Zompist Bboard Again

I think it's obvious this is going to keep being a topic of discussion here, so we might as well have a separate thread for it.

The controversies keep happening from the disappearance of the doctor who first reported it, to the lack of attention it got in China in the beginning, to the early attempts of many newspapers to understate the problem, to the incompetence of many governments around the world to hand out and allow testing, close operations and public events, provide care for people with accidents and other diseases, etc.

However, what I want to know at the moment is whether this medical attire is going to make a glorious comeback:


Source: "Plague doctor", English Wikipedia

People in Vancouver are noticeably staying a lot more at home this weekend. Traffic is down, and so are pedestrians on the streets. This past Thursday in the afternoon I was on the local metro on the way to the centre Vancouver at around 6:00 p.m., and the train was fairly empty, with a lot less people than normal. Presumably, hardly anyone is bothering to go to events in downtown now.

Meanwhile, as far as Europe goes, people in Portugal and Sweden are especially advised not to get sick this season.



(Pubmed ref of the article above: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22777516 )

Ser wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 6:24 pmHowever, what I want to know at the moment is whether this medical attire is going to make a glorious comeback:

I mean, it kinda already has?





Just need to make the masks longer and pointier. The guy in the back of the second image is halfway there! Although ideally yes, they should switch the PPE suits to be black.

Ser wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 6:24 pmthe incompetence of many governments

but is it tho...or is it unwillingness to accept the reality in front of them?

Politicians and leaders are people too, they are just as susceptible to cognitive dissonance as any one else...some more so.

The people in charge of my office waited until this afternoon before deciding to cease ongoing projects and allow us to telecommute...that's probably a very 1st world kind of complaint, but the idea that it took them that long to come to this decision is ludicrous to me and my colleagues.

is it by chance that the Venetian carnival costume looks so much like it and allowed the crown plague to enter the peninsula...

This has been confirmed, seemingly, by the German government:

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-and-us-wr ... a-52777990

US President Donald Trump is attempting to entice a German lab to develop a vaccine exclusively for the US, a German newspaper reported. Berlin health authorities are in intensive talks with the company.

I'm a bit mystified why Trump would want an "exclusive" arrangement. Presumably once the vaccine has been developed and tested, mass production should not be a major problem. This just seems like a way to poke your allies with a stick for no good reason.

chris_notts wrote: ↑Sun Mar 15, 2020 7:02 am This just seems like a way to poke your allies with a stick for no good reason.

Hi! I'm POTUS, an incompetent, sub-literate, narcissistic, misogynistic, sociopathic, racist, congenital liar. Nice to meet you.

masako wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 7:50 pm

Ser wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2020 6:24 pmthe incompetence of many governments

but is it tho...or is it unwillingness to accept the reality in front of them?

Politicians and leaders are people too, they are just as susceptible to cognitive dissonance as any one else...some more so.

The people in charge of my office waited until this afternoon before deciding to cease ongoing projects and allow us to telecommute...that's probably a very 1st world kind of complaint, but the idea that it took them that long to come to this decision is ludicrous to me and my colleagues.

I'd say falling prey to common logical and psychological fallacies is still a form of incompetence - even if the fallacies in question are very common, and have been scientifically studied and written about in books like Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me).


chris_notts: Wow. Just when I thought Trump's handling of the matter couldn't get any dumber, more embarrassing, or more repulsive.

Raphael wrote: ↑Sun Mar 15, 2020 8:41 am I'd say falling prey to common logical and psychological fallacies is still a form of incompetence

I can agree with that...perhaps the distinction here is "willful" incompetence.

You do all realize that, when this is all over, there will almost certainly be a lot of right-wingers who caught Covid-19, were among the high percentage of people who survived it and recovered, and got even more insufferable as a result, right?

masako wrote: ↑Sun Mar 15, 2020 8:43 am

Raphael wrote: ↑Sun Mar 15, 2020 8:41 am I'd say falling prey to common logical and psychological fallacies is still a form of incompetence

I can agree with that...perhaps the distinction here is "willful" incompetence.

For me, the word "incompetence" mostly refers to unintentional failure, which is why I initially found your reply to me confusing until I thought about what you meant... Maybe my usage is wrong, but when I refer to someone as incompetent I usually mean they're too unprepared, ignorant, disorganized, etc. to deal with something. I'd normally refer to "willful incompetence" as undermining/thwarting/impairing efforts or sabotaging.

Raphael wrote: ↑Sun Mar 15, 2020 10:51 amYou do all realize that, when this is all over, there will almost certainly be a lot of right-wingers who caught Covid-19, were among the high percentage of people who survived it and recovered, and got even more insufferable as a result, right?

Unfortunately, I have no idea what you mean. Why would they in particular get more insufferable?

Here's what happens when a president fundamentally misunderstands the crisis:



That's O'Hare Airport last night. 6 hour lines for baggage, then 2 hours more for customs.

The wait is not the problem, the problem is that large crowds are what we need to avoid. This is a perfect incubator for bringing untold numbers of cases to the country.

