Monday - February 24, 2020

The Winter That Wasn’t

I can’t believe it. It’s 60° today. It’s nearly the end of February. We had a winter like this back in 1998, where you hardly needed a coat and we only had a few short episodes of snow. Same this year. We’ve had plenty of rain, so there’s no drought. But gosh. Thank you Climate Change!

Posted by Drew458     on 02/24/2020 at 12:14 PM   
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   Saturday - February 22, 2020

GMO Zombie Fungus To The Rescue?

How’s that for a green revolution?

Chinese factories are producing thousands of tonnes of a “green zombie fungus” to help fight the swarms of locusts plaguing east Africa.

Metarhizium is a genus of fungi with nearly 50 species – some genetically modified – that is used as a biological insecticide because its roots drill through the insects’ hard exoskeleton and gradually poisons them.

In China it was named lu jiang jun, which means green zombie fungus, because it gradually turns its victims in a green mossy lump.

There are now dozens of factories across the country dedicated to producing its spores and despite the curbs introduced to stop the spread of Covid-19, many of them have resumed operations and are shipping thousands of tonnes to Africa.

These factories are set up in a similar way to breweries, growing the spores on rice which is kept in carefully controlled conditions to ensure the correct temperature and humidity.

Each plant can produce thousands of tonnes of fungi powder per year, each gram of which contains tens of billions of spores.

“I am sending off a truckload right now. Our stock is running out,” said the marketing manager of a production plant in Jiangxi province. “Some customers need it urgently. They need it to kill the locusts.”

The need is particularly pressing in east Africa at the moment, where abnormally high levels of rainfall during the dry season allowed hundreds of billions of locusts to hatch in recent months.

So far the swarms have devastated crops in countries such as Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia and Uganda and are moving on to neighbouring countries.

One disadvantage of the Chinese research is that it is mostly focused on local species, or the East Asia migratory locust. The desert locusts currently swarming east Africa have different genes and behaviour, and Li warned that some methods that work in China might not work elsewhere.

No mention of any side effects. Fungus is pretty tough stuff, nearly as tenacious as mold and yeast. What happens when it gets into the soil and stays there forever? Will it kill every other insect in Africa, including the bees that pollinate crops? Or is this thing so specifically targeted that it only chews up locusts and grasshoppers? And then dies out when they’re gone, instead of mutating and surviving? Shades of Jurassic Park; “life will out”. 

Posted by Drew458     on 02/22/2020 at 12:00 PM   
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   Thursday - February 13, 2020

weather, gak

It’s been November here for about 3 months now. Chilly and damp, sometimes windy. We haven’t had much actual snow, and only a week or so of sustained sub-freezing weather, but it’s been very rainy. It’s rained every day for the past 3 weeks, I’m certain. And we’re having another downpour right now.

My arthritic knees want to be warm and dry, not cold and damp. 

Posted by Drew458     on 02/13/2020 at 12:25 PM   
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   Wednesday - February 12, 2020

New Hampshire Primaries

•   Trump takes 85.5% of GOP votes, more than twice as many votes as Obama 2012

•  Sanders 25.7%, Buttgig 24.4%, Kloubuchar 19.8%, Warren 9.2%, Creepy Uncle Joe 8.4%.

•  Yang and Bennet drop out

Nevada and South Carolina follow New Hampshire – which is an overwhelmingly white state – in the presidential nominating calendar. Biden’s campaign has long considered Nevada and South Carolina – with their far more diverse electorates – as much friendlier ground for the former vice president. And they’ve pointed to South Carolina - with a majority black electorate in the Democratic presidential primary - as their firewall.

Biden - at a campaign kick-off Tuesday night in Columbia, South Carolina, downplayed the results in Iowa and New Hampshire.

“It is important that Iowa and [New Hampshire] have spoken, but, look, we need to hear from Nevada and South Carolina and Super Tuesday and beyond,” Biden told a crowd of supporters.

