Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19) and Tinnitus

[Bill Bauer]

You are on my Ignore list, but I happened to see your post.

You are obsessed with attaching a monetary value to everything.

I realize that people like you want a war against reality. The reality is that everything Has value. Pretending that it doesn't or assigning a value that is different from its real value causes serious problems.

From what you write he must be an idiot in your book, a naive man, a stupid idealist.

I don't think glorifying self-sacrifice for the good of the others (and working towards the replacement of the profit motive with the motive of self-sacrifice) is a good idea. [It goes against human nature and the world's 20th century experiences (compare East and West Germany, North and South Korea, USSR and USA) proves that it results in a reduction of people's well-being.] I also don't think that risking your own life or the life of a loved one to help save the lives of, say, 10 strangers (I know that a doctor seems more patients than that, but nobody is irreplaceable) is rational. Normally people discount the well being of strangers when trading it off for their own well being. But just because there is discounting, doesn't mean that they place zero value on the lives of others. If we keep increasing the number of lives saved eventually the number gets large enough to make the trade worthwhile.

Sabin refused to patent his vaccine, waiving every commercial exploitation by pharmaceutical industries

I have no idea what the above is saying. If pharmaceutical industry wasn't involved in manufacturing his vaccine, then who was? My guess is that the above is a bizarre way of saying that he wasn't interested in abandoning his academic career and creating his own firm that could charge a monopoly price. This isn't surprising if we take into account that he was a top scientist/professor. He wasn't just a researcher, he was the head of pediatric research at a university. It is safe to say that he was Very well off to begin with.

The way he did it, multiple firms were producing his vaccine and not paying Him anything. If he were to have a patent, he could determine the licensing fee paid by those firms, and surely the cost of the vaccine going up by a couple of cents wouldn't have an impact on its availability while making him rich. It is strange that he hasn't applied for a patent. Perhaps he couldn't do it even if he wanted to, as a lot of the development of the vaccine was done in collaboration with the scientists from USSR.

I am afraid the above doesn't say much about the pharmaceutical industry. Sabin could develop his vaccine at his lab and then he was able to test his vaccine on US prisoners and people in the USSR. [Aside: It so happens that this testing hasn't resulted in any deaths. But the reason those tests are necessary is that deaths are Possible. Of course we shouldn't apply our current values to evaluate the people from the past, but do you still feel like using his image as your avatar?] Modern pharmaceutical firms face much higher development costs. For every research project that is successful there are many projects that are a waste of money or even projects that result in lawsuits. The price of the successful drug has to cover the costs of development of all of the firm's projects. It also has to ensure that the investors receive a return that is the right return for the amount of risk one takes when one invests into a firm like that. If the price of a drug is forced to be below the price that ensures the above the investors will learn to not invest into the development of new drugs and that will be that. And before you suggest nationalizing those drug firms, you will want to study the experience of the countries that had tried that. You will see that medical drugs ended up being developed in countries that Haven't done it.

By the way another documented impact of a price ceiling are good shortages.

I could go on, but I guess forum posts aren't an appropriate venue for this.

do you really believe for a second that people are paid in proportion to how helpful they are to society?

In the absence of monopolies and oligopolies - yes. When anything (a good, one's labour) is exchanged (for another good or for money) voluntarily it means that the exchange benefits both parties or it wouldn't take place. So when you pay $1000 for a smartphone, the value that you place on the phone exceeds $1000. The corporation that sells the smartphone to you values the smartphone at less than $1000. So corporation's revenue is a lower bound of their contribution to society's well being (what the people paid for this corporation's goods is less than the value those people place on it). This revenue is split between the costs of the inputs and profit. The input cost is the lower bound on the contribution of the owners of the input. In other words, when a corporation hires someone (i.e., the supplier of the labour input), that person's contribution has got to exceed the person's salary, or there is no reason to hire that person. Profit is the return to the entrepreneurship input, or in the case of corporations the return to shareholder investment. Shareholder investment makes the production process possible.

