Coronavirus thread

[Kaelik]

For fuck's sake, it's not hard. de Blasio fucked around for several weeks before getting to work and Breed didn't. And now New York is full of zombies and San Francisco isn't.

Well for example it might be relevant because when De Blasio did want to shut down businesses Cuomo told him he couldn't and then he only could when Cuomo decided it was time because the Governor and Mayor both agreed to act in concert. For fucks sake you moron.

[Whatever]

They didn't "agree to act in concert". DeBlasio proposed it and Cuomo prevented him from doing it:

https://www.newsmax.com/us/deblasio-nyc ... id/958682/

Cuomo quickly stopped the idea of shutting down the city, reports The New York Times.

“It cannot happen," Cuomo said in his Tuesday morning briefing. "No city in the state can quarantine itself without state approval, and I have no interest whatsoever and no plan whatsoever to quarantine any city.”

[Kaelik]

They didn't "agree to act in concert". DeBlasio proposed it and Cuomo prevented him from doing it:

https://www.newsmax.com/us/deblasio-nyc ... id/958682/

Cuomo quickly stopped the idea of shutting down the city, reports The New York Times.

“It cannot happen," Cuomo said in his Tuesday morning briefing. "No city in the state can quarantine itself without state approval, and I have no interest whatsoever and no plan whatsoever to quarantine any city.”

On a purely power level, it is factually the case that De Blasio could have chosen to act without Cuomo, but he didn't for the obvious reason that he doesn't want to make enemies of a vicious bully with more power than him. Likewise Cuomo could have closed the schools when De Blasio didn't want to but he didn't because he didn't want to take sole ownership of an "overresponse" so he waited until he had De Blasio's buy in.

That they choose to act in concert because of external pressures rather than a general belief in the soundness of joint action doesn't change that they did decide to do so.

[deaddmwalking]

Boris Johnson moved out of ICU.

[hyzmarca]

The great bit is the part where the British press is starting to notice that Johnson nominating Raab to be his successor doesn't actually have the force of law and the UK doesn't have a formal means of investing executive power to another person while the Prime Minister is incapacitated.

The Queen retains the power to unilatterially appoint whomever she wants as Prime Minister. She even did that once in 1963. With Johnson incapacitated, Liz could pick a successor, if she's willing to step into that shitshow.

[Hicks]

The united states post office remains of the very precipice of collapse:

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5e90 ... 49db2b/amp

[OgreBattle]

WHO accused Taiwan of anti-Black racism:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/ ... 51269.html

In mainland China, Blacks are being evicted over rumors of immigrants bringing the virus into China:
https://qz.com/africa/1836510/africans- ... down-ends/

A Thai Boy's Love live action drama got popular in mainland China, but the actor's girlfriend made a comment about COVID-19 being a lab made virus (but she might be making a joke about US-China accusing each other of bio weapons... it's vague). That's caused a social media feud between Chinese who hopped the great firewall to insult Thai government and Thai's who are... laughing at how Thai's already feel that way about their government:
https://twitter.com/KttyJK/status/1249018525944971264

...and then some folks said they'll stop watching the show because the actor was only acting as a gay and has a girlfriend in real life.

So that's how COVID-19 affected the pirated viewing of a Thai gay drama and may turn into Thai-China soured relations.

[maglag]

USA world leader with over 2000 deaths per day and more than 20k deaths total!

[deaddmwalking]

The united states post office remains of the very precipice of collapse:

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5e90 ... 49db2b/amp

So the Post Office's problems are all accounting related and are because they are being held to a higher and different standard than any other government agency. They're fully funding future pensions. They make money. But delivering 5 days a week would be helpful.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Frank, I'd like to hear your opinion on this:

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Saturday that the city’s public schools would remain shut for the rest of the academic year, a decision that was widely expected given the scale of the coronavirus crisis in New York City.

“Lord knows, having to tell you that we cannot bring our schools back for the remainder of this school year is painful,” de Blasio said at a press conference Saturday. “But I can also tell you, it’s the right thing to do.”

But this is New York, so before anything happens, the mayor and the governor must squabble about it first. Barely hours after de Blasio said the nation’s largest school system would rely on remote learning through June, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo described the mayor’s decision as an “opinion.”

Cuomo said any decision in New York City would require coordination with counties surrounding New York City on Long Island and in Westchester, and ideally, in cooperation with New Jersey and Connecticut. His office told Vox the governor believes that such coordination will allow for clearer public messaging and limited public panic.

