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Today's News (2020/2/5)
Mar. 5th, 2020 09:23 pmSwamped lately. But several of these are relevant.
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[EDITOR: See comment at end of included text]
Why Some COVID-19 Cases Are Worse than Others
Emerging data as well as knowledge from the SARS and MERS coronavirus outbreaks yield some clues as to why SARS-CoV-2 affects some people worse than others.
Katarina Zimmer
Feb 24, 2020
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/why-some-covid-19-cases-are-worse-than-others-67160
Like many other respiratory conditions, COVID-19—the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2—can vary widely among patients. The vast majority of confirmed cases are considered mild, involving mostly cold-like symptoms to mild pneumonia, according to the latest and largest set of data on the new coronavirus outbreak released February 17 by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
Fourteen percent of confirmed cases have been “severe,” involving serious pneumonia and shortness of breath. Another 5 percent of patients confirmed to have the disease developed respiratory failure, septic shock, and/or multi-organ failure—what the agency calls “critical cases” potentially resulting in death. Roughly 2.3 percent of confirmed cases did result in death.
...
Some of Perlman’s research, which demonstrated that the sex disparity also holds true in SARS-infected mice, points to the hormone estrogen as possibly having protective effects: Removing the ovaries of infected female mice or blocking the estrogen receptor made the animals more likely to die compared to infected control mice. The effects are probably more pronounced in mice than in people, Perlman tells The New York Times.
[EDITOR: When - not if, when - the fundamentalists start blaming COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2 on queers in general and trans women in particular, whip this out. Because if it holds up, it kiiiiiind of implies that trans women are god's chosen people. At least, if on HRT. Just sayin'.]
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White House questionnaire adds new litmus tests for prospective hires
Jeremy Diamond byline
By Jeremy Diamond, CNN
Updated 5:11 PM ET, Tue March 3, 2020
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/03/politics/john-mcentee-white-house-litmus-test-questionnaire/index.html
Washington (CNN)Candidates applying to join President Donald Trump's administration will now have to explain what part of Trump's campaign message "most appealed" to them and why.
The question is one of several Trump-focused litmus tests that has been added to a questionnaire that candidates for political appointments across the federal government must now complete.
The new questionnaire, distributed by the White House's Presidential Personnel Office to federal departments on Monday and obtained by CNN, is the latest move by the office's new head John McEntee to emphasize loyalty to the President in the hiring process.
Trump tapped McEntee, a longtime aide and loyalist, to head the personnel office last month amid his renewed focus on purging officials whom he deems to have been disloyal to him and hiring those who have long supported him.
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Watch: Clinic in Iran torched, believed to be coronavirus quarantine
Joanne Serrieh, Al Arabiya English Saturday, 29 February 2020
[BIAS NOTE: THIS NEWS SOURCE IS SAUDI, AND WILL COVER IRAN ACCORDINGLY]
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2020/02/29/Watch-Clinic-in-Iran-set-on-fire-believed-to-be-coronavirus-quarantine-.html
A clinic in the Iranian city of Bandar Abbas was torched on Friday because some people believed that coronavirus patients from another city were quarantined in it, according to Iranian media reports.
Rumors spread that 10 infected people were transported from the city of Qom, the epicenter of the virus in Iran, to Towhid Clinic, according to social media posts.
However, the semi-official Fars News Agency referred to the claims of people being transferred to the southern Bandar Abbas city as “unfounded rumors” and that this information “angered” some residents who then set fire to the clinic.
-----
Cryptic transmission of novel coronavirus revealed by genomic epidemiology
2 Mar 2020 by Trevor Bedford
[EDITOR'S NOTE: Bedford is part of Fred Hutchinson Centre, who are local]
https://bedford.io/blog/ncov-cryptic-transmission/
The field of genomic epidemiology focuses on using the genetic sequences of pathogens to understand patterns of transmission and spread. Viruses mutate very quickly and accumulate changes during the process of transmission from one infected individual to another. The novel coronavirus which is responsible for the emerging COVID-19 pandemic mutates at an average of about two mutations per month. After someone is exposed they will generally incubate the virus for ~5 days before symptoms develop and transmission occurs. Other research has shown that the "serial interval" of SARS-CoV-2 is ~7 days. You can think of a transmission chain as looking something like:
-----
[EDITOR: Link is for the video only.]
Brian Sapient the Planet Saver
twitter.com/rationalsquad
https://twitter.com/rationalsquad/status/1235636443369873415
Rick Santelli on twitter.com/CNBC just made the argument that we'd be better off if everyone got the #coronavirus right away and 2% of the world died off, so that financial markets could stabilize.
Rick likes Republicans, don't be like Rick. This should go viral.
#VoteBlueToSaveAmerica
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America Punished Elizabeth Warren for Her Competence
The country still doesn’t know what to make of a woman—in politics, and beyond—who refuses to qualify her success.
