The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Taking the Coronvirus Seriously

Covid Fatality from Bloomberg

Three weeks ago, Italy had almost no cases of Coronavirus. Today the country is on lockdown. There are so many cases that doctors cannot put ventilators in everyone who needs them, and are having to choose who gets them, leaving many to die who might otherwise live.

Covid-19 has an exponential spread if it is not handled correctly. Donald Trump and the US have chosen to not manage it properly. In fact, in most cases the US has chosen to not even test. We do not know how widespread the Coronavirus is.

Trump is acting like the average American CEO, he is managing the numbers, not the underlying reality.

That may get you killed. Maybe you’re young and healthy, then it may kill your parents, grandparents, or other older people you care about.

You should assume, at this point, that there will be an epidemic in the United States and you should prepare for one. Buy the necessary supplies for staying in place for at least two weeks if you have not already. Include any medications if you can. Get some non-prescription anti-virals if you can (raw garlic and bee propolis are decent), because while conventional medicine is superior, you must assume that there will not be enough ventilators, for example, to go around. Heck, there may not even be even be enough beds.

British readers should take note as well.

A lot of organizations are cancelling meetings, there are planes flying entirely empty, school is being cancelled, and so on. All of these things are good.

Note that the fatality rate soars if the spread of the disease is not slowed, because if there are too many cases all at once, and hospitals are overwhelmed. The chart going around to illustrate this follows.

 

The US isn’t going to have a better curve. So assume that you aren’t going to get good hospital care, and that you might not get hospital care at all.

All of this is, of course, a bad case scenario. But that scenario is happening, right now, in Italy. If you make preparations and you don’t need them, that’s not a problem. If you do need them, you’ll be glad you did.

This virus specializes in older, unhealthy people. But young people are carriers, even if they don’t die. So if you don’t have to, you should probably be avoiding older people for the duration.

Social distancing is not a bad idea. If you can work for home, you probably should. Employers which can have their workers work from home should do that now. Schools should be sending students home, conventions should be cancelled, etc.

In Italy, the government has cancelled mortgage payments. I would suggest that other governments consider the same and do something similar for renters, while also cancelling utility payments, with the government directly compensating utilities. Other similar measures can be imagined.

The American government’s inclination will be to give money to rich people through the Federal Reserve, but it is poor people who need to be convinced they can afford to stay home, and not go to work and keep spreading the disease.

Remember that the virus has a five day average incubation period. You could have it now and feel fine. Further you can have the virus and never get symptoms, but spread it. This is especially likely if you are young and healthy.

So, take this all seriously. It might save your life, or it might save the life of someone you care about.

As for the politics, it all depends. If it’s not too bad, Trump can keep the lid on it. People will die, the media doesn’t really report it, he survives. If it truly breaks out, and people are sharing videos of their grandmothers dying without health care because hospitals are overwhelemed, he’s going to get the blame–quite deservedly so. Of course, most politicians, including Trump, Biden, and Sanders, are old, and are at high risk to get the disease and die. Trump, in particular, is obviously not healthy.

The Coronavirus is not a hoax, it is deadlier than the flu, and the response has been bungled.

Edit: One of the symptoms is coughing blood. An herbalist I respect has suggested Dragon’s Blood (Sangre De Grado) might help with that. I pass this on very tentatively, I’m not a doctor and don’t play one, but I have ordered some for myself. It’s not expensive. None of this is a substitute for hospital care, of course, but hospitals may be overwhelmed.


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47 Comments

  1. 450.org

    Excellent summation.

  2. anon

    I started looking for supplies weeks ago before the shelves were completely cleared out. I bought a half a dozen containers of Clorox wipes, ramen noodles, canned soup, and enough bottled water to last for at least two weeks.

    I went to numerous home and hardware stores where most were emptied out of N95 masks. I managed to get the last packed of two N95 masks at a store. Then went to another hardware store where the shelves were cleared, but a worker was nice enough to go in the back (where the workers are probably storing survival supplies for themselves – don’t blame them) and gave me a box of 10 N95 masks.

    I have read that gloves work better than masks. I believe I do have a box of gloves in the basement but and would recommend buying medical grade gloves if you can find them.

    I’ll stop by the supermarket tonight to buy frozen fruit, veggies, and microwaveable meals.

    The goal is to be as comfortable as possible if stuck at home for weeks or even months on end, whether with or without the virus. Especially for those who do not have health insurance, they will need as much prescription medication, over the counter medicine, and holistic medicine they can get their hands on if they cannot afford to buy themselves a hospital bed and professional medical care.

