Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

SoylentNews is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop. Only 18 submissions in the queue.
posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday March 17 2020, @11:52AM   Printer-friendly
from the sudden-impact dept.

A lot has already happened this year. SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2) which can cause COVID-19 (COronaVIrus Disease 2019) has been making headlines shortly after it was first reported. The first cases were reported to WHO (World Health Organization) on 2019-12-31. The virus spread. It began as an epidemic in China . The world watched apprehensively. Reports surfaced of cases in other countries and the the apprehension grew. For many folk, it turned to fear when it was upgraded to a pandemic: WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19 - 11 March 2020: "We have therefore made the assessment that COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic."

We have seen increasing efforts to stem the spread of the disease. Efforts have run the gamut. Closing of borders. Cancellation of sporting events. Conferences cancelled. Churches and other places of worship also closed. Schools closed. Panic buying of household goods and supplies. Supply chain disruptions affecting manufacturers. Restaurant, bars, and other such establishments closed. Work-from-home policies established and enacted.

The changes have been many, widespread, and continuing.

Reading about all the ways that "other people" have been affected is one thing. It seems different, somehow, when it hits closer to home and affects us directly. With many of our usual social activities curtailed or cancelled, it is easy to begin isolating and lose perspective. SoylentNews arose from a troubled period (the SlashCott) and a community has formed from that challenging period.

How have you been affected? Have you been infected? Had a family member or friend who was? Helped neighbors who are struggling? Hunkering down and isolating? (In a basement is optional.) Are you suddenly working from home and finding it challenging to manage your time? Still working on site, but now have a faster commute due to all the other people staying home? Catching up on watching TV shows? Reading more SoylentNews? How has your life changed?

From a somewhat different perspective, how have others helped you to cope... and how have you been able to help others? One of the potential impacts of social distancing is isolation and depression. I count myself fortunate, indeed, to have served this site for over 6 years and for all the people I have gotten to know, here. For those who may not be aware, SoylentNews has its own IRC (Internet Relay Chat) server. Feel free to drop in to #Soylent and just say "Hi!"

Social distancing is permanent when you're dead. So, practice good hygiene and stay safe.

Previously (oldest first):
China Battles Coronavirus Outbreak: All the Latest Updates
2019-nCoV Coronavirus Story Roundup
Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Roundup
Coronavirus Roundup
Coronavirus Roundup (Feb. 17)
Roundup of Stories about the SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus and COVID-19 Disease
COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2 - CoronaVirus) Roundup
CoronaVirus (SARS-CoV-2) Roundup 2020-03-12
Working from Home: Lessons Learned Over 20 Years


Original Submission

Related Stories

China Battles Coronavirus Outbreak: All the Latest Updates 84 comments

China Battles Coronavirus Outbreak: All the Latest Updates:

The virus thought to have originated in a Wuhan food market continues to spread as China steps up containment efforts.

[...] China is extending the Lunar New Year holiday for three days and enforcing strict containment measures in an attempt to curb the spread of a new coronavirus that has killed 80 people and infected at more than 2,700, most of them in the central province of Hubei where the virus first emerged.

The holiday season was due to end on Friday but will now be extended until February 2.

More than 56 million people in almost 20 cities, including the Hubei capital of Wuhan, have been affected by travel restrictions, introduced amid fears the transmission rate will balloon as hundreds of millions of Chinese travel during the Lunar New Year celebrations.

[...] Health authorities around the world are taking action to prevent a pandemic as more countries report cases. Confirmed cases have so far been announced in several Asiancountries, Europe and North America.

[...] The World Health Organization (WHO) has acknowledged the respiratory illness, which has been traced to the city of Wuhan, is an emergency in China but the organisation said on Thursday it was too early to declare the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.

Previously:


Original Submission

2019-nCoV Coronavirus Story Roundup 75 comments

Multiple Soylentils have submitted stories regarding the 2019-nCoV coronavirus which is believed to have originated in the city of Wuhan, China in December 2019. Rather than have a smattering of stories appear on the site, they have been gathered here in one story. Read on if you are interested; otherwise another story will be along presently.

Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) Roundup 62 comments

Editor's Comment: The figures and statistics regarding the novel coronavirus outbreak are changing daily and there are differences between reports from different sources. The latest figures, which we believe to be from a reputable source and which are being regularly updated, can be found at the worldometers. If you have a favourite site for updated information please leave a link in the comments.

Chinese Whistleblower Doctor Dies Due to Coronavirus

Li Wenliang: Coronavirus kills Chinese whistleblower doctor

A Chinese doctor who tried to issue the first warning about the deadly coronavirus outbreak has died, the hospital treating him has said. Li Wenliang contracted the virus while working at Wuhan Central Hospital. He had sent out a warning to fellow medics on 30 December but police told him to stop "making false comments".

There had been contradictory reports about his death, but the People's Daily now says he died at 02:58 on Friday (18:58 GMT Thursday).

The virus has killed 636 people and infected 31,161 in mainland China, the National Health Commission's latest figures show. The death toll includes 73 new deaths reported on Thursday.

An AC writes:

Wuhan hospital announces death of whistleblower doctor after confusion in state media

This story has been updated to reflect the latest statement from Wuhan Central Hospital, after confusion in state media reports.

Li died of the novel coronavirus in Wuhan in the early hours of Friday morning (local time).

"Our hospital's ophthalmologist Li Wenliang was unfortunately infected with coronavirus during his work in the fight against the coronavirus epidemic," the latest hospital statement read.

"He died at 2:58 am on Feb 7 after attempts to resuscitate were unsuccessful."

Earlier on Thursday night, several state media outlets had reported Li's death, following which Chinese social media erupted in profound grief and anger.

Coronavirus Roundup 24 comments

Coronavirus Roundup

Both c0lo and takyon write in with today's coronavirus collection of stories:

Why are children 'missing' from coronavirus outbreak cases?

So far, it seems that youth protects against the worst effects of 2019-nCoV.

The outbreak of a new coronavirus in China has killed more than 900 people, but one group has escaped with minimal damage: children.

Youth can certainly contract the virus. Among the infected are at least two newborns, according to Chinese health officials. But few children are among those sick enough to be diagnosed with the coronavirus, according to an article published Feb. 5 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. According to the data analyzed in that article — and numbers are changing quickly as the outbreak evolves — the median age of patients skews older, between 49 and 56 years old.

It's not entirely clear why children seem to be escaping the worst effects of the virus, dubbed 2019-nCoV. But a similar pattern holds for many infectious diseases, from the familiar, such as chickenpox and measles, to the newly emerged, including severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), doctors say.

Coronavirus Roundup (Feb. 17) 65 comments

This story is a roundup of several virus stories that were submitted over the past few days. This is a changing story, so some of what is posted below may have changed since the time of their originally being published.

What's in a name? One significant change is what the names are for everything. There is the question of what to call the actual virus and then what to call it when someone is infected.

Virus: The virus by itself is now officially referred to as SARS-CoV-2 (Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2). It was formerly known as 2019-nCoV (2019 novel coronavirus).

Disease: Those who have been infected by this virus are said to have a disease. The name of the disease is coronavirus disease (COVID-19) which is also known as 2019-nCoV acute respiratory disease.

More details are available on Wikipedia.

The six submitted stories are presented below.

NIH Official Says Coronavirus 'on the Verge' of Becoming Global Pandemic Unless Containment Improves

NIH official says coronavirus 'on the verge' of becoming global pandemic unless containment becomes 'more successful':

Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told CBS's "Face The Nation" that multiple person-to-person transmissions need to occur in multiple countries in order to reach the pandemic threshold.

[...] "Technically speaking, the [World Health Organization] wouldn't be calling this a global pandemic. But it certainly is on the verge of that happening reasonably soon unless containment is more successful than it is right now," he said.

Roundup of Stories about the SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus and COVID-19 Disease 105 comments

There have been several significant developments in the battle against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, and the resulting illness COVID-19. This story gathers a selection of stories from across the web.

WHO Director-General's Opening Remarks at the Media Briefing on COVID-19 - 24 February 2020

WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19 - 24 February 2020:

We're encouraged by the continued decline in cases in China.

Earlier today the WHO-China joint mission concluded its visit and delivered its report.

[...] The team has made a range of findings about the transmissibility of the virus, the severity of disease and the impact of the measures taken.

They found that the epidemic peaked and plateaued between the 23rd of January and the 2nd of February, and has been declining steadily since then.

They have found that there has been no significant change in the DNA of the virus.

They found that the fatality rate is between 2% and 4% in Wuhan, and 0.7% outside Wuhan.

They found that for people with mild disease, recovery time is about two weeks, while people with severe or critical disease recover within three to six weeks.

The team also estimate that the measures taken in China have averted a significant number of cases.

The report contains a wealth of other information, highlights questions for which we still don't have answers, and includes 22 recommendations.

[...] But the key message that should give all countries hope, courage and confidence is that this virus can be contained.

[...] The sudden increases of cases in Italy, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Republic of Korea are deeply concerning.

There's a lot of speculation about whether these increases mean that this epidemic has now become a pandemic.

COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2 - CoronaVirus) Roundup 159 comments

Many nations have begun to take special measures to address the problem of the spread of the COVID-19 virus over every continent. It would be pointless to report the details of all such measures; they are limited to each specific country and liable to frequent change as the situation develops. The USA FDA (Food and Drug Administration) have carried out what they describe as a "Supply Change Update", see the link below, but for others we suggest using a bit of web-search-fu to discover a site more appropriate to your own area of interest.

Worldwide, newspapers and other media need to maintain sales and subscriptions — many tend, therefore, to sensationalize their reporting. This has two undesirable effects: firstly it can result in data being quoted out of context to support the report they are making and, secondly, it tends to stress the possible effects of the COVID pandemic, should it be declared as such. In a comment elsewhere, I reported 2 tables which contain the most accurate figures we can find from a reputable source. They indicate the vulnerability of people to the virus by age, and any links to comorbidity (as far as they are known). There is no doubt that the virus poses a serious threat but it is not the same for all ages and many deaths are attributed to a combination of COVID-19 infection and other pre-existing conditions. For the latter it has not be proven that the virus was the sole cause of death; it is possible that the person would have died anyway. As postmortems have not been carried out in the vast majority of cases, the figures are open to misinterpretation. The WHO (World Health Organization) stresses that they will be unable to clarify these findings for a long time to come.

As it stands, for a person below the age of 70 with no other medical conditions, the chances of dying from a COVID-19 infection is less than 1%. That is still a large number of people at risk and the implications for every nation are significant. It is, however, much lower than some of the figures that have been quoted in the press. The figures for people over 70 and with other conditions cause the rate to rise quite sharply, and I would suggest that we all keep an watchful eye on the elderly or infirm members of our family and friends.

The majority of people will only suffer mild flu-like symptoms and will make a full recovery. - janrinok

Working from Home: Lessons Learned Over 20 Years 50 comments

Dustin Kirkland has written a blog post about telecommuting for over two decades. He goes into a lot of detail about his particular setup. He closes asking what other people's remote offices look like and what, if anything, he missed.

In this post, I'm going to share a few of the benefits and best practices that I've discovered over the years, and I'll share with you a shopping list of hardware and products that I have come to love or depend on, over the years.

I worked in a variety of different roles -- software engineer, engineering manager, product manager, and executive (CTO, VP Product, Chief Product Officer) -- and with a couple of differet companies, big and small (IBM, Google, Canonical, Gazzang, and Apex). In fact, I was one of IBM's early work-from-home interns, as a college student in 2000, when my summer internship manager allowed me to continue working when I went back to campus, and I used the ATT Global Network dial-up VPN client to "upload" my code to IBM's servers.

If there's anything positive to be gained out of the COVID-19 virus life changes, I hope that working from home will become much more widely accepted and broadly practiced around the world, in jobs and industries where it's possible. Moreover, I hope that other jobs and industries will get even more creative and flexible with remote work arrangements, while maintaining work-life-balance, corporate security, and employee productivity.

See similar article at the BBC.

How much, if any, can you work from home? What tools are on your "gotta have it" list? What cautions, suggestions, and resources do you suggest for your fellow Soylentils?


Original Submission

CoronaVirus (SARS-CoV-2) Roundup 2020-03-12 93 comments

Even though it has only been a short while since our last round-up there are 22 separate stories merged into this round-up. Many report duplicate news but, nevertheless, we have tried to distill the important elements of each submission.

Firstly, there is some confusion regarding the actual names that are reported for the virus, the disease that it causes, and names frequently seen in media reporting. From https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-020-0695-z:

The present outbreak of a coronavirus-associated acute respiratory disease called coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) is the third documented spillover of an animal coronavirus to humans in only two decades that has resulted in a major epidemic. The Coronaviridae Study Group (CSG) of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses, which is responsible for developing the classification of viruses and taxon nomenclature of the family Coronaviridae, has assessed the placement of the human pathogen, tentatively named 2019-nCoV, within the Coronaviridae. Based on phylogeny, taxonomy and established practice, the CSG recognizes this virus as forming a sister clade to the prototype human and bat severe acute respiratory syndrome coronaviruses (SARS-CoVs) of the species Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus, and designates it as SARS-CoV-2.

In order to facilitate communication, the CSG proposes to use the following naming convention for individual isolates: SARS-CoV-2/host/location/isolate/date. While the full spectrum of clinical manifestations associated with SARS-CoV-2 infections in humans remains to be determined, the independent zoonotic transmission of SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 highlights the need for studying viruses at the species level to complement research focused on individual pathogenic viruses of immediate significance. This will improve our understanding of virus–host interactions in an ever-changing environment and enhance our preparedness for future outbreaks.

There is much more information at the link provided.

Secondly, as this is a fusion of stories received over the last week or so take all quoted figures of casualties as possibly out-of-date. At the time of merging these stories (12 Mar 20) there have been 127,863 confirmed cases world-wide resulting in 4,717 deaths. 68,309 people have already recovered with the remainder either in self-imposed or advisory isolation, in basic hospital care and a relatively small number in critical care. The pandemic has affected 116 countries/regions. Source: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 - a graphical display produced by Johns Hopkins University (JHU).

Many countries have taken emergency measures to restrict travel or large gatherings of people. As this is a very fluid situation we suggest you refer to the media of any specific country in which you have an interest. President Trump has banned transatlantic air travel from countries in mainland Europe to the USA from Friday 2020-03-13 at 23:59 (no timezone stated) for a period initially of 30 days, and air travel within Europe is also significantly disrupted.

Meta: Changing Site UI to Make Long Stories Easier to Navigate -- Input Requested [superseded; see update] 58 comments

[20200320_184315 UTC: Update: Made the dept. line longer to better demonstrate space [un]availability.--martyb]

[20200320_202305 UTC: Update: Added topics: "/dev/random", "Code", "Software", and "Answers" topics to better illustrate their use of space in a story. --martyb]

[20200321_175412 UTC: Update: superseded by: Skip to comment(s) -- Second Try --martyb]

First: Please accept my best wishes to everyone during SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 / Coronavirus pandemic. Please take all necessary precautions to keep yourself and those around you safe!

Second: I should not have been surprised, but I must confess my admiration at how the SoylentNews community came together in support of each other in response to SoylentNews Community -- How has SAR-CoV-2 (Coronavirus) / COVID-19 Affected You? As of my writing this, there are over 300 comments! community++ This is what I had hoped for when SoylentNews started over six years (Wow!) ago, and so validates my giving of my time to this site!

Third: (and the focus of this story) our virus roundup stories are... long. An AC posted a comment: thanks to eds:

Thanks editors for pulling together this summary. SN for the win!

One comment--it is kind of long to scroll down through, to get to the comments. Perhaps next time some of the longer stories could be put inside the spoiler tag?"

This was quickly acted on by a member of staff, but that was not universally embraced as a "Good Idea". Both Soylentils, to my eye, had good points. If I am visiting an active story again, I have already read the story (both the "Intro Copy" and the "Extended Copy"). Why should I have to scroll through a wall-of-text to get to the comments? The suggestion of using <spoiler>...</spoiler> to bracket the contents of each of the merged stories seemed like a reasonable suggestion. But, when you have a hammer... Right idea, but maybe not quite the right tool.

Aside: If I am reading a review of, say, a movie, then a spoiler is an appropriate way to hide plot details from those who have not yet seen the movie. That is not the situation here. Why hide details of a story about the pandemic? Hmm. A good first try, perhaps, but it looks like we need something different in this case.

Idea: what if there were, say, a button at the top of the story that I could click and be brought immediately to the comment section of a story? Hey! I can do that!

Acknowledgements: At this point, I hereby express my sincere thanks to AndyTheAbsurd for constructing some CSS which allowed the conditional display of a button, and to FatPhil for his testing efforts. Thanks guys!

Read on past the break for details on the implementation and a request for assistance before I attempt to roll it out to production.

2020-03-25 Coronavirus (COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2) Story Roundup 85 comments

This story presents a roundup of a selection of our COVID-19, SARS-Cov-2, coronavirus story submissions. Some stories have been omitted because they were a duplicate, outdated, superseded, and sometimes just as a matter of keeping the size of these roundups managable. etc. (Before thinning, this story contained over 16,500 words (excluding HTML markup) and that excluded what is contained in this introduction.

If you are not interested in this coverage, then please ignore this story; another story will appear presently. Otherwise, please see the rest of the story below the fold:

2020-03-30 Coronavirus (COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2) Story Roundup 108 comments

This story is a merge of 30 story submissions. Given that it was well over 17,000 words of original source material (excluding HTML markup!), a great deal of pruning was performed to get it to a manageable size. I strongly encourage folks to read the linked articles for more information.

For latest statistics, and finer granularity, see https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/.

As of 20200330_151936 UTC, it reported these world-wide totals:

  • Coronavirus Cases: 743,081
  • Deaths: 35,347
  • Recovered: 157,046
  • Active Cases:
    • 550,688 (Currently Infected Patients)
    • 522,206 (95%) in Mild Condition
    • 28,482 (5%) Serious or Critical
  • Closed Cases:
    • 192,393 Cases which had an outcome
    • 157,046 (82%) Recovered / Discharged
    • 35,347 (18%) Deaths

Stories appear below the fold.

2020-06-15 Roundup of COVID-19 (SARS-CoV2, Coronavirus) Stories 153 comments

World-wide data as of: 20200615_140637 UTC:

total_count 8,028,325
closed_count 4,584,407
closed_deaths_count 436,277
closed_deaths_percent (10%)
closed_recovered_count 4,148,130
closed_recovered_percent (90%)
active_count 3,443,918
active_mild_count 3,389,380
active_mild_percent (98%)
active_serious_count 54,538
active_serious_percent (2%)
total_deaths 436,277

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
(1) 2
  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @12:03PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @12:03PM (#972143)

    I have to avoid seeing some of my family members right now since pneumonia would hit them particularly hard.

    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @06:15PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @06:15PM (#972382)

      Speak for yourself. I'm thinking about visiting my mother-in-law more often. (Grin.)

      • (Score: 2) by Subsentient on Tuesday March 17 2020, @08:20PM (1 child)

        by Subsentient (1111) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @08:20PM (#972453) Homepage Journal

        The zenith of boomer humor.

        --
        "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @11:26PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @11:26PM (#972542)

          I thought it was better than yours

  • (Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday March 17 2020, @12:10PM (5 children)

    by Bot (3902) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @12:10PM (#972145) Journal

    Discovered appr.tc installed a couple other shitty teleconferencing stuff, and basically in self imposed quarantine, because of a shooting tournament 500+ contestants from up to 200 km away using 10 rifles...

