Corvid-19 and its impact (name edit)

[Dalisclock]

looks like rand paul has the commie flu. maybe in 2 weeks, most of the senate will die.

Well, he did go to the pool while waiting for test results. You know, personal responsibility and all that.

I wonder if he got it CPAC and if so, much of the rest of the GOP bigwigs have it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/07/us/coronavirus-cpac.html

 

[Marik2]

looks like rand paul has the commie flu. maybe in 2 weeks, most of the senate will die.

Well, he did go to the pool while waiting for test results. You know, personal responsibility and all that.
I wonder if he got it CPAC and if so, much of the rest of the GOP bigwigs have it.

I'm crossing my fingers that the president and most of the senate will die. These people have been holding back the country for far too long. I have been patiently waiting for their deaths for millennials to take over.

 

[Terminal Blue]

I'm not trying to dismiss it, I'm just trying to separate out unlike things. A man who insists on Jewish accountants and a man who burns crosses in people's lawns are both bad and both racist, but there's no reason to expect these people to act the same or sympathize with one another. It's a different mindset. Not an acceptable one, just different. There are different kinds of prejudice that have nothing in common with klansmen or nazis.

Here's the thing though.

The reality is that Jewish people are not naturally better at accounting than anyone else. They may be more inclined towards financial services professions for cultural or family reasons, but that is not an issue of inherent capacity. The idea that Jews are inherently better at finance wouldn't be a bad thing to believe if it was true. However, it's not true.

Once you cross the line of being capable of believing things that are not true, that social stereotypes are more than cultural and reflect some inherent reality about a person's "natural" ability or capacity, then it's really not as big of a step as you think to go from "benign" racism to "malicious" racism. Once you view people as possessing inherent differences based on stereotype, then it becomes unreasonable to judge those people purely as individuals. Even model minorities have to walk a careful line, it isn't a great leap from "Jews are good accountants" to "Jews are naturally greedy and cunning". Non-model minorities have it even worse, of course, we've had plenty of opportunities to see how Trump feels about them.

The fact that the ordinary racist people who form a significant proportion of the population aren't going out and burning crosses doesn't indicate that their racism is of a special or different character. They may deny being racist or even condemn racist acts of violence, but this has less to do with active opposition to racism than it does with a fear that racist violence will upset or undermine the racist status quo. When the standard of racism falls short of actual interpersonal violence, these ordinary racists are typically only too eager to ignore or minimize it and to invite those overt, cross-burning, nazi "roman" salute throwing racists into political discourse in the name of proving their tolerance or "broadening the conversation". That is because ultimately, deep down, there are significant points of agreement between their positions.

 

[Dalisclock]

looks like rand paul has the commie flu. maybe in 2 weeks, most of the senate will die.

Well, he did go to the pool while waiting for test results. You know, personal responsibility and all that.
I wonder if he got it CPAC and if so, much of the rest of the GOP bigwigs have it.

I'm crossing my fingers that the president and most of the senate will die. These people have been holding back the country for far too long. I have been patiently waiting for their deaths for millennials to take over.

I honestly wish we could get Congressional/Senatorial Term limits to help retire some of these guys who have been sitting in seats for decades because Incumbency is a huge advantage. Hell, half the reason the average age of the House dropped by a decade is because a bunch of incumbent Congresspeople(mostly GOP, can't imagine why) decided not to run for another term and younger democrats won their seats in 2018. 2019/2020 has seen a similar trend, mostly among the GOP, which will likely lower the incumbency and congressional age even further.

I'd honestly be shocked if Trump doesn't end up getting sick from this. He's clearly unhealthy and he doesn't seem to listen to doctors(or anyone who tells him things he doesn't like to hear). He wasn't treating this pandemic at all seriously until fairly recently(and it's iffy if he's even doing so right now, considering this "Home by Christmas" talk he's peddling). He's apparently quite fond of physical contact with his bros.

The fact he seems to think can get away with anything likely also means he's likely not taking precautions.

If he does get sick, his supporters should call for his resignation due to having poor "Stamina". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rVqp4hvchg

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/10/11/new-trump-ad-revives-and-mainstreams-sick-hillary-attack/

Assuming of course he and his supporters aren't goddman hypocrit....oh, that's right......It's okay if he does it.

 

[Avnger]

I honestly wish we could get Congressional/Senatorial Term limits to help retire some of these guys who have been sitting in seats for decades because Incumbency is a huge advantage. Hell, half the reason the average age of the House dropped by a decade is because a bunch of incumbent Congresspeople(mostly GOP) decided not to run for another term and younger democrats won their seats in 2018. 2019/2020 has seen a similar trend, mostly among the GOP, which will likely lower the incumbency and congressional age even further.

Term limits aren't necessarily a positive thing. A lot of time you just end up increasing lobbyist groups' power and having a lot more cases of "I can do whatever I want because I can't be re-elected anyway."

