The Walls Come Down: No Travel Betwen US and Europe for 30 Days

[Zaune]

Found the source for that screenshot, I think. A long, detailed and thoroughly depressing Twitter thread analysing everything the British government did, everything it didn't do and everything it should have done. Quoting it in detail here is impractical, but here's a highlight:

nstead of going to Cobra meetings, Boris Johnson went to a Tory fundraising ball. One donor coughed up £60,000 for a game of tennis with him.

Full version of the article without paywall available here: https://archive.is/20200418182037/https ... -hq3b9tlgh

[bilateralrope]

The United States might run out of beer thanks to COVID-19

Dwindling supplies of carbon dioxide from ethanol plants is sparking concern about shortages of beer, soda and seltzer water - essentials for many quarantined Americans.

Brewers and soft-drink makers use carbon dioxide, or CO2, for carbonation, which gives beer and soda fizz. Ethanol producers are a key provider of CO2 to the food industry, as they capture that gas as a byproduct of ethanol production and sell it in large quantities.

But ethanol, which is blended into the nation's gasoline supply, has seen production drop sharply due to the drop in gasoline demand as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Gasoline demand is down by more than 30 percent in the United States.

The lack of ethanol output is disrupting this highly specialised corner of the food industry, as 34 of the 45 US ethanol plants that sell CO2 have idled or cut production, said Renewable Fuels Association chief executive Geoff Cooper.

CO2 suppliers to beer brewers have increased prices by about 25 percent due to reduced supply, said Bob Pease, chief executive officer of the Brewers Association. The trade group represents small and independent US craft brewers, who get about 45 percent of their CO2 from ethanol producers.

"The problem is accelerating. Every day we're hearing from more of our members about this," said Pease, who expects some brewers to start cutting production in two to three weeks.

In an April 7 letter to Vice President Mike Pence, the Compressed Gas Association (CGA) said production of CO2 had fallen about 20 percent and could be down by 50 percent by mid-April without relief, CGA CEO Rich Gottwald said in the letter. Meat producers are also feeling the pinch, as they use CO2 in processing, packaging, preservation and shipment.

Orion Melehan, CEO of Santa Cruz, California-based LifeAID, a specialty beverage company, said two of his production partners are looking for alternative CO2 sources.

"It does have us up at night figuring out what our options are," Melehan said. "It highlights the laws of unintended consequences."

A spokeswoman for National Beverage Corp, whose products include LaCroix, said the company sources from a number of national CO2 suppliers and does not anticipate a supply issue.

Coca-Cola, SodaStream owner PepsiCo, wine and beer seller Constellation Brands and several bottling companies did not respond to requests for comment

Walker Modic, environmental and social sustainability manager for Bell's Brewery, said the Comstock, Michigan-based brewing company had "not experienced any curtailments or changes in the source of our CO2."

Reuters

[Zaune]

Um... Shouldn't beer generate its own CO2 as part of the fermentation process?

[Beowulf]

Um... Shouldn't beer generate its own CO2 as part of the fermentation process?

Yes, but usually the process of moving the beer from the fermenter to the cans ends up decarbonating the beer. So you need to add extra co2.

[Broomstick]

Yes, but that doesn't rule out adding more if the producer or the consuming public want more fizz.

It would be funny if the solution to that problem was taking CO2 out of the atmosphere and the fizz-guzzling public managed to defeat climate change by drinking away a greenhouse gas.

(But they'd probably far more and we'd be back where we started....)

[mr friendly guy]

Newscorp is pushing the Wuhan Lab origin story today.

Murdoch media have been pushing this conspiracy theory for a while now. They even went as far as writing about how Dean Koontz (the author) predicted a viral outbreak from Wuhan. A US politician also pushed this particular conspiracy theory. And then they have to gall to complain the Chinese are pushing conspiracy theories when people in China return the favour.

Why lab accident would be that implausible? Given this virus often cause no symptoms it seems possible that someone in the lab could have gotten infected in some minor accident and later spread it around without even knowing it. I would say more likely scenario is the animal market because of unsanitary conditions and all sorts of animals crammed together, but if that Wuhan lab really researched animal coronaviruses then it is another potential source that should be investigated.

Plausibility doesn't mean probable. Its like the reverse conspiracy theory where it may have spread from an American (Maryland) lab in 2019 which was shut down in June 2019 due to improper safety precautions, a lab known to also study coronavirii. Shortly after Maryland reported a spike in strange lung disease which they blamed on vaping, but no other country reported such a disease from vaping. Then it spread to Wuhan in September from people attending the Wuhan military games. I am not saying it is, but we should at least look at it. I mean this is the same logic.

