The science is surprisingly legit.
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Basically, yes, it’s a pretty straightforward procedural where competent people with relevant expertise are listened to by well-intentioned, non-psychopathic political leaders. You know — fiction.
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Am I bad person if tracking the number of confirmed cases by country reminds me of an Olympics medal count? Go USA!
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Here in Sweden it’s been pretty bizarre. As far as I understand (I don’t speak Swedish), all national health related decisions are not taken by government but by the national health agency, who so far have only prohibited events >500 people and the closing of schools/uni for students >16 years old. The rest are mere suggestions, including: WFH if feeling ill (!?) and outdoor seating for restaurants. There’s zero mention of keeping distance when outside, I think they assume the Swedish can figure out the sensible precautions themselves. On Facebook today I saw a message from Stockholm Marathon (May 31, 18000 runners), that “It takes time to gather all necessary information and we are looking into all possible alternatives in order to make the most thoughtful decision possible.” This is typical Swedish, postpone actual decision making until it’s supported by everyone. It must be said that basically 99% of the reactions to that post was along the line of “wtf is there to think about?” Another example is that the ski slopes are still open. Going on a ski trip is very popular during Easter. This is just so out of touch it’s stunning. There have been a lot of cases of spreading virus in Europe by people coming home from winter sport trips in Italy/Austria.
Obviously I am taking this much more seriously, only leaving home for a weekly trip to the supermarket. I just ordered a bunch of stuff from IKEA to make the balcony a bit more comfortable. Fortunately my work (academia) allows me to work from home very easily, and we’re very used to collaborating through zoom. I was to attend a conference abroad this month, which got turned into a virtual conference basically overnight with 100 people attending (more than the original conference would have attracted).
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dunno what Melfi was thinking when she had prime rib at home
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GL US
Portable morgues as New York prepares for the worst
Tara McKelvey
BBC News, New York City
Long, white, rectangular-shaped trucks are parked outside of Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan and Elmhurst Hospital in Queens. The trucks are refrigerated morgues, last used after the 9/11 attacks. Now they are ready for the pandemic, providing a place for bodies if the city morgues fill up.
There are more than 21,000 cases of the virus in the city and, as New York state governor Andrew Cuomo said on Thursday, the number of those in hospitals increased by 40% in the past 24 hours.
In addition to deploying the trucks, New York officials are turning to the federal government for help.
The New York officials, as well as those from North Carolina and Hawaii, have asked Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) for “emergency mortuary assistance”, according to Politico.
Great, now I’ve got this to look forward to. Somehow they’ll manage to both deny the COVID coverage for hundreds of thousands of people while also getting billions from the government. Maybe we should, you know, nationalize them or something.
They had a lot of smart people consult for the movie and I believe this was posted
https://twitter.com/thedailybeast/status/1242768968185716737?s=21
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No problem - they can just pay the full brunt of COBRA which is usually about 3x the amount that was being deducted from their paycheck. Unemployment + $1200 should be enough for a few months for the average family. With nothing left over to spare for rent, bills or groceries.
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from my curiosity digging after I watched it they supposedly had an epidemiologist chart out what the next likely deadly pandemic was going to be. They then tinkered with the numbers a bit to be a bit more dramatic. From what I remember them saying, for dramatic effect, they raised the morality rate a bit too high, for something that contagious and, to be nitty, it most likely would have burned itself out. But they didn’t pick out of the bounds sci fi numbers
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My COBRA monthly payment back in 2013 was $1600 for a family of 3.
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Unemployment is $1900/month max I think in CA. So you’re good to go.
Bernie got $2400/mth on top of whatever you normally get for 4 months, so $4300/mth. My fear level about getting laid off has gone to ~0… at least for 4 months, lol.
The MEV-1 from movie is based on a mashup of SARS and something called the Nipah virus which is extremely lethal and spills over from bats. My understanding is that kind of thing could plausibly happen irl.
I posted this before, but I got my mom a copy of Contagion like two weeks ago and she thought it was outstanding and it got the science right (she knows quite a bit about this field). She one minor nitty issue with the scene where they bring up R0 values but otherwise she thought the science was spot-on throughout.
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He’s clearly fucked up on drugs during these things
EDIT: Meant to put this in the Trump thread but whatever, you know who I’m talking about
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Like successive rounds of a long jump towards a cliff edge.
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Why does he keep ranting about how we do more testing than South Korea? I don’t get it.
Well NY’s hospitalized count just nearly doubled. That seems double plus not good.
Eagerly awaiting tomorrow to see if maybe they just updated their counting procedure (like adding presumed positive or something). If they really just admitted 3k people in one day they are fucked.
People were pointing to SK’s testing program as very successful. Trump’s first and maybe only instinct is to pretend to be doing better than whoever’s generally acknowledged to be the best.