Continuing coronavirus happenings (Part 2)

Just waiting for “I dont have it in me to cull my mink, so I’m going to let them go free!”

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They are. That’s why farm escapees (and misguided environmental activists releasing minks from the farms) are such a problem; they’ve driven the already in-trouble European mink completely into extinction in many places, such as Finland, and are overall a harmful introduced species.

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And he’s causing major problems for his neighbours. shock!

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I wonder if we’ll ever get a true number of the deaths that could’ve been prevented with more humane housing policies. Not sure if that would change the minds of pro-business and small government advocates, because they didn’t care before the pandemic unless those policies directly affected them. Hopefully, we will see a significant improvement next year, but it will be after a lot more cases to come this winter. Some renter protections end on December 31st.

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“ The professor attributed the unusual spike in part to COVID-19, both through increased alcohol consumption and, paradoxically, the temporary decrease in auto usage under coronavirus restrictions.”

Anecdotal- but I see a lot more crazy Speeding and unsafe driving when the streets were less crowded.

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Portland has had a huge surge in street racing this year.

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broadchurch-sad|nullxnull

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The CNE (Canadian National Exhibition) grounds have a network of roads that are almost empty when there is no trade show or the exhibition itself happening. I suspect the driver figured it would be a great time to treat it as a race course, and overestimated his abilities. From the picture, he was going very fast when he crashed.

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“China is still struggling to deal with the fact that it is held responsible for the “original sin” of the outbreak, which undercuts virtually every effort to salvage its image,” said Andrew Small, a China scholar and senior fellow with the German Marshall Fund, a US thinktank.

Really? I guess Trump rules their world too.

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Saw this today…

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State media has been reporting intensively on coronavirus discovered on packaging of frozen food imports, not considered a significant vector of infection elsewhere, and research into possible cases of the disease found outside China’s borders before December 2019.

Yeah, it was a thing earlier in the year to blame each minor re-outbreak on foreigners entering the country, never on Chinese nationals entering. Once they blocked all foreigners, I guess they had to find a new way to blame outsiders.

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There’s several studies out there, too, which are a bit exploitable. The Pangolin origin simply does not want to die, I got a paper from a colleague lately which seems to corroborate that line of interest with some German researchers (who apparently have had a technical role) involved.
Also, other news outlets (anglophones!) jump on stuff a German virologist (Kekulé, my personal opinion: avoid) said about a origin of the pandemic in Italy (note: not the virus, but the often-discussed nowadays most frequent variety, aka mutation).

Please note I’m not saying this is orchestrated. But you and me have to be careful not to lose focus of the scientific consensus, based on the research of people who really spend lifetimes of work to coronaviruses.

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is there one? i thought it was simply that it was identified in wuhan first. that it was likely from there, but also may have been cycling around for at least a little while undiagnosed.

Given its contagiousness and lethality, it seems inconceivable to me that it could “lurk” in the background somehow without manifesting in the same explosions that happened in Wuhan (and later elsewhere) within a week or two of first appearing.

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As far as I am aware, the consensus is that the zoonosis jumped to being a human disease in China, likely in the state of Wuhan, and quite possibly in the city of Wuhan.

Discussing the Pangolin origin may help wildlife, as these poor creatures are wiped out for bullshit pseudo-medicine. But it ain’t bloody likely it jumped to humans in Myanmar, e.g., and was transported to China. That’s my current knowledge about the consensus, at least.

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