Coronavirus Thread IV: Legends, Laments and Lockdowns

[Diahon]

this guardian article on how one of india's most densely populated states made this virus quit it -- and is now preparing 165 thousand beds for a potential influx of possibly infected keralites from other states once india's own lockdown is lifted -- is fucking amazing

oh, and goddammit kerala

[Nobel Hobos 2]

And now I think we're done debating.

I conceded most of your points.

I did not concede your main claim, that customer reusable containers should not be allowed.

I put my own view that they should be allowed (not mind you, that shops be required to accept them), AND that there should be a charge for any disposable container.

I didn't bother making the argument that reusable plastic is pollution and should be discouraged, because plainly you don't give a fuck about pollution. Not interested, right?

With that last note I was trying to return our conversation to something even vaguely related to covid-19.

Do you have any alternative way to discourage customers from using cash? Or are we just going to rely on food staff to do what you admit the general public doesn't ...

Would you be interested if I were to create a new thread?

A whole thread about disposable plastic? Not terribly interested, but I guess I'd contribute.

[Atheris]

this guardian article on how one of india's most densely populated states made this virus quit it -- and is now preparing 165 thousand beds for a potential influx of possibly infected keralites from other states once india's own lockdown is lifted -- is fucking amazing

oh, and goddammit kerala

You know, when I first read through that, I was prepared to have one of several disappointed gifs from my "forum weapons" folder.

Now, after actually wrapping my head around it, damn good job, Kerala.

edit: okay, it's 3 in the morning and i shouldn't be commenting. when did i type this? did i even read the article?

[Shanghai industrial complex]

Emmm...Well . Usually we don't use cash, but pay by mobile phone.Just stick a QR code on the door, and the owner will put the goods on the table at the door If there's only one person in the store.I hate cash and I don't need cash now

However, I am not happy that KFC and McDonald's nearby have closed the cash register recently and only allow me to order food with app.I had to do operation myself, and before that I just had to say what I wanted to eat.

I almost always use cash, but I recognize that it's a luxury I'm not entitled to. If a store will only take card, that's fair enough.

Dunno what I'll do when stores stop even taking cards and I can only pay with a phone. Not comfortable with it!

When you're used to mobile payment, it's a great experience.Especially it will give me a monthly bill and asset management function.But the downside is that I always worry about my cell phone's power, so I always bring a credit card in case I need it.Cell phones are more secure than wallets, and they offer another benefit: thieves and robbers are almost gone.You can't steal more than one dollar from a person in China

[Shanghai industrial complex]

this guardian article on how one of india's most densely populated states made this virus quit it -- and is now preparing 165 thousand beds for a potential influx of possibly infected keralites from other states once india's own lockdown is lifted -- is fucking amazing

oh, and goddammit kerala

I expressed my concerns about India in the last thread last month.Unfortunately, no one paid attention to it at that time.Now I can say again that India is in a very dangerous situation

[Nobel Hobos 2]

Do you have any alternative way to discourage customers from using cash? Or are we just going to rely on food staff to do what you admit the general public doesn't ...

In US,paypal or Apple pay? I also have a paypal

Some people are very opposed to letting big corporations (and/or government) know where they spend money.

I'm kind of in-between. My information is worth money to Them, I don't like to give that away. But I don't really care if They know I had a falafel for lunch, or where I was when I did. So I use cash by preference, but card when I have to.

[Diahon]

this guardian article on how one of india's most densely populated states made this virus quit it -- and is now preparing 165 thousand beds for a potential influx of possibly infected keralites from other states once india's own lockdown is lifted -- is fucking amazing

oh, and goddammit kerala

I expressed my concerns about India in the last thread last month.Unfortunately, no one paid attention to it at that time.Now I can say again that India is in a very dangerous situation

you didn't read what i said, never mind the article, did you?

[Nobel Hobos 2]

this guardian article on how one of india's most densely populated states made this virus quit it -- and is now preparing 165 thousand beds for a potential influx of possibly infected keralites from other states once india's own lockdown is lifted -- is fucking amazing

oh, and goddammit kerala

Did they ban all their citizens from coming back into the province? That wouldn't be good.

I did notice that her recommended social distancing is 1 (one) metre. Um.