President Trump’s re-election campaign quickly spotlighted Biden’s abysmal finish in the primary, writing in an email to reporters titled, “Joe Biden Predicted He Would Win New Hampshire. He Just Got Beat Like a Drum—Again.... A crazy socialist and a former small town mayor just crushed the former VP”

South Carolina primary is 2/29
Nevada caucus is 2/22
Super Tuesday is 3/2, when 16 states and territories have their Democrat events

Freakin New Jersey doesn’t come in until June 2, when the game is long over, and does a rubberstamp drop of 107 delegates on whoever has already won the Dem thing. They really should join the Super Tuesday gang, just to get this whole thing settled faster, and to give their people a little voice.

Heck, in this instant information internet age, every state and territory in the whole darn country should do the primaries on the same day. Get it over with, and give the media a chance to report on real news.

Posted by Drew458     on 02/12/2020 at 10:34 AM   
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   Tuesday - February 11, 2020

No Air In The Air Up There

Extremely Low Air Pressure Grounds Flights In Norway

The past months have seen extraordinarily rough weather along the north Norwegian coast. Early this week came another extreme. The air pressure dropped to a level not seen in several decades.

According to the Norwegian meteorological institute, the air pressure across major parts of the region was below 940 hectopascal, a level that makes flying unsafe.

[ hectopascal is the same as millibars. Standard atmospheric pressure is 1013.25 hPa or mbar, equivalent to 29.92 inches of mercury or 14.69lb/sq in. ]

The Widerøe company that serves most of the regional routes put almost its whole aircraft fleet on the ground.

«Our smallest aircraft type Dash 100, 200 and 300 can not fly with pressure lower than 948 hectopascal,» the company informs on it Facebook page.

More than 2,000 passengers were affected by the weather conditions. Only on Tuesday afternoon did the pressure return to a level that allows aircraft to operate normally.

The Dash 100, 200, and 300 are all dual engine turboprop passenger planes, variations of the DeHavilland Canada DHC-8. When Bombardier bought DeHavilland from previous owners Boeing they renamed the line the Dash 100, Dash 200, Dash 300. Longview Aviation bought the company from Bombardier, and they are once again known as DeHavilland, an aircraft name that goes back to 1920. The Dash 300 carries about 50 passengers, with a range of about 1000 miles.

I really don’t understand this situation; 940 hPa is 94kPa, which is the normal air pressure at 2000’ altitude. Surely these planes can take off from less than half a mile elevation?

On the other hand, European storm Ciara is over there blowing like mad, winds 100mph in UK, and the storm system is so large, blowing west to east, that several flight records have been broken on the NY to London run; a plane made the journey the other day and arrived 102 minutes early, going 825mph with the tailwind instead of the typical 575mph. Wind comes along with abrupt changes in air pressure, so this company’s statement might be a noble CYA; better to say “dangerously low pressure” than “it’s too damn windy to fly”.

Posted by Drew458     on 02/11/2020 at 02:44 PM   
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   Monday - February 10, 2020

up early and hungry

I was up at quarter to dawn this morning. One eye barely open and the first neuron firing in my brain says “get up and feed the cats”. Wow, am I trained or what? So I did, at and the sound of the kibble jug a voice comes from the bedroom “I fed them already” Ok. Back to bed. Can’t get the right temperature under the blankets, so I get again in a short while. Hand hurts, back hurts, knees hurt. Oh joy. Gosh is it raining again? Why, yes it is.

Right. got one coffee in me, look for some food. Nada, unless I want sardines or artichoke hearts for breakfast. Grrr. So on with the shoes and off to the store. And I had to park waaaay the heck in the next lot last night, because parking sucks here.  Actually, it’s not built bad, it’s that too many people have too many cars ... I don’t want to get into that rant right now. Maybe the qwikee mart has some kind of something I can gnaw on for cheap?

Posted by Drew458     on 02/10/2020 at 09:14 AM   
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   Wednesday - February 05, 2020

Airport Ooopsie

And OF COURSE it’s a Boeing 737-800.

A plane has split wide open after crashing and bursting into flames.

The incident has injured 21 people after the Boeing 737-800 skidded off the runway at Sabiha Gokcen airport in Istanbul, according to Turkish officials.

