong in Wuhan, but something seems to have gone very, very badly. (Secrecy, slow response, weak healthcare system, censorship?) It's unlikely that will repeat.
3. We're almost at spring. It'll probably largely burn itself out when the weather warms up. Maybe it'll come back next winter.
4. I need to be right that COVID-19 isn't all that bad, because the US government is so broken and fucked up that if I'm wrong, lots of people will die preventable deaths.
5. Governments are taking really extreme reactions because there's not a huge downside to being highly risk-averse, and no one wants to be the official who could have done more to save lives and didn't.
6. For people who do have a severe illness (elderly, immunocompromised), antivirals and supportive care (fluids, etc) will probably decrease mortality rate substantially if deployed promptly.
Remember when everyone was scared of Ebola? Now, THAT is a scary possible pandemic.
Oh, and those masks are useless and bizarre. If you're wearing true respiratory protection, it's tiring - you have to work harder than normal to breathe. I can't imagine wearing an N-95 16 hours a day. And also, the US tends to be better off than Europe and Asia in terms of infectious disease simply due to fairly low population density in most places.
Does that mean I don't need to wash my hands?
The Mask isn't to protect you it's to protect everyone else.
It's also possible that the virus is evolving to be less deadly that could explain the higher deaths in Wuhan.
67: After shitting or before eating. What are you, an animal?
Oh, and those masks are useless and bizarre
They look so scary! Like, that dystopian future that you read about in a cheap sci-fi thriller has finally arrived...
Bits and pieces AIUI:
It seems PRC is seriously undereporting infections, so the mortality rate is less bad than currently appears.
Apparently there've been no child deaths yet.
Deaths in PRC so far have skewed heavily male ~75%; speculation is this represents relative rates of smoking and pollution exposure. If so, that implies death rates will be lower in most countries but maybe higher in others, like India.
~90% of active ingredients in all pharmaceuticals are made in China. Well played, neoliberalism.
68.1: Cool, everyone with coronavirus gets a mask. Healthcare workers get fit-tested N-95 masks, training, and HEPA-filtered anterooms for gowning and degowning. Everyone else can stand down.
Also live virus has been found in faeces.
69: Animals don't need to wash their hands after pooping because having too wipe is a side effect of bipedalism.
It's a bit more complicated than that.
65/71: Thank you, both of those are reassuring.
My observations and concerns:
- 71.last is correct. I've heard of issues with (coronavirus unrelated) drug discovery being significantly slowed.
- Our company is taking it pretty seriously. We have a serious security operation that tracks employee travel and they're closely monitoring locations and reports of illness.
- I always develop a lingering cough from mild colds. If I get a cold in a given winter I'll usually have a cough for a few months. I'm sure this would do wonders for me. SPouse has mild asthma and one of our kids seems susceptible to respiratory infections- he was hospitalized for croup a few times although hasn't had issues since he bulked up as an adolescent. Also I touch my eyes ALL THE TIME because I have dry eyes so if it comes here I'm definitely getting infected.
- I've now seen two reports of approved drugs that have at least some effect on blocking infection or symptoms. One is already in trials for COVID. Experimental vaccine creation has been fast but testing will take a while so wouldn't expect anything for at least a year.
- The real problem seems to be secondary pneumonia infection, should standard antibiotics help with that?
The office manager was wiping down the door handles today. I'm not sure if that was because of the virus or just because of general anxiety/work avoidance.
~90% of active ingredients in all pharmaceuticals are made in China
This is what I worry about. Not just pharmaceuticals, but every damn thing is made there, and they seem to be going night night for a while.
WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE PHONE CHARGERS??
Just electrical tape the stupid cord.
One of my sisters has some serious, Howard Hughes-like germaphobic tendencies. I have personally witnessed her furtively skulking by the bathroom door, waiting for another woman to touch the handle and open that door, at which point she quickly darts through! Some of us are more prepared for a pandemic than others, I guess.
Can't she just open the door with a paper towel or a disposable finger?
Some of us are more prepared for a pandemic than others, I guess.
Your sister and Kari Byron
And what happened in Wuhan isn't mysterious. The authorities spent six weeks covering up instead of containing, so it wasn't contained.
My Chinese friend who lives in TX says that the rumor in China is that the virus started in the U.S. n=?
Apparently such rumors are circulating and are not being censored. (US bioweapon rather than started in US.)
listening to the Swedish radio news this morning, in an effort to get away from this country's problems, I discovered that the virus really threatens the health system there, not because of a shortage of intensive care places, but because of a pre-existing shortage of nurses. I can't get any background on this, though I suppose I could ask my ex over there. It is in any case an interesting new point of failure for a first world country.
