3441

I feel sure we have some US vets here. I read in The Military Times that a corona virus positive test will be a permanent disqualification for any new recruits. I have no military experience since wheelchair is also a hard no. Can any of y’all shed anymore light on this? Thanks in advance David

3442

Not peer reviewed yet, but not so easy to develop a vaccine as a significant mutation has been reported.

https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/world/2020/05/672_287862.html

3443

Weird enough, the research suggests that the mutation makes it less likely for the spike protein to bind to its target, which suggests that this strain is less able to infect someone.
Let’s wait for the peer review, it is quite a claim from the news article that this strain, if it is real, would endanger the entire vaccin effort.

speculation mode activated, the following is not based on known facts
In general, even though SARS-CoV-2 seems fairly stable genetically, with so many copies of it manufactured by us humans at the moment, it is not unreasonable to expect mutations to happen at some point that gain function of the virus. No one really knows the likelyhood of that though. Btw, there are rumours around that this is happening already, but at this moment AFAIK no strains that are clearly more deadly or contagious than others have been properly confirmed by science, which for me, unlike for the misinformation minded, implies that for now the rumours are likely not true.

Several governments are making a mess of keeping the numbers of infections low, but apart from their obvious duty to protect their citizens, they also have a less obvious responsibility to the rest of the world to keep the virus copy numbers low to reduce the mutation rate, which is lineair with the number of virus particles around. Governments of larger countries of course have larger responsibility because of the larger amount of virus particles that they potentially will manufacture within their borders.

This is also an individual responsibility for all people to not contract the virus, even for those who will develop only mild or no symptons. Everyone who gets infected, multiples the virus and thereby aids the mutation rate.
But I doubt many feel that particular responsibility to mankind :party:
[/ speculation mode ]

3444

Most never played Plague Inc. :laughing: so they don’t understand that high infection rates increase the chances the virus has to mutate (I see the DNA points increasing like crazy :smiley: ). Of course some people that played Plague Inc. read too much into game mechanics and believe that mutations are somehow beamed (through 5G?) into every copy of the virus at once. :partying_face:

Game mechanics is also the reason the virus in Plague Inc. can always destroy mankind, mutations that increase mortality too much are harder to propagate in real life.

3445

Ah, that’s what those spikes are on Coronavirus - 5G Antennas! :smiley:
I probably shouldn’t joke like that :weary:

3446

Hmm, sounds plausable, I can visualise that ! :smiley:

(The 5G-Corona virus conspiracy is the most absurd idiotic conspiracy that I have met to date, jokes about that are most welcome)

3447

Trump’s alma mater makes this prediction
“Nearly 350,000 Americans would die of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, before July if all states immediately reopened, according to a new analysis by the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.”

Actually that quote came from Yahoo News

3448

Cool simulator! According to this one, my choice if I was the POTUS :person_with_crown: was to keep all behavioral measures in place and go for partial reopening. But I wonder if the model assumes the testing level to be on par (so 500,000+ per day) and the full package of tracing and isolating to be in place?

But as with all epidemilogical models, be careful, they are useful because they expose the counterintuitive behaviour of an epidemic, which adds to the understanding and gives a better idea of what the outcome could be, but reality can deviate significantly from the model.

But without modelling reality comes as a much bigger surprise, models are very important to find and prepare for the meaningful interventions.

3449

South Korea seems to be the success story that the rest of the 212 countries might want to study, understand and follow. Their test percentage of population is below many others, yet they have stopped the spread. How did they do it? Maybe they have experience from previous pandemics and have put the hard lessons-learned to good use? Not thru sheer quantity of tests, but contact tracing and focused testing and isolation.

Denmark, Norway, New Zealand, Australia and Austria have also done a great job to put the brakes on this corona. A study of their approaches would be interesting too. Quite a range of testing plus land size and population densities.

By contrast, the UK and Russia (#4 & 5) have barrelled up thru the ranks towards the top of that one list you don’t want to be in the top-ten. Russia’s confirmed case count is growing by 10k per day but their reported fatalities are extremely low. UK is growing 5k per day and seems to have a declining daily fatality rate, but is the reporting accurate or does it suffer from the sort of delayed updates used by the state of Georgia in the USA?

3450

They have braked but have not started up yet, which is the bigger challenge.

New Zealand/Australia have such low numbers now that they have the opportunity to eradicate the virus entirely for the moment and because they are islands that status is easier to maintain. This makes life much easier for them.

Denmark and Norway have a harder time re-opening. I understand that Denmark, after easening a package of measures, saw the reproduction rate of the virus go up already from 0.6 to 1.0. There may not be very much slack in what you can do.

3451

Taking a page from djozz, I also should separate the conspiracy theory I’ve mentioned from the factual information I’ve linked to. Doctors’ observations, studies, and real-world reports from ‘boots on the ground’ are the bulk of what I’ve been posting here. But the whole Gates thing is, I admit, not something I can produce evidence for and is therefore something in “speculation mode.”

About conspiracies: most of us don’t think along those lines, but conspiracies have been a very real part of the human experience throughout man’s existence. We can see them in Brutus’ conspiratorial betrayal of Julius Caesar. The Sanhedrin conspired to put Jesus to death. Cataline conspired to overthrow Rome. Any time people lust for power and see an opportunity to seize it (or maintain it), conspiracy is a possibility. Why is it so hard to conceptualize the possibility of conspiracies existing today? Yet we rarely will have ‘absolute proof’ of one. All we can see are indicators, and many of us would prefer to disbelieve that a person who outwardly appears ‘good’ could be involved in something underhanded.

3452

I’m opposed to conspiracies, however human it appears to be to follow them (personally I’m rather humanly handicapped in that I see them, notice the absence of facts and truth, and immediately loose interest), because they do no good, they are not constructive to solving any problem, instead they break down what is achieved already.

And unlike in the old days there is no excuse of ignorance, everyone on earth who has at least a smartphone, can easily find what are the conspiracies around and choose not to follow and spread them. Promoting conspiracies is not about truth-finding but about political agenda’s, while sneakily keeping that a secret. That is objectively a bad thing.

3453

Great. Now this thread has degenerated to the point where ancient anti-Jewish conspiracy theories are promoted as historical fact. This is where I bow out of the discussion. This is not something with which I feel comfortable being associated, even distantly. Good luck to all.

3454

@NorthernHarrier, it would be a sad thing if you left this thread because of the few misinformation-promotors (I count 3 at the moment), their contribution is not worth too much bothering about.

And besides, I really appreciate your contributions to this thread.

3455

I missed the promotion of anti-Jewish conspiracies being facts in Rexlions post but now I see it. That is regular talk in anti-semitic groups.

@Rexlion, you may want to correct your post about that, I’m not sure if you want to be associated with that, and I’m pretty sure that it is blatantly against the forum rules.

Edit: I have looked things up better (never thought that I would dive into the history of biblical writings of 4 different authors describing the same event) and I think that my judgement was too soon, sorry about that.

3456

I was going to check out this video to see what it is about but it’s already deleted by Youtube. I wonder what makes this video so special since there’s been so many other wildly fake conspiracy theory videos about Bill Gates and Wuhan lab bio weapon with millions of views still on Youtube. No biggie, probably just another video of a new conspiracy theory.

3457

??

Is this portmanteau word the new dog whistle term for “planned epidemic” ideas?

3458

Ooh, goodie! I’ll go post that on my blog, see if the idea takes off… :smiling_imp:

3459

Wait… what?

What’d I miss?

3460

Depends on what’s on her vagenda.

(Many thanks to Walter Bishop!)