Photos show how San Francisco emerged from a lockdown too soon during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, leading to an even deadlier 2nd wave that rampaged through the city.
I'm participating in a virtual running race today that was devised by a local race director to keep people having fun during the COVID-19 shelter-in-place.
It's called the Yeti Ultra 24 Hour Challenge. Participants have to run five miles every four hours over a 24-hour time period. We have to do the five miles every four hours and we cannot combine the miles into one run or anything of that sort. We can choose when and where we want to start the 24-hour challenge, but we have to observe social distance protocols by running alone and recording our run results via smartphone GPS apps or GPS watches. This will be six five-mile runs over 24 hours, totaling 30 miles.
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Great Owl
I just finished the fifth five-mile run...
April 25 @ 4:00 a.m. - 5.0 miles at a 9:39 minutes/mile average pace
April 25 @ 8:00 a.m. - 5.0 miles at a 8:33 minutes/mile average pace
April 25 @ 12:00 p.m. - 5.0 miles at a 8:25 minutes/mile average pace
April 25 @ 4:00 p.m. - 5.0 miles at a 8:10 minutes/mile average pace
April 25 @ 8:00 p.m. - 5.0 miles at a 8:51 minutes/mile average pace
April 26 @ 12:00 a.m. - ?
The wheels on the Great Owl bus are starting to fall off, but I'll be good for the final five miles in a couple of hours.
Done!
April 25 @ 4:00 a.m. - 5.0 miles at a 9:39 minutes/mile average pace
April 25 @ 8:00 a.m. - 5.0 miles at a 8:33 minutes/mile average pace
April 25 @ 12:00 p.m. - 5.0 miles at a 8:25 minutes/mile average pace
April 25 @ 4:00 p.m. - 5.0 miles at a 8:10 minutes/mile average pace
April 25 @ 8:00 p.m. - 5.0 miles at a 8:51 minutes/mile average pace
April 26 @ 12:00 a.m. - 5.0 miles at a 9:20 minutes/mile average pace
Remind me never to do that again...
Last edited by The Great Owl; 04-26-2020 at 05:07 AM.
Tax filers who don’t have direct-deposit information at the IRS will get checks mailed to them. The first batch of more than five million checks has been going out already, according to the Treasury.
More big chunks will go soon. Social Security recipients who don’t file tax returns should get their money by Wednesday. People who get Supplemental Security Income benefits and veterans benefits but don’t file tax returns should get theirs by early May.
The rest will dribble out as checks are mailed over the next few months, unless people can successfully update their direct-deposit information.
Quote:
Then, the agency’s call centers were flooded with inquiries. Now, they’re closed because of the coronavirus outbreak. Mail to the IRS is piling up in trailers because its buildings are shut and post offices lack space.
I guess I won't be getting into the "get my payment" page to update my payment info until they open up their call center again months from now. It could be due to my paper return not getting processed, or it could just as likely be the multiple ways I could enter in my address, since it includes an apartment #. This is discussed here:
"Epic fail: "Get My Payment" doesn't handle addresses properly, especially apartments"
"Scientists fear the hunt for a coronavirus vaccine will fail and we will all have to live with the 'constant threat' of COVID-19"
Great, more fuel for conspiracy theorists
Best one I've heard (so far): That the wealthy and powerful commissioned a "poor" virus to purge anyone not in the top 1%. There's a LOT of material out there for sci-fi/horror writers
I'm starting to see it happen. It was inevitable, it's human nature. Many people have put themselves under firm lockdown guidelines for at least six weeks. But each day goes past and they don't die. They don't even get sick. Family is fine, they haven't been sick. Neighbors seem good. Hell, they may not even personally know anyone who had any real health complications from coronavirus. That's when one begins to ask themselves, "Do I really need to be this serious about all of it?" And then the snowball effect begins.
"We can at least let mom and dad over. They're dying to see the baby, they can stand some six feet away and wear masks."
"We should be able to catch up with friends for beers.
We'll stay in the backyard. It won't be too many of us, probably 6 or 7"
"How dangerous could it be to shoot hoops with the guys? They're all fine, nobody is sick"
"It's beautiful out, let's take the kids to the beach. Everyone else is doing it."
Each day I walk my dogs, go for a run and take the baby for a stroll. Most days, anyway. Weather hasn't been consistent in my area. But yesterday was a gorgeous Saturday, and I was shocked at how many large gatherings I witnessed. People are beginning to decide for themselves that it's time.
Trust me, I get it. I miss my family dearly. My close friends just had a baby, and I have no idea when I'll actually be able to meet him. Like everyone else I'm making numerous sacrifices and literally putting certain goals and ambitions on indefinite hold. Things I have worked very hard for, opportunities I did everything I had to do earn that were taken away from me.
