This feeds right into a theory I have: people are blaming wet markets in China for the spread. Now all the processing plants are being shut down in the USA. Could raw meat be a contributor? My brother in Iowa said nursing homes and processing plants make up most cases in Iowa.

At first blush, I would say no. The packing plants are good areas for the virus to spread whether they are processing meat or something entirely different because the workers are all in close proximity.

On the other hand, I don't know much about this strain of the virus and its zoonotic transmission capabilities. Years back, I dealt with a corona virus (different strain) outbreak in my calves. The virus wiped out a good chunk of my calves one winter but there was never any concern for myself.

Although not Iowa, this article, if true, is an interesting insight into why some meat processing plants might be hotspots

Coronavirus at Smithfield pork plant: The untold story of America's biggest outbreak - BBC News

This is a little weird if accurate about very high % of asymptomatic in prisons. And if someone is asymptomatic, do they eventually "recover" in 2-3-4 weeks and no longer becomes asymptomatic?

Least surprising news of my week, part one: the camp for which we'd paid full price in mid June has been cancelled.

Least surprising news of my week, part two: that this particular camp is issuing 100% refunds, including the non-refundable deposit.

The camp in question is WinShape, run by the foundation heavily funded from the Cathy family and CFA. They announced that they've cancelled all their day and overnight camps for the entire summer. It's a fairly big operation: overnight camps at seven locations, many of the locations having different experiences for kids ranging from completion of 1st-11th grades, all summer long, and day camps in dozens (hundreds?) of locations. The refunds they're doing will set an extremely high bar for other camps to meet.

My daughter usually does the Athens Y camp for a week, they still think they are moving forward and it's the first week in June (like June 7). Meanwhile, Camp Sunshine and Camp Braveheart (two big volunteer camps) are cancelled in mid-late June. I have not spent a summer in Atlanta in 5 years (I teach in Ireland over the summer usually) and am not looking forward to being home with no camps and potentially no pool.

I finally found some toilet paper in the wild at my grocery store!

My Kroger was 100% fully stocked on paper products Saturday morning. First time I've seen that in 6 weeks. Luckily we don't need any, but it was good to see. First time I had gone shopping and didn't have to either visit a 2nd store for something, or just scratch something altogether.

Also, there were not people hustling in there and just grabbing paper stuff and checking out. That was a standard scene when we would go on our Sat. morning trips.

Civilization is saved! :)

No problem getting TP with our Wal-Mart pick-up order today.

Pork, though, was impossible.

New number I saw from an e-mail some pork organization sent out was that at least 3 million hogs ready for market will be euthanized and not processed. 6 million is the higher estimate.

The USDA is completely failing to support both the farmers and the people who need food. It's a big problem with a lot of challenges, but the federal government doesn't seem to be doing much of anything.

On the other hand, my daughters play spring soccer. No teams had played more than ONE game when COVID-19 closings hit. They haven't refunded a dime, and they are still saying "we're going to try to play the games." Really???

If you know a local farmer and have a local butcher, there's deals to be had. I was offered a whole hog last week at an absolute steal of a price. Between, that and the beef bundle I got a few weeks ago, I'm stocked on meat for the foreseeable future.

We were able to get toilet paper delivered from Walmart, but cannot find Clorox wipes, rubbing alcohol, or liquid soap.

Is it possible for the various makers of the products we're having shortages of to ramp up production? Or have they and they're still unable to meet demand? I'm surprised we're still in the position of having to hunt for some goods at this point. It's not like the inventory won't be sold.

One thing that I found interesting that was hard to find? Hair clippers. I decided a couple of weeks ago to cut the boys' hair until we can get in to a barber and couldn't find anyplace with clippers. I was finally able to get on a waitlist for an order that's supposed to arrive in 1 -2 weeks. Guess everyone had the same idea a week or two before I did....

It took me a few weeks to get chippers shipped a few weeks ago.

Also. I look awful.

I somehow got a same day delivery from Costco through Instacart yesterday. Put the order through and selected fast and flexible which gives a 2 day window and you can't change your order. It was shopped and delivered in 3 hours. I was amazed. Even got TP. Was able to order paper towels today from Costco.

What do the clippers have to do with that? :D

And yea I'm a mess too; close to a homeless look, but hopefully not the smell.

I'm like a week overdue on laundry. There's nobody else here to kick me in the ass for being a hobo.

The explanation I saw for toilet paper is that the overall use of it throughout the country is very predictable and factories run nearly 24/7 producing just enough for use with no stockpiles sitting in warehouses. This means any spike in demand is going to be felt immediately and take some time to calm down since we really don't have the means to just amp up production (already running 24/7). I'm assuming this applies to most of the cleaning products and other items that have experienced shortages.

One interesting thing I saw was the PX at Fort Lewis was selling Charmin in 2 roll packs that I've honestly never seen. The PX had the same 2 package limit on them as other TP, cleaning products, and medicines. It seemed to be Charmin's way of helping with hoarding.