It landed in wet weather, and was carrying 177 passengers and six crew members.

There have been no fatalities reported so far, Turkish Transport Minister Cahit Turhan said.

The condition of those injured is not known at this stage.

Shocking footage shows passengers evacuating the Pegasus Airlines plane through cracks in the fuselage.
...
It was a domestic flight within Turkey.

Posted by Drew458     on 02/05/2020 at 12:00 PM   
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   Monday - February 03, 2020

Oh shut the frack up

AOC and Bernie Introduce Bill To Ban Fracking Nationwide

What else do you need to know?Commies, out to tear down America. Like that’s news.

An anti-fracking bill crafted by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) aims to end the practice altogether, making it illegal “on all onshore and offshore land in the United States” by Jan. 1, 2025.

The bill, according to the Hill, aims to end fracking altogether, revoking permits for “wells where fracking takes place and that are within 2,500 feet of a home, school or other ‘inhabited structure’” beginning February 1, 2021. It would also “immediately prevent federal agencies from issuing federal permits for expanded fracking, new fracking, new pipelines, new natural gas or oil export terminals and other gas and oil infrastructure.”

It would make the practice, which Ocasio-Cortez has identified as the “leading contributor to our climate emergency,” illegal by January 1, 2025.

“Fracking is a danger to our water supply. It’s a danger to the air we breathe, it has resulted in more earthquakes, and it’s highly explosive,” Sanders said in a statement, according to the Hill. To top it all off, it’s contributing to climate change.”

“If we are serious about clean air and drinking water, if we are serious about combating climate change, the only safe and sane way to move forward is to ban fracking nationwide,” he continued.

Critics of Sanders have defended the practice, warning that its elimination would “spike household energy costs and hurt farmers and manufacturers.”

American Petroleum Institute spokeswoman Bethany Aronhalt told the Hill:

Banning a safe, successful method of developing energy would erase a generation of American energy progress and in the process destroy millions of U.S. jobs, spike household energy costs and hurt farmers and manufacturers.

“Thanks to fracking, the United States is the global leader in reducing carbon emissions,” Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) tweeted in response to the announcemen

Pretty sure you can put mini-mike bloomberg down as supporting this. New York Dems hate fracking, and they hate nuclear energy. Pity, because the Indian Point reactor supplies a big chunk of the electricity for NYC, and the whole central-western part of NY sits on the Marcellus Shale, which is a massive deep oil and gas field that only fracking can get to. And as one goes, so goes the next; expect Fauxcahontas and Butt-gig to climb on this bandwagon if they aren’t already aboard. Because they’re all freakin’ idiots.

Although before 2008 the Marcellus Shale was considered to have inconsequential natural gas potential, it is now believed to hold the largest volume of recoverable natural gas in the United States. In 2012, it was estimated to have 141 trillion cubic feet of technically recoverable gas by the US Energy Information Administration, and 88 trillion cubic feet by the US Geological Survey. In September 2012, the Marcellus Shale overtook the Haynesville Shale of northwest Louisiana as the leading producer of both shale gas and overall natural gas in the United States. In February 2014, Marcellus gas wells produced 14.0 billion cubic feet per day, a 42 percent increase over the year previous, and comprising 21 percent of all the dry gas produced that month in the United States. By 2018, production had grown further from an average of 19.4 Bcfd and reached more than 21 Bcfd in December 2018.  This increase in production, from the most productive basin in the U.S., has been a major contributor to the significant decline in price for natural gas

Yeah. So if it’s good for America, good for the economy, then you know the nitwit “democratic socialist” anarcho-Marxist commie scum rats are against it.

Posted by Drew458     on 02/03/2020 at 10:36 PM   
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kind of brain fried today

Maybe I can find something post-worthy later. Didn’t watch the stupor bowel, didn’t see the halftime stripper pole show. No point in writing about shampeachment, and the Wuhan virus thing is dull, even as the world continues to panic and the number of cases rise everywhere.

I don’t think I’m getting sick again, but with all the chilly damp weather it’s been hard for me to stay warm the past few days, even with extra clothes on. Beats me.