“You can’t make a decision just within New York City, without coordinating that decision with the whole metropolitan region because it all works together,” the governor said Saturday at his own, separate, news conference following de Blasio’s.

I'm inclined to support mayor de Blasio's decision on this, but I'd like to hear more about this.

[Username17]

Both of them are correct. The schools do need to stay closed for the rest of the year, and the Mayor of New York does not have jurisdiction over all the school districts in the New York Metropolitan Area. And indeed, since the metro extends across state lines, Cuomo doesn't have that authority either. Ideally this would be an announcement from FEMA. But Trump is less than worthless and the federal government is not going to be helpful.

What's going to happen instead is that Newsom's "consortium of states" is going to arrange a series of meetings with Cuomo, Murphy, and Lamont to hammer out an agreement about school closures in the tri-state area.

And it is going to end up being what deBlasio just said - that there's no way in hell that schools will be able to safely open before summer recess. But since it's going to require the coordination of school districts that aren't in the city or even state of New York as well as a bunch of secondary assistance for childcare and food for low income families the say so of the Mayor of the largest city in the metroplex is not the end but the beginning.

-Username17

[OgreBattle]

Saw news of people violating social distance to hold funerals in New York City, along with news of NYC cops man handling social distance violators at the metro.

So can you really pay off the new york police to hold public close-distance events?

[Username17]

Saw news of people violating social distance to hold funerals in New York City, along with news of NYC cops man handling social distance violators at the metro.

So can you really pay off the new york police to hold public close-distance events?

Probably? But I think it's more likely that you can just organize your funerals by calling your relatives on the phone and all show up to a designated spot and hold the entire funeral and go home before the cops know about it. It's not like you're holding your funeral in a police station or a subway car. Even if you're holding it at a mortuary, the mortician isn't going to call the cops on themselves.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

Saw news of people violating social distance to hold funerals in New York City, along with news of NYC cops man handling social distance violators at the metro.

So can you really pay off the new york police to hold public close-distance events?

The cops are too busy attacking poor people to follow individual rich people around to funerals.

[DSMatticus]

Frank, I'd like to hear your opinion on this:

...

I'm inclined to support mayor de Blasio's decision on this, but I'd like to hear more about this.

So, most experts are estimating a herd immunity threshold of 50-80% and a minimum (as in with adequate care) infection fatality rate of .5-1.0%. That .5 is very, very generous, but there's limited evidence to support it. But an HIT of 50% and an IFR of .5% is still 800,000 dead Americans and 20,000 dead New Yorkers (NYC specifically, not the state). The current tallies are about 20,000 dead Americans and about 5000 dead New Yorkers. This isn't even close to over. New York City could open, panic, and close again three more times before it was finished with COVID-19. Note that any deaths that would be or already have been caused by overloaded hospitals are "freebies" for the virus - we did this math assuming the minimum infection fatality rate where everyone gets adequate care. We chose the lowest numbers from the best case scenario; the numbers may not actually be the low, and we sure as fuck aren't seeing the best case scenario.

There are really only three ways to handle COVID-19:

1) Just let it burn through the country, likely becoming the deadliest crisis in American history both as raw death toll and percent death rate.

2) Shut everything non-essential down to minimize the attack rate so that the initial outbreak burns itself out at 5-8% instead of 50-80%, and then keep it shut down while we wait for a vaccine to get us the rest of the way to herd immunity.

3) Shut everything non-essential down to minimize the attack rate so that the initial outbreak burns itself out at 5-8% instead of 50-80%, develop the infrastructure for rigorous testing, contract tracing, quarantining, and then reopen while responding aggressively to the first sign of new infections. This would require a federally organized response. And also free healthcare for anything COVID-19 related. For everyone. Including immigrants, legal or otherwise. Even the ones we currently have in concentration camps. Basically, it's not happening. But other countries will attempt this and some of them will probably succeed. They'll screen people as they enter the country, test anyone who comes into a hospital with flu-like symptoms, then if it's COVID-19 track and test anyone they could have possibly given it to or gotten it from, then quarantines and financial support for everyone they find. And these countries will function mostly like normal, with some minimal bans on very large gatherings to prevent superspreader events. And they'll probably slip up once or twice, but contain it to a regional outbreak by just... shutting those places down again.