[Shanghai industrial complex]

In US,paypal or Apple pay? I also have a paypal

Some people are very opposed to letting big corporations (and/or government) know where they spend money.

I'm kind of in-between. My information is worth money to Them, I don't like to give that away. But I don't really care if They know I had a falafel for lunch, or where I was when I did. So I use cash but preference, but card when I have to.

It's strange that when using credit card, the bank will also know this information?People believe in banks but not technology companies.

[Nobel Hobos 2]

I expressed my concerns about India in the last thread last month.Unfortunately, no one paid attention to it at that time.Now I can say again that India is in a very dangerous situation

you didn't read what i said, never mind the article, did you?

It's a long article. Can you explain how the governor made the virus go away in Kerala?

Some people are very opposed to letting big corporations (and/or government) know where they spend money.

I'm kind of in-between. My information is worth money to Them, I don't like to give that away. But I don't really care if They know I had a falafel for lunch, or where I was when I did. So I use cash but preference, but card when I have to.

It's strange that when using credit card, the bank will also know this information?People believe in banks but not technology companies.

Banks have to take money (savings, interest or fees) off a customer to make their profit. Technology companies by contrast give you all sorts of things for free. You don't have to know much more than that to see that technology companies are better at profiting from information. You don't know who they sell information to, but banks and government are surely among them.

Anyway, some people don't trust either banks or techs. They take all their money out of the bank at the first opportunity, and spend it as cash.

Which is a bit nutty I admit. Still, I do prefer to buy with cash.

[Shanghai industrial complex]

I expressed my concerns about India in the last thread last month.Unfortunately, no one paid attention to it at that time.Now I can say again that India is in a very dangerous situation

you didn't read what i said, never mind the article, did you?

No,I read it.Yep,I read it.It praised India for doing much better than the West.But I feel uneasy because the article has always stressed that this state is the state with the highest quality of citizens in India.Of course, I admit that the governor's measures are very scientific and courageous.

[Shanzie]

Some people are very opposed to letting big corporations (and/or government) know where they spend money.

I'm kind of in-between. My information is worth money to Them, I don't like to give that away. But I don't really care if They know I had a falafel for lunch, or where I was when I did. So I use cash but preference, but card when I have to.

It's strange that when using credit card, the bank will also know this information?People believe in banks but not technology companies.

Banks arent analyzing that data, making detailed analysis of who you are and what you like, then using that data to get you to buy shit. As an example, customers in target are given an identity number. Based on your purchases, they can even predict when you are pregnant and your due date with so much accuracy that they accidently inform people they are pregnant.

One father stormed into a target and demanded to know why they were sending ads for infant stuff to his daughter. Thought they were encouraging her to get pregnant. Turned out his daughter was pregnant and didnt know it yet. They were able to tell this by some of the items she was buying before she knew because they analyzed the items women buy in the early stages of pregnancy and predicted it based on that.

[Shanghai industrial complex]

It's strange that when using credit card, the bank will also know this information?People believe in banks but not technology companies.

Banks arent analyzing that data, making detailed analysis of who you are and what you like, then using that data to get you to buy shit. As an example, customers in target are given an identity number. Based on your purchases, they can even predict when you are pregnant and your due date with so much accuracy that they accidently inform people they are pregnant.

One father stormed into a target and demanded to know why they were sending ads for infant stuff to his daughter. Thought they were encouraging her to get pregnant. Turned out his daughter was pregnant and didnt know it yet. They were able to tell this by some of the items she was buying before she knew because they analyzed the items women buy in the early stages of pregnancy and predicted it based on that.

Mobile payment background has signed an agreement with the bank, because it usually binds your credit card.Both banks and technology companies will analyze your spending habits.Or they have the same data.It's the online consumption platform you use instead of the payment platform that sends you spam,Sir.However, if you use the account consumption of the payment platform, the payment platform will draw the handling fee like the bank.I am also developing a contactless payment project.Is customer data valuable? It's only valuable in our business scenario, but if the data is leaked, we're in big trouble. It's not worth it.But that doesn't stop us from doing behavioral analysis of our customers' data and selling them our own services

[Australian rePublic]

viewtopic.php?p=37120867#p37120867

I created a whole thread for plastic containers and cash. Please move the discussion to there

[Kyapo]

Sanofi just got a slapping by the French. Good on you France

[Shanghai industrial complex]

Sanofi just got a slapping by the French. Good on you France

What happened?Did they announce that they would give priority to the US over France?

