quote:

The FEMA spokesperson said they are aware of those fires and that the states are returning the ventilators to it “out of an abundance of caution.”

Gringostar posted:

CNN posted:

Falling prices might sound like a good thing, but economists agree that deflation -- the opposite of inflation -- would be very bad news.

Good Citizen posted:

Checkpoints at the Cal border. No more zonies allowed.

facetoucher cat posted:

https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1260351202962931712

overmind2000 posted:

How does a ventilator catch fire

brugroffil posted:

This model has been terrible from the start. They just keep "revising" it after it turns out hilariously wrong yet again

shovelbum posted:

how do i be a better person about resenting the absolute gently caress out of my white collar remote working friends

edit: like theyre all oh its a little dull but we're settled in and saving so much money on going out and traveling that we'll buy a house and have a kid and stuff soon

Admiral Ray posted:

what makes you resent them?

shovelbum posted:

like drat i gotta go out and do my usual job but also maybe die of a plague here soon! i'm not wfh im just on a long-scheduled vacation and my wifes wfh is probs gonna end by fall

worst loving vacation ever

shovelbum posted:

how do i be a better person about resenting the absolute gently caress out of my white collar remote working friends

edit: like theyre all oh its a little dull but we're settled in and saving so much money on going out and traveling that we'll buy a house and have a kid and stuff soon

shovelbum posted:

like drat i gotta go out and do my usual job but also maybe die of a plague here soon! i'm not wfh im just on a long-scheduled vacation and my wifes wfh is probs gonna end by fall

worst loving vacation ever

quote:

One of the features distinguishing SARS-CoV-2 from its more pathogenic counterpart SARS-CoV is the presence of premature stop codons in its ORF3b gene. Here, we show that SARS-CoV-2 ORF3b is a potent interferon antagonist, suppressing the induction of type I interferon more efficiently than its SARS-CoV ortholog. Phylogenetic analyses and functional assays revealed that SARS-CoV-2-related viruses from bats and pangolins also encode truncated ORF3b gene products with strong anti-interferon activity. Furthermore, analyses of more than 15,000 SARS-CoV-2 sequences identified a natural variant, in which a longer ORF3b reading frame was reconstituted. This variant was isolated from two patients with severe disease and further increased the ability of ORF3b to suppress interferon induction. Thus, our findings not only help to explain the poor interferon response in COVID-19 patients, but also describe a possibility of the emergence of natural SARS-CoV-2 quasispecies with extended ORF3b that may exacerbate COVID-19 symptoms.

euphronius posted:

Notorious R.I.M. posted:

Pretty big preprint findings here:

https://twitter.com/SystemsVirology/status/1260180273158750208

Spime Wrangler posted:

on the one hand, the more recent IHME versions are lightyears ahead of the old one. revisions are a really good thing to do. moreover, they actually have an epidemiological transmission model tacked on now. it's good enough that it allows for a second peak in the US right now and has huge uncertainty bounds over the next couple months instead of everything disappearing to zero. they're doing a much better job communicating the movement data that they're using on the back end.

on the other hand, its projections for italy have insanely tight uncertainty bounds (though their focus is on modeling the US and I think parts of the model are turned off for other regions), and today's michigan deaths are again (slightly) outside the high-end estimate (90 vs. 89). In general it's being optimistic that daily death rates will go down, even in places like Iowa where they've been monotonically increasing for weeks.

on the gripping hand, every model is wrong but some are useful, so let me play devil's advocate for a moment.

IHME was primarily developed to provide estimates of healthcare capacity needs for decision makers. Was it effective at that? Well their actual model of expected ICU/all bed values kinda sucked but they set the uncertainty so wide that the high bound was a factor of ten higher than the low bound, and told healthcare providers to plan for something on the high end. This functionally meant that everyone was being told "whatever you have, get more of it," and given the PPE shortages and real uncertainty about how many people were going to come down with it, this was prudent guidance to be giving back in march and early april, especially in hotspots.

The big problem was that the IHME model was not only used for internal capacity decisions but as the #1 go-to model for the federal government projections for the entire scope of the pandemic. It's easy to see why - the post-peak model sucked utter poo poo and was insanely optimistic about how effective social distancing would be. Some of its assumptions are justifiable for a first-pass solution needed NOW, but also made it super useful for justifying lovely policy.

Another underlying issue, where a couple decisions would have made a dramatic difference, was that IHME decided to make public all the post-peak projections on its flashy site. Anyone could open it up, fire up their country or state page, and feel good about what it was saying. It was purpose-built to make its projections look good. The actual values for historic data fade cleanly and exactly into the modeled values for projected data, making the user think "wow, it's been bang-on! I can trust this" when in reality it's been all over the map and all those past errors are hidden in CSV files you have to parse yourself if you want the whole story.

