Covid-19 #20: Nowhere to Hide

[Larry of the Lawn]

2 minutes ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

And predictability rears its head.

 

Almost by definition

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

So I believe I need to start here.

On 12/8/2020 at 8:13 AM, VigoTheCarpathian said:

1. I work at a hospital as well - where are your coworkers eating lunch? Our restaurants are takeout only, and our break room/cafeteria is socially distanced, so there aren’t a lot of great options for people, who are tired and get 30-45 min for a quick bite.

2. I am all ears regarding this nation-wide plan to labor to eliminate food deserts in the middle of a pandemic, as opposed to feeding people using the existing infrastructure (even if it might be fast food).

3. Not anti-cooking at all, I prepare 95% of the food I consume - but I also volunteered at a food bank that had to suspend all in-person operations, including jam-packed classes teaching people how to cook unprepared food.  I think it unrealistic/ cruel to draw an “essential” line around food.

4. Tell me how the standard of “essential to eat meat” is different than “essential to eat fast food”.  Both are arbitrary lines about what is essential based on a value system.  And I would hazard a guess (google is failing me finding a recent stat) that a significant part of this  “essential” meat-packing industry relies on supplying fast food chains.

I’m not meaning to be antagonistic, but I think it’s not a feature in our system to be able to chop food services into “essential”/“non”, and  realistically enforcing it would be a nightmare.

1. There's no eating at common spaces at our facility. The Caf  is strictly for storing food and getting water. You eat your desk, in your office, in your car or you're allowed to go home and eat, which is what I do. We have staff that do various types of in-home evaluations, so basically all public areas are closed.

2.  Sadly, that's an opportunity that has been missed. Among many other things, food deserts could have bee eliminated if we had handled this crisis better and more comprehensively. 

3. I mean maybe? I taught cooking classes for two years in college, and I don't see how hard that would be to do remotely if everyone had the right supplies, which again, why isn't the government providing such necessities?

4. Perhaps that was a bit flippant. What I was trying to highlight is that grocery stores provide a range of food while fast food is get what they offer and it may not need people's health needs. There's a good argument to be had as to why grocery stores are essential. You have to talk yourself into why fast food is too, especially if you've ever worked in one, which, to say the least, lack what we would call sanitary standards.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

30 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

And their kids definitely shouldn't. 

Republicans think otherwise....

[A True Kaniggit]

6 minutes ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

And predictability rears its head.

 

You did't quote anything.

What's this in reference to?

[RhaenysBee]

6 hours ago, rotting sea cow said:

 

See above. The trust in the authority and in the rest of the society has been eroded and no without reason. The feeling that governments and corporations are in bed together is widespread. This affects the trust in medicine, science and pretty much everything and leaves us in a very delicate situation.

I agree. But what is our alternative at this point as a modern, globalized civilization? 

5 hours ago, JoannaL said:

I think there may be a small risk in taking these vaccines in the moment because they are so new and so we do not (cannot) have long time data (like say after two years).

Still often the small risk in taking the vaccine may be much less than the risk in getting Covid. It depends on the personal situation. For me that would mean that I will encourage my 82 year old mother to take it and I will take it myself as soon as I may  (so that I can visit), but I will wait this out longer for my children , who will very likely not have any bad effects if they get Covid.

I suppose this is the essence. I’ll be about the last group to official get access, as the statistical chance that covid might seriously harm me as a twenty something female with no preexisting medical conditions is low. But yeah, I wouldn’t want to test that low chance either... 

4 hours ago, williamjm said:

Not giving a vaccine to over 60s seems a huge limitation.

I think a key question would be what proportion of medical professionals had doubts. It's probably not hard to find people with medical qualifications who believe all sorts of crazy stuff - I remember a friend on Facebook recently posting about a conversation they had with a doctor they worked with who was convinced that Covid-19 was a hoax perpetrated by the Democrats and would disappear after the election. Online it can be easy for contrary voices on any subject to get amplified.

 

While I think this is a weird argument it did remind of an article linked here recently which pointed out that the West have also had at least one Covid-19 vaccine since the Moderna vaccine was designed in early January, it just took most of the year to gather sufficient evidence that it worked.

