Share your experience, tips, advice, questions…
As it seems most communities world-wide are going into voluntary or enforced quarantine that involves staying at home and avoiding physical contact as much as possible, I thought we could have a thread where we could try a bit of mutual support by cheering each other up over the next few days, weeks, months… Who knows?
I don’t know: suggestions on films to watch, books to read, gardening tips, exercise ideas
Usual rules apply plus a guideline. Let’s be kind and supportive to each other.
Allan Miller,
If natural selection were really true like you present it, there would be an airborne bacteria that could eat all the carbon based life forms on earth, and it would just float around eating everything and it would be all that’s left. Then it would mutate to eat the soil, and after that it would just consume all the oxygen until the planet disappeared.
I don’t know how you get to there from there, but if it helps you sleep, keep believin’ that.
I’m sorry your friend was physically assaulted. I hope they weren’t too badly hurt and that they are receiving all necessary support both medically and in pursuing their attackers. I remarked before racism, tribalism and violence seem to be as bad now as when I stopped attending soccer matches in UK in 1968. Had your friend asked my advice about living in London, I would have advised against it.
I don’t live in the UK and have no influence on racism and how it is dealt with there. So I don’t know why you are railing at me. TSZ has agreed not to permit the use of regional descriptive names for the current coronavirus. There are other places where such terms are still in use. Why not pursue your campaign in such places.
There’s zero logic in that comment. It makes no sense whatever.
Yes, I have a problem with that.
Fair warning. You are straying into moderation issues. You know the drill.
Moved a comment to guano. Moderation issues, moderation issues thread.
Anyway, Alan is losing his mind, words are just words. Now, what is the best jewish joke?
Very possibly!
Words are wind!
I suggest Jewish jokes work best when told by Jewish people, about Jewish people, to Jewish people. Otherwise somewhere along the line the point will be lost. And a joke explained is rarely funny. So you don’t actually have an amusing “Jewish” joke to tell?
Alan Fox,
I was hoping you did.
phoodoo,
That’s not true, is it, phoodoo.
A recent (30th March) publication from Imperial College, London:
Estimating the number of infections and the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19 in 11 European countries. (PDF)
The summary indicates cautious optimism that lockdowns are having the desired effect, so let’s hope they’re right.
Here’s a site with similar estimates for various USA states.
COVID-19 projections
It seems to suggest that the social distancing is working. New York still looks pretty bad there, as does Michigan. My state (Illinois) is going to be stressed, but perhaps at a level where it can improvise enough to get through the worst.
It’s almost a positive feedback loop. The more we see lockdown measures working the more we will be encouraged to stick to them… which will make them even more effective!
Alan Fox,
Massive error bars, but interesting that the upper percentages for Italy and Spain are quite high. Not herd immunity territory yet, but given that outbreaks are clustered, locally higher percentages may begin to give an accelerating damping effect from that cause. The problems will jump about for a while yet of course, to fresh brushwood.
Allan Miller,
I’m seeing suggestions that some countries, China among them, may have been under-reporting. Maybe Spain and Italy are what we should be expecting.
Madrid’s population is 6.7M. How many deaths or infections would indicate herd immunity there? I guess the number of deaths would be more informative here, since lack of proper testing means the number of reported infections is artificially low, right?
Numbers reported for Madrid right now are:
Diagnosed: 29840
Deceased: 3865
Recovered: 10827
Active cases: 15148
dazz,
I keep saying that until there is a determined effort to sample the general population for antibodies, what the true level of infection is remains speculative.
I guess daily deaths is the best indicator of a trend but there is a lag of 20 days* between infection and peak viral load.
*Average, I could be wrong.
dazz,
Alan’s link reports 3.7%-41% in Spain, which is a massive variance. But if high end, it might get towards the quoted 60% required for herd immunity in local clusters.
Based on calls to our 111 first-line service, it’s estimated that there could have been in excess of 1.7 million symptomatic cases in the UK, perhaps with an extra 40% asymptomatic or too mild to bother the sufferer enough. Which means a long way to go, of course, but there is a sense in which one hopes figures are higher than reported.
Alan Fox,
Could you provide a citation? Interested in seeing more data.
Schizophora,
This seems to be the origin of doubts being cast on China’s figures.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-01/china-concealed-extent-of-virus-outbreak-u-s-intelligence-says
phoodoo,
I see you making this argument regularly. I think what you fail to grasp is that, unlike you, bacteria don’t have an inherent “goal.” The problem for an organism such as a pathogenic bacteria is that it requires two main things to be able to reproduce: a host, and a manner by which to spread between hosts. Nowhere in these two exists the requirement to kill one’s hosts. Bacteria don’t exist with the “goal” to kill all humans, as you might if you were a cartoon bacterium. It is, in fact, often preferable for a parasite to not kill its host, even going so far as to protect its host. This is due to the fact that a stable host provides an excellent spot to live and reproduce; the longer you can hang out, the better. If you found yourself a nice house, and then your kids grew up and moved into a new house, you wouldn’t burn down your own house just to spite it. There are even certain species of flukes which parasitize snails and influence them to produce thicker shells to further protect the fluke by further protecting the snail from death.
