Home Forums FineTunedMac Community Lounge Coronavirus information: assorted web links

According the this, from the MIT Technology Review, eating in restaurants can be extremely risky. Since it's about sharing the air a closed environment for a period of time, there are lots of other places where we need to be on our toes, which makes vigilance critical.

I've got no idea if indoor air circulation has been mentioned as a problem, but it seems to me that if it hasn't, it should be prohibited.

I stopped into my watering hole the other night to say hello to a friend who I hadn't seen in too many months, and the host at the door scanned my temperature in a near outdoor vestibule after I'd just walked a half mile in low 60s weather, and he wasn't put off in the least by my 95.1º reading. Well, duh! If my body temp was truly 95.1º I'd have been on my way to the hospital suffering from hypothermia rather than in a saloon, and I was left wondering whether anyone in the entire place had actually had hir temp accurately checked.

As I understand it, the temperature scanners measure skin temperature, not body temperature (which will be higher). I don't know how the two relate to each other in your case.

In the proper environment, skin temp will be close to body temp, but in my instance, the reading clearly had nothing to do with it...as was probably the case with everybody in the bar.

The host clearly had no idea of what he was supposed to be doing or how to do it correctly.

At least he was making an effort. Beats 🤬 out of a woman I saw taking temperatures outside a medical building while wearing her mask on her chin so it wouldn't fog up her glasses!

Which reminds me of the people on the Coney Island Boardwalk who were giving out masks over the summer while wearing their own on their chins, if at all.

Given it's a health issue, you would think that people would at least take the time to learn how to do it properly. They remind me of the guy whose Doctor recommended suppositories. When he went back to the Doctor a few weeks later and the Doctor asked "How did the suppositories work out?" The guy replied: "They were useless. For all the good they did, I might as well have stuck them up my butt."

They were at no loss as to the proper way to wear their masks. They just didn't feel like wearing them.

You would think, but obviously thinking is a real stretch for some people, much less giving a 🤬 about anyone or anything but themselves and their own comfort.

…or they follow the President's lead and believe COVID-19 is fake news, and even if it isn't fake news, the rapid rise in the number of cases nationally proves Trump's often repeated assertion "we have rounded the corner". So in the immortal words of Alfred E. Neuman, "What? Me worry?". (It is a genuine shame Mad Magazine went under. It is times like these when we we need Alfred's words of wisdom!)

I assume you meant DISproves.

And if you've been paying attention, you've noticed that the two states that have recently leapt to the top of the list of stricken states are the two whose governors are most closely aligned with Trump's approach to the problem, i.e. Texas and Florida.

Hear, hear!

. NO, I Meant that though some inexplicable twist of logic many in Trump's camp believe that the rise in COVI-19 cases and deaths proves that "we have turned the corner". I can't explain their logic, as I said it is inexplicable.

Wow! I haven't run across that perverse "logic," but in that camp of idiots, I guess NOTHING should surprise me.

A perhaps relevant observation: I"ve been watching Russia's reporting, and in the past 3-4 weeks their number of daily cases has nearly quadrupled from just under 5,000 to a bit over 18,000, and if it can be attributed to the onset of the harsh Russian winter, it doesn't bode well for much of America.

Here is a response you can give the next time someone says "Masks? We don't need no stinkin' masks!" [with apologies to "Treasure of the Sierra Madres"]

It continues to be a Republican mantra that masks are not necessary as evidenced in this Senate dust-up. It seems you can't get Republicans to understand a basic concept, even when they are beat over the head with it. To date, five Senators have contracted Covid and they were all Republicans.

I don’t wish anyone ill, but a few of them, their family members, or a major campaign doner may have to die before they will get the point. Either that or they will have to grow new backbones so the Grand Old Party can resurect itself from the depths of Trumpism. Where are republicans like Everett Dircksen, John Tower, Barry Goldwater, and John McCain when the country needs them? All were died in the wool Republicans, but all of them understood the art of negotiation, and not. one of them would have placed party before the good of the nation. Together with their honorable opposition on the other side of the aisle they served to keep the nation from drifting too far to either side if the political spectrum. (And any one of them was smarter, better informed, and far more erudite than the entire Republican contingent of today’s U. S. Senate put together. )

They'll get the point reeeal fast if someone dies and it flips the Senate (which hopefully won't need flipping after Jan. 5th).

Or....we could respond with this opening paragraph from a New York Times analysis: "Coronavirus cases are rising in almost every U.S. state. But the surge is worst now in places where leaders neglected to keep up forceful virus containment efforts or failed to implement basic measures like mask mandates in the first place, according to a New York Times analysis of data from the University of Oxford."

Every country in Europe is having a spike, worse than the first spike except that we know what's going on now. All of us are in some form of lockdown, no two countries the same. So you're not too different than us.

One thing worth mentioning: Scotland's prime minister Nicola Sturgeon is being quite strict in her lockdown procedures. Some areas in strict lockdown, others in more moderate restrictions, but all are locked down.

In contrast, Boris Johnson, the UK prime minister (so, Northern Ireland and England) is afraid to tell anyone what they have to do, but the numbers forced his hand and he has reluctantly imposed a (less strict) UK-wide lockdown until December 2nd. His citizens are taking more or less notice. Numbers are rising.

The punchline: Nicola Sturgeon's approval rating on handling the pandemic is 76%. Boris Johnson's is 19%.

It's your life, for Christ's sake. And your family's...

For some, it would seem their motto is, "better dead than inconvenienced."

And they're buoyed by the falling death rate.

And the down-the-road non-death consequences of the disease won't mean a thing to them until their reality hits squarely home.

And by then it'll be too late for regrets.

And, if you were wondering where you most have to be careful, here is a list of high-risk places, complete with threat level assessments.

Speaking of which, my (othodox Jewish) dentist told me that the orthodox synagogues have been encouraging people with no known exposure to get tested anyhow so the percentage of positives will go down.

Brilliant!

How Not to Be Helpful 101. Given every jurisdiction seems to have different rates of testing, I've wondered whether any of the publicized results are particularly accurate so I've just take the position that Covid is everywhere. Therefore, be careful everywhere.