    How is life in isolation in a half deserted town? frankly it's been a blast. As all nice things it has to end eventually though.

    --
    Account abandoned.
    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by FatPhil on Tuesday March 17 2020, @12:52PM (4 children)

      by FatPhil (863) <reversethis-{if.fdsa} {ta} {tnelyos-cp}> on Tuesday March 17 2020, @12:52PM (#972162) Homepage
      I live at the very centre of the *extremely* tourist-focussed capital. Now we've started actually restricting movement, I've not seen a tourist since - erm, an hour ago, WTF!?!!??!? However, usually I'd see a hundred on the way back from lunch (about a 50m walk), so this is at least a 99% reduction.

      I paid off my ~200e tab at my local, now's not the time for pubs to be out of pocket, so I just paid twice what my tab was, I can burn through my credit with them when they re-open (that's my usual protocol, it leaves us on average with zero debt to each other). I only have 400 bottles of beer at home, I should survive...
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
      • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday March 17 2020, @02:48PM (3 children)

        by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 17 2020, @02:48PM (#972233) Homepage Journal

        Only 400 bottles of beer? No chairs? No computers? No bottle openers?

        • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:53PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:53PM (#972287)

          Only 400 bottles of beer? No chairs? No computers? No bottle openers?

          ...No toilet paper?

        • (Score: 5, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday March 17 2020, @06:55PM

          by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @06:55PM (#972408) Journal

          Give a man a beer, and he'll drink for an afternoon. Teach a man to brew his own beer, and you'll never see him again.

          --
          Washington DC delenda est.
        • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday March 18 2020, @10:30PM

          by FatPhil (863) <reversethis-{if.fdsa} {ta} {tnelyos-cp}> on Wednesday March 18 2020, @10:30PM (#972939) Homepage
          I have a cup with a taut piece of string which I use to communicate with the outside world.
          It's bloody useless, because of the hole for the string, the beer drains out of the cup.
          --
          Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
  • (Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @12:15PM (24 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @12:15PM (#972147)

    Beauty/Nail salons are all shut down. My wife is panicking.

    • (Score: 4, Funny) by FatPhil on Tuesday March 17 2020, @12:35PM (23 children)

      by FatPhil (863) <reversethis-{if.fdsa} {ta} {tnelyos-cp}> on Tuesday March 17 2020, @12:35PM (#972153) Homepage
      You've got a Dremel, right? What's the problem - step up, man, step up.
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
      • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @12:46PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @12:46PM (#972160)

        It's more the fear that the drapes will start to match the carpet.

        • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:17PM

          by RS3 (6367) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:17PM (#972255)

          > It's more the fear that the drapes will start to match the carpet.

          Oh the humanity!

        • (Score: 5, Funny) by Subsentient on Tuesday March 17 2020, @08:22PM

          by Subsentient (1111) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @08:22PM (#972454) Homepage Journal

          She's afraid of going bald, eh?

          --
          "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 17 2020, @12:49PM (10 children)

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @12:49PM (#972161)

        I had some marine epoxy mixed up, offered to paint it on my wife's cracked nail - don't know why she declined....

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @01:55PM (7 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @01:55PM (#972196)

          I've had really good luck on cracked nails using "New Skin, Liquid Bandage" -- it's sold as a replacement for band-aids (plasters in UK?) A few coats with ~5 minutes for each coat to harden does a good job. Comes in a small glass bottle with brush applicator in the top. Always seems expensive when I buy it, but lasts a very long time.

          https://newskinproducts.com/ [newskinproducts.com]

          Long ago I heard that the original instant/super glue, Eastman 910, was used in Vietnam as a quick way to seal up wounds, instead of stitches. Seems to be confirmed by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanoacrylate#Medical_and_veterinary [wikipedia.org] New Skin works along the same lines, but the adhesive isn't as aggressive--it won't bond your fingers together like super glue.

          • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday March 17 2020, @02:51PM (6 children)

            by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 17 2020, @02:51PM (#972235) Homepage Journal

            It's used in civilian medicine. I know it was used on my children. Not sure it was epoxy, but the doctor did glue them together after a cut. Far less invasive and frightening then stitches.

            • (Score: 4, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 17 2020, @02:58PM (5 children)

              by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @02:58PM (#972242)

              I work with "quasi clinical" sales guys sometimes. Once, one got drunk and did "the worm" a little too hard on his chin, split it open at ~10pm on a Tuesday... rather than seek mainstream treatment, we stopped in at a CVS and got a tube of superglue which he used to suture his still bleeding gash - healed up nicely in the long run and didn't look bad at all on Wednesday morning.

              --
              🌻🌻 [google.com]
              • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:25PM (4 children)

                by RS3 (6367) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:25PM (#972263)

                Egads! Doesn't that stuff cause great pain?

                • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:31PM (3 children)

                  by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:31PM (#972268)

                  The main issue with using super glue for wounds is that its not necessarily free of contaminants. The medical version is produced to not include contaminants that might lead to infection or other health problems. The product itself was invented to glue skin to skin. It's part of why it's so easy to super glue yourself to things if you're not careful.

                  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday March 17 2020, @04:57PM (2 children)

                    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 17 2020, @04:57PM (#972327) Journal

                    If medical grade super glue has had the contaminants removed, then shouldn't it cost less rather than more?

                    --
                    A 'midden heap' is a reserved area of memory that the Java GC simply refuses to service.
                    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @06:26PM

                      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @06:26PM (#972389)

                      This isn't Windows we're talking about, it's extra qa to ensure they don't get in there to begin with and tossing batches that are contaminated of need be, in addition to a lot more testing. What would be fine for an adhesive, might be dangerous when left sticking to a wound.

                    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 17 2020, @08:47PM

                      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @08:47PM (#972473)

                      That's the whole basis of the medical markup: sterilized products cost so much more because they've had the microbes removed.

                      --
                      🌻🌻 [google.com]
        • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday March 17 2020, @02:47PM (1 child)

          by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 17 2020, @02:47PM (#972232) Journal

          Hah, that's an old one. You were going to epoxy her to the anchor, then go for a sail?

      • (Score: 2) by black6host on Tuesday March 17 2020, @01:25PM (3 children)

        by black6host (3827) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @01:25PM (#972184) Journal

        It's sad. I had to answer yes to the dremel question. I bet many here would as well, lol.

        • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Tuesday March 17 2020, @01:42PM

          by deimtee (3272) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @01:42PM (#972189) Journal

          The original, the now sadly discontinued stylus, and a cheap Aldi knockoff that I use for rough work. Also in a box of old electronics stuff in the shed is a couple of tiny 12V mini dremel-type tools that I used to use to drill holes in circuit boards.

          --
          If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
        • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday March 17 2020, @02:39PM

          by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 17 2020, @02:39PM (#972225) Journal

          Yep! Any self-respecting hardware geek should have one.

        • (Score: 5, Funny) by hemocyanin on Tuesday March 17 2020, @04:21PM

          by hemocyanin (186) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @04:21PM (#972310) Journal

          Dremel? tsk. Just take a photo of her hand on a solid contrasting background, open in GIMP, from the image menu select mode/indexed then choose the B&W(1-bit) palette. After that remove the background with the magic wand selection tool (if the pic is a jpg, copy the image to a new layer, deselect the old image, and delete the background from the new layer). Save as PNG. Open in Inkscape , choose path/trace bitmap. Delete the bitmap leaving the path. You can edit the path with the "edit paths by nodes tool". Keep only the fingernail paths. Export as a new PNG. Open that new PNG in GIMP and paint in a depth map inside the finger nails. Open the depth map in Dmap2gcode ( http://www.scorchworks.com/Dmap2gcode/dmap2gcode.html [scorchworks.com] ), adjust your settings, put your wife's hand on your CNC router bed and clamp it down tight (there may be some pain involved while you work out the optimal settings), and do her nails.

          You could skip the Inkscape part and just make your depth map in GIMP, but if you take that extra step, you can use the paths created in Inkscape to trim her nails too. A 2d CAD program like qCAD (or the free version kicad) will handle this fine. CamBam runs on linux (with minor annoyances) just fine for generating the nail trimming gcode.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @01:43PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @01:43PM (#972190)

        Got the Dremel, but have a different nail-related problem.

        I get in trouble when she catches me using her sharp "house scissors" to trim my thick nails. I never got the "little scissors for nails" thing, those little scissors are flimsy, the pivot is loose, etc. I need leverage!

      • (Score: 2) by Rich on Tuesday March 17 2020, @05:12PM (1 child)

        by Rich (945) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @05:12PM (#972338) Journal

        There is cross-over between nails and nerds. I use a nail studio vapour & dust filter device for solder fumes extraction. It has a flexible trunk that stays in place and has LEDs for illumination on its front nozzle, which is very handy when working under the microscope on SMD with Flux.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @07:53PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @07:53PM (#972437)

          Ha. I used nail polish when I wanted large areas of copper on the circuit boards I was etching.

      • (Score: 2) by driverless on Thursday March 19 2020, @06:05AM (1 child)

        by driverless (4770) on Thursday March 19 2020, @06:05AM (#973075)

        Just don't try cutting them with a scythe. Lord Percy's brother had this brilliant idea of cutting his toenails with a scythe, and his foot fell off!

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 22 2020, @02:15AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 22 2020, @02:15AM (#973997)

          Small diagonal cutters work great on toenails. If you do it right, you won't have the snags that ruin your socks. They easily trim the heaviest nail.

  • (Score: 5, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday March 17 2020, @12:24PM (28 children)

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @12:24PM (#972148) Journal

    As far as we can tell, none of us have been infected. But who can say with a mystery disease that is totally fatal but can also strangely produce no symptoms at all.

    New York City shut down its schools on Sunday. We relocated to the inlaws' house in the Long Island suburbs. Wife and I are working remotely while the kids are set up with laptops in the dining room, working through grade-oriented curricula on Khan Academy. I structured their day on a Japanese school day, with calisthenics to start, bowing to Father Sensei to start class, and then working quietly at their places with occasional whacks from a bamboo rod when they lose focus. Small bowl of rice for lunch, then a lecture on how their poor marks are bringing shame on their family. Return to calligraphy, then martial arts instruction, with demerits given for crying or complaining.

    They are loving it.

    I am grateful to Soylentils for recommendations on online learning resources. We're going to move onto those after working through the Khan Academy. At the school board we recommended a month ago that the NYC Chancellor develop a contingency plan for online learning in case this progressed to a pandemic, but they have nothing except one homework packet per subject, per grade. PDFs, no answer key, no instruction, no checking of work. I suspect the Teacher's Union and the other unions are mortally afraid of being rendered obsolete.

    I stockpiled food a couple months ago when this started, well, augmented because growing up out west you tend to do that all the time anyway because you could get snowed in until spring, or the Russians would invade, or you'd have to hold out against tyrannical jackbooted government thugs, etc. But we're fine for the meantime and have been able to avoid the silliness at the stores. I am starting the garden out here soon, though, because who knows what's gonna happen.

    Happy Apocalypse, Soylent!

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 17 2020, @12:57PM (27 children)

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @12:57PM (#972165)

      totally fatal

      Wife read me a hero story about the ex chief of the New York fire department or some such who "met an untimely death at the hand of COVID-19, despite never having been exposed nor travelling out of the country..." Well, said hero - who did some pretty kick-ass high risk stuff in his life - was: 84 years old, with kidney failure and COPD, and lived in flipping New York (as if he couldn't have been accidentally exposed on the street...) I'd hardly call that an untimely death, even if COVID-19 was the trigger, it sounds like regular flu would have taken him down just as easily.

      As for myself, we had a houseguest from Oregon (flew out of SEATAC) last week, young guy who's home with some chills and fever now - don't know if he caught something on the way to us, or on the way home - and thanks to US levels of testing capability we have no idea what he has either. I've had bodyaches since he arrived, but... one of the purposes of his trip was to help us spread 15 tons of gravel on the driveway and I did a lot of raking in that job so... not really sure about these body aches, they seem like they might be viral, or maybe I'm just old and tired.

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 1, Troll) by khallow on Tuesday March 17 2020, @01:09PM (26 children)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 17 2020, @01:09PM (#972176) Journal

        and thanks to US levels of testing capability we have no idea what he has either.

        If you're that concerned, get him and you tested. Because US levels of testing do allow for that.

        • (Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 17 2020, @01:22PM (18 children)

          by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @01:22PM (#972183)

          Think, for a few moments, about the two possible futures: 1) pursue testing, and 2) ignore the testing "option."

          Under 1) what will be involved in getting the test? Start with exposure to the healthcare system and increased risk of both catching and passing on COVID-19 - not to mention considerable time, effort, and possibly expense. Test comes back negative, the whole thing was a negative exercise for the tested. Test comes back positive, the tested go into isolation, possibly enforced in some manner that is inconvenient and/or expensive, for 2+ weeks.

          Under 2) we're basically in self-imposed isolation for the next 2+ weeks anyway, Oregon kid lives in the boonies on a farm with one other person, and we're normally hermits in the city so stopping trips out for groceries and work meetings isn't hard at all. School is cancelled, so our major exposure vector has been cut off anyway.

          Who, exactly, benefits from the effort of seeking testing? More accurate statistics would be nice, but I personally don't gain any value from becoming one of those rare, accurate sampling points.

          --
          🌻🌻 [google.com]
          • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:21PM (16 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:21PM (#972257)

            The problem is that the Trump administration gutted the cdc in order to partially fund those billionaire tax cuts.

            I likely had it about the time that it first showed up in Washington, but I hadn't been to China and there was no testing available. I definitely would have been tested if it happened now, but that ship has sailed.

            We don't really know how many cases there are, I just know I had extreme fatigue, a fever and difficulty breathing. Could be it, but without testing, there's no way to know for sure.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:48PM (2 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:48PM (#972281)

              So why do you care now?

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:58PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:58PM (#972291)

                What makes you think I didn't care at the time? This was when the first reported case in the US had just happened and testing wasn't available. Nor was there the current level of public awareness of what the specific symptoms were. There was one known case and apart from living in Seattle and working near Everett, I had no reason to believe that it had already gotten to people around me. I know now that a cough is one of the less reliable symptoms, the fever + cold is a much better indicator that it's time to call a doctor and maybe get tested.

                From my perspective, it was a severe cold, albeit a weird one or possibly mild flu, but without testing being available, I couldn't afford to take the weeks off that would have been recommended, on the off chance that it was covid-19, not just a bad cold.

                It's easy to judge, but the reality is that in cases like this, we don't always have a lot of choices. I have nowhere near enough sick hours accrued in order to just take that kind of time off in case I've got a new virus, without at least having a positive test.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @04:54PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @04:54PM (#972324)

                As far as cutting the agencies go, of course I cared at the time. It's just that there were so many things that got gutted at the same time, the Democrats are up to their elbows in it and the GOP hasn't been listening no matter how many people complained.

                We don't all have the time and money to take off work to go protest when our elected officials refuse to do their jobs. The best we can do is vote them out of office. But, even then, they're the ones that are rigging elections so that they don't face any serious opposition.

            • (Score: 3, Informative) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday March 17 2020, @11:18PM (12 children)

              by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @11:18PM (#972537) Homepage

              Trump gutted the CDC because Obama transformed it into an organization that was concerned with pandemics to an organization that was instead concerned with dumb bullshit like school bullying and trans rights. Perhaps it could be rebuilt after a good housecleaning, so to speak.

              • (Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @11:52PM (11 children)

                by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @11:52PM (#972556)

                There's a special place in hell for people like you. There has been an epidemic of mass murder in the US and the CDC was the premier agency tasked with epidemiology. They've got some of the best.

                The fact that tools like you don't care, doesn't mean it wasn't the right thing to do. You and the GOP know perfectly well that the firearms and lack of regulations are the primary issues, which is why you oppose actually studying the problem. If guns weren't the problem, then what's the harm in studying it?

                What's more, if that were the issue, Trump could just appoint a head that would focus on the goal of studying diseases and epidemics, but he didn't do that. He cut funding. Tools like you are going to have even more blood on your hands as a result of this.

                • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 18 2020, @01:40AM (9 children)

                  by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 18 2020, @01:40AM (#972588) Journal

                  There has been an epidemic of mass murder and the CDC was the premier agency tasked with epidemiology.

                  What epidemic? Definitely warrants a funding cut there, particularly since the FBI is the premier agency for that particular epidemiology.

                  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @04:08AM (8 children)

                    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @04:08AM (#972638)

                    You people keep claiming it's a mental illness problem or really anything other than the guns problem. Which would make it something the CDC should be involved in. You can't have it both ways, either it's a mental health problem, in which case the CDC should investigate it, or it's a guns problem, in which case we should have better and more regulations.

                    The CDC is a completely reasonable place to study the problem. The real problem you degenerates have is that you don't want any research to be done because you know full well that the problem is the guns and related gear, not that Americans are worse people than in other parts of the world.

                    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 18 2020, @10:35AM (7 children)

                      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 18 2020, @10:35AM (#972694) Journal

                      You people keep claiming it's a mental illness problem or really anything other than the guns problem.

                      Well, yes. What's it to you?

                      Which would make it something the CDC should be involved in.

                      Why? Even if we were to grant the claim that is most medical, most mental illness doesn't come from an identifiable disease. Thus, that removes the pretext for involving the CDC.

                      You can't have it both ways, either it's a mental health problem, in which case the CDC should investigate it, or it's a guns problem, in which case we should have better and more regulations.

                      False dilemma. It's more a public policy problem. Most mass murder comes from the criminalization of recreational drugs.

                      • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @02:23PM (5 children)

                        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @02:23PM (#972758)

                        What it is is that you're a fucking hypocrite and people like you are why this continues to go on. You people claim, without any evidence, that this is not a guns thing, it's a mental health thing, but then refuse to allow any research that might uncover what's going on there. It's not just that you object to the CDC conducting the research, shitbags like you also refuse to allow any other government agency to investigate either and refuse to do anything that might help the situation.

                        Despite the troll mods I've received, the reality is that shitheads like you are why this continues, other countries suffer from mental illness and stress, in some cases at higher rates, but no country has as many mass murders as we do in the US. Japan has years where they have a total of 11 deaths from firearms of all types. That includes, suicide, accident and murder. In the US, suicides alone number well into the tens of thousands. Even if you adjust for the relative sizes of the populations of both countries, the rates in the US are multiple orders of magnitude higher. But, no, we can't conduct any studies, even though we know that guns are a large part of the problem. Other countries have taken steps to curtail their mass murder problems and have had good results by restricting access.

                        • (Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Wednesday March 18 2020, @02:59PM (1 child)

                          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 18 2020, @02:59PM (#972768) Journal
                          What's the CDC going to do here? Vaccinate us against guns?
                          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @04:50PM

                            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @04:50PM (#972812)

                            Hey, sterilizing Republicans may be a good idea in the long run but is definitely not something I can get on board with. They are still human, no matter how much Fox tries to turn them into zombies.

                        • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 18 2020, @06:21PM (2 children)

                          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 18 2020, @06:21PM (#972859) Journal
                          I notice also that you don't talk about guns, but rather things like demographics and mental illness. That indicates to me that we don't need studies from the CDC to determine that you need more clue.
                          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @09:28PM (1 child)

                            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @09:28PM (#972920)

                            Learn to read. We know that the biggest difference between us and other developed countries is the guns and relative lack of regulation about who can own them. Japan has a total of 11 gun related fatalities in typical years. Most cities in the U.S. have more.

                            But we can't conduct meaningful research to completely nail it down because of mouth breathers like you. If it's not the guns like morons like you think, then why not allow the research to be done?

                            Not that that's why funding was cut, funding to all agencies was cut.

