Coronavirus Pandemic

[Squirrel 5,180]

42 minutes ago, Danielle said:

I'm going to make today my last day at work for a while, I believe the NHS will start letting people know from Monday who needs to isolate for 12 weeks.

My works already made that decision. I’m popping in to the office today to sort a few things out but that will be it for me for a while. 

[DavidCore89 7,404]

People have already been told to isolate for 12 weeks here in Wales, happened in the last 2 days. Those with respiratory issues, chronic diseases, organ failure, etc.

[CatManDoza 3,474]

well, its all falling apart round me, the Greggs local to work is shut, and my back up cafe is shutting and doing deliveries only!!

[Danielle 3,007]

8 minutes ago, DavidCore89 said:

People have already been told to isolate for 12 weeks here in Wales, happened in the last 2 days. Those with respiratory issues, chronic diseases, organ failure, etc.

That's good, it's not very clear what to do here. I fall into the chronic disease category, I just told my boss I'm social distancing so I started 2 weeks off today.

[CatManDoza 3,474]

I'm sure I read somewhere, those with a BMI of over a certain amount should also self isolate. Not sur ehow true that is though!

[Squirrel 5,180]

2 minutes ago, Danielle said:

That's good, it's not very clear what to do here. I fall into the chronic disease category, I just told my boss I'm social distancing so I started 2 weeks off today.

I’ve got the chronic illness, a complex neurological disorder and the medication I’m on can affect my immune system so I’ve got three reasons to be avoiding the world. 

[doubleg213 746]

There seems to be basically no semblance of a plan or a coherent message here in the UK.

My mother works in a government department and had someone from work on the phone to go down a checklist to see if she should be allowed into work or not, they said she's fine to do so. But she pointed out that my dad has pretty much every single option on the checklist and that doesn't matter. 

So at the same time as one government department is telling my dad he should isolate for 12 weeks another is telling my mother she should go to work as she's not high risk, but the fact she could potentially carry something back to someone who is has been deemed irrelevant.

My Uni has closed for classes as they don't want people congregating, but they are still running lab and IT sessions and the likes of the library and common working areas are all still open.

If I was the cynical type I'd be inclined to think no one has a f*cking clue what they are doing.

 

Oh and we're out of toilet roll.

 

Edited March 19, 2020 by doubleg213

[djw180 7,005]

Our company has encouraged those that can to work from home so that there's few enough people left in the office to keep well apart from each other. I'm at home. My wife is too as she has a condition that could put her in the high risk group so her work has signed her off on sick pay as precaution. No official word on that yet though. We still have to leave the house to buy food, can not get any delivered as all on-line supermarkets I tried are fully booked or you can't even get through to the website.

[Con 5,719]

Coronavirus: Scientists tackle the theories on how it started.

Analysis of the entirety of the genome of the virus has found two key features which rule out any laboratory manipulation.

by Alexander Martin

Scientists have analysed the entirety of the novel coronavirus' genomic sequence to assess claims that it may have been made in a laboratory or been otherwise engineered.

The coronavirus outbreak first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan last December and has caused an international pandemic, infecting more than 198,000 people and leading to over 7,900 deaths. International blame around the COVID-19 pandemic has incited conspiracy theories about its origin. Without evidence Zhao Lijian, a spokesperson for China's foreign ministry, suggested on Twitter that the virus could have been brought to Wuhan by the US army. While he may have been insincerely provocative in response to American officials describing the outbreak as the Wuhan virus, stressing its beginnings in China, he received thousands of retweets.

Rumours linking the virus to the Wuhan Institute of Virology - based on geographic proximity, and without any endorsement from qualified epidemiologists - have also circulated.

Shortly after the epidemic began, Chinese scientists sequenced the genome of the virus and made the data publicly available for researchers worldwide.

Even the integrity of these scientists and medical professionals has been called into question by conspiracy theorists, prompting an international coalition of scientists to sign a joint letter of support for them and their work, published in medical journal The Lancet.