Posted by Drew458     on 02/03/2020 at 12:01 PM   
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   Wednesday - January 29, 2020

I’m not the only one overreacting to the Wuhan thing

The whole damn world is going into lockdown, one small step at a time.

Here’s a link to the WaPo’s running list of coronavirus news.

Air flights canceled. Borders closed. North Korea bans all foreigners from entering. Sporting events in Germany and Florida canceled. Schools shut down in China. Evacuees from China being sent to Isolation Island in Australia. Oil prices impacted.

Others say this is much ado about almost nothing; right wing tinfoil hat folks know this is a world-wide commie plot; a deliberate release of an engineered, weaponized, virus to ruin the global economy to take down Trump.

Posted by Drew458     on 01/29/2020 at 09:03 AM   
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   Thursday - January 23, 2020

Coronavirus Gross Vector

Yummy yum, rotted bat soup. Goes great with a glass of fresh snake guts wine!

A group of Chinese scientists today reported that the likely source of the deadly 2019‐nCoV virus is snakes, based on genetic analysis. However, grisly images from a Chinese restaurant suggest bats may also be on the menu.

Their findings were fast-tracked to publication yesterday in the Journal of Medical Virology, and report that infected people were exposed to various wildlife species at the market, where live poultry, seafood, bats and snakes among others, were present.

A detailed genetic analysis of 2019‐nCoV revealed that it is a new strain which seems to be a mixture of two other coronaviruses; one of which is from bats and another unknown strain. The group presented evidence that the last place the virus resided before hitting humans was a snake species, based on certain biological markers in the virus’s surface proteins. These proteins are what allow viruses to invade host cells, and the mutated form is allowing 2019‐nCoV to easily attack human cells.

Bats are food source for humans in the Pacific Rim and Asia, they are also consumed in various amount in Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Guam and in other Asian and Pacific Rim countries and cultures.

The flavor of fruit bats is similar to that of chicken. Bats are prepared in several manners, such as grilled, barbecued, deep fried, cooked in stews and in stir frys. When deep fried, the entire bat may be cooked and consumed. During cooking, bats may emit strong odors reminiscent of urine. This is reduced by adding garlic, onion, chili pepper or beer during cooking. [ No matter how awful it is, Tabasco makes it better. That’s why every MRE has a pouch of it included. ]

...

The body fluids of the snake are mixed into wine and consumed immediately in the form of a shot. Snake blood wine is prepared by slicing a snake along its belly and draining its blood directly into the drinking vessel filled with rice wine or grain alcohol. Snake bile wine is done through a similar method by using the contents of the gall bladder.

The deadly coronavirus, which has already killed 17 people, could have been spread by bat soup - a popular delicacy in Chinese city Wuhan.

Experts believe fruit bats could be playing host to the virus as researchers have “underestimated” the condition, which is similar to pneumonia and SARS, according to a paper published in the Chinese Science Bulletin.

The global outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) infected more than 8,000 people between 2002 and 2003.

It was thought to have been spread from bats to civet cats at an animal reservoir before being transmitted to humans in the Guangdong province of southern China.

Meanwhile the major Ebola epidemic which struck West Africa between 2013 and 2016 is also understood to have been spread by bats, according to the World Health Organisation.

Previously, experts believed the new virus wouldn’t cause an epidemic as serious as SARS because its genes were different.

But this latest study, published in China Science Bulletin last night, revealed that the virus has a “strong binding affinity” to a human protein called ACE2.

The researchers said that this binding protein had a high resemblance to that of SARS
...
In a statement, the researchers said: “The Wuhan coronavirus’ natural host could be bats … but between bats and humans there may be an unknown intermediate.”
...
The expert believes that the new strain was an RNA virus, meaning that its mutation speed was 100 times faster than that of a DNA virus such as smallpox.

Gao Fu, director general of China’s Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, earlier confirmed the new virus was connected with wild animals..

