Wednesday, March 11, 2020

Personal Pandemic

Viral Incubators,

 "Personal" is feeling the threat, getting sick, caring for a critically ill family member who is getting worse, seeing the loss of the life you know, and feeling fear that does not go away.
 Sorry to be negative, but I'm working to channel the mind that will be in my body soon, the mind that guides a body in mortal threat. Denial is weakening in America, and urgency is taking it's place, Soon will come panic, then despair and capitulation.
 Capitulation of the elites, as they go through the emotional dive-bombing is what could allow the obvious to actually take place. Bernie Sanders gets the Democratic nod, and props up Americans with public health, jobs that support families, and directions to new tasks to support society, rather than suck the life out of it for elites.
 No fever screening test will work for novel coronaviruses, because there are days of shedding virus without any symptoms, before the onset of feeling bad. This means only huge regional quarantines will work, and for months, not weeks, and the viruses will keep spreading until 70% or more of people have had them. S-strain and L-strain novel coronaviruses are different. L-strain spreads faster and is more deadly. Our tests in the US, just released, with long report-waiting times, do not distinguish. It's sort of academic right now. If I test somebody in clinic this afternoon, I'll get a report next week. We will see numbers explode across the US this month.
Colleges are saying not to come back from spring break. Schools will likely do the same. This will extend into summer vacation, if it is to be successful. In Austin, I will know that a shift in consciousness among elite power brokers has happened when they shutter the strip clubs. Austin has full contact strip clubs with lap-dances. Fellas come from all over Texas for that. Owners have "political clout".
 Drugs are of some help for sicker people, when the drugs are available. Chloroquine, a good old public health malaria drug is back-ordered to infinity in the US. Kaletra, and HIV drug-combination is found to be helpful. Remdesivir rights are now the property of the Peoples Liberation Army of China, and clinical trials continue. 
It's not for us, brothers and sisters...

Shedding a lot of coronavirus while you still feel fine:

The USA, USA, USA is China on January 11, today.
The coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. could grow to be as serious as it is in Wuhan, China, Johns Hopkins University Dr. Marty Makary told CNBC.
“What happened in Wuhan could happen here. Why do we think otherwise?” Makary said, referencing the Chinese city where the new virus originated in December.
“Viruses don’t care about politics and they don’t care about location,” he added.


​Cancel Everything. The moment of opportunity is Right Now. 
This virus spreads faster and is far more deadly than the "Spanish Flu":
When the influenza epidemic of 1918 infected a quarter of the U.S. population, killing tens of millions of people, seemingly small choices made the difference between life and death.
As the disease was spreading, Wilmer Krusen, Philadelphia’s health commissioner, allowed a huge parade to take place on September 28; some 200,000 people marched. In the following days and weeks, the bodies piled up in the city’s morgues. By the end of the season, 12,000 residents had died.
In St. Louis, a public-health commissioner named Max Starkloff decided to shut the city down. Ignoring the objections of influential businessmen, he closed the city’s schools, bars, cinemas, and sporting events. Thanks to his bold and unpopular actions, the per capita fatality rate in St. Louis was half that of Philadelphia. (In total, roughly 1,700 people died from influenza in St Louis.)


 
UK Health Minister Tests Positive For COVID-19; Bernie And Biden Cancel Rallies: Live Updates

​Alastair Crooke looks at the Middle east turmoil in coronavirus-pandemic-world:
And after the military dynamics, we are brought to the geo-politics and economics of the Corona virus.
​ ​The virus has brought an extraneous, sudden ‘shock’ to the real economy. The virus is not like seasonal ‘flu. It is much more infectious (the virus being in the throat, rather than lungs), and it propagates via cough and sneeze droplets that linger for many days on objects that others then touch. But unlike seasonal ‘flu, Covid-19 carriers may have the virus, but not have the disease (i.e. show no symptoms), which makes it hard to identify any chain of infection – or to take appropriate containment action. Medical experts, however, do not know the circumstances of Covid-19’s inception (presumed to be zoonotic, but lacking evidence for this); do not know its reproduction number; its fatality ratio; and do not know whether it is affected by seasons. It seems to have already mutated once, producing both a milder and a more lethal variant.
​ ​In short, anyone saying how long this virus will last simply is guessing.
(Spanish ‘flu – by way of illustration of the nature of viral ‘unknowns’ – began in late 1917, processed through three distinct phases in 1918; mutated, and became more lethal in August 1918; (with the peak lethality taking place in September – November); and began to wane in 1919. It infected one-third of the global population, and killed between 50–100 million persons in Europe, North America and Asia.
​ ​So, in the face of such uncertainty, what can we say about the Middle East?

​Eleni sends this interview with Bashar al-Assad MD. with transcript, about the war on Syria, and the resilience which Syrians of all stripe have shown. It is quite heartening.

Arising From Despair

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