Coronavirus Freakout 49: School's Out Forever?

Previous thread

can you imagine freshman year at college as 'virtual'?

how do you get laid?

Virtually every night r2.

unless you pressin flesh it aint the same

My sister had a baby back in late February. I asked her how she is going to socialize the baby, and she told me according to her doctor, the 1st year doesn't matter, but then she was befuddled. She immediately decided to do zoom calls with various members of the family (which I don't think really works, because babies are like animals looking at ipads). I feel bad for these kids for the next 5 years....the CV generation are going to be socially maladjusted.

What do you suppose people did before the iPad ?

In pandemics? Probably worrying about staying alive.

R% - Maybe they'll be like grandparents who were around for WW2. The Queen's generation. Weren't they considered the greatest generation for the stoicism? Maybe the COVID kids will have a resilience and resourcefulness. They'll definitely only know life through a screen. Babies use iPhones now with photos and videos.

Maybe we’ll all find what a pointless, brick in the wall, school actually is. Maybe we don’t want to be socialized this way, and can make something better?

During times of war people would have been there for each other physically as well as emotionally they would have been interacting with each other not staring at each other through windows or just talking to each other on the telephone.

Agree with r9.

So much of how school is set up is stupid and inefficient.

We've added thirteen new community-transmission cases in New Zealand today. It's a creepy feeling to be able to follow the spread, person by person, because it started out with such a small number of cases. Make that 'known number of cases'. They're saying undetected community spread may have been going on for weeks now.

The first case — a man with mild symptoms who works at Americold, a cold store, from which employees have regular contact with freight handlers at the airport.

#2 - #4 — three of the seven family members who live with #1, also with mild symptoms, travelled along with #1 to Rotorua and Taupō over the weekend where they went to several restaurants and tourist attractions, and possibly visited family although the reporting on that keeps changing.

#5 — a student at #1's daughter's school

#6 - #8 — Americold employees

#9 - #15 — family members of the Americold employees

#16 — an employee of Finance Now, where #1's wife works

#17 — a family member of the Finance Now employee

One of the confirmed cases, who hasn't been identified, visited an elderly relative at an unnamed rest home in the Waikato.

China says chicken wings from Brazil tested positive for coronavirus

A batch of frozen chicken wings exported from Brazil to China tested positive for coronavirus, Chinese officials announced Thursday.

The infected poultry was discovered in the city of Shenzhen during routine screenings of imported meat and seafood carried out since June, the city government said in a notice.

The screenings were implemented after a coronavirus outbreak in Beijing was linked to a seafood market.

People who may have come into contact with the chicken wings, along with food products stored near the batch, were tested by Shenzhen’s health authorities. All those results came back negative.

On Wednesday, China also reported that the coronavirus was found on packages of shrimp shipped in from Ecuador.

COVID-19, which has killed over 749,000 people worldwide, was first linked to a seafood market in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

With Post wires

Bullshit on the China story. Fuckers just won't take responsibility for anything, ever, and will just lie about everything, always.

Did they just stop testing in New Zealand? They opened everything completely back up but weren't routinely testing people all the time, especially those working in airports and other places people from out of country might come on a regular basis?

You know what I've been thinking. For the second time in two decades the world has been given a chance to come together in the face of a shared threat. The first was 9/11. Covid is the second. Both fucking times, the Republican motherfuckers fucked everything up. Some say the world will end in fire. Some say ice. I say spite and Republican stupidity. Hate them all.

Hold me David. I'm scared.

Get the fuck off me, you virus ridden bitch!

R14 - I'm not sure what was being done in the workplace but I do remember reading an article at the beginning of July about the problems they were having trying to meet the daily community-testing target, which I think was 4,000? They were getting less than half of that because people were just over it. I'll see if I can find the article again.

I've been stuck in CA throughout and while NZ didn't have the widespread denial and politicisation that is going on here (although not for lack of trying on the parts of our fringe, but that's another story), people's reactions to the 'end' of COVID were interesting in how different they were. I'm curious to see how it plays out this time.

So many people I know immediately went back to normal as though the nightmare had ended and that was that. Those first rugby matches in June were packed out, no one was using the tracker app, and it was almost like they were making up for lost time.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, the other side of my family in a rural Māori area were extremely wary of the reopening and looked at it as a brief respite in which to make plans for the next round. They had set up their own iwi-organised roadblocks early on (which upset a LOT of people) and protected the elderly and vulnerable by checking in on them daily, delivering prescriptions, groceries, and cooked meals, and just generally doing whatever it took to keep them in their homes. I'm hearing they're ready to lock it all down again, maybe even as early as tomorrow. Let the shrieking commence.

Great song though OP.

Me thinks school will reopen here in September and after a week or two another lock down.

Great song though OP.

Me thinks school will reopen here in September and after a week or two another lock down.

To the cocky New Zealanders, suck shit!

The Nation Wanted to Eat Out Again. Everyone Has Paid the Price.

Across the United States this summer, restaurants and bars, reeling from mandatory lockdowns and steep financial declines, opened their doors to customers, thousands of whom had been craving deep bowls of farro, frothy margaritas and juicy burgers smothered in glistening onions.

But the short-term gains have led to broader losses. Data from states and cities show that many community outbreaks of the coronavirus this summer have centered on restaurants and bars, often the largest settings to infect Americans.

In Louisiana, roughly a quarter of the state’s 2,360 cases since March that were outside of places like nursing homes and prisons have stemmed from bars and restaurants. In Maryland, 12 percent of new cases last month were traced to restaurants, and in Colorado, 9 percent of outbreaks overall have been traced to bars and restaurants.

The National Review interviewed doctors and administrators from Houston's public and private hospital system to find out what they've learned about treating Covid-19.

[quote] “If you wear a mask, maintain six feet, and wash your hands, we’re going to be okay,” Dr. Glenn Davis, an internist and pediatrician who runs a private clinic on the north side of Houston, stated. “It really is that simple. Basically, I bathe in coronavirus all day. I’m bathing in coronavirus, and I haven’t gotten it yet, and neither has my family. Because I wear my mask, I maintain six feet, and I wash my hands.” Davis added that “90 percent” of the patients he has seen contracted the virus because they were not careful. “I could pretty much tell you where they got it,” he said.

[quote] Dr. Reynolds Delgado, a cardiologist at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center who handles “the really bad COVIDs,” said he has closely examined patients “multiple hundreds of times,” and has been perfectly fine with an N95 mask. He added that none of St. Luke’s six infectious-disease doctors have gotten sick, despite examining “every single COVID case” since the pandemic began — an anecdote the hospital confirmed as accurate.

[quote] “The masks really do work. That’s the point of all that,” he stated.

.....

[quote]“When this first started, anyone who got really sick from a pulmonary pathway, we put them on ventilator early. And we’ve learned that if we can keep them off the ventilator, they do much better,” McCarthy said, explaining that doctors had shifted to more “non-invasive ventilation” treatments, like BiPAP and CPAP machines, which are commonly used to treat sleep apnea.

In New York, an April study found that 88 percent of COVID patients who were put on a ventilator ultimately died. But Herlihy said that Baylor St. Luke’s has slashed its mortality rate from 23 percent overall on March to 9 percent in July, in part by changing its treatment strategy. He said that the hospital’s mortality rate for patients on ventilators is “somewhere in the 30 to 35 percent range.”

[quote] “Remdesivir barely works. It’s very weak in its effect, which is unfortunate,” Delgado said. “The convalescent plasma definitely works — very important. I’ve personally seen that saved many lives.”

[quote] “We have not seen a lot of success with plasma, we have done a lot of it. I cannot honestly tell you that it has been a ‘wow’-type treatment. I know that we are continue to use Remdesivir, even that, it has not been a life-saving medication, let me just put it that way,” Porsa added.

[quote] But across the board, doctors told National Review that the implementation of steroids such as Dexamethasone were helping — Delgado called the treatment a “game-changer.”

[quote] “We’ve really figured out optimal timing of steroids, so we absolutely think the steroids are helping,” McCarthy stated.

.....

[quote] “We always had the idea that we would not be overwhelmed quickly like New York,” Delgado said. “A lot of people got infected very quickly in New York because the population density there is just many orders of magnitude greater than Houston, Texas. That is the problem, the problem is all of them getting infected in a short period of time. That’s the problem, and that’s what screwed up everything in New York. That never was going to happen in Houston.”

The United States reported more than 1,500 new deaths caused by Covid-19 on Wednesday, marking the deadliest day for the country since the end of May. The surge in deaths comes as daily new cases reported across the country appear to decline, but epidemiologists caution that nationwide testing has fallen, too, raising questions about whether the count of new cases reflects the state of the outbreak.

[quote] Baylor St. Luke’s has slashed its (Covid-19) mortality rate from 23 percent overall on March to 9 percent in July, in part by changing its treatment strategy.

It was expected that this would happen as hospitals learned more about the disease, and it must be happening all over the country. Little bits of good news here and there.

The Trump administration ordered 650 million reusable masks from U.S. underwear and apparel manufacturers -- enough to give almost every American two apiece.

But they were distributed to just 60,000 businesses and other entities, often in quantities far exceeding their needs.

A charter school with roughly 140 students in Florida, for instance, received 37,500 masks. In other cases, corporations with vast resources, including a Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company, received tens of thousands of the masks.

I agree with the above statement that China's statement about COVID on chicken wings is a complete lie. Presumably they would have been frozen, right?

How stupid do they think we are?

Oh - and for college football - the Big 10 and Pac 12 have cancelled their seasons, but the SEC - the states with the WORST COVID problems - are moving forward.

The ignorant South is getting what it deserves. Keep it going.

⏳ CORONA TIME ~ AUGUST 13 ~ 12:30 PM EST

👍 INTERNATIONAL LEFT HANDERS DAY

🍾 NATIONAL PROSECCO DAY

🌎 GLOBAL

CASES: 20,889,042

DEATHS: 748,578

CRITICAL: 64,591

🇺🇸 UNITED STATES

CASES: 5,368,675

DEATHS: 169,276

CRITICAL: 17,352

📊 WORLDOMETER

😷 SMART & SASSY !

It's really interesting to see how rigid, stubborn and unimaginative American culture is. We used to think of ourselves as flexible, creative and ready for anything.

The coronavirus is at least as deadly as the 1918 flu pandemic and the death toll could even be worse if world leaders and public health officials fail to adequately contain it, researchers warned in a study published Thursday in the medical journal JAMA Network Open.

The increase in deaths during the 1918 flu pandemic was higher overall, but comparable to that observed in the first two months of the coronavirus outbreak in New York City, the researchers found. But when taking into account improvements in hygiene, modern medicine and public health, the increase during the early coronavirus outbreak was “substantially greater” than during the peak of the 1918 pandemic, the researchers wrote.

Except for the one gentleman who looks like a state trooper in r30's photo, EVERY person is wearing a face mask, including the victim on the stretcher.

Interesting ..... 1918, and people were smart enough to know this.

120 years later, have we learned anything ?

CDC warns masks with valves or vents don’t prevent spread of COVID-19

Some breathable face masks don’t do much to protect against spreading the coronavirus, health officials have warned.

Face coverings with valves or vents — largely worn in pre-pandemic times by construction workers — do little to protect a person infected with COVID-19 from passing it to others, the CDC said in a new guide to wearing masks.

“Masks with one-way valves or vents allow air to be exhaled through a hole in the material, which can result in expelled respiratory droplets that can reach others,” the CDC said in an update, posted last week.

“Therefore, CDC does not recommend using masks for source control if they have an exhalation valve or vent.”

Instead, the agency urges people to wear cloth masks, noting that cotton prevents most of potentially infectious respiratory droplets from escaping.

The brand 3M, which makes masks used in hot or dusty construction sites, for example, is designed to release exhaled air through a valve.

A recent experiment conducted by Duke University tested 14 different types of face coverings to determine how effective each one was at stopping respiratory droplets. The study found that medical N95 masks were the most effective — followed by disposable surgical masks and polypropylene-and-cotton-mix masks rounding out the top three.

R27, the last I heard they were saying frozen food can carry Covid indefinitely. The virus gets frozen and then defrosts. Cooking or microwaving kills it.

Doesn’t mean they aren’t lying, I’m just saying, be careful handling frozen foods. Wash your hands after handling it.

I remember at the beginning of the pandemic some researcher saying the virus can live in your freezer for years.

I was hoping that had been contradicted since.

Let’s hope there’ll be a decent vaccine

Let’s hope there’ll be a decent vaccine

Frozen food could explain New Zealand if that is really true.

🐑 [italic] Nobody knows nothin 'bout The Corona

Except that it very baaaad.

It is what it is...

Russian officials say "US is not currently open" to their vaccine

From CNN’s Matthew Chance, Zahra Ullah and Vivian Salama

Russian officials in Moscow have told CNN that they have offered “unprecedented cooperation” with Operation Warp Speed, the US multi-agency body set up to accelerate access to effective Covid-19 vaccines and treatments.

But the officials have said that the “US is not currently open” to the Russian medical advances.

“There is a general sense of mistrust of Russia on the American side and we believe that technologies — including vaccine, testing and treatments — are not being adopted in US because of that mistrust,” one senior Russian official told CNN.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Thursday that President Trump has been briefed on the new Russian vaccine. She said that American vaccines go through “rigorous” phase 3 testing and high standards.

Other US officials told CNN the Russian vaccine is considered so half-baked in the United States that it hadn’t even piqued US interest in a serious way before the rollout.

“There’s no way in hell the US tries this (Russian vaccine) on monkeys, let alone people,” one US government public health official said.

Russian officials tell CNN that Russia is open to sharing information about vaccine and that it would allow US pharmaceutical companies to produce the Russian vaccine on American soil.

R39 That was amazing!

Meanwhile, my university sent an email today asking for staff & faculty volunteers to be "Building Safety Concierges." Seriously, they want staff who are so essential that they must be on campus to spend a few hours per day handing out masks and potentially getting yelled at and abused by entitled parents, students, or members of the public, OR expect staff who are working remotely to come to campus for this privilege?! When all of us make like $12/hour? Oh, but there's free parking! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA!

The gall of these cunts. Fuck right off.

"Dear Colleagues,

We are all accountable for supporting the safety of the campus community. As we unite in this mission, we are proud to announce the Building Safety Concierge Program, a network that will be powered by employee volunteers to provide additional safety assistance at key campus building entrances.   Those who volunteer to serve as Building Safety Concierge providers will be stationed at building entrances to support three duties:

Serve as a positive safety resource, reminding affiliates about the need to wear face coverings and maintain physical distancing, as well as providing face coverings, safety literature and guidance on where entrants can locate hand sanitizing stations and have health questions answered.

Convey building use requirements, provide guidance about entry procedures including the need to swipe/tap ID cards to enter and remind members of the public that buildings are only open to affiliates at this time.

Report incidents of safety non-compliance, entry congestion or other issues related to building access to respective university departments.

We need your help in building our network of Building Safety Concierge providers, and in making this important safety initiative a success. We are asking University leaders to help us raise awareness for the program, and to enable and encourage employees in their areas to serve as providers to volunteer. Of course, we also welcome your participation!  Across all campuses, we are seeking faculty and staff volunteers to staff concierge entry stations to be established at strategic locations for two hour shifts Monday-Friday from 8 a.m. -6 p.m. For staff, hours spent in service in this capacity count towards weekly time commitments. Employees otherwise working remotely are eligible to participate, and free parking will be provided to participants. Staffing support will be needed for campuses operating in Guarded Posture. A self-scheduling system will be established in the coming week, and when it is available, we will update this message and provide a link to enable self-scheduling."

Sylvia ....... [italic] Just Say No !

⏳ CORONA TIME ~ AUGUST 13 ~ 8:00 PM EST

👍 INTERNATIONAL LEFT HANDERS DAY

🍾 NATIONAL PROSECCO DAY

🌎 GLOBAL

CASES: 21,062,256

DEATHS: 752,565

CRITICAL: 64,692

🇺🇸 UNITED STATES

CASES: 5,413,697

DEATHS: 170,337

CRITICAL: 17,355

📊 WORLDOMETER

😷 SMART PEOPLE DO !

R30 Hold me David. I'm scared.

Fuck.

American covid deaths are almost at 170,000 people.

At some point this means "the six degrees of covid" could mean anyone we meet!

And what do we do about those really old people in our lives. My Grandmother's youngest sister is in her 90s and still alive. I loved visiting her but now I can't even give the old girl a confident wave. She calls and sounds like any grandma you'd want even though she was the spinster. She's so cool.

South Korea sees over 100 new coronavirus cases for first time since April

From CNN's Yoonjung Seo in Seoul

South Korea registered 103 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, the South Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said.

It's the first time the country reported more than 100 new daily cases since April 1.

Among the new cases, 85 were locally transmitted and 18 others were imported, Vice Health Minister Kim Ganglip said at a briefing.

Churches and schools: Kim said the health authorities are very concerned about multiple clusters from churches, door-to-door sales companies, markets and schools in Seoul and Gyeonggi province.

Sarang-jeil church in Seoul has 13 cases and the number is expected to rise. Kim said the church has not been fully cooperative with the government’s tracing efforts.

New rules for foreign patients: Starting from August 17, foreign coronavirus patients who violate South Korean anti-virus measures will be responsible for full treatment costs.

South Korea has so far reported 14,873 Covid-19 cases and 305 deaths, according to the KCDC.

One in four young adults in the US contemplated suicide during pandemic

One in four young adults in the U.S. said they considered suicide over the last month, according to new government data that paints a bleak picture of mental health issues stemming from the coronavirus pandemic.

Overall, the new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 40 percent of American adults reported experiencing mental or behavioral challenges tied to the COVID-19 crisis and measures including social distancing and stay-at-home orders.

“U.S. adults reported considerably elevated adverse mental health conditions associated with COVID-19,” the report said.

“Younger adults, racial/ethnic minorities, essential workers and unpaid adult caregivers reported having experienced disproportionately worse mental health outcomes, increased substance use, and elevated suicidal ideation.”

Nearly 11 percent of the 5,412 adults surveyed between June 24 and 30 reported having seriously considered suicide in the 30 days prior, the report said.

But the percentage was significantly higher among those between the ages of 18 and 24, with about a quarter saying they harbored such thoughts.

Almost 31 percent of unpaid caregivers and 22 percent of essential workers also said they had thought about taking their own lives. Respondents who are black or Hispanic were also well above average.

“Addressing mental health disparities and preparing support systems to mitigate mental health consequences as the pandemic evolves will continue to be needed urgently,” the report stated.

About one-third of respondents said they had been struggling with anxiety or depression symptoms. And roughly 26.3 percent reported experiencing trauma and stress-related disorders because of the pandemic.

To cope with the stress from the viral outbreak, another 13.3 percent said they had turned to substances including alcohol and prescription or illicit drugs.

The spike in reports of negative mental and behavioral health issues linked to the outbreak “highlight the broad impact of the pandemic and the need to prevent and treat these conditions,” the report stated.

“Expanded use of telehealth, an effective means of delivering treatment for mental health conditions, including depression, substance use disorder, and suicidal ideation, might reduce COVID-19-related mental health consequences,” it said.

[quote]I feel bad for these kids for the next 5 years....the CV generation are going to be socially maladjusted.

So, they will fit right in here at the Datalounge.

A woman I know can't stop talking about taking her college freshman to the dorms, and how great college is going to be for her offspring. She's constantly going on, and on, and on about it. She's not stupid...well, I didn't think she was before this.

There's absolutely no way in Hell that I'd move my child into a dorm during this pandemic. They would stay at home, take as many classes as they could online, and they'd work a part-time job. Everyone wants to return to some sense of normalcy (as do I), but they'll regret acting too soon.

She is in denial.

One thing Trump and COVID taught me is there are lots of stupid people out there. Gradations of stupid. Like you might seem somewhat intelligent in a conversation but then...shit you reveal your stupidity and ignorance.

I just recovered from covid-19. It knocked me on my ass for a week. Took another week to regain my senses of taste and smell, and my strength. I'm a pretty healthy 50 something guy who'd never had chicken pox or the measles before.

Sadly... my co-worker and 3 patients on the unit I work didn't survive this latest scourge from China. Do whatever you hasta to keep from acquiring covid.

Glad you're okay, R51. Thank you for doing what you do.

Appreciate that R52 😉

R49 As I've walked my dog around my neighborhood the past few weeks, watching dumpy Fraus and their dumpy husbands helping their kids move into apartments as if everything's totally normal, my internal monologue is like,

"Look! You fools! You’re in danger! Can’t you see?"

A college education is no substitute for common sense.

R49 Here. I absolutely agree, R50.

Anonymous in Kansas City - when did you come back to DL?

Snapshot of Today's Google Health News headlines concerning the CDC-

[quote] CDC director warns America is in for the ‘worst fall…we’ve ever had’

[quote] Suicidal thoughts surging, mental health plummeting during pandemic, CDC study finds

[quote] CDC director says 'We were under-prepared for pandemic'

CNBC: California reported 6,608 new cases of the coronavirus on Thursday, becoming the first state in the country to top 600,000 cumulative cases since the outbreak began.

The state, with a population of more than 39 million, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, has reported a total of 602,997 cases.

California is currently working through a backlog of up to 300,000 coronavirus records that were previously unreported due to a technical issue. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University anticipate "very large spikes at the county and state level” as California reconciles its unreported cases.

AIKC is back? You survived! Erna died, so I thought maybe you did, too.

I don't know r60, Erna or an imposter is still posting as of 2 days ago.

The Guardian: Applause and cheers rang out in May as Spain shut down its largest makeshift hospital – hastily erected in Madrid’s convention centre – in what was seen as a symbolic turning point in one of Europe’s deadliest battles with Covid-19.

Less than four months later, Spain’s military has again been dispatched to build a field hospital, this time in the north-eastern city of Zaragoza, as the country grapples with one of the highest rates of infection in western Europe.

A little death has NEVER stopped Erna from posting.

The CDC’s ensemble forecast now projects nearly 189,000 US coronavirus deaths by September 5.

That's 25,000 additional deaths in the next 23 days.

That might be a little low, actually.

Georgia's current policies to fight Covid-19 are not enough, according to White House Coronavirus Task Force recommendations dated Sunday and obtained by The Atlanta Journal Constitution.

"There is widespread and expanding community viral spread," reads the report, according to the newspaper. "Mitigation efforts must increase."

The task force recommended a statewide mask mandate, the closing of nightclubs, bars and gyms in high-risk counties, limiting restaurants to one-quarter of capacity, limiting social gatherings to 10 people, and ramping up testing and contact tracing.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp continues to refuse to implement any of these recommendations.

⏳ CORONA TIME ~ AUGUST 14 ~ 1:30 PM EST

🗣️ NAVAJO CODE TALKERS DAY

🥤 NATIONAL KOOL-AID DAY

🌎 GLOBAL

CASES: 21,117,374

DEATHS: 759,454

CRITICAL: 64,566

🇺🇸 UNITED STATES

CASES: 5,433,129

DEATHS: 170,817

CRITICAL: 17,220

📊 WORLDOMETER

😷 DON'T BE A LAWBREAKER !

NATIONAL KOOL-AID DAY

gurl, I feel like it has been for months now.

[quote]One in four young adults in the U.S. said they considered suicide over the last month, according to new government data that paints a bleak picture of mental health issues stemming from the coronavirus pandemic.

I don't buy this. I think people are just asking now and asking on a more regular basis. I think about a quarter of young adults have always thought about suicide during any given time. Seemed like that when I was one.

Too many dead hoes.

Georgia is trending as a swing state...do you think they're that awful to let the virus spread as a deterrent to voting? Yeah I do.

French High Council of Public Health recommends widespread use of masks

From CNN’s Isabel Tejera in Madrid

The French population should wear masks in all enclosed collective spaces, be it public and private, or places where there is a high density of people outdoors, in order to limit the emission of respiratory particles, it announced on Friday.

This follows an open letter sent by 239 international scientists to the World Health Organisation (WHO) on July 4 proposing the reclassification of SARS-CoV-2 as an airborne virus.

The HCSP says their mask recommendation should be combined with other prevention measures. It also calls on more research to understand the role of aerosols in viral transmission.

Data from France shows that over the past week, ending August 13,  there has been a 66% increase in newly reported cases and a 52% increase in weekly incidence rate per 100,000 population, indicating a sharp rise in coronavirus cases.