United States has antitrust regulations that should ensure that all industries remain competitive. Sadly those regulations either haven't been enforced, or haven't been stringent enough to achieve their stated goal.

The head of equity trading of JPMorgan probably makes hundred of times the money of key medical researchers or surgeons. Who do you think is more helpful to society?

When the corporation has to compete with other corporations (in the absence of monopoly or oligopoly), they are forced to make sure that what they pay for their inputs (including the labour input) corresponds to the input's actual contribution.

Investment firms make production and innovation possible by ensuring that society's savings are allocated to the most promising R&D projects and to the most efficient firms (i.e., the firms that won't waste resources). When decisions like that have to be made, small differences in ability will make a huge difference in how successful the firm is, and so if salaries measure one's contribution we would expect those decision makers to be earning large salaries (which of course are lower than the actual contribution).

The head of trading at JPMorgan has been facilitating the creation and the manufacturing of countless products used by countless doctors and countless other people. So, without a doubt his or her contribution is higher than that of One doctor.

 

[Bill Bauer]

Giampiero Giron, 85 years old, Venetian anesthetist. "They asked for my availability, and I said yes. When you decide to be a doctor in life, you get involved. I swore an oath. Afraid of getting sick? Then it is better not to be a doctor ».

Different people have different circumstances:

 

[Bill Bauer]

Are you a fan of Ayn Rand?

I found "Atlas Shrugged" at my local library, but I never got around to reading it. It could have been the quality of the writing or it could have had something to do with me being busy at the time. So, to answer your question, I never read Ayn Rand, and pretty much the only thing that I know about her is the quote "You can ignore reality, but you won't be able to ignore the consequences of you ignoring reality" an idea that I certainly approve of.

 

[another sean]

I thought this video was informative. 30min interview from 2 days ago from a leading expert on COVID-19 from South Korea. You know, a place that's actually doing a decent job all things considered. I found his info on different ways it's transmitted was helpful. Talks about distance and even how gravity affects droplets in difference circumstances.

https://staythefuckhome.com/

 

[linearb]

 

[Lane]

You can click on any county in any state to get the latest stats on infections in a given area. Not the easiest to navigate, but overall, gives good information, especially on various rural areas.

CNBC Coronavirus Tracker

 

[Chinmoku]

@Bill Bauer , not sure you will read this as I am apparently in your ignore list (interesting I ended up there and interesting you felt obliged to inform me of this as the first thing in your reply, but I digress).

Everything has value you say. Not really, or at least not an objective value. Value is subjective, price is more objective. One of my hints to you was to consider the difference between price and value, although you missed it completely. Well I don't want to spend ages on that theme. If you have time, look into it. Quick example. You have your grandfather car, it's an old Ford model, but too common to have any collector value. You have an accident. Your insurance offers you 200 dollars because that's the price of that model in the market. However, for you it has a much higher value due to it being the car of your grandfather. You are willing to spend 2000 dollars to get it repaired.

You write as if anything had a unique value, perfectly objectively defined. I don't know what kind of state of mind can bring a person to this conviction, it's borderline insane, and I am not insulting you, I'm really worried. Even in finance there are things like silos effects, price segmentation, illiquidity, market frictions, bid ask spreads, many derivatives had payoffs so complex and obscure that calibrating models for their valuation was impossible as you wouldn't even find the inputs. Unique value? Shall we talk about CLOs, or RMBS? Please, not even wall street people believe that. It's much worse that this though. What is the value of a child smile? What is the value of a beautiful sunset? What is your value as a person? Or mine? What is the value of the moon? Don't you see how ridicolous this is? See also the smartphone discussion below.

I don't think glorifying self-sacrifice for the good of the others (and working towards the replacement of the profit motive with the motive of self-sacrifice) is a good idea. [It goes against human nature and the world's 20th century experiences (compare East and West Germany, North and South Korea, USSR and USA) proves that it results in a reduction of people's well-being.]

Germany is a social-democracy. They guarantee health assistance, schools are free and so are universities. I invite you also to look at Sweden, Denmark and Finland. Or France for that matter. Or Spain. You are living in the past, in the remote past. One thing you will find interesting: How much the US economy has to rely on China. What do you think of China? Interesting it was not in your list of "bad" countries.