The value of the genomic sequence could prove vital for those developing a vaccine, but it also contains key details revealing how the virus evolved. New analysis by researchers at the Scripps Research Institute in the US, UK and Australia discovered that the virus has proved so infectious because it developed a near-perfect mechanism to bind to human cells. This mechanism is so sophisticated in its adaptions that the researchers say that it must have evolved and not been genetically engineered in their paper, titled "COVID-19 coronavirus epidemic has a natural origin", published in the journal Nature Medicine. Dr Josie Golding, the epidemics lead at the Wellcome Trust in the UK, described the paper as "crucially important to bring an evidence-based view to the rumours that have been circulating about the origins of the virus causing COVID-19".

"They conclude that the virus is the product of natural evolution, ending any speculation about deliberate genetic engineering," Dr Golding added. So how do they know? One of the most effective parts of the virus are its spike proteins, molecules on the outside of the virus which it uses to grab hold of and then penetr*te the outer walls of human and animal cells. There are two key features in the novel coronavirus' spike proteins which make its evolution a certainty. The first is what's called the receptor-binding domain (RBD) which they describe as "a kind of grappling hook that grips on to host cells", while the second is known as the cleavage site, "a molecular can opener that allows the virus to crack open and enter host cells".

If researchers were actually going to design a virus to harm humans then it would be constructed from the backbone of a virus already known to cause illness, the researchers said. However the coronavirus backbone is radically different to those which are already known to affect humans, and in fact are most similar to viruses which are found in bats and pangolins. "These two features of the virus, the mutations in the RBD portion of the spike protein and its distinct backbone, rules out laboratory manipulation as a potential origin for [the coronavirus]," said Dr Kristian Andersen, corresponding author on the paper. 

Another study of the genome by researchers at the Wuhan Institute for Virology reported that the virus was 96% identical to a coronavirus found in bats, one of the many animals sold at a Wuhan seafood market where it is suspected the virus jumped to humans. However the new research was unable to determine whether the virus evolved into its current pathogenic state in a non-human host before jumping to a human, or if it evolved into that state after making the jump.

 

[zztop911 1,609]

Spoiler

ALL OF CALI ON LOCKDOWN!

 

[Fido_le_muet 5,198]

Day 4 of the quarantine. 

Thank God I have a garden ! 

[Lann 10,846]

Went shoping for my inlaws yesterday as they are considered a risk group, good amount of people, food and tp in the store. 
 

My local salladsbar at work has seen a 50% drop in sells so I keep supporting them for lunch.

[Lann 10,846]

Saw a sign in a store, you can buy two bottles of hand sanitizer for $8 each, but the third will cost you $50. Along with a note encouraging to be respecful towards others and not to hoard.

 

[zztop911 1,609]

44 minutes ago, Lann said:

Saw a sign in a store, you can buy two bottles of hand sanitizer for $8 each, but the third will cost you $50. Along with a note encouraging to be respecful towards others and not to hoard.

 

That's one way to stop that hoarding crap! LOL!

[Jjss924 576]

Anybody heard any good conspiracies? Best I've heard so far is that covid 19 is just a cover for 5g network health hazards.

[pete_95973 4,386]

Day 1 of the California lockdown.  Doesn't effect my job at all as I have always been work from home.  In fact, our business is thriving because the company is entirely work from home and our product is 90% virtual (software and electronic delivery of article PDFs).  Our customers are also drug and biotech companies who are using our product more than ever right now for their research.  The two companies that Trump mentioned in his press conference Wednesday that are helping to provide testing are customers of ours.  So my job should be safe and paying me a paycheck as long as this lasts. 

But my wife had to close her hair salon and she is home with me now.  It is about a 40% hit to our household income.  Our spending should go way down though since we won't be doing much. One bright side is now she can get stuff around here that she has been meaning to for a while but hasn't because she works so much.