                            • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 18 2020, @11:27PM

                              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 18 2020, @11:27PM (#972964) Journal

                              We know that the biggest difference between us and other developed countries is the guns

                              Perhaps you should learn to read what you wrote. As you said earlier, the biggest difference is a moderately higher death rate from firearm deaths, most which has absolutely nothing to do with the alleged "epidemic of mass murder" (which in turn doesn't make us safer during real emergencies like the present coronavirus genuine epidemic).

                              But we can't conduct meaningful research to completely nail it down because of mouth breathers like you. If it's not the guns like morons like you think, then why not allow the research to be done?

                              We conduct plenty of such meaningful research. You just choose to ignore it. Perhaps because that research doesn't confirm your biases.

                              Not that that's why funding was cut, funding to all agencies was cut.

                              Typical problem when too much is spent. And IMHO an indication that we have bigger problems than guns.

                      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 21 2020, @08:08PM

                        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 21 2020, @08:08PM (#973912)

                        Most mass murder comes from the criminalization of recreational drugs.

                        Of all the stupid things khallow has said, this has to be the stupidest. Aurora? El Paso? Ideology, wacko right-wing nut-job racist ideology. That, and graduate school.

                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @01:43AM

                  by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @01:43AM (#972591)

                  lawl

          • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Tuesday March 17 2020, @11:35PM

            by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Tuesday March 17 2020, @11:35PM (#972545) Journal
            Option 3 - go to China. Test results in 2-4 hours, and they seem to have it under control now with the sort of tracking/testing regime the US won't be able to do ever because people would refuse.
            --
            SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
        • (Score: 4, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday March 17 2020, @05:54PM (1 child)

          by DeathMonkey (1380) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @05:54PM (#972365) Journal

          I have a friend who tried to get tested. Presented with a very high fever and difficulty breathing. He's under 50, though, so they sent him home and told him to self quarantine.

          They absolutely are not testing anyone who asks despite Trumps lies to the contrary.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @06:28PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @06:28PM (#972390)

            They have limited test kits because Trump gutted the cdc for spending cuts. I'm not sure why in this instance there was no test done, but here's a real shortage and the lab might not have gotten a result in time to make a difference.

        • (Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday March 18 2020, @04:20AM (4 children)

          by edIII (791) on Wednesday March 18 2020, @04:20AM (#972643)

          Are you being sarcastic or serious? I've heard from official sources that our testing capacity isn't anywhere near what it needs to be. Certainly not that you can get tested out of concern.

          If you're serious, citation please.

          --
          Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 18 2020, @10:37AM (3 children)

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 18 2020, @10:37AM (#972695) Journal

            Are you being sarcastic or serious? I've heard from official sources that our testing capacity isn't anywhere near what it needs to be.

            When has that been an excuse to not even try?

            • (Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday March 18 2020, @07:38PM (2 children)

              by edIII (791) on Wednesday March 18 2020, @07:38PM (#972885)

              I'm not interested in excuses, just facts about testing availability.

              Everything I'm hearing leads me to believe that people who need testing, are not getting the testing. A lot of stories of people who believe they're sick, or that somebody else is, and they can't get the tests done even though they're in hospitals, clinics, etc. There is a lot of talk about backlog.

              Bottom line, is if you think you may be sick, self-isolate. That also requires testing at some point, and I'm not hearing that people are getting tested nearly as easily as the administration lies would lead you to believe. The top guy in the White House says that testing is inadequate and we don't have enough tests, in stark contrast to the Orange Anus's claims that the "beautiful" tests are widely available and free.

              My state and local government (California) is constantly saying that don't have the testing kits the administration says that they have. A lot of people contradicting each other instead of providing cohesive leadership, and the only anecdotal evidence I can collect around me paints a grim ass picture of inadequate testing.

              So if you have any official news I can use as a citation regarding the availability of the testing kits, please share. I'm not interested in blame, just pure facts regarding the numbers of testing kits, how many will be produced in a month, how many on hand, per state, etc.

              That information seems to be on lockdown, and all we get is bullshit theater from above.

              --
              Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @09:31PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @09:31PM (#972921)

                Must be nice to be rich. For most Americans that's not a viable option. Using sick days requires a doctor's note and most people don't have $400 in savings if they don't have sick days to use.

              • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 18 2020, @11:29PM

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 18 2020, @11:29PM (#972965) Journal

                I'm not interested in excuses, just facts about testing availability.

                One such fact is that the person in question didn't try to get tested.

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by AndyTheAbsurd on Tuesday March 17 2020, @12:26PM (19 children)

    by AndyTheAbsurd (3958) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @12:26PM (#972149) Journal

    I work in IT for a large newspaper in Florida.

    Today is Tuesday, which is typically a smaller newspaper anyway, but we're down to just two sections in the physical paper: "news" and "classified". We're combining the "sports" section with "news" most days because there just isn't enough sports news to justify running off a section. We've also got a special e-newspaper only section for readers of our online replica edition (really just PDFs of the pages that we printed, in a nice interface that lets you "flip" through them).

    Our website, which has a paywall that kicks in after five articles read, has a special "coronavirus" section that's tracking nationwide and statewide infections and death, which has been excepted from our paywall.

    We've all been asked to work from home as much as possible - not just the IT department but everyone across the entire company. Of course, we still need to produce a physical paper, which means some people need to be at our printing plant to run the presses; but most of the other jobs in the company don't require being in the office these days. We're meeting using Microsoft Teams, which has been okay but definitely has some noticeable degradation past about a dozen people in one meeting.

    --
    Please note my username before responding. You may have been trolled.
    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 17 2020, @01:06PM

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @01:06PM (#972172)

      How many newspapers are left in Florida? I remember when the Miami Herald was crashing and burning due to internet competition... about 20 years ago.

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @01:52PM (4 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @01:52PM (#972194)

      We're meeting using Microsoft Teams, which has been okay but definitely has some noticeable degradation past about a dozen people in one meeting.

      Much as I like to bash microsoft you can't blame Teams for that. The last time more than ten people in the same meeting accomplished anything was the Solvay conference in 1927.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @02:55PM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @02:55PM (#972239)

        You ought to know, since you were there!

        • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:08PM (2 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:08PM (#972251)

          The sad thing is, you probably think that was an insult.
          https://physicshorizon.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/solvay_conference_1927_crop.jpg [wordpress.com]
          If you don't recognize at least 20 of them you can hand in your geek card.

          • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday March 17 2020, @05:21PM (1 child)

            by maxwell demon (1608) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @05:21PM (#972340) Journal

            Maybe you were there because you were the photographer. :-)

            --
            The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @12:12PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @12:12PM (#972726)

              Did you see the list of intellectual titans who were there? Even as the mere photographer I would wear that badge with pride.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Tuesday March 17 2020, @02:33PM (7 children)

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 17 2020, @02:33PM (#972218) Journal

      Why is "sports" actually dignified under the banner of "news" ?

      In my dream world, sports would come in some section buried right after obituaries and horoscopes. (and common CPUs would have enough cores to make GPUs unnecessary)

      It pisses me off to no end that Google News puts Sports ahead of Science. Which has done more for humanity? In what way have sports "heroes" benefited society worthy of the fame and fortune lavished upon them?

      --
      A 'midden heap' is a reserved area of memory that the Java GC simply refuses to service.
      • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:04PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:04PM (#972247)

        Sports is the only news they can't fake because too many people have seen the event in person.

        • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday March 17 2020, @11:40PM

          by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @11:40PM (#972549) Homepage

          Surely there are cheatings, perhaps the leagues want certain teams to win for certain purposes like how the New Orleans Saints got royally fucked by the refs in critical games two years in a row, or when the Chargers had the best kicker in the league and he missed 4 kicks in a critical playoff game, but yeah, there's still enough free will involved to make watching sports fun as fuck. But sports are going to be out for a bit so when I feel comfortable sucking on my booze stash, it's going to be to shitpost on SoylentNews.

        • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Tuesday March 17 2020, @11:50PM

          by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Tuesday March 17 2020, @11:50PM (#972554) Journal
          The Black Socks Scandal?
          --
          SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @05:46PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @05:46PM (#972359)

        You're obviously clueless about how this human body is what sustains the brains inside the bodies.

      • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday March 17 2020, @11:36PM (2 children)

        by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @11:36PM (#972546) Homepage

        Sports are a distraction that was traditionally allowed to continue during hard times because of their positive contribution to country morale.

        Last I checked every single sport except for UFC was cancelled outright for a good 2-3 months. It was pretty sad to hear the tone of the commentators gradually become more and more grim from "This is total bullshit and will blow over in a week" to "the leagues will continue to play without fans in the stands" to "Well, teams are *Cough Cough* being quarantined in their locker rooms and tested *Cough Cough*" to finally today "Well, looks like we're all going to be teleconferencing and doing interviews from our homes."

        I'm appropriately stocked up but it's looking like San Diego will be implementing a mandatory San Francisco-style quarantine-in-place where you're not allowed to go anywhere unless perhaps to the store to get essentials. The mood in the stores is somewhat more nervous but as of today there was still plenty of everything despite panic buying, and outdoors life goes on in the streets: People are walking their dogs, tons of cars on the highways, groups of cyclists are cycling etc. Only 0.5% of people I see outdoors are wearing masks and/or rubber gloves.

        I got really fucking lucky because I got furloughed late last year, and now due to these events my furlough became unemployment outright - the full award of $1800/mo for sitting on my ass and fucking off all day. So not only did I get a head start with this but if this hysteria continues then I'll have a good legal excuse for an automatic renewal. Let's hope it doesn't continue too long though, I want to enjoy my fucking summer.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 21 2020, @08:13PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 21 2020, @08:13PM (#973915)

          I got really fucking lucky because I got furloughed late last year,

          So, they discovered your SoylentNews posts, eh?

          • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday March 21 2020, @11:32PM

            by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday March 21 2020, @11:32PM (#973967) Homepage

            Let's just say that Boston Dynamics tolerated it because I made magic with interpretations beneficial to the company. When both of us decided that we could no longer tolerate each other, we made an amicable split.

            And that will set up new inside-jokes about which big name I will work for next. I am looking for work, of course, but unfortunately nobody's hiring right now.

    • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Tuesday March 17 2020, @11:37PM (4 children)

      by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Tuesday March 17 2020, @11:37PM (#972548) Journal

      Of course, we still need to produce a physical paper

      Don't bet on that. 90% of the papers that existed at the turn of the century are dead and gone.

      --
      SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
      • (Score: 2) by AndyTheAbsurd on Saturday March 21 2020, @01:34PM (3 children)

        by AndyTheAbsurd (3958) on Saturday March 21 2020, @01:34PM (#973816) Journal

        Sorry for the late reply, just got back on the site.

        90% of the papers that existed at the turn of the century are dead and gone.

        I suspect that number's somewhat higher than reality (though just a gut feel, I don't have anything to back it up), and also the shift to online news was still happening back in 2000/2001. Plus there has been a lot of industry consolidation since then (Gannett, Hearst, etc. buying up smaller papers and "consolidating" them into larger operations or just selling off their assets).

        We're seeing a 15% drop in number of papers produced for the same date compared to the previous year for weekdays, Sundays are more like 10% to 12% drop. This is remarkably consistent. I give the physical paper three to four more years before it's simply not worth printing, trucking to our distribution centers, and delivering to homes anymore. At that point, we'll be at about 52% of our current subscriber base. COVID-19 being more deadly to older folks may accelerate this somewhat.

        In the meantime, we're working on increasing our digital subscriber numbers so that perhaps we can continue to exist as a journalistic outlet even if there's no longer a need for printing plant. (No idea how that building is going to get repurposed, though.) Local journalism - stories about "hey the local hospital administration fucked up" or "the mayor of this local town got caught doing cocaine" - seems to still be very important to people, and seems to be the thing that mostly drives subscribership.

        --
        Please note my username before responding. You may have been trolled.
        • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday March 21 2020, @11:55PM (2 children)

          by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Saturday March 21 2020, @11:55PM (#973969) Journal

          No idea how that building is going to get repurposed, though.

          Repurposed as a COVID-19 hospital, a morgue, a homeless shelter, a jail for the swamp (hey, I can dream, right?)

          There used to be several free and paid local papers here - they're all gone. Plenty of consolidation among the majors, with former independent papers reduced to a section in the acquiring paper, and losing their editorial independence at the same time, end eventually just being part of the regular paper's reporting - no separate section.

          The only way you'll have eyeballs a decade from now is if you have an online presence. And the way to do that and stay relevant is to open up reporting to volunteers in the communities where you don't have the staff to cover everything. Which, unfortunately, will undercut regular reporters jobs if not done rignt, but can preserve them if reporters do in-depth follow-ups and investigative reporting. And it will create editor jobs for some of those reporters.

          --
          SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
          • (Score: 2) by AndyTheAbsurd on Sunday March 22 2020, @03:38PM (1 child)

            by AndyTheAbsurd (3958) on Sunday March 22 2020, @03:38PM (#974151) Journal

            Repurposed as a COVID-19 hospital, a morgue, a homeless shelter, a jail for the swamp (hey, I can dream, right?)

            Given the contamination from industrial solvents, it's probably not a place where you can house the living for very long. And it's 200,000 square feet so it's probably too big for cooling down to morgue temperatures.

            The only way you'll have eyeballs a decade from now is if you have an online presence. And the way to do that and stay relevant is to open up reporting to volunteers in the communities where you don't have the staff to cover everything.

            We tried that for a bit a few years back; it was an abysmal failure. I wasn't involved in that particular project, so I'm not sure if the time just wasn't right for it or if it wasn't promoted in appropriate places or if it's just that it turns out that having actual journalists (with actual journalistic ethics around things like accurate reporting and being accountable to the community) ends up being more important than just having content for people to point their eyeballs at.

            We'll continue trying new things, until we either find something that works or go out of business. (Hopefully I'm not still there if the latter happens.)

            --
            Please note my username before responding. You may have been trolled.
            • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Sunday March 22 2020, @06:57PM

              by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Sunday March 22 2020, @06:57PM (#974192) Journal

              Triage. Those who smoke will probably die, since their lungs are already damaged. And now that the "underlying conditions" are mostly from being obese or morbidly obese (think type two diabetes), and the cardio-vascular problems that go with that, you won't have to worry about them living long.

              They may even enjoy the solvent fumes.

              Okay, I;m being a bit cynical, but it may come to that - "death houses", where you stack those who you know will die because there aren't enough ventilators or specialized health care personnel and you have to devote your resources to those who can most likely be saved with the tools and personnel you have.

              "underlying health conditions" is a good excuse to do aggressive triage, and past a certain point that's the only sort of triage you want to be doing.

              --
              SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by turgid on Tuesday March 17 2020, @12:29PM (8 children)

    by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 17 2020, @12:29PM (#972151) Journal

    I have dispensation to work from home already, but I've currently got a dose of the Common Cold, which is starting to clear up. I was thinking I might dig up my lawn and plant some potatoes.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @12:40PM (4 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @12:40PM (#972158)

      You may then already be one of the millions that will get covid 19 but not suffer complications. If you don't go to a doctor, your case never shows up in the current count published in the media.

      • (Score: 2) by turgid on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:26PM (3 children)

        by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:26PM (#972264) Journal

        I was at the doctor last week about an underlying medical condition (for which I was prescribed some new and better medication) just before the cold hit properly. I haven't had a high temperature or a cough as such.

        • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:36PM (2 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:36PM (#972271)

          The lack of a fever is an indicator that it's probably not covid 19. From what I understand 99% of people that test positive for it have a fever. Personally, I wasn't able to be tested because I hadn't been to China and there were no test kits, but I had fever, fatigue and difficulty breathing. As I wasn't tested, I can't say for sure that I had it, but I've never had that cold before in my life. Normally, I get the same cold symptoms and when I take musinex, the mucus clears from the lungs and I can breathe clearly, in this case, I gave up on medication as it was doing thing.

          If you look at the symptoms, the fever is the only thing that everybody seems to get, the coughing and rest of it seems to vary quite a bit. In other words, if you haven't got a fever, you'd have to be in the 1% of the people that got it that didn't wind up with a fever.

          • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @07:42PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @07:42PM (#972430)

            Three things:

            1) 90%, not 99%.

            2) There's a major bias there. Two of the most common things that get folks to go to the hospital are blood and fever. If they're not coughing up blood and don't have a fever, I think it's safe to say that at *least* "most" are not going to go to the hospital. And the hospital for their part is also probably going to be less likely to test anybody that shows up without a fever.

            3) When you look at the large spot testing of groups who have a suspected infection (e.g. - a traveling delegation where one member ultimately tests positive) the numbers seem very different than that 90%. The vast majority of people end up completely asymptomatic. That's what makes this such a nasty beast to deal with. The perfectly healthy guy beside you with no coughing, no fever, and no unwellness whatsoever - he could be spreading corona while the guy that looks (and sounds) like he's on death's door that everybody's keeping more than a few feet from - he might just be having a particularly nasty cold, maybe with some aggravating factors like allergies.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @08:40PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @08:40PM (#972468)

              The numbers on that seem to still be in flux, it wasn't that long ago that the estimate was closer to 99%, but I see it's dropped quite a bit since I looked it up yesterday. Whether there's a bias or not, we have to assume that the numbers are relatively accurate, in this case, it's as I suggested possible but unlikely that he's got it if he hasn't got a fever as the fever is by far the most common symptom here. It's definitely not sufficient, but it is abnormal to have this and not have a fever.

              AFAIK, that's mostly the US where people don't get tested for things unless they're on death's door, but the numbers themselves are based upon data from more than just the US, the best numbers would be from Korea where they've done massive numbers of tests on hundreds of thousands of people, they'd be in the best position to know, not the US where it costs $1500 to get tested.

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by Gaaark on Tuesday March 17 2020, @10:50PM (2 children)

      by Gaaark (41) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @10:50PM (#972520) Journal

      Get some potato boxes: plant them in dirt, then when the greens come up, bury them almost completely in more dirt. Keep doing this. Finally, after greens have wilted/gone brown, HARVEST!
      You'll get lots of potatoes in a small area, with large potatoes on the bottom and smaller ones on the top. Get a few of them going and you'll have potatoes all winter (harvest them in small batches for potatoes in late summer/fall).
      Harvest them, leave them in shade for a while (just brush major dirt off but do not wash them) them put them gently into a box or something and leave in cool, dry, dark area.

      I might get a second box going this summer, and am looking into growing sweet potatoes.

      --
      --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @01:29AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @01:29AM (#972584)

        This looks like fun, thanks for posting.

        When we grew potatoes in my mother's garden, a farmer friend advised using blood meal (dried blood from a slaughterhouse) for fertilizer. It's very high in nitrogen, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_meal [wikipedia.org]

        Worked great, we had wonderful potatoes that year.

        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Gaaark on Wednesday March 18 2020, @02:32AM

          by Gaaark (41) on Wednesday March 18 2020, @02:32AM (#972604) Journal

          Yeah, I definitely have to look more into proper fertilization: I put compost on my asparagus, and planted clover which is supposed to put (?nitrogen?...my memory sucks) into the soil for them, but my potatoes I kind of just let go. Probably because it was fresh soil. This year I might just do something...

          --
          --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
  • (Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Tuesday March 17 2020, @12:37PM (137 children)

    by SomeGuy (5632) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @12:37PM (#972155)

    So do we have an automated death counter for this thing?

    The state department of transportation has a counter for roadway deaths this year. Last I checked it was around 200, but oddly nobody is panicking about staying off of roadways.