Megan Garber
March 5, 2020
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/03/america-punished-elizabeth-warren-her-competence/607531/
In November 2019, as the Democratic presidential candidates prepared for the primaries that had been taking place unofficially for more than a year and that would begin in earnest in February, FiveThirtyEight’s Clare Malone profiled Pete Buttigieg. In the process, Malone spoke with two women at a Buttigieg event in New Hampshire. One liked Joe Biden, but felt he was a bit too old for the presidency. The other liked Buttigieg, without qualification: “I feel he’s well positioned,” she explained. “The country is ready for a more gentle approach.”
As for Elizabeth Warren? “When I hear her talk, I want to slap her, even when I agree with her.”
A version of that sentiment—Warren inspiring irrational animus among those whom she has sought as constituents—was a common refrain about the candidate, who announced today that she was suspending her campaign after a poor showing on Super Tuesday. This complaint tends to take on not the substance of Warren’s stated positions, but instead the style with which she delivers them. And it has been expressed by pundits as well as voters. Politico, in September, ran an article featuring quotes from Obama-administration officials calling Warren “sanctimonious” and a “narcissist.” The Boston Herald ran a story criticizing Warren’s “self-righteous, abrasive style.” The New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, in October, described Warren as “intensely alienating” and “a know-it-all.” Donny Deutsch, the MSNBC commentator, has dismissed Warren, the person and the candidate, as “unlikable”—and has attributed her failure to ingratiate herself to him as a result, specifically, of her “high-school principal” demeanor. (“This is not a gender thing,” Deutsch insisted, perhaps recognizing that his complaint might read as very much a gender thing. “This is just kind of [a] tone and manner thing.”)
More Stories
The campaigns of those who deviate from the traditional model of the American president—the campaign of anyone who is not white and Christian and male—will always carry more than their share of weight. But Warren had something about her, apparently: something that galled the pundits and the public in a way that led to assessments of her not just as “strident” and “shrill,” but also as “condescending.” The matter is not merely that the candidate is unlikable, these deployments of condescending imply. The matter is instead that her unlikability has a specific source, beyond bias and internalized misogyny. Warren knows a lot, and has accomplished a lot, and is extremely competent, condescending acknowledges, before twisting the knife: It is precisely because of those achievements that she represents a threat. Condescending attempts to rationalize an irrational prejudice. It suggests the lurchings of a zero-sum world—a physics in which the achievements of one person are insulting to everyone else. When I hear her talk, I want to slap her, even when I agree with her.
-----
[EDITOR: See comment at end of included text]
Why Some COVID-19 Cases Are Worse than Others
Emerging data as well as knowledge from the SARS and MERS coronavirus outbreaks yield some clues as to why SARS-CoV-2 affects some people worse than others.
Katarina Zimmer
Feb 24, 2020
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/why-some-covid-19-cases-are-worse-than-others-67160
Like many other respiratory conditions, COVID-19—the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2—can vary widely among patients. The vast majority of confirmed cases are considered mild, involving mostly cold-like symptoms to mild pneumonia, according to the latest and largest set of data on the new coronavirus outbreak released February 17 by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
Fourteen percent of confirmed cases have been “severe,” involving serious pneumonia and shortness of breath. Another 5 percent of patients confirmed to have the disease developed respiratory failure, septic shock, and/or multi-organ failure—what the agency calls “critical cases” potentially resulting in death. Roughly 2.3 percent of confirmed cases did result in death.
...
Some of Perlman’s research, which demonstrated that the sex disparity also holds true in SARS-infected mice, points to the hormone estrogen as possibly having protective effects: Removing the ovaries of infected female mice or blocking the estrogen receptor made the animals more likely to die compared to infected control mice. The effects are probably more pronounced in mice than in people, Perlman tells The New York Times.
[EDITOR: When - not if, when - the fundamentalists start blaming COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2 on queers in general and trans women in particular, whip this out. Because if it holds up, it kiiiiiind of implies that trans women are god's chosen people. At least, if on HRT. Just sayin'.]
-----
White House questionnaire adds new litmus tests for prospective hires
Jeremy Diamond byline
By Jeremy Diamond, CNN
Updated 5:11 PM ET, Tue March 3, 2020
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/03/politics/john-mcentee-white-house-litmus-test-questionnaire/index.html
Washington (CNN)Candidates applying to join President Donald Trump's administration will now have to explain what part of Trump's campaign message "most appealed" to them and why.
The question is one of several Trump-focused litmus tests that has been added to a questionnaire that candidates for political appointments across the federal government must now complete.
The new questionnaire, distributed by the White House's Presidential Personnel Office to federal departments on Monday and obtained by CNN, is the latest move by the office's new head John McEntee to emphasize loyalty to the President in the hiring process.
Trump tapped McEntee, a longtime aide and loyalist, to head the personnel office last month amid his renewed focus on purging officials whom he deems to have been disloyal to him and hiring those who have long supported him.
