Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue

Submitted by Cant Stop the M... on Sun, 03/29/2020 - 5:19am

I still have one more essay (I hope only one, not two) to write about electoral politics before I can be done with the topic for the foreseeable future. Hopefully, I'll get them up this week. I had a bad night last night (being without the four hours of acupuncture I get per week is taking its toll, on both me and Kate), so I'm going to just put up as calming an Open Thread as I can.

Stay strong, mes amis.

I love this song. It expresses how I often feel about the American people. Yes, I know that sounds pretentious.

Something New

This poem is one of the main reasons I decided to do a Something Old, Something New OT this week. For once, there's something new I like (though the English professor in me wants to write sp! in red pen on parts of it). But I think this is quite wonderful. My mom told me about it:

And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still. And listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed, some danced.

Some met their shadows.

And the people began to think differently. And the people healed. And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.

And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed.

The poem is by Kitty O'Meara. The video appears to be part of a series called "Acts of Global Human Kindness," on Julia Sawalha's YouTube channel. Might be worth a look.

None of this is intended to downplay the horror, but merely to include calm and beauty in our lives right now, for those of us who can experience them. I believe that is important.

Something Borrowed

I'm borrowing these songs from Turkey. I know there's all sorts of terrible things in their history, but I can't help but love a people that reads books as a form of social protest and responds to a pandemic with song.

And then there's this, from Spain:

apparently, a professional singer is entertaining her neighborhood for a half an hour every day.

And in Italy...well, this is just amazing.

Something Blue

Get a load of this. Watch the maps turn blue as the emissions decrease:

Peace to us all.

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Comments

Submitted by mimi on Sun, 03/29/2020 - 6:28am

So, Trump didn't issue a quarantaine for NYC?

Can we sue him for negligent murder? I mean these days we are allowed to dream of the impossible, right?

Was the discussion between Cuomo and Trump for the whole NY State or just NYC? My reading comprehension is corona-affected. My head explodes. I need to fix my head first. Good Morning to you all.

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https://www.euronews.com/live

Submitted by Cant Stop the M... on Sun, 03/29/2020 - 12:59pm

A lot of them, perhaps most of them

@mimi

should be charged with manslaughter at least, for both this and other crimes. The people of Iraq would likely say murder.

I can't believe anybody is thinking about starting a new military offensive right now. Fucking unbelievable. Yeah, let's travel in planes to a foreign country and get up close and personal with lots and lots of different people.

—

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Submitted by mimi on Sun, 03/29/2020 - 6:27am

Interesting article to read, I made it half through so far

Is factory farming to blame for coronavirus? - The Observer

Scientists are tracing the path of Sars-CoV-2 from a wild animal host – but we need to look at the part played in the outbreak by industrial food production

Laura Spinney

Sat 28 Mar 2020 18.00 GMT
Last modified on Sat 28 Mar 2020 18.06 GMT

Where did the virus causing the current pandemic come from? How did it get to a food market in Wuhan, China, from where it is thought to have spilled over into humans? The answers to these questions are gradually being pieced together, and the story they tell makes for uncomfortable reading.

Let’s start at the beginning. As of 17 March, we know that the Sars-CoV-2 virus (a member of the coronavirus family that causes the respiratory illness Covid-19) is the product of natural evolution. A study of its genetic sequence, conducted by infectious disease expert Kristian G Andersen of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, and colleagues, rules out the possibility that it could have been manufactured in a lab or otherwise engineered. Puff go the conspiracy theories.

The next step is a little less certain, but it seems likely that the original animal reservoir for the virus was bats. Andersen’s team showed – like the Chinese before them –that the sequence of Sars-CoV-2 is similar to other coronaviruses that infect bats.
...
If this is indeed the route the virus took to humans, it has two critical interfaces: one between us and the intermediate host, possibly a pangolin, and one between that host and bats. Most of the attention so far has been focused on the interface between humans and the intermediate host, with fingers of blame being pointed at Chinese wet markets and eating habits, but both interfaces were required for the pandemic to ignite. So where and how did the spillover from the bat to the pangolin – or other wild or semi-wild intermediate host – occur?

Read on to how the virus jumped from the bat to the pangolin. If you like. I am too tired to excerpt further.

Have a good Sunday, all.

—

https://www.euronews.com/live

Submitted by Cant Stop the M... on Sun, 03/29/2020 - 12:58pm

Thanks, mimi,

@mimi

This is very interesting.

Is factory farming to blame for coronavirus? - The Observer

Scientists are tracing the path of Sars-CoV-2 from a wild animal host – but we need to look at the part played in the outbreak by industrial food production

Laura Spinney

Sat 28 Mar 2020 18.00 GMT
Last modified on Sat 28 Mar 2020 18.06 GMT

Where did the virus causing the current pandemic come from? How did it get to a food market in Wuhan, China, from where it is thought to have spilled over into humans? The answers to these questions are gradually being pieced together, and the story they tell makes for uncomfortable reading.

