Moderator notice: Please do not ask for medical advice in this forum!
- If you are interested in Crafting, maybe try ordering a craft kit online (something substantial that would take time would be best, like a Latch hook kit
(and crochet hook if you don’t have one), a potholder loom and cotton loops, or cross stitch kit), to work on.
- learn something physical, like an instrument, how to sew or knit, etc
- a lot of museums and zoos and the like are doing virtual tours or free online classes, so keep an eye out for that as well.
- do a giant puzzle
- Join an online bookclub
- Take an online class
While the outbreak started around New Year's Day (12/31), it's picking up steam around the Asia-Pacific region especially since Mainland Chinese people tend to travel a lot.
For reference, the BNO Newsroom twitter has a special feed for any info on the coronavirus:
https://twitter.com/bnodesk?lang=en
The WHO has page about COVID-19 and any other concerns people may have. I suggest peeps go to the Q&A page to check for official details.
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019
Edited by nombretomado on Jun 3rd 2020 at 3:21:48 AM
Professional Writer & Amateur Scholar
So, I'm like the only person in one of my university's buildings today, aside from security staff. And I figured, hey, since there was practically nobody here, maybe I could sit out in the open without a mask.
Sign: Please wear a mask, even if you are alone in the building.
Then I was like, hey, maybe I can afford not wearing a mask in one of the many empty classrooms.
(goes upstairs)
Sign: Please wear a mask, even if you are alone in the building. This extends to empty classrooms.
...What an oddly specific sign, I thought. So here I am, being one of the only three people in the building (the other two being security staff) and, sitting in an empty classroom, wearing a mask. XD
I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.
Professional Writer & Amateur Scholar
Actually, considering that I often study in empty classrooms (with most classes done online, there are plenty of them) to the point of getting on a first-name basis with the security staff, that's a legitimate possibility. ![[lol]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lol2v12_4863.png "[lol]"){kind=small}
Edited by dRoy on Nov 28th 2020 at 6:09:11 PM
I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.
I am guessing this is a pour encourager les autres sign to encourage mask wearing in general and to discourage loophole-seeking.
Speaking of French, it looks like their COVID-19 case numbers are going down quickly. Whereas Italy and Germany appear to be somewhat stuck.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Professional Writer & Amateur Scholar
Guilty as charged.
When the number of cases go down, I hope that it's because there are more people being cured, rather than because of deaths...
Also, I recently got one of the most terrifying emergency alert notifications I ever got.
Normally it just says something along the line of "Those who visited XXX building from OOOO hour on the date of TTTT must get tested in no less than DD days"
This one message, though, just said "All residents from XXX district should be tested at once."
It made me go, "Holy crap, just what happened there?!" And sure enough, it got hit with one of the worst infections in my country this month...
Edited by dRoy on Nov 28th 2020 at 6:12:21 PM
I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
I didn't get that message - where is that?
A Self-inflicted Disaster
The one about Noryangjin?
Professional Writer & Amateur Scholar
That's the one, yeah.
I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.
Huh, Dongjak-gu is near enough that I should have gotten something. Well, that did nothing for my peace of mind.
For a second there I thought you meant an entire gu and my heart just about stopped.
Edited by nova92 on Nov 28th 2020 at 1:30:51 AM
A Self-inflicted Disaster
The frequency of alerts saying "Everyone who was at building X around a certain time should get tested" instead of the usual "x more cases were confirmed in this district" is worrying, as it means that more and more contacts were unacccounted for.
"Enshittification truly is how platforms die"-Cory Doctorow
A procrastination in of itself
I imagine that the “wear a mask even when alone in the building” sign is also there because you might not actually be alone and because even when alone you might not be alone for long. Surface transmission is possible and if an unmasked infected person went around spreading on surfaces that then had people at them a few hours later you could get a big outbreak.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Professional Writer & Amateur Scholar
@nova - Yeah, that was a translation hiccup from my part, sorry about that. XP
I need some goddamn drink what with COVID getting worse all over around my place, but sadly I probably wouldn't want to go to bars anyway.
I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.
A Self-inflicted Disaster
Contact tracers in South Korea are experiencing burnout. A study interviewed 20 contact tracers in the suburbs of Seoul, and the results say that 80% of them are experiencing burnout. They are working 12 hours a day, with some even going home at 4 in the morning only to be called in at 7AM.
Most of them said they were tracing contacts in their dreams, and at least one of them got into a car accident because the work distracted them while driving. They are not getting adequate support for their work, using their personal cell phones, laptops, and cars.
The contact tracers said that without more compensation and job security, the government's pandemic response is not sustainable.
Edited by minseok42 on Nov 29th 2020 at 12:11:02 AM
"Enshittification truly is how platforms die"-Cory Doctorow
I'll just say this. The article is nonsense. We need the vaccine and all that stuff.
Edited by jessicadicicco610 on Nov 28th 2020 at 8:12:42 AM
Just a curious guy
On the subject of vaccines: I've seen medical workers around Twitter talk about a very convincing reason to be optimistic, it has to do with the fact all eyes are being put on these companies and labs, so their vaccines better be good or they'll be in trouble. So if they are so quick in trying to get them approved they must be pretty damn sure that the vaccines won't cause problems!
And according to most experts who talk on TV, the short timeframes are admittedly dubious, mainly because it's pretty much impossible to know for sure the effectivenes of the vaccines on the general public at this moment, but if they get approved for distribution there will be absolutely no reason to fear them, at the very least they'll be safe
El Erizo Sónico
In the name of being honest
The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines started their development all the way back in January, based on genetic data that Chinese scientists uploaded to the internet in December. I think we all gotta remember that this thing was already a big deal for the medical community before it started to hit the West in full force.