What the modelers should have done is accepted that they knew nothing out past a very limited timeframe and refused to provide months-out projections, or at least not the kind of projections that suggested uncertainty was dropping over time and that everything would be over by June. That shouldn't have passed even the most basic sniff test, and while they cemented their position as the modeling team of choice the way they did it was borderline malpractice. Statements saying "whoa, this is a misuse of the model" would have probably hosed their credibility with the public but should have been made. Even better, they could have provided only key values to key decision makers.

What they have now is a much more interesting model, and I expect they've been building it since the day they released the first version. The team states in their update notes that their focus is no longer on hospital bed projections but on capturing dynamics that might lead to a second wave or outbreaks in new regions. It's fully focused on the US, even though it still makes other countries' projections available. Once we get a couple weeks past the "reopening" of various states and if movement data spikes it's going to be very interesting to see if they're able to turn that into real outbreak forecasts. If the new model with its new purpose is again used to tell decision makers to "do everything you can or you might be hosed" but with stay-at-home orders instead of PPE then I'd say it's pretty good and they're doing their jobs.

However, they need a much better way of communicating the uncertainty in the months-out projections and a way of showing the effect of possible future scenarios. Updating the expected death count is all well and good, but what would be better is being honest about what a true worst-case-scenario would be and showing how various policy interventions may affect that value. My understanding is that they should have enough data now to estimate the effect of policies on Rt and I hope they're working towards ways of communicating that.

Google Butt posted:

the gently caress that mean dawg

quote:

the emergence of natural SARS-CoV-2 quasispecies with extended ORF3b that may exacerbate COVID-19 symptoms.

Google Butt posted:

the gently caress that mean dawg

Google Butt posted:

the gently caress that mean dawg

Admiral Ray posted:

the virus has genes that actively inhibit the proteins that activate our immune systems. there is a variant found in 2 patients that inhibited our immune system activating proteins to a greater degree than the common strain.

Omnicarus posted:

Sometimes when poo poo gets sketchy and a blood cell thinks it got a virus it sends out little interferons to let it's buddy cells know Hey watch your back this virus thing i shacked up with is posting cringe. Well the roni is like hey bro can I borrow your phone? and then tosses it out the window so that cell cant send those messages. then when the virus goes to your buddies they don't know to watch themselves

Omnicarus posted:

Sometimes when poo poo gets sketchy and a blood cell thinks it got a virus it sends out little interferons to let it's buddy cells know Hey watch your back this virus thing i shacked up with is posting cringe. Well the roni is like hey bro can I borrow your phone? and then tosses it out the window so that cell cant send those messages. then when the virus goes to your buddies they don't know to watch themselves

snoo posted:

okay gotcha but I don't have a dick

Admiral Ray posted:

being upset about that makes sense. it doesn't have to make you resentful of them in particular that the situation is legitimately unfair. redirecting your anger towards our government response can help, but can only go so far. i find that finding and stating small things that you are thankful for helps tamp down resentment. eg: neither of you have it (you don't have to add "yet" here), that you have a job that you seemed to like, that your wife has been able to wfh at all, that you still have food security, etc. that isn't to say you should be content with what's happening; you can have anger about the situation without it overwhelming you.

BULBASAUR posted:

thank you sir

now please pull up to the second window

Inceltown posted:

Forced job search providers are really helping the unemployed here in Australia.

https://twitter.com/JeremyPoxon/status/1260353664603938816

nooneofconsequence posted:

https://twitter.com/dvergano/status/1260242482547380224?s=20

Omnicarus posted:

Sometimes when poo poo gets sketchy and a blood cell thinks it got a virus it sends out little interferons to let it's buddy cells know Hey watch your back this virus thing i shacked up with is posting cringe. Well the roni is like hey bro can I borrow your phone? and then tosses it out the window so that cell cant send those messages. then when the virus goes to your buddies they don't know to watch themselves

ChristsDickWorship posted:

[Covid-19 May] this virus thing i shacked up with is posting cringe

Omnicarus posted:

Sometimes when poo poo gets sketchy and a blood cell thinks it got a virus it sends out little interferons to let it's buddy cells know Hey watch your back this virus thing i shacked up with is posting cringe. Well the roni is like hey bro can I borrow your phone? and then tosses it out the window so that cell cant send those messages. then when the virus goes to your buddies they don't know to watch themselves

Woofer posted:

what the gently caress is a job agent

Woofer posted:

what the gently caress is a job agent

Woofer posted:

what the gently caress is a job agent

Woofer posted:

what the gently caress is a job agent