OT: Coronavirus

@"MaroonBells" said: Wow....

https://twitter.com/SageRosenfels18/status/1237449732475293697?s=20

Yeah, DIA is never that empty. My goodness, this thing has really gotten ahold of people. But I suspect that it's going to make a far bigger dent in the global economy than the global population. 

What changes have you made? Personally, I have tickets to fly to San Francisco with my kids to see my brother in a couple of weeks. And, so far anyway, I plan to go. But I have to say I'm a little nervous about it, especially with my kids. Not as much about the virus as how people are panicking about it. A flight yesterday was rerouted to Denver because someone, um...sneezed. And I am narrowing in on some ridiculously priced tickets to Cancun in May. Am I crazy? 

Yah, I'd probably pass on the tix to Cancun...

3/10 (the original op from MB) seems like a life-time ago now.

All in a day's work.

$20 million raised for COVID-19 relief efforts. 👏 pic.twitter.com/0u7IrhagwA

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) May 25, 2020

I am supposed to go to Atlanta next month for work but I am not so sure about that now. We'll see what happens.

Can you imagine a 7 year wait for a Covid-19 vaccine? Like the world had to endure for Polio?

CRAZY
===========================================================

Jonas Salk's son warns: 'The disease can come back'

SAN DIeGO – He lives in La Jolla Village, near a cove that is attracting sunbathers this weekend, despite social distancing rules.

Peter Salk’s favorite stores and restaurants also are nearby. Many are beginning to reopen now that the pandemic is on the decline in San Diego County.
But after two months of hunkering down at home, the 76-year-old Salk won’t be venturing beyond his front porch during the long Memorial Day weekend. And it may be a while before he does.
“I’m not ready to run the risk of getting infected,” said Salk, a biomedical researcher who spent years working with his father, Jonas Salk, the man who developed the first successful vaccine against the deadly polio virus. “It seems clear that as we loosen up, the disease can come back.”
Customers are beginning to return to local restaurants after dine-in service was resumed countywide.
But many people share Salk’s concerns, especially older people. Salk’s thoughts about the threat carry weight because of his family name, as well as his deep understanding of communicable diseases and the promise and peril of vaccines. In 1953, at age 9, he became among the first wave of people to be inoculated with his father’s experimental vaccine.
His message has special meaning for people old enough to remember the era when polio paralyzed and killed thousands of people in what seemed to be a random way. Children were hit the hardest.
It wasn’t unusual for a parent to take their child out of school at the mere suggestion that another student had the virus, which is spread when people come into contact with an infected person’s stool. Polio also can be transmitted through the droplets in a sneeze or a cough from someone who is infected.
In the 1940s and ’50s, polio was the most feared disease in the country. Swimming pools and movie theaters were shut down. Things didn’t begin to change until 1955, when Jonas Salk’s vaccine was deemed safe and effective after seven years of research, development and testing. By 1961, the incidence of polio cases in the U.S. had dropped by 97%.
Salk eventually moved on to La Jolla, where he founded a biomedical research institute that bears his name.
On March 19, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a decree that ordered Californians to shelter in place. “That was such a relief to me,” Salk said. “I haven’t left home since then.”
In the meantime, scientists around the world are feverishly trying to develop a vaccine against the virus.
“It important not to try to go too quickly, despite the pressing need for having a vaccine as soon as possible. I have read, for example, that some of the vaccine programs may be skipping animal studies and going straight into humans. You lose an opportunity to see how the vaccine will work in people.”
Salk is eager to see a safe vaccine emerge soon. He feels very unsettled about what’s occurring now.
“First of all, we don’t yet know the natural history of the disease as it occurs through seasons in the year,” Salk said. “In any case, the chances of the disease flaring up again, sooner or later, are real, particularly with the loosening up of social distancing restrictions.”
But he understands people’s need for good news.
“People were afraid of polio. It affected them for years,” Salk said. “It could be measured in the extraordinary relief that came when the vaccine was found to be safe and effective. There was jubilation. Finally, we had a vaccine in hand so that we did not have to live in a constant state of fear.”

NBA legend Patrick Ewing is recovering at home after testing positive for the coronavirus 

Here in Illinois our Gov Prickster rules over us commoners with his edicts while his family traveled during stay@home orders to their 12.5 million $ Equestrian Estate in Florida. I can't stand Fred Flintstone and his endless daily lectures. !!!!

Sigh...tell whoever wrote the headline to actually read the article first.  34-45% increased risk of death, not 45% death rate.
Anyway, not looking good for hydrochloroquine.  
https://twitter.com/shorez/status/1264790782537420801

NSFW - or kiddies....

Uffda.
https://twitter.com/NAChristakis/status/1264739238844694530

@"RS Express" said:

Uffda. https://twitter.com/NAChristakis/status/1264739238844694530

And remember when Sweden was being held up as model of how to handle the virus?

dayum....that's a sad tale to be telling. 

Wonder how North America and rest of Europe look on that scale?

Edit:
That's a bad ass curve they got going there.

So (to-date) Sweden has faired worse than the US, but better than some other areas of Europe and far worse than some of their nordic neighbors. I wonder where Swedish leadership set the success bar?

