Coronavirus discussion thread - NO POLITICS, or "POLITICS by PROXY"

[Lagado]

From what i’ve been able to filter from the mass of whatever passes for information these days, this virus is actually quite mild when picked up by young healthy individuals, so much so that many in this group who are infected have mild or zero symptoms yet are still contagious. Apparently it’s those of us with compromised immune systems or conditions that weaken vital processes (like heart disease) who are at a much greater risk from it. I was encouraged by this info but as i dug deeper, my confidence began to erode.
I also read a lengthy bit that claimed drinking a mild bleach solution would kill this virus so there’s some comfort in knowing the information superhighway is here to insure crowd sourced medical wisdom cannot be suppressed by the man.
Unfortunately i also discovered this is a weaponized virus being sprayed on all consumer goods being produced in China for export, so old people can’t even open their imported bottle of bleach for a drink without risking certain death.
You have been warned.

"Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance."

Neil Postman - Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business.

 

[Tom Bomb]

Coronavirus Update (Live): 116,456 Cases and 4,091 Deaths from COVID-19 Wuhan China Virus Outbreak - Worldometer

Coronavirus Cases:

116,455
view by country

Deaths:

4,091

Recovered:

64,750​

Active Cases

47,614
Currently Infected Patients
41,825 (88%)
in Mild Condition

5,789 (12%)
Serious or Critical

Closed Cases

68,841
Cases which had an outcome:
64,750 (94%)
Recovered / Discharged

4,091 (6%)
Deaths

…
​

Latest Updates

March 10 (GMT):​

• 1 new case in Cambodia (third in the country): a 65-year-old British woman has tested positive for COVID-19 in Kampong Cham province [source]
• 419 new cases and 5 new deaths in Spain. Government prohibits direct flights from Italy to Spain. Congress suspends parliamentary activity one week [source] [source]
• 65 new cases in Sweden [source]. First patient in intensive care reported [[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]]
• 8 new cases in Romania, all in Bucharest: 3 are related to the case of Gerota, 1 is contact of the first infected in Bucharest, 4 are citizens who have traveled to Israel, Germany and the United Kingdom [source]
• 12 new cases in Malaysia, bringing the total to 129 [source]
• 2 new cases in Peru: two brothers, aged 21 and 15, who have recently returned from a trip to Europe [source]
• 1 new death in the UK: an 89-year old patient at the Watford General Hospital (West Hertfordshire) with underlying health conditions [source]
• First death in Morocco: an 89-year old woman in Casablanca [Invalid Link Removed]
• 391 new cases and 5 new deaths in Spain [source]
• 61 new cases in the Netherlands [source]
• 3 new cases in Poland [source]
• 3 new cases in the Czech Republic [source]
• 6 new cases in Slovenia [source]
• 3 new cases in Belarus [source]
• 2 new cases in Azerbaijan [Invalid Link Removed]
• 881 new cases and 54 new deaths in Iran [[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]]
• 8 new cases in Israel [source]
• 4 new cases in Albania [source]
• 4 new cases in Iceland [source]
• 2 new cases in Portugal [source]
• 8 new cases in Indonesia [source]
• 5 new cases in Brazil [source]
• 28 new cases in Belgium [source]
• 1 new death in Switzerland (third in the country): an 80-year-old man in Ticino with other pathologies [Invalid Link Removed]
• 15 new cases in the UAE: 3 Italians, 2 Emiratis, 2 Sri Lankan, 2 Brits, 2 Indians, 1 from Germany, 1 from South Africa, 1 from Tanzania, and 1 from Iran [source]
• 3 new cases in Estonia including two adult Tallinners from northern Italy and France [source]
• 4 new cases in Sweden [source]
• 2 new cases in North Macedonia [Invalid Link Removed]
• 1 new case in Poland. All mass events canceled. Poland's president will not hold big election rallies due to coronavirus [source]
• 1st death in Lebanon: a patient who had returned from Egypt [Invalid Link Removed]
• 5 new cases in Greece, four of which were in contact with the group of pilgrims from the Peloponnese who had traveled to Israel. 700 schools in the prefectures of Ilia and Achaia in Peloponnese and the island of Zakynthos are closed [source]
• The Czech Republic closes all schools and events with more than 100 participants. The measure is valid until further notice [source]
• 2 new cases in Latvia who returned on March 7 from the Italian mountain resort Cervinia [source]
• 5 new cases in Finland [Invalid Link Removed]
• 9 new cases in India. Meanwhile, an Indian Air Force aircraft airlifted 58 Indians from Iran to Ghaziabad (about 30 km from Delhi) as the central government started evacuating hundreds of citizens stuck in the country [Invalid Link Removed]
• 4 new cases in Kuwait: 1 has recently traveled to Iran, 1 is an Egyptian national, contact of a previous case with travel history to Azerbaijan, 2 are Kuwaiti males who recently arrived from Egypt [Invalid Link Removed]
• 1 new case in Morocco: a French tourist currently hospitalized in Marrakech [Invalid Link Removed]
• 9 new cases in the Philippines, bringing the total to 33. Previous report was corrected by DOH [source] Only 2,000 test kits available (earlier this week, down from 4,500 previously) for a population of 109 million people [source]
• 1 new case in Northern Cyprus: a 65-year-old German woman on holiday, part of a group of 30 people from Balingen, Germany who was staying at a hotel in Famagusta. Statistics for Northern Cyprus (which is only recognized by Turkey) are not included in the reports by the internationally-recognized Greek Cypriot government in the island’s south [source] [source]
• 3 new cases in Thailand, all linked to Italy. A couple: the 46-year-old wife returned from Italy on Feb 28 and did not feel well. Her 47-year-old husband fell sick on Saturday with a high fever and body ache. The other case is a 41-year-old woman who was in close contact with a previously confirmed case who returned from Italy [source]
• 2 new cases in Finland: both had traveled to northern Italy, with one of the patients having symptoms already during the return flight from Italy [source]
• 2 new cases in Serbia: two young women in Belgrade who have been in contact with an infected person (who is now abroad) [source]
• 1st case in Panama [source]
• 1st case in Mongolia: a French national who traveled to Mongolia from France through Moscow. The government has identified 42 people the patient has met with and another 120 individuals who had close contact with the person [source]
• United States:
  - 1 new death in Washington (King County): a resident of the Life Care Center [source]
  - 6 new cases in California (Santa Clara County) [Invalid Link Removed]
  - 1 new case in Maryland (Prince George’s County) [[Invalid or Expired Link Removed]]
  - 1 new case in Florida (Volusia County) [source]
  - 2 new cases in Kentucky [Invalid Link Removed]
  