Then they cut away to a report from an airport which is setting up quarantine facilities, and we were straight into Station Eleven territory even if no one actually said "And runway three is where we park them when they're taking time to die"
We may get there yet! Long, but recommended.
Cults are bad for your health. Who knew.
Silver lining! (Maybe. They say they'll close the markets every time, but they're a lot more totalitarian this time. Hopefully they'll at least raise costs and reduce volume.
The Japan school closures are turning into a bit of a clusterfuck. The government doesn't have the power to actually shut them down: Abe "requested" all schools to close, but the actual bodies responsible are the various local boards of education for public schools, and the schools themselves for private ones. Public elementary schools in Osaka and Kobe at least have decided to let children to come to school anyway, without giving them lessons, just to ease the pressure on working parents - the effect on the health system in particular, since about 20% of nurses are women with school-age children, is going to be significant. It's being widely pointed out that Abe himself doesn't have kids.
To be clear, Osaka and Kobe cities aren't just saying "come to school anyway" - they're saying that they will look after children of working parents in schools or at after-care facilities if parents are unable to arrange care otherwise.
86: The number of cases is not, but the mortality rate is, a little. And six weeks is a LONG time in public health. I understand the health care system was swamped, but I'm a little surprised mortality rate appears to have been double, possibly more. And the failures to protect healthcare workers is pretty surprising to me (although apparently the US just did the same fucking thing).
And I just learned that the mortality rate for those hospitalized with flu is around 2%. So, a lot different than overall mortality.
ISTM the simplest explanation is undereporting of infections. Undereported in the raw numbers for a bunch of practical reasons, then manipulated in the final numbers for political reasons. Frex.
This paper uses new credible non-official sources of data to evaluate the incidence and impact of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in China. Based on the number of reported cremations and on reports of possibly more accurate numbers on cases that appeared briefly on Tencent and were suppressed, we have conducted a modeling study to estimate the incidence and other parameters of the outbreak, including the potential starting time. The numbers for cumulative cases, new cases per day, and cumulative deaths coming from the non-official data are all substantially higher by a factor of 5 to 10 (depending on the date of the data) than would be implied by the official Chinese government data. All sets of non-official data used here imply that the coronavirus outbreak began in October or late September 2019.(Stand to be corrected. I'm not equipped to evaluate science.)
I'm finding it interesting that the rumor here is that corvid 19 is a bio weapon created in China. In China that Corbett 19 is a bioweapon created in America. I guess propaganda about who your enemies are have some consequences who knew?
95: [Booming announcer voice] In this corner, representing CHINA, we have the PORTENDER. Corvid 19 will sharpen his own stick to impale you like the tasty GRUB you are. When he's hanging with his buddies he's a murder; if you're lucky you'll just get MAIMED. And in this corner, representing the US, we have the ROCK. Your opioid addiction or boisterous Mediterranean family are no match for Corbett 19's ENDURING DECENCY. Try to crush him by cheating with your ex? He'll just show up within two years with a baby to make you feel INADEQUATE.
66. The mask, whatever its other qualities, reminds you not to touch your face: nose and mouth are good ways to get the virus into your body.
How can an opioid addiction have a baby?
Just been announced that a British man who was on the Diamond Princess has died in Japan. That's really going to put the cat among the pigeons for the people stuck in the hotel in Tenerife.
Is it worse to die in the Canary Islands than Japan?
Yes. People make coalmine jokes.
There's probably an ordered list of islands in which you should try to avoid dying.
I just saw an article that deaths from opioid overdose are greatly under estimated in America, I guess because checking to be sure what someone died of costs too much for the local governments in charge of doing so.
44: Similarly, where are people going to die in the US? Prisons, detention camps and homeless encampments. Also among service workers with no insurance and no way to take time off work.
There will be knock-on homelessness and bankruptcy crises after this because of people who got sick and had bad/no insurance or lost their jobs.
Medicare for all, New American Gulag for Trump, pharmacy executives, etc.
Will the Medicare people need a data analyst. Someone not in the Gulag needs to give me money.
I guess I don't mind if people in the Gulag pay me. I just don't think they are likely to be able to do so.
Prisons unlikely, I would think. There isn't much movement in and out of a prison, so not much chance of infection getting in...
IIRC 500 cases reported in prisons in Shandong.
||
Hi all, super quick update on my sister: she is currently at home, being cared for by my mother, friends and home health aides. We plan to bring her back to mpls next month, with an eye towards getting her in the transplant program here at the University hospital. So far, so good, I guess.
||>
114: Am I remembering right that the last time you updated us, no one had a very good understanding of why she was so sick? Is there a clearer picture now?