-----
Watch: Clinic in Iran torched, believed to be coronavirus quarantine
Joanne Serrieh, Al Arabiya English Saturday, 29 February 2020
[BIAS NOTE: THIS NEWS SOURCE IS SAUDI, AND WILL COVER IRAN ACCORDINGLY]
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/middle-east/2020/02/29/Watch-Clinic-in-Iran-set-on-fire-believed-to-be-coronavirus-quarantine-.html
A clinic in the Iranian city of Bandar Abbas was torched on Friday because some people believed that coronavirus patients from another city were quarantined in it, according to Iranian media reports.
Rumors spread that 10 infected people were transported from the city of Qom, the epicenter of the virus in Iran, to Towhid Clinic, according to social media posts.
However, the semi-official Fars News Agency referred to the claims of people being transferred to the southern Bandar Abbas city as “unfounded rumors” and that this information “angered” some residents who then set fire to the clinic.
-----
Cryptic transmission of novel coronavirus revealed by genomic epidemiology
2 Mar 2020 by Trevor Bedford
[EDITOR'S NOTE: Bedford is part of Fred Hutchinson Centre, who are local]
https://bedford.io/blog/ncov-cryptic-transmission/
The field of genomic epidemiology focuses on using the genetic sequences of pathogens to understand patterns of transmission and spread. Viruses mutate very quickly and accumulate changes during the process of transmission from one infected individual to another. The novel coronavirus which is responsible for the emerging COVID-19 pandemic mutates at an average of about two mutations per month. After someone is exposed they will generally incubate the virus for ~5 days before symptoms develop and transmission occurs. Other research has shown that the "serial interval" of SARS-CoV-2 is ~7 days. You can think of a transmission chain as looking something like:
-----
[EDITOR: Link is for the video only.]
Brian Sapient the Planet Saver
twitter.com/rationalsquad
https://twitter.com/rationalsquad/status/1235636443369873415
Rick Santelli on twitter.com/CNBC just made the argument that we'd be better off if everyone got the #coronavirus right away and 2% of the world died off, so that financial markets could stabilize.
Rick likes Republicans, don't be like Rick. This should go viral.
#VoteBlueToSaveAmerica
-----
America Punished Elizabeth Warren for Her Competence
The country still doesn’t know what to make of a woman—in politics, and beyond—who refuses to qualify her success.
Megan Garber
March 5, 2020
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/03/america-punished-elizabeth-warren-her-competence/607531/
In November 2019, as the Democratic presidential candidates prepared for the primaries that had been taking place unofficially for more than a year and that would begin in earnest in February, FiveThirtyEight’s Clare Malone profiled Pete Buttigieg. In the process, Malone spoke with two women at a Buttigieg event in New Hampshire. One liked Joe Biden, but felt he was a bit too old for the presidency. The other liked Buttigieg, without qualification: “I feel he’s well positioned,” she explained. “The country is ready for a more gentle approach.”
As for Elizabeth Warren? “When I hear her talk, I want to slap her, even when I agree with her.”
A version of that sentiment—Warren inspiring irrational animus among those whom she has sought as constituents—was a common refrain about the candidate, who announced today that she was suspending her campaign after a poor showing on Super Tuesday. This complaint tends to take on not the substance of Warren’s stated positions, but instead the style with which she delivers them. And it has been expressed by pundits as well as voters. Politico, in September, ran an article featuring quotes from Obama-administration officials calling Warren “sanctimonious” and a “narcissist.” The Boston Herald ran a story criticizing Warren’s “self-righteous, abrasive style.” The New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, in October, described Warren as “intensely alienating” and “a know-it-all.” Donny Deutsch, the MSNBC commentator, has dismissed Warren, the person and the candidate, as “unlikable”—and has attributed her failure to ingratiate herself to him as a result, specifically, of her “high-school principal” demeanor. (“This is not a gender thing,” Deutsch insisted, perhaps recognizing that his complaint might read as very much a gender thing. “This is just kind of [a] tone and manner thing.”)
More Stories
The campaigns of those who deviate from the traditional model of the American president—the campaign of anyone who is not white and Christian and male—will always carry more than their share of weight. But Warren had something about her, apparently: something that galled the pundits and the public in a way that led to assessments of her not just as “strident” and “shrill,” but also as “condescending.” The matter is not merely that the candidate is unlikable, these deployments of condescending imply. The matter is instead that her unlikability has a specific source, beyond bias and internalized misogyny. Warren knows a lot, and has accomplished a lot, and is extremely competent, condescending acknowledges, before twisting the knife: It is precisely because of those achievements that she represents a threat. Condescending attempts to rationalize an irrational prejudice. It suggests the lurchings of a zero-sum world—a physics in which the achievements of one person are insulting to everyone else. When I hear her talk, I want to slap her, even when I agree with her.
