Will someone please think of the shareholders
The sooner all those who are going to die do so, the sooner the workforce is back and the sooner the market rises and profits return.
This is horror. Trapped in self quarantine with the body of a sibling.
That is weird - it was, in her own words, a “UCSF expert BioHub panel on COVID19”
My wife is freaking out over text right now because she heard rumors that Trump is imposing nationwide quarantine with his appearance at 3:00PM. That can’t possibly be true given that nobody has had a chance to prepare for such a thing. Yet you know if she’s heard it, so have millions of other people, so I’m sure the grocery stores are a war zone by now. Whatever was left from yesterday is probably gone. Even the dark chocolate sea salt peanut butter cups.
I had no idea how serious this pandemic was until now.
KevinC
3341
Dear fellow Americans, this is why we don’t elect a incompetent fuckwit. Let’s do better.
I hate how that kind of stuff spreads, although I think it has one root cause - MOM GROUPS.
My wife said yesterday that she was 100% sure the governor address today was to announce Idaho’s first confirmed case. Where did she hear that? A mom group. What was it based on? Nothing.
When even the cinnamon raisin bread is gone you’ll know society is on the brink.
The people who sucked on leather for calories during the siege of Stalingrad have nothing on us if we run out of cinnamon bread.
What’s next, minimal Oreo flavor choices?!
vyshka
3346
That would explain Costco a bit ago. Had to go pick up medicine at pharmacy for the dog. Cars lined up out into the street, and line to get in winding through the parking lot.
Today in lab meeting I learned a bunch of interesting stuff:
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The early CDC kits for detection of covid-19 were flawed, in that they had a poor design of the PCR primers (short synthetic bits of DNA that detect both the virus and human RNA as a positive control). This is despite the WHO and China having good working designs. Someone at the CDC decided to reinvent the wheel, and fucked up the primer design rendering the kits almost useless. In this case, the short bits of sequence were too similar to each other so parts of the kit bound to each other instead of the virus.
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The rate limiting problem for testing has not been the availability of those PCR primers - those are easy to scale. Instead, it’s been RNA extraction reagents. While there are many ways to do this, only one kit made by Qiagen has been approved for clinical labs, and there’s been a shortage of those kits. China and Korea purchased all the available stock when the epidemic hit them. Research labs from around the country have donated kits to make up for the shortfall. In general, clinical labs are NOT good at RNA extraction, this is a bit of a new thing for them. There was a recent emergency provision to use Roach kits in addition, which are in more plentiful supply.
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As a pretty cool thing, one of our molecular biologists has modified the existing kit to change it from a qualitative assay (IE: +/- for corona) to one that can accurately measure levels. A few people are going to try and get that on bioarchive shortly. As a cool side effect, our lab can now test for covid19…if we ever “need to for some reason”.
and no, not shenanigans, lots of issues with canvassers, hustings, polling stations etc. Im not fussed, councillors dont matter, neither do mayors. Turn out and winning votes in my ward are in the hundreds at the most, often dozens.
Luckily November is a long way off as far as you lot in the US are concerned.
I posted this in the quarantine thread. One of the top tweets of the day.
People are idiots. Film at 11 (literally).
vyshka
3351
Props though to the guy that looked to be 70+, buying the 65"+ 4k tv to watch the end in glorious style.
The primary indication is (as someone mentioned above), the very low number of critically ill and dead. That suggests there are fewer unknown infected than, e.g., in the UK (though they certainly exist).
The purpose is the same though, as why government/schools are closing down, etc. - limiting the spread of infection and enforcing social isolation. The PM also specifically stated what @AK_Icebear mentions: how can you ask people to stay at home, while allowing foreign tourists in? It’s worth noting that the government isn’t banning people from entering - you are free to enter and leave, as long as you have a valid cause (e.g., workers in the transport sector, visiting a critically ill relative, returning home, etc). Apart from the actual effects, it’s also about signalling to the populace at large: this is serious.
Units of the army are going to be deployed to the borders to strengthen border control. “That nasty woman” (as Trump called her) is absolutely serious.
@KevinC: Yes. We’re living in surreal times.
Janster
3353
The UK is so fucked, the virus is going to wash over the entire island, good work goverment :)
Los Angeles Unified School District closing schools effective Monday, for two weeks (at least).