114: Thanks for letting us know. I'm glad things are looking up even though if a transplant is needed it still sounds very rough for her and you and the rest of the family.
112. Guards and other staff, visitors, and new people starting sentences. I would definitely expect coronavirus to make it to jails and prisons.
And if it does, to spread quickly.
114: best wishes to all of you , that's a hard time.
114: Glad she is well enough to travel but so sorry to hear it's still very serious.
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2020/02/29/2003731812
First case of corona virus reported here. Traveler coming back from Iran. They're talking about closing the schools for two weeks.
So, the state party's annual fundraiser -- aka Democratic Prom -- is tonight. Several hundred people. I wonder when stuff starts getting cancelled.
The coffee tomorrow featuring three women under 35 running for the legislature will be at least 80. And inspiring!
Aging people 45 years in a day is many adjectives, but inspiring isn't the first I'd reach for.
It's a necessary consequence of Relativity. If you don't like it, avoid travelling at speeds approaching that of the speed of light.
if we travel to Iran or Italy, we are now furloughed for 14 days. Same if we come into contact with someone with Covid 19 if we are taking care of them outside of our system or otherwise come into contact with them, we are furloughed for 14 days using our own vacation time. I think I might be able to work from home a certain number of days, but gawd, a lot of people would get screwed.
What are some steps local officials can take to mitigate the social and economic impact of the coronavirus?
Here is a "fun" stat: One of the canadian provinces (BC) with a total population of about 5 million today reported slightly over 1000 people have been tested so far (7 confirmed cases). That's about twice as many tested as the entirety of the US.
I guess file that under "Is the CDC on top of this thing or not"
132: How can they be, with dramatic funding cuts and heads being forced out in favor of political appointees who know nothing about science? This is when you need your professional civil servants.
Related, I am furious to see the treatment of Tony Fauci. I just saw he had appearances cancelled on five Sunday morning shows. The man is the go-to for infectious disease. He is a dedicated researcher who has served since the mid-80s.
Agree 133.last is insane.
re: 133.first the quotes were supposed to be sarcastic.
In fairness AIUI BC has a big Cantonese population, and it was just new year. But, presumably smaller than that in the US.
If they don't have leap years, then it is one day smaller.
Stereotypically, American rats are significantly fatter than Canadian.
135 is fair, so I looked it up. BC has a pretty big chinese population, mostly in Vancouver - about 500k. That means less than NYC, LA, or SF bay area, but probably more than in any other US metro.
Looks like the CDC may not be on top of this. (Though _maybe_ Canada is overkilling because SARS embarrassed them.)
134: Sorry, anger blinds me to sarcasm and humor. Gotcha.
Pence wants to find out if pee is stored in the balls first.
106 I'm war gaming COVID-19 to see how I can get myself quarantined in a luxury resort at somebody else's expense.
I just read Naomi Kritzer's 2015 story "So Much Cooking" about a food blogger in the midst of a pandemic quarantine. Seems topical, and is quite good. Also a reminder of how inadequate some of our current preparations might be.
In the event of a quarantine, Tremors is back on Netflix.
We're up to three confirmed cases now
The hiking websites are noting that freeze dried food is getting sold out, presumably because people want it in case they get stuck in the house for weeks.
I already have some because after Trump was elected I put two weeks of freeze dried food in the basement. I didn't buy another gun because I figured it would be easier to steal one from a senior citizen who bought six of them when Obama was elected.
NMM to this year's American Physical Society annual meeting. Canceling was probably the right move, but they had terrible timing: literally the day before it was scheduled to start. I wonder if other professional societies will decide they don't want a similar snafu and start canceling their big conventions sooner rather than later.
I thought it was personal trainers, but I was wrong. Huh.
Lay in a supply of pemmican now
It's too early. Any buffalo you shoot now will have hardly any fat.
151 had a paper accepted at a conference in Istanbul in late spring, will not probably be canceled now
Then don't hunt buffalo at all, even if they have gotten some fat on.
My company's annual gathering is scheduled to start tomorrow and while they did decide to not to allow international travel to it this year, I'm still uneasy about traveling to attend.
If you sneeze on the salmon, you get it all.
I bought lots of beans and rice and and did a costco run for all the stuff that was getting low. I figure even if electric goes out I can build a solar oven and use it on our porch (lots of sun here.). Just need to stock up on booze and edibles. Now I'm sort of getting excited about having an internet break and a chance to read all those books I haven't gotten to yet.
Vancouver had enough H1N1 cases that they closed some schools for a while, so they've had relatively recent experience with response. Also, I can't believe it's now been over a decade since I moved there, but at least it's been less than a decade since I moved away.