    I would trust any government in Western Europe and East Asia to deal with this crisis better than the American government. These countries already have a national health care system in place and actually care about preventing as many deaths as possible. The American government has been A-OK with millions of Americans dying from lack of health care thus far, so why should this be any different? Any humane action on the part of the Trump administration and the private health insurance companies is for optics only.

  3. NR

    I agree with everything you wrote except for Trump getting the blame if things go really bad. His supporters are quite literally a cult and will not abandon him, ever. Even if everyone they love is dying around them, they will swear with their last breath that it’s the Democrats’ or the Deep State’s fault and not Trump’s.

  4. Hugh

    At this point the virus is out there and it is going to do what it is going to do. We can take commonsense precautions, like isolating concentrated at risk populations: nursing homes and assisted living facilities. We can increase isolation in places with outbreaks like Washington state or New Rochelle, NY. We can wash hands, avoid public gatherings for a while, stockpile some necessities. But none of us know how long this is going to last. I read that Xi-di had visited Wuhan, but just because cases are declining there does not mean there couldn’t be a new influx of virus from those returning to the area. We won’t know that this pandemic is over until we see numbers of cases declining everywhere. And this will likely be less to anything we do, beyond the commonsense stuff, than that the virus wore itself out, i.e. mutated to a more benign form and possibly herd immunity built up.

  5. Geof

    “Trump . . . His supporters are quite literally a cult and will not abandon him, ever. ”

    Trump’s base are a minority, less than 40% of the population. They are not enough to sustain him. Rabid enthusiasm is no substitute for numbers.

    The lowest expert prediction that I have seen of how much of the world’s population will catch the disease is 20% (though presumably this will take years; it’s not all going to happen before November). With a death rate of 1%, it will touch everyone. Jobs will be lost. Ideology is one thing, but threatening the basic safety and security of families hits people where it counts. And fear trumps everything.

    Even considering his idiotic statements so far, I think that Trump could pull this out if he was able to play the authoritative fatherly leader who tells you that it will be hard, but we can get through this. (There is a political opening for something nasty.) He can’t do it. He lacks the gravitas.

    Incidentally, I think Sanders doesn’t project that image either. Which is very unfortunate, as I really want him to win. Though I truly dislike the man, I suspect that Biden could, if he were compos mentis.

  6. Zachary Smith

    https://www.ianwelsh.net/taking-the-coronvarius-seriously/#comment-111317

    I have read that gloves work better than masks. I believe I do have a box of gloves in the basement but and would recommend buying medical grade gloves if you can find them.

    Unless I’ve been misinformed, fabric gloves are better suited for most “protective” purposes, and far more comfortable. My unopened box of blue nitrile gloves will be reserved for special uses – like taking care of an infected coronavirus relative.

    Opinion time: Trump’s unbelievable incompetence has gotten us into a position where “routine” measures are no longer going to be enough. A must-read story by the German MOA blogger has this title.
    Coronavirus – The Hidden Cases – Why We Must Shut Everything Down And Do It Now

    For the next two or three weeks, shut down the US. Except for a few selected facilities like power/gas/electricity, everybody stays home. This length of time will smoke out the sick people, and they can be taken away to be safely treated by medical professionals.
    Until a vaccine is available, the newly cleared US would be kept that way with a 2-3 week quarantine of ALL incoming folks.

    That’s how I see it.

    https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/03/coronavirus-the-hidden-cases-why-we-must-shutdown-everything-and-do-it-now-.html

    See also https://digbysblog.net/2020/03/immune-to-reality/ with regard to the issue of President Dumbass.

  7. dbk

    My home state’s governor (IL-JB Pritzker) is being fairly pro-active and has a good back-up team at the IDPH. Plus, he and the Mayor of Chicago are pretty much in agreement about how to proceed (e.g. St. Patrick’s Day Parade – a huge deal in Chicago – was cancelled). Looks like the state’s public universities won’t go back into session after spring break. The IL General Assembly will not be meeting for (at least a) week.

    Pritzker provides no-nonsense daily updates and people are paying attention.

    Closing K-12 schools is a problem because so many students receive 1-2 meals at school; nobody knows how to deal with this.

    Nursing homes and VA homes that were polling centers for the primary on next Tuesday won’t be used. Pritzker issued a call for everyone to vote by mail if at all possible.

