Covid-19 (Coronavirus) - Please stay safe, y'all


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To wrestle this thread back to some kind of topic, the boost in numbers in the UK seems to mainly consist of people that have come back from the Diamond Princess or have been to northern Italy on their half term holidays. Seems containment in both places wasn't in place early enough, or wasn't effective.
 
Djoga'Ro said:
So in your country when you use a government services, you get invoiced for what you used?
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Absolutely, In the U.S it is called taxes which apply on multiple levels (Fed, State, county, sometimes even city all stacked on) including payroll taxes, Social Security taxes, sales taxes, vehicle registration, property taxes, personal property taxes.. I could keep going.

Hell my income gets taxed, then if I invest that income my already taxed money gets taxed again (every.single.year. in fact), and then when my daughter inherits my estate it will be taxed again!

I won't ever get back as much as I have put in either.
 
The situation is Sweden is deteriorating fast now. Yesterday the government owned chain of pharmacies reported they were out of face masks and hand sanitizer, the government also banned all flights to and from Iran because they don't trust their official statistics. Today we got 9 new cases and all of which originated from northern Italy. One of those cases are located in Skåne, which means all 3 densly populated regions in Sweden are now affected. The other four are in Stockholm, which is making me consider staying at home until all of this clears up.
 
Why not put all the people with already immunodeficiency at home, and make the healthy people get this virus all at once ?!
In a month you get all the people recovered, the virus dead without hosts, and the people with immunodeficency will then be clear to exit home. :cool:

Code: 
https://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s02e10-chickenpox

chickenpox.JPG
 
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I'm not sure the virus is likely to mutate if it can only infect people who are well equipped to defeat it. Certainly things like bacteria are likely to evolve if people don't take their antibiotics properly. Viruses aren't quite the same though, they're basically just fragments of rna floating around, so it's easily arguable they're not actually alive, and bacteria evidently are because they're a complete unit that can often live in the soil and in water for extended periods. But a virus in a body that can combat it isn't like someone not taking their antibiotics properly, it's more like someone that takes the compete set and the specified interval.
 
levi said:
they're basically just fragments of rna floating around
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Exactly. They cannot mutate on their own. What can cause mutations? I could only think of small chemical disturbances (if that can be a thing at all), radiation, or errors during the copying process.
Since a virus' MO is to make its host cell make huge numbers of copies of the virus, I'd gather an infected host is, where you get the highest prob(-ability) of mutations. The copy process is probably highly reliable, but leaves a chance of error - or no evolution at all. p(mutation leaves a virus functioning) will be less than 1. Ask for the mutated virus to also be more dangerous to the host (so for the mutation to be useful and be useful in a certain way), prob goes down further. Ask for it to get a chance to get multiplied a lot in the host already infected with its predecessor, prob goes down. Throw more hosts at the problem, prob goes up.
 
I don't know for sure. I'd guess it's the same thing that causes evolution, and cancer, namely errors in the copying process, especially since that's what viruses use to reproduce. I'd have thought chemical changes are unlikely to produce one of the valid nucleobases (as they're apparently called), Radiation on a viral strand is most likely just to break it off, if it affects it at all, which I'd have thought is most lilkey to make the genes within ineffective. If we consider them to be the equivalent of a self extracting zip file with a head bit that reproduces the virus's way into cells, and the rest being the genome to be inserted, truncating just that genome might have more unpredictable effects.
 
levi said:
Radiation on a viral strand is most likely just to break it off, if it affects it at all, which I'd have thought is most lilkey to make the genes within ineffective.
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I'd think so, too. But even if it could result in a new functioning virus, what are the chances of a single virion in the cold wide world? (In a host other mechanics I expect to be way more significant.)
levi said:
If we consider them to be the equivalent of a self extracting zip file with a head bit that reproduces the virus's way into cells, and the rest being the genome to be inserted
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Looks like virions are more than just floating RNA or DNA:
en.wikipedia.org

Virus - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
and it's their surface, that gets 'em into cells - also meaning the surface defines the range of host cells:
en.wikipedia.org

Virus - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
(don't miss the preceding subsection Genetic Mutation)
If I got it right now, changes to the virus mostly happen during self-assembly after copying. ?

Interesting, but to circle back: more hosts => more new viruses. And thus infecting every healthy human, might result in catastrophe at some to-be-considered probability, I'd assume.
 
It's remarkable how easy it is for the few companies controlling the news to spread mass panic or whatever emotion they want the masses to experience. And no one ever fact checks the news to the point that it being said in the news is seen as evidence in itself. Personally I need more evidence than a few news reports before I start panicking.
 
There was some ridiculously idiotic lady on the TV (I didn't see the program, but saw a clip), who was calling people who have contracted Covid-19 as "weapons of mass destruction" and "should be escorted away in handcuffs"... previously she had apparently been telling people to not panic.
 
ClockworkCoder said:
There was some ridiculously idiotic lady on the TV (I didn't see the program, but saw a clip), who was calling people who have contracted Covid-19 as "weapons of mass destruction" and "should be escorted away in handcuffs"... previously she had apparently been telling people to not panic.
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TV "News" is nothing but idiots arguing about things they don't know anything about.

Almost none of the political commentators should be saying anything about this subject. It's not within light years of their expertise, such as it is.
 
mrpalmtop said:
TV "News" is nothing but idiots arguing about things they don't know anything about.
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I'd extend that to 99% of "news", and not just TV. Ratings and advertising revenue are more important than facts.

Plus most stuff on the internet is, well... a good illustration of the Dunning-Kruger Effect in action

en.wikipedia.org

Dunning–Kruger effect - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
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