[Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

[Blackhawk]

You guys can agree with them but to me people who eat dogs and cats can choke and die. The animals are better than them. I have no love for them or the country that would allow that. Never mind allowing all that crap right back to their same old shit that has killed so many loved ones worldwide.

I assume you eat beef? Even though much of a culture roughly four times the size of the US considers that to be a terrible thing to do? Should they all hate you and wish you death?

Or is your culture simply different from theirs, and the fact that eating a burger to them is worse than eating a dog to you just something to accept? Or should they judge you because you don't live by their cultural standards? Expecting the rest of the world to live by your personal standards is not a healthy way to look at the world, and is dead center right in the core of the racism and nationalism that is destroying us.

[Blackhawk]

You agree its ok and support it? .

Abso-fucking-lutely. China isn't required to follow my culture.

[LawBeefaroni]

The mayo part is true. How am I ignorant though to say dog and cat eaters are shit of the Earth and deserve not to live? You agree its ok and support it? Do you think a counrty that openly allows it is a great country? Do you think allowing them to open the same markets that has killed so many is a great thing? I say you must be the ignorant not mayo one sir,.

Dogs and cats are not the source of Covid-19 as far as we know.

As for eating them, about a billion Hindus may feel the same about us and beef. Well, the shit of the earth part. Not sure about the not deserving to live. Plus the Bhudists, the Jainists, probably a lot of Jews and Muslims too if you're not kosher or halal.


I think eating cats and dogs is strange and I would never do it. Well, unless I was going to starve to death, maybe. But I can take a step back and see how odd it is to hold one animal species as sacrosanct while slaughtering and consuming others wholesale.

I'm not going to condemn and entire culture or nation for the food choice of some or even many. I'm more outraged about shark fins personally and I'm happy to call anyone who uses them "medicinally" ignorant and anti-science. I don't wish them dead (though certain fishermen, if their boat sank I wouldn't shed a tear...).

[Kraken]

I'm sure a billion and a half Chinese would be repelled by hot dogs.

Really Dae, dial it back a notch. We know you hate China.

[Zaxxon]

Forget beef and its religious connotations--I believe Dae's ire stems from eating animals deemed too intelligent/sympathetic to him.

In which case, I really hope he can tell us that he foreswore pork long ago...

[Blackhawk]

Cultural taboos are cultural taboos. And yet we break other cultures' taboos every day, because we aren't part of those cultures and aren't beholden to them, just like China isn't beholden to our taboos. And if that's enough reason to hate each other, we're screwed.

And yeah, pigs are an excellent example. Smarter and more emotionally advanced that pretty much any dog or cat, and yet they go good mashed up with mayo and soy sauce (or so I've heard.)

[Ænima]

Americans eat nutria, so... glass house, stones, etc.

[gameoverman]

I pretty much stopped judging other people for what they eat back when I was in my 20s. A close friend of mine got a job working at whatever big chicken producer was operating out here at the time, Zacky Farms I think. Anyways, he never ate chicken again. One time I asked him why he wouldn't eat chicken. He wouldn't tell me any details, he just said that after seeing what goes on at his job he will never touch chicken again. I still enjoy eating chicken.

It made me realize that even in an advanced country like the US you are kidding yourself if you don't think you're eating questionable things. The exception is if you grow your own food and raise and slaughter your own animals, then you can say you know what you're eating. Mad cow disease is another example of how Western food production doesn't own the moral high ground.

[Alefroth]

Why cant the stupid weed themselves out faster and faster while leaving the rest of us alone.

No one ever thinks it's them, do they?

[Anonymous Bosch]

I don't give a flying f... ig about cultural superiority flapdoodle.

But I do think China ought to face major repercussions if they insist upon continuing to place the rest of the world at serious risk as a result of their inherently dangerous 'wet market' practices. Especially considering thousands of the most vulnerable citizens all over the world are now dying at an alarming rate due to a virus that most likely originated from such a Chinese 'wet market'. And a significant contributing factor for that was the authoritarian and deceptive response of the Chinese government attempting to deny and cover it all up. So eff Xi, and the bat/pangolin Xi rode in on.

[stessier]

All these people still getting together.
Like they say....you just can't fix stupid.