It probably helps that with BC health insurance, you're likely to be be paying less out of pocket every month for insurance, on average, than in the US* and you can go to any hospital and there's no co-pay.
*You might not see this directly if your employer pays.
I bet they wash their hands better in Canada, because they sing Happy Birthday in both French and English.
So, ~2 weeks ago my girlfriend's Korean supplier sent 500 facemasks as a goodwill gift [to the benighted Sinitics]. And now there are no masks to be had in the ROK, and gf is like, 'I'd send them back, but it would be illegal to export masks, sorries!'
161 no yoyo you're supposed to spend it commenting on the blog
If there's one thing I'm learning from this epidemic, it's how hard it is to remember not to pick my nose.
As long as you only use your own keyboard.
My nose is much too small for that so I just use fingers.
But keyboards have unmatched spring-loaded scratching goodness
Why does Italy have more cases than the rest of the world that isn't Asia?
Trade routes established by Marco Polo?
That was more than fifty years ago.
170: maybe it doesn't. Maybe they've just been better at noticing them.
Everybody does talk about how efficient the Italians are.
Better at sniffing them out, if you will.
I suspect you don't have to pay $1600 to get a coronavirus test in Italy and when you get one it probably works.
I suspect the same about Canada and Germany and the like.
More people travelling to northern Italy on holiday? Skiing, Milan Fashion Week and general tourism. Canada isn't so much of a draw.
Iran, similarly, is a buzzing hive of global tourism.
People should tour Canada. It's really nice.
Iran, similarly, is a buzzing hive of global tourism.
Not global, but it's a buzzing hive of Shia Muslim tourism.
I figure even if electric goes out I can build a solar oven and use it on our porch
I've been seeing this idea floating around the intertubes during the last few days. On what basis do people suppose that the power would go out as a result of the flu? Are people honestly expecting some full blown horror movie apocalypse like something out of Stephen King's The Stand? Because that's the only scenario I can see where it would be likely.
182: What I'm getting at is, I think it's mostly random.
170. Recent visits by large Chinese tour groups were suggested as the reason.
Recent visits by large Chinese tour groups were suggested as the reason
Yeah, but Kyoto has plenty of those too, and there's still only two confirmed cases there (yet).
Apparently one of yesterday's confirmed cases in Japan is in the hospital where my ex is a doctor. Not quite sure how I feel about that.
My ex-MIL (mother-ex-law?) is freaking out completely about our scheduled visit; this morning she sent me two news articles about the dangers of infection on planes and immediately called to check I'd received them. I didn't tell her that Tatsu, who is due to fly out before us next weekend, has had a fever since yesterday.
188 is me having pressed the wrong language key on the keyboard. Sorry.
184: The apocalyptic scenario that seems most relevant right now is the backstory of The Postman. (OK book that got turned into Kevin Costner's more low-key mid-90s-post-apocalyptic action movie.) No one particular disaster, but half a dozen mostly unrelated crises compounding each other. Coronavirus; climate change; Brexit, Trump, Putin, Modi, and other quasi-fascist dipshittery... we're one recession or assassinated duke away from things getting really scary.
I live in an urban area, so any survivalism would be totally one hundred percent fantasy. If things really collapse, I'm screwed no matter what I buy or do with my house. But if I lived where my sister or parents do, stockpiling would be tempting.
Not quite sure how I feel about that.
Well, how do you feel about your ex?
191: On balance, I suppose I'd rather he didn't die until the boys are through college.
A lot of acute pneumonia can fit into that sentence.
we're one recession or assassinated duke away from things getting really scary.
That's Archduke to you, pal.
What happens if Russia attacks Turkey directly?
we're one recession or assassinated duke away from things getting really scary.
Recession is already here.
When it happened before the Turkish high commander's incompetence infuriated an ancestor of mine (who was there as a journalist) that he seized command of the Turkish army to show them how it ought to be done.
Barry needs to catch a plane, is what you're saying.
What happens if the dictates of NATO and the pee tape clash?
The Iranian outbreak seems to have started in Qom, which is unfortunate since it is the major center of shrines and pilgrimages. A "merchant" (isn't that kind of an orientalizing term? How about businessman) from Qom who recently visited Wuhan has been identified.
New Hampshire just confirmed its first coronavirus case. There are two in Rhode Island. All three had recently returned from Italy.
A "merchant" (isn't that kind of an orientalizing term?
It is a bit. Or perhaps a D&Dalizing term. ("Merchants in Qom say that the city is at a standstill, with thousands of Commoners unable to leave their homes. We go now to our Level 4 International Affairs Bard, Wolf the Blitzer.")
