Ongoing coronavirus happenings

This is an interesting theory, apparently by British zoologist Andrew Cunningham (link from ORF article).
Couldn’t find an English version at a pinch, so just a little TL;DR:

Bats have coroaviruses that usually lie dormant, pretty much the same way as lots of humans have dormant herpes viruses which will “wake up” under stress.
The viruses have adapted to the bats, obviously. When bats fly their metabolism ramps up, leading to their body temperature rising to levels that would be a light fever in other mammals.
Man intrudes into bats’ habitat, bats are stressed, viruses “wake up”, bats start spreading viruses.
[IMO, there probably is another step inbetween, the virus aquiring the ability to feel at home in humans.]
Humans catch viruses from bats, viruses can survive elevated body temperatures, usual reaction from humans’ immune system doesn’t work, at least at first.

Thoughts, anyone?

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I learned yesterday that a couple in the US re-purposed Chloroquine which they used for their aquarium fish before, and overdosed. One dead. Fuck. And the French study is seriously doubtful. Shitshitshit.

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Has this been posted, yet?

The day the earth stood still:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00965-x

Link will not onebox, since it’s Nature.

Coronavirus lockdowns have changed the way Earth moves
A reduction in seismic noise because of changes in human activity is a boon for geoscientists.
March 31, 2020 by Elizabeth Gibney

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This is speculative AT BEST.

No science. Just opinion.

FTR, @gatto, @Wanderfound and others discussing zoonoses:

To the best of my knowledge, the pangolin hypothesis is bullshit. Also TTBOMK, the virus didn’t jump from bats to humans, but there was at least one other mammal in between.
And VERY much for the record: it isn’t a zoonosis any more. This is a human infectious disease. The virus has evolved to human hosts, an jumping a species barrier is (mostly) quite difficult. There is a report from a cat in Belgium, and one of a dog in Hong Kong which TTBOMK was not holding up to scrunity.

ETA: seen this is covered above. Some word to @anon62122146: while I am all in favour of closing markets selling wildlife, you cannot simply “stop”. China has an authoritarian regime, but even them can’t.

Also, in case of SARS 2003, it is not unlikely the infection came via racoon dogs (Nyctereutes procyonoides). These are bred on a large scale for the international market. Got a jacket with fur on the rim of the hood? Possibly racoon dog from China.

I suggest that everyone stops shouting what Chinese should do to prevent emerging diseases. Especially if it isn’t at all clear what and how something can be prevented. But also in general, because theses things are complicated, and we need to focus for possible solutions.

And I don’t know about you, but with all that FUD at the moment, I, for one, can’t properly focus.

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Australian state will install home surveillance hardware to make sure if you’re in virus isolation, you stay there

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Oh, I dunno. It kept working for the Conservatives in the UK. They were still happily blaming Tony Blair and Gordon Brown for everything up to and including the most recent election.

Despite everyone pointing out that they had in fact been in power for the last 10+ years so really had plenty of time to fix anything they wanted fixing.

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Bill Gates lays out three-point plan for US on brink of coronavirus catastrophe

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Coronavirus latest: US death toll eclipses China’s in ‘worst global crisis since WWII’

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Well, he would say that wouldn’t he… /s

Not surprisingly there are people on the internet (I won’t link, thank you) claiming that the whole thing is either a hoax or deliberately caused by Bill Gates, the pharma industry and other unnamed rich folks (i.e. the usual suspects) in order to boost pharma co’s profits and concentrate wealth.

You need evidence - Gates modelled the effects of a pandemic before it happened!!!11!!!

And published the results - and joined the throngs of other people who have for years been pointing out that pandemics do happen and could be pretty nasty and perhaps governments should think about planning for them a bit more seriously.

It’s obviously a conspiracy. /s

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Coronavirus: Spain’s death toll tops 9,000 with 864 more fatalities in 24 hours - another record

https://www.euronews.com/2020/04/01/coronavirus-pandemic-is-biggest-crisis-for-world-since-ww2-says-un

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Well that certainly has solved the problem there

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ffs

Still not sinking in yet for the MAGA death cult.

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Another bunch of Austrian School Koch libertarian gobshites.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Ludwig_von_Mises_Institute

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What do you expect. The miseans are of the Austrian school, which means they don’t believe that anything so mundane as evidence can contradict their theology.

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I’m glad that my local school district had planned for remote learning well before this outbreak. They had also done full rehearsals with students. The transition was fairly fluid. There’s no way to fully replace the missing social-aspect of on-site schooling though because of the shelter-in-place order.

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