So the moral of the story is that yes schools are closed until mid-late 2021 when we have a vaccine. Or until we decide that actually we do need to toss the poor into the gnashing gears of capitalism lest the blood dry and they become inadequately lubricated.

[RobbyPants]

There are really only three ways to handle COVID-19:

1) Just let it burn through the country, likely becoming the deadliest crisis in American history both as raw death toll and percent death rate.

2) Shut everything non-essential down to minimize the attack rate so that the initial outbreak burns itself out at 5-8% instead of 50-80%, and then keep it shut down while we wait for a vaccine to get us the rest of the way to herd immunity.

...

Listening to the way people talk about this, I feel everyone is expecting that what we're supposed to do is #2 for a month-and-a-half, and then just jump back to #1 and assume that somehow this just all works out. As far as I can tell, that's what Trump wants, and then to just lie about the numbers while people keep dying and to complain about the Democrats every time the stock market does something he doesn't like.

[OgreBattle]

So the CCP muzzled the scientist the expert on covid19?
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/h ... li=BBoPWjQ

I don’t know enough about practices to see if this is suspicious or normal

[Maj]

The problem with the waiting, waiting, waiting on the call for schools is that there's no action being taken. When a school implements distance learning, they need to obtain and test equipment, put together material packets, modify curriculum, etc, etc. And then actually teach kids. They're not going back this school year. Washington hasn't been as hard hit, and we're out.

There is something to be said for decisiveness. Yeah, it sucks to lose your job or not have school. But then people can start making plans and move on. If you keep them in a pattern of circling and waiting for the OK to land, they're going to run out of fuel and crash.

[Username17]

So the CCP muzzled the scientist the expert on covid19?
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/h ... li=BBoPWjQ

I don’t know enough about practices to see if this is suspicious or normal

It is a category error to think of any particular scientist as "the covid19 expert." Science absolutely does not work that way. And medical science works that way even less than other branches of science do.

Medical science is not about individual super stars making breakthroughs at 23:59 in order to save the day. It's about a lot of people contributing pieces of data that are individually meaningless but Voltron into something greater.

Which actually makes the thing where the PRC was blackbagging various scientists and doctors who said things that various party officials didn't like so much worse. None of the scientists is "the expert" who will save us, but the corollary is that all of those pieces of data are like puzzle pieces and every single one you suppress makes solving the puzzle that much fucking harder.

Genetic sequencing of the virus is capital intensive (I can't do it at my hospital, you need a lot of PCR machines), but it's not rocket surgery. You need a bunch of specialist equipment and then you sequence the fucking thing. That task has been repeated by labs all over the world. It's important, because it can tell you every single protein the fucker makes, which in turn allows you to replicate individual proteins exactly for purposes of making potential vaccines. It's important grunt work, and having the Chinese government take some of the early bits and make them classified instead of sharing them with the world is seriously fucked up. Probably set back the vaccine program by about a week.

I know a week doesn't sound like a lot when the disaster has been going on since December, but exponential growth being what it is, that extra week is going to end up with a lot of dead people at the end. Here's a deep dive into the difference fucking around for two weeks made for the United Kingdom versus Ireland (more than double the dead as a fraction of the population at this point). A pandemic week doesn't just feel like an excruciatingly long time, it is an excruciatingly long time.

-Username17

[OgreBattle]

Ah ok the illegal gathering did have people charged
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/1 ... s/2356464/

They just didn't get police brutalized as among poorer neighborhoods and public transportation.

Israel's also reported that the fundamentalists have been ignoring quarantine and circulating covid-19 in their insular communities.
https://time.com/5815426/israel-orthodo ... ronavirus/

[maglag]

So the CCP muzzled the scientist the expert on covid19?
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/h ... li=BBoPWjQ

I don’t know enough about practices to see if this is suspicious or normal

It is a category error to think of any particular scientist as "the covid19 expert." Science absolutely does not work that way. And medical science works that way even less than other branches of science do.

Medical science is not about individual super stars making breakthroughs at 23:59 in order to save the day. It's about a lot of people contributing pieces of data that are individually meaningless but Voltron into something greater.

Which actually makes the thing where the PRC was blackbagging various scientists and doctors who said things that various party officials didn't like so much worse. None of the scientists is "the expert" who will save us, but the corollary is that all of those pieces of data are like puzzle pieces and every single one you suppress makes solving the puzzle that much fucking harder.

