Coronavirus

[wotnot]

While we're all on a pandemic focus -- Tuberculosis is a global pandemic, killing someone approximately every 21 seconds — about 1.5 million in 2018 alone.



*yawn* ...time for bed

[ol' boy]

9am Tuesday EST - Online Teaching just started!

The online Video Conferencing software my Mrs was asked to use won't let her log in, its capped at 99 video uses at one time.
They have 120 teachers
Bahahahahaha, all i'm hearing is swearing

Did the Australian Internet just take a huge hit or what?

This is all just going through my phone at my house, 3 laptops, 2 tablets. Video Conferencing and im trying to download 5GB Operating Systems for my MacBook

P.S. This is a Student Free day! Wait for the kids to log on tomorrow

[wotnot]

9am Tuesday EST - Online Teaching just started!

Told everyone I know to get the hardcopy material sent to them, because many of them are on wifi/sat internet, and this was always going to happen...et_voila, it has! Printed material is basically a hardcopy of the curriculum, replete with cheatsheet on back page containing all the answers.

Everyone knew this, yes? (this was 2weeks ago now I passed that advice out)...it was on their website (edu-qld)

[Tiny]

While we're all on a pandemic focus -- Tuberculosis is a global pandemic, killing someone approximately every 21 seconds — about 1.5 million in 2018 alone.



*yawn* ...time for bed

You & Trash may have misunderstood my point & the subject matter of the article I linked, pandemics are only the symptom of the human populations current unsustainable growth. We are increasing in number at the rate of a plague.

When, under especially favourable conditions any species’ population balloons, it is always deflated by one or several forms of negative feedback — disease, inadequate habitat, self-pollution, food shortages, resource scarcity, conflict over what’s left (war), etc. All of these various countervailing forces are triggered by excess population itself.
True, in simple ecosystems certain consuming species may exhibit regular cycles of uncontrolled expansion. We sometimes refer to these outbreaks as “plagues” — think swarms of locusts or rodents.


However, the plague phase of the cycle invariably ends in collapse as negative feedback once again gains the upper hand.


Bottom line? There are no exceptions to the first law of plague dynamics: the unconstrained expansion of any species’ population invariably destroys the conditions that enabled the expansion, thus triggering collapse.

[wotnot]

You & Trash may have misunderstood my point & the subject matter of the article I linked, pandemics are only the symptom of the human populations current unsustainable growth. We are increasing in number at the rate of a plague.

No no, your point was taken & well understood ... we have a recent historical example of exactly what you referenced -->

The origin of polio

Infectious diseases are generally believed to arise from the interplay of various developments such as humans’ settlement in urban structures, crowding that causes poor hygiene, food shortages enhancing populations’ morbidity, and the domestication of animals. The exact origins of the disease are not known, but based on the characteristics of the disease, epidemiologists are able to hypothesize how the disease has evolved and spread.
Because the disease requires a human host and does not survive outside the human body for longer than one to two weeks, the disease could only have developed when humans started to settle in larger agglomerations

I was merely pointing out, the TB pandemic is still ongoing (and that is despite having an antibiotic to cure/treat)...150years and still killing 1.5million a year.

I see these 'flu strains in the same light ; they are an ongoing pandemic that rides on the back of mankind's proliferating numbers ; the numbers keep increasing, so will the incidents of this happening

[Mr 672A]

Told everyone I know to get the hardcopy material sent to them, because many of them are on wifi/sat internet, and this was always going to happen...et_voila, it has! Printed material is basically a hardcopy of the curriculum, replete with cheatsheet on back page containing all the answers.

Everyone knew this, yes? (this was 2weeks ago now I passed that advice out)...it was on their website (edu-qld)

This will be the end for school teachers as we know. In the next 15 years we will have robot teachers that wont be effected with COVID 20+ so I say for the Teachers better find another job because their job wont be around long

[enf]

The World Health Organisation shows just how compromised by China they are and how useless they have become....FFS...

Coronavirus Australia: Scott Morrison pressures WHO as China re-opens wet markets

theaustralian.com.au2:14
China’s wet markets are ‘archaic, unhygienic and wrong’
Ben Packham
FOREIGN AFFAIRS AND DEFENCE CORRESPONDENT
@bennpackham
6:14AM April 14, 2020
431 Comments

The World Health Organisation has backed the reopening of China’s notorious wet markets, prompting calls from Scott Morrison for greater “transparency” from the UN body on the causes of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Despite strong evidence the coronavirus originated in a Wuhan wet market, the WHO said it did not support the closure of the markets “because they are a source of livelihood and food security to many people”.