Edited by eagleoftheninth on Nov 28th 2020 at 4:22:26 AM
Echoing hymn of my fellow passerine | Art blog (under construction)
A procrastination in of itself
My understanding is that the timeframe between phase three testing and approval is what you’d normally see, vaccine development time has been reduced by removing the many years of “beg for funding” and “search for viable testing subjects” that normally make up a big part of the process.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Shin Megami Tensei IV
I once said that AMLO, despite being a utter moron was better that Trump and Bolsonaro at his handling of covid.
Now...
AMLO now is on the team of "Lol, use masks if you want or not"
Edited by KazuyaProta on Nov 29th 2020 at 4:20:47 AM
Watch me destroying my country
Remind me what or who AMLO is?
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, president of Mexico.
Shin Megami Tensei IV
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Mexican President.
My Mexican friend refers to his handling of covid, especially as it just gets worse with time rather that improving as "If he wants us dead, a bomb should be easier"
Watch me destroying my country
Thanks, y'all.
The Guardian broke this article:
State media has been reporting intensively on coronavirus discovered on packaging of frozen food imports, not considered a significant vector of infection elsewhere, and research into possible cases of the disease found outside China’s borders before December 2019.
The official People’s Daily newspaper claimed in a Facebook post last week that “all available evidence suggests that the coronavirus did not start in central China’s Wuhan”.
“Wuhan was where the coronavirus was first detected but it was not where it originated,” it quoted Zeng Guang, formerly a chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, as saying. A foreign ministry spokesman, asked about state media reports that the virus originated outside China, said only that it was important to distinguish between where Covid-19 was first detected and where it crossed the species barrier to infect humans.
“Although China was the first to report cases, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the virus originated in China,” Zhao Lijian told a briefing. “Origin tracing is an ongoing process that may involve multiple countries and regions.”
Chinese scientists have even submitted a paper for publication to the Lancet – although it has not yet been peer-reviewed – that claims “Wuhan is not the place where human-to-human Sars-Co V-2 transmission first happened”, suggesting instead that the first case may have been in the “Indian subcontinent”.
Claims that the virus had origins outside China are given little credence by western scientists. Michael Ryan, director of the health emergencies programme at the World Health Organization (WHO), said last week that it would be “highly speculative” to argue that the disease did not emerge in China. “It is clear from a public health perspective that you start your investigations where the human cases first emerged,” he told a news briefing in Geneva.
Reports of Covid circulating in Italy in autumn 2019, based on samples from a cancer unit, seem “weak”, said Prof Jonathan Stoye, a virologist at the Francis Crick Institute in London. “The serological data [from Italy] can most likely be explained by cross-reactive antibodies directed against other coronaviruses.” In other words, antibodies found in the cases in Italy had been triggered in individuals who had been infected by different coronaviruses, not those responsible for Covid-19.
“What appears certain is that the first recorded cases of the disease were in China,” added Stoye. “It thus remains most likely that the virus originated in China.”
And while traces of coronavirus have been found on frozen food packaging, scientists think that represents a very low risk for a disease now believed to be overwhelmingly transmitted through respiratory droplets.
A positive test “doesn’t indicate infectious virus, just that some signal from the virus is present on that surface,” Andrew Pekosz of the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University told AP. “I’ve seen no convincing data that Sars-Co V-2 on food packaging poses a significant risk for infection.”
But as the human and economic toll of the pandemic mounts, Beijing is keen to protect its reputation at home and abroad. Covid-19 has now infected over 60 million people and killed nearly 1.5 million.
Since recovering from the devastation of its own initial outbreak, China has sought to bolster its standing abroad with medical aid.
It is now also promoting several vaccines it has in late-stage development as part of its contribution to the “global good”, offering help with manufacturing and funding immunisation drives. But resentment at Beijing’s role in unleashing the pandemic may ultimately prove harder for China to tackle than the disease itself.
“China is still struggling to deal with the fact that it is held responsible for the “original sin” of the outbreak, which undercuts virtually every effort to salvage its image,” said Andrew Small, a China scholar and senior fellow with the German Marshall Fund, a US thinktank.
“Recent months have shown what a catastrophic impact the pandemic has had for China in international public opinion.”
He does not think there is any doubt in the minds of senior Chinese leadership about the origin of the virus, and sees the focus on reporting possible alternative origins as a propaganda campaign.
The reports fit an internal narrative of a strong China led by an efficient Communist party. Domestically, Beijing has promoted its enormous success in virtually eradicating the disease and returning life within its borders to something like normal. Internationally, China’s aims probably include introducing some doubt for global audiences who are likely to believe it, turning basic facts into a “contested, politically sensitive matter” in relations with Beijing, Small said.
China’s questioning of the origin of the virus in Wuhan might be more credible if it was supporting an independent investigation into the disease, but instead authorities have repeatedly proved obstructive.
WHO investigators who visited Wuhan earlier this year were not able to visit the food market linked to the initial outbreak. A new team is expected to head to China soon to build on initial work by a Chinese team, but they still don’t have a date for travel, with the WHO saying only that they will travel “in due time”.
Understanding the origins of Covid-19 is vital to efforts to prevent the next pandemic. Unfortunately, for now Beijing seems more focused on the question of who should carry blame for the disease, than on understanding where it came from.
“What we’re seeing at the moment is indicative of where the Chinese government wants all this to come out – and that place is certainly not an open, accountable effort to determine what went wrong and ensure that it never happens again,” Small said.
Oh, bother.
Because of course they are. Fucking CCP.
Disgusted, but not surprised
Looks like Manila has allowed technical reviews for Sinovac and one more Chinese manufacturer. They passed and it means trials can be done.