I have no idea what the above is saying. If pharmaceutical industry wasn't involved in manufacturing his vaccine, then who was? My guess is that the above is a bizarre way of saying that he wasn't interested in abandoning his academic career and creating his own firm that could charge a monopoly price. This isn't surprising if we take into account that he was a top scientist/professor. He wasn't just a researcher, he was the head of pediatric research at a university. It is safe to say that he was Very well off to begin with.

They were developed in hospital and universities. You can find a lot of info if you are curious. Salk had a similar story. Sabin was not very well off compared to how he could have been with patents. He could have become a billionaire. He didn't. Don't diminish his story. He wanted to make the vaccine accessible asap and cheaply. Patents take time. A few children might have died. Salk was a similar case. They could have both patented them.

Side note and modern pharmaceutical houses: When you let medical research be driven only by profit this is what may happen, and with the Alzheimer epidemic in the world this is criminal.

"Pfizer had clues its blockbuster drug could prevent Alzheimer's. Why didn't it tell the world?"

On the rest of your note, I'm not against free market economy but the pharmaceutical industry should be more regulated. We have seen distorted trials, wrong incentives, hiding of drugs dangers and side effects. Have a look at this

https://institutions.newscientist.com/article/dn18806-revealed-pfizers-payments-to-censured-doctors/

The system can be improved but with unbridled profit as the only driver little will change, if anything. And in a country where industry has politicians in their pockets, given the way US elections are funded, there is little hope to correct such issues. Politicians will always be compelled to follow industry guidelines. It speaks volumes that often even democrats are unwilling to discuss gun control because they are afraid to trigger NRA wrath.

In the absence of monopolies and oligopolies - yes. When anything (a good, one's labour) is exchanged (for another good or for money) voluntarily it means that the exchange benefits both parties or it wouldn't take place. So when you pay $1000 for a smartphone, the value that you place on the phone exceeds $1000. The corporation that sells the smartphone to you values the smartphone at less than $1000. So corporation's revenue is a lower bound of their contribution to society's well being (what the people paid for this corporation's goods is less than the value those people place on it).

You are talking about a purely theoretical world that does not exist. Often the gadgets we have in the west are coming from children working incredibly long hours at the limit of slavery in other countries, risking their health. Where is this placed in your analysis? Look at children working in Cobalt mines in Congo,

https://www.theguardian.com/global-.../phone-misery-children-congo-cobalt-mines-drc

Profit, revenues, returns... and children health ruined for life. This is what I'm talking about. What is your phone value to a child who has ruined his lungs? This is what happens when profit is the only driver.

The head of trading at JPMorgan has been facilitating the creation and the manufacturing of countless products used by countless doctors and countless other people. So, without a doubt his or her contribution is higher than that of One doctor.

I think the head of trading has been trading products and portfolios to maximize the clients returns and take in fees and commissions, or to increase the firm profits directly if doing prop trading. Is this more important than the work of the head of a large medical research team? What about the banks that have been bailed out with taxpayer money? What about the banks that irresponsibly repackaged risk of mortgage loans, tranched it and sold it across the world? What about the flaws of the originate to distribute system, the short term incentives of the financial industry? For you it's as if the 2007-2008 crisis never happened. But even without that, I disagree that people in finance should be paid more than people in medicine. Look at the sick US academia. If you are a professor at a business school you are paid twice or three times as much as a professor of physics, mathematics or engineering, on average. Explain to me why that is right? Is finance more fundamental to society than mathematics, physics, engineering, medicine?

Anyway this is going to be a tiring conversation. I think I have said all I wanted to say. My tinnitus is killing me and I'm exhausted. I'll leave you with your convictions.

 

[HeavyMantra]

View attachment 37780

Nah dude you're a shill, your narrative is only a distraction from what's REALLY going down right now

 

[linearb]

Nah dude you're a shill, your narrative is only a distraction from what's REALLY going down right now

The "B" in my name actually stands for "Shill", due to a tragic misspelling error.

