A place to discuss the now-global coronavirus outbreak.
Lol. Perfect!
Got the alert twice. Maybe it didn't take the first time
I got it once in English then a second one a minute later in Spanish.
I looked at my clock at 17 after and thought I was good for another three minutes but then, BAM.
I got in at 18 after, then a minute later a coworker got it, followed by four or five more alerts I could hear in the building with last one 22 after. Which obviously means I'm gonna have up to a five minute headstart to start looting supplies when the real warning is broadcast. They might as well not even bother playing the apocalypse.
Stele wrote:Got the alert twice. Maybe it didn't take the first time
I got it once in English then a second one a minute later in Spanish.
Oh yeah, spanish/english together the first time. Had to hit ok on one to see the second.
Then one or both again a few min later. I clicked quick, not sure if I clicked twice or it was only spanish that time.
Rat Boy wrote:I looked at my clock at 17 after and thought I was good for another three minutes but then, BAM.
I got in at 18 after, then a minute later a coworker got it, followed by four or five more alerts I could hear in the building with last one 22 after. Which obviously means I'm gonna have up to a five minute headstart to start looting supplies when the real warning is broadcast. They might as well not even bother playing the apocalypse.
There was a company conference call today. But only 2 speakers weren't muted at the time. I would have loved to hear 1000 echoes.
I forgot to muffle my phone. Let me explain why that is bad...
Starting on Friday, Roscoe had severe diarrhea and was waking me up every 2 hours to poop. That was my weekend. On Sunday I took him into the vet because I spotted blood. Turned out to be what the vet called "stress colitis" which is apparently relatively common. On Monday he was pooping normally again, but I still hadn't got any sleep. Tuesday I got a flu and a pneumonia vaccine, so I was unable to sleep last night because of intense shoulder pain, and the inability to roll over on my right shoulder.
Eventually I got to sleep around dawn... then the goddamn alert went off and I was WIDE AWAKE.
Maybe I'll sleep tonight?
What does this have to do with COVID? Well, I haven't got my COVID booster and RSV shot yet, so I can look forward to more of the same whenever that happens. I haven't had a problem with earlier COVID boosters, so I don't anticipate any problems there, but like pneumonia vaccine, I have never had RSV vaccine. Which probably means my immune system will be like "WTF is going on here?" and make me sore again.
Yay?
I started coughing IMMEDIATELY after I got the alert!! The assimilation process is at hand I don't know how much more time I have this has nothing to do with my child's cough so it be that neto
I got my free test kits today!
Fascinating thread about the history of COVID public information missteps back at the start of the pandemic, and how they relate to the relaxation of protective measures that is happening right now:
https://mastodon.social/@siderea%40u...
In case you had forgotten this little bit of recent history: at the beginning of the pandemic, US media and *social media* was full of people – left leaning, science prizing, generally sensible and humane people – SCOFFING at the idea that what was happening in Wuhan could possibly come and touch them in their lives, and MOCKING the very idea that anyone should be concerned about it.
One of the frequent things that was expressed in those circles was that whatever was happening in Wuhan would never be as bad as the flu, so if you wanted to be worried about an infectious disease, be worried about influenza. Consequently, people took that in the direction of discussing how to protect oneself from the flu.
And that was the first thing to come to my attention. All these people sanctimoniously repeating "six feet apart". To which I was of course responding in my head, "Six feet? No, at least ten. Doust and Lyon, 1918." But that just piqued my curiosity: where the hell were people getting 6 ft from?
Well, I chased it down.
It was the CDC of course.
I don't recall *any* left-leaning science types or indeed people of my acquaintance - certainly not doctors and NIH researchers and infectious disease experts - pooh-poohing the idea that what was happening in Wuhan was coming for us. I mean, that's how influenza spreads, right? Anyone, left or right-leaning, with half a brain should have taken a look at what happened in Wuhan and gone "Oh, sh*t, this has serious potential".
I get the point that's being made, but I put the blame for the initial missteps on the dysfunction of the CDC (well known to me since the mid-2000's through personal experience) and the flip-flop of Trump on masking and other protective steps. Six feet was better than nothing, especially when masked.
But it was horrifying to me that we waited months after the international infectious disease community had begun crash sequencing efforts - a sign that something is quite serious, to my mind - before taking *any* real public safety steps. And Trump's desire "not to panic anyone" quickly turned to "well, we'll deny it's a problem, let the states do something if they want, but not too much". Which was a hideous turn of events and partly explains why Republicans think it's all long gone. Heck, even in my highly educated Blue city, no one worries any more - and rates are rising.
The CDC has excellent researchers and a horribly dysfunctional administration.
Edit - We had a D'&D thread that started January 30, 2020, and the vast majority of posters took it quite seriously. The Everything Else thread on Coping started March 14. I dunno, maybe this is the college professor wondering how Trump got elected because no one he knew voted for him, but it seems to me that liberal pundits (and initially some Republican ones) took this seriously from the start).
I don't recall *any* left-leaning science types or indeed people of my acquaintance - certainly not doctors and NIH researchers and infectious disease experts - pooh-poohing the idea that what was happening in Wuhan was coming for us. I mean, that's how influenza spreads, right? Anyone, left or right-leaning, with half a brain should have taken a look at what happened in Wuhan and gone "Oh, sh*t, this has serious potential".
Me neither, everything I saw was people saying how bad it would be if (once) it reached us, or lamenting that we weren't doing a damn thing to prepare for it. But I suppose it's harder to promote yourself if you stick to what really happened. Plus you get to throw in a healthy dose of anti-intellectualism and both-sidesism, which always makes people feel better about themselves.
The thread I linked goes more into exactly who was causing the problems. Using a dodgy 1918 study and other outdated studies to formulate public health policy was a huge mistake. I also do not recall any scientifically minded people back in early 2020 saying "it's just flu, it won't be that bad," on social media or anywhere else. Unfortunately that was a big part of the political narrative.
The fault definitely lies with the policy makers, not virologists or people actually in the trenches trying to figure out how best to combat the pandemic. I and my entire extended family were taking it very seriously right from the start. In fact, nobody I know of in my extended family has yet been infected by COVID-19. That's a good thing because that includes several immunocompromised people.
Fauci and others undertook herculean efforts to educate the public, but they were stifled at every turn by Trumpistas and their media lackeys trying to minimize the situation.
For me, the more interesting point from the thread was that the "six feet" number (also erroneously recommended to avoid flu, by the way) was bogus, outdated, and not nearly far enough.
It's a really long, fairly rambling thread that touches a lot of issues, but the most interesting part to me was how much bad policy was promulgated by the CDC. I'm not entirely sure that was CDC administrators' fault, either. They were under a lot of pressure, including funding threats, to minimize the impact of the disease and not frighten the public.
The cost in human lives is unforgivable. The politically motivated false "low risk" narrative carries through to this day. COVID infections are back up to levels as high as they were during the worst early part of the pandemic. Nearly nobody is masking. We know better how the pathogen works, how it spreads, and how to avoid it, but that information is not being proactively spread.
President Joe and his advisers are at least partly to blame after effectively declaring the pandemic over.
The CDC administration is one of the most insular, self-interested, impenetrable and hide-bound I've come across in dealing with the Federal government for my entire career. And I spent a while working for the Social Security Administration! 
There's another organization that is even more dysfunctional, but I don't want to get onto a list.
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