[Kyapo]

US over everyone. Didn't go down well. Lots of back tracking from CEO's. Nice to know how they think isn't

[Stellar Colonies]

Sanofi just got a slapping by the French. Good on you France

I'm surprised they said that at all, considering the kind of global backlash they'd get from suggesting to give it to the US first.

It's somewhat noble they suggested giving it to the country which appears to be most heavily hit by the virus and provided funding first, but worldwide distribution first and foremost could be the best way to go.

[Nobel Hobos 2]

Sanofi just got a slapping by the French. Good on you France

What happened?Did they announce that they would give priority to the US over France?

Due to greater investment from the US.

At first glance it's an attempt to get more money out of France. But I think it's actually an attempt to get more money out of the US!

[Tinhampton]

I really hope those people at Oxford really do manage to get their vaccine out by September. This has been going on too long.

If my school cancels extra-curricular activities and then reopens for September, I'm actually gonna pull Kristoph's breakdown from 4-4 but instead of screaming "WRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGGGGGHHHHHHTTT" I'm gonna scream "CCCCCCHHHHHHEEEESSSSSSSTTTEEEEERRRRRFFFFFIIIIIEEELLLLLDDDDDDD!"

Why am I now thinking about 1990s lower-league football (rather than Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, which appears to form the crux of Atheris' forum activity)?

Behold - the Baltic Bubble

[Nobel Hobos 2]

As to global distribution.

It matters a lot whether we're talking a vaccine or a treatment. A treatment would be easy: it would go to countries according to how many seriously ill they have at the time. A vaccine is a more complicated equation: how many people still alive in that country who are at high risk, and how likely they are to get infected in the next few weeks (ie before there's more vaccine).

There are other factors, but I'm not sure if they should be included. Ability to pay is one, and it's not as simple as it sounds. The stuff will go missing even in rather wealthy countries, and some of it will be destroyed (eg failure to refrigerate) or fall into the hands of people who don't even know what it is. The rest will go to wealthy people good or bad, and regardless of whether they're at high risk. Then there's government attrition: Donald Trump's policy of daily tests for anyone who enters the Oval Office is not remarkable except that he admits it. High government officials will always put their own safety first, they don't even see anything wrong with that. I think it's futile to fight that, it should just be a given that the first ten thousand vaccines distributed will be essentially wasted, on leaderships who by and large are not at high risk.

[Salandriagado]

There's a bunch of good news out today:

1. We're getting data about the safety effectiveness of convalescent plasma (PDF), and the short answer is "pretty good". Specifically:

The incidence of all serious adverse events (SAEs) in the first four hours after transfusion was <1%, including mortality rate (0.3%). Of the 36 reported SAEs, there were 25 reported incidences of related SAEs, including mortality (n=4), transfusion-associated circulatory overload (TACO; n=7), transfusion-related acute lung injury (TRALI; n=11), and severe allergic transfusion reactions (n=3).
However, only 2 (of 36) SAEs were judged as definitely related to the convalescent plasma transfusion by the treating physician. The seven-day mortality rate was 14.9%.

Now, those numbers might sound bad, but this was only given to people with severe/life threatening illness, and without this treatment we'd have expected about half of them to die. That's a pretty massive improvement.

2. Another paper about T-cell immunity, going along with this one that I posted previously. A bunch of good news here: firstly, it looks like we can now be pretty confident in saying that there is cross-immunity from at least one common-cold coronavirus, meaning that people who've had that virus can be immune to COVID-19 without having been infected. This could explain the unexpectedly low transmission rates in a few towns around the world. Secondly, 100% of COVID-19 patients had CD4+ T-cells (meaning that it seems like essentially all of them became immune). Basically a whole pile of good news as far as herd immunity development goes.

3. The Slovenian government is doing some large-scale testing that suggests that they've managed to hold their coronavirus mortality rate significantly lower than the figures we've been seeing out of places like Spain, probably due to more successfully keeping it away from their elderly population.