The French government on Friday declared Paris and Marseille and its surrounding areas high-risk zones for the virus, granting authorities there powers to impose localized curbs to contain the spread of the disease.

Vaccines are safe. But huge numbers of people around the world say they wouldn't take a Covid jab

From CNN's Emma Reynolds in London

Susan Bailey, a 57-year-old retired nurse from Florida, has had all her jabs and gets a flu shot every year. She's a vocal Joe Biden supporter -- and one of a growing number of people globally who say they wouldn't take a coronavirus vaccine even if one becomes available soon.

"I'm not anti-vaccine. My kids were both vaccinated with everything, but I would not take a Covid vaccine today," Bailey told CNN.

"I have underlying health issues ... I would want to see enough studies in a long-term period of what the ramifications are for the vaccine."

Bailey said she doesn't trust US President Donald Trump, and that consensus around a vaccine among the world's top scientists and at least six months of testing would be just "a start" in persuading her to take it. "It's much too soon for me, I'd have to say, 18 months."

Her trepidation is echoed by a significant proportion of adults all over the world, who reject the extreme views of the anti-vaccine community, but say they have major concerns about a coronavirus jab.

Neil Johnson, a physicist at George Washington University who is studying vaccine skepticism on social media, told CNN the four most common objections are: safety; whether a vaccine is needed; trust of the establishment and pharmaceutical companies; and perceived uncertainty in the science.

To see how widespread hesitancy is, he suggests asking your family and friends whether they would take a Covid-19 vaccine if one were available now.

"I would be surprised if you ask 10 people and you get all 10 jumping and saying yes without adding any caveats," he said.

Powerful tool: Scientists say vaccines are our most effective tool in combating infectious diseases, preventing 6 million deaths every year. Numerous studies have proven that they are safe. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top US epidemiologist, said that widespread uptake of a coronavirus vaccine could end the pandemic and a study in The Lancet medical journal found that it was the only way to fully end lockdowns.

Yet an Associated Press/NORC Center for Public Affairs online poll from May indicated half of Americans would hesitate to take or refuse a vaccine, and a study by King's College London last week found similar results in the UK.

"The benefits of London are gone." Why one young couple is moving to the country

From CNN's Mick Krever in London

For as long as there have been cities, their residents have agreed to an unwritten contract.

They tolerate cramped living quarters, noise and pollution. In exchange, they get the vibrancy that rural towns often lack. The pandemic has broken that contract. And many city dwellers are ready to move.

"All of the benefits of London are gone now," Michael, 29, said while sitting in the garden of his small London apartment. "The pubs, the clubs, and the bars have all shut, or they're open in very odd circumstances."

London's pubs and restaurants have been gradually reopening since July, when the coronavirus lockdown that turned one of the world's liveliest urban meccas into a virtual ghost town began to ease. But social distancing rules mean that many establishments are operating at less than half their usual capacity, and some have closed permanently. In a bid to get more Londoners dining out, the UK government is even subsidizing restaurant meals in August.

Michael and his partner, Agata Olszewska, 28, had long planned to eventually leave London. They would take a well-traveled trajectory: Spend their 20s getting ahead at work, then move somewhere more comfortable and affordable. (CNN Business is not using Michael's full name because he is employed as a civil servant and not authorized to speak to the media.)

While pay in London is generally much better than other parts of the United Kingdom, the cost of living, notably rent, is considerably higher and buying property can be unaffordable due to the size of down payment required. That often prompts professionals to move further out of the city when they want to buy a home.

"We probably thought about doing it in about two years' time, to get the maximum benefit of working in London," Olszewska, an architect, said. "The pandemic kind of accelerated our decision to move now."

These are the COVID symptoms you’ll likely get first, scientists find

The earliest sign of the coronavirus will most likely be a fever in infected patients, followed by a cough and muscle pain, according to the study conducted by the University of Southern California published in the Frontiers in Public Health journal Thursday.

People will then experience nausea or vomiting and diarrhea.

The latest findings are a major breakthrough in studying the coronavirus, since patients will now be able to more quickly identify and treat the disease.

“This order is especially important to know when we have overlapping cycles of illnesses like the flu that coincide with infections of COVID-19,” Peter Kuhn, a professor of biological sciences and medicine who worked on the study, said in a statement. “Doctors can determine what steps to take to care for the patient, and they may prevent the patient’s condition from worsening.”

Establishing a diagnosis early is key to stopping the virus before it gets more serious.

“Given that there are now better approaches to treatments for COVID-19, identifying patients earlier could reduce hospitalization time,” said Joseph Larsen, a doctoral candidate and the lead researcher on the study. “The order of the symptoms matter. Knowing that each illness progresses differently means that doctors can identify sooner whether someone likely has COVID-19, or another illness, which can help them make better treatment decisions.”

The initial symptoms of the coronavirus are very similar to other respiratory illnesses such as MERS and SARS, but it’s the timing of gastrointestinal issues that makes COVID-19 easier to single out.

“The upper GI tract (i.e., nausea/vomiting) seems to be affected before the lower GI tract (i.e., diarrhea) in COVID-19, which is the opposite from MERS and SARS,” the scientists wrote in the study.

Larsen, along with faculty advisers Kuhn and James Hicks, conducted the study at the USC Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience’s Convergent Science Institute in Cancer.

The USC researchers analyzed data collected by the World Heath Organization in China between Feb. 16 and 24 from more than 55,000 confirmed coronavirus cases. The scientists also took a look at nearly 1,100 cases gathered from Dec. 11 to Jan. 29 by the China Medical Treatment Expert Group via the National Health Commission of China.

They then compared the numbers to influenza symptom data of 2,470 cases in North America, Europe and the Southern Hemisphere that were reported to health authorities from 1994 to 1998.

10 of Will and Jada Pinkett Smith’s employees test positive for COVID-19

Any people with neurological symptoms having covid?

Last thing I heard about the cousin of one of my dear friends

Any people with neurological symptoms having covid?

Last thing I heard about the cousin of one of my dear friends

It's become a big story on local news, r78.

R79 thank you, missed it and I was quite shocked because more and more physical damage and symptoms seem to pop up.....

The COVID situation really proves what an idiot Trump is. He can have used his racist nationalism and anti-immigration tendencies to have closed all the borders immediately. Since it's an election year, he could have really worked with the democrats *just this once for show* to keep the employment subsidies going, get the testing going, send in more federal aid/guidance to blue states suffering. He could have actually played the role of savior, just put on his fake reality TV host persona for less than a year, and he would have looked like a hero to many on the fence and really secured the deplorable base. This will be better for us in the elections, but it seems like such a stupid miscalculation on his part. Yes, we know Trump is stupid, but if you are a (questionable) billionaire who becomes President with no political experience, you are smart enough to know how to play the game. Even from his purely self serving, let them eat cake viewpoint, I just don't see how he couldn't have seen that basically doing the opposite of what he did would have all but guarantee him a win in November. And then he could let us all suffer after the election.

[quote] The COVID situation really proves what an idiot Trump is.

I agree with R81's reasoning. I watch Trump and think, "WTF? Is he deliberately trying to lose the election?" And then I think, "Yes, he is." Trump doesn't want to deal with COVID and its economic fallout for 4 more years. He never wanted to be president in the first place. He only enjoys the campaign rallies. Trump wants to lose. But he wants to sow enough doubt about the legitimacy of the election (by creating fears of voter fraud, doubts about mail-in voting, etc.) that his supporters will forever think Trump really did win and that Biden is an illegitimate president. He wants his deplorable base to think of him as a hero who was treated unfairly got shafted out of a 2nd term. And Trump wants to leave the country in such bad shape that Biden will have a hell of a time trying to turn things around. Basically, Trump knows he's going to lose and is fine with it, but he wants to make everything as miserable as possible for Biden before he leaves.

⏳ CORONA TIME ~ AUGUST 15 ~ 2:00 PM EST

😾🐺 INTERNATIONAL HOMELESS ANIMALS DAY

😴 BREAK THE MONOTONY DAY

🌎 GLOBAL

CASES: 21,494,265

DEATHS: 766,159

CRITICAL: 64,467

🇺🇸 UNITED STATES

CASES: 5,499,765

DEATHS: 172,093

CRITICAL: 17,218

📊 WORLDOMETER

😷 1. PUT ON YOUR MASK ~ 😇 2. RESCUE A HOMELESS PET !

Is this the future of concerts? If so, it actually looks like a huge improvement. Thanks, corona!

Yes! I’m enjoying the roominess of social distancing. I went out for sushi yesterday and had a nice big area all to myself. This is a part of the “new normal” I welcome..

COVID-19 first appeared in a group of Chinese miners in 2012, scientists say

The coronavirus may not have originated at a Wuhan wet market last year but 1,000 miles away in 2012 — deep in a Chinese mineshaft where workers came down with a mysterious, pneumonia-like illness after being exposed to bats.

Virologist Jonathan Latham and molecular biologist Allison Wilson, both of the non-profit Bioscience Resource Project in Ithaca, arrived at their finding after translating a 66-page master’s thesis from the Chinese medical doctor who treated the miners and sent their tissue samples to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for testing.

“The evidence it contains has led us to reconsider everything we thought we knew about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Latham and Wilson wrote in an article published July 15 on their website, “Independent Science News.”

Latham told The Post that the coronavirus “almost certainly escaped” from the Wuhan lab.

In April 2012, six miners in the Mojiang mine in southwestern China’s Yunnan province fell ill after spending more than 14 days removing bat feces. Three eventually died.

In his thesis, the physician Li Xu, who treated the miners, describes how the patients had a high fever, a dry cough, sore limbs and, in some cases, headaches — all symptoms now associated with COVID-19, said Latham and Wilson.

How the miners were treated — for example, with ventilation and a variety of drugs including steroids, blood thinners and antibiotics — also resembles how COVID-19 patients are being treated worldwide, they said.

After conducting multiple tests for hepatitis, dengue fever and even HIV, the doctor consulted with various specialists throughout China, including virologist Zhong Nanshan, an international hero who managed the SARS outbreak in 2003 and is considered the country’s greatest scientist.

“The remote meeting with Zhong Nanshan is significant,” Latham and Wilson said. “It implies that the illnesses of the six miners were of high concern and, second, that a SARS-like coronavirus was considered a likely cause.”

The doctor also sent sample tissues from the miners to the Wuhan lab, a focal point of coronavirus research in China. There, scientists found the source of infection was a SARS-like coronavirus from a Chinese rufous horseshoe bat, according to the thesis.

Latham and Wilson believe the virus — once inside the miners — “evolved” into SARS CoV-2, “an unusually pathogenic coronavirus highly adapted to humans,” and the samples somehow escaped from the lab last year, launching what has morphed into the coronavirus pandemic.

The New York scientists labeled their COVID-19 origins hypothesis “the Mojiang Miners Passage”; “passaging” is a virologic term for adapting viruses to new species, they said.

Although scientists at the Wuhan lab had collected coronavirus samples from bats at the same mine, they missed the 2012 connection, Latham told The Post.

In fact, Shi Zhengli, a virologist at the Wuhan lab who is known as “the batwoman” for her extensive research into bat-derived coronaviruses, told Scientific American in June that the miners had died from a fungal infection, “although it would have been only a matter of time before they caught the coronaviruses if the mine had not been promptly shut,” the magazine reported.

“The mine shaft stunk like hell,” Shi told the magazine. “Bat guano, covered in fungus, littered the cave.”

Reaction to the Latham-Wilson finding has been gradually gaining positive reviews from the scientific community in the US. Renowned American geneticist and molecular engineer George Church shared their work on Twitter in July. The tweet garnered 304 retweets and 403 likes. Stuart Newman, a leading expert on cell biology and anatomy at New York Medical College in Westchester called it “the best sourced explanation yet of the origins of #SARSCoV2” in a July 19 tweet about the report.

“We feel that it’s being circulated underground in the scientific community,” Latham said. “People think it has merit, but they are reluctant to go public because the coronavirus has become very politicized.”

Chinese officials claim the coronavirus, which has infected more than 19 million worldwide and killed nearly 800,000, originated in Wuhan in December, when it crossed the species barrier from animals on sale at the Huanan seafood market.

But many scientists still question the infection’s origins, especially after the market was cleaned up and shut down by government officials almost as soon as the pandemic began to spread.

[quote]"All of the benefits of London are gone now," Michael, 29, said while sitting in the garden of his small London apartment. "The pubs, the clubs, and the bars have all shut, or they're open in very odd circumstances."

It hasn't even been six months and the situation is temporary but people like these idiots are already moving because 'Wahwahwah, everything is gone!'. There really is no impulse control or long term anything in anyone under 40 anymore, is there?

🤔 Maybe if we had a real plan . . . . . . . . . .

Part of the reason that people who aren't anti-vaxxers in any way are still questioning whether they'll get a vaccine, at least anytime soon, is because they mistrust TrumpCo to the point that they think they'd be perfectly willing to kill them with some third-rate imported Russian vaccine that they lie about getting from Russia and would fire all the people who would watchdog such a criminal action.

Why is everyone looking around waiting on a cure to magically appear.

The best way to cure this thing is to get a new administration.

Gee, ya think, R91?

Two senior Trump political appointees departed the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a senior official at the agency confirmed to CNN. Kyle McGowan, the chief of staff, and Amanda Campbell, the deputy chief of staff, resigned effective Friday.

The pair had been criticized by Trump administration officials for not being loyal enough.

"Basically this virus can put some patients' bodies on fire, including their hearts," says Dr. Dara Kass, an emergency medicine physician at Columbia University Medical School.. "We're seeing this damage happen in patients that are 30, 40 and 50 years old.

"These aren't the patients that are elderly and immunocompromised ... They're the patients that are surviving this virus, but now they're going to have a new chronic medical condition related to surviving this virus that we need to recognize and treat."

Complaints and symptoms of people who have survived Covid-19

A new survey of 1,567 long-haulers (people who have survived Covid-19) now shows just how wide-ranging these long-term symptoms are, stretching from sadness and blurry vision to diarrhea and joint pain. Here are the top 10 complaints and the percentage of people reporting each one (many long-haulers report several effects):

100% Fatigue

66.8% Muscle or body aches

65.1% Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing

59.0% Difficulty concentrating or focusing

58.5% Inability to exercise or be active

57.6% Headache

49.9% Difficulty sleeping

47.6% Anxiety

45.6% Memory problems

41.9% Dizziness

Ireland ... new clusters and numbers 'deeply concerning' ....

Cluster of Covid-19 identified in UNC Chapel Hill fraternity

From CNN’s Kay Jones

The University of North Carolina issued an alert on Saturday afternoon saying a cluster of Covid-19 cases has been identified in the Sigma Nu fraternity.

This comes a day after the University said that clusters had been identified in the Ehringhaus Community and Granville Towers.

The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services defines a cluster by five or more cases in close proximity in a location, like a single residential hall or dwelling. "The individuals  in this cluster  have been identified and are isolating and receiving medical  monitoring," the alert said. It also said that all residents in the living space have been given information about the next steps in the process."

UNC says they will not release information about individual positive cases.

The Sigma Nu national headquarters has posted Covid-19 information and resources for members of the fraternity. CNN has reached out to the Sigma Nu headquarters for additional comment but has not heard back.

[quote]"These aren't the patients that are elderly and immunocompromised ... They're the patients that are surviving this virus, but now they're going to have a new chronic medical condition related to surviving this virus that we need to recognize and treat."

Isn't this what a bio-weapon aims for, to bankrupt a country?

Don't forget the part about the pizza parlors, R98, you tinhat loon.

Bats were the vectors for Ebola too.

STOP TALKING ABOUT PIZZA PARLORS!

Fuck. Just stop.

I've had bronchitis for a few weeks now. I'm finally on antibiotics I have no other symptoms than a cough but it is really hanging on. My MD didn't test me because I only have a cough.

Could still be Covid R102 hope you’ll get well soon

⏳ CORONA TIME ~ AUGUST 16 ~ 12:30 PM EST

🎢 NATIONAL ROLLERCOASTER DAY

🥃 NATIONAL RUM DAY

🌎 GLOBAL

CASES: 21,700,823

DEATHS: 770,523

CRITICAL: 64,418

🇺🇸 UNITED STATES

CASES: 5,539,841

DEATHS: 172,762

CRITICAL: 17,188

📊 WORLDOMETER

😷 EVERY DAY ~ EVERYWHERE

R102, why not just test you? Your doctor is an idiot. You could have been spreading it the whole time.

This is a cross-post, but it’s upsetting.

I just saw a video of the surprise birthday party in Connecticut. Attending were two children under15 years of age, and at least ten adults, and a dog. There were no masks. There were no gloves, There was hugging all around, except for two who discreetly stood behind an obstacle. These are people who are from different states or intrastate areas and are not usually intimates. It breaks my heart. The least careful person could have passed COVID to everyone there. I’m really saddened by this.

Is this commonplace behavior this summer?

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

COVID is for everybody, even nice people like you or I

Corrected link:

COVID is for everybody, even nice people like you, or I

What's next? Forsythia?

[quote]Trump eyes new unproven coronavirus "cure"

[quote]To the alarm of some government health officials, President Trump has expressed enthusiasm for the Food and Drug Administration to permit an extract from the oleander plant to be marketed as a dietary supplement or, alternatively, approved as a drug to cure COVID-19, despite lack of proof that it works.

more at link

Can someone please hurry up and convince Trump that cyanide is the cure for Covid so he can take himself and his followers out?

[quote]Oleander plants contain several toxic elements, including cardiac glycosides, saponins, digitoxigenin, oleandrin, oleondroside, nerioside and other unknown toxins. These poisons are found in all parts of the oleander plant and are toxic whether the plant parts are dried or green. Ingestion of any part of the oleander plant can lead to serious illness and possibly death.

If the Coronavirus won’t kill us, Trump will find something that will.

[quote]Trump eyes new unproven coronavirus "cure"

Pushed to him by the MyPillow guy.

I just want to live long enough to see every bit of the stupidity, corruption and incompetence of this administration laid bare. Trump must go down in the history books as America's worst president.

The virus burned through the rich world like wildfire in the spring, but this new data confirms that the U.S. is one of very few wealthy countries that have failed to suppress it since then.

Over the past several weeks, the coronavirus has killed Americans at six times the average rate in other rich countries. And we’re recording about eight times more infections.

The My Pillow Guy should be silenced with one of his own pillows.

🧟Donald Trump is a Voodoo Queen

If you buy one at the low low price of $69.98 you get a second one absolutely FREE r116.

Countdown to the first oleander poisonings ...

The Corona is believed to have originated and escaped from a local pillow manufacturing facility located in Minnesota.

R119 I'm on it!

Sorry Sylvia, that is nicotiana, not oleander.

R122 Hollywood would never lie to me!

Anyway, I've been curious about air travel. If there had been any clusters of cases traced back to a group of people all being on the same flight, it seem like we would have heard about it by now. Does this mean that flying (with proper precautions in place) is safer than we'd previously thought?

I hadn't even thought about it Sylvia/ r123. I do remember much speculation about it early on, maybe as late as May, but either there was no follow through or I was distracted by some other aspect.

We can't even get restaurants named that are home to clusters. Just their general vicinity and time of customer exposure. I doubt they'd talk about an airline.

R125 If it happened on an international flight (especially a Chinese airline, or Emirates, etc) we'd hear all about it.

Sharon Stone has condemned “non-mask wearers” for the fate of her younger sister, who is hospitalised with coronavirus and “fighting for her life”. The actor, 62, shared photographs on Instagram of the equipment in her sister’s room, as well as a medical worker in full PPE. She wrote in the caption: “My sister Kelly, who already has lupus, now has Covid-19. This is her hospital room. One of the Non-Mask wearers did this,” Stone wrote.

“My grandmother died of Covid and my godmother died of Covid,” said Stone. “My sister and her husband are fighting for their lives and my sister is not doing well.”

I agree with her. I wear/wore a mask Everywhere but I still got the virus. Wearing a mask protects the other person but a mask on each person protects everyone. people are so damned selfish.

I remember early on, a foreign female student, infected people on the plane with her, i think up to 5 or 6 got it from her. I'm gonna google the article.

Coronavirus: social media anger in Vietnam at jet-setter linked to new cluster in Hanoi

The city’s patient zero, a woman named Nguyen Hong Nhung, had last month visited London, Milan and Paris and returned home from London to Hanoi on a Vietnam Airlines flight on March 2.

Nhung is the only person referred to by name on the government’s portal since the latest infections emerged. The Vietnamese online community has since expressed outrage towards the 26-year-old Hanoi resident, who reportedly lives in an extravagant home and regularly flaunted her jet-setting lifestyle on her now-closed Instagram account.

Several Facebook groups have been formed to rant about her, accusing her of being a spoilt rich kid, being irresponsible, and calling for jail time and fines to be imposed on her.

One of the groups, “Nhung Nguyen – COVID-19”, has garnered over 10,400 members.

Twelve of the country’s new cases flew on the Vietnam Airlines flight with Nhung, who was in business class. One of them is Vietnamese and the remainder are foreigners. The country’s Planning and Investment Minister Nguyen Chi Dung, who sat several rows from Nhung on the flight, tested negative. He is currently in self-quarantine at home.

The other new infections include Nhung’s personal chauffeur and her aunt, while a 24-year-old Vietnamese woman who had met with Nhung in London on February 27 also tested positive. She is now being quarantined in a field hospital in Ho Chi Minh City.

On Tuesday, Vietnam’s health ministry confirmed a 34th case – a woman who had returned home from a trip to the United States. The 51-year-old woman is being treated at a hospital in the central province of Binh Thuan.

Nhung’s neighbourhood in Hanoi, home to 22 families with 176 residents, was locked down as soon as she tested positive. Authorities have identified 156 of the 201 passengers on the flight from London and the places they have visited since arriving, and are still tracing the remaining passengers.

Sorry, R128, I hope you're feeling better. I do wish health experts would acknowledge more often that a mask is not guaranteed protection. Too many people think their mask makes then invulnerable. No, you still have to stay away from people as much as possible -- especially the unmasked.

thanks r131 I am pretty much over it except for the extreme tiredness which has finally subsided somewhat over the last few days.

R127 Her grandmother died of Covid? How old was she 114? Of course it’s very sad I’m just jealous she’s in her 60’s and still had a grandparent Alive!

Sharon Stone Mourns ‘Adopted Grandmother’ Who Died From COVID-19

Celebrities and their families get Covid more than regular people, despite their huge houses and not having to work in close proximity to others. What are they doing, traveling? I still don’t know anyone personally that’s gotten it, and the two I know of secondhand have recovered. That’s because I’m just plain folk.

We were finally going to get our windows replaced in the house and our contractor came down with CV. He is out of the hospital but was on a vent. This disease is no joke.

We were finally going to get our windows replaced in the house and our contractor came down with CV. He is out of the hospital but was on a vent. This disease is no joke.

Sharon Stone was from a small town in Pennsylvania, and my cousins were her neighbors. She may be famous now, but back then she was "just plain folk" from farm country.

You may have dodged a bullet there, R137. I worry about having contractors come into the house, but sometimes you can't avoid it.

The rich people hire the little people to do housework and you know those little people live in cramped conditions and can get covid quite easily...so they bring the virus to the houses of rich people.

New York's infection rate is the lowest since start of the pandemic, governor says

From CNN's Kristina Sgueglia

New York’s .7% infection rate is the lowest since the pandemic began, and one of the lowest infection rates in the country, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.

The state is averaging 1% or under since June, which the governor said is “exactly where we want to be."

Six more people have died from coronavirus, Cuomo said Monday.

Hospitalizations are up slightly but basically flat, he said. Intubation and intensive care admissions are also flat.

⏳ CORONA TIME ~ AUGUST 17 ~ 12:00 NOON EST

👥 BABY BOOMER RECOGNITION DAY

👣 I LOVE MY FEET DAY

🌎 GLOBAL:

CASES: 21,900,054

DEATHS: 774,394

CRITICAL: 64,228

🇺🇸 UNITED STATES

CASES: 5,573,154

DEATHS: 173,186

CRITICAL: 17,237

📊 WORLDOMETER

😷 DON'T FORGET: DEM CONVENTION BEGINS TONIGHT ! WATCH SAFE @ HOME!