    Illinois’ total diagnosed cases as of today (25) sounds low – but the state (like others) doesn’t have testing kits, so … who knows? Pritzker is justifiably angry, because Illinois has medical research centers that could have developed their own tests far more quickly, but the CDC forbade it.

    In contrast, the country where I’m living (Greece): (1) has closed all schools, universities, etc. for a minimum period of 2 weeks (after which, they’ll re-assess); (2) has cancelled all events of 1,000 or more (probably will cancel smaller events in the next day or so) countrywide; (3) has closed hospitals to visitors; (4) has cleared out the ICU at one of Athens’ largest hospitals solely for Covid-19 cases; (5) has cancelled all school trips this spring.

    People I’ve spoken with suspect that schools/universities will remain shut through Easter break (end of April), and the school year will be extended through late June.

    Greece caught the virus twice: from a woman returning to northern Greece from Milan (so, we know “Patient Zero”) and then again from a group of religious tourists returning from a trip to Israel (this group consisted of numerous individuals).

    Total diagnosed cases as of Wed.: 100. Total pop: 10.5 million. [note: everybody who asks/needs to be tested gets tested]

    If deemed necessary, the government will impose even more drastic measures.

    Hope it’s not too late.

  8. Seattle Resident

    “Even considering his idiotic statements so far, I think that Trump could pull this out if he was able to play the authoritative fatherly leader who tells you that it will be hard, but we can get through this. (There is a political opening for something nasty.) He can’t do it. He lacks the gravitas.”

    Trump has gravitas, but has too much of a tin ear vis-a-vis the problems of regular americans. He’s proposing free market solutions for a health care crisis that requires a Keynesian solution of Marshall Plan scale and I don’t believe he’s equipped intellectually nor ideologically, imo, to deal with this pandemic.

  9. Hugh

    That probably should read Sangre de Drago. That’s dragon’s blood in Spanish. I did find Sangre de Grado via the google but it would translate something like high quality blood.

    Masks won’t keep you from getting the virus. They would reduce your ability to transmit it if you have it.

    Re gloves, my favorite moments in medical and crime dramas were those where somebody gowned and gloved had just touched some very sick and contagious person or some gooey piece of corpse and then flicked their hair or rubbed their nose or picked up some report and handed it off to some unsuspecting schlub. There is simply no substitute for washing your hands often and well.

  10. DMC

    “The red latex of the Sangre de Drago, aka Sangre de Grado, tree (at least seven species of Croton native to Peru, Ecuador and Brazil), has purported wound-healing and antioxidant properties, and has been used for centuries by native people.” –Wikipedia

    Croton being one of several genera of plants whose dried sap has been collectively referred to as “Dragons Blood” and mostly traded in as an incense, though its medicinal use is ancient. The Yemeni island of Socotra is a principal source of DB, and was recently invaded by US Marines, apparently in support of some UAE operation. Now actual American ground forces are getting involved in MbS’ little fiasco? I’m going bullish on DB futures.

  11. Hugh

    Apparently, coronavirus testing will continue to be not free. From Trump’s speech tonight:

    “Earlier this week, I met with the leaders of health insurance industry who have agreed to waive all copayments for coronavirus treatments, extend insurance coverage to these treatments, and to prevent surprise medical billing.”

    Nothing about deductibles. Nothing about the un- and under- insured. Still a private enterprise approach.

  12. Zachary Smith

    I’ve seen a lot of tips about the coronavirus, but if there have been any regarding the laundry room they’ve escaped my notice.

    Households with more than one person in residence ought to be using color-coded towels, or individualized ones with name tags held on with safety pins. But what about when it’s time to wash the towels and the rest of the dirty clothes?

    Bacteria are likely hiding in your household washing machine

    Right about now my fingernails are the cleanest they’ve ever been, and people I speak with laughingly agree theirs are the same way. Keeping other stuff clean is something we also want to do. The linked article describes the washing machine problem, but the part telling how “Studies have shown that bleach activity strongly decreases and becomes insufficient at lower washing temperatures. shows the author just didn’t do his homework quite right.

    All experiments in this research were carried out using a domestic heavy-duty biological powder which is claimed by the manufacturer to be outstanding at low temperatures.

    Nowhere in the paper are the words “bleach” or “chlorine” used.

