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bolverk

Certifiably Surly
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Posts posted by bolverk

  1. 26 minutes ago, Liquor and Poker said:

    Seriously, I have some Home Depot brand sanding masks with the little metal part you bend to fit over your nose, but they're so old the rubber band just snaps when you pull on it slightly. They are a lot more than a decade old - I'd guess from about 2001-02.

    Do they go bad?  Are these better than surgical masks?  They don't say anything on the package about n95 or n anything. 

    I think we're so far gone for hoping to get n95s it's not even funny and am going to just leave those to the first responder community. I'm just trying to find something better than a gotdamn jerryrigged one made of paper towels, rubber bands, and fucking staples.

  2. 8 minutes ago, Skipper said:

    I know someone said masks are available on amazon (surgical, not N95 that healthcare workers need) but I didn't see anything with delivery this month when I looked.    If someone did please post.  I think DIY masks are going to be best most can do in the near term.

    This is the earliest I could find for medical masks.

    $9.88
    + $5.99 shipping
    Arrives: April 24 - May 15

    https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B084M7M2D1/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

    I also ordered this for the meantime:

    $19.99
     & FREE Returns 
    FREE delivery: April 15 - 16 Details

    https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0865XBYSD/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

    Until then, DYI.

  3. 9 minutes ago, Liquor and Poker said:

    Maybe.  That's also an interesting data point. 

    But what I meant is some way to correlate the % positive of all tests by state.  So, say LA has X confirmed cases.  How many tests has it done?  What's the positive %?  If it's twice as many tests done as Texas and roughly twice as many positives, but the same % percent, that's just an interesting datapoint to ponder.

    Can't think of it off-hand. I've seen someone previously post the ratio of tests to confirmed cases by geography elsewhere that I think is better than this, but the Rice nerds have put together this map. On the right, in yellow, it says 50,679 tests have been administered in Texas.

    https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

    Edit: Sorry. Wrong link. Too many tabs open. Here's the Rice one:

    https://www.coronavirusintexas.org/

    • Like 1
  4. The NYTimes has a treasure-trove of data on countries, the US, individual states, and all the counties with tables and heat maps. Especially useful are the county tables with a little bar next to them color-coded by the growth rate where you can see whether things are heating up or cooling off. I think the paywall has been lifted from all of this. 

    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html

     

     

     

    • Like 2
  5. 10 minutes ago, dcar00 said:

    How do you know the response is uncoordinated?  

    I read the news.

    Quote

    Hopefully after this is over feds/states actually do something to prepare for a pandemic after decades of not preparing.

    There have been plans for decades. Actually, implementing those plans is another matter and leads to a political discussion, which I'd prefer to refrain from in this thread. You're welcome to assert that stance and pose the quoted question elsewhere.

    • Like 1
  6. Update on the astoundingly bad decision's borne out of stubborn hubris at Falwell's cult college in Virginia:

    Liberty University Brings Back Its Students, and Coronavirus Fears, Too
    The decision by the school’s president, Jerry Falwell Jr., to partly reopen his evangelical university enraged residents of Lynchburg, Va. Then students started getting sick.

    Updated March 30, 2020: This story has been changed to reflect the first known positive coronavirus test of a Liberty University student.

    LYNCHBURG, Va. — As Liberty University’s spring break was drawing to a close this month, Jerry Falwell Jr., its president, spoke with the physician who runs Liberty’s student health service about the rampaging coronavirus.

    “We’ve lost the ability to corral this thing,” Dr. Thomas W. Eppes Jr. said he told Mr. Falwell. But he did not urge him to close the school. “I just am not going to be so presumptuous as to say, ‘This is what you should do and this is what you shouldn’t do,’” Dr. Eppes said in an interview.

    So Mr. Falwell — a staunch ally of President Trump and an influential voice in the evangelical world — reopened the university last week, igniting a firestorm. As of Friday, Dr. Eppes said, nearly a dozen Liberty students were sick with symptoms that suggested Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus. Three were referred to local hospital centers for testing. An additional eight were told to self-isolate.

    As of 8 p.m. on March 29, of those three students tested, one was positive, one was negative and one student’s results are still pending, according to Dr. Eppes, who added that the student who tested positive for Covid-19 lives off campus.

    “Liberty will be notifying the community as deemed appropriate and required by law,” Mr. Falwell said in an interview on Sunday when confronted with the numbers. He added that any student now returning to campus would be required to self-quarantine for 14 days.

