Coronavirus General Discussion

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WiseOne
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by WiseOne » Sun Apr 12, 2020 5:23 pm

dualstow wrote:
Sun Apr 12, 2020 5:35 am
There’s a NYT article, Food Waste of the Pandemic, which is too depressing to even quote, for the most part. Lots of buried onions (“People don’t make onion rings at home”) and purposely spilled milk.

Regarding your note above, Xan:
At many dairy processors, for example, the machinery is designed to package shredded cheese in large bags for restaurants or place milk in small cartons for schools, rather than arrange the products in retail-friendly containers.

To repurpose those plants to put cheese in the 8 oz. bags that sell in grocery stores or bottle milk in gallon jugs would require millions of dollars in investment. For now, some processors have concluded that spending the money isn’t worth it.
EDIT: Here’s the link if anyone feels like crying: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/busi ... -food.html
Fascinating article.

I am pretty sure this is not the only sad result of a severely dislocated economy. The economy has a lot of moving parts that rely on each other, and the cascade of events stemming from the retail closures is going to be horrifying to watch.

One possible bright side: I found it interesting that people cooking at home are eating fewer vegetables than they get on their plates at a restaurant. I would hazard a guess that many of those restaurant-served vegetables go uneaten, so in a way, the waste is simply being transferred to a different point in the food production chain.
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by Ad Orientem » Sun Apr 12, 2020 7:12 pm

‘There Will Be Losses’: How a Captain’s Plea Exposed a Rift in the Military...
WASHINGTON — The captain had reached a breaking point.

The aircraft carrier he commanded, the Theodore Roosevelt, was docked in Guam as the coronavirus raced unchecked through its narrow corridors. The warship’s doctors estimated that more than 50 crew members would die, but Capt. Brett E. Crozier’s superiors were balking at what they considered his drastic request to evacuate nearly the entire ship.

Captain Crozier was haunted by the Diamond Princess, a cruise ship of 2,600 passengers in individual cabins where the virus had killed eight people and infected more than 700. The situation on his ship had the potential to be far worse: nearly 5,000 sailors crammed in shared berths, sometimes stacked three high. Eight of his sailors with severe Covid-19 symptoms had already been evacuated to the Navy’s hospital in Guam.

On March 30, after four days of rebuffs from his superiors, Captain Crozier sat down to compose an email. “Sailors don’t need to die,” he wrote to 20 other people, all Navy personnel in the Pacific, asking for help. A Naval Academy graduate with nearly 30 years of military service, the captain knew the email would most likely end his career, his friends said in interviews. The military prizes its chain of command, and the appropriate course would have been for the captain to continue to push his superiors for action.

He hit “send” anyway.

Three weeks later, the fired captain is battling the coronavirus himself, 584 other crew members have tested positive and the acting Navy secretary has resigned. The secretary, Thomas B. Modly, removed the captain because he thought that was what President Trump wanted, officials said. Mr. Modly, the officials said, was keenly aware that his predecessor in the job had been fired after tangling with Mr. Trump. But in trying to please the president, Mr. Modly miscalculated and destroyed his own career.

Read the rest here...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/12/us/p ... e=Homepage
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by Xan » Sun Apr 12, 2020 9:19 pm

WiseOne wrote:
Sun Apr 12, 2020 5:23 pm
I found it interesting that people cooking at home are eating fewer vegetables than they get on their plates at a restaurant.
I was really surprised by that. I eat a lot more vegetables at home than when I'm eating out. I think.
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by dualstow » Mon Apr 13, 2020 7:22 am

The honeymoon’s over.
Mr. Trump reposted a Twitter message that said “Time to #FireFauci” as he rejected criticism of his slow initial response to the pandemic that has now killed more than 22,000 people in the United States. The president privately has been irritated at times with Dr. Fauci, but the Twitter message was the most explicit he has been in letting that show publicly.
(This is a link to a live update and won’t work forever)
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/12/us/c ... dates.html

Looking at the tweet, Trump himself added a comment and never explicitly attacked Fauci. But, it’s pretty clear there is bad blood.
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dualstow
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by dualstow » Mon Apr 13, 2020 9:23 am