Many cities in SC had started enacting their own bans. The state Attorney General sent out a memo on Friday saying that wasn't allowed based on a 1980 court case. So everything re-opened including the beaches. The governor thought this was fine as he relied on South Carolinians to proceed appropriately. If ever there was a "hold my beer" moment.

It was 87F this weekend and there are some very nice pictures of crowded beaches.

Ah - that explains why on Wednesday I saw a road sign indicating there was a check point preventing people from getting to Folly Beach (in Charleston) but the sign, and presumably the road block, was no longer there on Saturday. Idiot.

At 6:30pm on Monday, the governor ordered all the beaches, boat landings, and lake access closed for everything but commercial fisherman. Said he was saddened by the lack of responsibility people showed this past weekend. I'm guessing the governor was surprised because he doesn't have any experience with children.

[Kasey Chang]

IHME website has pushed back COVID-apocalypse day to April 26-27 instead of about 16, due to curve flattening. California may NOT be in danger of an overwhelmed medical system after all. I think New York's state of affairs had every state assessing how it can head off that sort of situation. Governor Newsome is calling up every trained medical professional (including dentists, retired, and even hospital admin staff) "just in case" for possibly volunteer deployment to special treatment camps around the state.

[Jeff V]

A classmate in college told me when he was in Korea while in the army, he observed dog ranches. He insisted the dogs looked and behaved more like cattle, not an animal you'd have as a pet. A few years ago I saw a Korean movie where a couple of buffoon-like characters were chasing down stray mongrels for an underground dog market.

Nobody yet mentioned how in South American, you can get BBQ guinea pig on a stick.

[Unagi]

The mayo part is true. How am I ignorant though to say dog and cat eaters are shit of the Earth and deserve not to live? You agree its ok and support it? Do you think a counrty that openly allows it is a great country? Do you think allowing them to open the same markets that has killed so many is a great thing? I say you must be the ignorant not mayo one sir,.

Are you a vegetarian?
Do you understand the concept of culture?

Both rhetorical.

[gilraen]

Forget cat and dogs, though - it's the bats that's the problem. Cultural traditions or not, how many more pandemics will Chinese wet markets start? Bats are unique in their danger to humans, in that the danger is invisible and you don't know when it's going to strike. They harbor hundreds of viruses that are just waiting to mutate and jump to other species. The level of ignorance is expected at the individual level, and external pressures don't really work on China, so it would have to come from their government. Shark fin soup was a long-time tradition, and yet they managed to move away from it (not 100% but still). Either the attitude on bat consumption will have to change or China will eventually wipe out half the civilization on the planet, starting with themselves.

[RunningMn9]

It was my understanding that we still have no idea how this actually started, and so we are all throwing darts at the things we want stopped and blaming them.

[Kraken]

IHME website has pushed back COVID-apocalypse day to April 26-27 instead of about 16, due to curve flattening. California may NOT be in danger of an overwhelmed medical system after all. I think New York's state of affairs had every state assessing how it can head off that sort of situation. Governor Newsome is calling up every trained medical professional (including dentists, retired, and even hospital admin staff) "just in case" for possibly volunteer deployment to special treatment camps around the state.

Some epidemiologists are projecting the rate of new cases in MA to peak around April 14 with 1,800 dead. That assumes that we continue distancing through May.

[Anonymous Bosch]

It was my understanding that we still have no idea how this actually started, and so we are all throwing darts at the things we want stopped and blaming them.

In that case, you may want to update your understanding. To quote the CDC:

COVID-19 Emergence
COVID-19 is caused by a coronavirus. Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that are common in people and many different species of animals, including camels, cattle, cats, and bats. Rarely, animal coronaviruses can infect people and then spread between people such as with MERS-CoV, SARS-CoV, and now with this new virus (named SARS-CoV-2).

The SARS-CoV-2 virus is a betacoronavirus, like MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV. All three of these viruses have their origins in bats. The sequences from U.S. patients are similar to the one that China initially posted, suggesting a likely single, recent emergence of this virus from an animal reservoir.