 

[valeri]

View attachment 37780

These 5G towers seem to appear overnight all around my suburb!

Every time I drive somewhere there's a new one!

This is a real concern!

 

[glynis]

Stay safe everyone from this virus.
All my love to everyone.

Love Glynis

 

[linearb]

These 5G towers seem to appear overnight all around my suburb!

Every time I drive somewhere there's a new one!

This is a real concern!

The way the technology works requires repeaters at much more frequent intervals, but they're much lower power output than a huge 4G tower. This also makes them impractical outside of cities and densely populated suburbs.

There's probably some breaking point at which EMF exposure does bad things to mammals besides thermal effects, however experiments to pin that down in a lab using doses much higher than you get in the most congested cities are either conflicted or unremarkable. It wouldn't shock me if there are some tiny changes to various risk factors from EM exposure, but, compared to something like inhaling fumes while pumping petrol, the effect seems to blend into the background.

In any case, whatever the nonthermal effects of EM fields are, they definitely don't include... coronavirus.

 

[Bill Bauer]

@Ed209

The good news is that all three - including one infant born nine weeks early - responded well to treatment and managed to shed the virus in just one week.

https://www.thechronicle.com.au/news/new-data-on-virus-and-newborns-revealed/3983434/

One of my hints to you was to consider the difference between price and value

Price is the best estimate of "the value to society" that we have.

You write as if anything had a unique value, perfectly objectively defined.

The value of a worker's contribution Can be objectively defined.

silos effects, price segmentation, illiquidity, market frictions, bid ask spreads, many derivatives had payoffs so complex and obscure that calibrating models for their valuation was impossible as you wouldn't even find the inputs. Unique value? Shall we talk about CLOs, or RMBS? Please, not even wall street people believe that.

What does any of that have to do with what we were talking about (the value of people's contribution to the productive process)?

What is the value of a child smile?

We could estimate it if we wanted to by asking various people how much they are willing to pay to see their child (or stranger's child) smile. We could also estimate it by looking at how much people are willing to pay for toys and other things that make kids smile.

What is your value as a person?

We could easily estimate my expected contribution to society. Another relevant concept is the value of a statistical life. This is what the authorities use to determine whether projects should go ahead. It's my understanding that in the US the VSL is something like $5,000,000. So if say increasing the speed limit is expected to bring in $50,000,000 per year and result in fewer than 10 deaths per year, the increase will be approved, otherwise it wouldn't be approved. VSL can also be used to determine what life-saving drugs/interventions to fund. If one intervention saves less than one life per $5,000,000 we would skip it, and if it saves more than one life per every $5,000,000 spent we would adopt it.

The above might seem like a horrific state of affairs, but this is a way to Maximize the number of lives that we will be able to save. To understand why, consider what would happen if the decision makers were to ignore VSL. Then one decision maker would approve a project that saves one life for every $10,000,000 while another decision maker approves a project that saves one life for every $1,000,000 that we spend. With a budget of $11,000,000, those two decision makes would end up saving 2 lives. If we were to abandon the $10,000,000 project and move the money to the other project, we would end up saving 11 (instead of 2) lives. Of course diminishing returns imply that the more we spend on a project the fewer lives we will be saving per each dollar spent. We can move money around until all projects are expected to save the same number of lives per dollar spent. At that time we are saving the most lives. If we deviate from that allocation, we could more money around and that would end up in more lives being saved.

The bottom line is that we can refuse to place a value on things like human lives, but decision still have to be made and those decisions will implicitly be assigning those values. Only if we are explicit about those values can we hope to save the most lives.

Or mine?

Are you saying that the fact that the future price of the resource is unknown makes it hard to estimate the value? We can determine a range, right?

Don't you see how ridicolous this is?

Don't you?

Germany is a social-democracy. They guarantee health assistance, schools are free and so are universities. I invite you also to look at Sweden, Denmark and Finland. Or France for that matter. Or Spain.

