Where's WYK been, and what trouble is he making?

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Another sumfin interesting - only 2 deaths attributed to COVID-19 in Hong Kong so far. They first declared an emergency in early January. It appears that the second largest epicenter for the SARS virus(which they traced to Guagdong province eventually) have shown strong resistance to COVID-19. We're seeing similar affects in Vietnam, another center for SARS, with one reported death due to COVID-19. The problem is, at this point, it is difficult to tell how strong the tie is between SARS and COVID and a potential effect of SARS anti bodies due to how effectively HK and Vietnam responded to the COVID-19 outbreak. They both shuttered borders and locked down instantly, distributed masks and PSA campaigns. That's what SARS does for you. In other words, they learned from SARS. It would appear most the rest of us didn't.
 
HK isn't reporting to WHO at the moment. They are listing 4 dead now tho. You have to go to their own web site. But other sources are also agreeing with them. I think vietnam is on the WHO's situation reports. Johns Hopkins is reporting 4 deaths in HK, 0 in Vietnam. Southern China also showing very few deaths as well. SARS struck most of Southern China and SE Asia.

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/situation-reports
https://www.coronavirus.gov.hk/eng/index.html
 
With the recent cowboy talk in this thread...

I was confronted by a wannabe cowboy today who pulled up into my work zone on a gravel county road. This guy opens the truck door to a blast of new “country” music, walks up in his square toe cowboy boots, flat brim baseball cap, light fade jeans, and proceeds to rudely pose the question of what we were doing. I told him we were working, and we would be until our permit ran out at 3:00 PM. Apparently he didn’t like what I had to say and began to remind me that we had inconvenienced everyone on the road.

All things being equal, this guy was social distancing, but he was tall enough where even my Frank’s don’t help, and I guess he thought I was intimidated. I told him to look at his tires. He looked confused. Then I told him to look at my cat operator’s. He looked more confused.

I continued, something like “See those over there? Those have a nice sidewall, it can be aired down, and it has flex to grip off road. Not only that, but they fit on a stock rim. See those on your truck? Those are good for doing things you wannabe cowboys do. Ya know, things like jerking off other guys to Luke Bryan.”

Apparently the entire crew had stopped work and were watching. They busted out in laughing and wannabe walked back to his truck and walked away.
 
As to the COVID related chatter, I dislike Boris Johnson’s policy platform, but I sure don’t wish ill of him. I have not read or listened to anything about how the SARS-COV1-hit regions are faring better in this situation. Admittedly, I don’t catch much news outside of Morning Edition shortly followed by BBC Newshour on WFPL lately. I wonder if it’s still in the “correlation does not equal causation” phase or if the regions were just more reactive to this?
 
With the recent cowboy talk in this thread...

I was confronted by a wannabe cowboy today who pulled up into my work zone on a gravel county road. This guy opens the truck door to a blast of new “country” music, walks up in his square toe cowboy boots, flat brim baseball cap, light fade jeans, and proceeds to rudely pose the question of what we were doing. I told him we were working, and we would be until our permit ran out at 3:00 PM. Apparently he didn’t like what I had to say and began to remind me that we had inconvenienced everyone on the road.

All things being equal, this guy was social distancing, but he was tall enough where even my Frank’s don’t help, and I guess he thought I was intimidated. I told him to look at his tires. He looked confused. Then I told him to look at my cat operator’s. He looked more confused.

I continued, something like “See those over there? Those have a nice sidewall, it can be aired down, and it has flex to grip off road. Not only that, but they fit on a stock rim. See those on your truck? Those are good for doing things you wannabe cowboys do. Ya know, things like jerking off other guys to Luke Bryan.”

Apparently the entire crew had stopped work and were watching. They busted out in laughing and wannabe walked back to his truck and walked away.
see now, this is precisely the kind of jerkoff I'm talking about
 
As to the COVID related chatter, I dislike Boris Johnson’s policy platform, but I sure don’t wish ill of him.

Same. However, my hope is that his misfortune will serve to alert other leadership personnel to how grave the danger really is. I will pause to enjoy whatever schadenfreude comes our way only once the crisis is over.
 
Same. However, my hope is that his misfortune will serve to alert other leadership personnel to how grave the danger really is. I will pause to enjoy whatever schadenfreude comes our way only once the crisis is over.

The blame game has already started. And the schadenfreude is thick. Europeans are stunned at America's behaviour as well since there was so much time and information ahead of this. And, like America, thay want to blame China. Some are saying they hid it. But China didn't hide it - they TRIED to hide it. Doctors warned the World Health Organization in late December, supplying all the information they knew at the time, including it was a new strain of SARS-like Corona. They had only comfirmed it the last few days of December, two weeks after the first case - so the WHO were alarmed as soon as they knew. Now, after that, China did try to crack down on a few scientists and doctors. Which, of course, was reprehensible. So much so, they actually exonerated at least one Doctor. Wuhan is a huge industrial and commerce center with 11 million people off of a huge river called the Yagntze(which prolly sounds familiar to many of you).