 

I think it's one thing to think that experts might sometimes be fallible and quite another to think that we should just ignore them completely. Unfortunately a lot of people seem inclined to do the second, at least on particular issues, I suspect most of the people nervous about vaccines don't give the same consideration to other medications they might be prescribed even if those might be riskier.

Very true indeed. I wonder if anybody had the notion to poll medical professionals about this. That’s a stat I’d like to see. Might give it a search. (And yes, sadly, my hometown GP went into extensive detail explaining to my mother that the pandemic is a cover story so healthcare systems around the world have an excuse to shut down and be restructured and redesigned......................) 

3 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

On the question of speed.

I recently saw a story that puts it in perspective. Do you remember way, way back in January, the story about a Chinese researcher who sent the gene sequence for the Covid-19 virus out to the world? The Chinese did that in mid-January. 
 

Once they had the gene sequence, Moderna had a vaccine developed the next day. That’s right. The next day. They had their Phase 1 application in to the FDA the next week. Having the gene sequence so fast made all the difference. The vaccine has literally existed since January. Human testing started three months later.

I hope that gives you some comfort and something to say to people.

This is quite reassuring though somewhat peculiar. Thank you for sharing! 

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

. What I was trying to highlight is that grocery stores provide a range of food while fast food is get what they offer and it may not need people's health needs. There's a good argument to be had as to why grocery stores are essential. You have to talk yourself into why fast food is too

No one does not when one looks at the real city in which I live, in which very many people simple have no access to kitchens (or even beds), internet and any storage at all.  I cook most days, and a lot of days most of the day, and I do it from scratch from the various food suppliers that I am so fortunate to have within walking distance, and many of them of high quality.  I have hardly any room to cook, but I do have a stove-oven, I have a sink and running water.  I do really amazing, if I do say so myself.  I have been doing this and nothing else since the beginning of March.

But I know a lot of people who do not have anywhere to cook at all, no stove, no oven, no sink.  Please, what can't you understand about that?

That we should have organized all this a lot differently at the very start of the pandemic, nobody's going to argue with you about that.  But we didn't, and shoggoth and all his monsters from the hell dimensions did not even care, much less want to.  They didn't want to do anything about control and confining it.  Much less help the ever growing numbers of people who desperately need help of every kind.

This afternoon in this covid-laden restaurant city, across the street I saw a very poor old black man, shuffling his feet in rhythm to the one he had going with a plastic cup and a few coins.  Actually that rhythm was pretty sharp.  He was thin, thin, thin,  He had a mask through which he was scatting - beating, according to the rhythm of his feet and his cup with a few coins.  I had on my medical gloves.  I got out a $10 bill and reached far over to give it to him.

This is heartbreaking.  Your anxieties about somebody in a Mercedes might possibly being taken advantage of free food has no relevance to this guy's existence, and attempts keep existing.

[Zorral]

34 minutes ago, RhaenysBee said:

I agree. But what is our alternative at this point as a modern, globalized civilization? 

I suppose this is the essence. I’ll be about the last group to official get access, as the statistical chance that covid might seriously harm me as a twenty something female with no preexisting medical conditions is low. But yeah, I wouldn’t want to test that low chance either... 

Very true indeed. I wonder if anybody had the notion to poll medical professionals about this. That’s a stat I’d like to see. Might give it a search. (And yes, sadly, my hometown GP went into extensive detail explaining to my mother that the pandemic is a cover story so healthcare systems around the world have an excuse to shut down and be restructured and redesigned......................) 

This is quite reassuring though somewhat peculiar. Thank you for sharing! 

I posted this link earlier this week, which provides a very easy to understand overview about how the vaccine was already designed back at the beginning of the year.  Again, too, is the opening paragraph.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/12/moderna-covid-19-vaccine-design.html

Quote

 

We Had the Vaccine the Whole Time

You may be surprised to learn that of the trio of long-awaited coronavirus vaccines, the most promising, Moderna’s mRNA-1273, which reported a 94.5 percent efficacy rate on November 16, had been designed by January 13. This was just two days after the genetic sequence had been made public in an act of scientific and humanitarian generosity that resulted in China’s Yong-Zhen Zhang’s being temporarily forced out of his lab. In Massachusetts, the Moderna vaccine design took all of one weekend. It was completed before China had even acknowledged that the disease could be transmitted from human to human, more than a week before the first confirmed coronavirus case in the United States. By the time the first American death was announced a month later, the vaccine had already been manufactured and shipped to the National Institutes of Health for the beginning of its Phase I clinical trial. This is — as the country and the world are rightly celebrating — the fastest timeline of development in the history of vaccines. It also means that for the entire span of the pandemic in this country, which has already killed more than 250,000 Americans, we had the tools we needed to prevent it ....