The worst part is the unknown. People can't deal with something that doesn't have a good answer. There is no date that it's all over, no countdown to quarantine ending. The virus determines the timeline, and the sooner we all make peace with that the sooner we get through this. Please be patient. Keep it together. Show some will power and resolve.
Last edited by Moe Szyslak; 04-26-2020 at 04:29 PM.
in the best of cases a vaccine is a long shot and in this case an extremely long one.
1) 4 of the viruses that make up the common cold are corona viruses, there are corona viruses that infect cats and dogs and the reason we guess this came ultimately from bats is its genetics, we had SARS and MERS that were extremely scary. We have had flue vaccines for a while but no corona virus vaccine ever for any of them.
2) do you read the reports coming out of China and South Korea and (areas hit earlier on) and the WHO? more and more people that showed up as positive (had covid-19) and then negative (got well) are having symptoms again and retesting positive? maybe the negatives tests were wrong, maybe the virus went dormant, maybe these people re-caught it weeks after getting better. If it is the first then it is meaningless but if it is anything near the latter two possibilities then making a vaccine becomes a much harder task and would require a lot more testing.
For the first time, one of the many COVID-19 vaccines in development has protected an animal, rhesus macaques, from infection by the new coronavirus, scientists report. The vaccine, an old-fashioned formulation consisting of a chemically inactivated version of the virus, produced no obvious side effects in the monkeys, and human trials began on 16 April.
Researchers from Sinovac Biotech, a privately held Beijing-based company, gave two different doses of their COVID-19 vaccine to a total of eight rhesus macaque monkeys. Three weeks later, the group introduced SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, into the monkeys’ lungs through tubes down their tracheas, and none developed a full-blown infection.
The monkeys given the highest dose of vaccine had the best response: Seven days after the animals received the virus, researchers could not detect it in the pharynx or lungs of any of them. Some of the lower dosed animals had a “viral blip” but also appeared to have controlled the infection, the Sinovac team reports in a paper published on 19 April on the preprint server bioRxiv. In contrast, four control animals developed high levels of viral RNA in several body parts and severe pneumonia. The results “give us a lot of confidence” that the vaccine will work in humans, says Meng Weining, Sinovac’s senior director for overseas regulatory affairs.
“I like it,” says Florian Krammer, a virologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai who has co-authored a status report about the many different COVID-19 vaccines in development. “This is old school but it might work. What I like most is that many vaccine producers, also in lower–middle-income countries, could make such a vaccine.”
But Douglas Reed of the University of Pittsburgh, who is developing and testing COVID-19 vaccines in monkey studies, says the number of animals was too small to yield statistically significant results. His team also has a manuscript in preparation that raises concerns about the way the Sinovac team grew the stock of novel coronavirus used to challenge the animals: It may have caused changes that make it less reflective of the ones that infect humans.
Another concern is that monkeys do not develop the most severe symptoms that SARS-CoV-2 causes in humans. The Sinovac researchers acknowledge in the paper that “It’s still too early to define the best animal model for studying SARS-CoV-2,” but noted that unvaccinated rhesus macaques given the virus “mimic COVID-19-like symptoms.”
The study also addressed worries that partial protection could be dangerous. Earlier animal experiments with vaccines against the related coronaviruses that cause severe acute respiratory syndrome and Middle East respiratory syndrome had found that low antibody levels could lead to aberrant immune responses when an animal was given the pathogens, enhancing the infection and causing pathology in their lungs. But the Sinovac team did not find any evidence of lung damage in vaccinated animals who produced relatively low levels of antibodies, which “lessens the concern about vaccine enhancement,” Reed says. “More work needs to be done though.”
SARS-CoV-2 seems to accumulate mutations slowly; even so, variants might pose a challenge for a vaccine. In test tube experiments, the Sinovac researchers mixed antibodies taken from monkeys, rats, and mice given their vaccine with strains of the virus isolated from COVID-19 patients in China, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, and the United Kingdom. The antibodies potently “neutralized” all the strains, which are “widely scattered on the phylogenic tree,” the researchers noted.
“This provides strong evidence that the virus is not mutating in a way that would make it resistant to a #COVID19 vaccine,” tweeted immunologist Mark Slifka of Oregon Health & Science University. “Good to know.”
Sinovac is an experienced vaccinemaker—it has marketed inactivated viral vaccines for hand, foot, and mouth disease; hepatitis A and B; and H5N1 influenza or bird flu. But Meng says it could produce, at most, about 100 million doses of the vaccine and might need to partner with other makers if the company’s COVID-19 vaccine proves safe and effective in human trials.