How COVID-19 Has Impacted Media Consumption, by Generation
A Visual Capitalist Infographic
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/media- ... -covid-19/

even better: What Shoppers are Buying
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/shoppe ... -covid-19/
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by shekels » Mon Apr 13, 2020 10:44 am

dualstow wrote:
Mon Apr 13, 2020 9:23 am
How COVID-19 Has Impacted Media Consumption, by Generation
A Visual Capitalist Infographic
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/media- ... -covid-19/

even better: What Shoppers are Buying
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/shoppe ... -covid-19/

What kind of Propaganda is this..
Where are the Guns and Ammo.. ???
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by dualstow » Mon Apr 13, 2020 10:49 am

shekels wrote:
Mon Apr 13, 2020 10:44 am
dualstow wrote:
Mon Apr 13, 2020 9:23 am
...
even better: What Shoppers are Buying
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/shoppe ... -covid-19/
What kind of Propaganda is this..
Where are the Guns and Ammo.. ???
Aisle 3, just next to the cans of Chef Boyardee.
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by shekels » Mon Apr 13, 2020 10:50 am

dualstow wrote:
Mon Apr 13, 2020 10:49 am
shekels wrote:
Mon Apr 13, 2020 10:44 am
dualstow wrote:
Mon Apr 13, 2020 9:23 am
...
even better: What Shoppers are Buying
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/shoppe ... -covid-19/
What kind of Propaganda is this..
Where are the Guns and Ammo.. ???
Aisle 3, just next to the cans of Chef Boyardee.
But i want my Gun NOW...
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by dualstow » Mon Apr 13, 2020 10:56 am

dualstow wrote:
Sun Apr 12, 2020 8:21 am
Amid Coronavirus Pandemic, China Bans Domestic Trade of Wild Animals, but Offers Tax Breaks for Exports
China disapproves of ‘recklessly eating wild animals’ as its Finance Ministry offers incentives to ship them abroad
::) Oh, CCP. I'll take Biden any day of the week. No more complaining from me ::)
https://www.wsj.com/articles/amid-coron ... 1586683800
Did anyone read the above, btw? It is truly disturbing.

A few choice cuts for those who don't have a subscription:
Less than a month later, China’s Ministry of Finance and tax authority said on March 17 they would raise value-added tax rebates on nearly 1,500 Chinese products, including offering a 9% rebate on the export of animal products such as edible snakes and turtles, primate meat, beaver and civet musk, and rhino horns, a Chinese government document shows.
And yet, even small amounts of exports could pose a risk, should wild animals prove to be the source of pandemics, as some Chinese reports suggest. The U.S. was the biggest importer of China’s animal products used in pharmaceuticals, such as civet and beaver, buying around $865,000 over January and February 2020, according to the data.
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by Kriegsspiel » Mon Apr 13, 2020 11:58 am

Even I am astonished by these graphs. I was expecting to see something in the graphs by week 13, even if I wasn’t expecting anything scary. But there’s just nothing. And you can’t say the lockdown caused this, because the UK lockdown had only been going for four days by this time. We’ve locked down the country for a supposed mass killer that still isn’t visible in the stats even after the lockdown was declared. We locked the country down for something that at the time only existed in Neil Ferguson’s dodgy computer models. link
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by vnatale » Mon Apr 13, 2020 12:31 pm

One thing that seems to be unaffected by all of this is commercials!

On both TV and radio they seem to be as unrelenting as ever!

Many of them, though, are completely valueless to the advertisers. That leads me to the belief that contractually they had no way of getting out of them?

I'm surprised, though, that none of them are not seizing on what could be a great marketing opportunity. Telling us what a great company they are by the way they are treating their employees. Maybe they don't want to do so in case they end up being not so great in that aspect?

Vinny
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by Mountaineer » Mon Apr 13, 2020 12:36 pm

Here is some brighter news via Garage Theology re. the virus (depending on your beliefs of course):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4d16oFba7o

It's all good!
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by dualstow » Mon Apr 13, 2020 4:32 pm

With restaurant closures, urban rats are getting hungry and angry. I need some feral cats in the backyard, or maybe an owl. We get a hawk from time to time.
https://apple.news/AQ6sRdqQpRqmQ29wQXPBLZA
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by Tortoise » Mon Apr 13, 2020 4:48 pm

You know, I almost said something in response to your recent "happy birds in NYC" post, dualstow. But I didn't want to be a Debbie Downer.