But the Prime Minister said he was not yet satisfied that wet markets could be made safe, and warned the WHO must play a central role in ensuring the world did not face a repeat of COVID-19.

“Australia and the world will be looking to organisations like the WHO to ensure lessons are learned from the devastating coronavirus outbreak,” Mr Morrison told The Australian.

“There must be transparency in understanding how it began in Wuhan and how it was transmitted. We also need to fully understand and protect against the global health threat posed by places like wet markets.”

The call represents an escalation in Australian government pressure on the WHO, after earlier calls by Mr Morrison for the global body to “do something” about wet markets. It follows global criticism of the WHO’s response to the pandemic, including accusations its director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, allowed China to under-report the impact of the virus in Wuhan.

As China’s wet markets reopen, the WHO told The Australian the facilities could be made safe with proper regulation. “With adequate facilities, proper regulation and good hygiene practices it is possible to have safe food sold in wet markets,” the WHO’s Western Pacific regional headquarters said.

But Australian MPs from both sides of politics condemned the advice, saying the markets — which also gave rise to SARS in 2003 — presented a risk to the world.

“Are we really to believe the Chinese Communist Party can’t eradicate wet markets?” Liberal MP Andrew Hastie said. “They can build artificial islands in the South China Sea, in the face of international opposition. Closing the wet markets should be child’s play by comparison. It’s a question of will.”

Mr Hastie, chair of the parliament’s intelligence and security committee, said the WHO’s advice was dubious “after the way they handled the pandemic”.

Liberal senator James Paterson said China needed to get its “house in order” if it wanted to be a global leader. “Allowing bad hygiene and poor food handling practices to flourish despite years of warnings about the danger to human health does not meet that test,” he said.

Labor MP Peter Khalil said it was “preposterous” to claim the markets could be made safe.

“Unless they can demonstrate that the regulations, the health and safety measures, are so strict that they can completely cut off the risk factors, they’re going to have to shut them down. It’s happened with SARS. It’s happened with avian influenza. It’s happened with COVID-19. Next time it might be an even worse virus.”

Scientists found coronaviruses close to the one that causes COVID-19 in horseshoe bats and pangolins, an endangered anteater, found at Chinese wet markets.

But the WHO said it was satisfied the Chinese government was up to the challenge of cleaning up the country’s wet markets. “The government of China banned the trade of wildlife and strengthened hygiene standards in local wet markets in February,’’ it said.

President Donald Trump has railed against the WHO, declaring the US would “put a hold on money” for the organisation.

[ol' boy]

Looks like Money and Personal Safety speaks volumes once again

[shred]

The World Health Organisation shows just how compromised by China they are and how useless they have become....FFS...

Of all the things to _not_ do... re-opening the wet markets. Didn't SARS or one of those earlier nasty viruses come from the same source?

I'm amused at WHO trying to tell countries what to do now. It was their inaction that allowed this terrible disease to progress outside China in the first place.

[enf]

Of all the things to _not_ do... re-opening the wet markets. Didn't SARS or one of those earlier nasty viruses come from the same source?

I'm amused at WHO trying to tell countries what to do now. It was their inaction that allowed this terrible disease to progress outside China in the first place.

Spot on!! More than SARS...I think some of the others were suspected from there as well.......unbelievable!!

It's rare that I agree with Trump. I suppose he has to get things right occasionally....

[DB44]

Re-opening the wet markets can only be taken one way. It is a #### you to the rest of the world.

[alpha0ne]

Re-opening the wet markets can only be taken one way. It is a #### you to the rest of the world.

butbutbutbutbut its their (Chineese) culture to slaughter and eat endangered wildlife

How dare you criticize another countries culture.............. because according to someone in Canada called Trudeau... western white ppl/countries don't have an identity/culture

[kclar]

[george65]

Wet markets were an excuse. This china flu was created in the nearby lab and got out either accidentally or deliberately.

My money is on the latter.

[trash]

You & Trash may have misunderstood my point....