Easyjet to close 3 UK bases, putting hundreds of jobs at risk

From CNN's Robert Nort

Easyjet will close its bases at London Stansted, London Southend and Newcastle starting August 31, said the group on Monday, putting hundreds of jobs at risk.

It cited the impact of the coronavirus pandemic and related travel restrictions compounded by quarantine measures in the UK. These rules have "created uncertainty for customers and an impact on demand for travel," said Easyjet in a statement.

The three bases employ 670 people, and Easyjet says it has reached an agreement on voluntary redundancy with staff. London Stansted and Newcastle will remain part of its network, and some domestic and international flights will continue to operate. The airline said it will inform customers of available refunds and transfer options in the coming days.

“We would like to reassure customers due to fly from these airports that we are now contacting anyone whose flight is affected with clear advice on their options which include rerouting via alternative airports or receiving a full refund," said the airline's CEO, Johan Lundgren.

[R140] Yes, I have heard that the most cases in my area are in the Hispanic community because they live in small apartments and can’t stay home from work. The wealthy people can’t trim their own shrubs or clean their own houses, and so it goes.

"I have heard" .............. Aye, Carumba, r144 , at least they're out there working !

Contractor is Hispanic true, but has a successful family business! Definitely not slaving away. A true tradesman, with work up and down the block. We certainly were not trying to cheap out. Yes much landscaping and garden care is run by Latinos, but they are successful small business owners and get to work outside.

Scientists who have been monitoring immune responses to the virus are now starting to see encouraging signs of strong, lasting immunity, even in people who developed only mild symptoms of Covid-19, a flurry of new studies suggests. Disease-fighting antibodies, as well as immune cells called B cells and T cells that are capable of recognizing the virus, appear to persist months after infections have resolved — an encouraging echo of the body’s enduring response to other viruses.

“Things are really working as they’re supposed to,” said Deepta Bhattacharya, an immunologist at the University of Arizona and an author on one of the new studies, which has not yet been peer-reviewed.

Although researchers cannot forecast how long these immune responses will last, many experts consider the data a welcome indication that the body’s most studious cells are doing their job — and will have a good chance of fending off the coronavirus, faster and more fervently than before, if exposed to it again.

Oleander reminds me of that case where the wife poisons her husband with it, along with anti-freeze. It also reminds me of Esther Blodgett.

[quote]Over the past several weeks, the coronavirus has killed Americans at six times the average rate in other rich countries. And we’re recording about eight times more infections.

America isn't a rich country. We are two countries. Rich America is doing just fine. It's poor America that's paying the price, mostly in the service of rich America.

CNN: Covid-19 is now the No. 3 cause of death in the US. This, as testing to find and isolate cases has decreased -- daily tests have dropped by an average of 68,000 compared to the daily rate in late July.

What are the top two, cancer and overdoses?

Heart disease and cancer.

UNC Chapel Hill has suspended in-person instruction after 135 students test positive.

It's like reopening the campus was a bad idea or something.

I'm shocked, R153, just shocked!

When I blocked the "heart disease and cancer" troll, roughly a dozen recent questionable posts suddenly disappeared. When in doubt, block first and ask questions later. Team Chump is hard at work!

R155 is lying.

U of Pittsburgh's first round of random student testing went well. Out of 452 tested, only 2 came back positive!

The film White Oleander, wherein a character murders with oleander, starring the glorious Michelle Pfeiffer and Robin Wright, also starring Zellweger, isn't even 20 years old!

NFL season opener will have fans in the stands

From CNN's David Close

The Kansas City Chiefs will celebrate their Super Bowl LIV title and take on the Houston Texans in the NFL’s season opener in front of spectators at Arrowhead Stadium.

The Chiefs, in consultation with health officials and the NFL, have announced a plan allowing 22% of stadium capacity (under 17,000 fans) to attend upcoming home games. Fans with tickets will also be allowed to tailgate ahead of kickoffs.

Tickets will be sold and grouped in six seats or less.

The team says fans will be required to wear a mask at all times while at the stadium, except for when they are “actively eating or drinking.”

All staff working home games will be directed to wear personal protective equipment.

The first game of the season is Sept. 10.

[quote]Don't forget the part about the pizza parlors, [R98], you tinhat loon.

I do not believe the COVID-19 was human made, I just stated a bio weapon aims to bankrupt a country with long term effects.

Why do people block?

Are you afraid your caftan will spontaneously combust ?

Did you miss the post that COVID infected miners back in 2012...they came into contact with bats

I'll give Kansas City two weeks ( or less ) before they're forced to shut down.

Texas will follow shortly.

The last game of the season is Sept. 10.

The racist Reddit troll who started a shitstorm in NZ has — whoops! — had a change of heart now that he's been caught out. He fabricated a tale which had the twenty-something daughter of the family of four sneaking in and out of a managed-isolation hotel to fuck her boyfriend. But that wasn't enough!

The boyfriend, a one-man international crime spree, was in quarantine after being deported from Australia and he somehow managed to fly out with heaps of ill-gotten cash, some of which the family used to finance their extensive disease-seeding travels.....to Rotorua. A luxury trip farrrrrr beyond their reach had they not been the beneficiaries of the boyfriend's criminal acts; a nice touch added in later iterations as the story flew from Reddit to Facebook to Twitter to the mouth of Winston Peters.

[quote]It literally took me three minutes to write, and I completely end my career and my public facing career in a three minute Reddit post that I left online for - it might have been a few hours.

Reddit Troll crying now but he could probably leave NZ and secure a cushy position in Washington.

I'm posting this here because the treason thread is paywalled. Republicans working with Russia to reelect Trump

How about you post somewhere else r166?

This is a Cororavirus thread.

Andrew Lloyd Webber participates in COVID-19 vaccine trial

Andrew Lloyd Webber is doing his part to get the theater community back up and running.

“Just completed the Oxford Covid-19 vaccine trial,” the 72-year-old “Cats” composer captioned a photo of himself receiving the vaccine on Thursday. “I’ll do anything to get theatres large and small open again and actors and musicians back to work.”

Webber announced he would be participating in the vaccine trial, which is being developed by the University of Oxford and pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, on Wednesday.

Fans immediately praised Webber for volunteering. “Much respect to you, sir,” one Instagram user commented. Another added, “that’s very brave, thank you Andrew.”

The coronavirus pandemic halted all Broadway shows in March and the shutdown has been extended until January 2021. West End shows in London have also been shuttered amid the pandemic.

Strip club at the centre of outbreak

A huge COVID-19 cluster has been linked to a strip club where the dancers are described as "to die for".

Oh dear!

UNC wasn’t testing? They only lasted a week! I suspect the other UNCs will follow in a week.

[quote] A huge COVID-19 cluster

One waitress testing positive does not a “huge COVID-19 cluster” make.

Give it a week, r171, and you'll have a cluster fuck.

[quote]What has been officially revealed is that the employee worked four late shifts in early August.

R172, it's been nearly two weeks. Still no cluster fuck.

How many off those men at the strip club were tested?

They'd lie and die rather than have their wives and girlfriends know that they were not really working late or attending a work related function.

Many work related functions involve artificial, comically large tits.

[quote]They'd lie and die rather than have their wives and girlfriends know that they were not really working late or attending a work related function.

No one is having "work related functions" right now, R174. Most of the guys at the strip club were probably single losers. I mean you'd have to be pretty desperate to hang out at a 75% empty strip club during a pandemic.

Drs. Don Jr. & Eric Trump have spoken !

R155 is DL biggest troll, major stalker, and lies like his idol, Donald Trump.

⏳ CORONA TIME ~ AUGUST 18 ~ 1:45 PM EST

🍰 NATIONAL ICE CREAM PIE DAY

🥂 PINOT NOIR DAY

🌎 GLOBAL

CASES: 22,173,219

DEATHS: 779,976

CRITICAL: 62,160

🇺🇸 UNITED STATES

CASES: 5,625,057

DEATHS: 174,191

CRITICAL: 62,160

📊 WORLDOMETER

😷 U NEED THIS !

What's the news from Sturgis? Is it over? Are all those fat fucks returning home super spreading?

Hundreds of Covid-19 cases already reported as students return to college campuses

From CNN's Annie Grayer and Elizabeth Stuart

Students nationwide are returning to college campuses, and some schools are reporting pockets of positive Covid-19 cases.

Here's a look at what some schools are reporting:

University of Notre Dame: As of Tuesday morning, 58 students have tested positive, according to the school's online health dashboard. Students returned to the university's Indiana campus on Aug. 3.

University of Kentucky: At least 160 people have tested positive at the university since school began on Aug. 3, according to the university's Covid-19 dashboard that tracks positive cases.

University of Western Kentucky: The University of Western Kentucky reported 19 positive cases of Covid-19 among students and staff between Aug. 7 and 13, out of the 132 tests conducted during that period.

East Carolina University: East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, reported 29 positive Covid-19 cases last week, a 7.8% positivity rate. Since students started returning to campus on Aug. 5, the university has averaged about 30 new cases per week, according to the school's Covid-19 dashboard.

Colorado College: At least 155 students in one dorm at Colorado College in Colorado Springs have been forced to quarantine after the college learned of a student who tested positive and did not practice proper social distancing guidelines.

Northeast Mississippi Community College: The college in Booneville, Mississippi, shared that “around 300” students are currently in quarantine, the school's president Dr. Ricky G. Ford said on the school's official podcast.

Oklahoma State University: An Oklahoma State University sorority house is under quarantine after 23 members tested positive for Covid-19, according to the university.

France will require face masks in offices starting September

From Eva Tapiero in Paris

Face coverings will be mandatory in enclosed shared offices spaces starting Sept. 1, Minister of Labor Elisabeth Borne announced Tuesday.

A ministry statement released later added that masks will not be compulsory in individual offices “as long as there is only one person present.”

This announcement comes after “an upsurge in the number of COVID-19 cases has been observed, as well as an increase in the number of clusters across the country,” the statement said.

“The professional environment is affected by this increase: the number of clusters currently being investigated is 268, including 60 in company settings,” the statement added.

Face masks became mandatory in public indoor spaces late July. Several cities have also imposed the wearing of masks outdoors, such as Marseille and Paris where it is now mandatory in central districts, major tourist spots and other crowded areas.

Study finds possible coronavirus spread on airplane

From CNN's Naomi Thomas

Researchers in Germany have found possible evidence of the spread of coronavirus on a four-hour flight.

In March, early in the pandemic, two airline passengers developed coronavirus infections after sitting through a nearly five-hour-long flight, the researchers said.

It all started with an infected hotel manager. A week before the flight, 24 travelers had contact with a hotel manager who later tested positive for Covid-19, according to research published in the journal JAMA Network Open on Tuesday.

They all were among 102 passengers on the four-hour 40-minute Boeing 737-900 flight from Tel Aviv to Frankfurt. None of the passengers had received Covid-19 diagnoses before the flight. That early on in the pandemic, there were no mitigation measures in place and passengers were not asked to wear masks.

Researchers from the Institute for Medical Virology at Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany examined 24 patients from a tourist group and tested them for coronavirus. Most of the other passengers were also contacted four to five weeks later for interviews.

Seven members of the tourist group tested positive for Covid-19. Four were symptomatic during the flight, two were presymptomatic and one remained asymptomatic, according to the researchers.

“We discovered 2 likely SARS-CoV-2 transmissions on this flight, with seven index cases,” the researchers wrote. The two people who may have been infected on the flight were sitting at the back of the plane, directly across the aisle from the seven infected passengers seated in a cluster.

“These transmissions may have also occurred before or after the flight,” the researchers wrote.

Just over 90% of the other flight passengers completed interviews with the researchers. One passenger reported testing positive for Covid-19 four days after the flight, but did not recall having any symptoms.

“The airflow in the cabin from the ceiling to the floor and from the front to the rear may have been associated with a reduced transmission rate,” the researchers wrote. “It could be speculated that the rate may have been reduced further had the passengers worn masks.”

The risk of transmission on a plane depends on a number of factors, including closeness to an index patient and movement of passengers and crew.

Cases increase in Paris: The number of daily new Covid-19 cases in the Paris region has increased to six times what it was at the beginning of the month, the French health authority told CNN.

Flu and maybe other viruses can spread via dust, study indicates

From CNN Health’s Maggie Fox

Influenza and possibly other viruses such as coronavirus can be carried on little particles of dust that float in the air, researchers reported Tuesday.

Studies using guinea pigs showed the animals could infect one another via virus painted onto their fur. Plus, tissues soaked with virus and allowed to dry out could send off potentially infectious particles when they were crumpled, researchers from the University of California Davis and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai reported in the journal Nature Communications.

“These results show that dried influenza virus remains viable in the environment, on materials like paper tissues and on the bodies of living animals, long enough to be aerosolized on non-respiratory dust particles that can transmit infection through the air to new mammalian hosts,” the team wrote.

It's known that viruses can spread in tiny droplets of saliva and mucus known as aerosols. They can also spread from surfaces in a process known as fomite transmission.

The researchers say their findings that the viruses can sometimes spread on specks of floating fiber, animal dander and dust indicate a new method. “We call these virus-contaminated dust particles ‘aerosolized fomites,’ to differentiate them not only from virus-laden respiratory droplets that are exhaled, coughed, or sneezed into the air by an infectious person or animal, but also from the macroscopic virus-contaminated objects that are traditionally thought of as fomites,” they wrote.

"It's really shocking to most virologists and epidemiologists that airborne dust, rather than expiratory droplets, can carry influenza virus capable of infecting animals," chemical engineer William Ristenpart of UC Davis, who helped lead the research, said in a statement.

"Transmission via dust opens up whole new areas of investigation and has profound implications for how we interpret laboratory experiments as well as epidemiological investigations of outbreaks."

Wider implications: The findings don’t necessarily apply to humans, but the possibility should be tested, the researchers said. Plus, there are obvious implications for coronavirus, which, like flu, is a respiratory virus.

“During the COVID-19 pandemic in China, air sampling in various hospital locations found the highest airborne genome counts of SARS-CoV-2 in rooms where health care workers doffed their personal protective equipment, hinting that virus was possibly being aerosolized from contaminated clothing as it was removed,” they wrote.

“In light of our experiments, we conclude that the contribution of aerosolized fomites to respiratory virus transmission in both humans and animal models requires further scientific consideration and rigorous investigation.”

Mississippi public schools have confirmed 199 cases among students and 245 among teachers, and school districts have ordered 2,035 students and 589 teachers to quarantine at home for two weeks after possible exposure to COVID-19. Schools in 71 of Mississippi’s 82 counties have reported cases.

So things are going as well as expected.

[quote] That early on in the pandemic, there were no mitigation measures in place and passengers were not asked to wear masks.

But have there been any other cases of transmission on a flight since mitigation measures have been in place? This is what I want to know.

R178. Not quite sure why you are calling me out and stating that Trump is my idol. I have never posted a single positive comment about Chump on DL or elsewhere. I hate this man with a passion and look forward to his exit "by any means possible". Lke you, I do my best to post interesting information, personal experiences and opinions on this forum to help deal with this crisis. If I make a mistake, it is not on purpose. I am human. In the meantime, I look forward to your future posts and updates. Now, back to the Coronavirus!

Then why did you out-and-out lie at R155?

[quote] "It's really shocking to most virologists and epidemiologists that airborne dust, rather than expiratory droplets, can carry influenza virus capable of infecting animals," chemical engineer William Ristenpart of UC Davis, who helped lead the research, said in a statement.

I call bullshit on UC Davis chemical engineer Ristenpart. Is UC Davis claiming that epidemiologists didn’t know about getting hantavirus from inhaling dried rodent droppings in old barns? (Or whatever hantavirus comes from?)

If viruses infect others by hitching rides on droplets coming out of people's throats and lungs—then why would epidemiologists NOT know about viruses hitching rides on any other matter that can be inhaled by someone?

Anderson Cooper has some words for our new COVID czar, the MyPillow guy.

I will never understand why the MyPillow guy has not been smothered with his own product.

MyPillow Guy: "I wouldn't risk my reputation..."

Anderson: "Sir, you don't HAVE a good reputation."

The My Pillow Guy is 🥜 [italic] Just Plain Nuts !

CNN's Shimon Prokupecz:

New York City reported its lowest percent of positive Covid-19 test results on Wednesday. The city reported a positivity rate of .24%

Going to get tested tomorrow. I have neurological symptoms. Wish me luck DL.

I hardly ever went outside since March, had my groceries delivered. I didn’t celebrate the kids birthdays. I didn’t see anyone for 6 weeks. What more could I have done.

What neurological symptoms do you have?

[quote]I didn’t see anyone for 6 weeks.

But what did you do in the last week?

If your "neurological symptoms" are a loss of taste and smell, that can actually be a sign that you may experience a (relatively) mild infection. I hope that is the case!

[quote]I didn’t see anyone for 6 weeks.

If you were being so careful as to have not gone out since March, even for groceries, who did you see? They are your downfall.

Tricks count as people, even if you order them online.

R197 R198 R199 Loss of taste mainly but also my feet and lower legs feel numb(my doctor said it could be due to the virus and urged me to get tested).

I’ve seen one friend in the garden, distancing and my aunt and uncle also in the garden socially distancing

r196 speaking as someone who hardly went out since February, I'd say: wear gloves when handling delivered groceries (I order in too!), use a sanitizing bleach - diluted spray on incoming items, wash hands diligently, and spray handrails and doorknobs or handles outside your home. I do these things. I also strove for 5000 IU Vitamin D3 daily. I could and can do better, I'm getting zinc today.

Thanks R202 will do that. I didn’t want to obsess over all the anti bacterial/viral cleansing but you have a valid point.

r203 one person's idea of reasonable protection is another's idea of overdoing, and yet another person's idea of "OMG you are trying to kill people! You are a bad person!" We don't know how much those other people know about the coronavirus; all we can do is educate ourselves with what's known and do what we can.

[quote] It’s not enough, argues Nisreen Alwan, a public-health professor at the University of Southampton who has had COVID-19 since March 20. She says that experts and officials should stop referring to all nonhospitalized cases as “mild.” They should agree on a definition of recovery that goes beyond being discharged from the hospital or testing negative for the virus, and accounts for a patient’s quality of life. “We cannot fight what we do not measure,” Alwan says. “Death is not the only thing that counts. We must also count lives changed.”

You didn't even see your delivery person? The people who maintain your house/garden? What about the mail delivery person/UPS/fedex person?

QVC & HSN both listed and sold several items from the "My Pillow" product line.

Now, if you punch in "My Pillow" you will revieve the message [italic] "O products found"

⏳ CORONA TIME ~ AUGUST 19 ~ 3:30 PM EST

🚶 WORLD HUMANITARIAN DAY

🍦 NATIONAL SOFT ICE CREAM DAY

🌎 GLOBAL

CASES: 22,463,582

DEATHS: 787,567

CRITICAL: 62,034

🇺🇸 UNITED STATES

CASES: 5,768,852

DEATHS: 175,758

CRITICAL: 16,980

📊 WORLDOMETER

😷 CARRY ON SAFELY !

i never buy anything on TV. They will spam call you to death. NO THANK YOU!

Plus most chainstores like CVS or Walgreens have a "as seen on tv" section and you can see how fucking cheap all that shit is.

R201, for Christ's sake, get them OUT of the the garden!

If everyone else follows suit, by the end of the year, Mike Lindell may have to close down the factory. Trump won't be in office, and nobody will be around to bail him out. He'll be boozing and smoking crack on the ninth hole of Mar-a-Lago.

FDA halts approval of blood plasma as COVID-19 treatment.

The authorization is on hold for now as more data are reviewed, and H. Clifford Lane, M.D., clinical director at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said an emergency approval could still be issued in the near future.

[quote]“Death is not the only thing that counts. We must also count lives changed.”

I would like just one reporter to confront Trump with the fact that his treatment-rather-than-prevention approach is leaving lots of Americans with serious, potentially lifelong medical issues.

As in "lives forever changed " by Covid19 ?

[quote]As in "lives forever changed " by Covid19 ?

Yes, see R205.

[quote]He'll be boozing and smoking crack on the ninth hole of Mar-a-Lago.

I suspect that is quite the crowded hole.

R212 WTF is that about? We've seen many articles stating that convalescent plasma is one of the few treatments that DOES work.

R217, There has yet to be results from a large randomized control trial.

R203 I have cooled off on the extreme sanitizing.from what I have read viral spread through surfaces doesn’t seem a prime mode of transmission. Like packages/groceries/food delivery . I wear gloves getting gas and at Grocery

R219 That's my take as well.

And a recent, albeit very limited, study done by a local news station in the Los Angeles area found COVID on 15% of the public surfaces tested.

The ones to avoid were shopping carts, ATMs, and hand railings. Also public bathroom doors and door handles in the frozen food section.

Somewhat surprising, they didn't find it at self-checkout stations or anywhere in the gym that had opened in defiance of the state's order to remain closed.

I know when I've been at Ralphs (grocery) or Target they've got someone cleaning the self checkout stations pretty regularly. Especially at Target. When I was there about a week ago, that poor girl was spraying-wiping each station after every customer.

I don't see why they're not emphasizing wearing safety glasses or goggles, since the aerosolized particles can go into your eyes, instead of sanitizing surfaces.

R221, for all we know, they don’t want to trigger a run on safety goggles.

R220: Usually, I bring my own cart (or a bag) to avoid their carts. On the off chance I have to use their cart, I have paper towels and sanitizer to wipe the handle myself. I always cringe when I open the freezer/fridge doors! Although I am wearing gloves, they can get contaminated after opening the doors and transfer CV to the items I take out. That is why I go to the freezer aisle last - even if it means backtracking. It is the last place I go before the register and I dispose of my gloves before handling the other groceries. I use my own pen for the card reader. However, I still need to wipe down the freezer/fridge items at home since they can’t go into quarantine and CV survives longer in cold temperatures.

🤕[italic] Nobody Knows Nothin 'Bout The Corona.

R196, this is what I do:

I go out once a week. I get up very early and I’m at each store at opening time. I plan out ahead of time what time I will arrive at each store and which order I will go in. I have notes on my phone with opening times for the stores I regularly go to. If one store branch opens at six am and another branch opens at ten, I go to the 6am one. I never go to Home Depot after 6:15am. Never go to Walmart after 7am (opening). If I have to go someplace with a lot of traffic, like Walmart, I wear a face shield.

When I leave the store, I put the stuff in the back. I take off my gloves inside out and put them and my disposable surgical mask immediately into a plastic garbage bag and twist it shut before I turn on the air conditioner. If I’m wearing a non-disposable mask, I take it off after one stop and don’t put it back on. It goes in a ziplock food storage bag that’s completely closed that goes on the car floor. It stays there for a minimum of three days, then I take it out and wash it. I immediately wash my hands in the car with Purell. I keep fresh gloves and masks in my car in a plastic box with a lid. I put on fresh gloves before I touch anything else in the car.

I do this at every stop. Fresh gloves and mask, every stop.

I get home, shoes go off and stay in the car. I leave my car keys somewhere I don’t have to touch them again until I go out again. I bring items inside that need to be kept cool. Everything else stays in the trunk for three days minimum. Sunglasses and wallet go into a plastic container inside, where they won’t be touched again until I go out. Non perishable foods go in a plastic bin with a lid for three days minimum.

All my clothes go straight into the washer including socks and underwear. I don’t touch anything in the house or go in any other rooms. I step straight into the shower and wash my hair, arms and face with lots of body wash and shampoo. I wash all along where my mask edge would be, my face, my indoor glasses, ears, neck, anywhere that was exposed to air with lots of soap. Soap kills the virus.

If you touch a cash register, door, shopping cart or anything inside a store, your gloves are contaminated. Take them off and don’t put them down in the car. Straight into a plastic bag and close it so the A/C doesn’t blow virus around in your car. Wash your hands with Purell the second they’re off. Every time you change gloves. Don’t bring any dirty gloves, masks or shoes in the house, ever. I normally wear large sunglasses when I go out. Lately I wear a face shield too.

I also bought a metal Behren’s trash can with a tight fitting lid for inside, food wrappers either go in there or straight to the garage bin. And I wash plastic meat wrappers with Dawn in the sink before I throw them away.