Alan Fox,
I’m not surprised, but I am disappointed. This seems to have been the strategy of the Chinese government from the start. The issue is that it has significant public health implications worldwide when they fail to accurately report, especially as they seem to be the worldwide epicenter of infection. Much useful information about infectiousness and mortality could be garnered from the knowledge they surely have.
Teleology alarm! 😉
Politicians cannot resist trying to spin reality for their own ends. The Chinese government is surely not unique in this regard.
Alan Fox,
I neither stated nor would state that it is.
Alan Fox,
Not so, I say! In the world of fluke reproduction, being alive is quite necessary. Those flukes who tend to be alive will tend to reproduce more.
Protecting your population at the borders is “communist”? You know less about “communism” than so many have forgotten. That’s why you’re likely a [not too secret] fan.
There was bound to be some “natural selection” somewhere in the gutter. Too bad no one takes that nonsense seriously when it comes to their life.
Naaah! It’s all a matter of luck!
I’ll get me coat.
Schizophora,
It was just the fluke’s influence I was querying. Seriously, I tend to regard organisms as passive, going with the flow. This new coronavirus is a string of RNA. It has no more intent than a rock.
Ninja’d
DNA_Jock,
I hate myself for laughing.
Alan Fox,
Do you mean that in a selfish gene sense, or a Big Lebowski sense?
I’m a Coen brothers fan but I was thinking of how loose talk about intent is leapt on by Creationists/ID proponentsists.
Alan Fox,
A fair point. I suppose it would be more accurate to state that those flukes with mechanisms to influence the calcium carbonate production of their hosts would be less likely to die as a result of their host perishing, and thus more likely to reproduce. I was attempting to simplify for understanding, but I can see how that could bring me into dangerous territory.
Nonlin.org,
Yep, I dare say graveyards are littered with people immune to the possibility of viral evolution, if not the virus itself.
Who said anything about a goal in order for this to transpire? More nonsense. If a bacteria existed which could consume any carbon based life, and which was airborne, why does it need a goal? It would just float in the wind and eat everything in site. Should be easy, what could stop it? The ultimate natural selection. Survival of the survivors.
What’s so hard to grasp?
phoodoo,
What you’re not realizing is that you’re assuming guided evolution; as though the bacteria have the goal to consume everything. Keep in mind that they don’t need to consume everything on the planet to be successful; they simply need to out-compete their neighbor. What’s so hard to grasp?
Furthermore, even if it came to be that a bacterial strain or a group of bacterial strains exhibited such behavior, and given that evolution worked in the manner that an uneducated child might think it would, what would stop a predatory microorganism from taking advantage of what is suddenly one of the most abundant food sources on the planet? What would stop something from evolving to the point of eating all of those until they are dead? What would stop a bacteriophage virus from evolving and destroying them?
This is for phoodoo
Clerk kicks Asian doctor out of U.S. gas station, citing ‘coronavirus prevention’ policy
This was in Martinsville, Indiana. The owner of the gas station has apologized.
The “Asian doctor” is American born.
phoodoo,
Having eaten everything, you imagine it continuing to float in the wind. That might be an issue. Additionally, you imagine this being the only organism on earth subject to natural selection, and capable of following any evolutionary trajectory at all, without restraint.
None of that flows from the fact that mutation to reduced virulence falls entirely within the parameters for natural selection. Yours is one of the bizarrest fantasies I’ve ever seen on the topic, so well done on that. And you’re not even slightly embarrassed, which also causes me to goggle somewhat.
I have no idea.
That’s not phoodoo’s fantasy, but an existing one.
Grey goo is an apocalyptic variant of von Neumann – replicators.
Corneel,
That demands design, not selection!
Thanks for the link. And there was I thinking phoodoo had come up with the idea himself. Completely crackers – but original.
Even the von Neumann scenario is biochemically and biologically naive. “What if we could make something that could do absolutely anything?”.
Errr…
Bloody mathematicians!
I like Allan’s refutation the best. If the bacteria ate too much they would be too fat to be airborne.
Oh, you got me there. I didn’t take into account the obese bacteria. Bacterium Americanus.
I encourage you to think about the remainder of that same paragraph: think about the wide open niches that would be available to any organism that was resistant to being eaten by your grey goo, and think about the awesomely plentiful food source that would be available to any organism that could eat grey goo.
Predator/Prey relationships and arms races are very powerful selective forces, even without flying omnivorous bacteria. They account for much of the complexity that we see.
DNA_Jock,
I should ignore the fat bacteria hypotheses?
Why should anyone think multi-cellular organisms would have a chance to mutate fast enough to overcome the rate at which bacteria can change?
Yes, why would anyone think that? Does anyone think that?
Because multicellular organisms’ responses are not limited to germline mutations. When I wrote that Predator/Prey relationships “…account for much of the complexity that we see.”, I mean what I wrote. Multi-cellular organisms have both innate and adaptive immune systems to fight off harmful infections.
If you reckon that the adaptive immune system is a good example of Design, you should ask yourself why the Designer favors camels over other mammals. 😉
Alan Fox,
Allan Miller,
Thanks guys. I’ll have a look at that paper.
Moderators mock each other.