The company recently started phase I clinical trials in Jiangsu province, north of Shanghai, which aim to gauge safety and immune responses in 144 volunteers. An equal number of participants will receive the high and low doses or a placebo. Although placebos are not typically used in phase I studies—which do not assess efficacy—Meng says this can help better evaluate whether the vaccine causes any dangerous side effects. The company hopes to start phase II studies by mid-May that have the same design but enroll more than 1000 people, with results due by the end of June.
If all goes well, Meng says, Sinovac will seek to launch traditional phase III efficacy trials that compare the vaccine with a placebo in thousands of people. The company has also discussed joining international vaccine trials being organized by the World Health Organization (WHO). Given the low level of transmission now occurring in China, the company is considering still more efficacy trials in other countries being hit harder by the virus. “We can’t put all our eggs in one basket,” Meng says.
To quickly obtain more efficacy data after the phase I and II trials and potentially help people, Meng says Sinovac may ask regulatory agencies in China and other countries for emergency authorization to give the vaccine to those at high risk of becoming infected, such as customs agents and police officers who do not typically wear the protective gear used by health care workers. The Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2018 began to widely use an experimental Ebola vaccine under that status and the evidence suggests it powerfully helped curb that epidemic. (That Ebola vaccine first received regulatory approval in November 2019.)
According to WHO, six other vaccines had entered human trials as of 23 April, and 77 others were in development. The vast majority of these vaccines use the modern tools of genetic engineering—only four rely on the old-fashioned inactivation technology—but Meng says what ultimately matters is whether a vaccine is safe and effective, not how it’s made. “We are not comparing ourselves to anyone,” Meng says. “In this pandemic situation, the most important thing is to make a vaccine, no matter what kind of vaccine it is, that’s safe and effective as soon as possible.”
Plenty of reasons to remain doubtful of course, it's from China, it's with monkeys, it's a small sample, etc..
Just had a friend get pissy with me because I posted a link on Facebook to the article saying scientists weren't sure there'd ever be an effective vaccine.
Apparently you're only supposed to post meme's or shiny, happy, positive 'we're all in this together' type drivel.
They refuse to even consider the 'what if' scenario.
Finally able to log into IRS site after trying my address many different ways. It says I'm eligible and I'm assuming my check won't be mailed until mid-May.
Will it make a difference entering my bank info and trying to get it sent there? Anyone do this yet and how long of a wait was it?
Best one I've heard (so far): That the wealthy and powerful commissioned a "poor" virus to purge anyone not in the top 1%. There's a LOT of material out there for sci-fi/horror writers
In my area, 5G towers seems to be the biggest conspiracy. Sharing non-confirmed links of its dangers. Sharing links from their cell phones using their wifi or 4G connections. I have to laugh.
If 5G worries you so much, go move somewhere remote like Wyoming and get rid of your Wifi and cell phone.
"Scientists fear the hunt for a coronavirus vaccine will fail and we will all have to live with the 'constant threat' of COVID-19"
Don't let the bleak click-bait articles like this get you down.
Right now, the scientists and medical professionals of the world are focused on a singular effort like never before in history. It's just like the film, The Martian. The world is going to “science the shit out of this.” Good things will inevitably result.
More people are going to die from COVID-19, and the situation will probably get a good deal worse before it gets better, but it will get better, or, at least, bearable. Always remember that.
A wise man once said, "If you're going through Hell, then keep going.” The world will keep going.
Most younger people today, myself included, have never been through a time when the world stood on the edge of the abyss and looked down at the Hell that served as a possible future. World War II was one such era, as was the aftermath of that war, especially in areas like war-torn Russia, where starving people baked wood chips into their bread so that it would give their stomachs a fuller feeling. People my age and younger have never experienced hard times like that as a collective society, and COVID-19 could perhaps be the wake-up call for us that. During those hard times before, though, people endured and things improved. Our current situation will be no exception.
We may be going through Hell right now, but we're going to keep going.
Don't let the bleak click-bait articles like this get you down.
That article isn't that click bait. We have tried to make a vaccine for sars and if you got sars or a corona virus varient after getting the vaccine your mortality rate was actually higher. catching corona viruses including covid 19 seem to generally only give temporary immunity. We should at least acknowledge the fact that their are decent odds we cant make a viable vaccine for this.
epidemiologists basically talked about this back in late January saying don't count on us making a vaccine because past vaccine attempts have failed for other corona viruses.
I do wonder if we could burn it out of the world either by allowing everyone to get it before immunity fades or by locking everything down to such an extreme level for 3 months that R is zero long enough that nobody has the disease to start this whole thing up again. The problem is some wild life can catch it with wildlife populations as carriers it might be impossible to ever get rid of this thing.
then even if they don’t know what IgG and IgM are, never mind having taken a class in basic Immunology, much less being able to draw them by heart, send the culprits this video to wake them up –
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