It also helps if you have plastic or glass storage containers that are fridge and freezer safe. Cambrio makes large rectangular ones that fit most fruit and vegetables and are dishwasher safe. I throw the outside boxes away and decant food into canning jars or plastic containers. I don’t wash fruit or vegetables until I’m ready to use them. I cook everything in the oven or microwave long enough that any virus that could be on it is dead. I use the oven a lot more than I used to. No virus is living through 425 degrees in the oven. The dishes and food storage containers all go in the dishwasher every time. No more hand wash.

I know this seems like a lot, but I went out once a week for months and so far, okay. I also wash my sheets every couple of days. And I wash my (cheap) pillows every couple of weeks. I keep a canvas throw cover on the sofa and it goes in the washer about once a week. I have to do all this because I have a pre-existing condition.

R223 and R225, you aren't just being careful at this point. You've moved into a full on complex/compulsion. I'm not kidding. You need counseling or there will be lasting implications for the rest of your life.

I’m not sure why people wear gloves (except if you have open lesions on your skin). If you make a point not to touch your face with your hands (which you could certainly do with gloves also), there shouldn’t be an issue. I think it just gives a false sense of security.

Wash your hands and use hand sanitizer frequently, and wear a mask.

R226: It is common sense that if you touch something with CV (i.e. high traffic handles etc) and then touch something else, the CV is transferred. Avoiding that as much as possible and wiping stuff down is just an extra precaution - not complex at all. 1. Use own cart/bag or sanitized cart, 2. Leave dirty freezer/fridge handles for last, 3. Don’t use dirty gloves on groceries at self checkout, 4. Wipe down cold items before putting them in fridge/freezer. It is not complicated. Actually, 2nd nature at this point. Gloves are not necessary - more of a reminder. I still wash my hands also.

R57 - about 2 weeks ago. I've missed DL and Muriel. Stay safe and be well 😘 -- AIKC

r229 - Who the fuck are you?

R230 😂

Let's face it, COVID-19 is a crapshoot. R225 does all that and, as far as he/she knows, they've not contracted the virus. I don't do any of those things and I haven't contracted the virus either. I am overweight, have high blood pressure, and tend to get bronchitis every couple years so I also have pre-existing conditions.

R226, I’ve been sick for a year and a half with a non Corona virus related illness. I absolutely cannot get Corona. I had to bump it up after I started taking a medication that lowers my immune system. And the strain of Corona that’s going around now is more contagious than the original one. Also, I’m on a very restricted diet now and have to go out frequently to buy fresh foods.

That may seem excessive to you, but I’ve seen morons with their mask below their nose everywhere. About gloves, I have a cat and often have small scratches on my hands. It’s safer to wear them.

There are so many people that don’t take it seriously at all. They make it harder for everyone else and frequently are looking to start a fight. If you’re looking for mental illness, try looking at Trumpsters that think Corona is all a lie or doesn’t hurt people. How somebody can see 170,000 dead and think there’s no problem is beyond me. That goes beyond denial.

For people that live in a country where everybody gladly wears a mask, this probably seems incomprehensible. But there are a lot of belligerent people that enjoy feeling like they have the power to kill you. Even if they kill themselves at the same time.

R232, I’m very prone to bronchitis also. Get the flu shot every year. And ask your doctor if you can get the pneumonia shot. That will stop the bronchitis from turning into pneumonia, which it did for me several times.

When you shop in ANY store, you're handling items that have been touched by several others. I often wear gloves, especially in a place like Walmart or in a grocery store. As soon as I exit the store I remove my gloves, put them in the trash bin, and thoroughly sanitize my hands. If you remove the gloves properly, your bare hands will never touch the outside, contaminated surface of the gloves.

Why wouldn't you do everything you can to keep yourself safe and protected during a worldwide pandemic. I also keep extra masks, gloves, hand sanitizer, and wipes in my car.

And today, I got a flu shot !

Between arthritis and carpal tunnel I can't grasp grocery items in those gloves.

I use a lot of sanitizer. So far, so good, and I'm out every second day.

⏳ CORONA TIME ~ AUGUST 20 ~ 11:00 AM EST

🚑 INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL TRANSPORTERS DAY

🥓 NATIONAL BACON LOVERS DAY

🌎 GLOBAL

CASES: 22,646,894

DEATHS: 792,369

CRITICAL: 61,988

🇺🇸 UNITED STATES

CASES: 5,709,066

DEATHS: 176,548

CRITICAL: 16,875

📊 WORLDOMETER

😷 EVERYTHING'S BETTER WITH BACON !

CNN: A professor of statistics calculates the odds of catching the virus on a full, two-hour U.S. flight with everyone wearing masks is about 1 in 4,300. Those odds fall to 1 in 7,700 if the middle seat is vacant.

Yeah, I'm still not flying.

Is AIKC another old lesbian from the Michfest Era?

Yesterday there was a full out brawl on an airline flight, which began, of course, with a passenger refusing to wear a mask.

I bet the Corona odds were much higher in that flight.

American initial jobless claims above 1 million again

From CNN's Anneken Tappe

Another 1.1 million Americans filed initial claims for unemployment benefits on a seasonally adjusted basis last week, dashing economists' hopes for a second-straight week with fewer than 1 million claims.

Economists were optimistic that the US jobs market would be on a steady trajectory toward recovery. But last week's claims returned above 1 million after the previous week's report was the first below 1 million since March, the Department of Labor reported Thursday

Continued jobless claims, counting people who have filed claims for at least two weeks in a row, remain very high at 14.8 million.

Some context: After months of shocking economic data, these eyewatering big numbers might not seem as shocking anymore as they really are. But the road to recovery remains long and arduous. The Federal Reserve said in its July meeting minutes Wednesday that any rebound of the jobs market depends on a reopening and businesses, which in turn depends on the path of the virus and what we do to contain it.

American Airlines plans to suspend service to 15 cities because of "low demand"

From CNN's Gregory Wallace

American Airlines announced Thursday it plans to suspend service to 15 cities in October citing “low demand.”

Airlines have thus far been mostly blocked from stopping service to a destination as a condition of accepting CARES Act payroll funding. But those restrictions expire on Oct. 1. Despite pressure from aviation worker unions, Congress has not extended the funding.

American said the cuts are not permeant and are “only in place for the October schedule.” The suspensions will be effective on Oct. 7.

Here are the 15 cities, according to the airline:

Del Rio, Texas

Dubuque, Iowa

Florence, South Carolina

Greenville, North Caroilina

Huntington, West Virginia

Joplin, Missouri

Kalamazoo/Battle Creek, Michigan

Lake Charles, Louisiana

New Haven, Connecticut.

New Windsor, New York

Roswell, New Mexico

Sioux City, Iowa

Springfield, Illinois

Stillwater, Oklahoma

Williamsport, Pennsylvania

Many leaders used Covid as cover to dent democracy. Trump may be the first to openly admit it

From CNN's Luke McGee

In the months since Covid-19 swept the globe, leaders the world over have been accused of exploiting the pandemic for political gain while laying waste to democratic norms. Few, if any, have gone as far as to reveal those plans publicly.

A notable exception is President Donald Trump, who has openly admitted that he is trying to block much-needed funding for the US Postal Service because he wants to limit the number of Americans who can vote safely by mail in November's election.

The reason? Trump says postal ballots will hurt his campaign, and has repeatedly made the unfounded claim that widespread mail-in voting will result in the "most fraudulent election in history."

By refusing to take steps to allow as many Americans as possible to participate in the election -- and by openly casting doubt over the legitimacy of the poll -- Trump is embracing tactics used by authoritarian leaders in countries with compromised democratic institutions, experts said.

"On one hand, he is claiming that postal voting could delegitimize the election while openly admitting that he opposes funding the post office to suppress the vote," said Nic Cheeseman, professor of democracy at the University of Birmingham. "It's a move from the populist playbook: blame someone else for the thing you yourself are doing."

Trump's moves come at a time when some countries are expanding the availability of mail-in ballots and other early voting initiatives in an effort to allow people to take part in elections without risking their health at polling stations.

FDA warns about UV lights to disinfect coronavirus and other germs

From CNN Health’s Maggie Fox

Lamps that use ultraviolet light to kill germs can inactivate coronavirus, but they are not all safe and it is not clear how good a job they do at killing the virus, the US Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday.

The FDA said ultraviolet-C (UVC) wavelengths are better than UVA and UVB light at destroying viruses, but UVC lamps still have their limits.

“The effectiveness of UVC lamps in inactivating the SARS-CoV-2 virus is unknown because there is limited published data about the wavelength, dose, and duration of UVC radiation required to inactivate the SARS-CoV-2 virus,” the FDA said in a newly posted statement.

Plus the lamps only work in limited circumstances.

“It is important to recognize that, generally, UVC cannot inactivate a virus or bacterium if it is not directly exposed to UVC. In other words, the virus or bacterium will not be inactivated if it is covered by dust or soil, embedded in porous surface or on the underside of a surface,” the FDA said.

There’s been an explosion of products on offer to fight coronavirus, including germicidal lamps. The World Health Organization warns against trying to use them to disinfect human skin, including the hands.

In addition, some UVC lamps generate ozone, which can irritate airways.

“Some UVC lamps contain mercury. Because mercury is toxic even in small amounts, extreme caution is needed in cleaning a lamp that has broken and in disposing of the lamp," the FDA added.

Fewer tests leads to less "official" deaths. I believe the deaths are still happening. Reported or otherwise. The truth will be revealed. Eventually.

Fortunately, my trip to Brazil/Argentina in November is officially cancelled. The airline for the 4 internal flights has declared bankruptcy due to the virus and today Air France has cancelled the international flights also because of the virus. In both cases, the airlines have offered a full refund for the tickets. The problem is that my travel agency will not refund the 60% deposit that I made last year because I signed a contract with them (via the purchase) and they do not want to give me my money back even if they can recoup the costs for the flights. They have not booked any hotels or tours so far, so no loss for them in that regard. And these MF's have collected interest on my deposit for many months! I am very frustrated as I have used this agency in the past and booked this trip based on these positive experiences. I would understand their position if they could not recoup the costs for the flights but this is not the case now. So now they are looking at other alternatives to propose like the Maldives but I would rather just get my fucking money back and rebook when this shit is over. Any advice?

😂 Yes, r246 Don't book another trip.

Bit the bullet, cut your losses, and be happy to still be alive.

I am exhausted just reading some of the cleaning rituals some of you do when you venture out of hour house. I just wash my hands when I come home, put the groceries and stuff away, wash my hands again, and go about my day. I have never owned hand sanitizer, wipes, bleach, lysol spray, gloves, or any of that. I do have disposable masks because they are required here. I usually re-use the same one for at least a few times. I wear the same clothes for the rest of the day and if they are still relatively clean and I didn't sweat all over them, hang them up and wear them again another day.

Maybe I am too casual about this, but I think hand washing, not touching face/eyes/nose, wearing a mask in public, and not being around crowds of people are the main things that matter. But everyone should do what they feel they must.

R248, high-risk people aside, the hunt for your aforementioned wipes and sanitizers, bleach, etc., has given a few of our shut-ins a new sense of purpose in life. You can read all about it in the Shopping for Groceries is Hell Right Now threads.

Warning, the threads repeat every 50 posts or so. Every thread. Read any random 50 posts in any thread with that title and you've read them all.

Oh well, keeps them busy!

Elaborate rituals -- like some of the cleaning procedures described here -- can help people feel more in control of a chaotic situation. I'm just too lazy to bother.

R239 - nah, I'm a still fabulous elder queen from the styx... 😉

Test turned out negative for Corona.

Did you have worrisome symptoms, R252?

A little bit R253. I was the one with the neurological symptoms but I had a hernia in the past. My doctor now thinks it’s the latter and not tons sk I am off to the physio again and my blood will be tested for Lyme’s.

Glad to hear it, R254. I hope you get some relief soon.

The latter and not rona

“I think most peoples’ perception is we had one epidemic in New York, in the New York region, we came down the epidemic curve, we had another epidemic in the Sun Belt, so that really looks like and feels like a second wave,” former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb told CNBC.

“I do think that we’re going to have a third act of this virus in the fall and the winter and it’s likely to be more pervasive spread in a broader part of the country.”

He added that the virus is likely to hit rural parts of the country, some of which have been “largely unaffected to date.” Cases are already beginning to build in the West and Midwest, Gottlieb said, adding that “every community is vulnerable.”

Great summation of how Trump failed -- and continues to fail -- at managing the pandemic:

Besides washing your hands, you need to clean/ bleach your surfaces, like keyboards, mobile phones, light switches, door handles, faucets etc. I wash my hands, my face (to avoid pimples from mask area) when I get home

🤧 Merry Freakin' Christmas

[quote] Loss of taste mainly but also my feet and lower legs feel numb(my doctor said it could be due to the virus and urged me to get tested).

Sounds like ALS.

R259 Inside your own home? Why, if I go out, wash my hands immediately upon returning home, and then only use my keyboard, light switches, etc with clean, virus-free hands, would I need to do that?

🤯 PimplePussy, you're heads gonna explode.

R261 I could always ask to be tested for that too. But then it could be MS or vitamine B12 too. I’ll ask my doctor.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Many people in this country don't even make $17,479 in a year.

That is the REAL crime.

⏳ CORONA TIME ~ AUGUST 21 ~ 8:15 PM EST

🎭 POETS DAY

🍨 NATIONAL SPUMONI DAY

🌎 GLOBAL

CASES: 23,097,158

DEATHS: 802,323

CRITICAL: 61,849

🇺🇸 UNITED STATES

CASES: 5,795,323

DEATHS: 179,153

CRITICAL: 16,833

📊 WORLDOMETER

😷 SAFE & STYLISH !

Guardian-Coronavirus infections have been reported by at least 41 schools in Berlin, barely two weeks after they reopened. The disclosure by Berlin city education authorities that hundreds of students and teachers have had to quarantine has underlined once more how little is known about the risk of infection in school settings, despite the insistence of governments and experts that reopening schools is safe with the right precautions.

Berlin? What a loser country. Underperformin' Angela, that's what I call her. Forty-one schools. Not great. Not good. In the last two weeks of July alone, we had 97k infected kids. That's ninety-seven thousand. In two weeks. They all said it couldn't be done. Beautiful numbers.

And we have our tremendous universities coming up. Colleges. Monster-story schools. Christian Academies. The Christians love me. Always say very nice things about me. Military schools for the fucked-up kids. Kinder Gardens. Charter schools. Magnet schools. All those beautiful numbers coming up. Tremendous numbers coming up. That's what I'm hearing. Beautiful numbers. Underperformin' Angela. Sad!

It seems like most DL-ers are taking at least the basic necessary precautions: mask, hand washing, avoiding crowds, etc. Has anyone caught coronavirus in spite of doing these things? I haven’t heard of anyone. Mostly in my area, it’s hitting the essential workers in multigenerational families or the 20-something partygoers.

I don't know anyone who has had it.

As many as 215,000 more people than usual died in the U.S. during the first seven months of 2020, suggesting that the number of lives lost to the coronavirus is significantly higher than the official toll.

Half the dead were people of color — Blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans and, to a marked degree unrecognized until now, Asian Americans.

I know 7 people who have had it. They got it early and weren't following the rules. Also, two people I know from college kids have gotten it but they were mildly affected.

If Biden is smart he will focus on Dump's response and his rush to open...he doesn't care, he is the reason the economy is stalling and children are getting infected.

Texas Christian University - 69 students tests and 1 staff member rest positive for Covid19

Utica college removes 12 students for not following Covid19 policies.

Yes, let's get those irresponsible jackasses back in the classrooms and bars, not to mention getting off-campus parties up and running again.

I don’t know anyone that has had it. My pharmacist told me he’s only had two clients affected, and they recovered. If you can work from home and take precautions, you’re in the lucky group.

R270 I don't personally know anyone who's had it. I have a friend who does things that I'm still terrified to do: takes public transit and works every day in a (de-densified) office. She wears a mask religiously, keeps away from people, and doesn't eat in restaurants or attend big gatherings, and she's been fine.

This virus really isn't that hard to thwart, but many Americans can't be arsed to do the bare minimum.

File this under Things That Will Never, Ever Happen. (The Stop part.)

WSJ, 8/21/20-

[quote] Colleges Worried About Covid-19 Cases Tell Students to Stop Partying

[quote] Colleges are starting to suspend students in effort to halt partying being traced to coronavirus outbreaks

I don't know anybody that has tested positive for the virus but I know a number of people who have had the test. But to be fair I'm living in a city that has only had a couple of thousand cases and most of them are from travellers who have returned from overseas.

I think wearing masks whenever I leave the house, hand washing as soon as I get home before I touch the stuff I use inside my home, avoiding crowds/staying outdoors has worked although I don't want to jinx myself. I believed in the masks from day 1. It just didn't make sense from ever lying organization that was giving us false info on purpose due to lack of supply (WHO, CDC, Surgeon General), that masks didn't work. If a 3M N95 protected MD's in all the hot spots, I would think it would also be protective to the public when going to the grocery store. Also, everyone was wearing masks in Asia and Europe during their peak outbreaks. It's not just Trump, but the leading health organizations really gave us bad info and maybe set up a sense of distrust. Maybe if they told us in the very beginning when everyone was scared to wear a face covering, any face covering to start, there wouldn't be so much resistance to it now, and the virus would;t have gotten out of hand. I do think WHO is a lying sack of shit. I remember all the ill advice from these earlier threads. They knew better.

All 11 of the people I know personally who got it all were March/April, no one post mask wearing.

A University in my area is requesting that you "don't bother the local police with excessive noise and large, loud party complaints, as they are already overburdened. Please call the campus police and they will respond immediately."

Yes they do respond, but they don't do a damn thing. Calling campus police to handle their own is about as effective as calling the head of a burglary ring to come pick up one of its members who was just caught breaking into a home.

I'm up to 30 customers who have had it. None have died that I know of, but I've had customers whose family members or coworkers have died. One of these still doesn't believe coronavirus killed her coworker. I also have a coworker whose 40 year old friend got pneumonia and then a collapsed lung in February and was on a vent for 6 weeks before finally dying. They say she tested negative for covid, but come on, you know that shit was coronavirus.

A lot of my customers seem dissipated. Just not the same. One guy who was sharp as a tack when I saw him at Christmas now can't use cash because he doesn't understand change anymore. A few in the same house had the same strain but totally different levels of sickness. I will say that these are all of my favorite customers. None of my asshole customers have had it. If they have, they aren't saying. I wear a mask and plastic shield all day long. I take my shoes off before entering the house then stick my clothes in the washer and take a shower, put on pajamas and rejoin the family. I don't let my dogs smell me before this ritual either.

R279, back in February and the beginning of March, when Fauci was saying don’t wear a mask, that made me self conscious about wearing a mask to the store. I wore gloves but not a mask. No one at the market was wearing masks then. Around the beginning of March, I was sick for a few weeks, I think I may have had the mild form. Fever, extreme body aches, diarrhea, slept as if I were dead. I stayed home until that was over. When I went out again (April), I wore a mask because I was afraid I could be contagious. It sort of petered out gradually, so I wasn’t sure when it really ended. I started to see at least some people wearing masks by then.

Fauci made a huge mistake saying that. He ruined his credibility, and a lot of Deplorables are using him as an excuse now to say that masks don’t work. I don’t care what Trump told him to say, he almost certainly killed people. And people are still going along with his original claims to this day and refusing to wear masks because “masks don’t work.” And peer pressuring others not to wear them. Which means they’re still killing people.

Later on, he quit lying for Trump, at least to that extent. But the damage was done and people are still refusing to believe anything but what he originally said, and now others are elaborating on it. He should have realized idiots would take him at his word.

I saw a fairly recent interview where he was asked about that and he said, well, at the time you couldn’t get masks...so what? He gave Trump ammunition to attack masks and mask wearers. He’s a doctor. He took an oath to first do no harm. I understand he wanted to stay in his post because Trump would replace him with some idiot like Jared, but he shouldn’t have outright lied.

As 30 million Americans suffer unprecedented job losses and struggle to stay in their homes, Donald Trump and the GOP have finally revealed their long-delayed COVID-19 plan: a cash handout for the ultra-rich.

It's amusing to hear university administrators saying, "We are shocked (SHOCKED!) to discover that our students are partying and socializing! We never could have foreseen such a thing happening. We were so certain that students would sit alone in their dorm rooms or apartments all day when they're not in class." Universities are now in a bind. Yes, they'll all end up going all online for classes, but what do they do with the students after they've all moved in? They can either keep students on campus or in town for the rest of the school year (students who signed leases for off-campus apartments may have no choice but to stay in town), turning college towns into party zones and COVID hotspots (which will destroy "town-gown" relations). Or they can send the students back home so they can infect their parents and spread COVID throughout the country, which will piss off the students and their parents.

They were saying that at the beginning to avoid a shortage of masks for medical personnel, r283.

This whole shortage thing with supplies is mystifying. They still don’t have enough Cotten swabs. really? The greatest country on earth can’t manufacture Cotten swabs?!

I remember the Surgeon General saying:

'Seriously people - STOP Buying MASKS!' Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams tweeted on Saturday.

'They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can't get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!'

There are a lot of outbreaks at factories that you'll never hear about. In Georgia they keep it hush hush, but my friend works in a restaurant district and knows a bar down the street just got destroyed by it. Like 80% staff positive. They never even closed. And it's not illegal.

In r284's photo, Trump is showing us the size of his teeny weeny peeny when fully erect.

Air-conditioned rooms help spread COVID-19, research shows

Dry air and air-conditioned rooms can help spread the coronavirus, according to an Indian-German research team that looked at the role of relative humidity in the transmission of infections.

For office workers and students worldwide, the findings are important as they head back to their desks after months in lockdown.

“The role of humidity seems to be extremely important to the airborne spread of COVID-19 in indoor environments,” the researchers reported. on the website of Germany’s Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research (TROPOS).

The scientists, who reviewed 10 international studies of swine flu and other infectious diseases such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, found humidity affects a virus in three ways: droplet size, how droplets float and how droplets land on surfaces.

In more humid rooms, virus droplets become heavier and fall faster in higher humidity, “providing less chances for other people to breathe in infectious viral droplets,” the team wrote, according to DW, a German news website.

Dry air makes the droplets shrink and hang around, becoming what the scientists describe as an “optimal route” for transmission.

Low humidity also dries out mucous membranes in the nose, making an easier way in for the coronavirus, they wrote.

Rooms should have a relative humidity of 40% to 60% — open the windows, the researchers urge — to keep a virus from spreading and governments should include the recommendation in any public health guidelines, the team found.

Besides raising the relative humidity and wearing face masks, the scientists are urging businesses and schools to not pack their rooms with people.

r288 I truly believe the Surgeon General was correct, Dr. Adams' line is consistent with that of immunology researchers, Infectious Disease professors, epidemiologists, cell biologists, all sorts of people who are not tasked with keeping consumers spending their dollars and not having, unlike Dr. Birx, to flipflop statements about what they know about pandemics to keep their jobs, or prop up what little credibility their government executive bosses have to preserve chances of re-election.

r292 you're an idiot and someone who is putting out misinformation. I challenge you to list all the immunology researchers, Infectious Disease professors, epidemiologists, and cell biologists who currently (August 2020) are saying that masks do nothing to prevent the spread of COVID. Furthermore , r288 was quoting a tweet from March 1 of this year, not something current. (The "last Saturday" is misleading as it is a quote from some article). The proof is in the pudding. In states which have strict mask mandates, the COVID infection rate has declined or remained steady. In states which are laissez faire in regard to masks, the infection rate has skyrocketed.

Granted that different masks offer less or more protection, ANY mask at all that is tightly knit offers a great deal more protection than no mask, and some offer a huge degree of protection.

[quote]I truly believe the Surgeon General was correct

Well, he doesn't believe he was correct.

r293 you're the idiot for demanding I spend time listing ALL of those people. I found their research just fine, and furthermore I have posted links in DL, which makes me think you're lazy at researching, and more of an idiot for making ad hominem arguments.

One has only to see the average slopes of growth for confirmed active cases in states with mask mandates and compare them to the confirmed active case growth slopes for regions outside the US without mask mandates to see there's little or no protection.

If you haven't learned to use an internet search engine by now, I can't help you.

Gurls, gurls!!!!! Bottom line is that is masks protected MD's from the virus in March, there is a good chance they protected the general public as well and it does not take a degree to read between the lines.