 

[Trunkage]

Trump is NOT a doctor

[...]

Fake News wins. Fatality

Morons ate fish tank cleaner. That's literally what happened.

Meanwhile...this one WaPo story gives up the ghost on this completely:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/03/20/hospitals-doctors-are-wiping-out-supplies-an-unproven-coronavirus-treatment/

The side of the story you're not hearing in "mainstream" news is chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, and azithromycin were key pharmaceuticals in the earlier SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV outbreaks. Which makes them a drug of key interest and of first resort during the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak. Who's purchasing the drugs and causing shortages, are hospitals buying in bulk to prescribe as off-label prophylaxis and treatment because they're proven effective against coronavirii (just not this particular strain in clinical trials as of yet). This was going on before Trump spoke.

Where this story takes a nasty turn, is that production of these pharmaceuticals had already been low, and in January the price nearly doubled. These drugs are also decades old, meaning they're out of exclusivity and can be mass produced in generic form, which in turn means lower profitability. In other words, the pharmaceutical industry saw there was about to be a major spike in demand due to the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, and moved to price gouge; being they've since been caught red-handed, the companies which produce them backed off and increased production while restoring the previous price point.

This is why all the talk in the news -- until Trump spoke -- has been about Remdesivir. That being a novel drug would still be under patent, and sparing executive action would enjoy exclusivity which means mega-profits for Gilead -- something of note considering today it was granted orphan drug status. See also, Truvada and Descovy.

Yeah, unfortunately, Capitalism is NOT good at developing vaccines for diseases that don't stick around. With outbreaks like MERS and Zika, a vaccine was created but about a year after the outbreak was contained. People making vaccines has been losing lots of money trying to research, thus it's not cost effective to manufacture vaccines.

Since this is the eleventh Covid outbreak, they've been hoping an old cure will fix this new one But, if you wanted to see more dodgy Capitalistic practices, here's one that might have past us by if this outbreak didn't occur:

 

[Agema]

Yeah, unfortunately, Capitalism is NOT good at developing vaccines for diseases that don't stick around.

Nor antibiotics, which is part of the reason there's been a massive slowdown in development of novel antibiotics. I think the last truly novel antibiotic compound was the 1980s (!), unless one's arrived since 2015. New formulations have been patented with old drugs, and there may be some adjunct drugs that target ways bacteria have developed resistance. That said, fears of antibiotic resistance have spurred a lot more attention over the last few years.

The capitalist model is not well geared towards antibiotics at all. The ideal for a profitable drug is one that requires chronic use so it carries on being bought, and will be used by lots of people. Antibiotics are overwhelmingly short course treatments, and due to resistance, when a new one is developed health services should use it as little as possible which so it won't make much during the patented period. Vaccines can have the same sorts of problem. People started looking at a vaccine for SARS, but it was contained long before one became worthwhile and I don't think one was ever carried through trials.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

Yeah, unfortunately, Capitalism is NOT good at developing vaccines for diseases that don't stick around. With outbreaks like MERS and Zika, a vaccine was created but about a year after the outbreak was contained. People making vaccines has been losing lots of money trying to research, thus it's not cost effective to manufacture vaccines.

Since this is the eleventh Covid outbreak, they've been hoping an old cure will fix this new one But, if you wanted to see more dodgy Capitalistic practices, here's one that might have past us by if this outbreak didn't occur:

It's true "capitalism" isn't very good at developing vaccines for novel diseases, or diseases which outbreak and fade...but for pretty much exactly the wrong reasons you intend. The reason a COVID-19 vaccine is going to take eighteen months to begin public distribution, is because of regulation and the need for testing. "Capitalism" rears its ugly head in the need for such extensive testing periods to begin with, to prevent harm to patients rushing harmful products to market. See for instance, the infamous Cutter incident in which the named laboratory tried to rush their own polio vaccine based on Salk's work to market, accidentally exposing 120,000 children to live Poliovirus in the process and causing outbreaks in their communities.

Strictly speaking, vaccines for COVID-19 have already been produced and already in human trials. They started a week and a half ago, and Moderna (the company that made it) is apparently already in talks with the FDA to expedite phase 1 trials and move into phase 2 trials by end of year.

Vaccines, however, are not treatment regimes, which is what I'm discussing. This is not the eleventh COVID outbreak, this is the first. COVID-19 is a novel coronavirus strain, separate and distinct from SARS-CoV-1, MERS-CoV, and other lesser-known coronavirii all the way down to those partly responsible for the common cold. "Coronavirus" is simply a family of virii, like rhinovirii or filovirii.