    “I can’t be sure what’s going on with individuals who are not being tested but who are advised to self-isolate,” said Kerry Gateley, the health director of the Central Virginia Health District, which covers Lynchburg. “I would assume that if clinicians were concerned enough about the possibility of Covid-19 disease to urge self-isolation that appropriate screening and testing would be arranged.”

    After initial publication of this article, the university said it had asked four students who returned from the New York area and two of their roommates to self-quarantine, but none of them were referred for testing and none had symptoms. One student who returned from a county with a high number of cases was running a fever and had a cough. He was tested and elected to go home pending the results rather than self-isolate, the university said.

    Of the 1,900 students who initially returned last week to campus, Mr. Falwell said more than 800 had left. But he said he had “no idea” how many students had returned to off-campus housing.

    “If I were them, I’d be more nervous,” he added, because they live in more crowded conditions.

    For critical weeks in January and February, the nation’s far right dismissed the seriousness of the pandemic. Mr. Falwell derided it as an “overreaction” driven by liberal desires to damage Mr. Trump.

    Though the current crisis would appear epidemiological in nature, Dr. Eppes said he saw it as a reflection of “the political divide.”

    Spoiler

     

    “If Liberty sneezes, there are people who don’t like the fact that Liberty sneezed,” he said in an interview. “Mr. Falwell called me to listen to a view that wasn’t exactly his. Great leaders do that type of thing.”

    The city of Lynchburg is furious.

    “We had a firestorm of our own citizens who said, ‘What’s going on?’” said Treney Tweedy, the mayor.

    Some Liberty officials accuse alarmed outsiders of playing politics. Ms. Tweedy has called Mr. Falwell “reckless.” And within the school, there are signs of panic.

    “I’m not allowed to talk to you because I’m an employee here,” one student on campus wrote in an email. But, he pleaded, “we need help to go home.”

    Under the Falwell family’s leadership, Liberty University has grown in five decades from a modest Baptist college to an evangelical powerhouse with cash investments and endowments of nearly $2 billion, nearly 46,000 undergraduates and a campus that sprawls across Lynchburg and neighboring counties in Virginia. Total enrollment, including online students, exceeds 100,000.

    The institution is a welcome and generous presence in this Blue Ridge Mountain region, where the percentage of Lynchburg residents living in poverty is twice the state average. Liberty and its Thomas Road Baptist Church donate goods and services, its medical students conduct free health screenings, and its students participate in city beautification, maintenance and charity projects.

    The university was founded by Mr. Falwell’s famous father as a bastion of social conservatism, one that was unabashedly combative as it trained what it called “Champions for Christ.” If anything, the younger Mr. Falwell has made it more so since his father’s death.

    The mayor and city manager here, Bonnie Svrcek, felt relieved two weeks ago, when Mr. Falwell assured them that he fully intended to comply with Virginia’s public health directives and close the school to virtually all students, most of whom were scattering for spring break. Then he changed his mind.

    “We think it’s irresponsible for so many universities to just say ‘closed, you can’t come back,’ push the problem off on other communities and sit there in their ivory towers,” Mr. Falwell said on Wednesday on a radio show hosted by Todd Starnes, a far-right conspiracy theorist.

    “We’re conservative, we’re Christian, and therefore we’re being attacked,” he said.

    Michael Gillette, a former mayor of Lynchburg and a bioethicist now working with its hospitals on rationing scarce ventilators, disagrees.

    “To argue that criticism of Liberty is based on political bias is unfounded and unreasonable,” he said. “Liberty just did not take this threat as seriously as others have.”

    Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia, Lynchburg city officials and a growing number of Liberty students, parents and employees have urged Mr. Falwell to reverse course, but such pleas have only prompted a stream of often conflicting statements.

    “Our messages did change throughout the week as the governor’s orders changed,” Mr. Falwell said. “We had to adapt.”

    Mr. Falwell initially said only international students or those with nowhere else to go would remain. Then he welcomed back a much larger group of about 1,900 students to campus housing last week, in addition to faculty members and staff. Others returned to off-campus rentals in Lynchburg.

    Students who remained at home had to return last week to clean out their rooms, a requirement that was later relaxed. Faculty members were at first ordered back to campus, even though they would be teaching online. Then some were allowed to work from home.

    Mr. Falwell also waffled on whether the school would issue refunds to students who did not return for the semester, before announcing on Friday that most would receive a $1,000 credit for next year’s bills.

