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Well, it says something that 15 days after Texas started opening up, they have the highest case and death count they've had yet...

 skyth wrote:
Well, it says something that 15 days after Texas started opening up, they have the highest case and death count they've had yet...

But does anybody know or care about that?

How much of that is just because of continued testing though? They have almost doubled the amount of tests in the last 15 days and the % of infected has dropped overall.

https://dshs.texas.gov/coronavirus/additionaldata/

350k tests done on 5/1 with 5.88% testing postive, to 645k done by 5/15 with 5.09% testing positive.

Edit: for anyone curious, the data Texas' department of health has on the link above is the most detailed I've found so far if anyone else was interested. 40% of fatalaties so far are for people who are 80+.

We won't really know until we can compare seasonal death counts. The months with the biggest difference from previous years we can assume are the ones with the most virus casualties.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
We won't really know until we can compare seasonal death counts. The months with the biggest difference from previous years we can assume are the ones with the most virus casualties.

We've been doing that already, actually. Virus death toll so far is probably at least twice what's been reported in the US, going by that data.

 Laughing Man wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
We won't really know until we can compare seasonal death counts. The months with the biggest difference from previous years we can assume are the ones with the most virus casualties.

We've been doing that already, actually. Virus death toll so far is probably at least twice what's been reported in the US, going by that data.

I know; I was referring to this month specifically. Obviously we cannot compare numbers yet, because the month is not over.

So the viral thought for this day is hardening an apartment or condominium against cross infection.
Most such buildings, even those with HVAC systems set individually per unit dwelling, have avenues of air inflow and outflow that affect other condos. For example, most kitchen and bathrooms are vented to the roofs, often by a common duct. The door to the hallway will have either negative or positive pressure flow through it depending on the structure, the design, etc, meaning air either is sucked constantly FROM your apartment out to the hall, or FROM your hall into your apartment.
A low pressure vent to roof duct for exhaust from a stove or offgassing duct for toilets and bathrooms will also similarly bring air from other apartments into your own apartment if you are not careful.
This can be field expediently fixed by a combination of duct tape over the intake/outtake vent holes, and the hepa style filter bag (cut to fit) material from vaccum cleaners. The front door, you should test yourself, and as a practice, open windows that allow vented air flow from the outside to disperse any trace cross contamination may be advisable.

Cats can apparently share this disease back and forth with people, but dogs, apparently, do not sicken from it.

That was the covid thought of the day, now consider well hardening your apartments (or hardening the airflow between apartments for older relatives you know) with such methods as you can devise, to limit in apartment spread of this virus. As things begin to reopen, cases will rise, or if they don't reopen now, cases will EVENTUALLY rise. Simple techniques like duct tape + hepa filtration in the bathroom, an open window, and the kitchen, similarly, can lower relative risk from this. If 20 bucks of filter + a roll of tape saves your life, it will have been money well invested. I have to do that in dollars, because if I understand it right, in England one would say 20 pounds of tape, which sounds heavy.

Note that being able to smell other people's cooking is a major warning sign, or other people's smoking. If you can smell those, you could smell their sneezes, too.

I've read that pets can spread the virus because it sticks to their fur when stroked, and someone else can pick it up when petting them. I haven't read any evidence of cats or dogs actually catching the virus and generating new particles.

Your advice about cross-infection in shared dwellings is good, as far as I can tell from my general knowldge. It highlights the fact that lower income people are more affected, because they live in more confined conditions.

I think the cats testing positive for the virus would suggest that they can actually catch and reproduce the virus. I wouldn't think the small amounts that a human would shed would build up enough inside the cat to actually trigger a positive test result, which has happened with multiple cat species at this point. If the cat were a deadend for the virus it shouldn't test positive unless the sample was contaminated.

Based on somewhat limited research, cats can get infected and infect other cats, but not humans. Cats can suffer symptoms. Animals like mink and ferret can also be infected. Bigger cats in zoo's have caught the virus and have shown some symptoms. On dogs its unclear, they might test positive, but symptoms or spread are doubtful.