Chrloroquine and hydroxychloroquine have been shown to be effective against the entire family of virii, given their use in the SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV outbreaks. Which is why hospitals looked to them first for off-label use. This is why the media framing of the issue has been particularly irksome, because what has been left out of the narrative is that these products have not been approved for on-label use as treatment for this particular strain; off-label use as prescribed treatment by a professional is still fair game, which is why it had been used prior to Trump saying a word and why it still continues being used. This outbreak started and spread so rapidly, no pharmaceutical product would have had time to go through clinical trials for on-label use as of yet.

Azithromycin, by the way, is funny enough an antibiotic. It's also a strong anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressant, which is why it's of key interest; the short story is, in these severe cases patients are being killed by their own immune systems. An uncontrolled or overly aggressive immune response leads to severe inflammation in the lungs, capillary damage and leakage of blood plasma into the alveoli which is the cause of ARDS in patients. In the worst cases, the virus triggers cytokine storms. So, medicine to reduce inflammation in the lungs to allow patients to breathe, while suppressing the immune system long enough for an anti-viral regime to take effect, are necessary.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

It's true "capitalism" isn't very good at developing vaccines for novel diseases, or diseases which outbreak and fade...but for pretty much exactly the wrong reasons you intend. The reason a COVID-19 vaccine is going to take eighteen months to begin public distribution, is because of regulation and the need for testing. "Capitalism" rears its ugly head in the need for such extensive testing periods to begin with, to prevent harm to patients rushing harmful products to market. See for instance, the infamous Cutter incident in which the named laboratory tried to rush their own polio vaccine based on Salk's work to market, accidentally exposing 120,000 children to live Poliovirus in the process and causing outbreaks in their communities.

That's not capitalism, in scare quotes or otherwise, that's scientific ethics and rigor with a good dose of government regulation. The reason you are not allowed to just send the first thing you think might work as a vaccine to the market is because it violates the decidedly non-capitalistic regulations regarding pharmaceuticals, that are meant to ensure unchecked profit chasing won't see dangerous pharmaceuticals enter the market. In a similar vein, since all pharmaceutical development is considered scientific research, it must abide by the international standard for both scientific rigor and ethics, which prohibits stuff like rushing into testing on humans.

In the case of the Cutter incident, the vaccine had passed necessary safety tests but some batches still contained live viruses due to manufacturing issues. Notably, Cutter Laboratories was found not negligent and it turned out that it was the laboratory that had certified the vaccine as safe that had been overlooking several cases of test monkey becoming paralyzed after the vaccine.

Vaccines, however, are not treatment regimes, which is what I'm discussing. This is not the eleventh COVID outbreak, this is the first. COVID-19 is a novel coronavirus strain, separate and distinct from SARS-CoV-1, MERS-CoV, and other lesser-known coronavirii all the way down to those partly responsible for the common cold. "Coronavirus" is simply a family of virii, like rhinovirii or filovirii.

Fun fact: The English plural of virus is viruses. In latin virus is always singular so the word virii is wholly made up.

 

[Smithnikov_v1legacy]

I CANNOT SWIPE RIGHT HARD ENOUGH! TAKE ME IN YOUR ARMS, CORONA CHAN!

Shes gonna make you stay at home and lose your job.

GOOD! The money I'd make in stimulus relief from it is MORE than what I get paid actually working and being at risk!

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

That's not capitalism, in scare quotes or otherwise, that's scientific ethics and rigor with a good dose of government regulation. The reason you are not allowed to just send the first thing you think might work as a vaccine to the market is because it violates the decidedly non-capitalistic regulations regarding pharmaceuticals, that are meant to ensure unchecked profit chasing won't see dangerous pharmaceuticals enter the market. In a similar vein, since all pharmaceutical development is considered scientific research, it must abide by the international standard for both scientific rigor and ethics, which prohibits stuff like rushing into testing on humans.

You basically just paraphrased what I said, but whatever.

In the case of the Cutter incident, the vaccine had passed necessary safety tests but some batches still contained live viruses due to manufacturing issues. Notably, Cutter Laboratories was found not negligent and it turned out that it was the laboratory that had certified the vaccine as safe that had been overlooking several cases of test monkey becoming paralyzed after the vaccine.

Incorrect summation. Bernice Eddy's work wasn't overlooked, it was suppressed -- just the same as her discovery of polio vaccine contamination by SV40. Cutter was found not negligent, but liable, in a court of law in contradiction to the evidence at hand -- the problem was improper administration of the formaldehyde inactivation process inconsistent with the standards they had been given -- courts are just as susceptible to political pressure as any other government appendage. Which is why blame was shifted onto the NIH over the Cutter incident, to protect private manufacturers rather than concede Salk's vaccine was (at the time) more expensive, invasive, hazardous to manufacture, and a less-safe alternative to Sabin's oral vaccine.