Early on, many of the patients at the epicenter of the outbreak in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China had some link to a large seafood and live animal market, suggesting animal-to-person spread. Later, a growing number of patients reportedly did not have exposure to animal markets, indicating person-to-person spread. Person-to-person spread was subsequently reported outside Hubei and in countries outside China, including in the United States. Some international destinations now have ongoing community spread with the virus that causes COVID-19, as do some parts of the United States. Community spread means some people have been infected and it is not known how or where they became exposed. Learn more about the spread of this newly emerged coronavirus.

[Max Peck]

Amazon workers strike over virus protection

Pressure is building on Amazon and other delivery firms to improve protection for workers worried about getting infected with coronavirus.

Some workers at US food delivery firm Instacart and US and Italian workers at Amazon have walked out, complaining of inadequate protection.

I haven't experienced any disruption (yet) to Amazon's services above and beyond the expected stocking issues, but I can confirm that Instacart is effectively paralyzed here. While it is possible to log in an place an order, the check-out process screeches to a halt because there are no delivery slots open at all. At the end of last week, there were a few slots open for delivery at the end of this week, but nothing sooner than 6 or 7 days out at that time. I have no idea whether the problem is simply that they have been unable to scale up to meet demand or if their existing shoppers have been standing down.

[RunningMn9]

smarmy response

Yeah, like we know that it likely has a bat origin, and we know that many early patients had connection to a market.

What I said was, we don’t actually know how the initial transmission happened. And so we have folks like you demanding the markets get outlawed. We have folks like Daehawk lamenting the eating of cats and dogs.

While I will give you that your boogeyman is at least a good educated guess, animal to human transmission happens in lots of ways.

My point was that we’re just guessing still. We don’t know.

[stessier]

I'm not sure if this belongs in the Space thread, Science thread, or here, but I chose here because we can all use a laugh.

Astrophysicist gets magnets stuck in his nose after coronavirus device mishap

Not the Onion.

[Enough]

I'm not sure if this belongs in the Space thread, Science thread, or here, but I chose here because we can all use a laugh.

Astrophysicist gets magnets stuck in his nose after coronavirus device mishap

Not the Onion.

Are we sure that this isn't an OO member?

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

[Kasey Chang]

IHME website has pushed back COVID-apocalypse day to April 26-27 instead of about 16, due to curve flattening. California may NOT be in danger of an overwhelmed medical system after all. I think New York's state of affairs had every state assessing how it can head off that sort of situation. Governor Newsome is calling up every trained medical professional (including dentists, retired, and even hospital admin staff) "just in case" for possibly volunteer deployment to special treatment camps around the state.

Some epidemiologists are projecting the rate of new cases in MA to peak around April 14 with 1,800 dead. That assumes that we continue distancing through May.

It's the same website. IHME is home of covid19.healthdata.org

[Kasey Chang]

Speaking of which... Any one want to test my Chatbot? It can even answer some COVID-19 questions. Really generic ones though.

https://integrations.us-south.assistant ... 92c8d15731

[Victoria Raverna]

Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that are common in people and many different species of animals, including camels, cattle, cats, and bats.

In addition to ban wet market in China, we need to ban cat ownership to prevent another outbreak.

[Smoove_B]

That would also help to address Toxoplasmosis, so you have my vote.

[Stefan Stirzaker]

Seems like we need a blanket ban on all animals unless they have been slaughtered and put into plastic and sterilized.

Mandatory 2 week quarantine period for all people who have contact with animals including horses, cows etc.

problem solved

discuss how insane that proposal is, to ban any contact

Anything can be a vector for something, while we're at it, probably ban all human contact too

[Alefroth]

Seems like we need a blanket ban on all animals unless they have been slaughtered and put into plastic and sterilized.

Mandatory 2 week quarantine period for all people who have contact with animals including horses, cows etc.

problem solved

discuss how insane that proposal is, to ban any contact

Anything can be a vector for something, while we're at it, probably ban all human contact too

Regulating factory farming wouldn't be a bad idea.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... oronavirus

[em2nought]

Plastic barriers mostly at face level between clerks and patrons have now gone up in a number of establishments. The post office put up an entire plastic sheet with open slots at the bottom for passing money, packages, stamps back and forth. Each clerk had their name emblazed on the plastic sheet above their "spot". We're all about to start living in a bubble.