Imagine what could have been had they reduced the socialism, and were to switch to a system that uses the person's merit to determine the person's salary. Well, those experiments had already been conducted, the results are conclusive, and I listed them in my earlier post.

What do you think of China? Interesting it was not in your list of "bad" countries.

As soon as they reduced the socialism, their standard of living shot up. Why are you bringing China up if their example contradicts your views?

hiding of drugs dangers and side effects

When the patients can sue the firm for hiding dangerous side effects, the firms have less of an incentive to do that.

When you let medical research be driven only by profit this is what may happen, and with the Alzheimer epidemic in the world this is criminal.

Have you Read the article? There are many possible reasons why they didn't pursue that line of research. One is that they have more productive uses for their limited resources (i.e., other drugs where the outcome is more certain and/or drugs that can be sold to more people). Another explanation is that the regulatory climate is such that it is hard for them to patent it. This regulatory climate is the result of sentiments like your sentiment above "We must do something about those greedy firms". If they Were allowed to be driven by profit, and were allowed to Get the Profit, they would have by all means been open to investigating a wider range of drugs.

They were developed in hospital and universities. You can find a lot of info if you are curious. Salk had a similar story. Sabin was not very well off compared to how he could have been with patents. He could have become a billionaire. He didn't.

Read my post. It's all there.

You are talking about a purely theoretical world that does not exist.

By their nature, math and decision theory are theoretical disciplines. The alternative of not using this theory to guide one's decision making is NOT going to improve the quality of one's decisions.

Have a look at this

https://institutions.newscientist.com/article/dn18806-revealed-pfizers-payments-to-censured-doctors/

Sorry, I can't access it.

Look at children working in Cobalt mines in Congo,

https://www.theguardian.com/global-.../phone-misery-children-congo-cobalt-mines-drc

Hopeless though it may be, it is her and her child's only means of survival.

Correct me if I'm wrong: you are saying that you want to deny that lady and her child their only means of survival, right?

Profit, revenues, returns...

result in that lady and her child surviving.

If some charity were to come in and support them for life, then they wouldn't be willing to work at that mine. But without the existence of that charity banning the firm from hiring them is equivalent to murdering them, right?

This is what happens when profit is the only driver.

That's right - people get to survive where they wouldn't be able to survive otherwise. The number of lives that are saved is being maximized.

I think the head of trading has been trading products and portfolios to maximize the clients returns and take in fees and commissions, or to increase the firm profits directly if doing prop trading.

To do that, the head of trading has to estimate what projects are the most promising, and allocate people's savings efficiently. If people like him or her didn't exist, capital markets wouldn't exist, and without capital markets most projects wouldn't get any funding.

Is this more important than the work of the head of a large medical research team?

Without a doubt.

What about the banks that have been bailed out with taxpayer money?

Shouldn't have been done.

What about the banks that irresponsibly repackaged risk of mortgage loans, tranched it and sold it across the world?

The people who Bought those securities that combined mortgage loans should have realized that different mortgage holders would likely all default at the same time. They made the mistake of assuming an incorrect risk for those securities. This demonstrates just how essential those heads of trading are, and how much impact their decisions and mistakes can have on our ability to produce goods. How is your argument different from saying that just because some engineers screwed up when they built those nuclear reactors in Ukraine and Japan, that we shouldn't build nuclear reactors any longer or have any projects involving engineers?

What about the flaws of the originate to distribute system, the short term incentives of the financial industry?

I don't know what you are talking about.

If you are a professor at a business school you are paid twice or three times as much as a professor of physics, mathematics or engineering, on average. Explain to me why that is right? Is finance more fundamental to society than mathematics, physics, engineering, medicine?