    Mr. Falwell and his administration have worked to tamp down dissent. After a Liberty undergraduate, Calum Best, wrote on his personal Facebook page that students should receive refunds, he said Liberty’s spokesman, Scott Lamb, called his cellphone to berate him. Asked about the call, Mr. Lamb said he was simply objecting to an error in the post, and Mr. Best was “spinning.”

    After Marybeth Davis Baggett, a professor, wrote an open letter asking the university’s board of trustees to close the campus, Mr. Falwell mocked her on Twitter as “the ‘Baggett’ lady.”

    Jeff Brittain, a Liberty parent, wrote on Twitter: “I’m as right wing as they get, bud. But as a parent of three of your students, I think this is crazy, irresponsible and seems like a money grab.” Mr. Falwell replied, calling him a “dummy.”

    All of this has left even his critics scratching their heads.

    “It’s honestly hard to figure out what his motives are,” Mr. Best, the student who wrote the Facebook post, said in an interview. “If he had purely political motives, he’s being way more conservative than even Trump is being right now. Trump is at least allowing doctors to say their piece. Jerry is not. It kind of shocks me at this point.”

    On campus, the administration says it is adhering to Virginia’s public health mandates, but students are flouting them. While security guards appear to be enforcing state advisories requiring a six-foot distance from others and gatherings of no more than 10 people, students are still assembling in closer proximity to eat, play sports, study and use dormitory restrooms. Decals slapped on furniture that say “Closed for Social Distancing” have wound up on laptops and car bumpers. Study tables are farther apart, but shared computer terminals remain. While some students are trying to adhere to social distancing guidelines, they live in group houses, pile onto city buses and crowd the few businesses that remain open in Lynchburg.

    It was not supposed to be that way. As the number of reported cases of the coronavirus in Virginia began rising, Ms. Tweedy said Mr. Falwell personally assured her that the school would not fully reopen. “We have some students who cannot go anywhere or they have nowhere to go,” she recalled his telling her. “The number on that day was 300 or so students, and even if it was a few more, we said, ‘OK, well, thank you.’”

    But as spring break drew to a close in mid-March, all Liberty students were encouraged to return.

    “We never discussed numbers, and I never told them the dorms would be closed,” Mr. Falwell said on Sunday. “We’re going to have to agree to disagree on what was said.”

    Mr. Falwell runs Liberty his own way, and his word is law. Professors are not tenured and can be fired at will. The administration controls the student newspaper.

    Mr. Falwell echoes Mr. Trump’s talking points on the coronavirus, which he often calls the “flu.”

    “It’s just strange to me how many are overreacting” to the pandemic, Mr. Falwell said on “Fox & Friends” on March 10. “It makes you wonder if there is a political reason for that. Impeachment didn’t work and the Mueller report didn’t work and Article 25 didn’t work, and so maybe now this is their next attempt to get Trump.”

    Lynchburg is particularly ill-prepared to become a hot spot. Hospitals in the region have a total of 1,174 beds, only 55 of them intensive care, according to a recent analysis by the Harvard Global Health Institute. Those must serve 217,000 adults, nearly 50,000 of whom are 65 or older. Tests for the coronavirus remain in short supply.

    Mr. Falwell has played down the dangers of his decision in interviews with the news media, where he has even suggested that the coronavirus is a North Korean bioweapon. On Fox News, he blithely asserted that the cure rate for Covid-19 “is 99.7 percent for people under 50,” adding, “We have talked to medical professionals, numerous medical professionals, before we made this decision.”

    An archived version of Liberty’s website said those medical professionals included the school’s own public health faculty and campus health providers, as well as “Dr. Jeffrey Hyman of Northwell Health, New York’s largest health care provider.”

    When contacted by The New York Times, Northwell Health denied that Dr. Hyman provided any formal guidance to Liberty, adding that he is not an infectious disease specialist. In a statement, the hospital system said that Dr. Hyman was a personal friend of the Falwell family, who told them in private conversation “that reconvening classes would be a ‘bad idea.’”

     

     

  7. 2 minutes ago, tjhooker said:

    Look at Ohio moving down each day on the total cases list.  Look at the surrounding states of Indiana, Michigan and PA.  All with less population than Ohio except PA which is now multiples higher.  The Gov here kicked ass early having the balls to shut things down.  DeWine is going to come out of this looking like a hero. 

    By all accounts, he's done a fantastic job in taking the bull by the horns and implementing the advice of his healthcare experts. Just hope the shit surrounding your state doesn't spill over. I've got elderly relatives living in Dayton and would prefer not to see them die. Keep it up, Ohio.