Now, yes, both Corona's did come from China. So if you want to blame a country or a people, have at it. But you have to understand the why and the how. The how is because of Chinese expansion in to areas that were wild until only just recently. Chinese relaxation of family sizes in recent years also contributed to this human expansion. But, by far, the largest contributor is us. Turn your laptop over, your coffee mug, your TV, most of the stuff inside your car, much of your house, every day you will touch something that came from China. We are the 'why'. Capitalistic materialism and efficiency made this inevitable. Poorer countries with resources were always going to be exploited by the richer. Nearly all viruses, if not all, that have affected us came from human expansion in to the world.

We tried to blame Mexico for the swine flu. But there is plenty of genomic indication it began in China and was carried to North America and Central America. The swine influenza virus is common in pigs throughout the world. Same with most other flu's like bird flu, etc. Common in birds. Surprise. The nomenclature has always been an issue, tho. Officials try to call the viruses names that people will identify with. Afterall, 'there's a load of novel strain H1N1' going about means nothing to most people. So these pandemics get names like Spanish Flu(which likely started in the US due to our own expansion), Swine Flu(which is a combination of bird and pig origin), Hong Kong Flu, Asian Flu, etc etc. And add to this the fact that nearly every animal we come in close contact with has their own versions of flu. So, while most of these viruses do not affect us - we can still brew them inside our bodies until one mutates enough that it does affect us. Given that flu is RNA, it only has to mutate ever so slightly and pow - humans get a new virus.

There will be more. It's just when. We know the how and why.

1920px-Influenza_subtypes.svg.png
 
I wonder what Trump meant last night when he said that Sweden suffers badly? I think we are doing pretty well so far. I wish they would do more tests since we only test those who need medical care, and not all of them either, but other than that I think we are doing fine all things considered.
 
I wonder what Trump meant last night when he said that Sweden suffers badly? I think we are doing pretty well so far. I wish they would do more tests since we only test those who need medical care, and not all of them either, but other than that I think we are doing fine all things considered.
I'm quite sure not even Trump knows what he meant. [emoji57]
 
I wonder what Trump meant last night when he said that Sweden suffers badly? I think we are doing pretty well so far. I wish they would do more tests since we only test those who need medical care, and not all of them either, but other than that I think we are doing fine all things considered.
He may have been referring to Swedens relatively relaxed quarantine, or lack thereof. Regardless of what Trump has to say, according to the World Health Organization, Sweden has so far more deaths than all of it's neighbors - Denmark, Norway, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Estonia....combined. But we won't know the actual numbers for a while, really. I mean, Finland has barely done any testing at all. It may be pandemonium there for all we know. I never see them on the news, the grumpy bastards;. Prolly too busy racing around on dirt to catch diseases. Anyways...
All we can say is he was likely referring to how Sweden is handling this vs, say, it's neighbors.
In any case, I don't know how much weight there are in Trumps words when it comes to Sweden or this pandemic. He appears to be spending much of the time arguing with his own infectious disease expert, Dr. Fauci, as well as ignoring the reports from some state governors. He seems to be mostly trying to protect his own interest instead of looking after the well being and health of his countrymen. :(
In Ireland they have a saying - "Slainte'(Slawn Chuh) - To Your Health. You've nothing if you've not got your health."
Having said all that, according to NY stats, 68% of the deaths are African Americans, with Milwaukee saying it is nearly 50%. Whether this is due to lack of access to health care/socio economic issues, physiological, or cultural issues, or the Vitamin D thing some are touting, I dunno. But it is a surprising and terrifying stat if true. Especially if it is physiological. That would not bode well for Africa at all for so many reasons.
 
Having said all that, according to NY stats, 68% of the deaths are African Americans, with Milwaukee saying it is nearly 50%. Whether this is due to lack of access to health care/socio economic issues, physiological, or cultural issues, or the Vitamin D thing some are touting, I dunno. But it is a surprising and terrifying stat if true. Especially if it is physiological. That would not bode well for Africa at all for so many reasons.

It's the same here, areas with a lot of immigrants/refugees suffer most. Partly because it took too long to put out information about COVID-19 in other languages than swedish, partly because they haven't had as good health care prior in their lives (if at all). They get the same help/treatment as anyone else but they start off with worse odds of surviving. In hindsight that could maybe have been avoided with a harder quarantine, keep everyone at home while they gather information.
We have more relaxed quarantine but it's well in line of the way things work here, we all have a responsibility in doing what we can to not spread the virus, we are pretty free to do what we want but most of us stay home, keep our distance etc. No need to force us at this point. It took a while for the people in Stockholm to take it seriously but I think everyone is doing what they can at this point.
I just found it funny that Trump speaks about Sweden while he himself believes that this will be over in 2 weeks...
 
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