If that salary scheme were the result of some government bureaucrat's decree, then you would be right, it would be very questionable. However, this is the outcome of the salary that those people could get in the private sector. This literally proves that the firms (who are not run by the relatives of those business professors) know that the business professors would add more to the bottom line than those math professors. If that Weren't the case and the math professor could bring in a lot more than the math professor's university salary, then why wouldn't the business owners pick up that easy money by offering that math professor a higher salary? And if the person with a Finance Ph.D. were to bring in less than the salary that those people currently earn, why wouldn't the firm lower the salary? If they were to do it, they would increase their profit, right? If many of them were to do it, it would be easier to find someone qualified to teach a finance class, and a university would find it easy to hire someone while paying them a salary that is lower than the current finance professor salary. Why on earth isn't this happening?

My tinnitus is killing me and I'm exhausted.

I am sorry to hear that. I really mean it.

Have you experienced any fading/changes in pitch compared to how it was nine months ago?

 

[Daniel Lion]

Glad @Bill Bauer, the bearded one, reached out with sincere compassion to @Chinmoku. That's what this place is for. I am an artist and have had a creative block ever since my tinnitus entered my life. I know i will break it one day and I am super impressed with the cognitive functions and writing of my fellow sufferers. I am a bit punch drunk.

We started our lock down today here in Vientiane. I had to mobilise my family to a more secure location. Another story. It was a lot of work carrying water, food supplies etc.
We are hunkered down.

 

[Chinmoku]

@Bill Bauer, thank you for your concern I appreciate it. My tinnitus started mild on sept 2018 with a ear infection but it got worse and worse over the months. Now it is practically unbearable. I did many tests but no clear cause. I was on pregabalin when the tinnitus hit me. It took me almost 17 months to stop that medication. I have been off 6 weeks now but I am on low dose clonazepam to bear the withdrawal. Trying to get off that too but I don't know if I can manage. My only hope is to improve soon, if it keeps worsening I won't be able to go on, I'm already impaired and my kids suffer for this. Very little hope at this stage.

Sorry for the off topic, but I'll go on topic now. With my usual luck I got also covid symptoms, but at least the fever is going down after 1 week at 38-39 Celsius and shivering/bone pain has improved. I'm isolated in a room far from my wife and kids. My sympathy to all who are suffering with the virus. I feel I can beat this, as it has not affected my breathing, but the tinnitus is another matter.

 

[Chinmoku]

Glad @Bill Bauer, the bearded one, reached out with sincere compassion to @Chinmoku. That's what this place is for. I am an artist and have had a creative block ever since my tinnitus entered my life. I know i will break it one day and I am super impressed with the cognitive functions and writing of my fellow sufferers. I am a bit punch drunk.

We started our lock down today here in Vientiane. I had to mobilise my family to a more secure location. Another story. It was a lot of work carrying water, food supplies etc.
We are hunkered down.

You have been functioning great for your family, Daniel. You are a star.

 

[all to gain]

@Bill Bauer, thank you for your concern I appreciate it. My tinnitus started mild on sept 2018 with a ear infection but it got worse and worse over the months. Now it is practically unbearable. I did many tests but no clear cause. I was on pregabalin when the tinnitus hit me. It took me almost 17 months to stop that medication. I have been off 6 weeks now but I am on low dose clonazepam to bear the withdrawal. Trying to get off that too but I don't know if I can manage. My only hope is to improve soon, if it keeps worsening I won't be able to go on, I'm already impaired and my kids suffer for this. Very little hope at this stage.

Sorry for the off topic, but I'll go on topic now. With my usual luck I got also covid symptoms, but at least the fever is going down after 1 week at 38-39 Celsius and shivering/bone pain has improved. I'm isolated in a room far from my wife and kids. My sympathy to all who are suffering with the virus. I feel I can beat this, as it has not affected my breathing, but the tinnitus is another matter.

You have had some really bad luck. Please hang on in there friend, and keep us updated on how things are going.

 

[Chinmoku]

You have had some really bad luck. Please hang on in there friend, and keep us updated on how things are going.

Thank you my friend

 

[Hazel]

These are troubling times, no doubt about it. On behalf of the Tinnitus Talk staff we wish everyone good health and those of you who are struggling due to coronavirus all the best of luck and strength.

@Markku and I would like to create a dedicated episode of the Tinnitus Talk Podcast about this crisis. In this episode, we'd like to speak with some of you and hear how you are affected, and how your tinnitus experience plays into this.

