Coronavirus?
This virus is far too communicable to be stopped. It can be slowed, hospitals can get overloaded, but the number of cases and number of deaths is unlikely to be affected much by ANY measure. Let's see if the tiger stomps on this little bug, or if it's on a respirator in a few days...
BRONX ZOO TIGER TESTS POSITIVE FOR COVID-19 ...First U.S.-Based Animal
4/5/2020 2:51 PM PT
2:51 PM PT -- The USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service just released some information that'll probably come as potentially great news for pet owners, who might be freaking out at the possibility of contracting COVID-19 from their pooches or felines at home.
In a Q&A sheet on their site, the federal scientists say in regards to animals (wild or domesticated) with the question being ... If animals can catch the virus, can they give it back to people? The APHIS experts say ... NO! They add, "At this time, there is no evidence to suggest that any animals, including pets or livestock, can spread the COVID-19 infection to people." What's pretty obvious by now though ... we can give it to them.
A tiger housed at New York City's Bronx Zoo has tested positive for COVID-19, which makes it the first-known animal in the U.S. to have contracted coronavirus.
The Wildlife Conservation Society -- which runs the facility and cares for the animals at the zoo -- made the announcement Sunday, saying a 4-year-old Malayan female tiger named Nadia has tested positive for the disease, which up until recently mostly affected just humans. The diagnosis was confirmed by the USDA's National Veterinary Services Lab.
The org adds other animals of theirs that have shown COVID-19 symptoms of late, including three other tigers and four lions, which have developed a dry cough, but all of which are expected to fully recover. Presumably, those other big cats will get tested too.
The Malayan tiger marks the first U.S-based animal case of coronavirus and the first case in a tiger anywhere in the world. Different animals -- including at least a couple dogs -- in China have reportedly contracted COVID-19, but it hasn't gotten to our furry domesticated friends ... or at least as far as we know.
It's pretty frightening ... and just goes to show the virus can, indeed, spread and adapt fairly rapidly. With this in mind, we imagine people will start having major convos about how to deal with the animal kingdom ... as that's a whole other swab of potential patients we'd have to care for on top of all the people already infected.
BTW, the Bronx Zoo has been closed since March 16 -- and, as you might know, NYC is considered the epicenter of coronavirus cases here in the States. Scary stuff ...
Originally Published -- 2:22 PM PT
source: tmz.com
April 6 & 7, 2020
- The latest figures from a special report by the German Robert Koch Institute show that the so-called positive rate (i.e. the number of test positives per number of tests) is increasing much more slowly than the exponential curves shown by the media and was only around 10% at the end of March, a value that is rather typical for corona viruses. According to the magazine Multipolar, there can therefore be „no question of a dangerously rapid spread of the virus“.
- Professor Klaus Püschel, head of forensic medicine in Hamburg, explains about Covid19: „This virus influences our lives in a completely excessive way. This is disproportionate to the danger posed by the virus. And the astronomical economic damage now being caused is not commensurate with the danger posed by the virus. I am convinced that the Corona mortality rate will not even show up as a peak in annual mortality.“ In Hamburg, for example, „not a single person who was not previously ill“ had died of the virus: „All those we have examined so far had cancer, a chronic lung disease, were heavy smokers or severely obese, suffered from diabetes or had a cardiovascular disease. The virus was the last straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak. „Covid-19 is a fatal disease only in exceptional cases, but in most cases it is a predominantly harmless viral infection.“
In addition, Dr. Püschel explains: „In quite a few cases, we have also found that the current corona infection has nothing whatsoever to do with the fatal outcome because other causes of death are present, for example a brain haemorrhage or a heart attack. Corona in itself is a „not particularly dangerous viral disease“, says the forensic scientist. He pleads for statistics based on concrete examination results. „All speculations about individual deaths that have not been expertly examined only fuel anxiety.“ Contrary to the guidelines of the Robert Koch Institute, Hamburg had recently started to differentiate between deaths „with the“ and „by the“ coronavirus, which led to a decrease in Covid19 deaths. - The German virologist Hendrik Streeck is currently conducting a pilot study to determine the distribution and transmission routes of the Covid19 pathogen. In an interview he explains: „I took a closer look at the cases of 31 of the 40 people who died in the Heinsberg district – and was not very surprised that these people died. One of the deceased was older than 100 years, so even a common cold could have led to death.“ Contrary to original assumptions, Streeck has not been able to prove transmission via door handles and the like (i.e. so-called smear infections).