Genetic sequencing of the virus is capital intensive (I can't do it at my hospital, you need a lot of PCR machines), but it's not rocket surgery. You need a bunch of specialist equipment and then you sequence the fucking thing. That task has been repeated by labs all over the world. It's important, because it can tell you every single protein the fucker makes, which in turn allows you to replicate individual proteins exactly for purposes of making potential vaccines. It's important grunt work, and having the Chinese government take some of the early bits and make them classified instead of sharing them with the world is seriously fucked up. Probably set back the vaccine program by about a week.

I know a week doesn't sound like a lot when the disaster has been going on since December, but exponential growth being what it is, that extra week is going to end up with a lot of dead people at the end. Here's a deep dive into the difference fucking around for two weeks made for the United Kingdom versus Ireland (more than double the dead as a fraction of the population at this point). A pandemic week doesn't just feel like an excruciatingly long time, it is an excruciatingly long time.

-Username17

But Frank, it wasn't a pandemic back in January 2. Everybody else considered it just China's internal problem if they considered it a problem at all.

Let's say that that that a (chinese) woman was allowed to go around saying "IT'S A NEW PANDEMIC THAT WILL SWEEP THE WORLD, PRAY FOR SALVATION SINNERS THE DISEASE OF THE CENTURY IS UPON US!?"

Who would've paid serious attention?

Would've Donald Trump taken any measures earlier for the USA?

Would've Boris Jhonson taken any measures earlier for the UK?

Would've Sergio Mattarella taken any measures earlier for Italy?

No, they would've pointed and laughed because in this timeline only when people started dying by the thousands from COVID-19 on their own countries did the people with power to do anything start to take it (hallf)-seriously. A week of "forward warning" before COVID-19 was actually declared an epidemic would've done no good because it woud've been a warning from evil communist China and nobody would've paid any serious attention. At best.

[Username17]

China letting the science out instead of blackbagging scientists and doctors would not have made the United States take the situation seriously, because Trump. Nor would it have put Italy in a better place because they ended up getting infected through a land route most people forget they even have.

But it would put the protein synthesis forward about a week of where it is now. Everything would be the same, but our vaccines would be about one week farther along in development and the mass vaccination programs would start one week sooner to now than they are going to.

Everything that pushes the start of the big outbreaks and the start of the vaccination program closer together is good. Everything that makes them farther apart is bad.

Donald Trump and Boris Johnson fucking up the early delay phases is bad in their respective countries because it makes the big outbreaks happen earlier. China's early science denial is bad for everyone because it makes the vaccination happen later in all countries.

-Username17

[maglag]

Tubercolosis vaccine can be effective against coronavirus!

That greatly explains why some countries seem to be a lot less affected by COVID-19 despite being side by side with countries with thousands of deaths.

The countries with significantly less deaths are those that had implemented strong universal tubercolosis vaccination for their populations.

The USA, UK, Italy, Spain... Didn't.

[DSMatticus]

That... that article doesn't say that. It doesn't fucking say that at all! It briefly explains the concept of "off-target" immunological effects, tells us that some researchers are hoping to determine whether the BCG vaccine has any benefits with respect to COVID-19, references one study that isn't peer-reviewed that suggests a correlation between universal BCG vaccination and less lethal COVID-19 outbreaks, and then tries to handwavily explain away China (which has a universal BCG policy).

That article's so scant on credible evidence I'm not sure it's even responsible journalism for it to exist yet, but I know for an absolute goddamn fact you shouldn't be posting it as fact with the bold declaration that a TB vaccine "can be effective" against COVID-19. The word you were looking for is "might" with a giant asterisk reading "based on absolutely no peer-reviewed evidence but who knows fingers crossed." Seriously, that was irresponsible and infuriating. It's rare that I'm legitimately pissed off by something posted here.

This is a less shit, less sensationalist article about the BCG vaccine and COVID-19. I can't vouch for it in its entirety; I'm not really familiar with any of the underlying material. But the tl;dr is STFU, stop hyping everything that comes along as a magic panacea, and let us test it. And also a note that more recent data looks way less promising than the initial "studies" made it look because testing is a shitshow and there's like a three-week lag between infections and deaths and it is frequently a legitimate fucking nightmare to figure out how bad the situation even is let alone whether or not it's better or worse than some other place.

[Thaluikhain]

But let's start to hoard vaccines anyway in case they might work against Covid, not like tuberculosis is nasty and people might legitimately need those.