Let’s start at the beginning. As of 17 March, we know that the Sars-CoV-2 virus (a member of the coronavirus family that causes the respiratory illness Covid-19) is the product of natural evolution. A study of its genetic sequence, conducted by infectious disease expert Kristian G Andersen of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, and colleagues, rules out the possibility that it could have been manufactured in a lab or otherwise engineered. Puff go the conspiracy theories.

The next step is a little less certain, but it seems likely that the original animal reservoir for the virus was bats. Andersen’s team showed – like the Chinese before them –that the sequence of Sars-CoV-2 is similar to other coronaviruses that infect bats.
...
If this is indeed the route the virus took to humans, it has two critical interfaces: one between us and the intermediate host, possibly a pangolin, and one between that host and bats. Most of the attention so far has been focused on the interface between humans and the intermediate host, with fingers of blame being pointed at Chinese wet markets and eating habits, but both interfaces were required for the pandemic to ignite. So where and how did the spillover from the bat to the pangolin – or other wild or semi-wild intermediate host – occur?

Read on to how the virus jumped from the bat to the pangolin. If you like. I am too tired to excerpt further.

Have a good Sunday, all.

—

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Submitted by Lookout on Sun, 03/29/2020 - 8:30am

Good morning

They canceled the Fla Folk Fest this week. I figured they would. For a little humor...Jonathon isn't handling the lockdown very well...(6 min)

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6lhWKX_S0k]

Stay safe and keep a good thought!

—

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Submitted by enhydra lutris on Sun, 03/29/2020 - 10:51am

Good morning CSTMS. Another day of rain here, and my

week to cook starts today. Luckily the last time we went to the farmers' market, we snagged two extra pieces of salmon and immediately froze them, so we get "grilled salmon sunday" just like nothing has changed. That means that today I can good off and claim to be menu planning even though it is already mostly done already.

Sorry about the missed acupuncture and the deleterious effects of that. Is it on hold for the duration or can you come up with a work around?

Thanks for the OT and its contents.

have a good one.

—

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Submitted by Cant Stop the M... on Sun, 03/29/2020 - 12:57pm

Not sure how to come up with a work-around

@enhydra lutris

without testing. An acupuncturist would, to be responsible, probably have to test herself daily--unless she had antibodies to COVID-19, showing that she had gotten the disease and recovered. Thankfully, COVID-19 is a very slow-mutating virus, so that antibodies to it will last for at least a year, so anyone who can be proven to have had it and recovered is good to go. But an acupuncturist who tested negative for antibodies or antigens would have to keep testing herself, I'd think daily. And we don't have resources to test the general public at all. That's been the big problem from the beginning. Well, one of many big problems.

—

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Submitted by UntimelyRippd on Sun, 03/29/2020 - 2:04pm

This is a very strange thing to say.

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

Thankfully, COVID-19 is a very slow-mutating virus, so that antibodies to it will last for at least a year

A single mutation could render an antibody useless.
Also, it's not clear that SARS-Cov-2 is "slow-mutating". It "appears" to have a lower mutation "rate" than influenza, but rate of mutation in this context is not well-defined. Things like incubation time and rate of transmission will affect the apparent rate of mutation over a given time-frame.

—

The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Submitted by Cant Stop the M... on Sun, 03/29/2020 - 3:16pm

Well, I got it from John Campbell, who is both a registered

@UntimelyRippd @UntimelyRippd

nurse and a professor who teaches people to be nurses, and so far he hasn't let me down. Of course, he could be wrong. But you should take it up with him.

When I put things like that in an essay, I like to post a link with them, but I usually don't in my comments. I'm looking for the specific episode now.

All right, I just found the episode, from last Thursday, 26 March:

It's at 1:15.

—

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Submitted by CS in AZ on Sun, 03/29/2020 - 3:33pm

He might have been premature in that opinion

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

He does give a number of caveats such as “it appears” and “so far”, and the statement that antibodies would last at least a year was purely his opinion. There’s no data to back that up yet, and there won’t be until time shows whether it’s true or not.

Until then, caution is warranted.

Mystery In Wuhan: Recovered Coronavirus Patients Test Negative ... Then Positive

March 27, 20209:28 AM ET

But some Wuhan residents who had tested positive earlier and then recovered from the disease are testing positive for the virus a second time. Based on data from several quarantine facilities in the city, which house patients for further observation after their discharge from hospitals, about 5%-10% of patients pronounced "recovered" have tested positive again.

Some of those who retested positive appear to be asymptomatic carriers — those who carry the virus and are possibly infectious but do not exhibit any of the illness's associated symptoms — suggesting that the outbreak in Wuhan is not close to being over.

At this point we have lots of stories, lots of questions, and very few facts.

Submitted by Lookout on Sun, 03/29/2020 - 3:38pm

There are two strains of the coronavirus

@CS in AZ

Seems like it is the L and S. That complicates the reinfection hypothesis.
https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/coronavirus-aggressive-l-type-strain-a...

That is especially the case without an antibody (ie immunity) test.