- The first Swiss hospitals have to announce short-time work due to the very low capacity utilization: „The staff in all departments has too little to do and has reduced overtime in a first step. Now short-time work is also being registered. The financial consequences are severe.“ As a reminder, a study by ETH Zurich based on largely unrealistic assumptions predicted the first bottlenecks in Swiss clinics by April 2. So far this has not happened anywhere.
- In Switzerland, there was a pronounced wave of influenza at the beginning of 2017. At that time, there were almost 1500 additional deaths in the over 65-year-old population in the first six weeks of the year. Normally, around 1300 people die in Switzerland every year as a result of pneumonia, 95% of whom are over 65 years old. By comparison, a total of 762 deaths with (not caused by) Covid19 are currently reported in Switzerland.
- The managing director of a German environmental laboratory suspects that the inhabitants of the northern Italian region of Lombardy are particularly susceptible to viral infections such as Covid19 due to a notoriously high legionella contamination: „If the lungs are weakened by a viral infection, as in the current situation, bacteria have an easy job, can negatively influence the course of the disease and cause complications.“ In Lombardy, regional pneumonia outbreaks had already occurred in the past due to evaporation cooling systems contaminated with legionella.
- On the basis of information from China, medical protocols have been defined worldwide that rapidly provide invasive artificial respiration by intubation for test-positive intensive care patients. On the one hand, the protocols assume that a more gentle non-invasive ventilation through a mask is too weak, on the other hand there is the fear that the „dangerous virus“ could otherwise spread through aerosols. As early as March, however, German physicians pointed out that intubation can lead to additional lung damage and has an overall poor chance of success. In the meantime, US physicians have also come forward who describe intubation as „more harm than good“ for patients. Patients often do not suffer from acute lung failure, but rather from a kind of altitude sickness, which is made worse by artificial respiration with increased pressure. In February, South Korean physicians reported that critical Covid19 patients respond well to oxygen therapy without a ventilator. The US physician mentioned above warns that the use of ventilators must be urgently reconsidered in order not to cause additional damage.
- The official US Covid19 projections so far have overestimated hospitalisations by a factor of 8, ICU beds needed by a factor of 6.4, and ventilators needed by a factor of 40.5.
- Renowned US statistician Nate Silver explains why „coronavirus case counts are meaningless„, unless you know more about the number and way of testing.
Further notes
- The website of Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, one of the earliest and internationally best known critics of the Covid19 panic, was deleted for a few hours today by the German provider Jimdo and only went online again after strong protests. It is not known whether the temporary deletion was due to general complaints or a political instruction.
- The university email address of emeritus professor Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi, who wrote an Open Letter to Chancellor Angela Merkel, was deactivated earlier, but was also reactivated after protests.
- On 2nd April the Danish Parliament adopted a new law that prohibits the publication of information on Covid-19 that does not comply with the government’s guidelines and allows the deletion of websites and the punishment or imprisonment of authors. Some commentators immediately withdrew as a result.
- The German science and medicine journalist Harald Wiesendanger writes in an article that his profession is completely failing in the current crisis: „How a profession that is supposed to control the powerful as an independent, critical, impartial Fourth Estate can succumb as quickly as lightning to the same collective hysteria as its audience, almost unanimously, and give itself over to court reporting, government propaganda and expert deification: It’s incomprehensible to me, it disgusts me, I’ve had enough of it, I dissociate myself from this unworthy performance with complete shame.
- Currently, about one third of humanity is in a „lockdown“, which is more people than lived during the Second World War.
- In the US, applications for unemployment benefits have skyrocketed to over six million (see chart), a figure unparalleled since the Great Depression of 1929.
- More than one hundred human rights and civil liberties organizations warn that the world is currently sleepwalking into a surveillance state. On Twitter, the hashtag #covid19 has been partially replaced by the hashtag #covid1984.
- US geostrategist Henry Kissinger writes in the Wall Street Journal, „The coronavirus pandemic will forever alter the world order.“ The U.S. must „protect“ its citizens from disease while starting „the urgent work of planning for a new epoch“.
source: swprs.org
COVODIOT ALERT!
This Smart Toilet Features Personal Butthole Recognition
Sometimes you write a headline and just stare at it, wondering what it says about you, your priorities, and your place in the universe. Sometimes the desire to inform people about the world they live in runs headlong into real questions about the acceptable limits of knowledge.
This is one of those times. I find myself wondering whether ’tis nobler to cloak the discoveries of madcap scientists with euphemistic language and imprecise phrasing, or I should take the bit between my teeth and make a full entry in the Captain’s Log, as it were. I invariably opt for the latter, which probably says something about me.