This honestly would seem to be apropos, given what I know about you.

My best guess is it isn't so much a supply issue for most things, but rather a throughput issue. I don't know how much impact this is having, but there was a bad nationwide shortage of truckers for years before this. Wages were going through the roof and people still couldn't find enough qualified applicants no matter how high they raised them (I've heard numbers like double-triple what the pay was less than 10 years ago).

Then there's the sheer physical space at the stores. Whether you're talking the bulk storage/warehouse side or out on the shelves for customers, all of these buildings are designed for a certain amount of volume. You can't just buy an infinite amount of the high-demand stuff - every thing you store means not storing something else. And of course the demand levels are constantly fluctuating.

What they're trying to do now is cram far more in than they were designed for, but there's only so much you can do with that. I've seen tactics like just throwing out pallets of potatoes instead of putting them on shelves for a while at the start of this, but for many things they have to go on a shelf and there's only so much of them. Some items have been minimized, at least in some places, so there's more space for toilet paper, flour, etc. But to have enough room to make up for the demand, you'd need to do a lot more of that and/or flat-out get rid of some other items entirely that currently use that space. That doesn't solve a shortage, it simply changes what you're short of. I really think a big part of it, though the situation has improved from what I've seen, is that there simply isn't enough space for all the products people are buying.

In the long run, by which I mean several years or more, the economy would adjust. Stores would remodel/expand, new locations would go up, new factories built in the supply chain, etc. Doesn't surprise me though that we can't quite get there in the short term.

Bravo.

It's funny you mention that as I was reading a well-written answer on Quora (which obviously isn't the be-all and end-all of knowledge, but the better answers usually rise to the top) which was addressing this exact topic, even though the wages look good for truckers on paper, margins have been shrunk, small owner operators have been replaced with large corporations who only care about the cents on bottom line and the job has got shittier and shittier year on year to the point where they haven't been able to replace all the experienced truckers who have left with enough competent new candidates. Plus I guess if the job has a bad enough reputation it doesn't matter how much you really are paying (unless it's genuinely life changing money).

Way off topic, and I wonder if we have any folks on the board who are or have been in that line of work, but it was interesting reading that and then seeing your response.

We had one several years ago. Name began with a C i believe but don't recall it

Heh. Clippers. I first shaved my head in June 1994 and have done it myself since. As a result, I've always owned at least one set. Check pharmacies. CVS and Walgreens typically carry them in-store. No idea if they're sold out now, though.

Saw a really interesting story on a study from Italy that suggests high particulate pollution levels helps the virus stay in the air longer.

And I read a super cool story about using sewage to determine the percentage of people with antibodies within a given area.

Science is cool.

Cringer.

Any chance you have a link to the second? That sounds interesting.

https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/07/...read-covid-19/

Here's one version. A number of cities around the globe have done this, apparently.

I think the animals are being euthanized because there's no buyer processor. As far as the outbreaks at processing plants, I would guess more due to the fact workers are usually absolutely cramped on the line. Look at pictures of meat processing lines and you'll see what I mean. Being that they're essential I figured they would be a hot point for outbreaks.

https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2020-...68?pfmredir=sm

Technology like this is going to be the only way to get people back out quicker with the ability to possibly contain a small breakout from spreading like wildfire.

Of course, we can’t even convince people to take vaccines seriously without a conspiracy theory so this will never get off the ground in the US.

Saw Campbell’s soup today in non condensed form. Can’t recall ever seeing that before. Was a smaller can and honestly a rip-off. Might have been something intended for a facility of some sort. Like a mini bar/vending machine type size.

Worldometers reported 1,157 new US deaths. Going in the right direction from the recent 2,500's.

That's good news if it sustains - I'm waiting to draw any conclusions until the usual post-weekend reporting increase. A one-day drop is quite possibly just a blip.

Numbers in Austria still looking good 2 weeks after reopening retails stores and some other stuff (public parks for example). Getting cautiously (!) optimistic about summer doing us all a solid and 'drip-drip-drip' infections from short contacts not being a major driver compared to clusters in closed settings (which happen terrifyingly fast)

ENOUGH! This was TODAY on a four hour flight. This is not okay. Masks must be mandated by DOT/HHS in airports and on airplanes. Essential travel only, with proper PPE. #COVID19 #StopTheSpread pic.twitter.com/TzwJyVRBoD

— Sara Nelson (@FlyingWithSara) April 27, 2020

Kids are losing out on socialization and education because most of us are trying to do the right thing and socially distance.

Small businesses are closing because most of us are trying to do the right thing and socially distance.

Billions of dollars in productivity are being lost because most of us are trying to do the right thing and socially distance.

We are making enormous sacrifices trying to do the right thing.

And it's probably all for naught because you know that Addison just has to fly to Miami for the weekend for Juniper's 25th birthday party.

(But don't worry, she'll try to remember to wash her hands).