The Dutch government has actually advised pet owners not to interact with their pets too closely if they have the virus:
https://www.rivm.nl/en/novel-coronavirus-covid-19/pets

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Yet another poor shotgun decision taken without consideration at the start of lockdown.

Has this government actually got any decisions correct during this? They demand people use common sense, but seeing as the prime minister and health minister have both had the virus, seem to be lacking in common sense themselves.

Even the furlough scheme came from the Unions and Labour.

Silver lining to the idiocy in Hyde park today has to be #I AM NOT MAN on Twitter Just don't fall down the deep deep rabbit hole of the people supporting the "protest"

GoatboyBeta wrote:
Silver lining to the idiocy in Hyde park today has to be #I AM NOT MAN on Twitter Just don't fall down the deep deep rabbit hole of the people supporting the "protest"

A NUMBER!

It was a beautiful haiku

GoatboyBeta wrote:
Silver lining to the idiocy in Hyde park today has to be #I AM NOT MAN on Twitter Just don't fall down the deep deep rabbit hole of the people supporting the "protest"

Fairly sure that was fethwit in chief, David Icke?

I just saw the latest "Covid is a conspiracy!" meme.

It says two identical twin girls drank for the same covid contaminated cup. One got covid, the other didn't.

Therefore, CONSPIRACY!

After recovering from the concussion I gave myself facepalming, i replied that it was simple: One twin made her resistance roll, the other didn't. Yes, as a gamer I occasionally see things like that.

Perhaps the one who drunk first sucked up most of the covid in the cup if it were on the surface. Perhaps the other one had recently taken vitamin c which boosted her immune system, or taken zinc which can impede viral replication. Perhaps the other one had recently had an infection that weakened her immune system briefly.

But a conspiracy? Really?

"Next, he clarified: “When you test, you have a case. When you test, you find something is wrong with people. If we didn’t do any testing, we would have very few cases.”"

Ah so that's why trump thinks testing is overrated.

Well guess it would be easier to brush away if you didn't test and could thus claim no cases.

 Matt Swain wrote:
I just saw the latest "Covid is a conspiracy!" meme.

It says two identical twin girls drank for the same covid contaminated cup. One got covid, the other didn't.

Therefore, CONSPIRACY!

After recovering from the concussion I gave myself facepalming, i replied that it was simple: One twin made her resistance roll, the other didn't. Yes, as a gamer I occasionally see things like that.

Perhaps the one who drunk first sucked up most of the covid in the cup if it were on the surface. Perhaps the other one had recently taken vitamin c which boosted her immune system, or taken zinc which can impede viral replication. Perhaps the other one had recently had an infection that weakened her immune system briefly.

But a conspiracy? Really?

To paraphrase The Matrix.

"There is no cup."

Or twins.

Or conspiracy, but that much is self evident.

 Azreal13 wrote:

 Matt Swain wrote:
I just saw the latest "Covid is a conspiracy!" meme.

It says two identical twin girls drank for the same covid contaminated cup. One got covid, the other didn't.

Therefore, CONSPIRACY!

After recovering from the concussion I gave myself facepalming, i replied that it was simple: One twin made her resistance roll, the other didn't. Yes, as a gamer I occasionally see things like that.

Perhaps the one who drunk first sucked up most of the covid in the cup if it were on the surface. Perhaps the other one had recently taken vitamin c which boosted her immune system, or taken zinc which can impede viral replication. Perhaps the other one had recently had an infection that weakened her immune system briefly.

But a conspiracy? Really?

To paraphrase The Matrix.

"There is no cup."

Or twins.

Or conspiracy, but that much is self evident.

The version of that meme I've seen is an excuse to get people to google 2 Girls 1 Cup. I'm reasonably sure it's not a real thing.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I've read that pets can spread the virus because it sticks to their fur when stroked, and someone else can pick it up when petting them. I haven't read any evidence of cats or dogs actually catching the virus and generating new particles.