Nar, we got it. And on the face of it we're not arguing with it or disagreeing.
I was just helping you "thin out the numbers" as Ned and Jimbo would say on South Park.

However I will say at the face of it, the self loathing of humanity is something that we usually associate with the Greens.
All the world's problems are human. Reality is that most of humanities problems are human. The universe doesn't give a fvck. If you get in the way of one species, you get eaten or trampled. The success of one organism is not in any way amoral. When bacteria bloom out of control is it there fault they're so successful?
Of course not, evolution rewards success.
If you're too successful as a species, then your resources or hosts are depleted and success moves from the team to the individual.
If you're not one of the winners, then understanding you're not going to win the lottery is not going to stop people playing.

I'll remind you of the poor frogs. You've heard the frogs are endangered and might become extinct. No. No ever (in context).
Most frog species will go extinct, but not all of them. I will draw your attention to Bufo Marinus. The cane toad.
When humans are long gone and cockroaches have inherited the earth, cane toads will still be there to eat them.


What your suggesting is one bacterium in a colony realising its future is determined by limited resources and signaling to all the other bacterium to reduce consumption to a minimum and control their numbers by minimising offspring. This is not an evolutionary success story.
The bad guy bacterium at the edge of the dish ignores the signal and his kind outbreed and take over. Evolutionary success and we're now back where we started.

You can see the problem but are completely helpless to prevent it while knowing that you are part of the problem and more importantly removing yourself from the equation makes absolutely no difference.

When you are capable of doing something and addressing the problem, guess who you are?
A James Bond Super Villain.



So back to the beginning of the post. yep. I fully understand your point that humanity behaves like a plague.
Here's your Yellow Jumpsuit, padded headwear and gun. Now get back in line and round up some hot chicks and put them in my space shuttle.

[george65]

I am not a betting man and know really nothing about it. I have been told that there are agencies out there that you can bet on about anything.
Just Musing over this situation, I was wondering what sort of odds one might get, if once could bet, on The world being afflicted by a Deadly Virus and Closing Pubs, Clubs, Churches and all social gatherings and people not being allowed to Travel in Australia?

For those in the know, would you be able to place a bet like this say a year or 2 out?
If so, what sort of odds might one Get? 100:1, 1000:1?

Just seems that what we are going through would make one sound like a total crackpot even a year ago but If one did front some betting organisation, it would seem they would be very happy to take a nutters money. If that would be the case, what sort of odds do you think one would get?

In my clueless assumption, seems to me $10K could have a VERY good return?

[wotnot]

Nar, we got it. And on the face of it we're not arguing with it or disagreeing.
I was just helping you "thin out the numbers" as Ned and Jimbo would say on South Park.

However I will say at the face of it, the self loathing of humanity is something that we usually associate with the Greens.
All the world's problems are human. Reality is that most of humanities problems are human. The universe doesn't give a fvck. If you get in the way of one species, you get eaten or trampled. The success of one organism is not in any way amoral. When bacteria bloom out of control is it there fault they're so successful?
Of course not, evolution rewards success.
If you're too successful as a species, then your resources or hosts are depleted and success moves from the team to the individual.
If you're not one of the winners, then understanding you're not going to win the lottery is not going to stop people playing.

I'll remind you of the poor frogs. You've heard the frogs are endangered and might become extinct. No. No ever (in context).
Most frog species will go extinct, but not all of them. I will draw your attention to Bufo Marinus. The cane toad.
When humans are long gone and cockroaches have inherited the earth, cane toads will still be there to eat them.


What your suggesting is one bacterium in a colony realising its future is determined by limited resources and signaling to all the other bacterium to reduce consumption to a minimum and control their numbers by minimising offspring. This is not an evolutionary success story.
The bad guy bacterium at the edge of the dish ignores the signal and his kind outbreed and take over. Evolutionary success and we're now back where we started.

You can see the problem but are completely helpless to prevent it while knowing that you are part of the problem and more importantly removing yourself from the equation makes absolutely no difference.