Posted by Drew458     on 01/23/2020 at 10:36 AM   
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Richmond Still Doesn’t Get It

VA Dem: Peaceful 2A Rally In Richmond Was TERRORISM

What a nuckin futjob

A Virginia Democrat said Tuesday that Second Amendment supporters who protested new gun-control legislation at the Virginia State Capitol had “terrorized Richmond.”

House Delegate Lee Carter, a self-professed democratic socialist, accused participants in Monday’s peaceful protest of menacing lawmakers, saying the thousands of “idiots” who demonstrated would only embolden the Democratic majority on gun control.

“The ‘pro-gun’ people that terrorized Richmond yesterday probably don’t realize that all they did was tag team with fascists, strengthen the liberals’ resolve to pass gun control bills, and force the most gun-friendly Dem (me) to not show up for a day,” Carter said. “Idiots. Absolute idiots.”

David Rutz breaks down the most important news about the enemies of freedom, here and around the world, in this comprehensive morning newsletter.

Contrary to Carter’s rhetoric, Monday’s rally “concluded without a single incidence of mayhem or civil unrest,” reported Washington Free Beacon staff writer Stephen Gutowski, who interviewed various protesters. Gov. Ralph Northam (D.), who declared a state of emergency leading up to the rally, acknowledged the event was peaceful.

Yes Virginia, anarcho-Marxists are real ... and you’ve elected at least one to your statehouse. Are you happy now??

Meanwhile, Back At The Richmond Statehouse: VA Senate passes Red Flag law

The state Senate in Virginia gave final approval to a “red flag” firearms seizure bill Wednesday in a party line 21-19 vote, and over the objections of Republicans who argued that the bill still has due process issues and lacks any sort of mental health component.

Senate Democrats, meanwhile, claim that the bill is a “step forward,” and that it was the best bill that they could come up with. Of course, that’s not an argument to pass the bill, but it is clear that Virginia Democrats plan on approving as much of Ralph Northam’s gun control agenda as possible, even if the measures are modified or watered-down in the process.

The unaddressed and underfunded mental health situation in Virginia is already at the crisis level. There simply are not enough beds or care systems for the number of people in need. Sadly, this is a back burner issue that doesn’t poll well, and being big in the polls is what drives the legislature. Because “working the big issues” makes them popular - a “brand” in today’s parlance - and that gets them re-elected.

Posted by Drew458     on 01/23/2020 at 08:42 AM   
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OMG. The Steele Dossier Back In The News Again?

I never knew BuzzFeed had that kind of money to throw around.

When old news is new news again

One of the experts who spearheaded a forensics report alleging Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman hacked Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s phone was also part of an attempt to verify the Steele dossier.
...
Anthony Ferrante, a cyber expert at the advisory firm FTI Consulting
...
BuzzFeed asked Ferrante, a former FBI agent who joined CNN as a contributor in 2019, to investigate the Steele dossier’s claims that Russian tech executive Aleksej Gubarev played a “significant” role in hacking Democrats’ computer systems.

Conclusion: Russians Bad, No Proof Of DNC Hacking

Ferrante determined that Gubarev’s companies “have provided gateways to the internet for cybercriminals and Russian state sponsored actors to launch and control large-scale malware campaigns over the past decade.”

Gubarev’s lawyer, Evan Fray-Witzer, dismissed Ferrante’s contention in a March 2019 statement. “Buzzfeed spent $4.1 million on a team of former FBI agents to try to prove that Gubarev and his companies did what was alleged in the Steele Dossier and came up empty-handed,” he said.

Fray-Witzer added: “The Dossier directly and unequivocally accused Alex Gubarev of having been corrupted by the [Federal Security Service] FSB and having personally hacked (or directed others to hack) the [Democratic National Committee] DNC. And that defamatory statement was, and is, a lie, plain and simple.” The FSB is Russia’s military service.

...

BuzzFeed paid Ferrante $4.1 million to verify elements of Christopher Steele’s dossier, which pundits argued showed links between President Donald Trump and Russia.

And of course CNN was spreading the fake about all this back then [ March 2106 ] .

Don’t you just hate it when even the news about a nothing burger turns out to be a nothing burger? Grrrr.