    The media really has everyone whipped in to good old fashion panic. Not that it it isn't serious, but the perspective is way off.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @12:55PM (4 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @12:55PM (#972163)
      • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday March 17 2020, @02:58PM (2 children)

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 17 2020, @02:58PM (#972243) Journal

        HOLY CRAP - 275 MILLION!?!?!?!??!

        Never mind, I was looking at the wrong window.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @06:08PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @06:08PM (#972374)

          Runaway never was very good with numbers. Tends to read the thermometer upside down.

          • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday March 17 2020, @10:52PM

            by Gaaark (41) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @10:52PM (#972521) Journal

            Man: i hate reading those thermometers when they're still up your ass.
            Upside down and messssssssyyyy!!!
            :}

            --
            --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
      • (Score: 2) by Unixnut on Tuesday March 17 2020, @07:18PM

        by Unixnut (5779) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @07:18PM (#972417)

        I got sent this one, which I use now: http://covidly.com/ [covidly.com]

        JS is required, but quite nice, but shows per country risk breakdown, and graphs too

    • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday March 17 2020, @12:56PM (19 children)

      by FatPhil (863) <reversethis-{if.fdsa} {ta} {tnelyos-cp}> on Tuesday March 17 2020, @12:56PM (#972164) Homepage
      WHY BOGROLL??!?!?!??!? I mean, seriously, why bogroll? Soup, pulses/rice/pasta, meats to freeze, ready meals, yes, they all make sense. But WHY BOGROLL!??!?!

      In Soviet times, there often wasn't bogroll here, and /Pravda/ sufficed (reported first-hand independently by friends in their 30s).
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @01:09PM (16 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @01:09PM (#972175)

        And if TP why not regular paper towels?

        I was greatly annoyed yesterday at having to go to the grocery store for emergency survival in case headless government policy results in closure of the supermarkets. Dried vegetables and drinking water for me.

        It is an entirely man made and avoidable crisis.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @06:53PM (14 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @06:53PM (#972407)

          Shhh, don't start a run on paper towels too!

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @07:18PM (13 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @07:18PM (#972419)

            Did I forget to mention napkins?

            • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday March 17 2020, @10:54PM (12 children)

              by Gaaark (41) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @10:54PM (#972523) Journal

              also, tampons!
              0----
              Plug that hole, bud!

              --
              --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
              • (Score: 2, Informative) by barbara hudson on Tuesday March 17 2020, @11:48PM (11 children)

                by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Tuesday March 17 2020, @11:48PM (#972552) Journal
                More women are opting to avoid periods entirely [knpr.org]

                More women in their 20s and 30s are choosing contraception that may suppress their menstrual cycles, says Dr. Elizabeth Micks, who runs an OB-GYN clinic at the University of Washington in Seattle. "In general, I think views are changing really rapidly," Micks says. "That need to have regular periods is not just in our society anymore."

                With traditional birth control, a woman takes a hormone pill for 21 days to stop her cycle. Then she takes a sugar pill for a week, so she can have what looks like a period.

                But Micks says, physiologically this isn't a real period at all. And it isn't necessary. "There's absolutely no medical need to have a period when you're on contraception," she says.

                So why have women been having all these "fake" periods for decades? "It's actually a historical thing," she says.

                One of the doctors who helped invent the pill was Catholic. He thought the pope might accept the pill if it looked like women were having periods.

                But the Catholic church never came around to the pill. And when doctors actually asked women if they wanted to have these fake periods, many said they didn't.

                Today women have many options if they want to try to suppress their cycles. There's the hormonal IUD, an arm implant and a hormone shot. They can also take some types of birth control pills continuously.

                --
                SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
                • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday March 18 2020, @02:43AM (1 child)

                  by Gaaark (41) on Wednesday March 18 2020, @02:43AM (#972608) Journal

                  I just don't trust companies testing: too easy for them to hide/fudge things.
                  I don't trust the pill: the original pill was found, finally, to cause Cancer, so they modified it (lowered the dose, I think). So then the new pill was safe until they found, finally, to cause Cancer in smokers, so they modified it (lowered the dose again?).

                  But the NEW pill is SAFE!

                  I just don't trust companies...or the government.

                  --
                  --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
                  • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by barbara hudson on Wednesday March 18 2020, @03:11AM

                    by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Wednesday March 18 2020, @03:11AM (#972617) Journal

                    It wasn't cancer -it was embolisms for smokers . And it was not estrogen, but progesterone, that is the risk factor for cancers.

                    Estrogen by itself is a real wonder drug. Now that we know the Women's Health Initiative study was hugely flawed (poor methodology, math errors, an unrepresentative cohort, and used horse estrogen with over 50 impurities in it that were grandfathered in under obsolete rules), as long as you're not a smoker, the rule is no longer "the lowest dose for the shortest time". It's "as much as you need for as long as you want."

                    Real human estrogen has only been around since 1094, and it's taken a while to work its way into the system.

                    Lowered risk of heart attack, better muscle tone, better balance because of better muscle tone (even without an increase in exercise), and other benefits. But it's going to take a generation of doctors dying to change attitudes.

                    --
                    SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
                • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @04:11AM (8 children)

                  by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @04:11AM (#972639)

                  The reality here is that there's no medically sound reason why women should be taking pills that screw with the hormones of their entire body to avoid getting pregnant. India has had a birth control pill for decades now that only affects the estrogen receptors needed to prevent pregnancy and none others.

                  • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by barbara hudson on Wednesday March 18 2020, @12:13PM (4 children)

                    by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Wednesday March 18 2020, @12:13PM (#972727) Journal
                    Ever heard of "my body, my choices "? Who are you to say that there is "no reason?" BTW, if anyone had asked me, I would have suggested they ask their doctor for only estrace or the generic equivalent if they're going to suppress periods. Same as HRT for menopause. Progestin has a cancer risk.
                    --
                    SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
                    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @02:29PM (3 children)

                      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @02:29PM (#972761)

                      Yes, I have, but that doesn't change the fact that it's not medically sound to do that. People do a lot of things with and to their bodies that aren't medically sound. You've got those fat acceptance twats that say that it's a person's right to be hundreds of pounds over weight and for people to pretend like that's healthy. Yes, it's their right to be massively overweight, but that doesn't make it a medically sound thing to do and it doesn't mean that there aren't consequences.

                      In this case, you're messing with the endocrine system on a body-wide basis. You'd have to be a great fool to think that there aren't going to be problems associated with doing so. The female body evolved to have fluctuating hormone levels, the male body as well for that matter, we've only been providing women with these pills for a few decades now. That's not a long time.

                      The other thing is, how many of these women are really making these decisions based upon all available evidence? Few, if any, of them know that there are pills available in other countries that prevent pregnancy without all the side effects that are typical of the pills available in the US.

                      • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday March 19 2020, @04:45PM (2 children)

                        by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Thursday March 19 2020, @04:45PM (#973239) Journal

                        I spent some time thinking about this whole problem of you not going outside yesterday, and I noticed you complained that you didn't want to write from home because of distractions. That's understandable, but if those distractions are other people who are going in and out, unless you're locked in a separate room with a separate bathroom, and preparing and eating meals separately, you'd be better off getting out once in a while no matter what.

                        Also, you mentioned that your daughter works as a nurse at the CLSC, and that she also is going out volunteering to help people. She's either been exposed or will be exposed, and shouldn't be doing that if it involves going into other people's homes. And she should keep away from you.

                        However, half the population has underlying health conditions, across all age groups. Half the people who have diabetes or high blood pressure don't know it yet, but these are both risk factors, even for 20-somethings.

                        I'm lucky in that I live alone with my two dogs. The place I volunteer at has gone way past the recommendations, and I approve. While the government says we can allow a certain number of clients in, we don't. We're in lockdown. Volunteers and staff only. Small numbers only. Hand sanitizer on entry and exit, latex gloves after sanitizing hands, keeping a distance from each other.

                        Nobody is required by the government to stay in 24/7, despite what the web site seems to say. You can go out once in a while for exercise, as long as you keep your distance from other people and don't touch things that others might have touched (or carry hand sanitizer with you).

                        Most of the population are going to get it no matter what, if the models are correct. One of the things that determines both severity and fatality is the initial viral dose load. People who have been in contact with many infected people come down with a much more severe case, and much higher death rates. So by practicing reasonable social isolation precautions, we can reduce the load when we finally get hit - we may not even notice it. That 80% who get a mild case include a huge chunk of the population who have underlying health conditions, and that includes those who don't even know they have underlying conditions.

                        So what else can we do to reduce both severity and fatality rates? The #1 factor is whether you smoke or not. Don't smoke, and don't expose yourself to second-hand smoke or other lung irritants.

                        As for estrogen, the default configuration for all fetuses is female. It's only when the SRY gene kicks and and causes testosterone to be released that you'll see visible sex differentiation. Estrogen improves health, causing the same healing properties for damaged muscle tissue that testosterone and other steroids, but with fewer side effects.

                        Interesting fact - when men get older, their testosterone level drops, and their estrogen level rises, until it exceeds that of women the same age. As for menopause, it's as unnatural as blue eyes. Blue eyes are from a genetic mutation between 4,000 and 6,000 years ago in a single human. Menopause occurs in humans and two out of ~81 species of whales, and not many other mammals. It's far from the norm, as are the drastic drop in estrogen that comes with it.

                        Women don't need to use birth control pills that contain progestins - estrace and generic variants have been around for almost 3 decades. Estrogen-only HRT works. It gives both a better quality of life and a longer life. Fewer strokes, fewer heart attacks, what's not to like? Unless you're a smoker, in which case you're fucked anyways, but your body, your choices.

                        I'm not aware of any countries that ban the use of estrace and it's generic forms. Estrogen by itself can prevent pregnancy, and it's women who are talking to each other and demanding that their doctors end unnecessary periods. Kind of understandable when women experience more than 6 years "waving the red flag."

                        If males had the same problem, this would have been attended to long ago. Same as if men got pregnant, the morning-after pill would be available at the local beer store along with a case of 24 and a pizza.

                        --
                        SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
                        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 19 2020, @07:47PM (1 child)

                          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 19 2020, @07:47PM (#973280)

                          Most of that doesn't seem relevant to my post. The active ingredient is Ormeloxifene, here's a link to an article, https://lovematters.in/en/birth-control/types-of-birth-control/saheli-the-only-non-hormonal-birth-control-pill [lovematters.in] .

                          It's one thing to take hormones in order to bring out of control hormonal fluctuations under control and another to try and completely eliminate them because they're inconvenient. Men also have hormonal fluctuations, it's just not as sever and even there, I'd be hesitant to try and eliminate them as we don't entirely understand the consequences of messing with such a complicated system.

                          • (Score: 1, Offtopic) by barbara hudson on Thursday March 19 2020, @11:10PM

                            by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Thursday March 19 2020, @11:10PM (#973334) Journal

                            We're not talking birth control here - we're talking ceasing having periods completely, not causing a failure for a fertilized ovum to implant in the uterus. So birth control pills aren't really relevant.

                            --
                            SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
                  • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday March 19 2020, @12:24AM (1 child)

                    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Thursday March 19 2020, @12:24AM (#972991) Journal

                    Please do expand on this. It's not of direct interest to me for obvious reasons but still sounds like something this country should be getting in on.

                    --
                    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
                    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 19 2020, @07:44PM

                      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 19 2020, @07:44PM (#973279)

                      Here's a link to a short article on it. https://lovematters.in/en/birth-control/types-of-birth-control/saheli-the-only-non-hormonal-birth-control-pill [lovematters.in]

                      The main reason we don't have it is that women aren't demanding that they be given better options. And, in some cases, they're taking the pills because of the side effects on their bodies. The pills have been in use for nearly 30 years now and any problems with them are pretty well understood.

                      Personally, this also doesn't directly affect me as I'm a man and my wife and I are old enough that there isn't such a thing as an unwanted pregnancy for us. Once we've had one or two, I'll likely get snipped, or more likely, we'll be old enough that we won't even be able to have more .

                  • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday March 20 2020, @12:00AM

                    by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Friday March 20 2020, @12:00AM (#973344) Journal
                    This is for avoiding periods entirely [theguardian.com], not birth control. There is no medical benefit to having a period, and periods increase risks of everything from anemia to ... well, just read the article.

                    With recent confirmation that periods have no health benefit, an increasing number of women are using contraception to stop them altogether

                    Some women say we should celebrate our periods, but others feel trapped in a cycle that can be unpredictable, inconvenient and unpleasant.

                    For some, it is about bringing an end to debilitating pain or dark thoughts. For others, it is as simple as being liberated from the sinking realisation that you need a tampon – but you left them in your other handbag.

                    When a new wave of feminist authors and activists are calling on women to embrace their periods, the idea that some do not want a monthly bleed and are seeking to avoid having them altogether can seem radical.

                    The technology is there, in contraceptives. They don’t only prevent pregnancy. A recent drop in tampon sales has been linked to women using contraceptive methods that stop, or lighten their periods. About a fifth of women using the contraceptive implant no longer bleed (myself included), while many who take contraceptive pills without a break often achieve the same result – and they are not the only methods.

                    The impact can be life-changing. “I started taking the mini-pill purely for the fact it would stop my periods,” says Jaimi Kendall, 25, from Exeter. “For years, I had extremely heavy periods that would drag on for eight weeks or so and left me severely anaemic to the point where I started experiencing pulsatile tinnitus. Not having periods any more is a blessing.”

                    She is not alone. Catriona Clarke, 25, from Cambridge, was thrilled when she realised she could stop having periods thanks to her contraceptive pills. “My periods weren’t even that bad,” she says, “just uncomfortable and a mess. And, given how expensive period products can be, an expensive mess.”

                    Let’s be clear: removing stigma around a normal bodily function should be celebrated. Proposals to end the tampon tax, distribution of free sanitary products, better education for boys as well as girls, and the introduction of menstrual leave are all positive moves towards ensuring women are not held back by their periods. But seeing them as a fundamental part of the body’s rhythm – something to be endured, or even celebrated each month (the author Maisie Hill writes in her book Period Power of embracing their natural high) – is only one side of the story. The other is a tale of pain, bloating, bad skin and mood swings. Many women feel trapped in a cycle that can be unpredictable, inconvenient and unpleasant.

                    Menstruation is the process by which the body sheds the lining of the uterus and unfertilised egg, triggered by fluctuating levels of the hormones oestrogen and progesterone. Not having periods does not create a “backlog”, nor are they necessary to “cleanse the body”. Menstruation can, however, exacerbate incapacitating physical or mental health problems including endometriosis and depression; it can also be distressing or problematic for people with gender dysphoria. According to a recent survey of 7,500 women by Public Health England, half those aged 16-64 reported menstrual issues in the last year, rising to 75% of those aged 16-24.

                    Dr Jane Thomas, a consultant gynaecologist at Homerton university hospital in London, says that having so many periods is a modern phenomenon: historically, women would spend much of their time pregnant or breastfeeding (which can delay the return of periods). “It would be a minority of people who had a couple of children only and menstruated all the way through their lives.”

                    So, if women do not want a period, is there a medical reason that they should? Many may be surprised to learn that the short answer is: no.

                    While Thomas notes that regular periods are an indicator of good health, Dr Anne Connolly, the clinical lead for Women’s Health for the Royal College of GPs, says there is no health benefit to them: “Ninety-nine per cent of women don’t need to bleed.”

                    Judith Stephenson, the Margaret Pyke professor of sexual and reproductive health at University College London, says the same. “In some ways, it seems like one of God’s great design faults … It is not helpful to have these periods – in fact, if you don’t have them, one of the biggest benefits would be reducing iron deficiency anaemia.”

                    The option not to have periods is rooted in hormonal contraceptives, which use synthetic versions of oestrogen and progesterone to interfere with the menstrual cycle. This prevents pregnancy (meaning the decision to stop bleeding is not compatible with trying for a baby), sometimes with other effects – including lightening bleeding or stopping it altogether. Many new forms of contraception – including the contraceptive implant and injection, intrauterine system (the hormonal coil) and the progestogen-only “mini” pill – are designed to be taken continuously, meaning many users can safely go months or years without any bleeding.

                    The benefits can be myriad, from saving money to mitigating health problems, including polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), in which there is a risk of problematic cells building up in the lining of the womb. While regular natural periods prevent this buildup, and thus can be beneficial for the condition, so too are hormonal contraceptives (even if they stop periods), because they keep the lining of the womb thin.

                    The idea that bleeding is necessary has been fuelled by decades of advice that women on the combined pill should take a break for one week a month. This results in a withdrawal bleed, or “fake” period (which is why the combined pill is often referred to, somewhat misleadingly, as “regulating” periods). Some claim that this was contrived by the pill’s inventors to make it acceptable to the Catholic church; others argue it was chiefly a practice to reassure women that they were not pregnant and to give them a break from the high doses of hormones.

                    Many new forms of contraceptive pill are designed to be taken continuously without any monthly break.

                    Experts say women today take this seven-day break as a hangover from earlier practice, even as the makeup and dose of the combined pill has changed over time. When, in January, the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare (FSRH) updated its guidelines to make it clear there were no health benefits to taking the break, many women felt they had been cheated into having a monthly bleed.

                    Thomas says doctors have known for years that the combined pill could be taken without a break, but many women I spoke to said that they had no idea until they read of the change in guidelines. For 27-year-old Cinzia DuBois, from Edinburgh, the impact was huge. When she was forced to take a gap in her pill, the week before and after her bleed would often leave her feeling suicidal. “I’ve attempted to kill myself four times, so it’s not a light matter,” she says. “Having to go through this every month was exhausting for both myself and my partner.” Since she stopped taking a break in her pill, “I haven’t had a single suicidal episode and have found my spells of depression much less frequent than they were and not as extreme,” she says.

                    For the more than 3 million women who take the combined pill in England, the FSRH announcement made no monthly bleed a possibility. But not everyone is comfortable with that idea, or of ditching natural periods. Holly Grigg-Spall, the author of Sweetening the Pill: Or How We Got Hooked On Hormonal Birth Control, says that while she understands why some women might choose not to bleed, there is limited research on the long-term impact of continuously taking the combined pill. Telling women they can stop their periods without giving them all the information could reinforce taboos around bleeding, she says. “It is really just an exaggerated form of saying to women keep your periods quiet, hide them, be secret about them, don’t talk about them, don’t show your tampon when you walk to the bathroom, your boyfriend doesn’t want to know about your periods.”

                    Some have also raised concerns that bleeding is a sign that a woman has not conceived. But Thomas is clear that the only way to be sure you are not pregnant is a pregnancy test: “You can definitely bleed and be pregnant. So having a period or withdrawal bleed from the pill isn’t a guarantee.” Experts also stress that stopping periods won’t affect future fertility. “When you stop taking the hormones, they get flushed out of your system very quickly, and your periods will return to what they were before you started taking the pill,” says Connolly.

                    It is, however, easier to reliably stop bleeding with some contraceptives than with others. The majority of women taking methods that contain synthetic versions of both oestrogen and progesterone can achieve that outcome, but it is less predictable for some methods containing synthetic progesterone only. Some women experience bleeding that is regular, irregular or prolonged (albeit often light); it differs between methods. About 20% of women on the contraceptive implant no longer bleed, compared with 68% on the injection at two years of use. Advertisement

                    Some women may also prefer not to use hormonal contraceptives, as they can bring unwanted side-effects such as fluctuations in weight and mood. Some methods can also slightly raise the risk of certain cancers, including breast cancer (although they reduce the risk of others, including womb cancer).

                    Thomas agrees that more research is needed into the long-term effects of taking hormonal contraception. However, she and other experts say there should be greater awareness of the benefits of contraceptives beyond preventing pregnancy, from tackling acne to alleviating premenstrual symptoms.