    Do your sanitation with liquid Chlorine Bleach. Two liquid ounces (1/4 cup) are about right. In my top-loader I premix the bleach with a gallon of water. Be careful at this stage not to splash any on the clothing you’re wearing. After the machine has filled with water, I pause it and dump in the weak bleach solution. For front loaders I’m a bit uncertain – I’ve never operated one of them. I’d suppose they have a dispenser somewhere. If so, I’d pour in the 2 ounces of Bleach, and finish filling it with plain water.

    *That 2 ounce number is one I found in an article several years ago, and it might be outdated. (The mixing jug I use is factory marked for both the 1/4 cup bleach and water levels.) Using more liquid bleach up to the amount suggested on the jug would be OK, but never less!*

    https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/27/health/washing-machine-bacteria-wellness/index.html

  13. Chipper

    I know I’m not a regular poster here, and I myself don’t tend to follow links of posters I don’t know, but if you want some really good statistics that will give you an idea of where we’re heading, please read this:

    https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca

    “Countries that are prepared will see a fatality rate of ~0.5% (South Korea) to 0.9% (rest of China).
    Countries that are overwhelmed will have a fatality rate between ~3%-5%”

    He also comes up with some estimates of the number of cases, given that testing is in inadequate in many/most countries.

  14. 450.org

    If a soft military coup is not conducted in America to forcibly remove the Traitor In Chief from office, here is one way this can & will proceed. The police, the sheriff’s departments, will be working overtime perhaps with the aid of the National Guard in kicking people out of their homes for not paying mortgages because they’ve been laid off by their employers because of the systemic domino effects of COVFEFE-19 and they have no money to pay their mortgages or any bills. The homeless population will explode. The burgeoning homeless population will be quarantined and placed in refugee camps similar to the camps seen in the rest of the world for migrant refugees. In Georgia, for example, the governor has deesignated a remote expansive state park as one such place. Maybe they’ll build some crematoriums on location to dispose of the throngs of dead homeless refugees. That would be a nice gesture, don’t you think? This will be the capitalist response in America to COVFEFE-19 — to double down and triple down on the pain & suffering. But hey, at least it’s not socialism, right, so it’s all good!!!!!! And to think, Joe & Mika have criticized the Chinese response to this as heavy-handed. I agree, the Chinese response was heavy hand versus the American response which is and will continue to be empty handed.

  15. 450.org

    Come on, seriously? What did I type that got it caught up in moderation? I didn’t include any links and I didn’t curse. I don’t get it.

  16. Chipper

    In addition to the average 5-day incubation period, according to this article, it’s an average of 5 days from symptom onset to when a person starts having difficulty breathing (for people who progress to that, obviously most do not) and 7 days on average from symptom onset until hospitalization. That means that even when countries/regions go into lockdown, there’s still going to be a growing number of cases needing hospital care for at least two weeks.
    Source:
    https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-covid19-day-by-day-symptoms-patients-2020-2?op=1

  17. The Polish Mystic

    I am disabled and homeless an living in a van in the United States. Still no idea what is going to happen to me when we lockdown.

  18. Stirling S Newberry

    “Flatten the curve” means we bugled it already. As several immunological types – including my SO – have said, the first phase is quarantine. So the first note for the world is set-up quarantine protocols for the future. Because the is a fact of life in a globalized world.

    Second, Democracy means something. If the democratic voters have trash for inputs, they give trash as an output. No this is not a seniority system, despite what the major parties think. This means money must be reduced. Or we have Trump calling for things that have no use.

    Science must be enshrined in your constitution. No “there no global warming.” No more “summer will calm thing down.” Contrary to science must be politically forbidden. In the US, it must be an Amendment.

    The long term problem is that normally we have “people problems.” People problems can be talked about. The more discussions and even fights the better. But world problems must be submitted to science. There are people problems the will insert themselves, but everyone must be arguing from the same facts.

    This is why taking the coronavirus seriously means changing how we do things.

  19. anon

    We’ll be seeing more of these stories come out:

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/er-charged-teacher-showed-coronavirus-211022509.html

    https://abcnews.go.com/Health/man-coronavirus-flu-felt-bad/story?id=69535458

    I have read in comments sections of these articles that people who felt sick were refused by hospitals to be tested for the virus. I’m assuming that hospitals are just picking and choosing who looks ill enough to be tested since there aren’t enough test kits. Ridiculous to believe that they would not test the wife of the Georgian man in the hospital with coronavirus. There will be other people like the teacher in New York who will go to the hospital to be on the safe side, and because they were found not to have coronavirus, will be charged thousands of dollars in testing and hospital fees. All the more reason for Americans not to go to the hospital, making this situation a lot worse to contain than in countries with national health care.