Do you want to be part of this episode? Send me and Markku a PM! You would need to make yourself available for 20-30 minutes or so for an online/remote interview very soon – within the coming week. Ideally you would have a good microphone at your disposal, but we can work with you to find the best sound solutions for remote recording.

Questions we'd like to cover during the Podcast:

• How has the coronavirus crisis impacted your life?
• What parallels do you see between the social isolation everyone is now experiencing and your personal experiences with social isolation because of tinnitus?
• How do you see the role of online communities like Tinnitus Talk in the current crisis?

 

[Bill Bauer]

My tinnitus started mild on sept 2018 with a ear infection but it got worse and worse over the months.

A lot of the time months after the ear infection clears tinnitus begins to fade and eventually goes away. Could it be that your ear infection is still there?

With my usual luck I got also covid symptoms

Get well soon...

 

[ajc]

 

[GregCA]

Holy cow! The closed cases stats look pretty bad in the UK!

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/

 

[linearb]

@ajc actual masks, used properly, are reasonable, as is eye protection especially if you're in an urban zone where maintaining 6' is not possible.

Everything else people are doing in those photos is probably directly counterproductive. Gloves are useless, wash your hands. Cool, you're covered in garbage bags, now you have virus-covered garbage bags to get out of without getting virus all over yourselves. People who wear PPE professionally get tons of training, because even with actual medical gear, one small fuckup makes the whole thing worthless.

There's a reason that the countries that have been most concerned about SARS/MERS, have mostly used face masks and none of this other ridiculous bullshit, and I am sure they are laughing hard at some of these photos.

People who are worried enough to Darth Vader it up but didn't just do what I did and buy ~6 weeks worth of dried meals, confuse me. I don't care if you live in a 500 sq ft apartment you share with a roomate, you can still store 3 months worth of food in a 3x3x7 pile if you want to, occupying 9 square feet, it just takes some basic sense and understanding of what food is, lol.

The death counts from the worst affected US areas (primarily NYC) are not rising as fast as you'd expect. Given that's coming on the heels of multiple hospitals doing triage outside the ER before they even bring people in, plus the pictures of FEMA trailers being used for body storage -- I think it's safe to assume that the numbers coming out of NYC are not accurate at this time because the system is overwhelmed in critical places, and this week will look worse 2-3 weeks down the line, than it does now, because at that point we may be through peak resource exhaustion in NYC.

I think peak resource exhaustion in NYC might end up looking like a fuckin walk in the park compared to the biggest Southern cities, many of which did not do anything until very recently, or are still resisting it.

Meanwhile, lots of people somehow still think this is all a hoax, and, our country is big enough that this could kill literally a million people, and many of those people would still think it was a hoax and simply not believe that number.

We're living in a post-fact era; Spengler was right, Western Civ peaked in the baroque era and we're in the end days

edit: do not read the abridged edition. But, also read a good translation of Faust before attempting because Spengler was really obsessed with it as emblematic of various archetypes.

 

[bobvann]

My wife's dentist boss tested positive

 

[Lane]

The below linked article (which I consider a must read if you're not familiar with the topic) makes it appear wearing masks could soon be mandatory across much of the world. -- The article gives a good review of why wearing masks were shunned in the beginning, and just to warn you, the details may be upsetting to read, just as they were for me. -- It's also looking like that recommended 6 feet of social distancing is well short of the 25-30 feet the virus can actually travel. Another reason to consider wearing a mask.

In other articles I just read this morning (that I feel connect well with the mask article), some health authorities now believe as many as 1/4 of people infected with the coronavirus are totally asymptomatic, while others infected are presenting with only very mild symptoms, and may not even know they have it. Also, people who have totally recovered from the virus can still be infectious for many days afterwards. -- All good reasons to always wear a mask.

Asia may have been right about coronavirus and face masks, and the rest of the world is coming around
Analysis by James Griffiths, CNN
Updated 12:21 PM ET, Wed April 1, 2020

"Hong Kong (CNN) In the coming weeks, if they have not already, your government is likely to begin advising you to wear a face mask to protect against coronavirus.'