 

 

[Fragile Bird]

What that story about Moderna told me was that Operation Warp Speed was utter bullshit, and Trump trying to claim credit for a fast vaccine development is also utter bullshit. The words warp speed were first mentioned at the end of April and the official announcement was on May 15, almost 5 full months after Moderna had developed their vaccine (and everyone else shortly after), and probably completed their Phase 1 by then. Total bullshit, although the money pumped in by the government was definitely useful.

[A True Kaniggit]

5 hours ago, Buckwheat said:

I think my country just reached this level yesterday. The whole country has something over 2 millions people living here. As of yesterday, more than 2000 people died from covid.

And the situation doesn't seem to be improving, we have had really high infection numbers every day for almost two months now.

I'm sorry your country is doing as bad as mine. (Slovenia right?)

Stay safe!

[Zorral]

14 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

What that story about Moderna told me was that Operation Warp Speed was utter bullshit, and Trump trying to claim credit for a fast vaccine development is also utter bullshit. The words warp speed were first mentioned at the end of April and the official announcement was on May 15, almost 5 full months after Moderna had developed their vaccine (and everyone else shortly after), and probably completed their Phase 1 by then. Total bullshit, although the money pumped in by the government was definitely useful.

Shoggoths gonna shoggoth no matter what which means warp speeding to steal steal steal and kill kill kill.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

15 hours ago, Zorral said:

No one does not when one looks at the real city in which I live, in which very many people simple have no access to kitchens (or even beds), internet and any storage at all.  I cook most days, and a lot of days most of the day, and I do it from scratch from the various food suppliers that I am so fortunate to have within walking distance, and many of them of high quality.  I have hardly any room to cook, but I do have a stove-oven, I have a sink and running water.  I do really amazing, if I do say so myself.  I have been doing this and nothing else since the beginning of March.

But I know a lot of people who do not have anywhere to cook at all, no stove, no oven, no sink.  Please, what can't you understand about that?

That we should have organized all this a lot differently at the very start of the pandemic, nobody's going to argue with you about that.  But we didn't, and shoggoth and all his monsters from the hell dimensions did not even care, much less want to.  They didn't want to do anything about control and confining it.  Much less help the ever growing numbers of people who desperately need help of every kind.

This afternoon in this covid-laden restaurant city, across the street I saw a very poor old black man, shuffling his feet in rhythm to the one he had going with a plastic cup and a few coins.  Actually that rhythm was pretty sharp.  He was thin, thin, thin,  He had a mask through which he was scatting - beating, according to the rhythm of his feet and his cup with a few coins.  I had on my medical gloves.  I got out a $10 bill and reached far over to give it to him.

This is heartbreaking.  Your anxieties about somebody in a Mercedes might possibly being taken advantage of free food has no relevance to this guy's existence, and attempts keep existing.

I've never lived in NYC, but are you saying people have places to live, but don't have a sink or a stove? Because that seems pretty absurd to me.

[Wilbur]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

I've never lived in NYC, but are you saying people have places to live, but don't have a sink or a stove? Because that seems pretty absurd to me.

New York City is a painful warning for what America could become.  I have had to spend too many trips to NYC for board meetings, and it is one of the most economically divided places in America.

Yes, there are beautiful and delightful places, but as a visitor you are always aware of the fact that these nice places rise up from a filthy and decrepit infrastructure supported by another underclass of Wellsian proportions. The gulf between the white shoes and the blue collars is stark and terrifyingly unlike most of the rest of the USA, although perhaps not for very long.

