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unknownprincess Report | 12/07/2021 7:12 pm

I am still coming around all of the time. O.O

faolan Report | 01/05/2021 11:19 pm

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They're not required at all times??? That [i]is[/i] nuts... as for your half-masking coworkers, is there a bulletin board, like in the break room or anything? I mean, you could always post [url=https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2020-11/4/7/asset/7614a2480210/sub-buzz-2677-1604474051-18.png]this[/url], or even [url=https://i.imgflip.com/4a2xlg.jpg]this[/url] in strategic spots... :XD





Yeah, it's been detected in my area, which is swarming with anti-maskers, so I've been adding surgical gloves to my grocery store outfit. I suppose it's not much of a surprise, considering coronaviruses are an RNA-strand type, which is even more prone to mutations than the DNA-types. I remember reading a few months ago that they'd already been tracking... I think they said hundreds of mutations, but my memory might just be tripping over "thousands" and remembering it wrong. Either way, my guess was "dozens," so I was definitely underestimating there.





I know I read something a couple years ago, though, about historical epidemiology -- identifying and tracking plagues hundreds or even thousands of years after the fact -- and it said something to the effect of one characteristic of viral outbreaks is that over time, the virus mutates toward efficiency. What a virus wants to do is multiply and infect, right? So it wants its host to be ambulatory and shedding infectious particles for as long as possible. So as an outbreak progresses, the mutations that are the most infectious [i]but[/i] less deadly are going to be the ones that end up edging out the others. Which jives with something I remember one of my science teachers saying, back in the day, that as horrifying as ebola is, it's not very good at its job as a virus -- it kills too quickly. At the other end of the spectrum, though, HIV can go undetected for [i]years[/i], spreading to others the entire time. And unlike ebola it doesn't kill quickly. In fact, it doesn't kill at all; it weakens the immune system so that the [i]next[/i] pathogen that comes along is the one that actually overwhelms the patient and kills them. So I guess it does make sense for new coronavirus mutations to be more infectious. Hopefully they'll be less deadly, too. I admit, that's been rolling around in my brain for a couple days now, wrestling with "yeah, tell the Native Americans it gets less deadly." Honestly, I [i]want[/i] to be an optimist, it's just that I chose to go into archaeology... :sweat:





Oh, yay! That's great to hear -- it's starting to look like California's really botching up the rollout on the vaccines. They haven't even gotten all the front-line workers or first responders vaxxed yet here. And about [i]half[/i] the medical workers in my area (Inland Empire) are apparently refusing the shot, so while neighboring LA might be the epicenter right now, my guess is that by mid-February our hospitals will just crash out. Maybe the state will have to take them over or something, I don't know, but the staff can barely keep up [i]now[/i] -- and if [i]half[/i] are insisting on remaining vulnerable, with that new strain having shown up just over in the next county they might as well have virus-shaped targets on them. I'd be wondering what the hell they're thinking, but I suspect there's not much of that going on at all.





So far, everyone seems to be doing alright. I even got to visit my grandmother a couple weeks ago, though we had to sit out in the patio area six feet apart. Every time I see her, I can't imagine there's any way she could become more frail, and yet, that's what happens, every time. I haven't seen any cases reported among the residents or staff there, at least, knock on wood. Her nurse said they should be getting vaccinated... I think she said this week, actually, come to think of it, so I hope that's happened, or will soon, at least.





Oh, and I found the [url=https://i.ibb.co/y5bb3yn/2020lit.jpg]perfect ornament[/url] for last year. For some re

faolan Report | 12/04/2020 10:38 pm

Whew, talk about a roller-coaster! Is someone in your department down with it, and that's why they tested everyone? Or is it going to be a regular thing for awhile?

We're still coasting along here -- I got word that a couple relatives in the Midwest came down with it, but they're recovering. Apparently there was a wedding a couple months ago in the small town I'm from, a couple prominent families or something. Anyway, I gather a bunch of the attendees ended up sick -- which might end up being a lucky break, because that town and several others in the area shut down everything in response, even church services, so it's actually one of the regions where cases aren't skyrocketing now (which isn't proof of spread in churches, according to the Supreme Court, but that's a whole nother rant).

Unfortunately, though, the case count, running average, positivity rate, hospitalizations, all the numbers, they're all spiking in my county, which is doubly frustrating because it's Southern California, and we can't really use "but it's cold outside!" as an excuse for indoor gatherings. These last few days, though, the Santa Ana winds started blowing, and we've already had a bunch of small fires nearby. It's about at the point where people start crossing their fingers, hoping we've seen the worst for the season, which is usually just before a Big One breaks out. =/

What's funny is that you usually don't see huge, national news types of fires in my immediate area, though small ones are frequent. My theory is that it's because we have several hundred feral donkeys that live in the hills north of town. Yes, feral donkeys, no joke! But 2020 is such a sadistic year, there's been an outbreak of equine encephalitis among the donkeys. There's a rescue group that works exclusively with them, and they've been doing an amazing job with raising funds for vaccinations, but it's like, "really, 2020? The burros, too?" When it rains, it really does pour, doesn't it? gonk

faolan Report | 08/22/2020 1:39 pm

Exactly -- when we've got the numbers coming in like they are and anecdotal accounts from all over the country and abroad, combined with what we know from pandemics of the past (especially what worked and what didn't), I mean.... look, even Trump started wearing a mask, y'know? And much like anti-vaxxers, the anti-maskers are primarily endangering themselves and their own families. The difference there, though, is that it's easier to tell them apart. They're not always completely avoidable, but they're a known entity, at least. xd

Besides, it could be so much worse -- viruses are nasty, but we know how to beat them, by and large. It's bacteria that might be our undoing. We're too cavalier about them, since we figure we have antibiotics. The Black Death officially kicked off in Europe in the 1340s. Y'know how long it lasted? Guy in New Mexico died of it two weeks ago. I'm not even kidding. It started off, killed a bunch of people, abated, then surged back after a few decades -- most recently in San Francisco in 1900 -- but it's still out there. Antibiotics are effective against it if you catch it early enough, but if there were a major outbreak and widespread administration of antibiotics, it would develop resistance pretty quickly, just like strep and even tuberculosis have. I dunno what other fun surprises 2020 has waiting for us, but I really hope that's not one of them.

And by all means! We can stagger our breaths so it's one long, continuous scream, even -- I think that'd be pretty cathartic!

faolan Report | 08/20/2020 4:53 pm

I haven't been -- it's kind of obsolete now. My original intent was to get everyone to take it seriously, but not to panic. I mean, when I started it, more than 95% of the cases were in Wuhan, and over 99% were in China. So updating that thing daily, watching as other countries' outbreaks made China's an afterthought... it was sickening, it really was. I think when everything's all done and we can go places again, I'm gonna find some isolated mountaintop and just scream for awhile.

Anyway, information-wise, at this point you're better served checking in at either the main Johns Hopkins site (that's where I was getting my numbers, anyway) or their county-by-county breakdown, and/or your local county and state heath department sites. But at this point, the proportion of each country's cases is kind of a moot point.

TopSnek Report | 01/25/2020 4:10 am

wow really? that's so weird. That's certainly not something I've enabled. Hang on let me turn that off and I'll PM you smile

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