Anybody want a Corona?

[Birds in Hell]

Can we keep social distancing forever?

I never want to stand closer than 1.5m to most people.

[Mickey]

Can we keep social distancing forever?

I never want to stand closer than 1.5m to most people.

Yeah I love this, it rules.

[Norah]

The best part of the pandemic was the lack of traffic, but that's going away now.

The second best part is not having to hold the elevator.

[tragabigzanda]

FUCK ICE

[B]

Stop flushing!

Flushing may release ‘toilet plumes’ with coronavirus
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2 ... -flushing/

If it's my poop, it's not gonna give ME the COVIDs.

[E.H. Ruddock]

Man, the last time plumes was a thing on RM, that was really something

[bart]

You should be putting the lid down before you flush no matter what, otherwise your entire bathroom is disgusting

[96583UP]

Stop flushing!

Flushing may release ‘toilet plumes’ with coronavirus
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2 ... -flushing/

If it's my poop, it's not gonna give ME the COVIDs.

this strikes me like the kind of article that will be disproven 2 months from now (a la 'you should fear fomite transfer bc tests show it can live on cardboard for 3 days') but for now gets a lot of clicks <fast forward 2 months and 14 days from now: 96583UP dies in intensive care following Covid toilet plume>

[verb_to_trust]

Just put the lid down when you flush.

[96583UP]

never

[McParadigm]

Have we price is righted final death count guesses for the US?

[McParadigm]

I’ll buy the winner a bottle of whisky, in memory of doug

[Norah]

350k

[LetMeSleep]

What's the cut off date? This could go on for years.

[bart]

What do you mean by final? I think we’ll hit 200k this year in the US unfortunately. Even if there’s a vaccine plus way more effective treatment I think we’ll always have some small number of people dying from covid every year unless the current strains are totally overtaken by less deadly ones.

[Mickey]

350k-400k before widespread vaccination sounds likely. 200k this year, 125k the year after, 50k as a vaccination program is developed. In theory we could count forever but outbreak-to-vaccination sounds like the most useful window for thinking about how deadly it is.

[96583UP]

yes, also because antibodies may not always matter ... granted this is synthetic lab stuff...

https://time.com/5854242/antibody-test-use/

In the study published in medRxiv, a preprint server for posting studies before they are peer-reviewed, a team at the Lindsley F. Kimball Research Institute of the New York Blood Center and Rockefeller University analyzed 370 plasma samples donated from people who recovered from COVID-19 and found some surprising results. The researchers used several antibody testing methods, including two commercially available tests, to document levels of immune system antibodies those patients generated against SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind COVID-19. (All produced similarly reliable readings.) The researchers then tested these antibodies against a SARS-CoV-2 virus substitute in the lab to see if the antibodies could actually neutralize the virus (such stand-ins, which mimic actual viruses without being infectious, are often used to laboratory research settings to avoid spreading disease).

Overall, around 88% of the people generated varying levels of antibodies to the virus. But only about 10% of them had high levels that were able to neutralize the lab-based version of the COVID-19 virus—and, on the other side of the spectrum, 17% had almost no antibody response to their infection.

What that means is so-called “natural immunity” to SARS-CoV-2 may be more complicated than the idea that everyone infected with COVID-19 is robustly protected from getting the disease again, says Dr. Larry Luchsinger, assistant member at the research institute and the lead author of the paper. “There was a very significant group of people who had essentially no neutralizing activity [against the virus]. What we found was that surprisingly, across all tests, there was a very wide deviation or range of antibody results that people were experiencing.”

[McParadigm]

350k-400k before widespread vaccination sounds likely.

Mickey has 400k before vaccination, which is the standard.
Chud has 350k.
I’ll take 500k.

[McParadigm]

I would accept 490k as a bet, but not 499.

[elliseamos]

How are we calculating deaths?

I'll go $1, please.