NON_POLITICAL China Coronavirus THREAD

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dullard

Elite Member
May 21, 2001
24,998
3,325
126
We need only look to Switzerland to see how freight rail can be done right. Warehouses have direct access to rail, and rail services replace tons of trucks there. And to top it off, they've also electrified their freight system.
Oh things can be done so much better with trains. But one key detail is the scale of things. On the map below, the blue blob is Switzerland for comparison. All the trains in Switzerland can't even connect two Canadian cities near the area of discussion (plus all the necessary branches once you reach each city to reach all warehouses).
1642533374677.png
 
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Zorba

Lifer
Oct 22, 1999
14,449
9,834
136
Obvious for sure. But talk about things we should have been expecting. Anyone paying a little attention saw the Omicron wave iin South Africa, then the UK. Public health officials had some time to ramp up testing capacity. They likely would never have gotten levels we may have hoped. Personally, I heard of no one even talking about ramping up testing capacity, much less any action.

On the other hand, a test never helped anyone recover, not that I know of. Resources spent on treatment are likely to be more helpful to those in need.
The feds have tried to increases testing and my county added test sites as demand went up. But you can't increase resources exponentially along side viral spread.
 

IronWing

No Lifer
Jul 20, 2001
68,847
26,624
136
Oh things can be done so much better with trains. But one key detail is the scale of things. On the map below, the blue blob is Switzerland for comparison. All the trains in Switzerland can't even connect two Canadian cities near the area of discussion.
View attachment 56172
It was thoughtful of you to stick Switzerland in the mountains so folks would feel at home.
 
Dec 10, 2005
23,984
6,786
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Oh things can be done so much better with trains. But one key detail is the scale of things. On the map below, the blue blob is Switzerland for comparison. All the trains in Switzerland can't even connect two Canadian cities near the area of discussion.
View attachment 56172
Yes, Switzerland is small, but the US is also largely empty. We could probably have a mix of our long distance rail coupled with improvements in regional freight. But that's probably an intractable problem for the US that involves land use, getting disparate companies to work together, and our insanely unreasonable rail construction costs.
 

feralkid

Lifer
Jan 28, 2002
16,394
4,451
136
Oh things can be done so much better with trains. But one key detail is the scale of things. On the map below, the blue blob is Switzerland for comparison. All the trains in Switzerland can't even connect two Canadian cities near the area of discussion.
View attachment 56172




Terrible analogy.

Try adding up the miles of rail in Switzerland and see how long that stretches.

It's over 3,000 miles.

Otherwise, I agree that rail can be so much more efficient; the U.S needs to get back in the game.
 
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dullard

Elite Member
May 21, 2001
24,998
3,325
126
You can't be serious.

Try adding up the miles of rail in Switzerland and see how long that stretches.

It's over 3,000 miles.
You think that cities in Canada also wouldn't need branches in tracks? Canada is 4700 miles wide.
 

gill77

Senior member
Aug 3, 2006
813
250
136
I probably should post a correction.

A buddy called me a couple days ago to tell me he had covid, despite being triple vaccinated, based on what we were seeing, that seemed likely to be the case.

He managed to get tested. Negative for covid. Positive for flu.

Yup, fully vaccinated for that too.

Hard to see how having two determined bugs out there is going to help things any.
 

TheVrolok

Lifer
Dec 11, 2000
24,254
4,076
136
I probably should post a correction.

A buddy called me a couple days ago to tell me he had covid, despite being triple vaccinated, based on what we were seeing, that seemed likely to be the case.

He managed to get tested. Negative for covid. Positive for flu.

Yup, fully vaccinated for that too.

Hard to see how having two determined bugs out there is going to help things any.
Flu shot missed this year. It happens.
 

dullard

Elite Member
May 21, 2001
24,998
3,325
126
Flu shot missed this year. It happens.
Flu shots right now are just an educated guess as to what variants might be spreading in the next year. They might guess right and be a success. They might guess right, be a success, but then another variant comes along. They might guess wrong. This year, they guessed wrong. This is probably because there was so little flu last year that they had almost nothing to base their educated guess on this year.

Universal flu shots will eventually fix that (i.e. not strain specific). But we aren't there yet.
 
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gill77

Senior member
Aug 3, 2006
813
250
136
Universal flu shots will eventually fix that (i.e. not strain specific). But we aren't there yet.
No kidding about the eventually part. We have been after this critter for a while now.

This new vaccine was first used to help protect soldiers fighting in World War II; it wouldn’t be approved for civilians until 1946

It seems we like to think our technology can conquer anything. If the physics is known and the technology is within reach, throw zillions at the problem and you go to the moon in the 1960's.

Complex systems are a whole other thing. Sometimes the silver bullet is within relatively easy reach, but not necessarily.

Another way to look at it is that you are not "just" doing all the due diligence to get yourself to the top of Mt Everest, but you are in a fight, and the other guy has something to say about its outcome also.
 

dullard

Elite Member
May 21, 2001
24,998
3,325
126
That history is all about strain-specific flu vaccines. They work well for a single-strain or a small group of selected strains. I was talking about universal flu vaccines which are fairly new:
 

Denly

Golden Member
May 14, 2011
1,433
229
106
We need only look to Switzerland to see how freight rail can be done right. Warehouses have direct access to rail, and rail services replace tons of trucks there. And to top it off, they've also electrified their freight system.