(deaths per million as of 5/24/20):

• US 293.31 
• India: 2.91 (???)
• UK: 540.24
• Russia: 24.26
• France: 434.05
• Italy: 541.42
• Spain: 614.95

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-covid-cases-deaths-per-million?time=2020-03-15..&country=ESP

US company trials coronavirus vaccine in Australia

CANBERRA, Australia — A U.S. biotechnology company announced on Tuesday the start of human trials in Australia of a vaccine for the coronarvirus with hopes of releasing a proven vaccine this year.
Novavax has begun the first phase of the trial in which 131 volunteers in the cities of Melbourne and Brisbane will test the safety of the vaccine and look for early signs of the vaccine's effectiveness, the company's research chief Dr. Gregory Glenn said.
"We are in parallel making doses, making vaccine in anticipation that we'll be able to show it's working and be able to start deploying it by the end of this year," Glenn told a virtual press conference in Melbourne from Novavax' headquarters in Maryland.
Animal testing suggested the vaccine is effective in low doses. Novavax could manufacture at least 100 million doses this year and 1.5 billion in 2021, he said.
Manufacture of the vaccine, named NVX-CoV2373, was being scaled up with $388 million invested by Norway-based Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations since March, Glenn said.
About a dozen experimental vaccines are in early stages of testing or poised to start, mostly in China, the U.S. and Europe. It's not clear that any of the candidates ultimately will prove safe and effective. But many work in different ways, and are made with different technologies, increasing the odds that at least one approach might succeed.
The results of the first phase of clinical trials in Australia are expected to be known in July, Novavax said. Thousands of candidates in several countries would then become involved in a second phase.
The trial began with six volunteers being injected with the potential vaccine in Melbourne on Tuesday, said Paul Griffin, infectious disease expert with Australian collaborator Nucleus Network.
Most of the vaccine shots in the pipeline aim to train the immune system to recognize the "spike" protein that studs the coronavirus' outer surface, priming the body to react if it ever encountered the real infection. Some candidates are made using just the genetic code for that protein, and others use a harmless virus to deliver the protein-producing information. Still other vaccine candidates are more old-fashioned, made with the killed whole virus.
Novavax adds another new kind to that list, what's called a recombinant vaccine. Novavax used genetic engineering to grow harmless copies of the coronavirus spike protein in giant vats of insect cells in a laboratory. Scientists extracted and purified the protein, and packaged it into virus-sized nanoparticles.
"The way we make a vaccine is we never touch the virus," Novavax told The Associated Press last month. But ultimately, "it looks just like a virus to the immune system."
It's the same process that Novavax used to create a nanoparticle flu vaccine that recently passed late-stage testing.A U.S. biotechnology company announced on Tuesday the start of human trials in Australia of a vaccine for the coronarvirus with hopes of releasing a proven vaccine this year.

6 states in the US adopted this policy of forcing nursing homes to take COV patients to "protect hospitals".

these homes were NOT equipped to deal with this.

the results have been tragic.

these states have 19% of US population and 62% of covid deaths.

and this was avoidable. pic.twitter.com/LbcP7vJOg0

— el gato malo (@boriquagato) May 22, 2020

I found this interesting and enlightening regarding the virus and how deadly it actually has been in the US,  as well as why its been way worse in some locations than others.  Also,  I was not aware that these state had mandated elderly care facilities to take in known infected patients.  That to me screams bull shit,  does anybody know if this is true,  and if so what logic was there in putting the infected with most vulnerable?

EDIT:  found this to be true in NY, NJ, and also California,  not sure about the other states,  but WTF kind of logic by any bureaucrat would put covid patients in a nursing home?  would they hire pedophiles to nanny their kids and grandkids?  JFC,  this should be criminally investigated and people need to lose their jobs and their freedoms.  If I had a loved one in a home that was forced to accept these infected patients my lawyer would be working on a civil case and I would be rounding up as many co-plaintiffs as I could. 

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EY5zhVJUMAAQ5uX?format=jpg&name=small

I think that may stem from rehab patients historically going to these facilities for surgery recovery etc...So kinda grand-fathered in systems and practices. 

That said, putting Covid patients in elderly care facilities strikes me about as wise as putting mice in a snake cage and wondering what will happen.

@"purplefaithful" said: I think that may stem from rehab patients historically going to these facilities for surgery recovery etc...So kinda grand-fathered in systems and practices. 

That said, putting Covid patients in elderly care facilities strikes me about as wise as putting mice in a snake cage and wondering what will happen.

A lot of things that we did historically prior to covid 19 were suspended in the name of safety,   this is just plain criminal IMO.

@"JimmyinSD" said:

@"purplefaithful" said: I think that may stem from rehab patients historically going to these facilities for surgery recovery etc...So kinda grand-fathered in systems and practices. 

That said, putting Covid patients in elderly care facilities strikes me about as wise as putting mice in a snake cage and wondering what will happen.

A lot of things that we did historically prior to covid 19 were suspended in the name of safety,   this is just plain criminal IMO.

@"Hidalgo" said:

@"JimmyinSD" said:

@"purplefaithful" said: I think that may stem from rehab patients historically going to these facilities for surgery recovery etc...So kinda grand-fathered in systems and practices. 

That said, putting Covid patients in elderly care facilities strikes me about as wise as putting mice in a snake cage and wondering what will happen.

A lot of things that we did historically prior to covid 19 were suspended in the name of safety,   this is just plain criminal IMO.

I think a big part of this is insurance companies getting people out of hospitals as fast as possible. I read a report that Medicare was pushing to get patients out of hospitals asap and the Florida health department blockaded it. This is a big part of why NY and NJ numbers have skyrocketed and Florida's have not despite Florida having an aged population and not shutting down their economy.

@"JimmyinSD" said:

@"purplefaithful" said: I think that may stem from rehab patients historically going to these facilities for surgery recovery etc...So kinda grand-fathered in systems and practices. 

That said, putting Covid patients in elderly care facilities strikes me about as wise as putting mice in a snake cage and wondering what will happen.

A lot of things that we did historically prior to covid 19 were suspended in the name of safety,   this is just plain criminal IMO.