Yep, the members of humanity have some gradiosed opinion that themselves, human beings, are somehow above or exempt from that which governs all life on Earth. It's quite astoundingly daft =) Get a petri dish, coat the inside with nutrient agar... this, is your planet Earth model. Introduce an organism, and it consumes the available resources, and it's numbers grow. Once the numbers reach a certain point, there's not enough food to feed the population, and it starts dying of due to disease and infections caused by it's own life excrement & waste...and it dies off. Something comes along that can make use of that mass extinction event, perhaps a fungal spore, that's adapted to that particular existence of living off the waste of a fallen species ~ life, will find a way. Worth, in The Cube ..."(we're all part of) a headless blunder proceeding under the illusion of a master plan - there is no plan" That's the problem. There is a political argument but it's much more basal ; people put up with every increasing social density, and ever decreasing size of house blocks...if you get that far, and don't end up in apartments. 'Modern' living, has it's drawbacks, one of which being that other lifeforms that adapt to another species living in a particular manner, become part of a symbiotic relationship, like it all not.

Folks think something like a virulent life threatening 'flu strain is a bad thing ; what you are seeing, is a truly wondrous thing. Take my own pair of shoes for a moment, having lived 30+ years with HCV (hep-c) infecting my liver and rendering it slowly into scar tissue. Part of the (10 years worth of) research into a cure, determined that in order to replicate, the virus needed a particular protein. They synthesized an inhibitor that would bind with the virus' receptors for this protein, thus blocking the virus cell's access to this protein, thus removing it's ability to replicate, and the standard application of peg/ribovarin was used to kill of the existing viral load. I was part of the clinical trial for said drug. In the space of a 10week course of treatment, the virus figured out how to adapt and utilize another protein type so it could continue to replicate. How many thousands of years did it take monkeys to evolve prehensile thumbs. Since records of HCV exist, hepatitis C have evolved and mutated into 7 different genomes, so it can get along in all different blood types. Right now, today, HCV is becoming part of the human genome in some way shape or form, due to it's ability to infect a host and show no indications of it's presence for the entirety of a person's life. Yet in others, it can suddenly multiply it's population exponentially, and kill a person in under 5years due to complications arising from acute and chronic onset of liver cirrhosis.

As you point out, whether by accident, contrivance, sanity conditions, wet markets, people who eat bats, conspiracy related world domination theories riding on the back of an innocent virus, one thing is for certain - mankind has done this to itself, because it keeps carrying on like a bunch of brainless bacteria in a petri dish ; the species future is assured to be a negative outcome. I think I can rest assured that if I can sense the need for a cull in human numbers on the planet, someone in a position of power is sitting there realizing exactly the same thing, and they have the means to accomplish those ends. You can kick back and watch these virus' demonstrate Darwinian theory in real time near abouts...(in my case, in my own body =), or you can watch this strain of 'flu have a go at the Guinness world record for the worst pandemic in recorded human history. At some level, you have to sit there, as an animal with a thinking brain, and in consideration of the planet, and all other life upon it, would the Earth be a better place with 5billion *less* people on it? IMHO, yes.

Don't worry, I'll be gone in under 20years, turn my body over to the PA surgical training unit, keep adding to that already huge medical record even posthumously,.help give others the skills to save others ; you don't have to be alive to help. It'd help if another 4.9something billion other people celebrated upon my death, by dying as well out of sheer apathy or something....hahaha. I can imagine everyone running inside to fit their suicide vests, and all detonating at the exact same moment in time, yelling 'free the planet!' ...all in lower case =)

[wotnot]

I am not a betting man and know really nothing about it. I have been told that there are agencies out there that you can bet on about anything.
Just Musing over this situation, I was wondering what sort of odds one might get, if once could bet, on The world being afflicted by a Deadly Virus and Closing Pubs, Clubs, Churches and all social gatherings and people not being allowed to Travel in Australia?

For those in the know, would you be able to place a bet like this say a year or 2 out?
If so, what sort of odds might one Get? 100:1, 1000:1?

Just seems that what we are going through would make one sound like a total crackpot even a year ago but If one did front some betting organisation, it would seem they would be very happy to take a nutters money. If that would be the case, what sort of odds do you think one would get?

In my clueless assumption, seems to me $10K could have a VERY good return?

Yeah, that wouldn't surprise me, a lot depends on market research they do into what the punters want, but things like this...as yet.... would be very long term bets, probably too long for your average punter perhaps. When/if global population reaches 10billion+ however, the book would start to tick over more frequently.

[enf]

From The Australian...

[ol' boy]

Wow, France and the UK just getting worse.
And such extreme lock downs...