—

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Submitted by UntimelyRippd on Sun, 03/29/2020 - 4:15pm

The claim of an L strain and S strain is not

@Lookout
currently the accepted consensus -- it was one claim in one paper that has been widely criticized.

I posted a long comment a few days ago trying to apprise folks of some of the issues: https://caucus99percent.com/comment/481118#comment-481118 . There are literally hundreds of distinct variants that have been sequenced, but none are all that different from any of the others, and nobody has measured a clinical difference between any of them.

Similarly, the work that originally informed Campbell's discussion of the virus being "slow-mutating" has been questioned on the grounds I indicated above.

Keep in mind that whatever else Campbell might be (and as CSTM notes, his professional expertise is in nursing and nursing education -- the "Dr." refers to his PhD in nursing education, not an MD), he's not a virologist, an epidemiologist, or a geneticist -- he's not a trained biologist of any kind at all. He may be less susceptible than the average bear to misinterpreting or overstating the significance of hot-of-the-press results, but he is not a practicing scientist specializing in the fields in question. Because the science itself is swiftly evolving, there will be plenty of interesting published findings, peer-reviewed and otherwise, most of which will stir up debate. He's doing his best to keep up with the new information and to synthesize it for the rest of us -- but his "lessons" can be only as good as the info that's being produced by the primary sources he and others are drawing on.

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Submitted by enhydra lutris on Sun, 03/29/2020 - 4:30pm

Ahem

@UntimelyRippd

He may be less susceptible than the average bear to misinterpreting or overstating the significance of hot-of-the-press results,

Don't be knocking us Bears, dammit! (Cal, '68)

—

That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Submitted by UntimelyRippd on Sun, 03/29/2020 - 5:09pm

Only the average ones, dude.

@enhydra lutris

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Submitted by CS in AZ on Sun, 03/29/2020 - 4:16pm

Old info. Now there are apparently at least 8

@Lookout

that have been identified so far.

At least 8 strains of the coronavirus are spreading across the globe

March 29, 2020

More than 2,000 genetic sequences of the virus have been submitted from labs to the open database NextStain, which shows it mutating on maps in realtime, according to the site.

Researchers said the data, which includes samples every continent except Antarctica, revealed the virus is mutating on average every 15 days, National Geographic reported.

They assure us, this isn’t as terrible as it sounds.

But Nextstrain cofounder Trevor Bedford said the mutations are so small that there is no strain of the virus that is more harmful.

“These mutations are completely benign and useful as a puzzle piece to uncover how the virus is spreading,” Bedford told the outlet.

He said the various strains allow researchers to see whether community transmission is widespread throughout a region, which can inform whether lockdown measures have been effective.

Various sources say these mutations don’t affect vaccine strategies or testing yes/no for the virus.

The articles I’ve found on people testing positive after recovering says it’s a mystery, but it could be the previous negative tests were wrong, I.e., false negatives. Or there could be other types of testing errors happening. Testing is not perfect and mistakes do happen. I think it’s going to be quite some time before we (humans) really get this figured out. That was really my point. It is too soon to know what will happen with this virus in the years ahead.

Submitted by UntimelyRippd on Sun, 03/29/2020 - 5:43pm

I'm going to post again, because this conversation

@CS in AZ
is branching in this one thread, but Bedford has gotten a bit of a spanking for his over-enthusiastic endorsement of the original "L and S model". At this point (or anyway, at the point of my last reading a few days ago) virologists haven't settled on the idea that there are any versions of the virus so different from one another that they merit classification as distinct "strains".

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Submitted by Lookout on Sun, 03/29/2020 - 6:19pm

That seems correct to me...

@CS in AZ

...there could be other types of testing errors happening. Testing is not perfect and mistakes do happen. I think it’s going to be quite some time before we (humans) really get this figured out. That was really my point. It is too soon to know what will happen with this virus in the years ahead.

We simply must wait for the evidence before we jump to any conclusions.

—

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Submitted by UntimelyRippd on Sun, 03/29/2020 - 2:16pm

I'm not sure why everyone is so excited about

South Korea's mortality rate. It's over 1.5%, with the following considerations:
A. South Korea has the most aggressive testing protocols in place anywhere
B. South Korea has one of the highest ratios of hospital beds to population
C. South Korea's numbers show higher rates of young patients to elderly patients.

In other words, South Korea's mortality rates represent a likely floor on the mortality rate. (Germany's are better at the moment, but we'll see whether that holds in the long run.) Unless an effective treatment is found, we can expect that eventually 70 or 80% (or more) of all human beings will catch this thing, including the elderly demographic; as a result we will see overall mortality figures of 2% to 3% assuming the necessary medical care is available (5 to 10% otherwise). Yes: Barring a vaccine or an effective treatment (of which there are two or three hopefuls at the moment, e.g. serum plasma from recovered patients), the best-case scenario is that COVID-19 and its successors will (maybe over the course of 2 or 3 years) take out about 5 million Americans, and about 150 million people worldwide.

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