For those living in Asia, such announcements will be a vindication of a tactic that has been adopted across much of the region since the beginning of the crisis and appears to have been borne out by lower rates of infection and faster containment of outbreaks."​

............................................

Just discovered another article title on the Politico website, but have not yet read it:

Mask mystery: Why are U.S. officials dismissive of protective covering?
Other nations recommend wearing masks to avoid coronavirus, but the Trump administration has not seen a benefit.

 

[Bartoli]

Where I live we're pretty much out of masks for 2 weeks now. Hospitals have asked to donate unused masks and medical personnel have to wear masks for twice the time they would normally before disposing of them.

They're even collecting the used masks separately in hospitals while they experiment with ways to disinfect them without rendering them useless.

The police on active duty who are enforcing the COVID-19 measures don't have access to protective equipment. Ill prepared you say?

Best to stay in as much as possible. As @linearb said, without some formal training most people will fuck up most likely and any additional measures they take would be pretty much useless.

 

[FGG]

The below linked article (which I consider a must read if you're not familiar with the topic) makes it appear wearing masks could soon be mandatory across much of the world. -- Th article gives a good review of why wearing masks were shunned in the beginning, and just to warn you, the details may be upsetting to read, just as they were for me. -- It's also looking like that recommended 6 feet of social distancing is well short of the 25-30 feet the virus can actually travel. Another reason to consider wearing a mask.

In other articles I just read this morning (that I feel connect well with the mask article), some health authorities now believe as many as 1/4 of people infected with the coronavirus are totally asymptomatic, while others infected are presenting with only very mild symptoms, and may not even know they have it. Also, people who have totally recovered from the virus can still be infectious for many days afterwards. -- All good reasons to always wear a mask.

Asia may have been right about coronavirus and face masks, and the rest of the world is coming around
Analysis by James Griffiths, CNN
Updated 12:21 PM ET, Wed April 1, 2020

"Hong Kong (CNN) In the coming weeks, if they have not already, your government is likely to begin advising you to wear a face mask to protect against coronavirus.'

For those living in Asia, such announcements will be a vindication of a tactic that has been adopted across much of the region since the beginning of the crisis and appears to have been borne out by lower rates of infection and faster containment of outbreaks."​

............................................

Just discovered another article title on the Politico website, but have not yet read it:

Mask mystery: Why are U.S. officials dismissive of protective covering?
Other nations recommend wearing masks to avoid coronavirus, but the Trump administration has not seen a benefit.

It definitely seemed suspicious when they were talking about how health care workers needed masks to protect themselves from the virus but were later insisting that (somehow) if the public wore masks, it would offer no protection.

 

[Luman]

The main thing is, you have to know how to use the mask. It can protect others from catching the disease from you. It reminds you not to touch your face, as most people touch their's 1000X a day, which can transmit the virus. Most masks must not be used, and then reused.

Masks of any kind are not currently available at stores, where I live.

 

[all to gain]

Holy cow! The closed cases stats look pretty bad in the UK!

View attachment 37833
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/

This is pretty damning if accurate.

I'm actually glad I'm not in the UK at the moment.

@ajc
We're living in a post-fact era; Spengler was right, Western Civ peaked in the baroque era and we're in the end days

View attachment 37837

edit: do not read the abridged edition. But, also read a good translation of Faust before attempting because Spengler was really obsessed with it as emblematic of various archetypes.

This would make an interesting thread of its own.

Out of interest did you get a proper book or one of those badly scanned books?

The below linked article (which I consider a must read if you're not familiar with the topic) makes it appear wearing masks could soon be mandatory across much of the world. -- The article gives a good review of why wearing masks were shunned in the beginning, and just to warn you, the details may be upsetting to read, just as they were for me.

If this is in fact the case, there's going to be lots of questions to answer in those countries where people are being told not to use masks.

 

[OnceUponaTime]

I dont know which one made me laugh more...LOL