4. Standard treatments are working very well at dealing with that inflamatory syndrome in kids, and it does still seem to be very rare. A note of concern, though - it does seem that those of African origin are significantly more vulnerable to it. Coupled with the large (and generally relatively unhealthy) populations of children in Africa, that adds up to a disturbing number of potential excess deaths of children in an area that most people seem to have been assuming will be broadly OK due to its young population and high sun exposure.

5. Cambridge has updated its modelling, with some pretty solid news. Key points:

• R₀ is now comfortably below 1 everywhere in the UK, and at a spectacularly low 0.4 in London (which I can't see being explicable by anything other than that speculation that I posted earlier (about herd immunity kicking in earlier than expected due to those who are most likely to pass it to others also being most likely to catch it) holding up in reality).
• Daily infections in London down to double digits. Estimated total infections in the UK at 6.5m, implying an IFR of 0.5% (the actual figure will be slightly higher, due to time-delay effects - they're estimating 0.63%, with a 95% CI of 0.49-0.81%), which is significantly better than the likes of Spain (though still significantly worse than the countries that avoided major care home outbreaks).
• The attack rate seems to be in the low double digits at worst (providing further confirmation for the "very high variance in infectivity between individuals" hypothesis), and is highest among children and young adults, as expected (notably, that high attack rate in children is a pretty damning indictment of the idea of opening up schools at this point).
• Death rates in children were so low they literally had to use scientific notation to write it down (6x10^-4% in the 5-14 age range).
• All areas now reporting halving (rather than doubling) times for infections: London's cases are halving twice a week, while the NE and Yorkshire's are falling most slowly, halving every 2 weeks. A similar pattern in deaths: London's are halving weekly, NE/Yorkshire every 2.5 weeks, and everywhere else somewhere in between.
• Expected total infections for the whole outbreak are a touch below 7 million (that is: almost everybody who will get it has already caught it), under the assumption that we avoid a second wave. Implies a total of ~42,000 deaths.
• Actual death counts have been falling cleanly inside their error bounds, which suggests that their model is at least not ridiculously worng.
• Check those Rt graphs: looks like the lockdown is being spectacularly effective.

[Page]

Emmm...Well . Usually we don't use cash, but pay by mobile phone.Just stick a QR code on the door, and the owner will put the goods on the table at the door If there's only one person in the store.I hate cash and I don't need cash now

However, I am not happy that KFC and McDonald's nearby have closed the cash register recently and only allow me to order food with app.I had to do operation myself, and before that I just had to say what I wanted to eat.

I almost always use cash, but I recognize that it's a luxury I'm not entitled to. If a store will only take card, that's fair enough.

Dunno what I'll do when stores stop even taking cards and I can only pay with a phone. Not comfortable with it!

I will continue to use cash whenever it's an option. If we're worried about germs than install machines that take cash payments that the customers use themselves without the cashier having to touch anything.

A world without cash is a frightening world. Every purchase can be tracked and regulated.

[Salandriagado]

I can only surmise that being small, pet cats don't shed enough virus to infect owners. It still doesn't seem right, it's the same virus isn't it? And people get very close to their cats don't they?

Glad I don't have cats, frankly. I'd be worried (for myself).

It's still good. If your cat were to get infected by the virus, it wouldn't jump to you at least and it doesn't seem to be lethal to cats. I haven't adopted a cat because of CoVID19 yet. Frankly, I'll just wait until this pandemic passes and then I'll look. But for those cat owners out there who are worried about their feline companion, this is at least positive.

As an interesting aside: the people who say that we've never produced a coronavirus vaccine aren't quite correct. We've never made a human coronavirus, true, but we do have a vaccine for feline coronavirus. This isn't even the most serious coronavirus currently infecting cats, and we can deal with the worse one. Cats should be OK.

[Salandriagado]

All the people who were in favour of banning plastic take away containers, saying that it's not a health hazard to serve take away food into someone's reusable food containers. I sincerely hope you're no longer hold this position

There are ways to do it using customer-provided reusable containers that are far safer than anything you can do with disposable containers. In particular, with disposable containers, your container needs to be handled by both you and the customer. With customer-provided containers, you can set things up so that only the customer ever handles the container.