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Post by prairiegardens on Mar 29, 2020 22:46:32 GMT -5
Well the fearless leader from Brazil, busy burning down the Amazon, is referring to the pandemic as minor and unworthy of any particular significance so he declines to give it any. He sees no reason to prepare or involve himself or government in suggesting people isolate themselves or not travel or indeed behave any differently than normal. HOW do these people get elected?? And where is karma when it's needed?
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Post by prairiegardens on Mar 30, 2020 9:56:42 GMT -5
I suspect most people who are looking ahead at all are worrying somewhat about food availability in the next year, so many people who have never grown a veggie are buying seeds and pleading for advice. Mention of rationing has come up more than once. Over the years our food supply system has become so complicated and often little of it is local, if any one link in that chain is broken, then it wouldn't take long for hysteria like the absurd frenzy over toilet paper. Saw a wonderful cartoon with two dinosaurs and a asteroid hurtling towards earth. One dinosaur pointed it out and the other said, "oh wow, we better go stock up on toilet paper!" which about sums it up. Sears catalogs have never been so badly missed. The thing is, that most people recover. It's interesting to me that a whole lot of people have been talking for a while about how there are way too many people in the world, well, it's looking like soon there will be a whole lot fewer. That's apparently something...how that might look or play out...that few people actually got to. It's going to be interesting and likely somewhat painful to watch. ( see, I can assume with the best of them that I won't get or at least won't die from it What else is there?
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Post by flowerbug on Mar 30, 2020 14:14:16 GMT -5
the sooner everyone is exposed and has some immunity the shorter the event, but when it has such a high complication rate and those requiring hospital care there's just not enough places for all those people to go. what is the population of Brazil? 213,000,000 x %15 complication rate gives roughly 31 million people, so let's assume that the actual infection rate is something more reasonable as everyone won't get it, so what say %50 that still leaves 15 million hospital cases on the way and if they don't have beds and care the death rate will be higher than 1-2%. if i were a health care worker in that country i'd be numb seeing that kind of a wave coming at me. roughly 750,000 people dead within the next 4-12 months? that's my guess. i sure hope it is wrong...
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Post by blueadzuki on Mar 30, 2020 17:48:22 GMT -5
But that's part of the issue. Based on the results China got, there is no evidence catching COVID-19 and recovering GIVES you any immunity. They think people are catching it more than once. There are already nine different strains of it, and it's supposedly still mutating.
What concerns me is how some scientists think that viruses as virulent or even more may become an annual, if not perpetual, occurrence. It's one thing to say it's only 2-3% but if we are talking 2-3 percent ever YEAR, or even with every wave of infection, and it will add up quickly. The next one could be 50% fatal, or 70% or nearly 100%.
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Post by prairiegardens on Mar 30, 2020 20:03:00 GMT -5
Well, The last time we got too uppity we go the plague. Definitely culled the numbers. I'm not sure having everyone stay home is the best idea. I remember when we were squidlettes, when one of us got sick, my mom would put us all in the same room, so we'd all get sick at once and she could get back to work. It was simple economics. One kid sick every week, all the kids sick for one week. None of us died from measles or mumps and mom got back to work bringing home that paycheck. in spite of the fearmongering, measles and mumps were very rarely fatal UNLESS the child was also highly deficient in vitamin A, it turned out, and usually they had other health issues. Another reason for the decline in the incidence of measles was the increase in adequate plumbing, so kids weren't drinking water from wells next to the outhouse and so forth. Healthy well nourished kids got them when they were young and that was that. Dr Spock even recommended that moms make sure that their kids got measles as it was far far less serious if kids got it rather than adults, especially adult males. who might end up with sperm count being affected. whooping cough is a totally different story, nobody wanted their kid to get that, ever. And this virus seems a tad too aggressive to be so casual.... it does tend to take out more people over 60 BUT an increasing number of much younger adults are ending up in hospital with it, and not all are going home later.
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Post by prairiegardens on Mar 30, 2020 20:15:44 GMT -5
But that's part of the issue. Based on the results China got, there is no evidence catching COVID-19 and recovering GIVES you any immunity. They think people are catching it more than once. There are already nine different strains of it, and it's supposedly still mutating. What concerns me is how some scientists think that viruses as virulent or even more may become an annual, if not perpetual, occurrence. It's one thing to say it's only 2-3% but if we are talking 2-3 percent ever YEAR, or even with every wave of infection, and it will add up quickly. The next one could be 50% fatal, or 70% or nearly 100%. well the second wave was expected sorta. as people started to go out and about again. It was certainly predicted, even as they hoped it wouldn't happen. I didn't know about the nine different strains... I knew it was related to SARS and probably MERS but didn't know it was mutating already. That's a bit scary. If it's mutating that quickly it makes a vaccine a very iffy proposition, I should think...it's a moving target, so to speak. ( Not that I am a fan of vaccines, I think most of them are iffy to say the least). China has supposedly banned all hunting and selling of wildlife/wildlife meat or parts, and also open markets, one report said. What that means exactly is hard to say, is a rat wildlife? In any case IF they can get compliance it should help avoid more of these events,,, maybe. It's a huge business and poaching is nothing new to people who want the big bucks that other people will pay for whatever. Still, China being China, if a poacher gets caught it's likely to be a very severe punishment, not a slap on the wrist.
