Continuing coronavirus happenings (Part 1)

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Iā€™m starting to get the notion that some people donā€™t understand probability, germs, or air, at all. 25% of Americans think the Sun goes around the Earth. You canā€™t see numbers or viruses or air, so maybe those are just fake ideas that somebody made up.

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ā€œPaycheck Protection Program Recipient Map: data upload in progress: 9/50 states completedā€

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Sorry if this is a repost, but what the fuck?

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Weā€™ve just got to learn to live with it!

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Itā€™s the ā€œHappiest Deadliest Place on Earth!ā€

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Fixed that for ya.

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Itā€™s very much still a thing, based on the number of vape shops in my area. Last yearā€™s Vitamin A (correction: E) acetate fiasco didnā€™t manage to kill it off. [Aside: Remember when dozens of people keeling over from contaminated vapes was Big News?]

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Not good.

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Then thereā€™s this a$$hole. He represents the 85th district which is NW of Columbus.

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In which we learn that Republicans lack the decency of Jim Jones.

Eschaton

Wednesday, July 08, 2020

Come On In, The Kool-Aid Is Right Over Here

These people.

The Republican Party of Texas is moving forward with its controversial in-person convention during the coronavirus pandemic ā€” but elected officials including Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick will be giving their scheduled speeches virtually.

Atrios at 10:44

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Honestly, as soon as it was clear that this thing can do a number on blood vessels, the range of potential complications rapidly approached the infinite. Being the ~25% of cardiac output is devoted to keeping the brain functioning, the idea that neurological complications would arise is not surprising in the least. The really concerning part to me is the number of such complications in people who had minimal symptoms, indicating that the initial severity of the disease may not be terribly indicative of the long term risks. And that the outlook down the road could be pretty ugly. Rapidly growing to hate this bug.

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Trumpvirus doesnā€™t even make the top ten of things going on right now that I hate. Itā€™s not Trumpvirus thatā€™s killing and maiming people in America, itā€™s the Republican Party.

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The Trumpster is pushing a lot this narrative that ā€œweā€™re getting more cases because weā€™re testing moreā€. This needs to be strongly debunked. The thing is, the US as a whole might be testing a lotā€¦ but many of those tests happen in states with very few cases. The WHO recommends that countries increase testing capacity to match increases in case load, so that the daily positivity rate is <5%. Look at the US state data and all the recently increasing states bust right through that.

When it comes to the recently increasing states like Texas, Arizona, Florida etc, the US is dramatically under-testing and thatā€™s making the numbers look better than they should. Arizona is scoring 27% (!) positive in its tests and that means they are definitely missing a ton of cases.

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ā€œWeā€™d much rather stick our fingers in our ears, go ā€˜lalalalalala I canā€™t hear youā€™ and do whatever we want instead.ā€

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Kind of good news in the solidarity front. The contact tracking app was released yesterday in Ireland and has around a million downloads already. This must make it by some extreme distance the quickest moving app in the history of both Google and Appleā€™s Irish stores. Itā€™s flawed but follows the system tools so not as flawed as the UK one. No new deaths and 11 cases. Thereā€™s been a couple of spikes recently due to people returning home. Nobodyā€™s fault really, it can happen. Some poor family in Sligo all got it from relations returning from Iraq last week. Doubt thereā€™d been a case there for a month.
unfortunately mask wearing is only around 1/3 to 1/2 in shops. This is squarely down to poor messaging from the government. This was acknowledged by the chief medical officer before he stood down to look after his wife who has cancer.

Other relatively positive elements are that the NI government are cooperating with us which is great as they have quite the US far right anti vax wing.

Worse news is that the vintners lobby persuaded the govt. to allow pubs to open (if they sold substantial meals, which some didnā€™t bother with) and only allowed people be there for around an hour. I guess if you did it by the rules - table service, meal, hour, booked and contact details for contact tracing - it wouldnā€™t be so bad but I saw my old street in the middle of town and it was swamped. So theyā€™ll be closed if they do it again.
Despite lobbying hard the CMOā€™s insistence forced the government to put back to July 20th the announcement of the green travel list. Stay the fuck at home. If our rate is higher than the country you go to, thatā€™s unfair, immoral, and wrong of you. If itā€™s lower it is stupid of you to go.

Also the major right wing parties buried a century old hatchet to go into government so the recession will be long, brutal, and unequal. Iā€™ve just got out of the last one.

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