• 35 new cases and 1 new death in South Korea [Invalid Link Removed]
• 19 new cases, 17 new deaths (all in Hubei) and 1,297 new discharges occurred in China on March 9, as reported by the National Health Commission (NHC) of China. [Invalid Link Removed]

 

[HaphAsSard]

Huh? I gave literally zero thought to the toilet paper hoarding sub-plot, let alone being offended by it. By all means carry on with the jokes. I mean, I wouldn't quit your day job if I were you, but that's more of a quality consideration, certainly not one of "edginess".
Likewise.

 

[fhm555]

Huh? I gave literally zero thought to the toilet paper hoarding sub-plot, let alone being offended by it. By all means carry on with the jokes. I mean, I wouldn't quit your day job if I were you, but that's more of a quality consideration, certainly not one of "edginess".
Likewise.

Who’s joking?

 

[HaphAsSard]

Who’s joking?

Well, I laughed at your post! Also at @J_Bass 's "burn my phone" one (I'd just forgotten to "like" it until a couple minutes ago). Others elicited vague smirks, or nothing at all. I'm more worried at some of the non-joking ones crying media poppycock. (By that I mean I'm worried for their respective countries - mine is pretty much knee-deep already.) When I wrote "serious" in my post above I meant "worth of serious consideration", not "all tomfoolery shall hereby be banished".

 

[FunkHead]

washing hands can only go so far. last friday, a checkout guy who was holding two pieces of clothing coughed directly ito my face

since he continued making cold sounds afterward, i hope he had an allergy rather than covid 19 or the flu.

This one checkout girl removed her nose ring while ringing me up. I resisted the urge to report her because I think she would have gotten fired.

 

[cosmicevan]

Have not read the thread but this thing has now hit too close to home. A teacher in my kids school has it and 3 confirmed cases in our town yesterday. Kids school is closed, I am WFH now but all around us everyone acting like nothing happening. I live in Long Island, NY.

I get that there is economic impact but I really feel like it is irresponsible the way it is being handled. Shut it all down for 2 or 3 weeks and then this will pass...every day they dont it spreads and will last weeks longer.

We had how long to get ready and dr offices have no tests or plans for this? Just awful.