The bottom line is:

🤓 [italic] Nobody Knows Nothin 'Bout The Corona

Seriously. If masks were so inefficient, why were they so desperate to have them for all the health care workers and first responders? That was the first clue that something was fishy with the initial statements to the public. Then seeing how things unfolded with the worldwide competition for precious PPE, that just cemented how important it really was. To be willing to pay the insane markups and go through the subterfuge of secret shipments to avoid hijacking and all that mess, I don't think they would have been doing all that for something worthless and unnecessary.

Here we are on thread 49 and (some) people are still questioning he efficacy of wearing masks?! Well, maybe Trump trolls and flat earthers (which are effectively the same thing).

[quote]One has only to see the average slopes of growth for confirmed active cases in states with mask mandates and compare them to the confirmed active case growth slopes for regions outside the US without mask mandates to see there's little or no protection.

Wow.... you really are a shameless liar, aren't you? Your statement is, of course, completely and totally false.

Yes, masks work. They offer substantial protection and we have ample data to demonstrate it, including, for example, the state of Kansas, where 15 counties had a mandate; 90 counties did not.

[quote]Norman pointed a graph showing the seven-day rolling average of cases per 100,000 people comparing counties with the mask mandates with those counties that abandoned it. The favorable trend line down was entirely in the counties that required the use of masks, while the trend line for those without one was flat, he said.

[quote]“Do masks work? Here in this natural experiment called Kansas where we have essentially — not due to any great design, but it has worked out that way — some counties have been the control group with a no mask mandate and some have been the experimental group with masks,” Norman said. “The experimental group is winning the battle. All improvements in case development comes from those counties wearing masks.”

Link for the above.

Trolls are gonna troll, r300. And they're going to be pulling out the stops from now until January.

Donald Trump today accused members of his own FDA of deliberately hampering coronavirus vaccine and drug trials in order to prevent their development until after the election. His tweet:

"The deep state, or whoever, over at the FDA is making it very difficult for drug companies to get people in order to test the vaccines and therapeutics. Obviously, they are hoping to delay the answer until after November 3rd. Must focus on speed, and saving lives!"

[quote]Dr. Adams' line is consistent with that of immunology researchers, Infectious Disease professors, epidemiologists, cell biologists,....

And another shameless lie, since the direct opposite is true. It just isn't that complicated: early in the pandemic, there was huge concern about protective gear for medical professionals and insufficient information about how the virus was transmitted.

Given these two factors, the recommendation at that time was that the average individual leave the protective gear for professionals and take other precautions to stop the spread.

Two things have changed since then: while N95 masks are still in short supply in many locations, the average three-ply surgical mask, plus cloth equivalents, are now plentiful. And we now know far more about the transmission of the virus, including that transmission by surface contact is rare whereas transmission by aerosol (e.g., the well-known case of the choir in the state of Washington early in the pandemic) is rampant.

Given these two factors, the recommendation is now, and has been for months, wear a fucking mask.

🤑 There's money in them there masks, Daddy !

You should be wearing on. It's good for business !

r295 The first clue that someone is bullshitting is that when that person is asked for proof, he says look it up yourself. The first rule of any kind of debate is "Present your evidence". Someone like r300 has ALL the credibility you lack, because he presented epidemiological evidence. You presented bullshit. Bullshit is the mark of a troll or a provocateur.

This morning, r303, Mme Speaker said that went beyond the pale, even for him.

[quote]I truly believe the Surgeon General was correct, Dr. Adams' line is consistent with that of immunology researchers, Infectious Disease professors, epidemiologists, cell biologists, all sorts of people who are not tasked with keeping consumers spending their dollars and not having, unlike Dr. Birx, to flipflop statements about what they know about pandemics to keep their jobs, or prop up what little credibility their government executive bosses have to preserve chances of re-election.

r292, Do you cover your mouth when you cough or sneeze? Why?

R295 wants you to die.

Why do you seek to kill people R295? For money? Because you are a sociopath? Because Mommy didn’t love you enough?

This is my favorite story to debunk the no-mask idiots:

Two covid-positive hair stylists serviced 139 clients over the course of eight days. Both stylists and all customers wore masks. Not a single customer was infected.

One of the stylists lived with four people. All four people were infected by her.

While it's good that they didn't infect their customers, what the fuck is wrong with these people?

[bold]Stylist A worked from day 0 to day 8 with COVID-19 symptoms[/bold] before receiving a diagnosis of COVID-19 by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing. [bold]Although self-isolation was recommended after testing on day 6, stylist A continued to work[/bold] until the test returned a positive result, at which time stylist A was excluded from work by salon A. On day 3, after working with stylist A, stylist B developed respiratory symptoms. [bold]During Stylist A’s symptomatic period, the two stylists interacted while neither was masked[/bold] during intervals between clients. [bold]Stylist B worked from day 3 to day 8 while symptomatic before self-isolating[/bold] and seeking PCR testing, which returned a positive result for SARS-CoV-2 on day 10. Stylist A worked with clients for 8 days while symptomatic, as did stylist B for 5 days.

r311 This is why I have not entered a hair salon or barbershop. I'd rather have long hair or attempt my own haircuts than risk more than ten minutes in an enclosed space with strangers.

People go to work when they have the flu, people go to work when they have COVID -- often because employers won't pay them if they're out sick and sometimes because they're so self-centered they don't care that they might infect others.

[quote]The first clue that someone is bullshitting is that when that person is asked for proof, he says look it up yourself.

Well, R306, it's not like he's going to be able to find proof for such hilariously ridiculous bullshit as:

[quote]Dr. Adams' line is consistent with that of immunology researchers, Infectious Disease professors, epidemiologists, cell biologists....

or

[quote]One has only to see the average slopes of growth for confirmed active cases in states with mask mandates and compare them to the confirmed active case growth slopes for regions outside the US without mask mandates to see there's little or no protection.

Note that he's also something of an idiot, since he says, "I also strove for 5000 IU Vitamin D3 daily. I could and can do better, I'm getting zinc today."

The blame for the lack of clarity and accuracy in our government's COVID messaging rests strictly on the cellulite-filled shoulders of Donald Trump.

r313 which is why it's worth staying away from them. I wonder how many people going after r295 assume r295 isn't socially distancing or employing other sanitary and hygiene practices, that everything they've been told by a government public health authority is true (eggs and butter kill! industrial seed oils and hydrogenated fats will save you! Smoking cigarettes keeps weight down! high LDL cholesterol is dangerous!), that r295 is in the United States and not in some other nation whose government is not set on serving the whims of the top 1%.

Ad hominem without citations to research are as worthless as inventing suppositions that aren't supported by evidence.

R316, that link doesn't even come close to supporting your claims about COVID-19 and Vitamin D, nor do you have any links to back up your other rather silly assertions about the virus and how to prevent it.

Zinc as a Gatekeeper of Immune Function

Gosh those "idiot" researchers have nothing over flighty freaks making insults because that's all they have

The best thing I did last year was permanently socially distance from USans. 0.012333259166% population confirmed cases versus 0.723416577% population confirmed active cases in the US.

R318, you genuinely don't get it, do you? Nothing you've posted supports any of your ridiculous assertions.

Maybe because none of the assertions are ridiculous?

Only ridiculous thing is expectation of a DataLounger to read and comprehend sentences greater than twenty words in length.

LOL.... Did you even bother to read what you linked to, R320?

[quote]Some retrospective studies demonstrated a correlation between vitamin D status and COVID-19 severity and mortality, [bold]while other studies did not find the correlation when confounding variables are adjusted.[/bold]

...

[quote]Thus, people who are at [bold]higher risk of vitamin D deficiency[/bold].....

In other words, if you're deficient in Vitamin D, go ahead and take some. Duh.

Tell us again how masks don't work and how epidemiologists all agree on that.

Stop feeding the troll.

Oh, but it's such fun. Challenge him on his ridiculous mask and epidemiologist statements and you get crickets, since he can't back them up and he knows it. But hey, challenge him on Vitamin D and he goes apeshit.

[quote]I remember the Surgeon General saying:

'Seriously people - STOP Buying MASKS!' Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams tweeted on Saturday.

R324, we already covered this in R304. That was in February, when masks were short everywhere. Here, I'll post it again, since you seem to have trouble reading.

It just isn't that complicated: early in the pandemic, there was huge concern about protective gear for medical professionals and insufficient information about how the virus was transmitted.

Given these two factors, the recommendation at that time was that the average individual leave the protective gear for professionals and take other precautions to stop the spread.

Two things have changed since then: while N95 masks are still in short supply in many locations, the average three-ply surgical mask, plus cloth equivalents, are now plentiful. And we now know far more about the transmission of the virus, including that transmission by surface contact is rare whereas transmission by aerosol (e.g., the well-known case of the choir in the state of Washington early in the pandemic) is rampant.

Given these two factors, the recommendation is now, and has been for months, wear a fucking mask.

Oh, sorry, R324. I had a knee-jerk reaction since you didn't quote everything in your reply.

🤕 Corona Virus Fatigue Syndrome

This is interesting. German scientists staged a test to study COVID-19 transmission in large gatherings. I love how instead of spreading fear, denial and confusion, Germany decides, OK, let’s see how this virus actually spreads in various circumstances so we can start to develop some best practices for moving forward. This is the benefit of having a leader with a Ph.D. in quantum chemistry and an early career as a research scientist.

From R328's link:

[quote]A decision to grant approval for a concert of German singer Sarah Connor with 13,000 attendees on Sept. 4 in Duesseldorf has faced sharp criticism by virologists and local politicians.

Great! As if 2020 didn't suck enough, now we're going to have to deal with Terminators!

R328 I think some people may have some justifiable issues with Germany and 'best practices' (@WW2)

And let's not forget the Stassi.

Kayleigh McEnany:

News conference with President @realDonaldTrump at 6 pm tomorrow (Sunday) concerning a major therapeutic breakthrough on the China Virus. Secretary Azar and Dr. Hahn will be in attendance.

The Maine CDC has linked 53 infections (and counting) to a wedding reception that violated state rules limiting indoor gatherings to no more than 50 people. One person has died after acquiring the infection from a guest after the wedding.

In a tweet this morning, Trump warns agains using mail drop boxes for mail-in voting because "they are not Covid sanitized."

[quote]The Maine CDC has linked 53 infections (and counting) to a wedding reception that violated state rules limiting indoor gatherings to no more than 50 people. One person has died after acquiring the infection from a guest after the wedding.

Fuck. I just got back from Portland. I honestly thought it would be safe.

Thankfully, this cluster is in the middle of nowhere, but who knows what else has been happening elsewhere.

That cluster may be "in the middle of nowhere" but those spreaders have taken it to the middle of somewhere.

NBC News White House Correspondent Geoff Bennett reported that a guest from Robert Trump’s funeral punched a waiter at DC’s Fig & Olive over the restaurant’s coronavirus restrictions. President Donald Trump held a funeral at the White House for his late brother on Friday, and according to Bennett, a group of mourners went to the restaurant afterwards, and became irate when they were told that capacity restrictions prevented it from accommodating the party.

⏳ CORONA TIME ~ AUGUST 23 ~ 12:00 NOON EST

🖤 EUROPEAN DAY OF REMEMBRANCE ~ VICTIMS OF STALINISM & NAZISM

🌽 BUTTERED CORN DAY

🌎 GLOBAL

CASES: 23,457,548

DEATHS: 809,982

CRITICAL: 61,677

🇺🇸 UNITED STATES

CASES: 5,848,860

DEATHS: 180,295

CRITICAL: 16,740

📊 WORLDOMETER

😷 SAVE AMERICA !

French Covid-19 cases triple in a month

From CNN's Fanny Bobille

The number of people who have tested positive for Covid-19 in France recently tripled in one month, according to data from France’s national health agency (Santé Publique France).

In its weekly epidemiological report dated July 23, the agency reported 4,397 people tested positive for the virus in the week July 13-19.

The agency said 15,706 people tested positive between August 10-16, according to its report issued on Thursday.

"The test positivity rate itself tripled in August," French Health Minister Olivier Véran tweeted on Sunday, while explaining that the increasing numbers of confirmed cases in France is not only linked to an increase in the country’s testing capacity.

More details: On Thursday, France reported 4,711 new Covid-19 cases, the highest daily increase post-lockdown.

On the same day, President Emmanuel Macron said France didn’t plan to lockdown the country again, “but we're going to have to live with the virus and make sure it doesn't spread, especially not faster, and that it doesn't affect older people, who we know are the most vulnerable."

Italy records more than 1,200 new Covid-19 cases

From CNN’s Livia Borghese in Rome

A total of 1,210 Covid-19 cases have been recorded across Italy as of Sunday, the highest figure since May 12, according to new government data.

Sunday's official figures recorded seven new Covid-19 deaths.

There were 1,071 Covid-19 cases reported on Saturday.

Pelosi says Democrats are united on stimulus stance despite push for stand-alone unemployment bill

From CNN's Alison Main

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told CNN Sunday that her caucus is standing together in its approach to negotiating another round of coronavirus relief legislation with the Trump administration.

This follows after almost half of House Democrats signed a letter last week calling on Pelosi to pass a stand-alone unemployment insurance bill and restart talks with the White House to find bipartisan solutions to pass another coronavirus stimulus bill.

"I invite any ideas that they have," Pelosi said on CNN, referring to her fellow House Democrats, later adding "of course, we all want the negotiations to continue but not just what the administration wants, but what the country needs."

Pelosi criticized the Trump administration's stance against providing additional funds for state and local government. The White House has firmly opposed including $1 trillion in state and local aid which Democrats said must be part of a new stimulus bill.

"What they say to us is why should one state help another state that may have needs? Well, we welcome them to the United States of America," the speaker said.

More UK children "likely to be harmed" by school closures than Covid-19, chief medical adviser says

From CNN's Hilary McGann in London

Keeping UK schools shut would likely be more harmful for children than the coronavirus, said the country's chief medical adviser, Professor Chris Whitty, amid a debate over the safety of reopening schools.

Whitty said the evidence was "overwhelmingly clear" that children dying from the virus was low risk.

"The chances of many children being damaged by not going to school are incredibly clear, and therefore the balance of risk is very strongly in favour of children actually going to school, because many more are likely to be harmed by not going than harmed by going, even during this pandemic," Whitty said in an on-camera interview with British media broadcast on Sunday.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson previously said there was a "moral duty" to reopen schools in the autumn.

Whitty acknowledged that students returning to the classroom was "likely to put some pressure" on the reproduction rate — or the R rate — which measures how much the virus is being transmitted in the community. An R rate of 1, for example, means every one person with the virus infects one other person, on average. Many countries are trying to keep their R rates below 1 to prevent the virus from snowballing.

On Friday, the UK government updated its guidance to say the country's R rate was somewhere between 0.9 and 1.1.

The government's main scientific advisory body on the pandemic, SAGE, also said Friday it "does not have confidence that R is currently below 1 in England."

During the interview, Whitty went on to say they were always going to have to balance keeping transmission rates low while doing "the least social economic damage to achieve that."

As world tops 23 million cases, US still the worst affected. And cases continue to rise

From CNN's Samantha Beech and Alta Spells in Atlanta

The number of people who have been infected with the novel coronavirus globally surpassed 23 million on Saturday, according to the Johns Hopkins University. JHU is reporting more than 801,000 people have died from the virus.

The United States has the highest numbers of coronavirus infections and deaths in the world, followed by Brazil. The US confirmed another 44,572 new cases and 983 new deaths in United States in a 24-hour period on Saturday, keeping the US firmly in the position of the worst-affected country in the world.

The US has now confirmed more than 5.6 million cases and at least 176,353 people have died.

In other parts of the world:

Brazil, the second-most affected country by case numbers, on Saturday reported more than 50,000 new cases in 24 hours, bringing the total number of cases in the country to more than 3.5 million, while the death toll is over 114,000.

The Philippines reported more than 4,900 new cases on Saturday, bringing the total to more than 187,000 and deaths to more than 2,900.

Mexico recorded more than 6,400 new cases Saturday, bringing the total number to over 556,000.

New Zealand, which is trying to eradicate the virus, on Sunday reported three new cases, raising the total to 1,324. Twenty-two people have died.

R338 And school will start in a week. We're fucked. October's going to be rough.

My partner's sister and her husband drove across state lines with their infant, and did god knows what on the way and in town, and then came to see her mother, who has diabetes, heart failure, and COPD, twice in 3 weeks, while our county was on lock down.

No one could tell them they shouldn't, because THEY wanted to, that is the only reason. Multiply my experience by millions- People are so fucking selfish, and think they are the exceptions.

The FDA, under pressure from Trump, is authorizing plasma therapy, over objections from scientists. Why do they object? There’s insufficient proof that it works.

This is Trump's big "breakthrough" announcement tonight ... something he's already been touting for months.

My son was supposed to begin his freshman year in DC but the dorms were officially closed three weeks ago so I reserved him a coworking desk here in Austin. At least he’s not alone in this - almost 100% of his HS classmates are staying here now.

WaPo's James Hohmann:

[quote]The president’s political advisers believe that making people believe a vaccine is imminent by Election Day — whether true or not — is key to his prospects for winning.

And we doubt why some people are hesitant to get a vaccine pushed by this administration?

I broke down on Fri and finally went to my chiropractor because my neck and shoulders were so painful. I wore a mask and gloves, put a beach towel down on the table (after my chiro wiped the table down w/ disinfectant). My chiro wore a mask, but not gloves, but he purel-ed before and after. I'm still nervous. I also complained to him because his receptionist had her mask pulled down under her nose. He let me sneak out the back so I wouldn't have to go past her again.

I'll be holding my breath for the next 14 days. But my neck and shoulders feel so much better.

Address, R347?

R349 I know it's nerve-wracking, but if it's any consolation, my partner has had two varicose vein removal procedures over the past month and he's fine. I've gone to several shorter medical appointments and I'm fine. We wore masks and goggles and had to be temperature-scanned heading in to the appointments.

So, there's a professor out of Pennsylvania who is trying to predict upcoming counties that are heading toward worse Covid futures. He, again, goes on and on about how the cold weather is going to make the cases get way worse again in the North because our cases were going down because of summer weather.

Someone, explain to me how this makes any sense considering that all summer the South of the US and the Southern hemisphere in general exploded. It's pretty obvious that it's gatherings and parties and not weather that contributes to increases in cases. The argument that it acts like a cold or the flu has been shown to not apply. The party atmosphere brought out in the summer is the problem. People will hermit this winter and mostly be around their families like they should have been doing the whole time.

[quote] [R349] I know it's nerve-wracking, but if it's any consolation, my partner has had two varicose vein removal procedures over the past month and he's fine. I've gone to several shorter medical appointments and I'm fine. We wore masks and goggles and had to be temperature-scanned heading in to the appointments.

Thank you, Sylvia. I appreciate that. I wanted to wear goggles but since my face was going to be pressed into the table, I figured it would be too painful. I do trust my chiro if not his staff. I hope your partner is feeling better!

It isn't safe to keep a hand sanitizer in your car. It can catch fire.

Don't be afraid to go to doctors or dentists. Please do so before we have a 2nd wave or increased cases in the fall/winter.

I'm in NYC and the numbers are very low. I've been to the eye doctor to get eyes checked for new prescription, my friends have been to dentists, doctors for annual check ups etc.

All very safe and clean environments. You get your temps checked when you're in the lobby, they make sure you hand sanitize before you go use the elevator etc. There is even a doormat drenched in bleach/water solution that I was told to step on...before I went up to my doctor to get eyes checked.

Also in the covid era, you no longer have to wait for a long time. there are very few people in the waiting room.

I’ve had a few dermatology treatments. My provider wore an n95 mask. I think medical offices of any kind are pretty safe... they are probably ahead of the game when it comes to sanitary procedures.

Connecticut city facing ‘serious’ COVID-19 outbreak, residents urged to stay home

The city of Danbury in Connecticut is facing a “serious outbreak” of the coronavirus, officials warned Friday as they urged residents to stay home.

“This is a serious outbreak in Danbury and we really need an all hands on deck approach,” Acting DPH Commissioner Deidre S. Gifford said in a statement.

From Aug. 2-20, the city recorded 178 new cases of the virus, compared to 40 over the previous two weeks.

Health officials are blaming the outbreak on outdoor barbecues, travel and youth sports, which have been cancelled over the uptick.

Danbury residents should also avoid unnecessary gatherings, church services and limit other indoor activities, officials said.

Those who feel they have been exposed to the illness are urged to self-quarantine for 14 days.

Hong Kong Reports First Confirmed Coronavirus Re-Infection

A man was infected with the coronavirus after recovering from an initial bout in April in what scientists said was the first case showing that re-infection may occur within a few months.

Researchers at the University of Hong Kong used genomic sequence analysis to prove that he had been infected by two different strains. The information technology worker didn’t develop any symptoms from his second infection, which might indicate “subsequent infections may be milder,” the researchers said.

Dozens of nudists test positive for COVID-19 at French colony

More than 100 nudists have tested positive for the coronavirus in a “very worrying” outbreak at a popular naturist holiday resort in France, according to reports.

The Cap d’Agde resort on the Mediterranean coast reported 38 infections Monday — and 57 tested positive on Wednesday, the Guardian reported, citing the regional health ministry.

Managers at the resort, which welcomes around 35,000 visitors each summer, acknowledged that so-called “barrier gestures” are all but impossible among nudists, according to the Sun.

The rate of infection was four times higher among the skinny-dippers than in nearby communities, the reports said.

Another 50 holidaymakers also had tested positive for the bug after returning home, according to the Guardian, which said additional test results are expected. The figures are “very worrying,” the health ministry said.

“We are in an alarming situation, therefore we ask that all the people of the village be tested before leaving the place and going elsewhere,” a spokesman for the Hérault Prefecture said, the Sun reported.

“And we also ask all the people who wish to come to this naturist village to postpone their arrival,” said the rep, who added that at least two of those infected work at prestigious hotels in Cap d’Agde.

On Sunday, France reported almost 4,900 new coronavirus cases over 24 hours, its highest number since May.

Health Minister Olivier Veran acknowledged there were “risks” in the surging infection levels across the country, which has more than 280,000 confirmed infections and 30,518 deaths — the third-highest toll in Europe after the UK and Italy.

EVIL

Iowa reports a positivity rate of 21.04 today, indicating that the disease has spread far and wide there.

Notre Dame reports an additional 50 cases of Covid-19 over the weekend via CNN

The University of Notre Dame added a total of 50 additional cases of Covid-19 over the weekend. 20 additional cases were reported Saturday, 30 were reported Sunday. The total case count for the school now stands at 448 cases.

Undergraduate classes are currently being conducted entirely online after the school announced last week it would move to all remote learning for two weeks.

Covid-19 testing will be set up at New York airports, governor says

From CNN's Kristina Sgueglia

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and NY Health and Hospitals will be setting up new Covid-19 testing sites at John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports in New York City for incoming passengers.

He did not elaborate on the details.

This decision comes as New York continues to enforce its travel advisory which requires a 14-day quarantine for individuals traveling in from Covid-19 hot spots.

Usain Bolt says he's self-isolating while awaiting Covid-19 test results

Olympic legend Usain Bolt says he's self-isolating while awaiting his Covid-19 testing results. The eight-time Olympic champion posted a video on social media on Monday saying he currently has no symptoms. He took the test on Saturday.

Coronavirus live updates: Storms impact Louisiana COVID test sites; plasma therapy touted by Trump still 'experimental,' experts say

A maskless Melania Trump shakes hands with dozens of children and hugs some at a White House event

[quote]Storms impact Louisiana COVID test sites

Beautiful success in Louisiana! New cases way down. Beautiful numbers. New cases dropping. The greatest dropping in the history of the world, okay? The greatest. Tremendous decline. They said it couldn't be done. I did it. I did it. Beautiful.

Another COVID-19 Medical Mystery: Patients Come Off Ventilator But Linger In A Coma.

Doctors across the U.S. and in other countries have noted a troubling phenomenon associated with some COVID-19 cases: Even after extubation, some patients remain unconscious for days, weeks or longer.

Doctors who are studying the phenomenon are concerned that medical teams are not waiting long enough for these COVID-19 patients to wake up, especially when ICU beds are in high demand during the pandemic.

R359, love the phallic nude beach aerial shot.