The animal market theory seems less likely now. Originally they thought it was animal to human transmission so they close the wet market down. However they expanded their search when not all the infected people had contact with the wet market. It gets worse when the intermediate host, the pangolin (thought this way because the virus is very similar to one infecting pangolins) are not listed as being sold in that market. Now its illegal to sell pangolins, so they wouldn't list them, but it also means people arguing for the wet market don't the evidence yet.

The Murdoch press has now gone on about how they are still selling bats in Wuhan's wet market, by using a picture from a well known Indonesian market which sells bats (one of their outlets news.com.au has since change the label of the photos to say its from Indonesia), but this reflects how shit some western media are. The reason I brought it up, I have heard from a messageboard elsewhere (but haven't had time to verify it yet) was that this particular wet market didn't even sell bats. So while I agree wet markets dealing with exotic animals should be closed or have the exotic animal trade stopped, it doesn't appear to be the culprit this time round.

In fact the latest evidence from WESTERN scientists analysing the virus, is that it most probably spread to humans as early as September and most likely came from Southern China rather than Wuhan.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science ... ay-british

But I know conspiracy theorists are going to say well they must have brought the bat from southern China to Wuhan's lab. Although ...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-bats-b ... 1586440959

RaTG13 is the name, rank and serial number of an individual horseshoe bat of the species Rhinolophus affinis, or rather of a sample of its feces collected in 2013 in a cave in Yunnan, China. The sample was collected by hazmat-clad scientists from the Institute of Virology in Wuhan that year. Stored away and forgotten until January this year, the sample from the horseshoe bat contains the virus that causes Covid-19.

I doubt a person is going to be touching faeces of any sort without something to cover themselves.

[Zaune]

Plausibility doesn't mean probable. Its like the reverse conspiracy theory where it may have spread from an American (Maryland) lab in 2019 which was shut down in June 2019 due to improper safety precautions, a lab known to also study coronavirii. Shortly after Maryland reported a spike in strange lung disease which they blamed on vaping, but no other country reported such a disease from vaping. Then it spread to Wuhan in September from people attending the Wuhan military games. I am not saying it is, but we should at least look at it. I mean this is the same logic.

You know, in all seriousness that hypothesis probably merits more thorough investigation even just to rule it out... but in a long, thorough and hopefully relatively nonpartisan public inquiry held after the pandemic is officially over. As it is, man-hours the relevant organisations spend deciding who to blame for the crisis are man-hours they're not using to come up with a solution.

[chimericoncogene]

Singapore's outbreak is going to be an interesting one to watch, since it has one of the most efficient public health services in East Asia.
They're at 800 cases a day right now, and full lockdown. Not a good place to be, but we'll see how they handle this.

https://experience.arcgis.com/experienc ... fe67bd8b89

[AniThyng]

A large proportion of those new cases IIRC are from outbreaks in foreign worker dorms, which I imagine they can contain, but it won't be pretty.

They also have a plan to make use of empty cruise ships to isolate recovered patients from said dorms.

https://www.thestar.com.my/news/world/2 ... uise-ships

[loomer]

Dialysis machines are now also in short supply and increasingly important in the struggle.

[Sky Captain]

Murdoch media have been pushing this conspiracy theory for a while now. They even went as far as writing about how Dean Koontz (the author) predicted a viral outbreak from Wuhan. A US politician also pushed this particular conspiracy theory. And then they have to gall to complain the Chinese are pushing conspiracy theories when people in China return the favour.

Why lab accident would be that implausible? Given this virus often cause no symptoms it seems possible that someone in the lab could have gotten infected in some minor accident and later spread it around without even knowing it. I would say more likely scenario is the animal market because of unsanitary conditions and all sorts of animals crammed together, but if that Wuhan lab really researched animal coronaviruses then it is another potential source that should be investigated.

Plausibility doesn't mean probable. Its like the reverse conspiracy theory where it may have spread from an American (Maryland) lab in 2019 which was shut down in June 2019 due to improper safety precautions, a lab known to also study coronavirii. Shortly after Maryland reported a spike in strange lung disease which they blamed on vaping, but no other country reported such a disease from vaping. Then it spread to Wuhan in September from people attending the Wuhan military games. I am not saying it is, but we should at least look at it. I mean this is the same logic.

