Jump to content

berlinerbaer

Legacy Members
  • Posts

    846
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by berlinerbaer

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  4. One way or another, the team was never going to make it to summer 2020 before being disbanded, unless every member were to slob Trump's orange knob 24/7. Do you really think Trump would let a bunch of "experts" look smart around him? Dr. Fauci already is on thin ice.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. This better mean that the stimulus money is a loan and not a handout, but we all know better...
  8. In the age of Trump, EVERYTHING is political. Back when the virus was only in China, the DT thread was a source of news and discussion, including a fair amount of speculation. All the problems began when things started going to shit here in the US. Municipal leaders are handling this well. Governors on both sides are doing what they need to do, for the most part. Hell, even Congress is quickly passing bipartisan legislation freeing up money to battle the pandemic and shore up the economy. The wild card in everything is Trump. He makes everything political and forces us all into pissing contests. it doesn't help that he has made a cult of personality out of a plurality in this country in a way no politician before him has done.
  9. Texas just had its 1000th positive case. Almost a fifth of those, 192 as of last refresh, were diagnosed today.
  10. 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.
  11. About the DT Covid thread... the fact that there needs to be 10 other Covid threads also on DT indicates quite clearly that the main thread sucks ass.
  12. 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.
  13. 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.
  14. 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.
  15. Adhere strictly to cotton bedding. It wicks away moisture. Avoid polyester, both comforters and sheets but especially sheets. That's like sleeping wrapped up in Saran wrap.
  16. 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.
  17. 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.
  18. 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.
  19. 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. 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.
  20. 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.
  21. NSIAP. This is a great site for keeping track of Covid-19 in the States. Everything is well-sourced. https://coronavirus.1point3acres.com/en
  22. Where did you see a modest slowdown? Link? Here is one of the best sites I've come across for monitoring Covid-19 cases in the US. There is a graph of cumulative cases that shows no slowdown to date. In fact, you can plot it logarithmically and the result has been linear for almost 2 weeks now, meaning we are still in the exponential growth phase.
  23. A PCR kit contains two necessary reagents: primers and polymerase. In the case of CoV-2, a reverse transcriptase is also needed to first convert the viral RNA to DNA. Polymerase should be standardized for the PCR method regardless of the application and widely available, reverse transcriptase less so as it would be more application limited. My educated guess is that the primer is the scarce resource since it must be custom manufactured for CoV-2 genes. Oligonucleotide synthesis, for making primers, probably can't be done on a large scale everywhere but it isn't rocket science. I'm still surprised at how slow things are going and have no good explanation why there should be a physical limitation to their manufacture. Therefore, I chalk it up to poor planning and decision making. I'll now head over to the Cloak Room.
  24. PCR is a widely available analytical tool that many hospitals and forensic labs are capable of running. The key seems to be in the choice of which viral genes are targeted and the availability of those needed reagents. PCR uses a small amount of synthetic DNA, called primer, that's about 10 base pairs long. The primer is designed to only bind to a segment of viral complimentary DNA, usually at the start of the strand for one particular gene. The polymerase enzyme finds this primer-bound segment and begins replication. In this manner, only the DNA you want is amplified, and the much greater amounts of other DNA, such as from the patient, is ignored and eventually drowned out by the replicated viral DNA. My guess is that the primer is the reagent in short supply that we keep hearing about. Not only that, but in an early CDC test a primer was chosen that targeted a gene non-specific to CoV-2, leading to ambiguous results or even false positives. The South Koreans and others appear to have chosen the correct gene to target. The South Koreans also have an antibody test that works in minutes, much faster than PCR. These are much like the standard flu test.
×
×
  • Create New...