Didn't she do enough damage to the Rose Garden by cutting down trees and removing shrubs, flowers, and plants? Wasn't it enough that she totally destroyed Jackie Kennedy's tribute to her late husband, while establishing a beautiful garden for visitors to enjoy? Evidently not. Now she's trying to poison little children?

The beautiful Rose Garden now looks as cold and barren as the Whore of the Manor.

WH OSTP is engaged in data gathering related to the impact of the Gain of Function policy. I am not sure what to think about that.

There is no way to safely reopen schools this summer/fall especially in the US. The White House doesn't give a shit and neither does Wall Street. Cases will explode. We are fucked!

Already 180K deaths now in the US. More than 3 X what Chump was saying earlier. That MF doesn't care about the final number as long as Wall Street is ok and he can continue to fool his base with lies and red herrings. He doesn't give a shit about you or me or that man/woman who was the first casualty in the US. FUCK hum!

[quote]People will hermit this winter and mostly be around their families like they should have been doing the whole time.

Well, that's kinda the problem. At least in the summer, people were able to get together outside: in the back yard, in a local park, in a restaurant or bar patio, etc., thereby reducing the risk. And sunlight outside can help kill the virus.

But when it gets colder, everything has to be indoors and in winter there's less sunlight. And as we've seen in multiple instances thus far, ventilation from a furnace or HVAC unit can really help the spread of the virus. And then there's the psychology of it, as people get cabin fever in the winter and need to go out.

You're right that it is speculation, just as there was speculation that the virus might not flourish as much in warmer weather, which proved to be false, but there are very real reasons to be concerned.

Guardian-A Hong Kong man has been re-infected with Covid-19 after four-and-a-half months, leading to immunity concerns. A Hong Kong man who recovered from Covid-19 was infected again four-and-a-half months later in the first documented instance of human re-infection, researchers at the University of Hong Kong said on Monday.

Guardian-Usain Bolt has tested positive for coronavirus. World-record sprinter and eight-time Olympic gold medalist Usain Bolt has tested positive for the coronavirus and is self-isolating at his home in Jamaica after last week celebrating his 34th birthday with a big bash mask-free, Reuters reports.

What are the implications R371?

Guardian-A 34-year-old doctor in Argentina is the country’s first confirmed case of someone who, after having recovered from Covid-19, fell ill with the virus a second time four months later.In Argentina, Alejandra Müller, a hospital director in the town of Helvecia in the central province of Santa Fe, was first diagnosed with Covid-19 on 24 March, after acquiring the virus from a child who had fallen ill. Müller recovered from the virus and, after testing negative, was able to return to her job. “That first time I was back at work after two weeks, having had only some chest pain, some throat congestion, a bit of fever and pharyngitis,” Müller told the daily La Nación. The doctor submitted to two tests in April, both of which came back negative, before receiving the all clear. “I thought I had acquired immunity,” Müller said. But four months later Müller fell ill with the virus again, much harder this time. “The second time the infection was completely different,” said Müller. The doctor developed pneumonia at the end of July and had to go into hospital for five days. “I had all the symptoms, except losing my sense of taste, though I did lose my sense of smell.”

R377 I am not sure. It could be completely benign. Maybe they really are just interested. However given the politics around GOF right now, with the (IMHO wrong) accusations against Wuhan Institute of Virology, I can’t help thinking that maybe they are trying to get something they can then twist to sound nefarious. The fact that they want to do open ended interviews is super weird. Normally a government agency would do an RFI (request for information) and broadly announce. Alternately they might do an on-line survey and/or partner with FDP.

Nice interview with the author of "Spillover," which if you haven't read, you really should.

"Everything about this outbreak was predictable, to me and to the scientists I was listening to, 10 years ago.

New virus coming out of an animal, yes, predictable.

Animal was a bat, yes, predictable.

Virus is a coronavirus, yes, predictable.

Happens in or around a wet market in China, yes, predictable.

What was not predictable was how completely unprepared we would be.

A virus starts getting into people and spreading from airport to airport—but we have no diagnostic kits that work. We have no platform vaccine that can be modified to become a vaccine for this coronavirus. We have no public health emergency capacity. We have no integrated national plan in this country. We have nothing except the lying president who stands up there worrying about his poll numbers every day, with a noble man named Tony Fauci forced to stand next to him. Who’s been in that job for 30 years, and he’s the greatest tightrope walker since the Wallendas."

Patients were infected twice with the coronavirus, say virologists

From CNN's Mick Krever and Jacqueline Howard

Two European patients, one in Belgium and one in the Netherlands, have been infected twice by the coronavirus, virologists say.

Belgian virologist Marc Van Ranst told VRT News that a Belgian woman was infected first in mid-March, then again in June. Her symptoms were mild enough to avoid hospitalization, he said.

“We were able to genetically sequence the virus in the two cases,” Van Ranst said in a television interview on Monday night. “And there is indeed enough difference to be able to say that this is another strain, a second infection.”

“Good news, it is not,” he said. “Because you hope of course that when you’re infected, that you’re then out of the danger zone for a long while. And hopefully that is so in most cases. At the very least, there appear now to be exceptions.”

Meanwhile, a patient was infected twice in the Netherlands, virologist Marion Koopmans told NOS, the Dutch national broadcaster.

Koopmans said it was an “older patient with a compromised immune system,” according to NOS. Koopmans confirmed to NOS that the RNA profiles of the two viruses that infected this patient differed.

The news comes after a 33-year-old man living in Hong Kong was reported to have had Covid-19 twice this year, according to preliminary research.

The pre-print study -- which the University of Hong Kong said on Monday has been accepted to publish in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases -- found that the man’s second case of Covid-19 occurred 142 days after the first.

The study also noted that in the first case, the man showed symptoms but in the second case he was asymptomatic, in that he did not show any noticeable symptoms.

The genetic analysis showed that the first infection was from a strain of the coronavirus most closely related to strains from the US or England, which were collected in the spring, and the second was most closely related to strains from Switzerland and England, which were collected in July and August.

“This case illustrates that re-infection can occur even just after a few months of recovery from the first infection. Our findings suggest that SARS-CoV-2 may persist in humans as is the case for other common-cold associated human coronaviruses, even if patients have acquired immunity via natural infection or via vaccination,” the researchers wrote in their study.

The researchers called this the “first case” of re-infection of Covid-19 in their paper, but other experts are calling for more research before naming this case truly the world’s first.

Belarus to become first country to receive Russian coronavirus vaccine

From CNN’s Mary Ilyushina in Minsk

Belarus will become the first country to receive doses of a potential coronavirus vaccine being developed in Russia as part of a new agreement reached by Presidents Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko on Monday.

According to the state-owned Belarusian Telegraph Agency (BeITA), the two leaders agreed that Belarusian citizens will participate in the third stage of Russian vaccine trials, on a voluntary basis.

In a press release, the Kremlin added that the telephone call between Putin and Lukashenko focused on “bilateral cooperation” between the two states, as well as the situation in Belarus.

Mass demonstrations over August's disputed presidential election are now entering a third week in Belarus.

“Alexander Lukashenko informed [Putin] about the measures being taken to normalize the situation in the country,” the Kremlin statement added.

FDA chief apologizes for overstating plasma effect on virus

Responding to an outcry from medical experts, FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn on Tuesday apologized for overstating the life-saving benefits of treating COVID-19 patients with convalescent plasma.

Scientists and medical experts have been pushing back against the claims about the treatment since President Donald Trump’s announcement on Sunday that the FDA had decided to issue emergency authorization for the treatment.

Hahn had echoed Trump in saying that 35 more people out of 100 would survive the coronavirus if they were treated with the plasma. That claim vastly overstated preliminary findings of Mayo Clinic observations.

"Doctors across the U.S. and in other countries have noted a troubling phenomenon associated with some COVID-19 cases: Even after extubation, some patients remain unconscious for days, weeks or longer."

Could it be they're just LAZY?

[quote] Belarus to become first country to receive Russian coronavirus vaccine

Well, that oughta get them to stop protesting. Because they'll all be DEAD!

DJT will request millions of doses to be handed out free in October.

🤥 [italic] Everybody Lies

Reinfection by a different strain do not mean that there's no immunity. The indications are also that this virus mutates rather slowly. Right now, it is probably at the peak of its mutation ability due to the huge number of hosts it currently gets to use to mutate. If people ever decide to start acting responsibly instead of like fucking morons, we can get control of it, limit its mutation ability by limiting its available hosts, and then control the spread. Reinfection with new strains, which all of these reported cases have been, would stop for the most part.

Some 66 Covid-19 cases in South Korea are linked to a cluster at a Starbucks store in Paju city, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Tuesday.

Health officials said the cases mainly occurred among customers who did not wear face masks inside the café, adding the location was poorly ventilated.

Corona cases can be linked to anyplace in the world where at least two people have been in a relatively close proximity of each other.

🦇 Or, one person and one bat.

Really good article about higher ed reopening plans from faculty living it. Pseudonyms of course!

20,000 coronavirus cases stemmed from a single biotech conference that hosted 175 people in Boston in February.

That's not all you can catch at the Marriott Long Wharf!

(Per The Bedbug Registry.)

Dying for a Starbucks?!! The horror.

[quote] R106: I Ijust saw a video of the surprise birthday party in Connecticut. Attending were two children under15 years of age, and at least ten adults, and a dog. There were no masks. There were no gloves, There was hugging all around, except for two who discreetly stood behind an obstacle. These are people who are from different states or intrastate areas and are not usually intimates. It breaks my heart. The least careful person could have passed COVID to everyone there. I’m really saddened by this.

I just saw another picture. All gathered inside this time, around a too-small table, practically sitting on top of each other. It looked like great fun, but I’m scared to death for them. And me, I don’t want them to all get sick and some die..

Bio weapon

NYT: New study finds that women produce a more powerful immune response than men.

The findings suggest that men, particularly those over age 60, may need to depend more on vaccines to protect against the infection.

“You could imagine scenarios where a single shot of a vaccine might be sufficient in young individuals or maybe young women, while older men might need to have three shots of vaccine."

Trump has probably been taking plasma this whole time and decided it made him 100% immune. So hearing it might not is freaking him out, so he wants to say doctors are wrong.

In real life, everyone around him is tested, which isn’t foolproof either, but he’s likely just been lucky all this time.

CNN's Jeff Zeleny reported that coronavirus tests were not required for last night's Rose Garden crowd. I find that hard to believe given that Trump and Pence sat among them ... but maybe you're right about prophylactic plasma.

CNN: About 20% of the new Covid-19 cases across New York City are coming from people traveling from the 31 states on New York’s quarantine list. The sheriff’s office has completed more than 3,000 vehicle stops, issued two citations and handed out more than 12,000 face coverings.

The mayor urged people coming in from one of these places to quarantine, saying in part, “You really have to quarantine, it’s the law.”

The women thing makes sense apparently women who’ve had the virus, have anti bodies against it in the mother milk when they have a baby. The breastfed children are immune.

Expert on new CDC guidelines: "I am worried that this is just a way to slow down testing"

From CNN's Andrea Diaz

Dr. Carlos del Rio, an infectious disease specialist and the associate dean of Emory University School of Medicine, said on CNN Newsroom this morning that he doesn't understand why the CDC changed its guidelines on testing.

The CDC changed its Covid-19 testing guidelines to say some people without symptoms may not need to be tested, even if they've been in close contact with someone known to have the virus. Previously, the CDC said viral testing was appropriate for people with recent or suspected exposure, even if they were asymptomatic.

Del Rio said the CDC has not provided evidence to explain the changes. “I mean, the evidence that I'm aware of as of today is that close to 40% of the cases of the infections are asymptomatic and asymptomatic people transmit the infection,” Del Rio said.

“So, not testing — I mean, if you have been in contact with somebody for a few minutes, that's okay. But if you have been in contact for 50 minutes and that people doesn't have a mask, I think you need to be tested regardless if you have symptoms or not. We know especially young people going into the house and then transmit inside the household. So, the guidelines baffle me and I really don't understand them," he said.

Del Rio added that he's concerned about politics influencing these decisions. He noted that President Trump has said in the past that more testing leads to the detection of more cases.

"If we slowed down testing we will have a decrease in cases,” Del Rio said. “So I am worried that this is just a way to slow down testing and that would clearly be not good. We don't want to decrease the amount of testing. We want to decrease cases by decreasing transmission, not by decreasing testing."

Moderna says vaccine data shows it is well tolerated across all age groups

From CNN Health’s Naomi Thomas

Moderna’s experimental coronavirus vaccine appears to be safe and elicits an immune response in all age groups, including the elderly, a company official said Wednesday.

Data from the phase one safety trial of the vaccine showed only mild adverse effects, and generated an immune response in volunteers aged 18 to 71, Dr. Jacqueline Miller, therapeutic area head for infectious diseases at Moderna, told a meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

The phase one trial was conducted in three age groups: 18 to 55, 56 to 70 and 71 plus years of age. Participants received two 100mg doses of the vaccine 28 days apart.

Neutralizing antibodies – which inactivate the virus — were detected in all participants, including the upper age range, she told the meeting. All age groups also seemed to produce the same immune response – a good sign, as older people often have weaker responses to vaccines.

The most common adverse reactions were fatigue, chills, headache and myalgia. More reports of adverse symptoms observed after the second dose of the vaccine, but the majority of symptoms resolved within two days.

ACIP advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on how vaccines should be used in the population.

Bed Bath & Beyond is laying off 2,800 employees

From CNN’s Jordan Valinsky

Bed Bath & Beyond is eliminating 2,800 jobs effective immediately, as the troubled retailer tries to streamline its operations and shore up its finances amid the pandemic.

The significant reduction of corporate employees and retail workers will help Bed Bath & Beyond save $150 million in annual pretax cost savings, the company said Tuesday. As of February, the retailer had 55,000 employees, so the cuts amount to 5% of its total workforce.

Tuesday's "action forms part of a series of changes we are making to reduce the cost of our business, further simplify our operations and support our teams so we can emerge from the pandemic in an even stronger position," CEO Mark Tritton said in the statement.

Some background: Last month, Bed Bath & Beyond announced it was permanently closing 200 stores starting later this year. Brick-and-mortar stores continue to struggle as people shift their shopping online.

The company — which also operates Buybuy Baby, Christmas Tree Shops and Harmon Face Values — has about 1,500 stores. Nearly 1,000 of those are Bed Bath & Beyond locations.

Tritton was named Bed Bath & Beyond's CEO last October, joining the retailer from Target. In addition to the layoffs and store closures, Tritton is bolstering the company's digital efforts and launching new in-house brands next year.

Berlin bans planned coronavirus protests

From CNN's Nadine Schmidt in Berlin

Authorities in Berlin have banned this weekend’s planned protests against the German government’s coronavirus restrictions, citing concerns about violations of hygiene regulations.

In a statement, Berlin's Senate announced: “Today, the assembly authority banned several demonstrations that were to take place next weekend in Berlin,” adding that “the expected circle of participants will be in violation of the current infection protection ordinance.”

The Senate said that protests on August 1 had shown “that the participants had deliberately ignored existing hygiene rules and corresponding requirements.”

Andreas Geisel, a senior official in the state of Berlin said: “This is not a decision against freedom of assembly, but a decision for infection protection. We are still in the middle of a pandemic with increasing numbers of infections. This cannot be denied. We must therefore weigh up the fundamental right to freedom of assembly against the right to the integrity of life. We have chosen life.”

Organizers of the protest had planned to march through the center of the German capital on Saturday. Police told CNN as many as 17,000 participants were expected to march, with thousands more expected at a rally afterwards.

“I am not prepared to accept a second time that Berlin is misused as a stage for Corona [virus] deniers ... and right-wing extremists,” Geisel went on to say, adding that: “The state will not be fooled.”

Here's some background: Thousands of protesters rallied in Berlin on August 1 to demonstrate against measures imposed in Germany to stem the coronavirus pandemic. Police broke up the demonstration, which was attended by some 20,000 people, on the basis that organizers failed to ensure health and safety regulations were followed. Most protesters did not wear face masks or adhere to physical distancing rules, police said.

German chancellor Angela Merkel is set to meet with the country’s 16 state premiers on Thursday to discuss the country's coronavirus response amid rising numbers of infections.

Remember that starbucks in S. Korea where at least 55 people got the virus? The workers who wore masks there did not get it. So masks work!!!

Continue to wear your masks folks! stay safe and healthy!

Scientists find that Citriodiol, ingredient in insect repellant, can kill COVID-19

British scientists have discovered that an active ingredient found in insect repellent can kill COVID-19, according to a report.

Researchers at the UK’s Defense Science and Technology Laboratory determined that Citriodiol can help fight coronavirus in a preliminary study, Sky News reported.

Insect repellents containing Citriodiol are not believed to be enough alone to protect people from the virus but can be used as an additional layer of defense along with face masks, hand washing and other health recommendations, according to the report.

Citriodiol — which has approval from the US Environmental Protection Agency — is derived from the leaves and twigs of the eucalyptus citriodora tree.

Jacqueline Watson, managing director of Citrefine, which produces the naturally-sourced active ingredient, previously said that she was optimistic that it could help stop the spread of the virus.

“What we can say is that we do feel there is a very good chance it could work against this virus but it does of course need to be thoroughly tested,” she said.

Antonio Banderas recovers from COVID-19

Antonio Banderas announced on social media Tuesday that he has recuperated from COVID-19.

Three weeks after revealing his diagnosis, which he received on his 60th birthday on August 10, the “Mask of Zorro” star said he’s “cured.”

“After 21 days of disciplinary confinement I can say now that today I overcame the Covid 19 infection,” he tweeted. “I am cured. My thoughts go to those who weren’t as fortunate as me, and to those who suffered more than I did. I also wish strength to the ones who are in the middle of the fight.”

Banderas also issued the positive news in Spanish and tweeted out a Photoshopped image of him kicking away the virus.

The “Genius” actor is part of a long list of celebrities who tested positive for coronavirus and recovered, including Kevin Hart, Idris Elba, Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson and Andy Cohen.

R396 Ask not for whom the bell tolls, DL. It tolls for thee.

R405 I'm surprised that Starbucks is open for sit-down visits anywhere, even Korea.

Apart from the facts and news isn’t this situation exhausting DL? I wish I’d known what we had before this.....I surely appreciate it more now it’s gone(cliché I know). What wouldn’t I give for some hugs, friends, family.....

“Though patience be a tired mare, yet she will plod” -Shakespeare

R400, the breastfed children are probably only immune as long as they continue to breastfeed. And maybe less, since it seems people only have immunity for a few months. So if the mother loses her immunity and continues to breastfeed, probably the child does too.

R409, one thing I’ve learned from this is not to procrastinate.

I need plumbing work done on my house. I called my regular plumber to make an appointment. The next day I called back to reschedule. The plumber’s wife said she was just tested for Coronavirus and he was quarantined until her results come back. We all know even if she tests negative that means nothing. She probably still has it anyway. She sounded sick on the phone so she was symptomatic. God knows how many people he saw when she was asymptomatic. And I wondered if either one would have said anything to me if I didn’t call first.

Still having plumbing issues, but now afraid to call anyone.

CNN: A sudden change in federal guidelines on coronavirus testing came this week as a result of pressure from the upper ranks of the Trump administration, a federal health official close to the process tells CNN. “It’s coming from the top down,” the official said of the new directive from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

+75K cases in India today. What in the world

They keep saying our cases are dropping in the US but so is testing, people either can’t get tested or find it worthless to wait a week or two for results. It’s insane

[R414] Exactly. No one is getting tested. We have fires in the West, hurricanes in the South and shootings in the Upper Midwest. Testing is out the window and it barely existed before.

Tonight it’s storm surges on the Gulf Coast. Next week it will be Coronavirus surges in Southeast Texas and Western Louisiana. We were told to evacuate, over 300,000 of us. For some living within several miles of the actual coast, it would be a do or die situation. For those of us living 50 miles or more from the beaches, no surges. Just heavy winds and more rain than your yard needs from Hurricane Laura.

What’s worse? Taking your chance and hunkering down, or being bussed out of town to a shelter and sleeping on the floor, crowded with strangers who may be carriers of the virus?

Sadly, the WHO is always a day late and a dollar short when it comes to this crisis. They were late with the pandemic declaration, late with the mask recommendations, and mostly respond to the news that has already been reported for whatever the reason. There is no forethought in many of their public statements. Just a rehash of what we already know and is subject to change based on the latest news however filtered it may be.

Although still disproportionately high relative to our population, new cases have slowed here in Belgium. Mostly due to mandatory mask regulations in public places. Nevertheless, I question the data from all countries now during this peak travel/tourism season and just before the planned reopening of schools and upcoming elections. Everyone wants to put this fucking crisis behind them, especially 'Merica and Europe. Who can blame them? But the virus is still there and lurks in the shadows. It hasn't gone anywhere. Stay vigilant!

Take care r416.

Absent the danger of storm surge, I might be inclined to hunker down at home, but I've never experienced one.

CNN: Dr. Anthony Fauci tells Sanjay Gupta he was under anesthesia when task force met to discuss changing testing guidance. “I am concerned about the interpretation of these recs & worried it will give people the incorrect assumption asymptomatic spread is not of great concern. In fact it is.”

CNN: Researchers say they have evidence that a woman caught coronavirus on a flight -- perhaps in the jet's restroom.

The 28-year-old woman was among about 300 South Koreans evacuated from Italy at the height of the coronavirus pandemic in Milan last March.

"On the flight from Milan, Italy, to South Korea, she wore an N95 mask, except when she used a toilet," researchers wrote.

"The toilet was shared by passengers sitting nearby, including an asymptomatic patient. She was seated three rows away from the asymptomatic patient," they added.

Oh, no! Has CORONA POLL TROLL caught the dreaded virus or just DGAF like seemingly everyone else? No posts in three days. Depressing, either way.

What is the fucking point of articles like at R421 (and I'm not condemning you, poster, just the article) when the incident they're discussing is from March? Of COURSE she got it on a plane then. it was MARCH. There were no guidelines about travel and most people didn't even understand the severity of COVID at that point. Why are news outlets talking about shit from back then now and acting like it's some massive revelation?

The pandemic is making US drug shortages even worse, FDA says

From CNN's Andrea Kane

The coronavirus pandemic is worsening the United States' drug shortage problem, according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

“Due to Covid-19, we've had the increasing demand for certain medications, and then we've also had an increase in hospitalizations, which has drained the supply. Patients wanting to stock up, and that's a normal reaction — that's been another reason," Valerie Jensen, associate director of the drug shortages staff at the FDA, said Wednesday on the podcast “FDA Insight”. "And then sometimes, we've had some cases of slower manufacturing times due to labor shortages in some of the areas that have been harder hit."

Traditionally, Jensen said, drug shortages are rooted in manufacturing and quality problems involving sterile, injectable drugs especially older ones. Those are the very kinds of medications used by hospitalized patients, that are facing shortages and increased demand

There are also shortages of pharmacy drugs, like those for high blood pressure and antibiotics.

Jensen said the FDA had been in contact with more than 180 drug manufacturers since January, working to stabilize supply chains and monitor potential disruptions.

R417 The WHO is not exactly a reliable source I remember their announcement in December when they said the highly contagious virus in Wuhan was nothing to worry about and that no measures should be taken.

🌞 GOOD MORNING, MY LOVELIES . . . . . . .

⌛ CORONA TIME ~ AUGUST 27 ~ 8:30 AM EST

🤗 JUST BECAUSE DAY

🍌 NATIONAL BANANA LOVERS DAY

🌎 GLOBAL

CASES: 24,368,194

DEATHS: 830,400

CRITICAL: 61,563

🇺🇲 UNITED STATES

CASES: 6,002,092

DEATHS: 183,685

CRITICAL: 16,378

📊 WORLDOMETER

😷 NO EXCUSES ~ WEAR IT !

Days before the CDC downplayed the need to test asymptomatic people, CDC scientists found that limiting tests to symptomatic people underestimated cases by 12x.

Lord & Taylor is officially closing all of its stores and going out of business

From CNN's Jordan Valinsky

Lord & Taylor -- the first department store established in the United States -- is officially going out of business, ending a nearly 200-year-run.

The company announced Thursday that all of its 38 remaining stores and website have begun liquidation sales — a sharp reversal from last week's decision that it was keeping 14 locations open.