Okay. Here goes. Scientists at Stanford designed a smart toilet that can analyze both feces and urine in various ways, including checking for telltale signs of certain intestinal problems. While I cannot precisely articulate the various parasites, conditions, cancers, blockages, or extremely unwise bedroom activities that can be diagnosed by a scatological analysis, PCMag notes they can “identify signs for various cancers as well as gut disorders and liver diseases.”
My brain, going into lockdown mode to prevent a Google Search.
But this is no ordinary porcelain descendant of Thomas Crapper’s wizardry. This is a smart toilet. With cameras! They’re for taking pictures of the contents of your toilet “which will then be uploaded to your health provider’s secure cloud storage for analysis.”
Daniel Jackson disapproves. Image from Stargate SG-1, by MGM
Do not mistake me. I am aware that it is important to have such analysis performed betimes and that being aware of one’s bodily functions is an important part of physical health. It is important to be aware of changes to one’s gut, bladder, or kidney behavior, and monitoring effluvia is one way adults do that. It’s not fun. It’s just life.
But notwithstanding this objective fact, the phrase “which will then be uploaded to your health provider’s secure cloud storage for analysis” fills me with a horror I can scarcely describe.
Why Is There A(n) Anus Camera Sphincter Scanner?
Because researchers want it to be capable of differentiating between users, and they decided you couldn’t always trust that the person who flushed the toilet would be the same person who used it. So the scientists in question decided to create a stoolproof method of detecting even the stealthiest deuce dropper.
And the show has reached a new low. Image by Saturday Night Live.
They call it an analprint. If that hurts you to read, I want you to know it hurt me just as much to write. There’s a pandemic ravaging the planet, everything is on fire, and I am burdened with the knowledge that this exists. My fiancée has wedged herself into the furthest corner of her desk and is staring at her monitor in mute horror. Christmas is canceled. Sex is canceled. I’m probably canceled. So it’s not just you. I want to die. But I’m not going to die. I’m going to write about tech news, even if it’s shitty.
“We know it seems weird, but as it turns out, your anal print is unique,” senior author, professor of radiology, and plumber of the depths of sanity Sanjiv Gambhir told Stanford Medicine.
There’s no word yet on whether healthcare providers plan to bring this product to market, or what it would cost. Out of 330 people surveyed by the Stanford team, 37 percent of respondents indicated they were “somewhat comfortable” with the idea of it. This raises obvious questions about the nature of the test question. For example: “Would you feel safe using a toilet that could analyze your feces and urine to detect if you had cancer?” scans very differently than “Would you buy a toilet that sent your doctor a video of your butthole every time you take a dump?” I’m not saying that the second question is better than the first, but I think it gets a bit closer to capturing the essence of what is happening in this process.
I’m not sure it’s possible to make an “Internet of Shit” joke after this. This is literally an internet-connected device you shit into.
I’m sorry, folks. I don’t know where we go from here.
source: extremetech.com
Save ur cheesestakes buy a whole damn kilo of this stuff for like 11 dollars plus shipping
hydroxychloroquine
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This I heard has good effects on the virus
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Here's another
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Quote from Bestowic on April 8, 2020, 11:16 amSave ur cheesestakes buy a whole damn kilo of this stuff for like 11 dollars plus shipping
hydroxychloroquine
I don't think I need any, but nice find. My only concern is that it's at Alibaba and isn't that one of those marginally legitimate websites featuring lots of Made in China junk?
I won't weigh in on this one, but I'm posting the article because of mask- wearing.
Should We All Be Wearing Face Masks? Here's Why Experts Are So Conflicted
Should members of the public be wearing face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic? It's a controversial question, with different countries and authorities giving different advice.
We have reviewed the results of more than a dozen randomised trials of face masks and transmission of respiratory illnesses. We found the current best evidence suggests wearing a mask to avoid viral respiratory infections such as COVID-19 offers minimal protection, if any.
Conflicting recommendations
Two of the world's major health organisations disagree on mask wearing. The World Health Organisation (WHO) currently discourages mask use:
There is currently no evidence that wearing a mask (whether medical or other types) by healthy persons in the wider community setting, including universal community masking, can prevent them from infection with respiratory viruses, including COVID-19.
WHO does recommend special masks (N95 masks or equivalent) plus other protection for health-care workers working with people who have, or are suspected to have, COVID-19.
By contrast, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States has recently recommended everyone wear a (cloth) mask. However, this is to prevent infected people passing on the infection, not to prevent the wearer getting infected.
Who is right? Does wearing a mask protect the wearer? Does it protect others?
Understanding the spread
To examine this, we need to first look at how coronavirus spreads and how masks might stop it.