I bet the birds in NYC are just as hungry as those rats.
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by dualstow » Mon Apr 13, 2020 6:26 pm

oh no, you still said it!
:-) I think you’re right, though. Robins get worms from my backyard, but I forgot about the pigeons.
Coronavirus affects so many things.
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by Tortoise » Mon Apr 13, 2020 7:04 pm

dualstow wrote:
Mon Apr 13, 2020 6:26 pm
oh no, you still said it!
Image
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by vnatale » Tue Apr 14, 2020 6:25 pm

Capture.JPG
Capture.JPG (58.92 KiB) Viewed 19221 times
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by WiseOne » Wed Apr 15, 2020 9:43 am

I swear, the $50 Amazon basics bidet has already paid for itself! I'm glad I have no problem finding toilet paper but the stuff now costs a fortune.

So on another topic...what do y'all think of Trump's decision to withhold the US contribution to the WHO, which is the lion's share of its budget?

At first glance, this is as crazy as Bill Gates, the AMA, and others have said. WHO would obviously collapse without that funding. But then I thought...what have they actually done that was at all useful? They officially called it a "pandemic". Was that worth the $1 billion dues payment? (caveat: I vaguely remember that number, just tried to look it up to confirm but couldn't find the info online.)

They were a lot more useful during the Ebola virus outbreak, because they organized medical professionals to go to Africa to help. Nothing like that has happened with COVID. Also, would those medical professionals not have been able to go anyway, without WHO to arrange logistics? If WHO didn't exist some other group would have stepped in, since that was obviously a situation in which international help was needed.

In fact, the ideal group already exists: Doctors Without Borders. When I was in Kenya doing a medical student rotation during a cholera outbreak, we got a visit from DwB doctors from Spain who provided advice and a supply of rehydration salts as well as a recipe for a homemade version. The advice was invaluable. We had been rehydrating with IV solutions and were losing patients due to metabolic derangements - including a 5 year old boy who had been getting better. So I followed the advice, put down NG tubes and rehydrated with the salts. The patients treated that way all recovered.

So what DO we need WHO for? and is it worth the $1 billion that could otherwise have been spent on, say, manufacturing N95 masks? All good questions that it's about time were asked.
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by shekels » Wed Apr 15, 2020 10:11 am

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by shekels » Wed Apr 15, 2020 10:20 am

Libertarian666 wrote:
Wed Apr 15, 2020 9:49 am
WiseOne wrote:
Wed Apr 15, 2020 9:43 am
I swear, the $50 Amazon basics bidet has already paid for itself! I'm glad I have no problem finding toilet paper but the stuff now costs a fortune.

So on another topic...what do y'all think of Trump's decision to withhold the US contribution to the WHO, which is the lion's share of its budget?

At first glance, this is as crazy as Bill Gates, the AMA, and others have said. WHO would obviously collapse without that funding. But then I thought...what have they actually done that was at all useful? They officially called it a "pandemic". Was that worth the $1 billion dues payment? (caveat: I vaguely remember that number, just tried to look it up to confirm but couldn't find the info online.)

They were a lot more useful during the Ebola virus outbreak, because they organized medical professionals to go to Africa to help. Nothing like that has happened with COVID. Also, would those medical professionals not have been able to go anyway, without WHO to arrange logistics? If WHO didn't exist some other group would have stepped in, since that was obviously a situation in which international help was needed.

In fact, the ideal group already exists: Doctors Without Borders. When I was in Kenya doing a medical student rotation during a cholera outbreak, we got a visit from DwB doctors from Spain who provided advice and a supply of rehydration salts as well as a recipe for a homemade version. The advice was invaluable. We had been rehydrating with IV solutions and were losing patients due to metabolic derangements - including a 5 year old boy who had been getting better. So I followed the advice, put down NG tubes and rehydrated with the salts. The patients treated that way all recovered.