"While we are still entertaining various opportunities, we believe it is prudent to simultaneously put the remainder of the stores into liquidation to maximize value of inventory for the estate while pursuing options for the company's brands," Ed Kremer, Lord & Taylor's chief restructuring officer, said in a statement.

Backstory: The company was once a mainstay of high-end fashion. Hudson's Bay Company acquired Lord & Taylor in 2012 before selling it in 2019 to Le Tote, Inc., a fashion rental subscription service, for $75 million. Le Tote tried reviving the brand with a pop-up store in New York City and remodeling its remaining stores with a focus on technology.

Guardian-More than 100 mink farms in the Netherlands will be ordered closed by March after animals at dozens of locations contracted the coronavirus, Dutch news agency ANP has reported. Hundreds of thousands of the ferret-like animals, which are bred for their fur, have been culled in the Netherlands and other European countries since the virus outbreak. The Netherlands had already intended to halt its mink breeding industry by 2024, but decided to bring forward the closures after several farm employees contracted Covid-19.

We'll really be screwed if and when mosquitoes start spreading the love.

Guardian:

France reported its second-highest level of cases ever and a new post-lockdown high. Over the past 24 hours, 6,111 cases were recorded, the highest level since lockdown ended and the second-highest ever since the 7,578 high set on 30 March at the height of the epidemic. It brings the total number of infections in the country to 259,698.

Italy recorded its highest number of daily cases since May. A further 1,411 people tested positive for Covid-19, the country’s highest tally since 6 May, bringing the total reported to 263,949

The UK recorded its highest daily tally of cases since 12 June. Another 1,522 cases were reported and the UK’s cumulative death toll based on the government’s statistics reached 41,477.

Spain diagnosed 3,781 new coronavirus infections in the past 24 hours, health emergency coordinator Fernando Simon told a news briefing on Thursday, slightly higher than the 3,594 reported the previous day.

I have the sinking feeling that many of us will eventually get the virus before this is finally over. Hoping for a mild case or better treatment by then. In the meantime, I will continue to wear my mask, work from as much as possible and to wash my fucking hands.

^^work from home...

WTF, France!?

R432 I agree. I still wish more work was being done on treatments rather than vaccines.

Go home, get plenty of rest, drink lots of fluids, and eat your chicken soup.

50% of asymptomatic show heart damage. A disease of the heart and blood vessels.

[quote]50% of asymptomatic show heart damage.

Another thing that drives me crazy about the way the Trump administration has handled this: no acknowledgement whatsoever that many survivors, even the asymptomatic, will have lifelong medical challenges – even as the administration works to roll back coverage for pre-existing conditions.

I really hope I'm wrong but given the evidence of the last six months I think the U.S. is headed for Mass Gravesville by the end of the year.

180,000 dead in six months isn't "mass" enough?

[quote]the U.S. is headed for Mass Gravesville

Is that near Canarsie?

Did we all die? Why this thread so slow?

Because every hysterical thing that could possibly be said has already been said about 1000 times in 49 threads.

Spooky .. where are all my DL friends? Hopefully sipping on a mint julep or daiquiri and enjoying life..

Love you all 💕

The only thing new are the daily counts.

Also, it seems like DL is in Prime Time about 50-70% of each day. What's up with that?

I’ve known several people. One died on a vent, the other has been sick for several weeks. On oxygen at night only now. Requiring insulin daily now - wasn’t diabetic before.

I think I've solved the enigma that is Covid 19 infection. Covid 19 is a time traveler. It shows up and infects you and you get all the diseases you would have eventually gotten in the future. The reaons kids don't get it as bad is that twenty years from now, we will discover the cure for everything. See?

[quote]Also, it seems like DL is in Prime Time about 50-70% of each day. What's up with that?

General election year. Get used to it.

I have to admit I'm all over it.

I am one of the group of people who were on the board warning about this back in January and advising people to stock up. I've still got a really good supply of food, essentials and medicines but having said that where I live has not been badly affected....so far but that is not going to last.

But I'm just sick of the whole thing. Our lives have changed more than we realise it and I don't think we are anywhere near the worst yet. And then there is the economic ramifications which are unavoidable.

We really don't know anymore than what was coming out of China in January/February and whilst I'm pessimistic of a vaccine emerging anytime soon if ever I hope against hope that I'm wrong about that.

I feel I am finally on target with everything I need, my area is in Pretty good shape. Still a bitch to find wipes but sanitizer is plentiful and I will buy a bottle whenever I shop. Once schools open we will no doubt spike again and undo all the good we have accomplished. Our k-12 schools open next week, our state university opened last week and already has whole dorms quarantined. Be ready for the Late September/October spike.

R437 Exactly! We will see many thousands of people dying much sooner than they should have, from heart damage, lung damage, whatever. But before they die they will be a huge strain on our flimsy healthcare system for years to come. Even if COVID disappeared tomorrow, we still have flooded the system with chronically ill people and no one will admit it.

⌛ CORONA TIME ~ AUGUST 28 ~ 10:00 AM EST

🐾🌈 RAINBOW BRIDGE REMEMBRANCE DAY 🐈🐕

🍷 RED WINE DAY

🌎 GLOBAL

CASES: 24,670,605

DEATHS: 836,596

CRITICAL: 61,389

🇺🇲 UNITED STATES

CASES: 6,049,462

DEATHS: 184,927

CRITICAL: 16,231

📊 WORLDOMETER

😷 POWERFUL STATEMENT !

A look back to 7 months ago...

Thanks R452.

Germany's Merkel warns coronavirus pandemic will become "more difficult" in the coming months

From CNN's Nadine Schmidt in Berlin

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned that the coronavirus pandemic is “likely to get more difficult in the coming months,” cautioning that society "is never going to be the same" until a successful vaccine is developed. ""Things will not return to normal until we have a coronavirus vaccine," Merkel said Friday. "

“We will have to live longer with new coronavirus [cases]," she added.

Speaking during her annual summer press conference in Berlin, Merkel stressed that the “economy should be kept alive or brought back to life,” adding that Germany will “work with the European Parliament so that the recovery fund can be launched early next year.”

The Chancellor’s comments come just a day after the introduction of tougher measures in Germany to curb the spread of coronavirus ahead of the autumn and winter season, including new travel regulations.

“We can see that the number of infections has risen in recent weeks…we take this increase in the summer months very seriously,” Merkel said.

Thanks, r452 ......

🤔 A not so conspiracy theory after all.

A correction and an apology - sorry for being all nervous nelly earlier in this thread. The feds are just 2.5 years late on implementing 7.1 in the attached.

Unfortunately for America, Trump only listens to the sound of his own voice.

😜 And Ivanka's . . . . . .

Not all of us have an extra $1.99 to toss around every month, r447.

Speaking for myself, I'm actually lucky to have $1.99 per month for life's basic little 🥕 necessities.

Get over your cheap self Darfur Orphan.

I've had it up to here with you and your distended belly.

Everyone r459 is entitled to their opinion, no matter how wrong they are, and I 🖕 salute you.

Meet me behind the orphanage near the red dumpster at sundown, and I'll adjust your condescending attitude. Having spent my life around nuns and priests, I've become a [italic]Master of The Art of Psychological Torture.

Vaya Con Dios, fella.

The coronavirus death toll in the United States is projected to reach 317,000 by December 1, according to a University of Washington model cited by the White House.

Harbinger: four people who were in Charlottesville earlier this week for Republican convention events tested positive for COVID-19.

Darfur Orphan speaks Spanish, not Arabic?

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Australians working on a COVID-19 antiviral nasal spray. Shitty DL hates the link, so...

"Melbourne, Australia; 25 August 2020: Starpharma (ASX: SPL, OTCQX: SPHRY) today announced progress with development, regulatory and manufacturing activities associated with a nasal spray for protection against COVID-19 based on the company’s proprietary antiviral dendrimer, SPL7013.Australians working on a COVID-19 antiviral nasal spray. Shitty DL hates hte link, so...

As first announced in April, data has shown the potent antiviral activity of SPL7013 against SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19). Extensive antiviral data has been generated and submitted to a peer reviewed scientific journal and is now available on the preprint server, bioRχiv.[2]

The data confirms that SPL7013 inhibits infection of host cells by SARS‑CoV-2 when it is applied to the cells either before or after exposure to the virus (see Figure 1 below). The selectivity of SPL7013 for SARS-CoV-2 in these assays was very high (selectivity index[3] up to ~2200), indicating potent antiviral efficacy compared with minimal cellular toxicity. The selectivity index is a measure of therapeutic window. The high selectivity index of SPL7013 compares very favourably with the selectivity index against SARS-CoV-2 reported in the literature of 279 for remdesivir and 172 for chloroquine.[4]

In an assay to detect virucidal activity, SPL7013 also rendered SARS-CoV-2 inactive and prevented infection when it was mixed with the virus prior to adding to cells.

The high potency and high selectivity index of SPL7013 indicate that a final formulated product can and will have a concentration of SPL7013 that is several thousand-fold higher than the concentration shown to exert an antiviral effect on SARS-CoV-2.

SPL7013 has broad spectrum antiviral and virucidal effects, with activity demonstrated against a range of viruses, including HIV, herpes simplex virus (HSV), human papillomavirus (HPV), adenovirus, H1N1 influenza virus, hepatitis B virus (HBV) and Zika virus. Given the broad antiviral activity, a SPL7013 nasal spray also has potential for application beyond SARS-CoV-2 for other common respiratory viruses, and could be useful in pandemic preparedness in the future."

Shitty DL ?

Would that be the same DL demanding $1.99 per month from a poor African boy who needs a new pair of flip flops and a bottle of sunscreen ?

Between the RNC, and today's March in DC, our nation's Capitol will soon be named the Official Covid19 Epicenter of the United States.

What an honor for all Americans !

Meel-yuns and Meel-yuns !

This sounds scary:

A Nevada man appears to be the nation's first confirmed case of COVID-19 reinfection, researchers say.

The case is detailed in an online preprint, a study that has not yet been peer reviewed before officially being published.

The case involves a 25-year-old man living in Reno, Nevada, who first tested positive for COVID-19 in mid-April. He recovered, but got sick again in late May. The second time around, his illness was more severe, the case report said.Researchers reported that genetic sequencing of the virus revealed that he had been infected with a slightly different strain, indicating a true reinfection.

It's still unclear why the patient was reinfected. The cause could lie in his immune system, the virus itself, or a combination of the two.

Mark Pandori, director the Nevada State Public Health Laboratory and one of the authors of the report, stressed that reinfection with the coronavirus appears to be rare. This is the first instance reported in the U.S. among the nation's nearly 6 million cases so far, and "may not be generalizable" to the public, Pandori said.

Still, he urged caution. "If you've had it, you can't necessarily be considered invulnerable to the infection" again, said Pandori, who is also an associate professor of pathology and lab medicine at the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine.

"The evidence so far suggests that if you've been infected and recovered, then you're protected for some period of time," Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, said. "We don't know how long, and we're going to find individual cases of people for whom that's not true."

Indeed, on Monday, a case of COVID-19 reinfection was reported in Hong Kong -- the first such confirmation of reinfection during the pandemic. Two European patients, one in Belgium and one in the Netherlands, were also reported this week to have been reinfected with the virus.

R467, I didn't see one person on the news coverage without a mask on at the Washington rally today.

It's all the stupid fucking assholes who won't stop traveling, won't stop going to restaurants, won't stop going to parties, won't stop going to weddings, won't stop going to church gatherings, won't stop going to Repug political rallies, etc., that are causing this to never end.

Trump held a large campaign rally in New Hampshire today, and says he'll continue to hold several more.

Cedar Rapids Gazette: More than three-quarters of coronavirus tests in Iowa over a 24-hour period ending at 11 a.m. today came back positive, according to public health data analyzed by the Gazette. The positivity rate jumped to a record level of 79.43%.

Booing when they were asked to wear masks:

[quote]The positivity rate (in Iowa) jumped to a record level of 79.43%.

Meawhile, New York state today reported a record low positivity rate of 0.65%.

🗣️ No Mask? No Problem .......

🤖 High Tech Ventilators for EVERYONE !

I think I you forgot something, r471.

[quote]But Pat Garrett, spokesman for Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, said Friday evening that the abrupt increase is a one-time event, reflecting the addition of antigen tests to state numbers.

[quote]The results of about 10,000 antigen tests, previously marked as “inconclusive,” were updated as positive or negative — thereby boosting the number of cases and the positivity rate.

[quote]“The test was already counted,” he said. Now the antigen results are added in.

[quote]About 1,000 of the antigen tests — or 10 percent — were positive, Dr. Caitlin Pedati of the Iowa Department of Public Health told the Associated Press.

[quote]As a result of the catch-up, Garrett said, it’s possible some areas appeared to have more positive cases than they had tests conducted.

While Iowa is a deplorable shithole, the numbers are misleading because there was a backlog of antigen tests added all at once so some areas showed more positive tests than total tests for a positivity rate of over 100%. They are still fucking backwards assholes, but that number will go down tomorrow. Real shit is bad enough without trumpeting misleading information.

[post redacted because linking to dailymail.co.uk clearly indicates that the poster is either a troll or an idiot (probably both, honestly.) Our advice is that you just ignore this poster but whatever you do, don't click on any link to this putrid rag.]

Coronavirus outbreaks identified among several hundred students at Kansas State University

From CNN's Hollie Silverman

Coronavirus outbreaks have been identified among several hundred students at Kansas State University.

The students at four sororities have been told to quarantine for 14 days from the day the outbreak was declared. Alpha Delta Pi and Alpha Xi Delta have six cases each, while Chi Omega and Kappa Delta have five cases apiece, the Riley County Health Department said Friday.

More than 60 US universities and colleges in at least 36 states have reported positive cases of Covid-19, and some have returned to remote learning to try to stem the spread. More than 8,700 infections among American college students and staff were reported through Friday, as the nation approaches 6 million confirmed cases.

At Kansas State, event permits associated with fraternity and sorority organizations through September 10 have been canceled or revoked.

At the university’s main campus, 364 students are in quarantine, and 167 students are in isolation, the school said in a news release, noting an increase of 149 in quarantine and 49 in isolation since last week. The entire student population reports a 3.82% positivity rate, the release states.

R474 Ventilators confiscated from Philips(which is not an American company). Simply because the factory is located in the US Dump feels he can claim all the vents. Though Philips had agreements with the US and other countries about how many ventilators would be sold to whom.

⏳ CORONA TIME ~ AUGUST 29 ~ 12:30 PM EST

🐎 PONY EXPRESS DAY

🍜 CHOP SUEY DAY

🌎 GLOBAL

CASES: 25,022,351

DEATHS: 843,128

CRITICAL: 61,082

🇺🇲 UNITED STATES

CASES: 6,111,496

DEATHS: 186,291

CRITICAL: 16,190

📊 WORLDOMETER

😷 WHY WOULDN'T YOU ?

🧤 SANITIZE & MOISTURIZE

Damn, we're going to be at 200,000 before we know it.

[quote]Damn, we're going to be at 200,000 before we know it.

The model the WHI uses projects more than 300,000 by December.

In the past two months, dozens of Secret Service agents who worked to ensure the security of the president and Vice President Pence at public events have been sickened or sidelined by COVID-19.

Five had to be replaced in Tampa. Two fell sick when assigned to Bedminster for Trump's golf trip there.

“Never before has the Secret Service run up against a president so intent on putting himself first regardless of the costs, including to those around him,” said Ned Price, a national security expert and former CIA analyst. “And by maintaining a rigorous travel schedule and otherwise flouting public health guidance, he is demanding that agents add to their already considerable professional risk in ways that are qualitatively different than what they signed up for.

[quote]California chicken plant is forced to shut down after EIGHT employees die from COVID-19 and at least 350 more test positive for the virus

I need to replace my apocalypse food supply, I suppose.

Well you don't say..... thanks DL for rejecting the link:

https: // www. charlotteobserver. com /news/coronavirus/article245322115.html

4 people at RNC in Charlotte test positive for COVID, as GOP defends safety measures

Two attendees and two local support staff at the Republican National Convention in Charlotte tested positive for COVID-19, Mecklenburg County and GOP officials announced Friday.

The disclosures come after county health officials raised concerns about a lack of social distancing and mask wearing during the roll-call vote to renominate President Donald Trump for a second term on Monday — despite strict health protocols that were supposed to be followed. The GOP is defending the safety procedures it had in place.

Local health officials said the county instructed those who were infected to isolate immediately, and people who came in close contact with them should also quarantine themselves. A county spokeswoman did not respond to questions on whether the orders were followed.

It is not clear how many people at the RNC might have been exposed to the coronavirus. Almost 800 people were tested by the local hospital systems for the event.

The two infected attendees drove themselves home while self-isolating, GOP spokeswoman Blair Ellis said. That action aligns with the joint guidelines from the RNC, the county and local hospitals. The RNC protocol states: “If attendee tests positive for COVID-19 during the event, attendees agree to extend their stay in Charlotte for self-isolation, unless able to secure safe, private transportation home.” Two weeks of isolation were expected for anyone who came in contact with a person who tested positive.

Ultimately, infections were to be expected when bring that many people together from across the country, according to Dana Rice, a public health professor at UNC Chapel Hill.

“I’m not sure it could’ve been avoided, unless you didn’t bring people together in a room,” she said. “That was a decision that the RNC made not taking into consideration all of the public health warnings and messaging that has been out there.”

The public may need to wait weeks for an “after-action” report detailing the true scope of infections linked to the RNC.For now, Mecklenburg Public Health Director Gibbie Harris has said the convention posed no infection risk to the greater Charlotte area.

“There have been no known incidences during the five days of RNC meetings in Charlotte where the public has potentially been exposed to an individual involved in the event (local or otherwise) who may have tested positive for COVID,” Harris said in a statement Tuesday.

CONTINUED:

A SCALED-DOWN EVENT Charlotte’s portion of the RNC was a dramatically scaled-down convention for a spectacle once expected to draw more than 50,000 people to the Queen City.

Earlier this month, the RNC’s senior advisor for health and safety said the modified gathering in Charlotte still posed a “high risk” with more than 300 delegates traveling from all across the country. In a statement Friday, the RNC said it had “diligent safety protocols in place,” which included coronavirus testing.

“Out of roughly 1,000 tests administered, two RNC attendees, despite having negative tests prior to travel, and two Charlotte locals who planned to serve as event support staff tested positive upon arrival,” said Michael Ahrens, a spokesman for the RNC. “All were sent home.”

RAPID TESTS AHEAD OF THE RNC The Charlotte region has been North Carolina’s epicenter for the novel coronavirus since March when the pandemic began.

There have been almost 25,000 confirmed cases and 290 related deaths of county residents as of Thursday afternoon.

When delegates arrived in Charlotte last week, they were tested for the virus upon registration and had regular symptom checks. Support staff from the surrounding community were also tested, Mecklenburg officials said. The RNC also used a rapid antigen testing system for other people at the convention, county spokeswoman Rebecca Carter said. “We did not manage those tests and the antigen tests do not confirm infection,” she said. Delegates also wore special badges that recorded who they came into contact with and for how long — making it easier for health officials to quell possible outbreaks.

Once in town, attendees were free to move about the city, eating at restaurants and attending events. That opened up the possibility that the virus could be picked up after their Charlotte-based test, and before the convention in person. Additionally, delegates were free to travel between their test in Charlotte and when they received their results.

Over the weekend ahead of the Monday renomination, delegates gathered for business meetings in a ballroom in the Westin Charlotte and mingled at a handful of events in the city, where mask wearing was not absolute.

CONCERNS OVER GUIDELINES At the Monday convention in the Richardson Ballroom in the Charlotte Convention Center, many attendees did not wear masks.

When reporters in the room asked staff why public health requirements were not being enforced, staff said that they were enforcing them. Still, large numbers of delegates in the room were not wearing masks, gathering in a small groups and milling about the room.

The delegates were seated at individual 6-foot tables for most of the official business of the convention.

Midway through Monday’s events, Harris reached out to RNC organizers with concerns about adherence to public health guidelines. She said she was assured that RNC staff would enforce them.

Shortly after, delegates swiftly converged near the stage of the Richardson Ballroom as President Donald Trump came to the podium for a surprise speech. Attendees, packed close to one another, danced the YMCA after the speech concluded — with many still not wearing face coverings.

When asked why they allowed delegates to do this, an RNC staff member said that that was the purview of the U.S. Secret Service. The Secret Service did not reply to a request for comment.

CONTINUED:

OFFICIALS CONCERN The RNC agreed to enforce mask-wearing at the event, but even before the convention happened, officials were concerned about the enforcement of the mandate.

Dr. Elizabeth Tilson, the state’s public health director, sent a letter to the RNC on Aug. 6 asking who would enforce the mask mandate. The RNC replied the next day that staff and private security would be responsible.

“It was disappointing to see reports that the RNC failed to follow through on their plan, potentially putting attendees and North Carolinians at risk,” said a spokeswoman for Dr. Mandy Cohen, secretary of the state Department of Health and Human Services, on Friday.

The positive tests from the RNC add to ongoing concern about the safety of Republican campaign events nationwide.

A July fireworks event at South Dakota’s Mount Rushmore attended by President Donald Trump attracted thousands, but local health officials said that no outbreak was sparked by that event.

At Trump’s RNC acceptance speech at the White House on Thursday, masks and tests were not required for the crowd of roughly one thousand.

U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, an N.C. Republican up for re-election in November, apologized Friday for not wearing a mask at part of the White House event.

Both the White House and Mount Rushmore events were outdoors, though, where experts say infection is much more unlikely. The RNC in Charlotte was conducted indoors, in hotel and convention center ballrooms.

I'm waiting for the New Hampshire positives.

Trump is really intent on inning this race, no matter how many lives he puts at risk.

Meanwhile, where are Biden and Harris? What's the plan? They don't have to go out and press the flesh like Trump but they need to make a strong presence every single day to counteract the Trump campaign. We can't have silent candidates, we need determined vocal leaders.

Otherwise, we are doomed.

[quote] Meanwhile, where are Biden and Harris? What's the plan? They don't have to go out and press the flesh like Trump but they need to make a strong presence every single day to counteract the Trump campaign.

At the risk of sounding like a concern troll, I worry that the media will cover every one of Trump's deadly, maskless rallies. But the media won't cover Biden's virtual rallies -- or at least not cover them with the same intensity. Biden's virtual campaign events won't be treated as "real" events by the news media. In the end, Trump may be rewarded for putting people's lives at risk while Biden is punished for keeping people safe.

NBC Jacksonville: After the first full week of classes in Duval County, school officials say they are still counting how many teachers and students test positive for the novel coronavirus. But, the district said, it can’t share those numbers.

On Friday, after multiple requests for answers, the Florida Department of Health said the information about the number of COVID-19 cases in schools was “confidential.”

Confidential = Massive. A far greater number than anyone envisioned.

👽 The truth is out there, but your not getting it.

WHET Dr. Birx ?

Do you know what the numbers in schools with mandatory testing are actually showing? The real infection rate in those areas. A number we would already know if we had adequate testing. A number we need to know to fight this. But, instead, we're going to hide the numbers and cut the testing under Trump's fucking orders. I hope his entire familly dies of Covid in front of his eyes ten minutes before his brain explodes from the biggest stroke ever.

NYT: European leaders weigh new lockdowns as alarming caseloads return.

In France, President Emmanuel Macron warned on Friday that the authorities were doing “everything to avoid a new lockdown.” A day later, the country reported over 7,300 new virus cases, its highest daily tally since March 31 and a number that sent its seven-day average to a new record of 4,668.

As Germany faces its own more modest resurgence — its seven-day average for new cases has now risen to over 1,300, the database shows — Chancellor Angela Merkel said this week that managing the pandemic would become more challenging in the fall and winter, as the colder weather drives people back indoors. “We will have to live with this virus for a long time to come,” she said.

The sobering comments from Ms. Merkel and Mr. Macron come as European countries brace for — or even appear to be entering — a second wave of infections.

Nowhere on the continent is the threat more alarming than in Spain, where the Times database shows that the seven-day average has passed 7,600. The country reported nearly 9,800 new cases on Saturday, its highest number for a single day to date.