  20. I published this a week ago, nothing’s changed:

    You’re damned right I make jokes about it. What else are you gonna do?

    It has to do with paying attention, as few do. I’ve been making bad jokes about bad Mexican beer since about three hours after it was made public. Kinda’ feel bad about that but, whatever. There’s enough good information out there that anyone paying attention should be making jokes. Because it’s a joke.

    Sidebar – Wash your hands like you just diced a bunch of jalapeños and need to take your contact lens out

    Bat-flu because that’s where it originated and I feel bad about making bad jokes about bad Mexican beer; vectoring from bats to dogs to humans with immuno systems compromised by a densely packed urban environment with very poor air quality. Yes yes yes it’s a virus not a flu but it seems like every three to five years we’re hit with a frenzied media hysteria about how if we don’t all run out and buy the Tamiflu© shot or this toilet wipe or that hand sanitizer we’re all gonna’ die of the bird/pig/monkey-flu. You want to talk about viri let’s talk about the viri and bacteri thawing in the tundra today that hasn’t seen a human since before we were human. We haven’t all died from the bird/pig/monkey-flu. I don’t know anybody who died from the bird/pig/monkey-flu. I don’t know anybody who knows anybody who died from the bird/pig/monkey-flu. Do you? Much ado about nothing. A hysterical marketing scam to sell hand sanitizer.

    Or more accurately, mountain out of a mole hill. The way I read the plethora of information available in the next two years between seventy-five (75) and eighty-five (85) percent (%) of the human population will be infected with the novel Corona virus; about half (50%) of whom will exhibit symptoms, about ten percent (10%) of whom seriously and of whom about one percent (1%) will die. That rounds out to 0.001% of the infected population. Less than your everyday common cold. Less than the Tamiflu, less than the bird/pig/monkey-flu.

    The bottom line, there’s actually two bottom lines: the first is if you just do as your grandmother taught you, wash your hands, keep your space clean, avoid unclean places, eat right sleep right maybe even get some exercise you’ll be just fine. Respect yourself. Put your hand over your mouth when you cough, that’ll help the solution. You’re either gonna’ get it or not. Be sensible, pay attention, be clean.

    The other bottom line: let’s talk about the viri and bacteri thawing in the tundra today that hasn’t seen a human since before we were human, and seven billion people on a ball of rock that can barely sustain one. I don’t think this is the one that gets us. Maybe the next.

    Grow thicker skin.

  21. 450.org

    The CEO and CFO of that hospital should be executed. In China they would be. As well, the entire Board of that hospital should also be executed and replaced as should all of upper management. The time has come.

  22. Lex

    I’ve previously given professional comment here on masks. And 12 airports in the last two weeks included the waiting hobby of pointing out to my wife all the masks that either weren’t effective or being worn improperly. I didn’t see a single person appropriately wearing a mask capable of stopping a virus. If you wear a mask incorrectly, you likely have higher contaminant concentrations inside the mask than outside.

    Gloves will provide protection for you, but not for spreading a virus. And unless you remove them correctly they provide little protection to you. Removal should have zero skin contact with any part of the gloves except the wrist band. One is peeled off, held in the still gloved hand and then the second peeled off and wrapped around the first glove removed. This encloses all exterior surfaces.

    The other note on my recent air travel was that I saw no measures being taken by airline or TSA staff to limit contaminant spread. And the only medica check facility I saw was at the little airport in San Juan that serves small plane trips to outlying islands (twin prop planes with maybe 12 passengers). It’s a certainty that the virus is spreading unchecked through the US and we’ll only come to grips with it when we find ourselves at the high end of the exponential growth curve.

    Finally, hydrogen peroxide is generally a better cleaner for bio-contaminants than bleach. Most hospital grade anti-viral cleaners are H2O2 based. 3% does a good job. It can also be purchased from horticultural supply stores at 30% (this is dangerous stuff). Solution of higher percentages must be done with distilled or DI water so that the reaction doesn’t occur during dilution. And with all sanitizing, contact time is important. A quick wipe with a bleach doesn’t do anything. A wet contact time of 5 minutes is generally necessary for sanitizing hard surfaces.

  23. Willy

    Last night, while picking up just cat food and LED bulbs at Costco, more than a few shoppers looked at me funny because their shopping carts were overflowing full.

    Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is characterized by mild symptoms including a runny nose, sore throat, cough, and fever. Illness can be more severe for some people and can lead to pneumonia or breathing difficulties.

    More rarely, the disease can be fatal. Older people, and people with other medical conditions (such as asthma, diabetes, or heart disease), may be more vulnerable to becoming severely ill.

    Is this what all the panic is about?

  24. @Lex

    Do you have any info or informed opinion on using 3% hydrogen peroxide mist to treat lung infections? This woman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbkBN3NmYPI successfully uses a nebulizer to treat her asthma. I think you can’t get a nebulizer without a prescription, nowadays, but the cool mist humidifiers are easy to find.

    I was researching H2O2 misting with regard to killing coronavirus, but apparently the concentrations they use (at least in a hospital setting) are too high for humans. OTOH, I think if your lungs are infected, then killing, say, half of the offending microbes might spell the difference between life and death, anyway, by giving your immune system a chance to finish the job, before organ failure sets in.

    BTW, the author of “Hydrogen Peroxide Medical Miracle” reports that intravenous hydrogen peroxide was very effective against flu and pneumonia.

    “H2O2 therapy is very effective on flu and pneumonia, especially if used in conjunction with ultraviolet blood irradiation (photoluminescence). For more information on photoluminescence (ultraviolet blood irradiation) see the book, Into The Light – Tomorrow’s Medicine Today.”

    Also, BTW, I was using 3% H2O2 to get rid of toenail fungus. It was slowly working, but I got impatient so started using 35% drops. I even dunked my foot in the stuff, once. It “burns” by turning your skin white, for a few hours. However, that did accelerate the process, and the nail finally came off.

    Because it would grow up, away from the nail bed surface, I used to trim it with wire cutters! I’ve saved the nail, which looks like a claw. I’ve thought of selling it on ebay, to inspire either a podiatrist, or else total weirdo; and also as a joke, but I’m afraid my family will disown me if I do so. 🙂

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

    Also, having watched another program on vitamin D vs. the flu (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5yVGmfivAk), I’m disappointed that Trump and Fauci, et. al., aren’t telling everybody to make sure they are getting enough. Even if it’s useless against covid-19 (which I doubt), it’ll keep people out of the hospital from other upper respiratory infections. I’m mostly expecting a failure to provide enough ICU’s for people with ARD. Vitamin D deficiency is common, and rickets has been increasing in the US.

  25. Jace

    Lex,

    My wife works in health care, for a non-profit. They are the only clinic in a fifty mile radius which has a large interpreter pool and treats uninsured patients.

    So they have a noticeably larger immigrant patient base.

    It’s a large organization, dragged down by a teaching university and a Catholic affiliate, so they tend to move slowly towards implementation.

    They got their response time in shape for this crisis, surprisingly. A robust questionaire, an isolation room with a veteran triage nurse linked on teleconference, and cleaning and other procedures in place since very early January. Clinical, clerical and admin, all bought in.

    This, of course, includes signage about self-reporting, requests for masks, hand washing, etc.

    None of that mattered, yesterday, when confronted with marrow-deep American ignorance. A man interpreted the signage and protocol as proof that the clinic was illegally concealing a covid-19 outbreak to protect the dirty immigrants who, he thought, were abusing taxpayer largesse and putting his pregnant wife in harms way. He was not persuadable, even after my wife explained that she is on multiple immunosuppresants and had confidence in the clinic’s efforts. The man began trying to open windows to escape, while yelling on his phone to another party that there were infected people all around him. He became a security issue, and until his wife was able to shame him out of the building, almost triggered the clinic’s lockdown procedures (which, fortunately, are robust because of repeated threats, unfortunately, to kill the abortionists).

    Before anyone assumes mental health problems, I heard similar sentiments at multiple locations, throughout the day, including one man repeatedly declaring to my Latino client that, as long as “your people” aren’t infected, he knows he can still feel safe, with all the threat in the unspoken part rather sickeningly left thick in the air.

    We aren’t, in the end, going to be undone by a novel virus. The virus isn’t ignorant or wise. The virus doesn’t lust for and fear the apocalypse. The virus isn’t a health, welfare and planet-killing apocalypse. We are.

  26. sglover

    In this hour of national trial, what we need more than anything else is lots of well-attended Trump rallies. To reinforce the solidarity of Real Americans at these events, hugging and the clasping of hands should be encouraged.