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Post by steev on Mar 31, 2020 4:52:41 GMT -5
Yes, well, as we overpopulate, we become a richer resource for other organisms to enjoy; further, the more we overpopulate, the more we enter into habitats and destroy the habitat of other species, driving them to interact with us, sharing whatever viruses they have. Some of these things may have been around a long time, but not really close to us. There is much to be said for leaving the world alone.
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Post by prairiegardens on Mar 31, 2020 14:37:50 GMT -5
Just read this morning that scientists have found 3 more viruses new to us in the melting sea ice. Haven't verified it, but it seems reasonable. No word on whether they might be "hostile" to human health or not. It's mildly interesting to consider if choosing..or not...to despoil the natural world is the original choice of "free will". Certainly there has been mutterings for years about what we might find coming out of the thawing tundra in terms of bacteria and viruses.
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Post by steev on Apr 3, 2020 0:44:48 GMT -5
Well, maybe those ancient viruses are only dangerous to ancient humans; just kidding. As we live on our family (all that lives), some of them live on us. Granted, we are swell, but why do we think we aren't part of the food chain? We've largely freed ourselves from large carnivores, but really? Except for being pickled. canned, and put in a vault. what awaits us but decomposition? Why not? Why is that undesirable? Do you really want to be preserved for eternity; to what purpose? Really, do you think you're that important?
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Post by flowerbug on Apr 3, 2020 9:35:28 GMT -5
there are millions of bacteria and viruses that we've not classified or sequenced. we have immune systems which gladly work for most of us and for keeping the various creatures from infecting us too badly.
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Post by prairiegardens on Apr 3, 2020 14:02:22 GMT -5
Well, maybe those ancient viruses are only dangerous to ancient humans; just kidding. As we live on our family (all that lives), some of them live on us. Granted, we are swell, but why do we think we aren't part of the food chain? We've largely freed ourselves from large carnivores, but really? Except for being pickled. canned, and put in a vault. what awaits us but decomposition? Why not? Why is that undesirable? Do you really want to be preserved for eternity; to what purpose? Really, do you think you're that important? Many more choices these days than being pickled or canned and put in a vault (and don't forget deep freezing ) now you can be morphed into a tattoo or a piece of jewelry or someone got made into coffee mug apparently. And for those of us who prefer more natural forms of reincarnation, some funeral homes have started graveyards where people are just wrapped in a shroud and planted either beside a tree or with a seedling tree on top. However, that option here is bewilderingly expensive considering what's involved..
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Post by steev on Apr 3, 2020 18:24:04 GMT -5
As I've mentioned, I'd prefer to be natural-buried on the farm or sent to a soup kitchen, but those don't seem viable (pun intended) options, so I'm settling for alkaline hydrolysis, although I'd prefer the hydrolysate sprayed OTF, rather than going to the sewage treatment plant, with the remains buried on the farm; wonder whether I could get them cast into a dildo; not an uninteresting afterlife, I suppose.
On a lighter? note, my bank is closed due to covid, so I used its ATM to deposit a check; the ATM choked, neither crediting the check nor returning it; they tell me it can take up to 10 days to get this cleared up, meanwhile, I have no funds and couldn't make payroll for my helper; recurring electronic charges will come in and the bank will doubtless want overdraft fees. Tech is going to kill us all.
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Post by prairiegardens on Apr 3, 2020 19:29:57 GMT -5
argh how incredibly annoying when the tech that's supposed to be so failsafe totally screws you around!
As far as that's concerned, I've always been slightly annoyed that when you pay a bill by interac the money comes out of your account instantly but it somehow doesn't get credited to the account you are paying for about 3 days.
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Post by steev on Apr 3, 2020 23:17:32 GMT -5
Yes, they all want EFT; screw 'em; they can't wait for a paper check, they can go to hell, IMHO.
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Post by steev on Apr 6, 2020 22:12:13 GMT -5
One of my creditors sent me a bill dated the 10th, which I received on the 13th, saying it was due on the 14th; fuck them very much is my opinion!
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