                    Stephenson says the option of having periods is naturally addressed in consultations about contraception choices, but should be talked about more widely. “It is absolutely a sensible discussion in its own right,” she says. Earlier this year, she co-launched ContraceptionChoices.org, a website that recommends contraceptive options to women on the basis of what they say matters to them – including whether they want to have periods.

                    Some do, some don’t, each for a variety of reasons. But perhaps the most empowering approach for all women is simple: to let them choose for themselves. Sophie, 24, from Glasgow, no longer bleeds thanks to the contraceptive implant, and says it has made a huge difference to her mental health – she couldn’t be happier. “Just because something is natural, I don’t think it in any way means we should have to go through it,” she says. “Different things suit different people, and that’s fantastic.”

                    --
                    SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
        • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday March 17 2020, @11:47PM

          by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @11:47PM (#972550) Homepage

          Yeah, the whole TP thing is pretty much disgraceful and will be a joke on us for decades to come, like the "burgers" insult.

          And the TP/paper towel divide wasn't the only stupid thing I saw in the stores. For example disinfectant wipes were wiped out(heh) but the disinfectant sprays and paper towels were everywhere. There was plenty of good produce but people were scrambling for the cans and TV dinners as if the power was going to go out tomorrow.

      • (Score: 2) by choose another one on Tuesday March 17 2020, @02:14PM (1 child)

        by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 17 2020, @02:14PM (#972205)

        > In Soviet times, there often wasn't bogroll here, and /Pravda/ sufficed

        Trouble is in these days of online everything actual physical newspaper could quite easily be as scarce as bog roll.

        • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday March 18 2020, @03:18AM

          by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Wednesday March 18 2020, @03:18AM (#972620) Journal

          No more Sears catalogue in the outhouse. No more Sears. No more outhouse.

          "Got any tp in your stall?
          "Nope. You?"
          "Got change for a $5?"
          "Sorry, I'm from Canada. The only thing smaller is coins - I've got a Loonie and two Toonies ".

          - And now you understand the Three Shells" in Demolition Man, grasshopper …

          --
          SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday March 17 2020, @12:57PM

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday March 17 2020, @12:57PM (#972166) Journal
    • (Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @01:03PM (8 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @01:03PM (#972169)

      I think there is, something like 3000 for SARS v2 and 40000 for the normal flu, worldwide. Probably on CDC.gov.

      The real problem is the politicians now. While the health experts have a goal of preventing contagion for any disease no matter how minor, it is the politicians that are really causing a crisis now with their travel bans, visit bans and operating bands. Now everybody is at risk of losing their livelihood, not just the elderly and infirm that may have gotten complications from the virus. The politicians need to moderate the ideal on perspective, otherwise we would have 5 mph speed limits on highways and not get anywhere.

      What I'm really missing here is something like a local restaurant association calling for an injunction against arbitrary bans. But everybody is afraid of social and legacy media shitstorms. Nobody seems to have the backbone anymore to stand by a rational balanced decision anymore in the face of people making money and building their profile on FUD and supposed concern for your health.

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday March 17 2020, @01:28PM (2 children)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 17 2020, @01:28PM (#972186) Journal

        The real problem is the politicians now.

        [...]

        But everybody is afraid of social and legacy media shitstorms. Nobody seems to have the backbone anymore to stand by a rational balanced decision anymore in the face of people making money and building their profile on FUD and supposed concern for your health.

        Then the real problem probably isn't politicians, but this hysteria.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @02:28PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @02:28PM (#972216)

          Then the real problem probably isn't politicians, but this hysteria.

          Yes. But politicians affected with hysteria promulgate hysterical rules that hurt the sane too.

        • (Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:01PM

          by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:01PM (#972245) Journal

          So, instead of a pandemic, we have a dempanic?

      • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @02:08PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @02:08PM (#972201)

        > rational balanced decision...

        I'm all for rational decisions. In the face of exponential growth (have you personally looked at how fast this goes?), various groups have been running infection-rate models.

        To re-state your comment, I hope that the model runs (with reasonable input data) are being used as part of the rational decision process that calls for shutting things down. As I'm seeing this, we are right on the edge, may not have shut things down soon enough.

      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday March 17 2020, @02:41PM

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 17 2020, @02:41PM (#972226) Journal

        Nobody seems to have the backbone anymore to stand by a rational balanced decision

        Nothing is wrong with a bit of rational balanced decisions, in moderation.

        --
        A 'midden heap' is a reserved area of memory that the Java GC simply refuses to service.
      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:40PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:40PM (#972273)

        I can't help but notice that you didn't mention the numbers of individuals that contracted both. The flu kills many people every year in large part because it infects a large number of people each year. SARS never spread to the same degree that this one or the flu did. We're treating this like it could be like that nasty strain from the middle east which killed about a third of the people that contracted it, but we don't know if it's going to be that bad.

        What we do know from Italy is that without taking these actions, the virus could flood our hospitals to the point where they have to make literal life and death decisions about who gets treatment and people with other injuries/diseases may be displaced. And that's in Italy, they've got much better infrastructure for public health than we do where many people are going to try and avoid treatment for fear that it will bankrupt them.

    • (Score: 5, Informative) by drussell on Tuesday March 17 2020, @01:04PM (52 children)

      by drussell (2678) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @01:04PM (#972171) Journal

      So do we have an automated death counter for this thing?

      Sure, although it is not truly "automated" since they have to compile data from multiple sources.
      The most trusted authoritative worldwide source is at Johns Hopkins:

      https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6 [arcgis.com]

      The media really has everyone whipped in to good old fashion panic. Not that it it isn't serious, but the perspective is way off.

      Is it, though? The death rate is trending towards closer to 10% than the 1% that many were hoping for.

      Prior to three or four days ago, it was hovering around 5.8%, but is now steadily increasing. As of this morning, of the 86094 cases where there is an outcome (either someone dies or they recover,) 7167/86094 = 8.25%

      Edit: New, latest numbers: 7330/87566 = 8.37%

      The other 96521 (now 97501) confirmed cases have no outcome yet, but cannot simply be lumped in as if they will all recover to give the 1 - 3.x% mortality rates that have been panned to try not to instill panic. That's not how you calculate the CFR, though.

      • (Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Tuesday March 17 2020, @01:30PM (51 children)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 17 2020, @01:30PM (#972187) Journal
        Reported cases != cases. For Italy, for example, their high deaths per cases probably means that they're greatly underreporting cases.
        • (Score: 2) by choose another one on Tuesday March 17 2020, @02:10PM (46 children)

          by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 17 2020, @02:10PM (#972202)

          Italy's healthcare system has collapsed in some areas, based on some reports they are already triaging based on age (and probably pre-existing conditions), and old = no treatment, at all. Not enough oxygen, tubes, or ventilators. When people are dying who would recover on oxygen for a day or so, your CFR is going to go way way up.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:08PM (5 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:08PM (#972248)

            Disorganized? Ineffective? Corrupt? Italy?

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:43PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:43PM (#972275)

              More likely, that's just how quickly it hit. They were one of the first countries to be hit hard outside of Asia and had little time to put in place quarantines and social distancing measures to slow the rate at which it spreads.

              As bad as it is there, at least people will get tested without having to worry about being presented with a $1500 bill on top of whatever the cost of being treated is.

            • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @07:52PM (2 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @07:52PM (#972435)

              That has little to do with the problem.

              At the latest numbers more than 0.5% of Italy's entire population has been diagnosed with the virus. And it continues to spread rapidly. And those who have been diagnosed are going to be a fraction of all people with it. No medical system anywhere is meant to operate with this sort of influx of mostly new cases. Do you know what I mean on that last point? This doesn't mean it's like 0.5% of Itality's population getting sick - it's everybody who's already getting sick/injured/etc at a normal rate, suddenly with 0.5% of the entire nation's population added on to it.

              No country's medical systems anywhere are going to be able to deal with this because meaningfully and genuinely (as opposed to theoretically) preparing for this sort of eventuality would just be an absurd waste of time and resources 99.99% of the time. We just hit that 0.01%.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @10:06PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @10:06PM (#972500)

                Yes, they typically do drills for this sort of thing, but there's really only so much you can do. Getting additional medical doctors and nurses along with supplies like ventilators and this short of a time frame is a massive challenge no matter what you do. If you're lucky enough for it to be contained to a region, then you can import from elsewhere, but during a pandemic, there is no elsewhere. At least not unless you're towards the end of the epidemic and can borrow previously used equipment after the rates have returned to normal elsewhere.

              • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday March 18 2020, @07:43AM

                by FatPhil (863) <reversethis-{if.fdsa} {ta} {tnelyos-cp}> on Wednesday March 18 2020, @07:43AM (#972673) Homepage
                You prepare for that eventually by being prepared to do something that prevents that eventuality.
                Blocking people from China at the borders would have slowed their growth down massively, and given them many more weeks to prepare and further manage policy. *Politics* could have fixed this, not stocks of medicine or hospital beds.

                Almost all of the cases we have here in Estonia came from Italy. *3 weeks* after I was considering Italy a festering pit of toxins the worst cluster of cases arrived inside our borders, and yes, it was a planeload of plague that arrived. If we'd have said "no entry from Italy" when I thought it was sensible 3 weeks earlier, we'd be fine right now, instead we have the 5th highest infection rate in the world. All Italy's cause, and all Estonian idiots' fault. And now the whole country is suffering because of a few idiots' insane decisions.

                One of my businesses, a brewpub which I've invested much of what I've ever owned into, might go bust because of this disaster.
                --
                Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
            • (Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday March 17 2020, @08:53PM

              by PiMuNu (3823) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @08:53PM (#972476)

              Note they are predicting a 30-fold excess in UK of intensive care unit cases to beds, if no preventative action is taken. That means "health system collapses".

          • (Score: 2, Disagree) by quietus on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:27PM (39 children)

            by quietus (6328) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:27PM (#972265) Journal

            Those reports are in all likelihood very much exaggerated. The popular prejudice is that Italians are not organized, and chaotic, and these reports play on that.

            But: (a) the region where the outbreak has focused is about the richest region in Italy, (b) Italy's economy is the second most important economy in the EU, (c) the ICU capacity was still not reached last I checked, during the weekend, and (d) other EU countries (i.e. Germany) have been transferring medical supplies to Italy.

            There was a video posted on my national public broadcaster: a helicopter view, circling an Italian hospital; the sound: a nurse with broken voice, telling that people are dying on the floor (crying), doctors are deciding who's going to live and who is going to die.

            That's not reporting: that's emotion. That's hype.

            • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @05:50PM (6 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @05:50PM (#972363)

              Italy's health care system was ranked 2nd in the world by the World Health Organization. The United States is 37th.

              Italy's medical services have had to perform reverse triage for several days, now as the number of patients has exceeded the number of ventilators. This means telling the 90 year old, that she must be left to die, so a 30 year old can be saved. A very shitty position to be in, and it should not be minimized.

              • (Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday March 17 2020, @06:25PM (2 children)

                by Bot (3902) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @06:25PM (#972387) Journal

                Italian health system varies depending on the region, some areas of world class excellence, some with ants populating the patients bed. The problem, in all areas the personnel is stretched. The equipment, or so it seems, too. So when unexpected numbers turns out, it becomes a war scenario.

                --
                Account abandoned.
                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @05:04PM (1 child)

                  by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @05:04PM (#972823)

                  Jesus Fucking Christ you dipshits just NEEEEEED to shit on universal healthcare in order to not admit you live in a 3rd world healthcare system. Well, unless you're wealthy, then you can afford 1st world status.

                  Dipshit.

                  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @06:10PM

                    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @06:10PM (#972854)

                    Hey dumbass armchair internet big guy:

                    The guy is Italian, I would expect him to know and have seen a thing or two about Italian health care.

              • (Score: 2) by quietus on Tuesday March 17 2020, @08:25PM (2 children)

                by quietus (6328) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @08:25PM (#972457) Journal

                It should not be exaggerated, either. So let's take a look at some numbers.

                The latest (March 17) figures [rainews.it] state that there are currently 26.062 corona patients in Italy; 2060 of them are in intensive care. How much should this stress the Italian hospital system?

                Italy had a population of 60.4 million people in 2017. In that same year, it had 261.530 [europa.eu] nurses and caring professionals working in 1.063 [statista.com] hospitals.

                Italy has 262.5 [europa.eu] hospital beds per 100.000 citizens. I couldn't find any numbers for ICU beds in Italy, but if we take the lower of the lowest number in Europe, the UK (3.5-7.4 [nih.gov] beds per 100,000 inhabitants), that should still work out to 2,100 ICU beds for Italy.

                They are also certainly not laggards in medical technology: scoring in the top 5 for CT, PET and MRI scanner deployments [oecd.org]. That indicates that the number of ICU beds is probably much higher too: in Belgium, there are about 150 ICU beds per million inhabitants: in Italy terms that would come down to about 9,000 ICU beds in total.

                In short, we've got 100 nurses per corona patient, the limit in the number of ordinary ICU beds has not yet been reached, and this is a hospital system which is at the forefront in terms of technological infrastructure.

                As a final note, a video akin to the one I mentioned in my previous post, has been published today: this time however, the critical situation was not in an Italian hospital. The setup was identical though: a crying nurse, claiming disaster in the intensive care department. The location, this time: the Saint-Luc hospital, in Brussels. For your info: there are a little over 1,700 intensive care unit beds in Belgium, and there's a current total of 360 corona patients in hospital -- 58 of them, I believe, are in intensive care.

                • (Score: 3, Insightful) by drussell on Tuesday March 17 2020, @09:12PM (1 child)

                  by drussell (2678) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @09:12PM (#972478) Journal

                  For your info: there are a little over 1,700 intensive care unit beds in Belgium, and there's a current total of 360 corona patients in hospital -- 58 of them, I believe, are in intensive care.

                  How many empty ICU beds are there in Belgium?

                  Presumably some of the total beds are occupied by patients with conditions other than coronavirus.

                  The question is how many are actually available vs. how many you will need for a given speed of outbreak and trying to keep it below the system-breaking-point.

                  • (Score: 2) by quietus on Tuesday March 17 2020, @09:35PM

                    by quietus (6328) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @09:35PM (#972486) Journal

                    Indeed. I've got no numbers for that, but all non-critical treatments have been suspended. One can assume that the vast majority of ICU beds are, in normal times, intended for post-surgery patients. As there are little to no surgeries anymore, the number of available ICU beds must be quite substantial. As a conservative estimate, take 60 percent: that's still about 1,200 ICU beds available, for 58 patients (currently), after 3-4 weeks of infection spread. Take the extreme case, with the number of intensive care patients doubling every day from now on: that would come down to about 5 days runway for that number. We know from Chinese research that after day 8, the patient either has died, or survives, and can be moved to ventilation only. So we need another 3 days runway, or about 900 additional beds.

                    That might become the reality. Current reality, though, is that we -- and the Italians -- currently not have reached that maximum capacity, and there's no need for triaging, nor is it a disaster situation, yet.

            • (Score: 1, Flamebait) by barbara hudson on Wednesday March 18 2020, @12:00AM (28 children)

              by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Wednesday March 18 2020, @12:00AM (#972559) Journal
              Anyone over 65 doesn't get a respirator even if they need it. They die. Triage can be a bitch, but with limited supplies, warehouses being converted to wards for the sick on camp cots, 12 years in jail if you break quarantine, panic is advised.
              --
              SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
              • (Score: 3, Informative) by quietus on Wednesday March 18 2020, @05:04AM (27 children)

                by quietus (6328) on Wednesday March 18 2020, @05:04AM (#972647) Journal

                I take it then that you can read/write and speak Italian, and have some sources to back this up?

                • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday March 18 2020, @07:41AM (26 children)

                  by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 18 2020, @07:41AM (#972672) Journal

                  Barbara doesn't believe in providing the evidence to back up her claims - she believes that the onus is upon you to find the evidence to support her statements. Trust me, don't go there, you might as well bang your head against a brick wall.

                  • (Score: 2, Troll) by barbara hudson on Wednesday March 18 2020, @12:03PM (25 children)

                    by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Wednesday March 18 2020, @12:03PM (#972721) Journal
                    That's right - I'll tell you where to look, but you have to move your fat fingers to do your own research. There's plenty of reports on the guardian. Go do your own research. You should not take anything I or anyone else says on the Internet as true. And you should not assume that any link anyone provides is without bias. Do your own research , make your own judgment calls. Anyone who tells you to do otherwise is pushing a personal agenda (which is exactly what you are doing now).

                    You've been caught out, now own up to it.

                    For everyone else following along wondering WTF this is about, the poster I'm replying to keeps insisting that it is somehow my duty to provide links, specifically to a claim that Iber was stupid enough to think that they could implement their self driving cat code in JavaScript, because JavaScript coders are cheap and plentiful . I told him to look on a discussion about Uber layoffs on slashdot a year or two ago, but he keeps giving excuses as to why he won't do that , makes up shit as to why it probably won't be satisfactory anyway without actually looking at it first, and doesn't get that it's not my problem if he can't find other proof.

                    I'll say it again - people proffer biased links that confirm their narratives all the time. I prefer to tell people to do their own research and make their own judgments, same as we do all the time in the real world, where we either trust the statement or do research. If I tell you there was a car accident outside, you can either believe me or go look for yourself. But don't demand that I provide a link to prove it because you're too lazy to go outside to look. If I tell you that bananas are on sale this week, don't go all Internet lawyer and demand a link - it's no skin off my nose if you miss out on the bargain. You can get off your ass and go check it out in person, or not. I am under no obligation to go home and get the store flyer and send you pictures.

                    Just because you can't find out something without it being in the first 10 results in a search engine doesn't mean it isn't true. There's plenty on the Internet that search engines won't expose. A search engine web interface that only returns the top 1,000 results is gonna miss a LOT. Sometimes you have to do actual research, sometimes you have to get hold of someone familiar with the problem, sometimes you have to accept that not everything is accessible by a search engine.

                    That's life. Janrinok either can't or won't accept that, and keeps wanting to play Internet lawyer and internet cop at the same time . I told him where to look, " rel="url2html-21324">https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=36486&page=1&cid=970177#commentwrap> here is his refusal to do so. How is that my problem? Hint - it's not.

                    --
                    SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
                    • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Wednesday March 18 2020, @12:07PM (6 children)

                      by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Wednesday March 18 2020, @12:07PM (#972723) Journal
                      fixed link to the whiner's excuses [soylentnews.org] My apologies.
                      --
                      SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
                      • (Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday March 18 2020, @03:26PM (5 children)

                        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 18 2020, @03:26PM (#972776) Journal
                        So you bother to link to that, but not supporting evidence?
                        • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday March 19 2020, @05:02PM (4 children)

                          by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Thursday March 19 2020, @05:02PM (#973247) Journal

                          That's right. I link to what I want, when I feel like it. I am under NO obligation to do other people's research on topics that are external to here.

                          And people who stupidly insist that I have to, and try to play both internet lawyer and internet cop, show me the RFC that requires me to, or STFU.

                          The bone of contention was what language Uber was trying to implement their self driving car software in. There's a simple solution - let him tell us what they are "really using". After all, by his own self-professed internet cop/internet lawyer standards, he's made a claim and now he has to back it up with links.

                          On a side note, I'm really, really disappointed that the latest "Call of the Wild" (the one with Harrison Ford) used a man in a suit instead of a real dog. No wonder it looks creepy in close-up, according to early reviews.