Here's how it happens. A 35-year old woman was infected but not tested, at a time when there were only 30 cases in the country. She went to two church services, with a total attendance of 9300. 1200 people got the virus; a few weeks later, her city (Daeju) was the epicenter of the virus in South Korea, with 3600 cases as compared with 98 in Seoul.

The crisis is not "furriners are doing bad things and must be punished." The crisis is "we have a highly infectious disease in this country and need to test to see who has it, and stop it spreading."

After much hand-wringing and indecision, the powers-that-be decided to shut down my workplace entirely. It's not really clear if I'll have to telecommute or not. (I'd rather not. Got two kids to take care of).

For the most part in France it seems we'll be following Italy so we're looking at a few weeks staying at home.

Raphael wrote: ↑Sun Mar 15, 2020 10:51 am You do all realize that, when this is all over, there will almost certainly be a lot of right-wingers who caught Covid-19, were among the high percentage of people who survived it and recovered, and got even more insufferable as a result, right?

Well, hopefully, the upcoming containment period should be a great opportunity for everyone to sit down and reflect a bit on what's really important. Health. Toilet paper. Pasta. Having loved ones you can endure the presence of for a few weeks.
Ha, ha, just kidding. In three months, everyone will have forgotten all about it and the bullshit steering comittees will be back!

Ser wrote: ↑Sun Mar 15, 2020 12:00 pm

Raphael wrote: ↑Sun Mar 15, 2020 10:51 amYou do all realize that, when this is all over, there will almost certainly be a lot of right-wingers who caught Covid-19, were among the high percentage of people who survived it and recovered, and got even more insufferable as a result, right?

Unfortunately, I have no idea what you mean. Why would they in particular get more insufferable?

Because they will think that the fact that they didn't die proves that they were right all along about not taking it seriously.

The timing with this is "excellent", especially since I'm supposed to be moving to the Netherlands at the end of the month! (I've terminated my lease for my apartment and my residence permit will run out on the 7th of April.) The borders are not yet closed, though I'm keeping an eye on things, and I contacted Immigration to see what to do about the fact that I need to leave Luxembourg in three weeks.

Here in Luxembourg, the situation is very much the social distancing, though now with all restaurants closed starting from Monday and highly reduced public transit frequencies. Workplaces are case-by-case, and, as of today, the university is now very highly recommending working remotely unless unavoidable, though the university campus will remain open and the working remotely stuff is quite restrictive and hoop-jumpy. In my case, I think I'll need to go into work at least a few days to take care of experiments and finish cleaning up my stuff, because I have to leave at the end of the month, but... yeah.

Also swung by the grocery store to get a few small things, because I wasn't able to restock earlier this week, and, yeah, it was crazy. No eggs, no potatoes, no toilet paper, most dry pasta was gone, most meats were gone... at least it was civilized.

Weird. I went to the supermarket this morning, and everything seemed... normal. Apart from hand sanitizers and protective gloves, there wasn't any shortage: half the pasta shelf was still full, potatos and TP were as usual.

When I was at my standard supermarket on Friday, things seemed mostly normal, too - almost all meters of all aisles were well-stocked. However, when my Mom went to her standard supermarket on Saturday, there were, according to her, lots of empty shelves and a bit of a buying frenzy. She did manage to buy most of what she wanted, though.

One or two weeks ago (I'm not sure), I was buying pasta at my standard supermarket, and I had the impression that the parts of the shelves dedicated to German noodle/pasta labels were mostly (but not entirely) empty, but the parts of the shelves with Italian pasta labels were still mostly full.

Boris' official plan is to not do very much in the UK at the moment. Despite that, my company, a European multi-national, has told everyone to work from home where possible, so I guess I'm doing that from Monday. Based on the mortality statistics by age from China I think I'd be very likely to be OK, but my wife is very worried because she's prone to chest infections and had a bad case of pneumonia a couple of years ago (after visiting China for work, funnily enough!).

I guess for me, the major pluses of not commuting are (a) protecting the other half, and (b) cutting out 1.5 - 2 hours of commuting a day, thus freeing up more time for gardening, writing, and playing with our son (who currently still has to go to school every day). I'm not the kind of person who feels a burning need to go out and socialise every day (or week, or even month).

Regarding supermarket stocks, there have been runs on a few things in the UK. A few days ago the following were very hard to get hold of here:

1. toilet paper
2. pasta and other long-life foods
3. common medicines such as ibuprofen
4. hand sanitisers

Raphael: no one who survives a bad flu ever takes disease lightly again. I once stayed perfectly still in bed for two full days because if I sat up to drink water I would vomit. Now I lean on the flu vaccine harder than the guy who cleans the public toilets at Varanasi. If enough rich elderly policy makers get sick, virus testing will become a sacred institution.

On the definition of "incompetence:" I get that there is a distinction between "I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing so I'm going to pull this big red lever and hope for the best," what we could call sheer incompetence, and "I am sold on the idea that light bulbs run on bottled firefly farts, and nothing will ever change my mind," what we might call delusional incompetence. Most politicians show at least some signs of one or the other, but it's a rare treat to see both operating at once.

Here the main things that seem hard to get are paper products (not just toilet paper, but also paper towel, and wipes - but interestingly not facial wipes) and hand sanitizer...