  27. KT Chong

    China has been hit by a lot of epidemics in the past 2-3 years. The bird flu and swine flu and coronavirus together with the fallout of Xinjiang and Hong Kong…

    I think they are signs that Xi Jinping has lost the Mandate of Heaven.

  28. Zachary Smith

    https://www.ianwelsh.net/taking-the-coronvarius-seriously/#comment-111360

    Look at the bright side – not all homeless people have that metal roof.

    Seriously, in a well-run society homeless people wouldn’t exist. There wouldn’t be a belief that the Magical Marketplace is the answer to all problems. If a “lockdown” happens, hopefully your local and/or state government will make provisions for supplying isolated dwellings where elderly or disable people may live. And of course assisting homeless people. That’s not the way to bet, for so many elected folks have drunk the “Libertarian” kool-aid these days. “Christians” are among the most enthusiastic in kicking people while they’re down. Their reasoning seems to be that Jesus was telling an elaborate fairy tale in his Sermon On The Mount. It’s just a theory, or some mysterious kind of Parable!
    I hope you are able to keep yourself warm and dry, and to supply yourself with clean drinking water. And somehow find enough food. Good luck.

  29. bruce wilder

    Coronvirus? (Headline typo)

  30. Stirling S Newberry

    When we have just had the 4th largest Dow loss for the day, and our betters have not gotten the message to put forward the best, it means a world of hurt is coming on.

  31. elkkern

    Mike the Mad Biologist has useful perspective on how the USA screwed up the first couple steps (testing, for isolation):

    https://mikethemadbiologist.com/2020/03/12/looking-for-covid-19-under-the-streetlight/

    – becuase we don\’t have enough test \”kits\” (wrong word?), they are used sparingly
    – the guidelines used for rationing the tests excluded people with no known contact vector
    – so we only looked where we knew we already had a problem
    – so many (thousands? at least?) other people who might have it were sent off without testing and subsequently infected others.

    And now the Democrats are pushing a bill to \”force\” employers to give workers paid leave. That\’s a Good Thing, but useless RIGHT NOW. Implementing that at every business, large & small, will take forever (counting likely court challenges!), and even then it won\’t be enforced. And all those Gig Workers, \”Contractors\”, etc – will they be \”required\” to pay themselves sick-leave?

    Federal Gov\’t needs to just pay people who test positive to stay home/self-isolate. Of course, that\’s meaningless until we can test millions of people.

    What a CF. Decades of hard work by all those lobbyists to prevent national health care, exacerbated by Trumpian incompetence. Sure wish I lived in a civilized country.

  32. Mark Pontin

    Ten Bears wrote: ‘You want to talk about viri let’s talk about the viri and bacteri thawing in the tundra today that hasn’t seen a human since before we were human.’

    Yes. This can’t be stressed enough.

    As Siberia’s permafrost starts to melt, scientists have been discovering some remarkably weird — frankly, alien — microbiological lifeforms that haven’t seen the light of day in hundreds of thousands of years.

    In this light, COVID-19 may actually turn out to be something of a blessing inasmuch as it functions as a light wake-up call about the perils of not merely letting financial predators order global societies to their benefit (as we’re witnessing), but of the real potential Jackpot to come.

    I may post again here about this sometime.

  33. Hugh

    So as Stirling noted, today the Dow-Jones lost 2,629.9 (-11.16%), the NASDAQ was down 83.35 points (-10.42%), and the S&P fell 286.8 (-10.46%). But don’t worry. Be happy. As Trump said in his speech yesterday, “Our banks and financial institutions are fully capitalize and incredibly strong.” Thank goodness for that. In fact, our banks and financial institutions are so incredibly strong with all those trillions in bad loans and unnettable derivatives looming over them that well, I’ll let the Martens over Wall Street on Parade lay it out for you:

    “the Federal Reserve Bank of New York announced today [Thursday, the 12th] that it will be offering $500 billion in 3-month repo loans to its primary dealers (Wall Street trading firms) today at 1:30 p.m. That $500 billion comes on top of the $198.10 billion the New York Fed loaned the street in its morning repo operations.

    “Tomorrow, the New York Fed said it will offer its primary dealers another $500 billion in a 3-month loan and another $500 billion in a one-month loan, bringing the two-day total to potentially more than $1.7 trillion being offered at super low interest rates. (The Fed will also offer its regular one-day loan of $175 billion tomorrow.)