Ok, so I guess the new news part is that this Russian guy Gubarev is suing the pants off of Steele because that dossier names him specifically as the person who hacked, or hired others to hack, the DNC server.

The same server that no one has ever seen or even had access to.

Or maybe it comes up again as news because the same cyber security guy, Ferrante, is looking into the hack of Bezos’ phone, allegedly by Saudi agents. Hey, that’s his job, investigating computer stuff, isn’t it? Big yawn.

Just a reminder that the Steele dossier is totally bogus, unproveable even after spending millions to have former FBI “Top Men” work on it. Gotta wonder about that one a bit, knowing that the FBI knew the thing was fake from the get-go.

And as time goes by, it becomes boringly obvious that the DNC server was never hacked from the outside. Somebody (Seth Rich) took the data from a terminal onto a thumb drive. Good grief, we’ve known this for years now. 

Posted by Drew458     on 01/23/2020 at 08:12 AM   
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   Wednesday - January 22, 2020

This Year’s Killer Virus From China

How is it that every damn year the worst diseases come from China? Every year. Swine flu, Avian flu, SARS, you name it. And now it’s coronavirus. WTH is coronavirus? Who knows, but it’s deadly. And it’s already in the USA.
TLDR: The answer is “wet markets”, the traditional Asian totally unhygienic outdoor butcher shop/live wild animal/vegetable stall/crowded shopping bizarres that they refuse to give up. This is the source of every one of these diseases.

The Chinese government has quarantined the city of Wuhan and plans to shut down the airport and public transportation within hours amid an outbreak of the coronavirus, according to reports on the country’s social networks. The virus has been linked to at least 17 deaths and has sickened over 500 others.

Other countries’ health agencies and governing bodies have issued warnings to travelers including the U.K., which advised against “all but essential travel” to Wuhan, which is where the virus was first detected. Several countries have implemented enhanced screening measures at airports for flights arriving from the Wuhan region as China faces scrutiny over what officials knew about the outbreak and when they discovered it.

For weeks the country’s health officials maintained that the number of people infected remained at 41, with minimal fatalities, but as more cases emerged and the death toll spiked fears of a cover-up began to surface. Top officials in China have reportedly warned lower-level officials to not cover up the spread of the virus, which is now said to be transmissible between humans.

Any lower-level officials who attempt to conceal new cases would be “nailed on the pillar of shame for eternity,” officials with the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, a top political body in the country that handles law and order, allegedly said, according to the BBC.

The call for transparency follows the country’s botched handling of the SARS virus in 2002-2003, which infected 8,000 and killed at least 770. At the time, officials were accused of covering up the virus, which was not announced to the public until about five months after it was detected.

This tells me that this germ is so virulent that it spreads faster than the ChiComs attempts to hide the truth. Wuhan is a city of 11 million in central eastern China, about 430 miles west of the port city of Shanghai. Locking down an entire city and leaving the people to die is what communists can do, instantly. “All power comes from the barrel of a gun”, said Chairman Mao, and they’ve got all the guns. Whatever numbers their government is admitting to are probably at least an order of magnitude less than the reality; if they say 10 it’s 100. Or 1000.

Scientists have warned that official totals from Chinese authorities of how many people have been infected with a deadly and little-understood new virus could be out by a factor of 35.

You can’t trust the little bastards to be truthful. They lie about everything, always have. Oh but THIS TIME they’re going to open and honest. Yeah right. When they quarantine an entire city, one bigger than LA and NY combined, you know the situation is out of control. It’s an achinkolypse.

Spread of coronavirus prompts CDC to expand ‘enhanced health screenings’ to 2 more US airports

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced it will expand health entry screenings to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, as the U.S. on Tuesday reported its first case of the potentially deadly coronavirus.

The CDC and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) had previously announced the implementation of “enhanced health screenings” for airline passengers arriving from or traveling through the Wuhan province of China amid a mysterious viral outbreak in the region.

Screenings began Friday at three major air hubs: San Francisco International Airport (SFO), John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) in New York and Los Angeles International Airport (LAX).

The CDC announced that they will be expanding public health entry screenings to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and O’Hare International Airport in Chicago.

