I’m generally pessimistic about human beings. I’m trying to reconcile belief in democracy and giving people autonomy with the belief that a significant percentage of the population just isn’t capable of the meaningful engagement that you want to teach people.
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Combination of things - I’d considered it for that before, but didn’t want to risk getting hooked. Then the COVID-19 study made me buy some just in case, then you mentioned it… So I went for it. Seems like using 2mg 2-3 times a week will work well. Yeah, it’s great for poker, a little pick me up, enhanced focus, enhanced mood. So far so good with not getting hooked, I haven’t had any urges to take it.
On Saturdays and Sundays I play 10-12 hours online, which is way tougher than playing 12-15 hours in a casino. 550-660 hands per hour versus 35 hands per hour makes such a massive difference in terms of fatigue. I mean, in a casino you can fold a hand, mentally check out for 3 minutes, look at the showdown and reconstruct the action and you didn’t miss anything. Especially if you’re in a game with a bunch of people you play with a lot and don’t really need reads. Plus you never have the stress of having 2-3 hands hit turn and river decisions in big pots simultaneously with timers counting down and screeching beeping sounds warning you that you’re running out of time.
So my routine is coffee in the morning, and then mid-day when I start hitting that wall I try to take a 5 minute break, cut my tables in half by alternating where I’m sitting out for a few minutes while eating, then 15 minutes later the nicotine gum and then I’m back pretty close to peak.
So far, so good. I’m pretty well adjusted and doing very well, so far. I do notice the games getting tougher each week. Shoot me a PM if you want to discuss any of the adjustments or such.
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In almost every single article I’ve seen in which a doctor says this is not necessary, the doctor is basing it on CDC guidelines. The CDC has been not so great on this.
Also, I really don’t give a fuck what a doctor thinks about the appropriate precautions in washing produce to kill/remove coronavirus. I care what virologists and epidemiologists think.
Doctors treat patients, they don’t study the finer details on exactly how a brand new virus is spread.
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Yeah, I agree this sort of modeling is necessary, but it’s a completely different analysis. Mine is oriented towards HVAC air exchange rates and ambient air risk.
To be completely transparent, I was testing my assumption that I need to wear masks diligently indoors, but outdoors it’s not such a big deal. Outdoors, when you exhale your 1/2 liter of air every 4 seconds, you’re surrounded by masses of air. Even a crowded-looking open public area has such an absurd amount of air surrounding it that’s the concentration of air you’re breathing that has been in someone else’s lungs is minuscule in comparison to basically any indoor area. But I wanted to quantify it using reasonable assumptions.
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Yup, like I’ve already caught myself slacking on my handwashing behavior on days I’m totally confined to my place (which is most days - going out 1-2 times a week for packages//mail). In theory, this is fine. My apartment is a clean zone, so it’s ok and it’s still a better handwashing than pre-COVID.
But then I’ll be handling groceries, wiping them down, and I’ll wash my hands before touching my face and realize that I half-assed it just as I’m reaching to scratch that itch. And I’m tired, and I don’t want to go back to the sink, and I think, “Fuck it, it’ll be fine, I’m being so careful 99% of the time.” But then I catch myself, “No, dumbass, THIS is the most important 1%, THIS is your only actual risk - handling stuff that’s been outside then touching your face.”
Then I go back and do it right… and again, if I’m at this point and I’m in like the 99.99999th percentile of borderline OCD precautions about this, I assume other people are like licking the packages when they bring them in.
I’m doing the analysis myself, but unfortunately I don’t know a thing about hospital HVAC systems and I believe they’re designed specifically to limit airborne pathogens. I wouldn’t venture a guess about what this all looks like.
I hear you. I have similar questions. Perhaps where we differ is that I see each person’s engagement on a spectrum. Some are more capable than others. My aim is to engage each person to their desire and capacity, no matter how small. And just so, there are others who engage as I describe but to an unhealthy extreme. I’d hope to encourage a more balanced approach from them, too.
How would we confirm/document this? You would have to meet the following criteria:
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A person contracts coronavirus who was not exposed to anyone else during a ~2-week window than their delivery driver.
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This person gets sick enough to get tested.
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They live in an area that is doing proper contact tracing, and it is traced back to the driver.
or… One delivery person gets it and super spreads it to 10-15 people and you’re able to trace it back and then draw conclusions, which seems way more likely as the way to confirm it.
That first parlay seems tough to hit. Like I keep hearing people say, “Nobody has gotten it from handling things in the grocery store.” I call bullshit. How the fuck would we know? It’s hard enough to confirm or suspect the exact place someone caught it, let alone the method. Even if we knew someone caught it in the grocery store, there’s no way in hell we’d be able to figure out whether they caught it because someone else was shedding virus in the air or because they touched the wrong milk carton and then rubbed their face.
Glad this is going so well for you, cuse. All of the discussion made me reconsider whether I’d enjoy using nicotine as well. What’s the difference in this and my casual/regular use of caffeine? But I am overly careful about such things given my family history.
IIRC, worldometers includes American territories in with America while JHU does not.
We have 1.4m confirmed cases and probably somewhere in the ballpark of 5-15m actual infections. Seems pretty unlikely people weren’t getting infected from delivery and the grocery store to some extent just based on the fact we averaged like 30k confirmed new cases a day a month after lockdown.
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Rare to get to use this twice in one day. Thanks for sharing your analysis 
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What is up with Cuomo saying they had 170 deaths or whatever and Worldometers only showing 63? They did that yesterday for NY data also.
Yeah, so, if you don’t count leaving my apartment to take trash down the hall to the trash chute or to go down to the package room to get mail/packages as leaving the house (and I’m always doing those things after 12am, usually after 2am), then I’ve been locked down since March 10th. I’ve left the house three times: once to visit my parents the day before my father had surgery, and I wore a P100 mask the entire time, once because my Dad had to go back to the ER the night he was discharged, and I had to meet my Mom there to give her a ride home, once to drive my car for 5-10 minutes since it had sat unused for two weeks, again after 12am. I need to do that again, actually.
The one way I cheat is that when I go to the package room, I sometimes walk the long way. My complex is multiple buildings, and I could stay in the courtyard and get there, but instead I loop around and walk half a block down the street so I can peak in the grocery store across the street and see whether they appear to be staying stocked up.
Worldometer usually takes a day or two to get everything tabulated.
Turns out that you can cough/sneeze it more like 12 feet. Some researchers used lasers and figured it out. GJGE global health experts with the six feet thing! Memo to humanity in 100 years: whatever number you say first WILL stick for good. So in the next pandemic, whatever everyone thinks the number is at first, just fucking triple it.
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Update on my daughter’s connections that had covid.
Both parents of one friend now test negative for being infected and positive for antibodies. (Might be same status as last update)
The kid though now tests positive for antibodies and negative for being infected. She never had any symptoms she noticed.
Her other friend whose dad had tested positive, now is negative. I don’t know details on that as far as antibody vs infected.
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Are antibody tests even reliable yet?
You can’t be 100% accurate. Is it better to err on the side of assuming people are dumber than they actually are or smarter than they actually are?