Not in our lifetime, NA are built on roads. Just look at how shitty our(US/CAD) public transits system.
 
Dec 10, 2005
23,984
6,786
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Not in our lifetime, NA are built on roads. Just look at how shitty our(US/CAD) public transits system.
Shitty public transit and crappy local freight rail are policy choices we continue to make. We can reverse that trend whenever we choose. We had this long before the automobile and other countries have reversed their automobile dependence in the last 50 years, so it's not impossible.
 
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TheVrolok

Lifer
Dec 11, 2000
24,254
4,076
136
About a 50/50 proposition if I recall.

I believe you had requested that Peter Attia link. Did you look at it at all?

Nope. I stopped getting notifications on Tapatalk months and months ago, makes it nearly impossible to follow up if I don't actively remember to look. I almost never browse AT on an actual browser. I'll have a look later today tho now that I've seen this.
 

gill77

Senior member
Aug 3, 2006
813
250
136
Nope. I stopped getting notifications on Tapatalk months and months ago, makes it nearly impossible to follow up if I don't actively remember to look. I almost never browse AT on an actual browser. I'll have a look later today tho now that I've seen this.
No worries. No rush either.

Have a good day.
 

PingSpike

Lifer
Feb 25, 2004
21,729
559
126
Lot's of young ones testing positive. Our county has 10 1-4 year olds and 42 5-11 year olds with covid.

Hospitalizations in the state are way up at 907 which is about 100 from our last peak of 1012 on 9/24/2021. This means all our hospitals are nearing capacity. Luckily not as many people in ICU or on vents but they could be lagging behind.

61.2% with at least one dose. 52.7% fully vaxxed. 38.9% boost doses in the "free" state of West by God Virginia.

My state has a 97% 12+ vaccination rate, 50something% with boosters. We have record high hospitalizations at the moment, not sure if they're going to get worse before they get better or not.
 
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Kaido

Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
Feb 14, 2004
48,387
5,255
136
Omnicron is whacking everybody...I have one customer with nearly 100 employees out. Another had 50% of their entire staff out. One of my restaurant customers literally had to close up because only the owner wasn't sick. Seems worse now than at the start! Thankfully the cases seem more mild than at the beginning...
 

Spacehead

Lifer
Jun 2, 2002
13,201
10,063
136
Re: testing
Not only can you order the free at home tests thru that .gov site but i heard you can also now get reimbursed by your insurance if you buy them in the store.

They're setting up a free drive-thru test site here for 2 weeks. That's great and all but i'm hearing it could be 3-5 days to get the results. If that ends up being true then not-so-great.


Testing sounds great and all but... at least in my own circle, people won't stay home if they're sick because they can't afford to mostly & in some cases just don't care about other people.
 

gill77

Senior member
Aug 3, 2006
813
250
136
Testing sounds great and all but... at least in my own circle, people won't stay home if they're sick because they can't afford to mostly & in some cases just don't care about other people.
People need help sometimes. One of the ideas behind the Great Barrington Declaration. The least we can do is get groceries for our friends and neighbors. A little government attention towards this problem might be helpful also. I'm talking carrots not sticks.

This is one thing that concerns me about having the flu mixed in. Now it may be easier for some folks to say it's just the flu, and others to just accept that.
 

Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
67,194
12,025
126
www.anyf.ca
UK has dropped a lot of restrictions. Great for them! Maybe this will put pressure on our government.


As for test kits, IMO they are a huge problem as far as plastic waste goes. Too bad they can't at least design them in a way so you only use the strip on it's own without the plastic part.

Really, if you have any kind of symptoms it's best to just stay home anyway, the tests are not 100% accurate. At this point I would hope that most workplaces are accommodating for that. The last time I had symptoms I just had someone drop off my PC at my house and I worked from home.
 

JM Aggie08

Diamond Member
Jan 3, 2006
8,148
776
136
Very thankful our kid's experience with the covid was super minor. As mentioned in my earlier post, he had one low-grade fever and just a ton of congestion. He did have some gastro issues the night before we took him in to get tested, but they never reappeared.

Wife and I have either come out unscathed or asymptomatic -- assume the latter, given the virality of omicron and the fact that we had it being coughed in our faces. We were supposed to have a PCR test on Monday, but the site ran out of tests. We'll take some at-home tests likely tomorrow, but it appears we're in the clear.

Again, just relieved the kid had such an easy go of it. He was always my biggest concern amidst this whole mess.
 

Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
67,194
12,025
126
www.anyf.ca
It's rare for kids to be badly affected so that's good. When my nephews got it, one of them did lose taste for a bit while the other was sick for maybe a day. My sister probably got it the worse but it was essentially a really bad cold for her too.

So far I've managed to dodge it, either that or I got it back when it first started when we all got sick in the office but they were not testing back then.
 

balloonshark

Diamond Member
Jun 5, 2008
6,286
2,682
136
We just hit 25% positivity rate in WV. 1 out of 4 people getting tested are positive. Our health department can't keep up with contact tracing. All our hospitals should be at max capacity by now since data is 1 day behind. This is terrible and we knew it was going to happen. Most didn't do anything to prevent the inevitable. I weep for our species.

Should be fun going to my pre-admission and transesophageal echocardiogram appointments next week.
 
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