How coronavirus can be transmitted directly. (Author provided)
There are several possible routes to infection. An infected person can cough, sneeze or breathe while within about two metres of another person, and the virus lands in the other person's eyes, nose or mouth (1).
Another route is when an infected person coughs or sneezes onto their hand or onto a surface. The uninfected person then shakes the hand (2a) or touches the surface (2b), and transfers the virus to their own eye, nose or mouth.
It is possible that an infected person can also cough or sneeze to create an airborne spread (3) beyond the close contact range – but it is controversial whether this last route is a major means of transmission.
We don't know how much transmission occurs by each of these routes for COVID-19. It's also unclear how much protection a mask would offer in each case.
Current best evidence
To resolve this question, we analysed 14 randomised trials of mask wearing and infection for influenza-like illnesses. (There are no randomised trials involving COVID-19 itself, so the best we can do is look at similar diseases.)
When we combined the results of these trials that studied the effect of masks versus no masks in health-care workers and the general population, they did not show that wearing masks leads to any substantial reduction of influenza-like illness. However, the studies were too small to rule out a minor effect for masks.
Why don't masks protect the wearer?
There are several possible reasons why masks don't offer significant protection. First, masks may not do much without eye protection. We know from animal and laboratory experiments that influenza or other coronaviruses can enter the eyes and travel to the nose and into the respiratory system.
While standard and special masks provide incomplete protection, special masks combined with goggles appear to provide complete protection in laboratory experiments. However, there are no studies in real-world situations measuring the results of combined mask and eyewear.
The apparent minimal impact of wearing masks might also be because people didn't use them properly. For example, one study found less than half of the participants wore them "most of the time". People may also wear masks inappropriately, or touch a contaminated part of the mask when removing it and transfer the virus to their hand, then their eyes and thus to the nose.
Masks may also provide a false sense of security, meaning wearers might do riskier things such as going into crowded spaces and places.
Do masks protect others?
Could masks protect others from the virus that might have been spread by the mask wearer? A recent Hong Kong laboratory study found some evidence masks may prevent the spread of viruses from the wearer.
They took people with influenza-like symptoms, gave half of them masks and half no masks, and for 30 minutes collected viruses from the air they breathed out, including coughs.
Masks did reduce the amounts of droplets and aerosols containing detectable amounts of virus. But only 17 of the 111 subjects had a coronavirus, and these were not the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. While the study is promising, it needs to be repeated urgently.
We also don't know how this reduction of aerosols and droplets translates to reduction of infections in the real world. If there is an effect, it may be diluted by several factors such as ill people who don't wear a mask and "well" people who have no symptoms but are still carrying and spreading the virus.
Masks for some?
If wearing masks does substantially reduce the spread of the infection to others, what should we do? We could ask everyone with any respiratory symptoms to wear masks in public. That could supplement other strategies such as social distancing, testing, tracking and tracing to reduce transmission.
To also capture infected people without symptoms, we could ask everyone to wear masks in indoor public spaces. Outdoors is more difficult, since most people pose little or no risk. Perhaps, as we reduce restrictions, masks could also be required at some outdoor crowd events, such as sporting events or concerts.
Another possibility is a "2 x 2" rule: if you are outdoors and within 2 metres of other people for more than 2 minutes you need to wear a mask.
Mask wearing for the possibly infected, to prevent spreading the infection, warrants rigorous and rapid investigation. It could be an alternative or a supplement to social distancing, hand hygiene, testing, and lockdowns.
The authors would like to thank John Conly, Liz Dooley, Lubna Al-Ansary, Susan Michie and Amanda McCullough for comments.
Paul Glasziou, Professor of Medicine, Bond University and Chris Del Mar, Professor of Public Health, Bond University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
source: sciencealert.com
Were you aware that viruses aren't evil? Seriously, check this out:
'Virotherapy is a treatment using biotechnology to convert viruses into therapeutic agents by reprogramming viruses to treat diseases. There are three main branches of virotherapy: anti-cancer oncolytic viruses, viral vectors for gene therapy and viral immunotherapy. These branches utilize three different types of treatment methods: gene overexpression, gene knockout, and suicide gene delivery. Gene overexpression adds genetic sequences that compensate for low to zero levels of needed gene expression. Gene knockout utilizes RNA methods to silence or reduce expression of disease-causing genes. Suicide gene delivery introduces genetic sequences that induce an apoptotic response in cells, usually to kill cancerous growths.[1] In a slightly different context, virotherapy can also refer more broadly to the use of viruses to treat certain medical conditions by killing pathogens.'
