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The General [Coronavirus] Discussion Thread 3.0
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The bleach thing was a meme, sure - if an awful, mean-spirited one - when it first started showing up on the more asshat parts of the internet. That said, those asshat parts of the internet often love nothing more than seeing how much damage they can do elsewhere, so they often make a game of trying to nudge some group of tinhats or other susceptible people into taking up one of their things without irony.
Bleach as a quack "treatment" has been a thing for awhile, sure, but the recent huge spike in it being advocated all over the place? I'll absolutely lay at least some of that one at the feet of chan sites and various other cesspits where anything's fair game if it results in The Lulz.
My point is simply that we may be able to get a little bit of breathing space in summer. Warm weather effects aren't going to be enough, but they may help us sustain social distancing at sufficient levels for a while. If people can go to parks and for a hike safely, they will be more likely to be able to remain indoors at other times.
Also, viruses hate humidity for the most part. Water sticks to them and makes them change shape and dissolves their fat coatings. Flu is actually incredibly sensitive to humidity.
If there is one thing I've learned from the pandemic it's that the masses of humanity are either incapable of or unwilling to grasp anything more nuanced than a simple, declarative statement.
There is a zero percent chance you can explain to the general populace that it's okay for them to go to the park and stay 6 feet away from one another but there's still danger so they need to otherwise stay home.
The instant you say, "Warm weather kills the virus!" it's going to be standing-room-only, spring-break-style party on the beach.
A year ago I'd have said, "Sure. If you put out news alerts explaining that it's safER to go outside but that it's still not safe with clear instructions on how to behave, people would look out for their own health and interest and follow the rules." Clearly that was child-like naïveté.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
It works for him though. "Flailing" seems to really impress Republican voters. They like a guy who goes on the attack.
Well then we may as well give up on this nonsense and let everyone else have a big makeout party while we stay indoors.
It is better for the virus to be sensitive to sunlight than for it to not be sensitive to sunlight. Even if everyone is an idiot, and bright sunshine and warm weather suppresses r0 by 0.3 or something, then that's less total people infected over a longer time.
People are actually doing a mind boggling Good job of social distancing for the most part. If you look at health weather, we've done well enough to eliminate the flu. Which is a pretty solid effort! There is a vocal minority who is determined to be stupid, but, what can we do? Only our best, for as long as we can.
I'll be honest with you. I've been inside for 6 weeks. My kids have been inside for 6 weeks. And over the last few weeks I've made the decision that I'm going to invite over one neighbor, once ever 5 days or so to sit 20 feet away at the end of the driveway while I sit on my house steps and we have a drink and a chat. If sunshine and warm weather make that more ok, then I can keep this stay at home order going another 6 weeks. Every small thing counts.
Watching this from Canada, it feels like we’re watching our neighbour's house burn.
When this gets to the point where everyone has personal experience with the severity of this disease I expect many conservatives' attitudes will change. Unfortunately by the time that happens we'll already basically be locked in on hundreds of thousands if not 1M+ fatalities.
Corona-viruses have a protective protein envelope unlike other viruses. And judging by it's ability to spread in warm countries such as Brazil... Brazil had 400+ deaths today.
Be careful what you wish for. Fox et al have already begun priming such people to react with blaming Democrats/the media for the upcoming tragedy.
...or that's the kernel of hope that my wishful thinking has been orbiting. It'd be really tacky of me to genuinely express how much I want this to end. I didn't know it was possible to crave good news like a drug, but here I am.
Isn't Brazil and the rest of the southern hemisphere just starting to enter cold and flu season?
I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for a conservative to change their attitude on this. Dead little kids in school shootings don't change their minds, I would expect they'll happily continue to blame everything on everyone except the politicians they've brought to power, regardless of if grandma just died because of their negligence.