                          --
                          SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
                          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday March 20 2020, @09:02PM (3 children)

                            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday March 20 2020, @09:02PM (#973621) Journal

                            I am under NO obligation to do other people's research on topics that are external to here.

                            Nobody is under anyone's obligation to do any research at all. But it saves time if you do the research instead of dozens of readers. It's also support of your assertions that you can readily provide.

                            • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday March 20 2020, @09:17PM (2 children)

                              by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Friday March 20 2020, @09:17PM (#973627) Journal

                              As I've pointed out, there is always a bias from any citation anyone makes. I'll cite the CBC and the Guardian, someone else will cite LGF and the Daily Stormer. It's not always possible for me to provide citations, in some cases because my eyesight goes so I have to give up, in other cases, because it's not indexed by search engines (such as comments).

                              In such cases, people are free to either do their own research (always a good thing imo). After all, they might find something they wish to share that would have been ignored if they had just followed a link.

                              There's a balance, and I do provide links when I can, but if everything suddenly goes completely illegible, I can't, so I won't. And in other cases, such as COVID19, I referred them to the guardian site because there is simply no link that won't be obsolete within hours, sometimes within minutes. Not like opinion pieces, which can hang around for days.

                              --
                              SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
                              • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 21 2020, @01:35AM (1 child)

                                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday March 21 2020, @01:35AM (#973704) Journal

                                It's not always possible for me to provide citations, in some cases because my eyesight goes so I have to give up, in other cases, because it's not indexed by search engines (such as comments).

                                Even when that happens, don't rub salt in the wound by citing [soylentnews.org] the disagreement instead.

                                • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Saturday March 21 2020, @02:25AM

                                  by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Saturday March 21 2020, @02:25AM (#973712) Journal
                                  Scroll up a few parents to the link you just gave. See that janrinok was the one who started the whole mess with an off-topic post taking a cheap shot at me. He's been going on in several threads from several articles, claiming that it is my obligation to supply links. There's no such obligation anywhere on the Internet.

                                  I think it's a good idea to encourage people to do their own searches; I don't think it's a good idea for anyone to try to outright lie because they can't stand that someone disagrees with their need for everyone to conform to a non-existent standard. The lying - about never visiting slashdot because he doesn't want to be accused of plagiarism - and in the next sentence stating that he checked 3 years worth of headlines was wacko behaviour over something that nobody else gives a crap about - not even Uber.

                                  To then claim he didn't visit the site because he used a python3 script to scrape the headlines is an outright lie. Visiting the site can be done with a browser, a script, or whatever.

                                  The whole was misdirection theatre because I never claimed it was in any story, but in the comments, which google probably doesn't index anyway. More dishonest argument.

                                  And then to lie by saying I said it was "in the Guardian Newspaper " - well, I have never even seen a copy of the newspaper. Just the site and app. And I never ever said it was in the Guardian. Just another attempt to put up a smokescreen of misdirection.

                                  There's something not right about all this behaviour. It's obviously personal for him.

                                  But emailing me at 1:10 in the morning, rather than posting his latest attempt at justifying his gonzo behaviour, that really took it up a notch. It was cowardly. A stupid attempt to avoid public scrutiny of his latest "justifications."

                                  Most people don't look into the psychological aspect of this behaviour - I find it fascinating. Why does someone need to play internet cop and insist I have a duty to post links? Do they do that in real life - pick nonsense fights over nonsense questions? Is it a form of aggression? Or just a need for "everything following the same routine?" (a la aspies and people with OCD, or is it something else?)

                                  Is there a way to run experiments to probe what lies behind it? Would it even be ethical without informed consent? Or can the same data be gleaned by observation only? The tech world is not normal, but observing how abnormal behaviour diverges from the norm can give us a better understanding of both worlds. But is even that ethical without informed consent ? And will such knowledge of itself alter the behaviour , like how people are more likely to wash their hands when someone else is also in the washrooms?

                                  People are fascinating.

                                  --
                                  SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
                    • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday March 18 2020, @12:24PM (14 children)

                      by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 18 2020, @12:24PM (#972730) Journal

                      There's plenty of reports on the guardian. Go do your own research.

                      So presumably you have found the links - but you still refuse to provide them? Thank you for your invaluable contribution.

                      • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday March 19 2020, @03:58PM (13 children)

                        by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Thursday March 19 2020, @03:58PM (#973212) Journal

                        The situation is changing hourly, and the site is updated much more often - why limit yourself to any link I post, which will be outdated withing an hour, when you can get fresh, up-to-date information just as easily?

                        Or are you really that determined not to continue peddling your silliness. Go back and re-read your excuse for not going to slashdot for the information. So childish. You want it from somewhere else "because". So you're cutting your nose off to spite your face. But it's still no skin off my nose.

                        Keep it up - I'm the one encouraging people to do their own research, and not trust anyone's links because people can be selective in the links they post. You're against this. Why?

                        Anyone who's worked for a search engine knows the limitations of even the biggest ones. Most stuff isn't findable via search, because algorithms and site limitations. I ran into google's 1,000 search results maximum a few times when looking for information that I knew existed, because they had it before, but it had been pushed out of the top 1,000 (have they fixed that "feature" yet?).

                        BTW, since you claim to be so smart, what was Uber using to develop their self-driving car software? c? ada? cobol? pascal? programmable fpga's? Java? Since you claim it's not javascript, as was revealed in the discussion threads on slashdot, you must know what it is. Or say you don't know, and it could be anything, including javascript.

                        --
                        SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
                        • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday March 19 2020, @04:22PM (12 children)

                          by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 19 2020, @04:22PM (#973224) Journal

                          As a founder member of this site which we created because Slashdot didn't want us - the majority here who remember those times are of the same opinion as I. As we say - 'Fuck Beta'. As an Editor we have to ensure that we cannot be accused of plagiarism - we do this by not visiting the site - period.

                          However, I have been through all of the story titles on that site which contain the word Uber or Javascript from Jan 2017 until today. None of them appear to be discussing writing the control software for a vehicle using javascript. So, as far as any reasonable search would suggest, it was not a discussion topic. Now, if you are suggesting it was in a comment and that I should go back and search all the comments - you are simply being obstructive. Javascript WAS used for the display of their ride hailing app, their driver/rider control display, and was used for one display that could have been used - but apparently never was - in a vehicle. That is not the same as what you claimed. Javascript was never suggested as a real time operating system that was used to control a car in any of the material I have searched. I have spent over 3 hours searching for the link you claim is easy to find.

                          BTW, since you claim to be so smart, what was Uber using to develop their self-driving car software? c? ada? cobol? pascal? programmable fpga's? Java? Since you claim it's not javascript, as was revealed in the discussion threads on slashdot, you must know what it is. Or say you don't know, and it could be anything, including javascript.

                          I never said I did know what they were using. But such a task would require a real-time operating system with more than the 2 interrupts that javascript has on offer. You made the claim that it was being used, not I. You may have simply misunderstood what was being discussed, or misread the article that you refuse to provide a link to.

                          As I said - thank you for your "invaluable contribution". I was quite prepared comment no further, but seeing that you commented to me, I have politely replied. However, as you have failed to prove your claim I will quite happily ignore your comments from now on.

                          • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday March 19 2020, @05:27PM (11 children)

                            by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Thursday March 19 2020, @05:27PM (#973253) Journal

                            First, I never said it was a good idea, just that they were trying to do it that way. That's why everyone was laughing at Uber for being so stupid. Duh!

                            Second, as someone else just pointed out here [soylentnews.org], burden of proof is not a thing.

                            Third, your status as a founder/editor looks like an attempt at argument from authority. It's kind of irrelevant, and you just contradicted yourself in this post:

                            we do this by not visiting the site - period.

                            However, I have been through all of the story titles on that site

                            Those two statements are contradictory. Either the first one is true, and the second one false, or vice versa, or neither is true, but most certainly they can't both be true. I'll do you the courtesy of letting you pick one of the three possible options, but I've got to say, it doesn't look good from here.

                            You can always prove me wrong (won't be the first time) by practicing what you preach - post a link with information as to what Uber was actually using when they laid off the first 400 engineers.

                            I'm not the one requiring any proof from you one way or another - but you're the self-appointed internet cop who says a link is necessary to back up a claim. You claim it wasn't javascript - prove it.

                            Or just drop it. Because WTF is wrong with you that this is so important anyway?

                            --
                            SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
                            • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday March 19 2020, @05:55PM (9 children)

                              by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Thursday March 19 2020, @05:55PM (#973256) Journal

                              First, I never said it was a good idea, just that they were trying to do it that way. That's why everyone was laughing at Uber for being so stupid. Duh!

                              But you said there was a newspaper report and discussion - you did not demonstrate that it actually occurred or what was said. Hence the request for you to provide a link so that we can ALL see what was actually said.

                              Second, as someone else just pointed out here [soylentnews.org], burden of proof is not a thing.

                              I do not believe that the opinion of a single AC (who, let's be fair, could be you) should actually replace the standards that this site tries to maintain and which are common in all scientific or technical debate.

                              However, I have been through all of the story titles on that site

                              It's you who has not thought this out. I have written a program in python-3 using selenium which I used to scrape all the titles from Jan 1 2017 until today. If Slashdot's own search cannot find it that is a fair indication that they haven't got it. I have not read any articles.

                              but most certainly they can't both be true.

                              As I have explained, the next option is that your assumption is wrong - which in this case it is.

                              You claim it wasn't javascript - prove it.

                              Don't be silly, I haven't claimed it was anything at all. YOU made the claim - and you now cannot or will not prove it. I can only surmise why you cannot/will not find the link that would so easily solve this problem. I am also prepared to accept that it occurred, but we have seen absolutely nothing to suggest that it did.

                              There is nothing more to discuss. You are not, in my personal opinion, a reliable commenter and I will be taking your comments with a huge bucket of salt in the future. I'm sure that will not concern you in the slightest.

                              Thank you for your views.

                              • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday March 19 2020, @11:24PM (8 children)

                                by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Thursday March 19 2020, @11:24PM (#973335) Journal

                                But you said there was a newspaper report

                                Another lame attempt at misdirection, this time with a TOTAL LIE ON YOUR PART.

                                It's you who has not thought this out. I have written a program in python-3 using selenium which I used to scrape all the titles from Jan 1 2017 until today. If Slashdot's own search cannot find it that is a fair indication that they haven't got it. I have not read any articles.

                                And again, another lame attempt at misdirection. You claimed that you avoid the site completely to avoid any claims of plagarism, and yet somehow scraping and reading the results is "completely avoiding the site." You're so full of shit at this point it's not funny.

                                You made the claim that I was wrong. That is also a claim. According to your opwn standards, you have to either back up your claim or retract it.

                                You are not, in my personal opinion, a reliable commenter and I will be taking your comments with a huge bucket of salt in the future.

                                Aha - a convert! I've been urging everyone to do the same thing - do their own research. Nice to see you admit I'm right.

                                And as I've said repeatedly, I don't care what you think, I have zero obligation to prove anything to you. But you've been caught out in blatant lies, and I've bookmarked this for future use, because after all, you're the one who insisted on hijacking a thread in an article on COVID-19 to make a personal attack on me [soylentnews.org] and my policy on not providing links, just guidelines and letting people do their own research.

                                Obviously, you're pretty stupid to stoop to such attacks so publicly. Whine all you want - you made your bed, you sleep in it.

                                BTW - I notice you have not been able to come up with a single argument against my policy of urging people to educate themselves and form their own opinions by doing their own research rather than trusting proffered links that can reflect the biases of the poster. Stupid troll.

                                --
                                SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
                                • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday March 20 2020, @05:08AM (7 children)

                                  by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Friday March 20 2020, @05:08AM (#973413) Journal

                                  Final reply sent by DM. There is nothing to be gained by continuing this pointless discussion.

                                  • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Friday March 20 2020, @08:57PM (6 children)

                                    by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Friday March 20 2020, @08:57PM (#973617) Journal

                                    Janrinok was too cowardly to reply here, so he instead sent this via email from a no-reply address.

                                    The stuff in blockquotes is him quoting me. His "rebuttals" are in plain text. My comments are in italics.

                                    ====================================

                                    Our discussion is filling up a thread on an entirely different topic.

                                    (janrinok was the one who posted a completely off-topic shot at me under one of my on-topic posts. Further on, he accuses others of going off-topic, but wasn't happy at all when I pointed out his hypocrisy. Just another example of how he's lost it.

                                    My final reply is here:

                                    Another lame attempt at misdirection, this time wth a TOTAL LIE ON YOUR PART.

                                    You said it was reported in the Guardian, and that I should go and search pm a search engine. But you cannot substantiate that either.

                                    Mistaking the guardian for slashdot??? I'm half blind, and I don't make that mistake. I never said that the Uber thing was on the Guardian. Ever. I have always been quite clear that it was in comments on a slashdot article. I also think it's a lie when he claims that his scraping 3 years of headlines from slashdot in the sentence immediately after claiming that he never goes to slashdot to avoid plagerism claims, is somehow not visiting a site. Whether it's a web browser or a script, it's still visiting the site.

                                    Also, kind of pointless to scrape 3 years of headlines when I've repeatedly said it was in the comments. This is far beyond disingenuous.

                                    I've made it a point lately to tell other people to do their own research; don't take my word or janrinok's word, or anyone else's word, or link, as the final authority. This is the internet, FFS. I'll say it again - do your own research. If you can't find something, that's not my problem.

                                    Search engines don't make the vast majority of the data they scrape off the Internet available for free. If you can't find it via a search engine, it just means that you can't find it via a search engine. It doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

                                    You claimed that you avoid the site completely to avoid any claims of plagiarism

                                    I am trying to get to the bottom your your claim - if you have a better solution then I would have been pleased to hear it. If it is true then it is probably worth a story on its own right.

                                    Seriously? Trying to justify a lie by claiming to do detective work on defunct software? Hey, keep an eye out, there might be some more Atari carts buried in the desert! You're not the "internet police.: Get over yourself already.

                                    -if you have a better solution than I would be pleased to hear it.

                                    ( And another lie - I proposed an extremely simple solution - he can post evidence of what Uber was using at the time they did their first round of software engineers. But he doesn't, because his motivation is not to settle the question, but something a bit more sinister.

                                    I say that IF IT MATTERS ALL THAT MUCH TO YOU, do your own research. It's not my problem, and I'm not about to go all OCD like janrinok searching for near-worthless shit, doing it on a site he claims he will never visit, and searching in the wrong place - the story titles, not the comments. It's the fucking internet, ffs. Get some perspective. It's obsolete information. But if you think it's relevant, why not tell us what they were using at the time instead of scraping slashdot titles that you never visit.

                                    I can see it now - guy claims he didn't access aa website with KP because he scraped it instead of using a web browser ... nobody will buy it.

                                    It's the same as criticism that I didn't post a link to the guardian about COVID-19. I made my reason quite clear when I was again criticized by Mr Intenet Cop. Any link would be out of date within minutes, since they are doing almost continuous updates, so just visit the site for the latest and best news.

                                    But no, that is somehow "wrong." He has continually ragged on me not posting links to everything. And I've been clear - show me the RFC that requires it, or STFU.

                                    I stopped posting links to everything one evening when I tried to, and everything in my field of view went completely unreadable. That was at the beginning of the month, when my "better" eye bled, ruining the work I had put in to training my vision to work despite the diseased retinas, the holes and edemas in the retinas, the distortions, the cataracts that may be too risky to operate on ... I said to myself "There has to be a better way." And there is:

                                    1. Every time you choose to cite a link, you can't help but have it reflect your internal biases. The site you got it from and the content can't help but reflect your biases. I'll cite the CBC and the Guardian, others will cite LGF (Little Green Footballs - are they still around?) and The Daily Stormer. Obviously this reflects two different world views.

                                    2. So why not encourage people, if it matters so much to them, to do their own research free of any bias from me, and let them make their own decisions, same is we do in the real world.

                                    Real-world example: I claim that bananas are on sale. If someone asks me for a link, I'm not going to go home and take a picture of the store flyer to "prove" it. Either take my word for it and pick up some bananas on sale, like normal people do, or miss out on the sale because I won't provide "proof" (and obviously not everything on the internet is true, so again, you have to use YOUR judgment).

                                    So if someone goes all medieval and says I have to provide a link, I'll point out "No, I don't."

                                    I still provide links when I can, when they are relevant, and when it's something interesting. Nobody normal is interested in Uber's defunct self-driving car software - they've laid off the devs and moved on. And it's not that important to me whether Janrinok or anyone else believes that Uber originally tried to do it in Javascript. It's only important to someone with an ulterior agenda.

                                    And emailing me with more bullshit, instead of posting it in the thread, where his statements can be judged in context, is the act of a coward who knows he's been caught out multiple times.

                                    Seriously, WTF is your problem, dude?

                                    Your judgment has been superseded by your need to have a certain order - that the internet must work a certain way, that people HAVE to provide links, and you threw a wobbly when I said No, it's not my job."

                                    Dude, do you think it's normal for you scrape 3 years worth of headlines off slashdot to try to "prove" something, a task that you should have realized was doomed to failure since I repeatedly said it was in the comments, not the story? Or did you somehow "manage" to forget that it's in the comments, despite my repeating it multiple times?

                                    What makes this interesting to me is the human aspect - that someone can be so desperate to preserve "the order", including the imaginary requirement that people have to post links, that they mis-remember things that don't fit into their narrative of the world, and go to extremes like scraping slashdot for 3 years of headlines.

                                    Most sites would consider that rude behaviour. Some would make it an outright ToS violation. And for what, exactly???

                                    emailing me at 2 in the morning instead of replying in the thread ON SUCH A USELESS TOPIC is nuts and cowardly. You've been caught out in multiple lies. Not my problem. Just stop trying to prove I'm the liar.

                                    I've gotten used to people acting weird wrt me. This is far from the worst, but it's definitely a strange reaction. Check your motivations.

                                    --
                                    SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
                                    • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday March 21 2020, @07:36AM (5 children)

                                      by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Saturday March 21 2020, @07:36AM (#973758) Journal

                                      janrinok was too cowardly to reply here, so he instead sent this via email from a no-reply address.

                                      You are now trolling:

                                      Read the last line of that message - it is my email address. You are still trying to recover from digging yourself into a hole. But, in case you claim you cannot now find it - my email as everyone here probably knows is janrinok (at) soylentnews (dot) org.

                                      I am NOT going to clutter up this thread by responding to your trolling, whinging and complaining. I do not believe anything you now say because you cannot/will not substantiate the claims that you have made. I will respond to you via email. You could have prevented all of this by simply providing the source of your claim.

                                      • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Sunday March 22 2020, @12:52AM (3 children)

                                        by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Sunday March 22 2020, @12:52AM (#973978) Journal

                                        First, when you scraped slashdot, you violated their robots.txt policy, which can be found here [slashdot.org] since you want links so much. I've bolded the applicable lines:

                                        User-agent: *
                                        Disallow: /authors.pl
                                        Disallow: /index.pl
                                        Disallow: /comments.pl
                                        Disallow: /firehose.pl
                                        Disallow: /journal.pl
                                        Disallow: /messages.pl
                                        Disallow: /metamod.pl
                                        Disallow: /users.pl
                                        Disallow: /search.pl
                                        Disallow: /submit.pl
                                        Disallow: /pollBooth.pl
                                        Disallow: /pubkey.pl
                                        Disallow: /topics.pl
                                        Disallow: /zoo.pl
                                        Disallow: /palm
                                        Disallow: /slashdot-it.pl
                                        Disallow: slashdot-it.pl
                                        Disallow: authors.pl
                                        Disallow: index.pl

                                        There's more to the file, but the bold parts are the relevant parts.