    • Like 1
  8. 13 minutes ago, F250 said:

    It's the stockpile for the United States not the States. Wait, yeah this doesn't make sense.

    ABC had a story about California receiving 300 ventilators from the national stockpile this evening. When they arrived, they didn't work.

  9. 22 minutes ago, dcar00 said:

    Check the link to the CDC website that I provided for that flu season. I did not type those words; they're a direct copy/paste from the CDC website.

    Here, I'll paste it again with the link.

    The overall burden of influenza for the 2017-2018 season was an estimated 45 million influenza illnesses, 21 million influenza-associated medical visits, 810,000 influenza-related hospitalizations, and 61,000 influenza-associated deaths. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2017-2018.htm

     

    • Like 1
  10. 20 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

    That's weird. I don't remember quarantining in 2018

    I don't know where he's getting those numbers. Here are the data directly from the CDC.

    Quote

     

    CDC estimates that the burden of illness during the 2018–2019 season included an estimated 35.5 million people getting sick with influenza, 16.5 million people going to a health care provider for their illness, 490,600 hospitalizations, and 34,200 deaths from influenza. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2018-2019.html

    The overall burden of influenza for the 2017-2018 season was an estimated 45 million influenza illnesses, 21 million influenza-associated medical visits, 810,000 influenza-related hospitalizations, and 61,000 influenza-associated deaths. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/2017-2018.htm

     

    The combined death total estimated from two flu seasons was is 91,000 (CDC notes 2017-2018 was especially "severe." That would equal an average of roughly 350 deaths nationwide spread out over about 272 days. Now someone remind me again how many deaths we had across the country again and how far away are we from the peak?

     

  11. 6 minutes ago, closetojumping said:

    Ha, I've thought about it with Brian Fantana's "Panda Watch!" voice in my head too. 

    So far, we've got Dahobbs up on the  big board with 10,000 deaths per day by April 10th, which he reconfirmed yesterday. So, I guess he's thinking big with an overall number.

    jimmyjazz projects 50,000 total as of April 15th, including hoping to see me and my family as part of the body count.

    I believe briskettexan showed up early and matter of fact declared 2million but he might have had a range in there. 

    atomheartbevo at one point believed that this was going to be 12 Monkeys bad but I don't think he stated a number. I assume he was just broadly thinking in the billions.

    Anastasis is apparently a fellow sunshine-pumper and he's called for something in the 50's, I think for the year. 

    Not sure who else has shown up with something. I've stated that jimmyjazz and dahobbs are wrong and it won't even be close, but now that Michigan has come completely and totally unhinged, I don't know, they've got to be feeling better about their chances. 

    Someone posted waaaaay upthread fewer than 9 Americans under the age of 25 would die, but I can't recall who.

    • Like 1
  12. 37 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

    That’s the thing though. Did we get to 100 from ten places going from 1-10 at the same time?  2 going 1 to 50?  What about the other countries?

    the assumption is that we have more isolated hot spots and therefore should grow quicker as they each grow exponentially independent of each other. 
     

    I haven’t seen it modeled how the total growth is affected when the parameters are changed like that: 100 to 1000 using 10 sites of 10 infected vs 1 site of 100 infected vs 2/50 or 4/25.

    we also have greater ability to community spread into new hotspots as things roll along.  How do you model such things with any kind of accuracy or precision, contemporaneously?

    after the fact, I bet the smart people will find some models that fit the final facts. 

    If you've got 23 minutes, this is the best thing I've seen posted. It's a really powerful demonstration of various computer simulations of infection rate, central points of spread like grocery stores, and how it spreads from community to community. I highly recommend anyone watch it to have a better understanding.

    Hat tip goes to another poster who I can't remember.

     

    • Like 3
  13. 13 minutes ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

    I hear you. My husband was watching Ferris Bueller's Day Off and I was walking through the room, the large crowd dance scene was playing. First thought in my head was, "SOCIAL DISTANCING YOU CRETINS!" and then I shook my head. How amazing is it that we can socialize ourselves to new norms?

    Anyway, when I get bsc I go out and pull weeds or clean something and take out my aggression on things instead of people. Take care of yourself.

    What does BSC stand for? I obviously understand the meaning from context, I'm just not familiar with that acronym.

    https://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/BSC

  14. 32 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

    I'd sure as hell try to capitalize on the  buy American not China man stuff. Much harder to just pull out of china if you're a public co. probably, but I'd sure float the idea.  The gov't needs to create boring it back home tax incentives.