[YellowKing]

My uncle had a guy at his plant come in with over 100 fever, so they turned him away. Come to find out, his wife had tested positive for COVID-19 two weeks ago and he didn't tell anybody. So he'd been showing up at work for two weeks infected.

[LawBeefaroni]

My uncle had a guy at his plant come in with over 100 fever, so they turned him away. Come to find out, his wife had tested positive for COVID-19 two weeks ago and he didn't tell anybody. So he'd been showing up at work for two weeks infected.

Do they have a paid self-quarantine policy? If not, that's what it takes.

If so, the guy is kind of an ass.

[Skinypupy]

Went to place a take-out order at our favorite hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant last night, and was rather shocked to get a "This is the time for virus. We're closed, call later" message on their line.

This place was primarily take-out to begin with, having only two tables in the entire place. Their line would be out the door most nights though, as they were quite yummy. Really odd that they'd shut everything down, as I can't imagine it would change their business much.

[Defiant]

Went to place a take-out order at our favorite hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurant last night, and was rather shocked to get a "This is the time for virus. We're closed, call later" message on their line.

This place was primarily take-out to begin with, having only two tables in the entire place. Their line would be out the door most nights though, as they were quite yummy. Really odd that they'd shut everything down, as I can't imagine it would change their business much.

If it's run by people who are likely to be more vulnerable (older or preexisting conditions), they might just decide the risk isn't worth it.

[gameoverman]

My uncle had a guy at his plant come in with over 100 fever, so they turned him away. Come to find out, his wife had tested positive for COVID-19 two weeks ago and he didn't tell anybody. So he'd been showing up at work for two weeks infected.

If it's any consolation, his wife tested positive two weeks ago. This virus can take a couple of weeks to make someone sick. So it's possible he was infected and passing it on at work four weeks ago. So what he did in these last two weeks might not have mattered.

[LawBeefaroni]

My uncle had a guy at his plant come in with over 100 fever, so they turned him away. Come to find out, his wife had tested positive for COVID-19 two weeks ago and he didn't tell anybody. So he'd been showing up at work for two weeks infected.

If it's any consolation, his wife tested positive two weeks ago. This virus can take a couple of weeks to make someone sick. So it's possible he was infected and passing it on at work four weeks ago. So what he did in these last two weeks might not have mattered.

If he's symptomatic now he's probably contagious now and didn't have it 4 weeks ago. Unless he just happens to have something else now.

[naednek]

My uncle had a guy at his plant come in with over 100 fever, so they turned him away. Come to find out, his wife had tested positive for COVID-19 two weeks ago and he didn't tell anybody. So he'd been showing up at work for two weeks infected.

fire him for poor\no judgement? WTF

[Ralph-Wiggum]

Paging Dr. Smoove: on a scale of 1 - 10, how risky would it be if my gf came to stay with me during the quarantines? She lives in northern Florida and I'm in Charleston, both of which have cases but are certainly not current hotspots. In any case, we've both been working from home and self-isolating for the last few weeks. Florida just announced a 30 day stay-at-home order that goes into effect midnight tomorrow, so she was thinking about heading up before then.

[Jeff V]

Some local stats I find interesting -

Kendall County (where I live) - 27 cases, +8 from this morning
Kane County (where I am working right now) - 142 cases, +14 from this morning
Will County (where I am working tomorrow) - 322 cases, +94 from this morning
DuPage County (where I went shopping yesterday) - 392 cases, +36 from this morning
Cook County (except Chicago - where I lived most of my life) - 2,065 cases, +263 from this morning
Chicago - 3,087 cases, +394 from this morning

[Xmann]

I have a nursing assistant who is probably the most compassionate care giver I have worked with or managed.

Yesterday afternoon on his way home he stops for gas to fill up. He hears a lady shouting a couple tanks over from where he's at. Turns out she was yelling at him, "how dare you come out in public after taking care of sick people and risk me and my children's lives."

She proceeds to walk over and spit on him.

My nurse is the type of guy who would risk his health and well-being to care for a stranger, such as this lady. And she spat on him.

[Unagi]

She sounds mentally ill.