Jump to content

berlinerbaer

Legacy Members
  • Posts

    749
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by berlinerbaer

  1. 16 minutes ago, gsoda3 said:

    milk and fruit.  we go through a gallon a day during normal times.  with everyone home now all day (except me) we're at a gallon and a half a day.  and now we can only buy 2 gallons at a time from whole foods so i'm going every other day.

    Yep. The 1 year-old has us going out to buy milk every three or four days, 2 gallons at a time. I might as well grab some cereal, fresh fruit and veggies, ice cream, and a six pack while I'm at it.

    Maybe all you aristocrats lucky enough to trap themselves in at home for 3 weeks straight eating canned kidney beans will think of those of us less fortunate.

    • Like 1
  2. 17 hours ago, burntorangebongos said:

    Governor Inslee looks like a fucking genius for going 2 weeks earlier than the rest and they haven't had a uptick surge like other regions. He seems like an intelligent and effective leader.  Every state is different but he seems to have handled it right from the jump. Good on him and his peeps.

    He should run for president. He should throw his hat back into the ring.

  3. Our 4 year old has been on the downward spiral since we pulled him out of daycare two weeks ago. After asking to go back (or go to the museum) for days, it's beginning to sink in that he's stuck with us for a while. I hope parks and the backyard can entertain him, since there's only so much TV to watch and he's already started fighting with his 1 year-old sister over toys. Had a meltdown right before bed tonight.

    It doesn't help that his sister is finally moving into her "cute" phase. If we thought he was jealous before, I worry he's about to show us how bad it can get.

    Wife and I are both mid-late 30s, but if either one of us ended up in the hospital with Covid, I don't think the other could go it alone. We don't have any family nearby.

    • Like 1
  4. The in-laws report that after a month or so of state sponsored propaganda, it's widespread for Chinese to think that the virus originated in the US. The differences are whether or not one believes it was a US military job or not.

  5. I"m going to get pedantic here, but there are too many poll choices. Furthermore, they assume a linear increase in positive cases, when cases are currently exponentially increasing, as they will for the foreseeable future. The options should be organized in a logarithmic manner, like

    < 100k (log < 5)

    100k - 300k (log = 5 - 5.5)

    300k - 1M (log = 5.5 - 6)

    etc

    I guessed 500-600k, only because we will be test-limited.

  6. 1 hour ago, Pokoloco said:

    On top of that they will reduce our pay by the amount we're receiving from the stimulus.  So that's nice..

    This better mean that the stimulus money is a loan and not a handout, but we all know better...

  7. The local school PTA or whatever decided to liven things up in the neighborhood by piling their kids and family into their cars, at least 30 of them all decorated with signs and confetti, and drive through the streets honking and waving at the majority of us who went outside to look at the commotion. That at least was fun.

  8. 8 hours ago, Bama Chick said:

    Good.
     

    Whose decision was it to let the Senate take the lead on stimulus? Let me rephrase, why the hell didn't Pelosi initiate like the House did with the Covid funding? 

    I hope she knew Senate Pubs were going to fuck it up in the end, and I really hope she now takes advantage. With their presumptive nominee laying low for some reason, the Dems really need to show leadership right now.

    • Like 1
  9. So this is the new thread of refuge for the Trumpkins? How ironic that China's newfound aggression is because they know the US is crippled by the incompetence of their orange idol.

    Fine. Get mad. It won't make a shit until someone who knows what they're doing starts driving this bus.

  10. 3 hours ago, bolverk said:

    These are interesting findings and yet another reason why we need more widespread testing. The more data, the better.

    Blood Type and COVID-19

    Today I participated in another radio call in show about COVID-19. I was stumped by a question regarding ABO blood type and susceptibility to COVID-19. Did having Type A blood make you more likely to get sick when infected with SARS-CoV-2?

    1*sXlXexU7jORu_CNjrYutjQ.png

    I was fully prepared to discuss the ibuprofen story, but this was news to me. Thanks to a long commercial break, I was able to look it up. A few days ago, Chinese researchers uploaded a pre-print to medrxiv. They looked at more than 2000 COVID-19 patients in hospitals in China, including some who had died. They found that patients with blood type A were associated with a higher risk of infection than those with blood type O. They also had a higher risk of death. Since there are more people in the general population with type O than with type A, this wasn’t simply a reflection of the population. (Types B and AB also had higher risk than O, but the difference wasn’t statistically significant.)

    Does this mean that being Type A is bad? Not necessarily. First rule of epidemiology is correlation does not equal causation. Coincidence happens in science too.
    SARS-CoV-2 infects the lungs, so why would blood type even matter?

    Interestingly, a similar pattern was found for SARS-CoV, the virus that caused the SARS outbreak in 2003–2004. Having Type A blood means you have a molecule on the surface of your cells that Type O lacks. People with Type O blood have naturally occurring antibodies to Type A blood. This is why someone who has Type A blood can’t donate to someone with Type O. The Type O person’s immune system will recognize that A surface molecule as foreign and attack it with “Anti-A antibodies.” Researchers studying SARS-CoV hypothesized that these anti-A antibodies also recognized the spike (S) protein on the surface of the coronavirus, blocking infection, or at least providing some protection.