 

[Fishheadjoe]

I just called my 84 year old MIL. She has health issues involving heart and lungs; she lives alone in her apartment.
I suggested to her that she ensures that she has at least two months of her required meds on hand, should there be a lock down coming.
No, I was not trying to panic her, I just wanted to help her prepared for what may happen. The less she is exposed to other people, the better.
Fishheadjoe

 

[J_Bass]

There is (literally) an ocean between our perspectives. I can see how COVID-19 jokes aren't funny to you. Half your country is in lockdown.

Here we have a total of 800 cases and 26 deaths among a population of over 327 million. That's 0.0000024 of our population. More people have died doing skateboard tricks than from coronavirus here. We can make TP jokes and they're funny.

I get why it's not funny to you. It's funny to me and I'm not stupid. "Period".

Stay safe over there.

That's what you think.

Maybe you don't know that your country isn't doing the tests, or is doing in a very small number.

Until two days ago, the US tested 1895 people.

In the UK, in the same time frame they tested 18.000 people.

In South Korea they are doing 10.000 tests a day.

Just so you can have some perspective.

 

[Gravedigger Dav]

This is just the beginning. In our new altered climatic state, we'll be dealing with a lot of stuff we didn't have to before.

 

[mdlewis]

Glad to see that there is some sensible contributions here but dismayed to also read some of the regrettably common misinformation attributing this to the usual conspiracies or bad actors. Folks, it just ain't so. Don't fall into the trap of believing conspiracy sh*t just to make yourself feel better. Better yet, try to find some people who might actually trust to know what's going on and listen to them.

This is a serious disease, like flu. Those of you who think flu is nothing to worry about probably don't know anyone who has died from it, or has been hospitalized from it. SARS-COVID-19 seems to hit older people much harder than your usual coronavirus - given the age here, it seems like there should be enough TalkBass readers who might benefit by learning more about it. I have had both flu and serious coronavirus infections. Even with the latter and supposedly less virulent strains, I got pneumonia and was out of commission (delirious actually) for a week.

We simply don't know how serious this one is yet. We know it's very infectious. I was in Japan during the height of the first SARS scare, and their response was far more draconian than anything close to what ours has been. I've also just returned from Japan 16 days ago and they were just beginning to ramp up their response when I left. Anyone who seems amazed by our school closing etc. and says it has never happened anywhere, well it just ain't true. It has and it does.

Even with flu, many of our local (suburban/rural New England) preschools will close if the infection rate spikes. If they don't entire families succumb and this results in serious financial hardship. Pervasive cleaning and isolation is the only way to shut down transmission in an environment where herd immunity is insufficient.

IMO, we are too late for this to work very well with COVID-19. We can hope that warmer and humid environments may lead to faster destruction of the viral particles and lower transmission rates, but I have not seen any credible scientific data to support this. Using reported infection rates in various parts of the world to support this is magical thinking. There is no reliable data yet on rates of infection in the US right now, only best guesses, and given the CDC's current response, there may never be. The only country coming close to producing decent data is South Korea.

Hoarding sh*t may help you if get sick and have no one to take care of you, but I'm guessing soon infection rates will likely be high enough that the public focus will shift to general hygiene rather than isolation.

This may effect your gigs. It may also effect you. Take care.

 

[Nevada Pete]

To be fair, it has not been in the U.S. long at all. It's spreading pretty quickly. That 800 cases line can quickly change to a 100,000 line and so on.

I am not a medical doctor and I am not giving anyone medical advise. I don't think anyone knows very much about what's happening with the Coronavirus. I have worked in the healthcare racket as a trained specialist allied to the practice of medicine, and this is what I think I know. Corrections welcome from anyone:

FWIW / IMHO it would be great if it was that simple. I don't think it is. You would think form listening to the news media that there is a test to identify Coronavirus infections same as there is a test to identify venereal disease, for example. At present, so far as I know, there is no such test. Many credentialed experts say the same thing. There are tests that suggest a Coronavirus infection. Let's put it this way: If you are running a high fever and you're experiencing difficulty breathing, well, that's a pretty good indication that you have a serious respiratory tract infection! At that point, it probably doesn't matter if its Coronavirus, or not, as far as treatment goes. It's a matter of contagion.

Yet, the testing protocols are very weak at present and make it hard to determine just exactly what the virus is actually doing. A PCR test for Coronavirus won't be very accurate for at least another six months until sufficient genetic data is gathered on the virus to make a proper identification actually possible. Even then, PCR will never be specific. Additional genetic data will only make the test more specific than it is now. Similarly, a serological test that looks for specific antibodies cannot actually differentiate a Coronavirus from other viruses with a high degree of certainty. Current testing protocols may be useful if someone is experiencing symptoms of Coronavirus infection to guide treatment. Maybe. But to understand just exactly what it means when someone says there is a "confirmed" case of Coronavirus, one would have to know just exactly what the criteria are for making such a statement. Is it that a non-specific test has been performed twice? What is the published and peer reviewed error rate on these tests, i.e., what is the false positive and false negative rate? Have any such rates been determined? How would you determine that?