[JustHatched 12,123]

1 minute ago, pete_95973 said:

One bright side is now she can get stuff around here that she has been meaning to for a while but hasn't because she works so much.

That married language for your honey do list bout to get real big. Ask @Dodge

[Con 5,719]

19 minutes ago, pete_95973 said:

One bright side is now she can get stuff around here that she has been meaning to for a while but hasn't because she works so much.

Wow same here. For about five years mine has wished for time to go through the countless amount of sh*t she has accumulated in paper work and clothes. It's always something that prevents her, sometimes its even my fault for not "motivating her", a woman who gets on me for leaving my hat in the wrong place suddenly needs motivation to clean her own sh*t, lmao. Anyways, she has said stuff like, i wish it would rain all weekend so i can stay home. Well another rainy weekend comes and goes and the sh*t is still there, papers waiting to be shredded. Its been so predictable. First it was, we have no shredder, we bought one, it s*cked, then we got a great deal on an industrial one her office was getting rid of...she shredded for a few days and then came the excuses again. lmao. We set her up to work from home yesterday, so now she has that excuse. It wouldnt be a big deal if she didnt talk about the house being a mess when she goes on her rants, but its her mess. lmao. The sad part is if something were to happen to her, I would just throw all that stuff out. I wouldnt go through it and sort it out, thats her mistake. Just throw the sh*t out. I get why she doesnt do it, its a lot of work going through decades worth of papers but just throw them the f*ck out. Put them in a bag and lets bring them to an incinerator instead of having to shred everything. She has to accept that she isnt fitting back in to old clothes, those days are over. We reach an age where our bodies change and no matter how much exercise you do, you arent going back that far to fit into clothes over a decade old. Look, i just dont want to feel bad if something were to happen to her, as i would just grab clothes in her closet put them in bags and donate them------I'd have her closet clean in a day....what is taking her over a decade to do.

Edited March 20, 2020 by Con

[JustHatched 12,123]

3 minutes ago, Con said:

She has to accept that she isnt fitting back in to old clothes, those days are over. 

You have told her this.....right?

[Con 5,719]

13 minutes ago, JustHatched said:

You have told her this.....right?

Those type of things are better left said as hieroglyphics on pyramids. 😄  I bet thats what all that cuneiform was...just a bunch of pharaohs venting about they wives. lmao

Edited March 20, 2020 by Con

[Squirrel 5,180]

Whole country going on lockdown now. Everywhere is closing. Only shops and essential places staying open. 

[Banketelli 3,655]

Argentina is on full lock-down as of today. Police/military patrolling the streets and my dumb kid brother is there illegally. Normally you just get a small fine and told to leave within 10 days but with the current situation my brother is worried about getting thrown in jail until things get a bit more normal and the airports open up again. Told him it'll be fine but still gave him sh*t for not listening to me a week ago, "No need to come home, things are completely fine here", he said... Always listen to your older, wiser brother.

Was at the hospital yesterday to get a MR-scanning of my thumb. Was a ghost town compared to normal. Pretty surprised it wasn't cancelled since it's a very non-critical thing. Guess they can't put a hold on everything. Was told the next consultation was gonna be by phone. Probably a good move.

Edited March 20, 2020 by Banketelli

[LimeGreenLegend 4,293]

 

 

[Con 5,719]

My stomach hurts from laughing so hard...I just saw a tweet from Gov. Mike Huckabee giving a tip regarding toilet paper shortage during the pandemic:

“Those of us from rural south know how to handle toilet paper shortage.  Eat more corn on the cob! The corn isn't important, but the cobs are free and work great!  (Just don't flush them!) You're welcome!“

-Gov. Mike Huckabee

if toilet paper runs out here in the northeast, I’m sellin corn on them streets.

Edited March 20, 2020 by Con

[Squirrel 5,180]

@Con

Useful video for these hard to wipe times.