I agree. Essentially, we most likely already have outbreaks (or are about to) but we’re in the incubation period. I’ve actually got a slight cough and mild sore throat, so I’m kind of wondering… But hopefully it’s just a common cold or the result of the weather fluctuating from 30 to 60 and back repeatedly.
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Hmm, people are stockpiling food? Well I’ve done a 10 day fast so I guess I’m good.
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This makes me feel much better about being in San Fran all last weekend.
/s
Oh yeah, epidemics and disasters are excluded. It’s useful if your kids get sick.
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I’m pretty irritable right now.
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I usually like to have a bunch of tuna in my house anyway just in case of earthquake or other disaster. I just cleaned trader joes out - I should be good for a month.
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It’s not as bad as Malaria(or flu, or car crashes)
Yeah. Malaria is really fucking bad and is arguably responsible for a huge chunk of the world’s suffering. Another Malaria would be absolutely catastrophic.
This is like telling a one legged man that they are “only” going to lose a hand, so it’s not that bad.
Welp, first case identified in my continent. Brazilian dude from Sao Paolo came back from a trip to Italy, tested positive today.
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I know the fairview development center thing is probably not huge news where you’re from but people in my city are losing their fucking MINDS
Blaming newsome, blaming trump, some saying it’s a conspiracy to wipe out republicans or something (despite costa mesa going blue the last two elections)
It’s crazytown on all my community boards. The hysteria’s at a fever pitch. I don’t know what to make of it, honestly. I don’t really want the covid 19 patients here but it’s mostly because I think the facility they’re pitching is a run down piece of crap that they’ve been trying to close for years, not motivated so much by my proximity to it. I don’t think there’d be some ground zero pandemic event in this city.
The mayor filed the injunction/restraining order or whatever, and unlike that other facility that was proposed - (in alabama or georgia?) - the administration seems to be fighting it.
Warning, many, many uses of the n-word and other non-work safe language and content.
Your momma be callin the prison, how did he die?
Ma’am, he didn’t want to give up his ramens.
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One upside to this whole thing is that the antivaxxer thing may resolve itself.
Talked to my parents about this today and they are going to stock up on non-perishable foods this week. They are definitely not the prepper/doomsday type so it was an interesting conversation to talk about logistics and best practices. We have cousins that live outside of Burlington, VT with a decent amount of land on a small mountain, so heading up there to quarantine if needed was also discussed.
And my sister works in a hospital that treats patients from all over the world. She is immunosuppressed and got super sick last night. She’s now in the hospital being treated for the flu. Drs told me to take Tamiflu as I am also immunocompromised and was near her two days ago. Really hoping we’re not the early cases for this, but if so wish us luck.
NIMBYs gonna NIMBY. Citing the massive communal funeral pyres is going to be hell out there. “The giant mountain of corpses is completely out of context with the rest of the neighborhood.” “Traffic is bad enough already–how are we supposed to deal with garbage trucks packed with human remains?” “Of course we need to dispose of all these bodies, but this corpse-fire should be for the people who made this neighborhood so desirable in the first place, not for some 21-year-old software developer with no roots in the community who just died of coronavirus”
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Did anyone note itt that Iran decided not to do quarantines? Because that happened.
Most of Iran’s neighbors have closed their borders.
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Human trials will start around April on a COVID-19 vaccine.
Moderna’s vaccine against COVID-19 was developed in record time because it’s based on a relatively new genetic method that does not require growing huge amounts of virus. Instead, the vaccine is packed with mRNA, the genetic material that comes from DNA and makes proteins. Moderna loads its vaccine with mRNA that codes for the right coronavirus proteins which then get injected into the body. Immune cells in the lymph nodes can process that mRNA and start making the protein in just the right way for other immune cells to recognize and mark them for destruction.
Pretty cool.
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Also, this is 4 days old so maybe I’m ponied, but a professor at National Taiwan University thinks the virus might be man-made, although he’s not certain.
His evidence is that it has a 96% similarity with a bat virus stored at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but that the differences include four amino acid insertions in the genome compared to other known coronaviruses. He thinks with natural mutation you would be very unlikely to see four insertion mutations all at once. I’m not qualified to evaluate this claim as I didn’t major in genetics, but it seems plausible.
Edit: Very briefly for those without science knowledge, amino acids are what proteins are constructed of, including the proteins viruses use to do things like gain entry to cells. Modifying the structure of such a protein could make it viable in human cells. Each amino acid is coded for by what’s called a “codon”, which is a sequence of three bases in the RNA genome. There are four “bases” which are the coding units of RNA, U C A and G. So for example, UUU codes for the amino acid phenylalanine, while CUU codes for leucine. Accidentally put a C in instead of an U while replicating the genome, boom, you’ve got what’s called a substitution mutation. Those happen all the time in error-prone viral replication.
Insertion mutations involve inserting three bases into the genome at a particular point. It has to be three and it has to be at exactly the right place for a new codon to be added or you’ll throw the whole sequence out of whack (a “frameshift”) and end up with a junk protein. You can see how insertion mutations are a lot harder to pull off than substitution mutations. Having four separate ones of one amino acid each which produce a resulting protein which is functional is… suspicious, especially without seeing any intermediaries in the wild. HOW suspicious, exactly, I’m not qualified to say.
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I read the first two paragraphs but can confidently say this conspiracy is BS. How do I know? Because they are all BS.
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