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Tim Walz finally pulled the trigger. It’s an order with a broad exemption list which predictably didn’t satisfy the MN GOP, treating it as draconian despite allowing all but the most minor businesses to operate as normal.
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Is this the end of spring break as we know it?
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Related:
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Here’s a CNN report from South Africa (probably exemplary of other places) showing how you treat people in the name of public health, while giving a rat’s ass about their own health:
rounding up homeless people in public squares to take them to some sort of housing.
… that’s not how you protect someone from an infection. That’s how you treat someone as a disease vector,
Civil rights are not optional in a pandemic, they are under threat, and we need to acknowledge that. I get the feeling that concerns like this are now often ignored, or even denounced as being conducive to the pandemic.
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Absolutely. People who look at China and go “authoritarianism solves the pandemic” are drawing absolutely the wrong lesson.
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“Cottage country is not expecting you, yet. Rural hospitals have limited capacity and resources, and you should consider where your health needs can be best met in an emergency situation,” the organization stated on their website.
Only a recommendation so far.
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“Bars are closing, how has Alko prepared? CEO says there will be enough drinks.” (I’m shit at translating sorry)
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Not sure if this article below refers to the same study you mention, but:
… I found the details therein useful including:
“DO NOT use alcohol and chlorine [bleach]-based disinfection methods,” they wrote. “These will remove the static charge in the microfibers in N95 facial masks, reducing filtration efficiency. In addition, chlorine also retains gas after de-contamination, and these fumes may be harmful.”
I have only been reading LiveScience for about two years, but am going to assume they are a reliable news source:
tl;dr
… different methods for sterilizing N95 masks, many of which were ineffective [and then this:]… “70 C / 158 F heating in a kitchen-type of oven for 30 min, or hot water vapor from boiling water for 10 min, are additional effective decontamination methods.”
I note their use of “decontamination” and not the word “sterilization” so heads up. IANAD and YMMV etc.
There’s been an effort in our neighborhood to sew mask covers for HCW who want to extend the lifespan of their increasingly rare and precious N95 masks. Nice to see the retiree neighbors pitching in with their sewing skills, blowing the dust off their sewing machines, etc. This video seems to have the best contours and least BS, and includes a sewing pattern with scale to get the measurements right.
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From a closed OxyContin factory.
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It would be a national crisis on top of the national crisis here if Vinmonopolet closed.
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I thought making moonshine was legal over there.
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“If COVID19 made your dick fall off you could get a vaccine at the ATM.”
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Decontamination is generally used to indicate “clean enough” but not the complete elimination of the contaminant. Sterilization on the other hand indicates the complete removal/destruction of a contaminant.
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Brewing, yes. Distillation, no. Friends here have told me that outside of the cities it is a matter of honor for men above a certain age to make their own, but as adventurous as I usually am with alcohol I wouldn’t touch Hjemmebrent with a 10 meter pole.
There are at least 2 distilleries here who have switched production over to hand sanitizers. If home distillation was legal (and the equipment as available as brewing equipment) I’d bet many people would be trying to make their own.
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Normally I would just roll my eyes at this, but I will not put anything past this bastardly bug.
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That’s the one! Thanks.
Note that they definitely rule out alcohol and chlorine, but also had doubts about EtO and vaporous hydrogen peroxide due to modification of the micro structures of the filter.
“Sterilization” is a word rarely used in these kinds of studies because it is extremely difficult to measure experimentally. The technical definition is 10^6 reduction of the target pathogen, or reduction of one million organisms per sample compared to the control. That’s difficult enough to inoculate a sample with that much bacteria and still recover that much on the control, much less with a virus. The recovered bacteria will grow on their own on a growth medium. Virus recovered from a sample have to be grown in cells or have to be detected directly. Designing an assay that is sensitive down to 10^-6 and still quantified at control levels is crazy difficult. The best I’ve seen is sensitive down to about 5x10^-5
Tl;dr “decontamination” vs “sterilization” is more of a limit of the experimental methods than a limit of the treatment technique.
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