I'm not suggesting we shouldn't take precautionary measures. Nor do we have the right to disobey the authorities, something that may become frighteningly clear as time goes on because you won't have the right to argue with orders or instructions if they are handed down from on high. By all means, do what you need to do. But pay attention to what's going on and do some reading on the subject! You might be surprised what you learn.

While dialog is still possible, remember that Wuhan China where the outbreak originated has air pollution levels from their coal fired power plants that would quickly shut down a city here in the US. Schools would close and children and the elderly would be told to remain indoors. Temporary shutdowns like this happened here in the US all the time until the Clean Air Act had a chance to take effect. Excessively high pollution levels in Whuan are virtually permanent. Ask yourself this question: What is it about inhaling sulpheric acid droplets into the lungs, do you think, that might exacerbate a viral respiratory tract infection and contribute to its spread? Combined with that, how much do you think smoking two to three packs of cigarettes a day as many men do in China might contribute to the problem? Added to these two factors, does anybody know the biological effect on the immune system of massive 5G deployment in Wuhan? Answer. Nope. The public health situation in other hard hit countries may not be as bad as it is in China where people eat feral bats for dinner (thought by some scientists to be the animal source of the virus). But the public health establishments in these other countries are not good either, and this may strongly contribute to the problems there.

My last comment to give people something to think about (while commenting is still allowed) is this: The Grand Princess cruise ship that recently docked in Oakland, California, reportedly had 3,500 passengers and crew on board. Out of these 3,500 people, 46 of them were "tested" for Coronavirus, indicating that these 46 people were sick. We (presently) have the right to ask just how unusual is it for 46 out of 3,500 people on a cruise ship to be sick"? The tests reveal that 21 of the people had a viral infection suggestive of Coronavirus. See above regarding these "tests".

 

[J_Bass]

Hi J_Bass



Obrigado for sharing this!


greetings

Wise(b)ass

De nada!

 

[J_Bass]

The plan in Portugal now is to antecipate the school's Easter Vacation. That way all schools close now and, hopefully, will open in a couple of weeks and when Easter comes, they won't close.

Still to be officially confirmed.

 

[BassBrass]

Intelligence is a Lethal Mutation/Sagan/Mayr/Chomsky:

"I’LL BEGIN with an interesting debate that took place some years ago between Carl Sagan, the well-known astrophysicist, and Ernst Mayr, the grand old man of American biology. They were debating the possibility of finding intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. And Sagan, speaking from the point of view of an astrophysicist, pointed out that there are innumerable planets just like ours. There is no reason they shouldn’t have developed intelligent life. Mayr, from the point of view of a biologist, argued that it’s very unlikely that we’ll find any. And his reason was, he said, we have exactly one example: Earth. So let’s take a look at Earth.

And what he basically argued is that intelligence is a kind of lethal mutation. And he had a good argument. He pointed out that if you take a look at biological success, which is essentially measured by how many of us are there, the organisms that do quite well are those that mutate very quickly, like bacteria, or those that are stuck in a fixed ecological niche, like beetles. They do fine. And they may survive the environmental crisis. But as you go up the scale of what we call intelligence, they are less and less successful. By the time you get to mammals, there are very few of them as compared with, say, insects. By the time you get to humans, the origin of humans may be 100,000 years ago, there is a very small group. We are kind of misled now because there are a lot of humans around, but that’s a matter of a few thousand years, which is meaningless from an evolutionary point of view. His argument was, you’re just not going to find intelligent life elsewhere, and you probably won’t find it here for very long either because it’s just a lethal mutation. He also added, a little bit ominously, that the average life span of a species, of the billions that have existed, is about 100,000 years, which is roughly the length of time that modern humans have existed."

Recent discoveries of cave art estimate we have been here around 50,000 years with our current cognition and higher mental function. 50,000 years is transparent in geological time, next to nothing at all. And look at our "progress" in that time. Intelligence was a Faustian Bargain, and here is the price.