Noone is saying that heat, humidity and sun will possibly be enough alone to stop a virus of this nature. It's not enough alone to stop the flu, only a combination of heat AND herd immunity does that, because people spend a lot of time indoors with each other in close proximity. But, every little helps us.
Also, the southern hemisphere is warmer and wetter than the northern, even in winter just by the randomness of geography and climate. Brazil for example, is about as far south as Mexico is north, as is new Zealand. Other than Antarctica, there's not really much below 30 degrees south, whereas the entirety of europe and the US lie above 30 degrees north.
Yeah if the narrative shifts from "it's not that big of a deal", it won't shift to "shit, it is a big deal, let's handle this properly", it'll shift to "who do we blame for this situation we find ourselves in, while we continue to not handle this properly?"
New Orleans has been nice and warm throughout this entire outbreak. It has spread pretty wildly in our community. If temperature in the 80s isn't doing it then I don't think it's going to be doing much for the rest of the country.
And it isn't like NO has a dry heat.
About that:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-brazil-cases-idUSKCN21V1X1
Even if the reported figures are not intentionally inaccurate, Brazil seems to be severely under testing, which means there are probably also more unreported deaths, suggesting that the number produced by the above logic is still an underestimation.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/coronavirus-brazil-testing-bolsonaro-cemetery-gravedigger/2020/04/22/fe757ee4-83cc-11ea-878a-86477a724bdb_story.html When the United States is out testing you 32:1, you've really got problems.
The Brazil data on worldometers is also kind of sketchy. Apart from being pretty erratic, it shows that they somehow only have 20k active cases, equivalent to the number of cases reported in only the last eight days, which would seem to require an exceptionally fast recovery time*.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/brazil/
*Edit: Or test results lagging so far behind that people are well on their way to recovery before before they definitively find out what they were recovering from.
Its not saying that, "Hot weather means you cannot catch the virus", its saying that "Warm weather, espescially sunny weather, may provide a suppression of R0, albeit not enough to prevent rapid spread".
What its saying is that the New Orleans outbreak would have been worse if it had been cold. Not that it doesn't exist. Its saying that the increase to R0 of say, opening public parks, or allowing people out to exercise should be marginal and can likely be tolerated.
For me the issue is not that the idea is incredibly naive, it's that he pulled it directly out of his ass and, without a second thought, ordered people tasked with finding real solutions to waste time and resources on it.
I can't sum it up any better than this guy:
Article referring to dermatologists in different countries observing these symptoms in connection with covid 19.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.health.com/condition/infectious-diseases/coronavirus/covid-toes?amp=true
Press release from Spanish dermatologists (Spanish) https://cgcop.es/2020/04/09/registro-de-casos-compatibles-covid-19/?fbclid=IwAR2wv4ocR2eLQGPVSChBuPeDjub6Ay7tAZwqiuWISwYe0EqCPPklhRb3Rdg
I! Was! Joking!
They have really learned nothing
So this is where we are at now:
Somehow it always gets stupider
It really does
A lot of the people I saw on Twitter were talking about various disinfectants facetiously
At least, I hope so
I don’t know if it’s the weather or boredom but even with tighter restrictions I’ve been seeing more people out and about in the east bay. Hope it doesn’t lead to anything.
The irony of course is that if he could just unlash himself from the wheel and let someone else take charge of this who knows anything about epidemiology or disaster assistance or any of a hundred other things he could probably salvage this to some degree; like it'd still be terrible but it would be better then whatever the hell this is.
But he can't do it because he can't admit to anyone that he isn't the smartest person in the room on a given topic or that he actually needs help.
He is just the Ideas Man, man
We had Clorox and Lysol trending over here.
"Nothing is gonna save us forever but a lot of things can save us today." - Night in the Woods
I'm not really much of a drinker, but every now and then since about 2016, I've been thinking I might start.
Gotta be 100% covid immune standing on the sun
Newspapers are really bad at not repeating misleading or false statements as headlines
They really should have realized how bad that headline was before putting the article up