The flight to Colorado next to me is less then 50% full. 85 passengers, 90 empty seats. Announcer telling people they can upgrade for $40
The flight to Colorado next to me is less then 50% full. 85 passengers, 90 empty seats. Announcer telling people they can upgrade for $40
Sorta around sometimes for some of your shitty mod needs.
The problem I worry about with experts is they sometimes spend so much time in their bubble, they have trouble thinking outside the box.
Someone around here has a tag line "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face".
With President Trump, do we really think he is being given the best information available and choosing to ignore it? How much of the response falls to state / local governments? Are they requesting Federal support and NOT getting what they ask for? If so, I haven't heard about it.
This is my concern. And why I'm doubtful much would change under a different administration.Originally Posted by Redhat
It’d be awesome if we could keep this thread as a valuable collection of good info with the occasional humorous diversion like is to be expected, it is obviously being used.
Could you and @RevolverRob take the political shit to the political thread please.
Last edited by Caballoflaco; 03-12-2020 at 09:33 PM.
Well, shoot. We were going to fly our son home from his university for a family/church event, but the church just cancelled all meetings until further notice, and his university just announced they’re closing the day after his return ticket.
And the darn airline won’t answer their phone.
Wonder why?
Oh, well. At least his car’s wheel bearings/bushings are worn out, and it’s a ‘98 civic, so him driving home isn’t happening. I’m probably going to drive up there, sell the stupid civic, load him up, and bring him home. At least it’s my spring break next week, right?
Well, at least you'll have plenty of time to talk!
Which is no small thing these days.
https://www.latimes.com/california/s...HV_40-ARrKkPJI
California Gov. Gavin Newsom released a sweeping executive order on Thursday that allows the state to commandeer hotels and medical facilities to treat coronavirus patients and permits government officials to hold teleconferences in private without violating open meeting laws.
Newsom issued the order hours after he called for the cancellation of gatherings of 250 or more people, marking the first time he has applied so-called social distancing practices to the entire state of California. — Los Angeles Times
Maybe Martial Law is next?
Maybe China's numbers can give us some hope on this thing have a 2'ish-month burn time:
On March 2 - China broke 80k, they were increasing at roughly 600 new cases per day throughout most of February. Since March 2, only 900 new cases, today March 12, they are at 80.9k. That's ~150 new cases a day.
Of course, the global numbers don't bring much solace. In two days we've seen 10,000 new cases globally. This is similar to the trend in China that lasted roughly 3.5-weeks, with 2k'ish new cases a day, until it started leveling out.
I'd have to run the numbers and it's tough to say - for sure - for sure - but I'd guess for every day we have social distancing measures in place, we can cut infection rate by almost an order of magnitude. Which is, of course, the idea. We won't stop the virus, we're merely slowing it down. Instead of 2,000 new infections a day, we can get that to 200. BUT we have to maintain the social distancing measures for the full cycle of the virus - judging from the Chinese data, that's at least 8 weeks and probably closer to 12.
I have a hard time imagining the United States staying on self-imposed lock down for 12-weeks. I can hope.
I don't know if I'll ever catch up with this thread. I'm not in NC anymore, but I know that the academic medical centers there are working hard to get tests online (based on first hand info I received from a former lab mate who is now in the middle of that effort). Not specific to NC, but you can expect academic medical centers to likely surge to the mid-hundreds per day in test volume. The red tape around this is very complicated. Tests have to be performed in labs that meet certain standards and performed by certified technicians with documented competencies. I can do RNA extractions and RT-PCR in my research lab all day long, but they wouldn't be valid clinical tests despite my diligence and ability. In some of their guidance, the FDA has commented specifically on the importance of test validation. Basically because we are in the midst of this pandemic, the public health implications of the test are significantly greater than under normal circumstances, so validation and QC is extra important.Same conference NC governor said we only got capacity to do 300 tests.At some point academic labs in the research triangle should just say F it and start running their own tests for the state if the FDA/CDC still can't get it together after twiddling their thumbs for the past 7 weeks.
To my great surprise, I've become heavily involved in getting our testing online. Figuring out a way to surge to 500 tests a day while simultaneously carrying out the non-coronavirus test volume of the institution is a challenge, to say the least. No one buys a bunch of extra hundred thousand dollar machines on the chance that they might need them some day. No one has extra lab space kitted out and ready to go just in case, nor are extra employees kept on payroll just for emergencies.
Put another way, let's say you have a factory that builds 1000 rifles a day and 1000 pistols and then I told you that next week (NEXT WEEK!!!) you have to build 1000 rifles a day but that you must up your pistol production to 5000 per day. The answer is that you make a list of every piece of equipment that you have that you can plug into the system, figure out the rate limiter in the system, and then attack that with whatever you can think of. Remember that not all employees are trained on all equipment. Then you have to plan for what happens when your equipment breaks because if you run things too hard, they have a tendency to break. Lots of other pistol/rifle factories are upping their production by the same amount at the same time, and their equipment is breaking too, so equipment is back ordered. The different companies in the industry buy their small parts from the same vendors, and now that there has been a rush, the small parts are all on back order too. Then, if by some miracle, you solve all of these problems, you have to think about what you'll do if a bunch of your employees all get sick at the same time. Remember...1000 rifles per day and 5000 pistols...gotta make it happen!
Nationally, we are not doing a good job understanding how big this is going to be. I communicated with a different former lab mate in another state and asked what the testing situation was at his institution. He said that their guidance was that by the end of the week that commercial labs would have the capacity to meet the needs of his entire state. I asked him how anyone knew what those needs would be, and he said that no one does know. If we are lucky, the social distancing measures will buy us some time so the system isn't overwhelmed. As people get sick and recover, they basically become a buffer in the population that helps slow the spread of the virus (i.e. the reduce the frequency of susceptible contacts). Every day that goes by before this thing blows up makes for a slightly less awful worst case scenario.
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