    “To prop up the stock market further, the Fed announcement indicated that the $500 billion in 3-month loans and $500 billion in one-month loans will be offered weekly “for the remainder of the monthly schedule.” That means $1 trillion a week will be available at below-market interest rates. That will be on top of the $175 billion the Fed is offering daily in one-day loans and the $45 billion it is offering each Tuesday and Thursday in 14-day loans.”

    https://wallstreetonparade.com/2020/03/federal-reserve-announces-unprecedented-1-5-trillion-in-loans-to-wall-street-today-and-tomorrow/

    As the Martens point out, this is not QE4. That’s already been underway a few months. This is a full blown bailout, 2008 all over again. And as in 2008, it’s bailout of the rich and banks. Stupid money (401ks and small investors) and slow movers (pension funds) are going to get hammered.

  34. Hugh

    450, if it is any consolation I am in moderation too. If I had to guess, it was because you used the s–alism word, which the software finds offensive. Says a lot, doesn’t it?

    Mine had a link and some numbers in it.

  35. 450.org

    The software is bizarre, Hugh, isn’t it? You’re right, it could be so****ism or, then again, it could be COVF*F*-19 that’s setting it off.

  36. Lex

    @metamars,
    I wouldn’t ingest or inhale any H2O2 solution. It works by extreme oxidation. Once in contact with anything except pure H2O, the extra oxygen in H2O2 breaks off and becomes a free radical. It not only kills microbial life by over oxygenating the immediate environment, but the free radical oxygen damages DNA. I mean I’m not a doctor and it probably would kill whatever caused the infection, but that’s not all it would kill. The horticultural grade 30% stuff, as you learned is capable of burning flesh. At anything above 30% you can start cleaning concrete.

  37. Lex

    @Jace, holy shit. It wouldn’t matter if they were because they’re clearly using good protocols. I learned today that my brother-in-law (a cop) is convinced that it’s all a hoax. Too bad there’s no market value for ignorance, america would be rich.

  38. Willy

    I suspect the moderation algorithm here has a bit of a comical nature, sorta like when your kid asks Siri about “moutain beaver” for her school report, and Siri gives back pages of hillbilly porn pictures. It’d be interesting to see what gets caught in the net here.

  39. Mark Pontin

    It’s interesting what’s censored or at least omitted by corporate algorithms.

    It’s not just s****lism. Spellcheck rejects the word “immiseration” as correct. It is, though.

  40. Mark Pontin

    “Too bad there’s no market value for ignorance, america would be rich.”

    Oh, there can be plenty of market value in ignorance for those who aren’t ignorant.

  41. Benjamin

    @Geof

    “Trump’s base are a minority, less than 40% of the population. They are not enough to sustain him. Rabid enthusiasm is no substitute for numbers.”

    Which is why it’s to his advantage that the Dems again run a crappy candidate that people won’t come out to vote for. An obviously senile Biden is just the ticket for that. It’s honestly like the DNC went out of its way to push a candidate that is unlikely to win.

  42. @Lex

    Thanks, but shouldn’t potential DNA damage apply to intraveneous H2O2, also?

    I’m guessing that there’s a hormetic effect.

    In fact, IIRC, vitamin E is now considered to be pro-oxidant, at least at high levels. It’s hormetic effect results in the up-regulation of genes that make your body create more of it’s own anti-oxidants.

    So, the real question would be: what is the correct hormetic dose to get a net healing effect?

    Also potentially related: some herbs (at least) result in increasing positive effects, up to about 10 days consumption; after that, the body sort of adapts, and the response starts decreasing, dropping to basically no effect, at all. This is related by Dr Chris Shade, in one of his talks. His detox protocols are pulsed, starting at maybe 5 days on, and 2 days off; and going up to 10 days on, 4 days off.

    Consequently, another question is: in what manner should H2O2 be pulsed? (which would allow time for DNA repair).

    The oral H2O2 protocol I’ve seen promoted involves a long term build up, hold, and then decrease back to no or extremely low dose. This is also a form of pulsing.

  43. different clue

    About comments going into moderation, I think it is totally random. If this comment goes through, I will try a comment with some of those supposed tripwire words.

  44. different clue

    Write a sentence using the word survivalism. Hey, I just did!

  45. different clue

    It went right through. Socialism

  46. different clue

    It went right through.

  47. different clue

    hmmm . . . . the word soh-shuh-lizzum did not go through when it was spelled correctly.

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