At least one person in the United States is infected with the mysterious pneumonia-like virus that has already killed at least six people and sickened some 300 others since the illness was first reported in Wuhan.

The case of the new coronavirus was confirmed in a man in Seattle. The man arrived in the U.S. last week before CDC and CBP officials had announced the “enhanced health screenings.”

The patient, who was not identified, is a resident of the U.S. and is in stable condition, CDC officials said during a news conference on Tuesday. The patient is isolated at the hospital he is being treated at and poses “very little risk” to medical staff and the public, officials said.

The man was reportedly aware of the outbreak affecting Wuhan before falling ill and proactively reached out to state health officials when he began experiencing symptoms, which have been reported to include fever, cough and shortness of breath.

So it feels just like any other bout of the flu pretty much, but maybe worse? Shortness of breath because your lungs are all phlegmmed up? Great. People are going to go nuts. I just got over the bug that’s going around here, with waterfall sinus flow and coughing enough to nearly pop my eyes out of my head.

Symptoms for SARS and MERS are much more severe than for common coronaviruses. Both cause respiratory problems. Those infected with MERS may also feel fatigued, experience shortness of breath and could develop kidney failure.

The virus is thought to be able to be spread from person to person and in some cases has infected doctors and nurses. The early days of the outbreak have evoked comparisons to SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, the illness that spread through airports and hospitals around the globe in 2003, killing nearly 800 people in a matter of months.

With the Chinese New Year travel season about to send billions of people on holiday journeys, no one wants to underestimate the disease.

“The speed with which this virus has been identified is testament to changes in public health in China since SARS,” said Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, in a statement. “However, we know there is more to come from this outbreak - and with travel being a huge part of the fast approaching Chinese New Year, it is right that concern levels are at the highest level.”

Coronavirus is first cousin to SARS, and SARS is some deadly badness. Also in that family tree is MERS, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome. MERS has a 35% fatality rate. More than 1 in 3 who get it DIE. Is “Wuhan Virus” any less severe? Teh Authorities say so, but current data is perhaps too limited to have much faith in that panic quelling banality.

Both the Wuhan virus, known as 2019-nCoV, and SARS belong to the family of coronaviruses, so called because of their crown-like shape. Many such viruses cross the barrier between animals and humans, as the Wuhan virus appears to have done
...
Some of the first patients infected in Wuhan worked or shopped at a seafood market where live animals and wildlife parts were reportedly sold.

These so-called wet markets, where shoppers mingle in narrow spaces with animals ranging from live poultry to snakes, have been a key source in the emergence of new viruses transmitted from animals to humans.

If sanitation standards are not maintained, wet markets can spread diseases. Because of the openness, newly introduced animals may come in direct contact with sales clerks, butchers, and customers. Insects such as flies have relatively easy access to the food products. Carcasses are sometimes thrown on the floor to be butchered. Both the current avian flu outbreak and SARS can be traced to keeping live animals in wet markets and its potential for contamination. In 2008 the government of Hong Kong proposed that all poultry should be slaughtered at central abattoirs to combat the spread of avian flu. However, public opposition to the scheme led to its abandonment.

Great. Pack a big bunch of people in a small space where raw meat, open to the air and the flies and dirt, uninspected, anything-we-could-farm-hunt-or-pickup-as-roadkill ... and you’ve got the world’s biggest Petri dish brewing every kind of putrescence imaginable. The only way it could be worse is if they put the markets right next to the dung heap. “But we’ve always done it this way!”, so let’s just infect the whole damn planet.

Wuhan is already present in China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand. Maybe it’s time to just blockade all of Asia for half a year or so. Just to be safe. You can live that long without the latest hi-tech gadget or some more cheap stuff from Walmart. And God knows we don’t need YET ANOTHER one of their damn insects to sneak in either. WTF, let’s put Africa on the blockade list too. Because the ChiComs are big in Africa these days, and a Wuhan-MERS-Ebola crossbreed could wipe out half the world.

Posted by Drew458     on 01/22/2020 at 02:57 PM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
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