The animal market theory seems less likely now. Originally they thought it was animal to human transmission so they close the wet market down. However they expanded their search when not all the infected people had contact with the wet market. It gets worse when the intermediate host, the pangolin (thought this way because the virus is very similar to one infecting pangolins) are not listed as being sold in that market. Now its illegal to sell pangolins, so they wouldn't list them, but it also means people arguing for the wet market don't the evidence yet.

The Murdoch press has now gone on about how they are still selling bats in Wuhan's wet market, by using a picture from a well known Indonesian market which sells bats (one of their outlets news.com.au has since change the label of the photos to say its from Indonesia), but this reflects how shit some western media are. The reason I brought it up, I have heard from a messageboard elsewhere (but haven't had time to verify it yet) was that this particular wet market didn't even sell bats. So while I agree wet markets dealing with exotic animals should be closed or have the exotic animal trade stopped, it doesn't appear to be the culprit this time round.

In fact the latest evidence from WESTERN scientists analysing the virus, is that it most probably spread to humans as early as September and most likely came from Southern China rather than Wuhan.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science ... ay-british

But I know conspiracy theorists are going to say well they must have brought the bat from southern China to Wuhan's lab. Although ...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-bats-b ... 1586440959

RaTG13 is the name, rank and serial number of an individual horseshoe bat of the species Rhinolophus affinis, or rather of a sample of its feces collected in 2013 in a cave in Yunnan, China. The sample was collected by hazmat-clad scientists from the Institute of Virology in Wuhan that year. Stored away and forgotten until January this year, the sample from the horseshoe bat contains the virus that causes Covid-19.

I doubt a person is going to be touching faeces of any sort without something to cover themselves.

While lab accident may not be top 1 likely cause of outbreak I think it is plausible enough to warrant an impartial investigation. If this was a crime scene I bet that Wuhan lab would be held as a possible suspect and investigated accordingly. If evidence pointed the virus originated earlier in Southern China then lab theory would be dropped.

[loomer]

Vancouver PD is attempting to storm and dismantle a squat established by the homeless who need a place to ride out COVID-19. They have no other place to go, and being ejected back onto the streets is a hazard both to them and to public health. Being arrested and jailed is likewise a public health issue.

People wonder why I hold to ACAB. Well, this shit is why.

[ray245]

Singapore's outbreak is going to be an interesting one to watch, since it has one of the most efficient public health services in East Asia.
They're at 800 cases a day right now, and full lockdown. Not a good place to be, but we'll see how they handle this.

https://experience.arcgis.com/experienc ... fe67bd8b89

Yeah, because we fucked up in ensuring we can stop the spread of the virus in tightly packed location ( dormitories of the workers)

[The Romulan Republic]

Get ready for the second wave:

https://cbc.ca/news/world/texas-vermont ... -1.5537446

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday that Texas and Vermont will allow certain businesses to reopen on Monday while still observing coronavirus-related precautions and Montana will begin lifting restrictions on Friday.

"We continue to see a number of positive signs that the virus has passed its peak," Trump told reporters at a daily briefing.

Some state governors have warned that they will not act prematurely to reopen their economies until there is more testing for the virus, however. Business leaders have also told Trump the country needs to have widespread testing in place before their companies can return to normal operations.

Trump said "our testing is getting better and better," but offered no concrete evidence.

He said both Republican and Democratic governors "have announced concrete steps to begin a safe and gradual phased opening." Texas and Vermont "will allow certain business to open on Monday while still requiring appropriate social distancing precautions," he said.

Several dozen protesters gathered in the Texas capital of Austin on Saturday, chanting "USA! USA!" and "Let us work!"

Trump also said the $500 million US that the United States has been giving to the World Health Organization can be spent more efficiently elsewhere.

The president announced earlier in the week that he has directed a halt of U.S. payments to WHO pending a review of its warnings about the coronavirus and China.

He also said there should be consequences for China if the country was "knowingly" responsible for the coronavirus outbreak.

[bilateralrope]

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday that Texas and Vermont will allow certain businesses to reopen on Monday while still observing coronavirus-related precautions and Montana will begin lifting restrictions on Friday.

What do the governors of those states say ?

[The Romulan Republic]

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday that Texas and Vermont will allow certain businesses to reopen on Monday while still observing coronavirus-related precautions and Montana will begin lifting restrictions on Friday.

What do the governors of those states say ?