They've banned travel from Egypt here, which is not direct since the blockade and appears to me to be more payback because of the blockade than anything else since there's only been a couple of reported cases in Egypt.
The next Geneva Convention should let chaplains fight so long as they use clubs and the like.
IIRC chaplains (and medics for that matter) can carry and use weapons but only for self-defence.
No more going "inside the actors studio" to James Lipton.
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Anyone had a kid with a tonsillectomy around? Or had one yourself?
I scheduled Ace's for May 7th, but her dance recital is May 17th. Will she be able to dance and perform by then, or do I need to reschedule the surgery?
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207: Based on my nearly 50-year-old memories of having had a tonsillectomy, I would say that she should be fine by then. But I wouldn't trust my memory.
Tonsils aren't near the feet and dancing through pain never hurt Debbie Reynolds in any way except for long-term emotional damage.
207 my vague memories of a vaguely similar situation is that the kid will feel fine in a few days, but docs will recommend 2 weeks without 'strenuous activity' to avoid small chance of pulling sutures, etc.
210: Imaginary Historical Conversation
peep's mom: Will peep be able to dance two weeks after the surgery?
surgeon: Sure! That should be fine.
peep's mom: That's wonderful! He's never been able to dance before!
(Swings violin at your head)
In this hospital we respect tradition.
164: my girlfriend
Is this her first mention here? (I haven't been reading all the recent comments so I may well have missed an earlier one.) In any caste, congrats!
Oooh, good catch! Does she need a pseud?
cry, cry, NMM to Jack Welch, cry
215: It has a certain poetic appeal.
"in any caste"? Really? May we? Then we congratulate them too
"in any caste"? Really? May we? Then we congratulate them too
I hope that's not going to be the regular schedule
207: My nephew (first grade) just had this, and he had a very emotional reaction to anesthesia, waking up with night terrors and crying for almost two weeks afterward. I don't think the physical recovery was long, but he was emotionally out of sorts for a while.
If you aren't waking up with night terrors and you're an adult, you aren't paying attention.
Unless Ace has to sing, a fortnight should be fine for recovery. I was hideously traumatised because I was promised ice cream as a reward for having my tonsils out, but when I came round, the bastard nuns only gave me camomile tea. This is a memory, and a grudge, I have treasured for something like 60 years, but when I examine it, it must be wrong: it makes no sense that there should have been nuns in Communist era Belgrade. They must have been ordinarily sadistic Serbian nurses, with old-fashioned starched headgear.
In any case, it didn't take a fortnight to recover physically.
I just found out that our regional children's choir just returned from a trip to Italy. I'm guessing those kids won't be able to go to school.
Fun fact: I'm the only person I know to have a caste designation on my birth certificate. I expect they aren't rare - but they are rare, here.
I was promised ice cream as a reward for having my tonsils out
I remember being promised ice cream too -- but what went wrong in my case was that when I came round, I didn't feel like eating anything.
Having a cast in your birth certificate is unusual, but the real trick is getting an understudy listed on your marriage license.
Having a cast in your birth certificate is unusual, but the real trick is getting an understudy listed on your marriage license.
223: I suspect you're right, but the doc would endorse a full fortnight and I'm wondering about squeaking by with 10 days.
I'm still guessing that kids are too rambunctious to bank on them being calm as soon as they're feeling better, and that a week is fine...?
228: sometimes you can be your own understudy
207: as long as she turns out, points, and lifts from below and behind /mean ballet teacher
on topic, at 6pm this evening I got a seat - a seat! - on the tube from Bank to Highgate and that's basically impossible, so GO VIRUS!
the bastard nuns only gave me camomile tea
I laughed.
I guess you haven't gotten to the part about Masky yet.
Add me to the congratsy thread, Mossy.
We've had two tonsillectomies in one summer (me as an adult, Selah right before kindergarten) and she was definitely good to go for anything within 10 days and only in real exhausting pain days 3 and 4, IIRC. Getting her to rest the rest of the days was the hard part. Me, I was constantly sipping ice water in an excruciating stupor for probably two weeks, although it doesn't help that just as I was able to believe my throat would heal it was time to get my uterine ablation. That was sure not a fun year, but having no tonsils (or uterine lining, for that matter) has been fantastic.
7 reported cases here, they canceled the amazing film festival they hold here, I had an application in and was going to take the week off. Claire Denis was coming. James Gray and Jessica Hausner too.
having no tonsils (or uterine lining, for that matter) has been fantastic.
Strong agree. I have neither and life is pretty good.
the bastard nuns only gave me camomile tea
Shane McGowan, ladies and gentlemen.