                                        What you did was called "unauthorized access to a protected computer." The computer was protected from script robots by the robots.txt file (aka the robots exclusionary standard). Your access was illegal under Title 8 of the Patriot Act, as well as being a real dick move.

                                        As for your email, you sent it from noreply@soylentnews.org. And you did it again today. Sedriously, WTF is wrong with you? Or are you going to deny that you sent it from a noreply address, because people look at the sender, since that's the canonical address for the sender, unless it's been spoofed.

                                        But that's okay, anything from noreply@soylentnews.org is now flagged as junk. And checking my junk folder, your latest message has only noreply@soylentnews.org.

                                        To add insult to injury, you sent an .odt file. Why would I want to carry around an app to read ODT files? My email app does plain text just fine (doesn't even do html, but at least I can still read the content).

                                        I can picture this latest stupidity:

                                        Me: I don't do odt. I don't do doc or docx. I don't do wp, pdf, swf, xls, or whatever.

                                        You: But everyone does ODT.

                                        Me: So? I'm not everyone. Text only.

                                        You: But what if someone wants to send you something important?

                                        Me: From a noreply address? Can't be that important, at least not to me. Tons of spam from noreply addresses. And certainly I don't expect anything important from you, just more lies and stupidity. You started this in public and off-topic, it's going to continue in public until you stop, because your behaviour is off the wall.

                                        What a dope. Are you going senile? You mistake the guardian for slashdot, you illegally scrape slashdot headlines and not the comments even though I was quite clear it was in the comments, you now want any further discussion out of the public eye ...

                                        Now THAT is a story! Maybe I should submit it .... but nah, you just keep playing internet cop - it'll keep you off the streets, and with Covid-19 and France on lock-down, the french would probably consider it a public service :-)

                                        Try not to step in it any more, mkay?

                                        --
                                        SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
                                        • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday March 22 2020, @08:10AM (2 children)

                                          by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Sunday March 22 2020, @08:10AM (#974057) Journal

                                          To add insult to injury, you sent an .odt file.

                                          You included bold, italics and other formatting. What format would you prefer people to use?

                                          Your access was illegal under Title 8 of the Patriot Act,

                                          Fortunately, that is a US law. I will await the extradition request, but ....

                                          ... I didn't access any of the the links you provided in the robots.txt. I accessed only https://slashdot.com. [slashdot.com.] Wherever they subsequently redirect anything is not anything I can control. Most of those links are to Perl files/directories which I most certainly wouldn't want. Selenium creates a virtual browser and accesses a site like any other user could but with the ability to enter data into fields or press buttons etc.

                                          Other recipients of that email had my email address as the sender - janrinok (at) soylentnews (dot) org, (that is obfuscated here of course, but I'm sure you know that). I would check your email settings.

                                          • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Sunday March 22 2020, @07:37PM (1 child)

                                            by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Sunday March 22 2020, @07:37PM (#974215) Journal

                                            So you admit that you purposefully didn't even try to look at any comments, even though I was quite specific that it was in the comments. You're losing it mentally. Same as for some reason you claimed I said it was in the Guardian newspaper, when I've never in my life seen a copy of that newspaper, and haven't been able to read newspapers for years.

                                            I've already offered to send a copy to TMB of your email. It displays as noreply@soylentnews.org. But nice to know you were sending it to others as well - so now you can't even accuse me of some sort of unfairness for posting the contents. And thanks for also confirming that you were in fact the sender, and not someone pretending to be you.

                                            --
                                            SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
                                            • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday March 23 2020, @08:39AM

                                              by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 23 2020, @08:39AM (#974364) Journal

                                              So you admit that you purposefully didn't even try to look at any comment

                                              Because there are thousands if not millions of comments on /. - without a clue which story to look at I would have to scrape and read everyone of them. All because you are unable to provide any source to support your claim.

                                              There's plenty of reports on the guardian [soylentnews.org]

                                              You wrote that - you know this because it was in the email that I sent and I know that you received it because you are quoting from it. Then you say "when I've never in my life seen a copy of that newspaper, and haven't been able to read newspapers for years". Two of us took you at your word - which you are now denying you even said. But you have the temerity to call me a liar or suffering from a mental defect. It is there in the link. You seem to be having no problem reading the comments here - I suggest that you could easily use the same method to read the Guardian.

                                              But nice to know you were sending it to others as well - so now you can't even accuse me of some sort of unfairness for posting the contents.

                                              You have accused me of being a liar. I am not. Why send it to TMB - he has nothing to do with my editorial role? If you want to go the senior person currently available on site address it to Deucalion / Juggs. The Editor-in-Chief is Martyb. I will send my emails to whomever I like as we often do. We depend on communication because we are all widely dispersed over every continent. The emails received by other staff here have the correct sender address. The problem appears to be at your end, but I will ask the email specialists at SN to investigate further.

                                              Yet despite me giving you my email address multiple times (janrinok (at) soylentnews (dot) org) you still seem to want to come on here accusing others of being liars and trying to score points rather than communicating directly. We have been asked to stop this discussion in this thread. You have lost this argument in the opinion of many although you will undoubtedly have your own supporters. Your word cannot be trusted, as even the links in this comment demonstrate.

                                              If you wish to continue to protest - send me an email or put something in your journal. Please leave this thread for the story under discussion.

                                      • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Sunday March 22 2020, @01:01AM

                                        by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Sunday March 22 2020, @01:01AM (#973982) Journal
                                        BTW, you asked in you first email if I could propose a simple solution, and I had already done so, several times, even before that - tell us what Uber was using before their first round of engineer layoffs. Substantiate YOU claim of STFU, you lying hypocrite.

                                        Nobody else is making such a fuss that I don't always post links. You have OCD or what?

                                        Or you can show me the RFC that states that I have to post links. Too bad there isn't one.

                                        Or the site policy saying that I have to post links for comments. I don't see one, not here, not anywhere else.

                                        Bloody internet nazi.

                                        --
                                        SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
                            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 22 2020, @08:07PM

                              by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 22 2020, @08:07PM (#974223)

                              Second, as someone else just pointed out here [soylentnews.org], burden of proof is not a thing.

                              Apparently you are immune to all forms of sarcasm and satire.
                              As the author of that post, I have the happy duty to inform you I was mocking you.

                    • (Score: 2) by quietus on Wednesday March 18 2020, @02:14PM (1 child)

                      by quietus (6328) on Wednesday March 18 2020, @02:14PM (#972756) Journal

                      The poster you accuse of being a whiner is, well, let's say, he belongs to the bedrock of this site. I respect him, and trust him; he does not need to prove himself at all.

                      • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday March 19 2020, @04:58PM

                        by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Thursday March 19 2020, @04:58PM (#973245) Journal

                        Except that he being a hypocrite. He claims that I somehow "need' to post links to the discussion where it was revealed that Uber was using javascript ... but oh noes, not slashdot. That's childish. He keeps saying I have to prove it with links, but he won't prove that they're using something else.

                        Read his excuses.

                        And then think about our different approaches. I say "don't trust anyone's links. Do your own research, make your own evaluation. People can pick links that are biased towards their viewpoint. They do it all the time." He says "post links." Like you should trust any link anyone posts uncritically.

                        Also, links get obsolete really fast. Shallow khallow criticized me for not posting a link to the guardian, insted telling people to go there to look. I pointed out to him that the site is updated several times an hour with the latest information on things like COVID-19 and anything I link to will be obsolete within minutes, so use the source, luke, use the source.

                        This is not rocket science. But people have become lazy and want everything spoon-fed to them. OMG if they have to actually read something on their own!

                        No wonder so many people fall for scams like colloidal silver curing COVID-19.

                        --
                        SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
                    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @05:31PM

                      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @05:31PM (#972835)

                      Can we just mod this spam? At this point I think it qualifies.

            • (Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Wednesday March 18 2020, @07:50AM (2 children)

              by FatPhil (863) <reversethis-{if.fdsa} {ta} {tnelyos-cp}> on Wednesday March 18 2020, @07:50AM (#972674) Homepage
              > There was a video posted on my national public broadcaster: a helicopter view, circling an Italian hospital; the sound: a nurse with broken voice, telling that people are dying on the floor (crying), doctors are deciding who's going to live and who is going to die.

              > That's not reporting: that's emotion. That's hype.

              Were people dying on the floor? The photos I have seen certainly looked like very infirm people on campbeds, which is as near as darn it to the floor, many with a very low survival expectation.
              Are doctors performing triage to bias care towards the young and otherwise healthy, who will survive, and away from the old or comorbid, who have a significant risk of dying? All the reports I've seen have indicated that's the case.

              So those are facts being reported.

              If you have a problem with facts being reported, then the problem is with you, not the reporting.
              --
              Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
              • (Score: 2) by quietus on Wednesday March 18 2020, @02:20PM (1 child)

                by quietus (6328) on Wednesday March 18 2020, @02:20PM (#972757) Journal

                There were no photo's at all, just the video I described. What I do know is (a) the numbers about hospital resources, as posted in my previous posts, and (b) the post about the Brussels' hospital was completely fake.

                If you provide your resources, I might attempt to cross-check with Italian sources.

                • (Score: 3, Touché) by barbara hudson on Thursday March 19 2020, @11:43PM

                  by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Thursday March 19 2020, @11:43PM (#973339) Journal

                  Go watch the evening news. Two days ago it was a report from a warehouse that had been converted to house patients in Italy. Tonight it was ICUs with people jammed in because there wasn't enough room to space them out. Or just look at the latest stats, where Italy now has more deaths than China, and expecting it to get much worse, and towns where funeral homes are having problems disposing of the dead (even though funerals are banned, so that's one bottleneck taken care of) because they have a shortage of workers and coffins, and doctors who attest a death are now having to seal off the rooms in which the dead are because pickup and disposal can take a few days.

                  And remember - this is the future of the USA, thanks to your idiot-in-chief cutting back on all sorts of health research and funding to give more money to his buds in the swamp. The +13,000 cases today are nothing - wait until testing really gets underway. Given that large segments of the population still refuse to practice social distancing to help prevent the virus from spreading, May is going to be a total disaster.

                  And if you still believe that summer weather will somehow make this all go away, look at Italy - it's on the Mediterranean. It's where people go to escape winter. And Iran, on the Persian Gulf. Summery weather didn't save them.

                  Interesting news this evening (our national news network ran another hour of coronavirus reporting) - turns out that after re-examining data, people under 60 make up half the cases. And they're also dying. And not just people with "underlying health conditions" either. People in their 30s are also dying. So much for #boomerremover.

                  The most likely scenario under current modelling is that 80% of the population gets it. The idea of "flattening out the curve" is not just to keep health services from being overwhelmed. Autopsies of the dead show major damage to the lungs. But we know that you are more likely to have a less severe case if your initial viral load is lower, so by keeping people apart, you'll be less likely to get a severe case and kill your lungs. Ditto with smoking - if you want to live, stop smoking. Stop hanging around people who smoke because second hand smoke is also a problem. But not believing that it is "that bad", or that it can't happen to you, is exactly what keeps people from taking precautions.

                  Crowded beaches and concession stands - yeah, that will sure keep the virus from spreading. Not.

                  --
                  SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
        • (Score: 2) by drussell on Tuesday March 17 2020, @04:42PM (3 children)

          by drussell (2678) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @04:42PM (#972316) Journal

          Case fatality rates (CFR)—that is, the number of infected people who will die from the infection—are simply calculated by dividing the number of dead by the number of recovered plus dead. The fatality rates you’ve probably seen so far have likely been a crude version of this: deaths divided by total cases.

          One problem with these crude calculations is that the cases then being counting are not all resolved. Some of the patients who are currently sick may later go on to die. In that situation, the patients' cases are counted, but their deaths are not (yet). This skews the current calculation to make the CFR look artificially low.

          The best way to clear up this uncertainty is to wait until one of the local outbreaks is completely over and then to do blood tests on the general population to see how many people were infected. Those blood tests would look for antibodies that target SARS-CoV-2. (Antibodies are Y-shaped proteins that the immune system makes to help identify and attack pathogens and other unfriendly invaders.) The presence of antibodies against a specific germ in a person’s blood indicates that the person has been exposed to that germ, either through infection or immunization. Screening the general population for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies will give a clearer picture of how many people were actually infected—regardless of whether they were symptomatic or diagnosed while sick. That number can then be used to calculate an accurate CFR.

          So far, some preliminary population screening for COVID-19 infections has been done in China, specifically in Guangdong province. Screening of 320,000 people who went to a fever clinic suggested that we may not be missing a vast number of mild cases. This in turn suggests that the CFRs we are calculating now are not wildly higher than they should be. However, experts still suspect that many mild cases are going unreported, and many still anticipate that the true CFR will be lower than what we are calculating now.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @05:01PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @05:01PM (#972330)

            We by far will never know the total case count. With the current hysteria, you would either be really sick or a lunatic risking being placed in forced quarantine for common cold symptoms.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @05:06PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @05:06PM (#972335)

              I meant to say "really sick to seek medical advice or a lunatic".

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 18 2020, @10:44AM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 18 2020, @10:44AM (#972700) Journal

            This in turn suggests that the CFRs we are calculating now are not wildly higher than they should be.

            In China!

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 17 2020, @01:08PM

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @01:08PM (#972174)

      Plenty in the press, do you trust any of them?

      Deaths from normal flu can run up to 60,000 per year in the US alone, with similar and higher per-capita rates around the world. Politically, attributing COVID-19 deaths to normal flu can make fearless leaders seem like they're "doing a great job, 10/10."

      --
      🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by hendrikboom on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:00PM (1 child)

      by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:00PM (#972244) Homepage Journal

      Road deaths aren't contagious with potential for exponential growth.

      • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday March 18 2020, @08:23AM

        by FatPhil (863) <reversethis-{if.fdsa} {ta} {tnelyos-cp}> on Wednesday March 18 2020, @08:23AM (#972682) Homepage
        Yeah, with these things it's always

        Case
        Case case
        Cluster
        Cluster cluster
        Boom

        Have you ever stopped to think that maybe it's you that's the problem!??!?!
        --
        Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:17PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @03:17PM (#972254)

      Some strains of corona virus have fatality rates of up to 30% according to Wikipedia.

      While it's unlikely to be that high with covid 19, if we wait until we know, it could wipe out huge numbers of people both directly and indirectly if we can no longer treat people due to a lack of resources.
      In the US a big part of the problem is incompetence on the part of the president. I likely had it 6 weeks ago just after it showed up, but I couldn't have been tested and the public awareness of what the symptoms were wasn't good. But, I had extreme fatigue, a fever and mild difficulty breathing, despite there being nothing in my lungs to cough up.. I've never had a cold like that before and it didn't completely go away for the better part of a month.

      Testing wasn't available, so I have no way of knowing for sure what it was. But it wasn't like any cold or flu I've ever had.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by Rich26189 on Tuesday March 17 2020, @04:34PM (1 child)

        by Rich26189 (1377) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @04:34PM (#972315)

        ... so I have no way of knowing for sure what it was.

        Yes, you do ... Antibodies.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @06:32PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @06:32PM (#972392)

          Is anybody actually going to perform that test though? I don't personally have the gear, hence my comment about it being unknowable.

    • (Score: 2) by drussell on Tuesday March 17 2020, @04:52PM (23 children)

      by drussell (2678) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @04:52PM (#972322) Journal

      Latest updates from JHU about 10 minutes ago:

      dead / recovered:
      7516 / 88159 = 8.53%

      ...with another 101965 currently known to be infected, with unknown eventual outcomes.

      • (Score: 2) by drussell on Tuesday March 17 2020, @04:57PM (17 children)

        by drussell (2678) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @04:57PM (#972326) Journal

        Grrr... it missed a line...

        dead / recovered:
        7516 + 80643 = 88159
        7516 / 88159 = 8.53%

        ...with another 101965 currently known to be infected, with unknown eventual outcomes.

        • (Score: 2, Disagree) by janrinok on Tuesday March 17 2020, @06:09PM (16 children)

          by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 17 2020, @06:09PM (#972378) Journal

          You figures are good, but they do not address the spread by age. The majority of those are over 70 years old, and many also have pre-existing medical conditions i.e. COVID-19 might not have been the cause of death but was a contributory factor [worldometers.info]. Still bad numbers but not all caused solely by COVID-19.

          • (Score: 2) by drussell on Tuesday March 17 2020, @06:32PM (15 children)

            by drussell (2678) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @06:32PM (#972393) Journal

            That's not true...

            Here is an example distribution chart, happens to be from a study of data from 44,672 mainland China cases.

            https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/covid-19-2.001-1280x960.jpeg [arstechnica.net]

            So, in that particular sample set, 80+ year olds accounted for less than 5% of the cases, yet over 15% of the deaths.
            Sure.
            And the 70-79 year olds also had a high mortality rate close to 10%, but they represented under 10% of the cases.

            Less than 15% of the cases in that study were people over 70.

            Yes, the mortality rate will be higher in the elderly, but that doesn't mean that there aren't 20 and 30-something year olds that had no existing underlying medical conditions laying in a hospital right now on ventilators. Some of them are going to die too.

            Half of of the confirmed cases of infections in that data set were people under 50.

            • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday March 17 2020, @06:49PM (14 children)

              by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 17 2020, @06:49PM (#972401) Journal

              We could be comparing apples and oranges - your data is China only, mine is world figures. China has some very advanced hospitals but it also has a lot of less capable ones too.

              The figures I used indicate that for 10-19 year olds the death rate is 0.2% and no group under 50 years old had a rate of higher than 0.4%. My figures show the risk of dying, not the actual percentage of that age group in the number of total deaths. So the number of deaths of those diagnosed with COVID-19 might show 50% were under 50 years old, but their risk of dying was about 0.25%.

              I'm far less interested in how many contract the virus and recover, it is the loss of life that will be significant.

              • (Score: 2) by drussell on Tuesday March 17 2020, @07:18PM (11 children)

                by drussell (2678) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @07:18PM (#972418) Journal

                I'm far less interested in how many contract the virus and recover, it is the loss of life that will be significant.

                Indeed.

                The current number is 7865 / 88705 = 8.9%

                There are currently 106168 other confirmed cases without outcomes yet.
                How many of that next 100k outcomes do you expect to be deaths?

                Please show your work. :)

                • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday March 17 2020, @07:46PM (10 children)

                  by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 17 2020, @07:46PM (#972433) Journal

                  Please show your work. :)

                  https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=36598&page=1&cid=972378#commentwrap [soylentnews.org] - as posted in my first comment. It breaks down data by age, sex and pre-existing conditions.

                  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by drussell on Tuesday March 17 2020, @07:59PM (9 children)

                    by drussell (2678) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @07:59PM (#972439) Journal

                    Yes, and all those numbers in your provided charts are based on deaths / total cases. Not deaths / known outcomes.

                    Using total cases as the denominator in a rapidly exploding phenomenon like a pandemic is disingenuous, at best.

                    • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday March 18 2020, @07:12AM (8 children)

                      by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 18 2020, @07:12AM (#972666) Journal

                      And your data does not account for those who have no symptoms or only mild symptoms and are never diagnosed. THERE IS NO GOOD DATA YET. We are all learning as we go along and the bottom line is how many people will die. I don't care if people who survive were never diagnosed as long as they survive. I understand your calculations and acknowledged that fact in my first response.

                      If members of my family die, whether diagnosed with COVID or not, I am concerned. Until we have a test that identifies those who have had the disease and have recovered - possibly without even knowing it - then we cannot have accurate figures.