So what DO we need WHO for? and is it worth the $1 billion that could otherwise have been spent on, say, manufacturing N95 masks? All good questions that it's about time were asked.
So far all I can tell that WHO has done with the Covid plague is to cover up China's malfeasance.
We would have been a lot better off without their doing that.
As for the amount the US has paid, I believe it's been about $500 million a year.
Looks like Investigations will continue.
https://youtu.be/9wcdm-55Xg4
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by ochotona » Wed Apr 15, 2020 1:35 pm

I'm on the board of a non-profit, and I'm ready to quit because we're deciding whether to have our meetings and conferences in May, and I think it's way too soon. If someone gets sick and dies, I don't want to be sued. I signed up to manage the technical program, not to be sued for everything I have. I can manage the technical program as lowly volunteer who is not a board member.

I also won't attend my own events! Do you blame me?
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by Xan » Wed Apr 15, 2020 1:39 pm

ochotona wrote:
Wed Apr 15, 2020 1:35 pm
I'm on the board of a non-profit, and I'm ready to quit because we're deciding whether to have our meetings and conferences in May, and I think it's way too soon. If someone gets sick and dies, I don't want to be sued. I signed up to manage the technical program, not to be sued for everything I have. I can manage the technical program as lowly volunteer who is not a board member.

I also won't attend my own events! Do you blame me?
Surely whatever decision you make, if there's still a lockdown order in effect, it would have to be cancelled, right?

And if this decision absolutely must be made now, then the answer would have to be no, because it's quite likely there will be some form of lockdown.
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by vnatale » Wed Apr 15, 2020 1:40 pm

ochotona wrote:
Wed Apr 15, 2020 1:35 pm
I'm on the board of a non-profit, and I'm ready to quit because we're deciding whether to have our meetings and conferences in May, and I think it's way too soon. If someone gets sick and dies, I don't want to be sued. I signed up to manage the technical program, not to be sued for everything I have. I can manage the technical program as lowly volunteer who is not a board member.

I also won't attend my own events! Do you blame me?
Does your non-profit NOT have Directors and Officers insurance? That would only address the financial side for you. Not the ethical / moral side.

Vinny
Above provided by: Vinny, who always says: "I only regret that I have but one lap to give to my cats." AND "I'm a more-is-more person."
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by ochotona » Wed Apr 15, 2020 2:35 pm

vnatale wrote:
Wed Apr 15, 2020 1:40 pm
ochotona wrote:
Wed Apr 15, 2020 1:35 pm
I'm on the board of a non-profit, and I'm ready to quit because we're deciding whether to have our meetings and conferences in May, and I think it's way too soon. If someone gets sick and dies, I don't want to be sued. I signed up to manage the technical program, not to be sued for everything I have. I can manage the technical program as lowly volunteer who is not a board member.

I also won't attend my own events! Do you blame me?
Does your non-profit NOT have Directors and Officers insurance? That would only address the financial side for you. Not the ethical / moral side.

Vinny
I have been told we do, but I don't want to be a test case
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Re: Coronavirus General Discussion

Post by vnatale » Wed Apr 15, 2020 2:49 pm

ochotona wrote:
Wed Apr 15, 2020 2:35 pm
vnatale wrote:
Wed Apr 15, 2020 1:40 pm
ochotona wrote:
Wed Apr 15, 2020 1:35 pm
I'm on the board of a non-profit, and I'm ready to quit because we're deciding whether to have our meetings and conferences in May, and I think it's way too soon. If someone gets sick and dies, I don't want to be sued. I signed up to manage the technical program, not to be sued for everything I have. I can manage the technical program as lowly volunteer who is not a board member.

I also won't attend my own events! Do you blame me?
Does your non-profit NOT have Directors and Officers insurance? That would only address the financial side for you. Not the ethical / moral side.

Vinny
I have been told we do, but I don't want to be a test case
I think the courts are going to be quite lenient on the culpability of the decisions of non-profits.

Vinny
Above provided by: Vinny, who always says: "I only regret that I have but one lap to give to my cats." AND "I'm a more-is-more person."
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