Several adult tigers have tested positive for covid, and I suspect they're not getting picked up and stroked much

It seems we infect felines, but not the other way around.

 Laughing Man wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:

 Matt Swain wrote:
I just saw the latest "Covid is a conspiracy!" meme.

It says two identical twin girls drank for the same covid contaminated cup. One got covid, the other didn't.

Therefore, CONSPIRACY!

After recovering from the concussion I gave myself facepalming, i replied that it was simple: One twin made her resistance roll, the other didn't. Yes, as a gamer I occasionally see things like that.

Perhaps the one who drunk first sucked up most of the covid in the cup if it were on the surface. Perhaps the other one had recently taken vitamin c which boosted her immune system, or taken zinc which can impede viral replication. Perhaps the other one had recently had an infection that weakened her immune system briefly.

But a conspiracy? Really?

To paraphrase The Matrix.

"There is no cup."

Or twins.

Or conspiracy, but that much is self evident.

The version of that meme I've seen is an excuse to get people to google 2 Girls 1 Cup. I'm reasonably sure it's not a real thing.

Could've started that way...

Was watching random stuff on Youtube and came across a video where a Lion Sanctuary keeper was talking about how cats can have all sorts of problems with their own coronavirus strains, and that it can lead to all sorts of issues especially with weakened immune systems.

Something that I think we take for granted with people is just how much our populations interact and intermix relative to a lot of wild animal populations, and how much effort keepers/zoos/hobbiests/sanctuaries/breeders/etc go to in keeping all sorts of animals safe with things like quarantine procedures and keeping animals separate enclosures and the like specifically to avoid disease transmission. It helps that humans have widespread access to medical care (even if we feel it's often inadequate in many cases), but there appears to just be a lot more mindfulness of it with animals than people.

Certainly with rare and (therefore) valuable animals.

School reopenings here started well. New corona cases detected in school. Hardly surprising news.

tneva82 wrote:
School reopenings here started well. New corona cases detected in school. Hardly surprising news.

Annnnd no one was surprised by that.
Honestly anyone surprised that schools will start spreading the virus need their heads checking. Schools are always hotbeds of exchange of sickness; esp in modern times with huge populations and schools crossing huge work and social boundaries and gathering people together. It's not like the ancient days when everyone at school also attended the same church, general store etc....

Heck there's another huge melting pot - religious services. Whilst fewer days a week and typically less time its still a ripe place to gather a large segment of the population together to swap sickness.

Any sources on that? I can't find anything. Seems unlikely after only 3 days.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/finland/
If anything it seems to be dropping...

It didn't seem to have that effect in Denmark. We'll see the effects of schools reopening in the Netherlands in a week or so.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
A pizza place here had the unfortunate timing of opening up just as the lockdown began. Somebody here said try to help the little businesses through this and I took that to heart. And I’m glad that I did because it was really good pizza.

An acquaintance of mine was caught with his brand new restaurant open just by a couple months. We're talking mega-posh, as in we're getting a Michelin star in 5 years, 60 euro 10-course tasting menu without drinks place.

In order to meet bank payments he's now doing burgers, wings, ribs and paellas to go. Slightly more expensive than your run of the mill fast food place but tremendous value.

jouso wrote:

 Future War Cultist wrote:
A pizza place here had the unfortunate timing of opening up just as the lockdown began. Somebody here said try to help the little businesses through this and I took that to heart. And I’m glad that I did because it was really good pizza.

An acquaintance of mine was caught with his brand new restaurant open just by a couple months. We're talking mega-posh, as in we're getting a Michelin star in 5 years, 60 euro 10-course tasting menu without drinks place.

€60 for a ten course tasting menu is extremely cheap

Heston Blumenthal's The Fat Duck is £360 a head.

I applaud your friend for standing up to face the challenge. I wish I could support him by ordering his food.