    There have been several attempts in Congress to create those incentives over the last decade but most have been voted down or killed outright. I'll end it there because, by its nature, this policy discussion would lead to "politics."

    Edit: Let's just stick to current events and what's happening on the ground now.

    • Like 6
  15. 18 minutes ago, dcar00 said:

    does anyone have any info on hospitalizations and/or hospitalization rate of confirmed cases?

    The only "real time" data that I know of is what the nerds over at Rice have put together.

    https://www.coronavirusintexas.org/

    Bottom right-hand corner of the map, labelled "Typical Bed Utilization Rate", is a yellow pie chart. For Texas, yesterday it was 47% and right now it's at 54.7%. I think it's a little poorly labelled and means the share of available beds that are being used, but I don't know.

    As someone mentioned: Texas DSHS isn't updating for whatever reason and doesn't show that information. The local Travis County one doesn't publish it either, but Bexar County shows how many have been hospitalized. There, they're showing 207 confirmed cases with 57 hospitalizations, 9 deaths, and 44 recovered.

     

  16. 6 minutes ago, F250 said:

    It seems to the trend we have seen all over the globe. The affluent seem to be the biggest seeders of C19 with all of their globetrotting.

    Yep. We see the same pattern with the Austin/Travis County dashboard. West Austin & 78704 are the hot spots, plus Pflugerville for whatever fucking reason.

    Edit: Adding dashboard for those who may have missed it.

    https://austin.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/39e4f8d4acb0433baae6d15a931fa984

  17. More on those UT Spring Breakers:

    Company urged UT students to take Mexico spring break trip despite coronavirus pandemic
    JusCollege, a Nevada-based company, told students via email that Cabo San Lucas was considered one of the safest destinations and refused to offer refunds.

    AUSTIN, Texas — At least 28 University of Texas at Austin students tested positive for coronavirus after returning from a spring break trip to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, Austin Public Health announced Tuesday.

    Those students traveled on a chartered flight from Austin-Bergstrom International Airport on March 14 and returned March 19, according to an airport official. There were at least 70 students on the outbound flight, and most of them returned on the chartered flight.

    But some returned on commercial flights, Austin Public Health said.

    The spring break trip, which cost students around $2,000 each, was organized by a Nevada-based company called JusCollege.

    On March 3, only 11 days before the trip, JusCollege sent students an email with the subject line that read in part: “Spring Break Is On!”

    In the email, the company told students, “We believe that our travel destinations remain among the safest and most enjoyable places in the world to visit right now.”

    Then, on March 12, two days before the scheduled departure and one day after the World Health Organization declared coronavirus a global pandemic, JusCollege emailed students again to alert them, “Our refund policy remains the same as when your purchase was made as we have already incurred significant costs related to the trip.”

    JusCollege told students Mexico, at the time, had fewer cases than the United States.

    “We hope that you choose to enjoy your Spring Break with us – we’re currently in our 2nd week of Cabo and have had almost 5,000 travelers, all with no issues,” the company wrote on March 12.

    UT Austin sophomore Ross Fisher said he spent a whole year saving for the trip and worked a second job.

    “It's the most expensive trip I’ve personally ever gone on,” Fisher said. “It would have been made [it] easier had they just simply offered to refund us and done the right thing.”

    He said after spending that amount of money and being encouraged to go by the company, it was a difficult decision to make.

    “Every single email they sent out seemed very defensive. And it was kind of like it came across as like, desperate, trying to get as many people to still go on the trip,” Fisher said.

    He said he hasn’t been tested for COVID-19 since returning to Austin and isn’t experiencing any symptoms, but he plans to get tested.

    KVUE intern Bailey Abramowitz made the decision to cancel the trip just a couple of days before departure.

    “At the time, everything was still really up in the air,” Abramowitz said. “We had no idea how many cases there were or if travel was going to be cut off internationally. And I was really scared that if I went, I would get stuck in Mexico.”

    She reached out to JusCollege to cancel the trip and get a refund but still hasn’t heard back.

    “I know a lot of other people have emailed. None of us have gotten a response,” Abramowitz said.

    KVUE reached out to JusCollege via phone, email, and social media, but did not receive a response.

    Austin Public Health said it is working to trace back the direct contact all of the students had with others, while many of them recover at home.

    https://www.kvue.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/coronavirus-company-urged-ut-students-take-mexico-trip-despite-pandemic/269-4043c120-e880-4557-a7b6-8b4a6d11f39a

     

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