Don't know, but Texas and Vermont both have Republican governors.

Yeah, I know, the state that elected America's sole socialist Senator has a Republican governor. Vermont is fucking weird.

Also, note Trump rattling the saber at China, and implying that its a Chinese bio-weapon attack. Which is fucking insane, because a) it has no evidence, b) China was one of the worst-hit countries, and c) if that was true, there's only one response that would be considered sufficient, and it would involve every major city on the planet disappearing beneath a mushroom cloud.

[The Romulan Republic]

Trump claims he probably saved "billions" of lives by barring travel with China:

https://huffingtonpost.ca/entry/trump-s ... 50-million

President Donald Trumpbusted his boastful exaggeration record Saturday when he claimed he likely saved “billions” of lives with his measures against COVID-19. The entire population of the U.S. is just 330 million.

Trump claimed Monday he saved “tens of thousands” or possibly “hundreds of thousands” of lives because in late January he restricted foreign nationals from entering the country if they had been in China the previous two weeks. The restrictions did not apply to Americans, however, allowing a conduit for the disease to enter the U.S.

Trump made his outlandish billions claim at his press briefing Saturday. Based on some models, the COVID-19 death toll in the U.S. was predicted to reach 100,000 to 220,000, he noted. “I really believe it could have been billions of people [who died] had we not done what we did,” he added. “We made a lot of good decisions,” he claimed.

"It could have been billions of people if we had not done what we did" -- Trump absurdly claims that his move to restrict travel from China saved a billion or more lives pic.twitter.com/GbkI4ozs8F

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 18, 2020
There are 8 billion people in the entire world, so it’s possible Trump was taking credit for saving an extraordinary number of lives around the world for some unknown reason. The U.S. has nearly a third of the 2.3 million COVID-19 cases around the globe — the highest in the world — but only 4.2% of the Earth’s population. The U.S. also has the highest number of deaths — 36,000 — of any country. So whatever measures the nation is taking don’t appear to be particularly successful.

Trump, however, declared Saturday that the U.S. has “produced dramatically better health outcomes than any other country with the possible exception of Germany.”

It’s uncertain what an accurate COVID-19 death toll prediction will prove to be, or how many will ultimately die. But several experts have said that Trump’s months of inaction with a lack of testing, disease contact isolation and early social distancing measures likely cost countless lives in America.

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That's not how math works, Dickless.

[Zaune]

Yet more fun revelations on Twitter.

During the Foot & Mouth crisis in 2007, GB didn’t just attend every COBRA meeting, he chaired them all. There were no 'experts' telling him when to tune in. If that's what we got from a PM for a disease that didn't even threaten human life, was it too much to ask for Coronavirus?

Although I will generously concede that the odds of Johnson contributing anything worthwhile if and when he did bother to show up are not terribly high.

[mr friendly guy]

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/illi ... &r=US&IR=T

Illinois' governor organised secret flights to bring masks and gloves from China out of fear Trump would seize them
MICHELLE MARK
APR 19, 2020, 1:32 PM

llinois’ governor reportedly organised secret flights to haul millions of masks and gloves from China to bypass any Trump administration efforts to seize the products.
The Chicago Sun-Times reported that the details were kept secret after the Illinois government “heard reports of Trump trying to take PPE in China and when it gets to the United States.”
A number of reports have documented federal efforts to seize ventilators, masks, and other PPE for the national stockpile, even intercepting and diverting orders without explanation.
Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker organised secret flights bringing millions of masks and gloves to the state from China on charter jets in an effort to bypass potential Trump administration efforts to seize the products, The Chicago Sun-Times reported.

Two invoices from the state revealed $US888,275 purchases for “aircraft charter flight to Shanghai, China for COVID-19 response,” according to the newspaper.

The state has reportedly spent $US174 million on coronavirus-related purchases, such as ventilators, personal protective equipment, and hand sanitizer.

The Sun-Times cited a source familiar with the purchases, who said the details were kept secret “because we’ve heard reports of Trump trying to take PPE in China and when it gets to the United States.”

Pritzker’s press secretary declined to give the newspapers details on the flights, but noted the “challenges” Illinois has faced to obtain PPE for frontline health care workers.

The supply chain has been likened to the Wild West, and once you have purchased supplies, ensuring they get to the state is another herculean feat,” press secretary Jordan Abudayyeh told the Sun-Times. “These flights are carrying millions of masks and gloves our workers need. They’re scheduled to land in Illinois in the coming weeks and the state is working to ensure these much-needed supplies are protected and ready for distribution around the state.”