Again here I think it is the cultural whiplash that creates such a negative perception, as during the day you deal with the i-bankers and legal people who live in an insider fantasy land of self-actualization, and then in the evening you see the hotel workers who have two jobs and barely survive.

Dubai and Abu Dhabi have similar divides between the indolent native populations of fantastically oil-rich wealth inheritors and the foreign workers who actually operate the economy, but these are purpose-built cities that have replicated the social system that has grown in place in NYC.

[Zorral]

4 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

I've never lived in NYC, but are you saying people have places to live, but don't have a sink or a stove? Because that seems pretty absurd to me.

Shows how very little you know about the country you live in and who lives in it.

That you don't, shows you really don't care do u.  You seem to not know that even where you are many many many homeless exist, and shelters do not provide cooking facilities.

Additionally the real estate / mafia that rule the city have been working really hard to change the housing laws, which mandate stove,  refrigerator, electricity, heat, sinks, toilet, running water for each apartment -- they are all about teeny spaces without all the above, 'coffin' spaces, as they've had in some places in Japan -- so they don't have to pay for it. 

Our stove and oven, our refrigerator, we bought ourselves, because the owner of the building wouldn't replace the ancient ones that were dead, fred -- which supposedly he's mandated to do.  But somehow he then manages to up one's rent a thousand dollars a year for each replaced utility.  Thus you can see why we bought ours ourselves.  But we're fortunate, we could do that.  Many people cannot, considering what the rent is, and how little they are paid.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

20 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Shows how very little you know about the country you live in and who lives in it.

That you don't, shows you really don't care do u.

Lol, what?

[Zorral]

1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

Lol, what?

If you cared you'd know how many people have no facility to cook. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

4 minutes ago, Zorral said:

If you cared you'd know how many people have no facility to cook. 

Do you know, off the top of your head, how many people have no facility to cook in Paraguay? If you don't immediately, does that mean you don't care? 

Be reasonable. 

[Week]

3 hours ago, Wilbur said:

New York City is a painful warning for what America could become.  I have had to spend too many trips to NYC for board meetings, and it is one of the most economically divided places in America.

As opposed to the bastion of the equality and futurism that is Scottsdale, Arizona. With golf courses for rich retirees, white collar execs, doctors, and vacationers in the middle of a desert created at the expense of Mexico down river and maintained by underpaid migrant workers (often without legal status and protections). No need to dive into the indignities foisted upon the tribes of Arizona.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/22/mexico-colorado-river-people-left-without-river

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-colorado-river-runs-dry-61427169/

[Zorral]

4 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Do you know, off the top of your head, how many people have no facility to cook in Paraguay? If you don't immediately, does that mean you don't care? 

Be reasonable. 

You stop pretending that you didn't say close all the fast food outlets and force everyone to get their food in supermarkets AND COOK!  You said that. And then you refused to admit that it wasn't possible to have shelter without cooking facilities (while ignoring all together how many people have neither shelter nor food).  = either unfathomable ignorance of what has been on the front pages of media for decades,  or it means u don't care.

Stop pretending and trying to gaslight. You wrote it.  It's here.  Get a grip. Man up and admit you were both wrong and stupid.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 hours ago, Zorral said:

You stop pretending that you didn't say close all the fast food outlets and force everyone to get their food in supermarkets AND COOK!  You said that. And then you refused to admit that it wasn't possible to have shelter without cooking facilities (while ignoring all together how many people have neither shelter nor food).  = either unfathomable ignorance of what has been on the front pages of media for decades,  or it means u don't care.

Stop pretending and trying to gaslight. You wrote it.  It's here.  Get a grip. Man up and admit you were both wrong and stupid.

 

Yes, I said that. And? I also questioned the claim you made that people don't have a sink in their apartments. That seems a bit outlandish, no? It's 2020, not 1920.

And no, I'm not gaslighting anyone. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

33 minutes ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

I personally think all restaurants should remain open (for literal outdoor service, not at all enclosed; or takeout), and all restaurant workers are essential - whether it is Taco Bell or The French Laundry.

Do you know how many times I have burned myself, cooking?? Cooking is DANGEROUS.

HAHAHAHA. 

As someone who used to teach cooking classes, excuse me if I laugh at your pretty ass burning your finger tips a bit.