                      • (Score: 2) by drussell on Wednesday March 18 2020, @07:54AM (7 children)

                        by drussell (2678) on Wednesday March 18 2020, @07:54AM (#972676) Journal

                        And your data does not account for those who have no symptoms or only mild symptoms and are never diagnosed. THERE IS NO GOOD DATA YET.

                        Indeed, the preliminary data is sketchy, at best.

                        What is your reaction, though, to the 320,000 tested in Guangdong which was a sampling of a much wider cross-section of the general public? Their testing showed much less spread among the general population than some believe has already occurred.

                        • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday March 18 2020, @08:19AM (5 children)

                          by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 18 2020, @08:19AM (#972681) Journal

                          To be honest, I'm not sure what I would make of it. Until I read something that is authoritative about how the data was collected, how the calculations were made, the error bands, and then have the assessment of an expert epidemiologist on what it actually indicates, it is interesting but I do not have enough expertise to make an assessment that is any better than anyone else's.

                          In Europe, I am pleased that most decisions seem to be science based and there is relatively little politicising, and in some cases no politicising whatsoever, of the steps being taken to combat this pandemic. I assume that the situation is the same for you in Canada. It also seems that our US cousins seem to be slowly realising that political bullshit is not going to save lives and may indeed endanger many people needlessly. As the scientists keep reminding us on the TV, they are working with the best data that they have and they are sharing knowledge and expertise with each other all around the world - but that data is incomplete and there are still many holes in our knowledge.

                          The UK government made some very good announcements yesterday about financial, business and medical support. There is still much more to be done but at least action is being taken to mitigate the potential problems before they are too great to manage or it is too late to take action.

                          I live in France and, over the last 7 days or so, my life has changed considerably as I have discussed elsewhere in this thread. I'll read what I can find, and I have the TV news on in the background all day in case of major or significant developments. But I cannot spend as much time as I would like staying on top of the subject. I'll keep reading your posts though - so please continue with them!

                          • (Score: 2) by drussell on Wednesday March 18 2020, @08:26AM

                            by drussell (2678) on Wednesday March 18 2020, @08:26AM (#972685) Journal

                            Indeed.

                          • (Score: 2) by drussell on Wednesday March 18 2020, @09:05AM (1 child)

                            by drussell (2678) on Wednesday March 18 2020, @09:05AM (#972688) Journal

                            As an aside, the current numbers from JHU are:

                            7954 / 89915 = 8.85%

                            ... and now 108264 remaining confirmed cases with no known outcomes.

                            • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday March 18 2020, @10:45AM

                              by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 18 2020, @10:45AM (#972701) Journal

                              FYI - The youngest person to die from COVID-19 in the UK is a 45 year old male who had motor-neurone disease. He died over the weekend.

                              As far as I can ascertain, all UK deaths so far had additional health concerns before infection, but I cannot be certain of that as there is incomplete reporting in the public domain.

                          • (Score: 2) by drussell on Friday March 20 2020, @03:33AM

                            by drussell (2678) on Friday March 20 2020, @03:33AM (#973400) Journal

                            9867 / (9867 + 84972) = 10.4%

                            147875 active cases with no known outcome

                          • (Score: 2) by drussell on Sunday March 22 2020, @08:40AM

                            by drussell (2678) on Sunday March 22 2020, @08:40AM (#974062) Journal

                            One additional data point as to general spread in the community...

                            Here in Alberta we have still been conducting more tests per capita than anywhere else in North America (though thankfully not raw number of tests anymore!). As of Friday we had tested 20360 people, anyone who has shown any possible symptoms or has been exposed to someone known to have the virus has been tested. Thus far, that is one test for every 215 residents. Only 195 cases were found, so less than 1% of those tested have actually been found to be infected.

                            This mirrors what was found in Guangdong, where it looks like no, it has probably not already spread as widely among the general population asymptomatically as some people are thinking. Now, of course, we haven't tested everyone but if we've tested a whole bunch of likely-to-be-infected people and found less than 1%, it doesn't seem to show there already being a huge undetected infected group that will eventually be found to push the death rate down by an order of magnitude.

                        • (Score: 2) by drussell on Wednesday March 18 2020, @08:24AM

                          by drussell (2678) on Wednesday March 18 2020, @08:24AM (#972684) Journal

                          I should be more specific...

                          The testing in Guangdong showed less spread amongst the general population there, but it was more aggressively contained, seemingly earlier "on the curve" than the data suggests that subsequent outbreaks in some other countries have been.

                          I expect that future after-tests of areas harder hit than China, (like Italy and the US are likely to be for example,) will of course show that a wider cross-section of the population was infected when all is said and done. Does my gut feeling after watching the trends and crunching the numbers tell me that the final numbers will be a real, true, final CFR of 10%? No, not really, (or at least I certainly hope not, :) ) but I think it will be a lot closer to 5% than the 0.5% that some wish.

                          Unfortunately, though, there is also a decent chance that the distribution is already wide enough that barring a vaccine (and, of course, hoping for no mutations) it will unfortunately quite possibly become a permanently circulated virus, essentially just knocking our average age we can all expect to live to back by at least a few years, especially since most coronaviruses do not generally cause permanent immunity, rather typically 3-6 months to something specific at best, which is why we tend to keep getting those same viral "colds" over and over...

                          Only time will tell, I suppose. :)

                          Be safe, and try to stay healthy, all! :)

              • (Score: 2) by drussell on Tuesday March 17 2020, @08:17PM (1 child)

                by drussell (2678) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @08:17PM (#972452) Journal

                We could be comparing apples and oranges - your data is China only, mine is world figures.

                Citation, please?

                The information you referenced on the worldometer site is based on data from China, from two sources:

                A paper by the Chinese CCDC released on Feb. 17, which is based on 72,314 confirmed, suspected, and asymptomatic cases of COVID-19 in China as of Feb. 11, and was published in the Chinese Journal of Epidemiology

                The Report of the WHO-China Joint Mission published on Feb. 28 by WHO, [2] which is based on 55,924 laboratory confirmed cases. The report notes that "The Joint Mission acknowledges the known challenges and biases of reporting crude CFR early in an epidemic"

                While the latter IS a WHO report, it is analyzing and reporting on Chinese cases.

                The death rates in most places have thus far actually been higher than those in mainland China.

                Only time will tell what the actual numbers are in the end...

                • (Score: 2) by drussell on Tuesday March 17 2020, @08:30PM

                  by drussell (2678) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @08:30PM (#972462) Journal

                  Oops, forgot the link to the WHO report:

                  https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/who-china-joint-mission-on-covid-19-final-report.pdf [who.int]

                  Also, see:

                  https://smw.ch/article/doi/smw.2020.20203 [smw.ch]

                  At present, it is tempting to estimate the case fatality rate by dividing the number of known deaths by the number of confirmed cases. The resulting number, however, does not represent the true case fatality rate and might be off by orders of magnitude [...]

                  A precise estimate of the case fatality rate is therefore impossible at present.

                  and this might help if you would like to take a stab at predicting the next 100k outcomes:
                  https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/162/5/479/82647 [oup.com]

                  The case fatality rate (CFR) represents the proportion of cases who eventually die from a disease.
                  Once an epidemic has ended, it can simply be calculated with the formula: deaths / cases.

                  While an epidemic is still ongoing, as it is the case with the current novel coronavirus outbreak, this formula is, at the very least, "naïve" and can be "misleading if, at the time of analysis, the outcome is unknown for a non negligible proportion of patients."

                  In other words, current deaths belong to a total case figure of the past, not to the current case figure in which the outcome (recovery or death) of a proportion (the most recent cases) hasn't yet been determined.

                  The correct formula, therefore, would appear to be:

                  CFR = deaths at day.x / cases at day.x-{T}
                  (where T = average time period from case confirmation to death)

                  This would constitute a fair attempt to use values for cases and deaths belonging to the same group of patients.

                  One issue can be that of determining whether there is enough data to estimate T with any precision, but it is certainly not T = 0 (what is implicitly used when applying the formula current deaths / current cases to determine CFR during an ongoing outbreak).

                  ...or, you can use the known outcomes like I did for rough current calculations, knowing that accuracy will improve as more outcomes are known, etc. by just using the CFR = deaths / (deaths + recovered)

                  In any case, simply using deaths / total cases is essentially currently meaningless given the high rate of daily new infections and the lengthy time period before there is a known outcome.

      • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday March 18 2020, @08:29AM (4 children)

        by FatPhil (863) <reversethis-{if.fdsa} {ta} {tnelyos-cp}> on Wednesday March 18 2020, @08:29AM (#972686) Homepage
        The recovered were infected weeks before the dead. Use the death count for people infected at the same time as those who are recovered, namely weeks back's.

        Oh, then justify your choice of the number of weeks back you chose to give your resulting number some kind of credibility.

        Presently you've used "0" as that number, and provided no justification, so it has a credibility to match.
        --
        Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
        • (Score: 2) by drussell on Wednesday March 18 2020, @09:34AM (3 children)

          by drussell (2678) on Wednesday March 18 2020, @09:34AM (#972690) Journal

          The recovered were infected weeks before the dead. Use the death count for people infected at the same time as those who are recovered, namely weeks back's.

          Weeks? What are you basing that on, do you have a citation?

          That is not what the data I have seen suggests.

          At most there seems to be a "delta?" of 7-8 days usually... I'll see if I can find a graph to put on pastebin or something to try to explain... You can easily see the typical delay because of the various waves of local infections, that's not mystery.

          All of the numbers will become more accurate with time, of course.

          • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday March 18 2020, @11:02PM (2 children)

            by FatPhil (863) <reversethis-{if.fdsa} {ta} {tnelyos-cp}> on Wednesday March 18 2020, @11:02PM (#972953) Homepage
            Please fill in the blanks in these 6 statements with some vague numbers:
            1/2/3) The recovered are typically declared such ___ days after detection/symptomaticity/infection.
            4/5/6) The dead are typically declared such ___ days after detection/symptomaticity/infection.
            If you have no idea about one, leave it blank.
            --
            Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
            • (Score: 2) by drussell on Friday March 20 2020, @03:20AM (1 child)

              by drussell (2678) on Friday March 20 2020, @03:20AM (#973398) Journal

              If I had access to raw patient case information rather than aggregate statistics, I could calculate all of those more precisely and consistently for you, but the data from the following preliminary studies agrees with my own empirical evidence and analysis graphs (the trends in recovered and deaths track closely) which you probably would dismiss anyway since I'm just some guy on the internet. :)

              Instead, here are some data points from actual published papers by real doctors and scientists....

              The Wang et al study (an admittedly small study of only 138 cases) suggests:
              The median durations from first symptoms to dyspnea, hospital admission, and ARDS were 5 days (interquartile range 1-10), 7 days (IQR, 4-8), and 8 days (IQR, 6-12), respectively
              The median time from onset of symptoms to ICU admission (not just hospital admission) is 10 days (IQR 6-12)
              For those discharged from hospital, the hospital stay was a median of 10 days with an IQR of 7-14 (vs 12 days median 12.8 mean duration in the Guan study of 1099 cases, so reasonably close agreement on hospital stay to discharge)

              The earlier CNHC study (preliminary data from 17 early cases) suggests that the median days from first symptom to death were 14 (range 6-41) days, and tended to be shorter among people of 70 year old or above (11.5 [range 6-19] days) than those with ages below 70 year old (20 [range 10-41] days

              The Lan study where they were looking to see how long patients still tested positive after meeting the criteria for hospital release or lifting of quarantine, the patients were initially considered "recovered" after 12-32 days, though it does not specify a median or IQR.

              In any case, my point is that while the duration of typical cases does vary widely, the approximate time between a "death" outcome and a "recovered" outcome is not vastly different, as you seem to suggest. They track very closely, and there is certainly not a multi-week delay in being declared a "recovered" outcome rather than "dead."

              https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2761044?guestAccessKey=f61bd430-07d8-4b86-a749-bec05bfffb65 [jamanetwork.com]
              https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2002032 [nejm.org]
              https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jmv.25689?af=R [wiley.com]
              https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2762452 [jamanetwork.com]

              • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday March 20 2020, @12:14PM

                by FatPhil (863) <reversethis-{if.fdsa} {ta} {tnelyos-cp}> on Friday March 20 2020, @12:14PM (#973455) Homepage
                That's interesting, thank you. The data I was basing my estimation on was that from countries with 1 case, which gives you *exact* recovery times for every patient, as you can check every one in, and every one out. Of course, any country will zero deaths/recoveries can give you a lower bound, and those with full recoveries can give you an average, but that requires better record keeping, singletons were trivial. Those intervals were very often over a month. This could be a difference in release criteria in different countries.
                --
                Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
    • (Score: 4, Informative) by PiMuNu on Tuesday March 17 2020, @05:30PM (16 children)

      by PiMuNu (3823) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @05:30PM (#972346)

      > Not that it it isn't serious, but the perspective is way off.

      I thought that yesterday, until I saw the modelling here:

      https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf [imperial.ac.uk]

      fig. 1: Do-nothing implies Intensive Care Units overwhelmed by factor 30 and 500,000 (1% of population) die in UK - 2,000,000 die in US.

      fig. 2: Do-not much implies ICU overwhelmed by factor 10 and 20,000 die in UK.

      fig. 3: Lock-down implies ICU is overwhelmed by factor 1.9

      It is all totally model-dependent of course, but then what else do we have?

      Note in UK, we have just started to go into a sort-of lock down phase. About half of the people I know socially (not thru work) have significant risk on their jobs.

      • (Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @05:39PM (15 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @05:39PM (#972351)

        You shouldn't shut a whole country of 50 million down just because 20000 could die.
        Put extra effort into care facilities.

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Tuesday March 17 2020, @06:11PM

          by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 17 2020, @06:11PM (#972380) Journal

          You cannot build new equipment and hospitals overnight. You have to work with what you have. If there is no contact with the virus,there can be no spreading of the virus.

        • (Score: 2) by drussell on Tuesday March 17 2020, @07:28PM (13 children)

          by drussell (2678) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @07:28PM (#972425) Journal

          You shut the country down because at the current rate of infection, your medical system will be quickly overrun. You need time to try to put in place the logistics for dealing with a problem of this potential magnitude.

          It is simply to try to buy some time, to try to spread out the need for medical care over a longer time period to hopefully have a better chance to cope with the inevitable influx.

          If only 20,000 people die, that will be a success.

          If a few hundred thousand or a million die, it will cause follow-on ripple effects for a very long time, even if many of those who die are the elderly and already not as prevalent in the workforce, etc. etc.

          At least if some of the bubbles burst, some of the younger generations may have a chance to do things like eventually own their own home after all, even though it has begun to look all but impossible for many in the past couple decades.

          • (Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @08:25PM (12 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @08:25PM (#972456)

            You shut the country down because at the current rate of infection, your medical system will be quickly overrun. You need time to try to put in place the logistics for dealing with a problem of this potential magnitude.

            You don't think this already has been going on in the background? The outbreak in China happened December, January? That's months of preparation time, generally unreported on in the media.

            • (Score: 2) by drussell on Tuesday March 17 2020, @08:35PM (11 children)

              by drussell (2678) on Tuesday March 17 2020, @08:35PM (#972464) Journal

              You don't think this already has been going on in the background? The outbreak in China happened December, January? That's months of preparation time, generally unreported on in the media.

              You would think so, but apparently not, hence the dismal response from many places like the US.

              Last I checked, we were still testing more people per day here in the Canadian province of Alberta than the entire US is testing per day.

              This is what their months of planning (or not) got them? Egads!

              • (Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @08:44PM (10 children)

                by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @08:44PM (#972471)

                It's only plenty of time if you're not lying to the people in public and also doing fuck all about it behind the scenes either. We learned about this in December and had the first case in the US in January, that should have been enough time to at least start putting together effective test kits based upon what was being learned in China and Korea. The Koreans tested nearly 100k people while we had only tested a few hundred and they had far less lead time to get ready than we did.

                • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @10:12PM (5 children)

                  by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @10:12PM (#972502)

                  They did, and got reamed by the WHO for their efforts in reporting a high number of infections.

                  Anyway, who cares about a test for a cold virus really? Treat the complications, if they occur.

                  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @04:16AM (4 children)

                    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @04:16AM (#972641)

                    We care about the test because, in a lot of cases, this strain is going to look like a normal cold. If we don't test for it then we don't know how prevalent it is or where it's likely to crop up. South Korea has already demonstrated that it's feasible to test hundreds of thousands of people over a relatively short time frame, you just have to care enough to put the resources into it in a timely fashion.

                    Also, if it's just a normal cold, then there's no reason to quarantine, these are people that could be out and about within a day or two of their symptoms going away. Leaving them untested means that they aren't available to help with whatever might need to be done in the community or just going out to get their own food rather than needing it to be brought to them.

                    The logistical considerations alone are sufficient to suggest that we need to be testing anybody that has symptoms that could be covid 19.

                    • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @06:04AM (3 children)

                      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @06:04AM (#972652)

                      We care about the test because, in a lot of cases, this strain is going to look like a normal cold. If we don't test for it then we don't know how prevalent it is or where it's likely to crop up. South Korea has already demonstrated that it's feasible to test hundreds of thousands of people over a relatively short time frame, you just have to care enough to put the resources into it in a timely fashion.

                      Yes, because it is a cold virus causing the pneumonia complications. We can rationally assume that a large percentage of the population will get it during the cold season. What do we get from just knowing a closer approximation of the number of people infected? How will that get people back to work again? What does South Korea get from having mass testing?

                      • (Score: 2) by drussell on Wednesday March 18 2020, @06:58AM (1 child)

                        by drussell (2678) on Wednesday March 18 2020, @06:58AM (#972664) Journal

                        Have you seen how deadly and contagious this virus is?!!

                        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @12:52PM

                          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @12:52PM (#972739)

                          That did not address any of the points.

                      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @02:35PM

                        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 18 2020, @02:35PM (#972763)

                        Covid 19, damages the respiratory system itself in many cases. This is to a much greater degree than what you'd see with the common cold. The patients that die then tend to get bronchitis or pneumonia. Having had a pneumonia vaccination isn't necessarily enough either.

                        By knowing the number, we know how many doses of medication we're going to need, we know how many beds we need to try and get ready as well as how much space we need to shoot for expanding. Also, we know how many volunteers we might need for tasks that don't require a lot of medical training, such as disinfecting those facilities and unloading trucks.

                        At this point, it looks like they may have found a medication that works to treat this particular virus and if we followed your ignorant advice, we'd have no idea how many doses to try and get to treat those cases where the individuals are severely sick, but not so sick as to need to be in a hospital. The more people we can get self-quarantining while the virus runs it's course, the fewer of them we need in the hospital and the more total cases the system can handle without collapsing, but in order to make any of these decisions, you need the best numbers you can get on how many cases there are and where.

                • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @10:41PM (3 children)

                  by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @10:41PM (#972515)

                  We had more important things to worry about, like witchhunt impeachment theater...

                  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @11:55PM

                    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2020, @11:55PM (#972558)

                    How much were you paid for that post and how can I get in?

                    The impeachment was a real impeachment because he really violated his oath of office. If you don't believe me, then what would the harm have been in having an actual investigation?

                  • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday March 18 2020, @07:28AM (1 child)

                    by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 18 2020, @07:28AM (#972669) Journal

                    Go and talk politics somewhere else - this is a COVID-19 story.

    • (Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Wednesday March 18 2020, @02:49AM (1 child)

      by Beryllium Sphere (r) (5062) on Wednesday March 18 2020, @02:49AM (#972610)

      "Your perspective is way off! There are only 32,767 grains of rice on the chessboard! There's more than that in a single bag!"

(1) 2