That's a useful outside extreme perspective and I agree that there are risks with intelligence just like with capitalism and danger in sitting on a planet in space, but "intelligence" isn't foreign and mechanistic to anything, animals and bacteria become more clever at doing what they are doing all along the chain, and early primates learned how to organize and hunt together, gave more protein, more prosperous. Intelligence is an inevitable result of evolution not a mutation.
(also by now we know that modern humans were established in N. Africa 300,000 years ago, left Africa in multiple waves and even migrated back to Africa on occasion. Prior to that there were maybe a half dozen human types who didn't survive and we are also interbred with them and passed that dna on.

The other side of the hazardous nature of life is the carbon energy use barrier which most galactic civilizations may have failed to pass, and as we are headed also. If the Arctic methane release situation really gets going we'll see much more abrupt change. I'm not even mentioning asteroids and the solar coronal mass ejections aimed at Earth. It's surmised there may be galactic sterilizing events that make complex life form survival very chancy.

 

[Lagado]

Intelligence is an inevitable result of evolution not a mutation.

Then why do the higher functioning species have a shorter existence? That's the mean of the success of a species after all.

"The light that burns twice as bright lives half as long."

 

[OldogNewTrick]

...
Here we have a total of 800 cases and 26 deaths among a population of over 327 million. That's 0.0000024 of our population. ...I get why it's not funny to you. It's funny to me and I'm not stupid. "Period".

Stay safe over there.

Just wait for a while, that percentage will change.
You'll catch up, be sure about that,

 

[GregC]

How true it is! Some people I know here in Vegas started a thing called "Hunting for Bambi". The press releases were just a ruse to get free publicity and entice people into buying video's of naked women getting hunted and shot with paint ball guns. The timing was perfect because the guy who produced "Girls Gone Wild" had been sent to prison. Apparently, the television news media was a little short on drama when the press releases for "Hunting for Bambi" were launched.

There were no actual "Hunting for Bambi" contests where people would fly into Vegas and pay big bucks to hunt down and shoot naked women with paint ball guns as was widely reported in the mass media. No matter, the television news jumped on it like you couldn't believe. "Hunting for Bambi" received world wide coverage! Not only did no one associated with the news media bother to investigate to determine if the scenario was real, or not. They didn't care!

One of my friends grandmother lived in Germany and totally freaked out when she and her friends were having tea and her grandson appears on German television news with all these scantly clad women in a story about "Hunting for Bambi". I was there when she called him on his cell and started yelling at him in German! You could hear her all the way across the room even though he didn't have her on speakerphone! It was halarious!

1. Hunting for Bambi--a scam bought into by one local Vegas TV station and Fox News (weird, they don't usually go for sensationalistic trash ), and maybe a few others that I couldn't find. A few days later, another Vegas TV station got skeptical, and the story started to fall apart. Within 2 weeks, the organizer of the scam recanted. Not journalism's finest hour, but not a huge deal--just a "news of the weird"-type thing. Hunting for Bambi

What isn't funny is that the mass media / press will literally report anything. Well over half the stories they air they don't even create themselves. Segments come in digitally and are pre-packaged from public relations firms and advertising agencies. The segment is already scripted and everything. There's always a digital voice actor included in the package who reads the script in case the television outlet is too lazy or too cheap to hire their own announcer.

At least with the prostitutes here in Vegas, you have a fifty fifty chance they might come across if they don't trick roll you and steal your Rolex (if you have one). These media guys sell themselves to the highest bidder, or who ever gives them a free story. You've been warned. Beware.

2. I don't know how Vegas TV stations operate, but this generalization is just flat-out false. I worked on the print and Internet sides of media (which your post doesn't even address) and the amount of copy provided by PR firms and ad agencies was exactly zero. The same has been true for coworkers who went on to work for Time magazine, the Wall Street Journal, Fortune magazine, and other outlets. It's all been original reporting, and it's all closely edited and fact-checked with the reporters' sources.

Broadcast: I don't watch a lot of TV news, but I've seen all of the local Chicago stations' newscasts numerous times over the years (as well as in other places I visit frequently, such as South Florida, Virginia, Colorado, and New York). They sometimes run stories from their national network, but all are reported by recognized correspondents, not with voice-overs. I really don't know where you are coming up with this stuff.

3. You linked to a news story earlier in this thread, from "rt.com". The headlines had an, er, interesting slant to them. But the site had no evidence of its origins or who runs it. So I Googled it--Russia Today, a "news" outlet funded by the Russian government. Is this the preferred news source of a media expert?

 

[J_Bass]

 

[Wisebass]

View attachment 3738990

Newer studies show that they also ran out of toilet paper!


Wise(b)ass