Today on twitter “six percent” is trending. The CDC announced that only six percent of Covid deaths had no comorbidities at all. They’re calling dying of pneumonia, or having heart failure after you get Covid a “comorbidity.” Or dying with any complication that’s a result of Covid a comorbidity, as if it’s a separate issue, not just people with obesity, diabetes and other pre-existing conditions.

The definition of comorbidity isn’t that you already have a pre-existing condition, then you get Covid and your pre-existing condition is what kills you, it’s:

“the simultaneous presence of two chronic diseases or conditions in a patient.” Such as, "the comorbidity of anxiety and depression in Parkinson's disease.”

The Trumpers on twitter are taking it to mean that everyone that died of Covid, except for 9,000 people, really died of something else and therefore all masks should be gotten rid of and everything should be opened up, right now. Because Covid deaths are a lie and nobody is really dying of Covid but 9,000 people and that’s too small to matter. If the CDC issued this statement, it’s because Trump forced them to, because no CDC doctor believes that.

And if the definition of comorbidity is that if you die of complications of Covid, you’re not really dying of Covid, then I’m surprised even six percent is defined as having no comorbidities. What happened to those people, if they didn’t have any complications of Covid and they still died? A guy named Covid came in and shot them in their beds? It makes no sense.

“Americans, take off your masks and mingle freely, it will be fine.” Sounds like something Putin would say. Can you imagine what will happen if people do that? You won’t be able to leave your house. And likely Trumpers would start ripping masks off people. Some of them seem obsessed with trying to spread it, while claiming it doesn’t exist.

I read this morning that Russian ships were around Alaskan fishermen’s ships doing a live drill, including missiles. A Russian submarine came up in the middle of the drill. The Alaskan ships reported it, but they were told not to worry.

“It cited former Russian navy’s chief of staff, retired Adm. Viktor Kravchenko, as saying that by having the submarine surface in the area the navy may have wanted to send a deliberate signal.

“It’s a signal that we aren’t asleep and we are wherever we want,” RIA Novosti quoted Kravchenko as saying.”

I always thought Trump was just stupid and selfish. Now I’m wondering if Putin is telling Trump to spread Covid on purpose. There is no depth Trump won’t descend to.

⏳ CORONA TIME ~ AUGUST 30 ~ 12:00 NOON EST

🐈 HOLISTIC PET DAY

😢 GRIEF AWARENESS DAY

🌎 GLOBAL

CASES: 25,255,178

DEATHS: 847,999

CRITICAL: 61,298

🇺🇲 UNITED STATES

CASES: 6,146,120

DEATHS: 186,925

CRITICAL: 16,028

📊 WORLDOMETER

😷 IT'S MORE THAN FASHIONABLE !

🧤 WASH WELL & OFTEN

Are we taking bets on 200K before or after the surge Labor Day is going to bring?

SUNY Oneonta is suspending in-person instruction after 105 cases.

The Florida Department of Health accidentally released a report on COVID-19 outbreaks at schools across the state and found that nearly 900 students and staffers had tested positive during a two-week period in August as schools had begun to open.

They published it on Monday and deleted it a day later but some news organizations retrieved it before it was deleted.

Just found out someone I know got the virus, he's in his late 30s, didn't have to go to hospital but was in bed for 3 weeks. He works for NYC Department of Sanitation. 10 of his co-workers got it too.

How many people really wear masks? The LA Times counted. It wasn't pretty.

All Californians are required to wear a mask in crowded outdoor spaces. LA Times reporters tracked 3,026 people in Venice, Long Beach and Huntington Beach over the course of a week last month.

47% of people wore no masks

42% wore masks correctly

10% wore masks incorrectly

mmmmm ... chicken!

Eight employees dead.

Ames, Iowa City COVID Outbreaks Are Worst In The World

Iowa’s exploding COVID-19 outbreaks at state universities in Ames and Iowa City are now disasters that can only be fully measured on a global scale. Ames holds the distinction this morning as the worst coronavirus outbreak in the entire United States, while Iowa City is at third on the list. The per capita rates are worse than any individual country in the world, and appear to surpass any state in some of the other currently hardest-hit countries.

According to the New York Times COVID-19 tracker, Ames has had 956 new cases in the past two weeks, while Iowa City has counted 1,489. In the past seven days, Story County’s per capita infection rate is 797 per 100,000 people, with Johnson County coming in at 787 per 100,000.

rest of story at link

Not to mention the Derecho that just hit Iowa. Iowa you in danger girl!

More on the situation in France.

I wonder what France (and Los Angeles county, and a few other places) see that has convinced them to mandate mask wearing outdoors. Most people in the U.S. act like there's no chance of transmission in fresh air. Of course, a good percentage of us act like there's no chance of transmission, period.

R505 I think that France is really seeing transmission by young people because its bars and restaurants are open, but rather than face the fact that they might have to shut those things down again, they're grasping at any other straws they can.

If we have any Europeans in the thread, I'd love to have some real observations.

CNN: 193 passengers and crew ordered to isolate after seven people test positive for the virus after catching it from three infectious people on a flight from Greece to Wales.

A passenger on the plane told the BBC the journey was a "debacle," and that many of those on board had removed their masks. "The flight was full of selfish 'covidiots,'" she added.

Sylvia, my brother and his wife live in France and he would probably explain it as you had. He's pissed because he's a 70 year old runner and the mask is an impediment. He has found that some masks are better than others, I should ask him which ones again.

R506 the main thing over here is that people seem to want to act like everything is normal again. So they don’t keep their distance in many cases. Not in bars and restaurants for sure and let’s face it we can’t expect the employees to act like police officers. Schools are open, everything is open again and numbers of infected people are rising.

I find it frustrating to see our government isn’t doing much except warn people. I’d prefer a long lockdown and then be done with the virus than this situation where it could linger forever or until we get a vaccine or preferably a treatment.

[quote]I’d prefer a long lockdown and then be done with the virus

But does a long lockdown guarantee that we would then be done with the virus?

Or would it just be a return to status quo ante?

It doesn't. It's like trying to get rid of crabs. You think you're clear and all you need is one louse to fuck everything up and you have to start all over again.

So the only solution is a treatment then? I do not disagree but people are not taking responsibility, at least too many aren’t willing to do so. Our gouvernement is simply “trusting” people will do what’s right even though we’re experiencing they’re not.

Louis Armstrong would be so disappointed .

Twitter removes tweet shared by Trump with false coronavirus stats

⏳ CORONA TIME ~ AUGUST 31 ~ 12:OO NOON EST

💏 NATIONAL MATCHMAKER DAY

🤓 LOVE LITIGATING LAWYERS DAY

🌎 GLOBAL

CASES: 25,455,514

DEATHS: 851,685

CRITICAL: 61,111

🇺🇲 UNITED STATES

CASES: 6,181,394

DEATHS: 187,367

CRITICAL: 15,966

📊 WORLDOMETER

😷 LIFE'S NECESSITY !

[quote]CNN: 193 passengers and crew ordered to isolate after seven people test positive for the virus after catching it from three infectious people on a flight from Greece to Wales.

Why the fuck are people traveling? Why the fuck are governments allowing people to travel? Why the fuck haven't airlines been shut the fuck down? I'm so sick of assholes. But, but, but, I needs my vacations! Fuck you.

There's a rumor on #AcademicTwitter that University of Iowa's faculty/students are going to strike (protest?) to move the shitshow of in person classes to online only. The positivity rates in IA are higher than 60%! If my kid was there I would bring 'em home (& quarantine them)

What is herd immunity, and why are Trump officials pursuing an idea WHO calls ‘dangerous’?

USA Today:

Sentenced under now invalid drug laws and less than a year from freedom, inmate gets COVID-19

[quote]But does a long lockdown guarantee that we would then be done with the virus? Or would it just be a return to status quo ante?

That depends entirely on what the government does during the lockdown. Those countries who got it right used the time to massively ramp up testing, tracing, protective gear, etc., precisely because they knew that you can't completely end a pandemic without a vaccine.

[quote]So the only solution is a treatment then?

No. It's pretty straightforward: "test, trace, and isolate." You get the infected numbers down, the infection rate down, and then you monitor the population closely. When a new outbreak appears, you jump on it, with a local lockdown, a massive testing campaign, tracing everyone who might have been exposed and who might have exposed others, quarantining as needed. Repeat as needed.

Because you had already done the national work, you can limit these responses to the local areas, making them much more manageable. See, for example, New Zealand and Australia, each of which had to deal with new outbreaks but on a scale much, much smaller than ours.

If your outbreaks are measured in dozens or, at most, hundreds rather than tens of thousands, then the vast majority of your population remains mostly unaffected.

I just got my flu 💉shot.

Ditto r521.

Connecticut extends Covid-19 emergency declaration until February 2021

From CNN's Mirna Alsharif

Connecticut will extend its Covid-19 emergency declaration until February 9, 2021, Gov. Ned Lamont announced Monday afternoon.

Why this matters: The five-month extension ensures that the state can use emergency powers to quickly respond to outbreaks, safely reopen the economy, protect and recover jobs and rapidly procure personal protective equipment, Lamont said.

What the state's numbers look like: The state also reported 384 new cases of Covid-19 and no new deaths, according to Lamont. Connecticut continues to have a positivity rate of less than 1% — around 0.8%, Lamont said.

Note: These numbers were released by the state’s public health agency, and may not line up exactly in real time with CNN’s database drawn from Johns Hopkins University and the Covid Tracking Project.

A third coronavirus vaccine enters phase 3 trials in the US

From CNN’s Andrea Kane

British drugmaker AstraZeneca announced Monday it has started Phase 3 trials of its coronavirus vaccine candidate in the United States.

AZD 1222 becomes the third vaccine to enter large-scale trials in the United States, after vaccines made by Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech.

For the US trial, AstraZeneca said in a statement that it is “recruiting up to 30,000 adults aged 18 years or over from diverse racial, ethnic and geographic groups who are healthy or have stable underlying medical conditions, including those living with HIV, and who are at increased risk of infection from the SARS-CoV-2 virus.”

Participants will receive two active or placebo doses, spaced two weeks apart.

The trial will assess safety and efficacy in all participants – a subset of 3,000 participants will be assessed for local and systemic reactions and immune responses.

Currently, Phase 3 trials of AZD1222 are going on in the UK, Brazil and South Africa. Trials are also planned for Japan and Russia.

In total, Phase 3 clinical trial for AZD 1222 will enroll up to 50,000 participants globally. Results from the late-stage trials are anticipated later this year.

The trial is funded by the Biomedical Advanced Development Authority, which is run by the US Department of Health and Human Services and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

There is NO way I would take this vaccine and I am NOT an anti-vaxxer. Too soon and I don't trust Trump, big Pharma, CDC, WHO, etc.

I know...I'm very hesitant as well, imagine if you're a teacher, nurse, doctor etc or other essential worker...your job might require you to take it!

I am a front line health worker and am exposed to patients all day. I STILL would not take it. I wear my mask, distance and wash my hands. That's it for now-- and praying I don't get this shit.

I’ll take any vaccine that shows statistically significant efficacy and a reasonable safety profile In a phase 3 trial as long as the phase 3 was at least partially done the United States. I don’t get the mistrust.

[quote] R429: Guardian-More than 100 mink farms in the Netherlands will be ordered closed by March after animals at dozens of locations contracted the coronavirus,

What do I do with my mink mask? It feels soooo good,

Unless you're willing to agree to volunteer for the first vaccines, I doubt that you can be legally forced to take it. I'm sure lawyers are sitting in the sidelines just waiting ............

Even for healthcare workers, there are ways to work around the requirement for workers regarding flu vaccines and those who refuse to get the shot.

Unless you're willing to agree to volunteer for the first vaccines, I doubt that you can be legally forced to take it. I'm sure lawyers are sitting in the sidelines just waiting ............

Even for healthcare workers, there are ways to work around the requirement for workers regarding flu vaccines and those who refuse to get the shot.

Seeing Double ?

I might be willing to be a vaccine test subject, but only after Biden is President and all Trump-associates in the subject-area are fired or hung from lampposts. Both, preferably.

Massachusetts has a lot of vaccination exceptions for Christian Scientists, who prefer prayer over most medicine. It was born in Boston. The Mother Church is here. Because of herd immunity, it’s not been a general health hazard, to my knowledge.

When I went to grad school in Boston , I had to first get the vaccinations for most childhood diseases, even though I had already actually had measles and mumps. I just couldn’t prove it, so the vaccine was the simplest solution. If I were a Christian Scientists, I could have opted out.

they can't force people to take the vaccine.

But here's how they're going to get people who aren't willing to line up.

Would you like to travel?

Would you like to fly in an airplane or cruise on a cruise ship?

Roll up your sleeve this won't hurt a bit..

they can't force people to take the vaccine.

But here's how they're going to get people who aren't willing to line up.

Would you like to travel?

Would you like to fly in an airplane or cruise on a cruise ship?

Roll up your sleeve this won't hurt a bit..

I 'd like to know which trumpanzee coined "Operation Warp Speed". That's not exactly a project name that makes me willing to trust its safety or efficacy.

CNBC: Coronavirus cases are on the rise again across more than half of the U.S. New cases are up by at least 5%, based on a seven-day average, in 26 states as of Sunday, compared with just 12 states a week ago.

Many of the recently growing outbreaks across the country are occurring in Midwestern states, including Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio and the Dakotas.

Bump

My friend is head of the Moderna trials at GW. He insists they're doing due diligence. He is confident the vaccine is safe and will be ready Q1 2021.

I assume operation warp speed was thought up by the space force people. The graphic on the cover page of the broad agency announcements is interesting..,,

Does it get much more ironic than the MAGA ads on Worldometer?

[quote] It was born in Boston. The Mother Church is here. Because of herd immunity, it’s not been a general health hazard, to my knowledge.

I lived across the street for a year.

[quote]I don’t get the mistrust.

Then you haven't been paying attention. The Trump administration has already demonstrated a willingness to overturn FDA and CDC decisions for political expediency and both agencies have willingly accommodated him, even when it was clearly unsafe to do so.

Given that the Trump administration has already expressed a desire to not wait for Phase III testing to complete before signing off on an emergency authorization, specifically to do this before the election, there is every reason for the mistrust.

⏳ CORONA TIME ~ SEPTEMBER 1 ~ 12:00 NOON EST

😻 GINGER CAT APPRECIATION DAY

🤗 NO RHYME OR REASON DAY

🌎 GLOBAL

CASES: 25,721,294

DEATHS: 856,297

CRITICAL: 61,122

🇺🇲 UNITED STATES

CASES: 6,218,003

DEATHS: 187,902

CRITICAL: 15,869

📊 WORLDOMETER

😷 SO SMART !

Trump is desperate to have the vaccine in his hands by October. He needs to be "The Savior of the World, The Redeemer of the Mankind"

Sorry, Donnie Boy, that position was already filled 2,000+ years ago.

While new cases continue to spike in many Euro countries, they continue to decline in Sweden. It wasn't supposed to be that way.

I never said I’d take a vaccine under emergency authorization in the absence of statistically significant phase 3 results R544.

The National Institutes of Health said today that convalescent plasma should not be considered the standard of care for the treatment of patients with COVID-19.

Despite Trump calling it a "breakthrough treatment" last night, the NIH says there is insufficient data to recommend either for or against its use.

R540 I'm in association with someone in family with a stakeholder in Moderna. He's talked good of the process too, but I don't know the details of whether to trust it. (and its been months since I last checked about it, as well as want to minimize risk that I'm breaching privacy)

But last I checked they were thinking by end of year or early next year. So far, from whatever route, the best Trump could trumpet is that they're soon on their way to a potential vaccine being available in months, but very likely not by election day, and there will certainly be questions and possible mistakes.

[quote] President Emmanuel Macron warned on Friday that the authorities were doing “everything to avoid a new lockdown.”

That's a pretty ballsy statement when we've been reopening schools today with barely any safety measures, (masks only for 11 year olds and older kids). No acknowledgment of the recent study showing that kids may carry more virus than adults. Also vulnerable workers who have been in quarantine since May had to go back this week. While the numbers are spiking.

[quote]I never said I’d take a vaccine under emergency authorization in the absence of statistically significant phase 3 results

You said, and I quote, "I don't get the mistrust." I explained the mistrust to you. It's not that complicated.

😴 This thread was started on August 12th . . . . . . . . .

The CDC sent an "urgent" request to states last week, imploring them to have vaccine distribution sites fully operational by Nov. 1.

I imagine Trump will announce a vaccine will be available a week or so before the election. Even if the vaccine won't be ready/safe/effective.

R547 they are “a wave” behind us.....late autumn and winter is going to be ugly but they did eradicate the elder population by their policy. Saves the state so much money. The biggest risk group has been taken care of.

Precent of people who think the gov't is handling the coronavirus issue well in their country:

Sweden was banned from travel to most of Europe right? Even the other Nordic countries didn't want them

R 557 You might want to check out travel restrictions now in Europe.

R555 I love how ill informed people shoot off at the mouth. "According to the COVID Tracking Project, 6,624 people have died of COVID-19 in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities in New York" There have been more nursing home deaths in Andrew Cuomo's NY than total deaths in all of Sweden. Macron's France has seen over 10,000 deaths in nursing homes. And while daily cases continue to decline in Sweden, they are going through the roof in France. And that includes nursing homes.

⏳ CORONA TIME ~ AUGUST 2 ~ 12:30 PM EST

🏅 VJ DAY ~ VICTORY OVER JAPAN DAY ~ AUGUST 15 1945

👯 GLOBAL TALENT ACQUISITION DAY

🌎 GLOBAL

CASES: 26,026,370

DEATHS: 863,439

CRITICAL: 60,606

🇺🇲 UNITED STATES

CASES: 6,258,507

DEATHS: 189,228

CRITICAL: 15,088

📊 WORLDOMETER

😷 COVER ~ 🤲WASH

My San Diegan sister's British in-laws were proposing to do the holidays in London, but my sister and brother-in-law (who is a doctor) told them no (they have a 6 month old baby). Apparently everything is open and people have been going around maskless for about 6 weeks there, and they don't know that we still don't have everything under control. BIL is expecting a second wave there right around the holidays.

Spain being realistic:

From today'd Guardian:

"The president of Madrid, the Spanish area hardest hit by the coronavirus, has said that “practically all the children” about to return to school in the region are likely to pick up the virus over the coming months."

"Isabel Díaz Ayuso insisted that the necessary steps had been taken to make schools “very safe places”, but said such measures were not in place away from the classroom."

“Over the course of the school year, it’s likely that practically all the kids will get it one way or another,” she told esRadio on Wednesday."

Gee...Europe is slowly starting to sound like Sweden...

r562 my niece was hoping to do her study abroad in London in January since her Fall semester there went poof. I don't think January is going to happen unless a vaccine comes into play before December.

🤕[italic] Ain't No Place Safe From The Corona

Maybe the Swedes are just naturally more introverted than everyone else in Europe, and that's what's saving them. None of this "big extended family dinners" every week bullshit.

R559 I think it comes down to what the media reports. over here so not in English, a third at least died of the virus in nursing homes. I find it extreme.

Fair enough R552. I am so close to the scientists and the studies and I trust them so much I guess I can get blinded to the political shenanigans.

First day back to the physical office in six months and it is spooky.

⏳ CORONA TIME ~ SEPTEMBER 3 ~ 12:00 NOON EST

🏙️ NATIONAL SKYSCRAPER DAY

🎳 UNITED STATES BOWLING LEAGUE DAY

🌎 GLOBAL

CASES: 26,289,334

DEATHS: 869,248

CRITICAL: 60,558

🇺🇲 UNITED STATES

CASES: 6,302,203

DEATHS: 190,300

CRITICAL: 15,101

📊 WORLDOMETER

😷 EVERYONE SHOULD !

Jewish Insider reporter Amy Spiro:

Past 24 hours in Israel:

- 3,172 (!!!) new confirmed cases, a record high

- 13 new deaths

There are 855 people hospitalized, 426 in serious condition and 124 on ventilators.

But sure, keep wearing your masks around your chins, Israelis. That'll do it.

Another possible reason why COVID-19 is disproportionately killing Black Americans: sickle cell.

Sickle cell disease, which causes Covid-like symptoms — clotting, strokes, and severe oxygen deprivation — is one of the medical conditions that the CDC says puts people at higher risk for severe illness from the coronavirus. Now, a research team is trying to determine whether the several million people who merely carry one copy of the sickle cell mutation — but do not have the disease itself — could be more vulnerable to Covid-19, and whether that might be one reason the virus is disproportionately sickening and killing Black Americans.

I see so many black folks wearing their masks under their noses and around their chins. It's very disappointing.

Penn State's director of athletic medicine says that cardiac MRI scans revealed that roughly 30-35 percent of Big Ten athletes who tested positive for COVID-19 appeared to have myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle that can be fatal if left unchecked.

Last week I was going for a walk after work. This used to be a daily thing but I am sick of people so I do it less now. Of the roughly 30 people I passed on the sidewalk and walking path, I counted 2 wearing masks. One house was having a large drunken gathering with loud music. I didn't see anyone wearing masks. This is in a municipality that requires masks when in public and has a prohibition against gatherings, as part of a public health order. Nobody seems to give a shit.

My doctor told me to take walks to keep up my strength. I am 70 with severe COPD. I told him I could not wear a mask for any length of time because I cannot breathe. He told me It wasn't necessary to wear a mask outside because the cross-currents dissipate the virus and it would not be enough to get sick. It is being inside that is dangerous without a mask.

The public health order here requires you be masked unless you are in your own home or in your car. Step outside, mask up is what's required.

R574, can you wear a shield?

Variety.com

[quote] Robert Pattinson Tests Positive for Coronavirus, Halting ‘The Batman’ Production

34 years old

Many, many cases popping up at universities around the country. Fauci want the infected to hole up on campus, but universities are encouraging them to go home.

And with Labor Day Weekend just a heartbeat away, watch those numbers start climbing even higher in few short weeks. couple weeks.

And those poor students, complaining about people infiltrating their favorite off-campus bars, without wearing masks!

Why don't these highly educated students stay home, or socialize in small groups?

Is that a fact r571 ?

I see a lot of white folks walking around without any masks at all, especially around the neighborhood.

Anything more you'd care to add ?

R577 Why are celebs so prone to catching the 'rona? They can afford to live in isolation.

New thread

R580, they have access to testing.

gags how dare u cast fug alice coopers face on this site

[quote]Last week I was going for a walk after work. This used to be a daily thing but I am sick of people so I do it less now. Of the roughly 30 people I passed on the sidewalk and walking path, I counted 2 wearing masks.

Where you live requires masks outside? There is no reason to wear a mask outdoors while taking a walk unless where you're walking is packed shoulder to shoulder with people.

R571 was in response to r570 comment about a possible connection between carrying the sickle cell gene and getting covid.

There was a context—it was relevant to the thread's ongoing discussion.

The model the WH relies on most heavily now predicts that 410,000 Americans will die of COVID-19 by the end of the year. That's an average of 1 American dying every 8 seconds between now and Dec. 31.

That's if we continue to do exactly what we're doing now ... if we get more lax, the prediction jumps to 620,000 dead Americans.

New Zealand today recorded its first Covid-19 death in over three months.

The World Health Organization does not expect widespread vaccinations against COVID-19 until the middle of next year, a spokeswoman said on Friday, stressing the importance of rigorous checks on their effectiveness and safety.

None of the candidate vaccines in advanced clinical trials so far has demonstrated a “clear signal” of efficacy at the level of at least 50% sought by the WHO, spokeswoman Margaret Harris said.

I am not going to be a guinea pig for that hardly tested vaccine. I’d rather just be careful and stick to the current rules.

Bajour!

If you're going to Bajour, r590...

[quote] The model the WH relies on most heavily now predicts that 410,000 Americans will die of COVID-19 by the end of the year. That's an average of 1 American dying every 8 seconds between now and Dec. 31.

Your math is a little off, hon.

I should have double-checked what I heard, R592, but I likely would have screwed up the calculation anyway. I heard it on-air at CNN yesterday but I can't find any mention of it. I do find that an American died every 80 seconds at the beginning of August, so I probably misheard that stat -- though I don't know why that would have been part of the story about 230,000 additional deaths in the next 4 monts.

Mea culpa.

Can someone please explain "Bajour"?

If someone must explain Bajour, you do not deserve to know Bajour.

BAJOUR!

B

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