    So that brings us back to the question, if you have Type A blood, do you need to worry? Maybe, but not necessarily. The difference (37.75% Type A vs 25.80% Type O) is statistically significant. But what this means isn’t really clear. It’s an interesting story and worthy of further research, but maybe not a determining factor in disease. There are other co-morbidities linked to higher risks.
    This story does highlight the importance of understanding the scientific reports during an outbreak in context. medRxiv is an extremely useful resource for scientists. It’s a site developed by Yale and Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory for researchers to upload articles as soon as they write them, before peer-review. In a typical scientific journal, articles go through extensive review by multiple scientists who will point out weaknesses, inaccuracies, or just ask hard questions for clarity. In an outbreak situation, we need information fast, and we don’t have the months available to go through that process.
    That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t trust the articles in medRxiv because they’re not peer reviewed. It means we need to understand that they are preliminary. Such research is often meant to pose more questions than it answers. This is what scientists do- we ask questions. Sometimes those questions lead to groundbreaking research. And sometimes, they don’t.

    So if you have Type A blood (like me), don’t fret. Take all your usual precautions. Wash your hands. Be alert to symptoms. Practice appropriate social distancing. Review the science.

    Blood type is the domain of pseudoscience and quackery, so I'm naturally skeptical of any new "research" about it. That said, thanks for the report and I hope we get more data of better quality.

    It's plausible that we have these receptors on the surface of our other cells besides RBCs (except its not usually relevant). They could be present in lung tissue as well.

    I hope it's wrong. My whole family and I are type A.

  11. On 3/15/2020 at 5:13 PM, cactusflinthead said:

    From the article 

    In his 2018 run for an immigrant-heavy, suburban Houston House seat, Sri Preston Kulkarni drew attention for his unorthodox effort to diversify his campaign staff. His volunteers and staff could reach voters in 15 languages; he hopes to double that to 30 languages this time. Primary turnout in the district grew from about 29,000 to over 65,000 , a 110 percent increase.

    Full disclosure: this race is in my district... but it's a great target for the Surly PAC. Not only is Sri a strong candidate, but he'll be going up against either Troy Nehls or Kathaleen Wall.

    • Like 1
  12. 35 minutes ago, wild_turkey said:

    How does everyone feel about daycares right now? Are a lot of cities mandating that they close? Are any of you still using them?

    We have friends who still take one of their two kids to daycare with no plans to stop until the daycare is forced to close. It makes no sense to me because the mom is currently home from work on maternity leave with their other kid who is ~7 weeks old.

    About half are closed where we are (local district is closed) but ours is still open. As for an opinion, I completely understand both sides. Not fully knowing your friends' situation, if mom has a 7 week-old then she probably has no time to take care of the older one unless dad is there to do it. I feel bad for parents who have no choice but to work and send their kids somewhere.

    We pulled both of our kids out this week once I learned I'd be mostly working from home. Otherwise I would have wanted to keep them in a week longer, despite my wife's wishes, because I know she'd get run into the ground. Having me around makes the decision easy because we are both sick of coming down with whatever the kids bring home. Foot-and-mouth and that flu that turned into pneumonia sucked. They sure as shit won't be bringing us Covid-19.

     

    • Like 1
  13. 11 minutes ago, achooloco said:

    Serious question, so i'm good if i walk the dog for an hour twice a day but remain away from folk and just mind my own business? Go on a run alone on less populated side streets? Outside of those two things and grocery store runs, i've been S-I-P since thursday. Since gyms and bars are closed but liquor stores are open, i'm a little confused on what the guidelines are/is allowed.

    Yes, you'll be fine. The virus is not truly airborne. As long as you stay 6 feet away from an infected person, your risk of contracting Covid is minimal.

    Even day trips to places that don't involve being confined with other people are okay.

  14. We found the neighborhood parks to be almost deserted last Saturday. Based on the number of people I saw walking their dogs with masks on, my guess is that everyone thinks Covid-19 is airborne (it isn't), or it's the oak pollen. Time to take advantage.

     

    6 hours ago, ztejas said:

    Yeah that high horse is going to last about another 2-3 days. 

    More like 2-3 hours for us. I told my wife before I left for a couple hours of work in the morning that we should give in and let our 4 year-old watch some tube. These are unprecedented times. I'd be tempted to let our one year-old watch it too except she doesn't have the attention span, thankfully.

  15. 3 hours ago, ChiTownDoc said:

     

    The virus appears to be concentrated in a band between 30-50 degrees north latitude, meaning that like the common cold and flu, it prefers cold weather. The coming summer in the northern hemisphere should help. This is to say that the virus is likely seasonal.

    There is evidence of non-seasonality. Singapore was really hard hit at first and only a sustained control effort from the authorities and the population put a lid on it.

    • Fuck You 1
×
×
  • Create New...