Tag: Virus

Don’t Get COVID-19 Without Having a Plan Ahead of Time

Greg Strange
Greg Strange
47 15
 

Let’s say that, God forbid, you end up contracting COVID-19. What are you going to do? That’s not a rhetorical question, it’s serious, and one that needs to be answered by everyone well before they get a positive test result. I did not have an answer to that question before I tested positive and now I’m kicking myself. And I’m pretty certain that’s been the case with millions of other people as well.

So here’s how it went down for me. I had some very mild symptoms (which later got worse) and decided to get tested just to be on the safe side. Since my job involves going in and out of doctors’ offices and hospitals, I was at higher risk than the average person. But since I had been doing that for months on end without getting the virus, I assumed that mask- and glove-wearing was keeping me safe. Wrong!

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Eridemus
Eridemus
7 4
 

Don’t know what else to say than I guess it’s more accessible than a man on a horse. And I’m sure there is some place to send donations, and it will compensate for about a dozen others that have been torn down. (Yes, people still seem to need to commemorate some things). https://archinect.com/news/article/150212457/g-mez-platero-unveils-design-for-world-s-first-large-scale-memorial-to-the-victims-of-covid-19 Preview Open
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Eridemus
Eridemus
2 2
 

https://dirt.asla.org/2020/05/26/suburban-sprawl-increases-the-risk-of-future-pandemics/ It’s odd how all the “new urbanism” defenders haven’t said following the virus: well yeah, the suburbs aren’t that bad after all. Nope, it’s like how climate people say whether it’s cold or it’s hot, they are always right about overall global warming. I read this article today in which the author said the […]
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Some Perspective on Viruses

CB Toder aka Mama Toad
CB Toder aka Mama Toad
27 10
 

For sixth-grade science, I like to use a text called The Universe in My Hands, which is “a general science course in which the elements of the material universe are ordered by size and the student is introduced to the disciplines of the science as a function of their sizes.” The student encounters the universe by ordering things according to their magnitude. You and I, for example, as humans, are on the order of 1 x 10^0 meters (one times ten to the zero power), which we call the Zero Order of Magnitude, or [0].

A cat is smaller than that, at the 1 x 10^-1 meters or [-1] Order of Magnitude. A marble is at the [-2] scale. A human cell is at the [-5], and a virus is at the [-7], or 2 orders of magnitude smaller than a human cell.

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The Perils and Pleasures of Modeling

Locke On
Locke On
17 5
 

The term ‘model’ is much in the news, and I’m not talking about @RightAngles trade. It’s the term apparently favored by the media to describe a general area that may also go by: cybernetics, system dynamics, advanced statistics, simulation, control theory, and others. Having some academic and professional background in the domain, this is my (inevitably simplified) attempt to sketch its limits, so you can be smarter than the average journalist.

So, simplifying, as warned: There are two types of models. One is broadly statistical in approach. The other attempts to be more mechanistic.

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carcat74
carcat74
11 4
 

Not my words, but those of my supervisor at work. She is referring to the perfect storm of events, coincidences, and accidents that resulted in the world wide panic of the Wuhan virus. How did this all manage to happen so quickly? Her husband is an EMT, but she hasn’t said anything about what he’s […]
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Greg Strange
Greg Strange
5 3
 

“We had to destroy the village in order to save it.” Remember this alleged quote from an unnamed military source during the Viet Nam War? Well known New Zealand-born reporter, Peter Arnett, has asserted that this quotation was something that an “American major said to me in a moment of revelation.” This major was allegedly […]
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benwood91
benwood91
22 12
 

Okay. There is a serious human health problem circlling the globe right now. I get that, and I do have great sympathy for thse suffering badly from the disease itself. but I fall in the camp that believes the results of unwarranted hysteria is far mor dangerous than the disease. Things like economic turmoil, if […]
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Dave Sussman
Dave Sussman
3 3
 

Cancer ruins families. There is no treatment that isn’t horrific. I said to my Fathers oncologist the day he was released from the hospital for home hospice that we are still in the dark ages. And then last week I saw this documentary from the guys at Vice. It’s on HBO but the feed here is available […]
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Obama Stubbornly Refuses Ebola Travel Ban

Jon Gabriel, Ed.
Jon Gabriel, Ed.
33 21
 

The calls are growing louder for the Obama administration to ban travel from countries dealing with Ebola virus outbreaks. But, throwing caution to the wind, the White House refuses to even entertain this common-sense first step to protect the United States from experiencing an outbreak of its own.

“There are protocols in place where those individuals who are leaving West Africa and traveling to the West are screened,” White House Spokesman Josh Earnest said yesterday. “We’ve also provided guidance to pilots, flight attendants and others who… are sort of responsible for staffing our transportation infrastructure, we’ve given them guidance for monitoring the health and well-being of travelers, to ensure that if they notice individuals who are exhibiting symptoms that seem to be consistent with Ebola, that the proper authorities are notified.”

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