All because of who Sabin had worked with to develop his vaccine, having reached across the Iron Curtain and all. But you never seem to hear about March of Dimes' own little role in the Cold War here in the West for some reason.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Okay so why is this not bigger news?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology

In 2015 the Wuhan Institute of Virology announced they had successfully taken a Coronavirus strain from horseshoe bats and crossed it with the SARS virus to create a Coronavirus hybrid that can infect humans. And the Chinese government's response is they are sure the virus didn't leak from their labs and cause this mess. Since when did we take the Chinese government's word on anything, let alone this massive cosmic coincidence?

 

[Agema]

Okay so why is this not bigger news?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology

In 2015 the Wuhan Institute of Virology announced they had successfully taken a Coronavirus strain from horseshoe bats and crossed it with the SARS virus to create a Coronavirus hybrid that can infect humans. And the Chinese government's response is they are sure the virus didn't leak from their labs and cause this mess. Since when did we take the Chinese government's word on anything, let alone this massive cosmic coincidence?

There are even earlier papers (2007 at least) suggesting a new SARS outbreak was likely as there were loads of relevant Coronaviruses in horseshoe bats. Ultimately, it's more likely than a lab losing their hybrid.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Okay so why is this not bigger news?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology

In 2015 the Wuhan Institute of Virology announced they had successfully taken a Coronavirus strain from horseshoe bats and crossed it with the SARS virus to create a Coronavirus hybrid that can infect humans. And the Chinese government's response is they are sure the virus didn't leak from their labs and cause this mess. Since when did we take the Chinese government's word on anything, let alone this massive cosmic coincidence?

There are even earlier papers (2007 at least) suggesting a new SARS outbreak was likely as there were loads of relevant Coronaviruses in horseshoe bats. Ultimately, it's more likely than a lab losing their hybrid.

Maybe more likely, but it still strikes me as a hell of a coincidence that a viral outbreak started in a city that has research centers creating hybrids of that same virus that can infect humans.

That's like Umbrella saying its only a coincidence the T-virus broke out in Raccoon City, and their T-virus lab in the city had nothing to do with it.

 

[Marik2]

Okay so why is this not bigger news?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuhan_Institute_of_Virology

In 2015 the Wuhan Institute of Virology announced they had successfully taken a Coronavirus strain from horseshoe bats and crossed it with the SARS virus to create a Coronavirus hybrid that can infect humans. And the Chinese government's response is they are sure the virus didn't leak from their labs and cause this mess. Since when did we take the Chinese government's word on anything, let alone this massive cosmic coincidence?

Hopefully /pol/ will meme this so main stream news picks up on it.

 

[Marik2]

Life will find a way.

 

[Agema]

Maybe more likely, but it still strikes me as a hell of a coincidence that a viral outbreak started in a city that has research centers creating hybrids of that same virus that can infect humans.

I think all you really need to consider is that the lab had bats. It's a lot easier to believe someone had an mishap with animal handling: most people who work with lab animals (chiefly rodents) will have been bitten at least once, for instance. It's a lot less glamorous than the Frankenstein-like narrative of scientists accidentally letting loose their creation, but it's more plausible.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Maybe more likely, but it still strikes me as a hell of a coincidence that a viral outbreak started in a city that has research centers creating hybrids of that same virus that can infect humans.

I think all you really need to consider is that the lab had bats. It's a lot easier to believe someone had an mishap with animal handling: most people who work with lab animals (chiefly rodents) will have been bitten at least once, for instance. It's a lot less glamorous than the Frankenstein-like narrative of scientists accidentally letting loose their creation, but it's more plausible.

Oh Im not saying someone with a vial of this threw it out a window accidentally. I think its entirely reasonable someone got bit by a bat and got infected or some animals escaped or something.
My point is that I think this facility was the epicenter of the entire outbreak. If they hadn't been literally creating a coronavirus that can infect humans we wouldn't be going through this global outbreak.

 

[Terminal Blue]

My point is that I think this facility was the epicenter of the entire outbreak. If they hadn't been literally creating a coronavirus that can infect humans we wouldn't be going through this global outbreak.

It could also not be.

It's not actually a huge coincidence that a lab would be researching coronaviruses in a region where coronaviruses are common in the local wildlife. That's kind of a normal thing to do. Viruses evolve incredibly fast, developing an understanding of animal viruses and zoonosis as a process is sort of integral to staying ahead of potential threats from natural zoonosis, and this is without factoring in that genetically engineered viruses can be extremely useful in medicine.

That and the whole biowarfare thing is laughable.

All in all, the whole idea just sounds like another weird conspiracy theory, and unless there's actually hard evidence I'm not surprised the "mainstream media" is ignoring it, because even if some of it is credible (there have been cases of viruses being accidentally released from labs) there's a distinct political odour coming from the people making these claims which makes their ideas harder to buy into than they might otherwise be.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

As a slight change of pace, let's have something to cheer us up.

[tweet t="https://twitter.com/yungchomsky/status/1242904421547126785"]