A number of reports have documented federal efforts to seize ventilators, masks, and other PPE for the national stockpile, even intercepting and diverting orders without explanation.

Pritzker has vehemently criticised Trump for his handling of the coronavirus. In a CNN interview on April 14, Pritzker said he had “given up” on the Trump administration’s promises to deliver medical supplies.

Trump has criticised Pritzker right back, saying he “is always complaining.”

Prizker also described fierce bidding wars against the Trump administration, as well as other states, for PPE and other items from overseas. Last month, an Illinois official even sped up a highway with a $US3.4 million check to personally meet a supplier’s deadline to obtain 1.5 million N95 masks, the Sun-Times reported.

I think this is a case of the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing, but if it did, it would work to screw the right hand.

[The Romulan Republic]

It honestly feels like we're already in a cold civil war at this point, with governors (by necessity) forming coalitions and conducting covert operations in opposition to the President. Jesus Christ.

Trump accuses the Illinois governor of treason in 3, 2, 1...

[aerius]

We have most of our leaders and politicians along with pretty much everyone in this thread saying that we can't lift the lockdowns too early or we'll get a massive flood of new infections and undo everything we've sacrificed and then some.

Question. Has anyone bothered to work out a ballpark number for the infection rate, total infections, and how long the lockdowns will need to last before we have herd immunity? And if you did, how likely is it that our critical infrastructures & supply chains will stay intact for that time?

[ray245]

We have most of our leaders and politicians along with pretty much everyone in this thread saying that we can't lift the lockdowns too early or we'll get a massive flood of new infections and undo everything we've sacrificed and then some.

Question. Has anyone bothered to work out a ballpark number for the infection rate, total infections, and how long the lockdowns will need to last before we have herd immunity? And if you did, how likely is it that our critical infrastructures & supply chains will stay intact for that time?

You can use Iceland as an example of how infectious the disease can be to give a good estimate. However, it seems that prior to the lockdown in Iceland, the infectious rate has not reach the 60-70 percent of the population to have herd immunity.

Lockdowns do not help with herd immunity as it reduce contact and exposure to the virus.

[MKSheppard]

Found via my forums referencing twitter:

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0764_article

COVID-19 Outbreak Associated with Air Conditioning in Restaurant, Guangzhou, China, 2020

Amazing study, supporting droplet (rather than aerosol) as key means of transmission. One asymptomatic person infected 10 (out of 91) at restaurant—but *only* if they were in direct line of air pushed by the A/C. (Aerosol would have infected others, too).

...

Also, none of the staff were infected—only people who were in direct line of the A/C for 53 or 73 minutes. (Hong Kong health authorities, who are excellent at evaluating this risk, consider more than 15 minutes at less than 6 feet as "close contact").

So basically; this virus behaves VERY much like radioactive material.

Get exposed to it briefly, your immune system munches it for breakfast and asks for MORE.

Get a heavy load (an hour's worth of exposure) -- your immune system fails and gives up the ghost.

Takeaway II -- don't stay in unknown places for over 15 minutes -- limiting your exposure is good.

So no standing in line for 20 minutes to enter a Costco people!

[MKSheppard]

From another forum:

[this] also explains why so many younger Healthcare workers were dying.

Yes, because they've spent multiple 8 hour shifts in close contact with 100% confirmed (or 75% pretty sure they have it) COVID cases - making their exposure, even with masks and PPE pretty high.

Another takeaway from that study is:

You don't need to decontaminate to BSL4 to protect yourself.

A 5 to 10 second wet exposure (bleach or 70% alcohol) will kill enough of virus in ordinary environments to protect you.

You only need to go to the full 30 second to 1 minute wet exposure (full log decontamination of 99.9999% or whatnot) cleaning protocols if you know a confirmed case spent an hour coughing in that chair and you want to sit in it.

[Broomstick]

Yeah, I know, the state that elected America's sole socialist Senator has a Republican governor. Vermont is fucking weird.

Vermont is fucking unpopulated.

The largest city is only 42,000+/-

It's a low-population state. The entire state of Vermont has half the covid cases my one county in Indiana has. Arguably, that might be a region that doesn't require the strictest form of lockdown. They still might do better with one given their proximity to hot spots, but I'm not informed enough to say either way.

Texas, though, with major cities like Dallas, Houston, Austin... that just does not strike me as a good idea to let up on restrictions.