That's a terrifying picture, tbh. I wouldn't even think of flying right now - being in an enclosed space with circulating air... and that full to boot, yikes!

The whole 'recirculating air' bit is one of the biggest misconceptions about flying there is.

How much are masks going to help when you're on a packed plane for 4 hours?


Btw, the prison numbers are shocking if true. 90% spread & 95% of people are asymptomatic? If both those numbers are true, it's not tests producing false positives, and there aren't a lot of hospitalizations/deaths then maybe the super high estimates of % who have already had it are closer to being right than I thought they could be. Saw Boston is doing a random 1000 person test for antibodies in 3 (lower income, harder hit) neighborhoods and should have results within a week, I'll be interested to see what those numbers say.

What makes you an expert?

Masks will shorten the distance that your bodily fluids are traveling (esp if you cough), reducing the possible area of transmission from 6ft to like 1ft or so. So it may have some impact.

I will say the ReOpen people are doing a bang up job discrediting that point of view. https://www.charlotteobserver.com/ne...242317346.html

I think prison cases should be monitored closely to give us a good idea on the length of immunity. They'll inevitably be reexposed .

As a rule Sunday and weekend numbers have been a little unreliable throughout this thing. Let's see what tomorrow's say.

There's some controversy regarding false positives in the serology tests, but Cuomo said based on 7500 statewide tests roughly 25% of the population of NYC shows antibodies for Covid-19.

Some of you guys were awesome when news hit of my grandmother. Thought I would share an update.

She is COVID free at this point. She had a rough 3-4 days in the middle were her symptoms were the worst, but she never got to the point where she had trouble breathing. She never had to be admitted into the hospital.

I am shocked. As soon as I heard she had it I thought it was going to kill her. She's 83 and battled the flu for about 2 months in December & January. She was just getting back to normal when this hit.

Thanks for all of the well wishes guys.

Great news!!

That is super indeed.

Wow! That's great!

She should get a "I beat COVID 19" tattoo.

Think of how viral it would go!!!!

Glad to hear to good news!

SI

Yeah Spleen!

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Really good news

Wonderful news, spleen!

Yup, great news. We all need to hear about the victories more than ever.

Congrats to you and her Spleen.

Great news! Can I have some of her blood if I get sick?

this sounds gross the way you put it...

That's fantastic news.

lol Dangers of no comma.

Meat shortages soon? I'm sure hoarding will happen now that they're calling for it.

Global coronavirus death toll could be 60% higher than reported | Free to read

Thought this was an interesting article about the increase in deaths around the world since the COVID-19 pandemic started. I was looking into this kind of data yesterday but didn't get far . If this is accurate, there is an overall increase in deaths around the world that's above and beyond the COVID-19 totals + the average deaths for the time period.

Based on the lack of testing and the choice to assign COVID-19 deaths only to those who tested positive for the disease, this kind of trend makes sense. Curious to see what other reasons could come into play for the increase besides the ones mentioned in the article (increase in suicides and homicides, people avoiding the hospital and dying instead of getting treatment, etc).

Testing was so bad early on that it makes sense.

Setting aside the false positive issue (less of an issue here than it'd be in a non-hotspot and offset by false negatives of people infected recently), the main problem is that this was done on a part of the population that was more likely to be actively 'out and about' (shoppers at grocery stores) which would naturally skew the results. Heck, it might even be that people more likely agreed to do them that had a gut feeling that they had it already.

I mean, it's not as useless as asking people to volunteer via Facebook or in emails enticing them with "we can tell you if you can go back out safely" and then retroactively 'adjusting' it for underrepresented demographics (and posting a "see, this is like the flu !" Op ed) but also not exactly what you should aim for when you want to be able to upscale your results as a basis for policy decisions.

"Controversy" makes it sounds like it's something made up or junk science.

COVID-19 Antibody Testing | ARCpoint Labs

This is on the website of one of the testing labs that has dozens of sites nationwide:


The bottom line is what a lot of people choose to focus on, as we know so little about the virus. But I'd argue the bolded part is even more important. Considering coronaviruses hit about 20% of the population each cold and flu season, that seems really problematic.

Yes, I know this isn't how the naming works, but, as a parent of a 4 year old, I joked that I probably have already had COVID-18, COVID-17, COVID-16 3/4, COVID-16 1/2, etc.

SI

I'm surprised it took this long, but hadn't seen it mentioned here; the court battles over stay-at-home orders are ramping up. In Illinois, a temporary restraining order has been granted, essentially (for the moment) preventing the governor from extending the current order into May. Other cases are pending in Michigan and I presume elsewhere. Like everything else, there'll be a lot of scrutiny over what the courts decide to do on this, and I wonder how far up the legal chain it goes by the time we're done.

The one thing that unites us in this country--left and right together--is a fierce opposition to frivolous lawsuits and an equally fierce belief that anytime you don't get everything you want, you should sue somebody and deserve to win.

We disagree only on what we mean by frivolous :-)

NJ governor still hasn't cancelled schools for the year and said yesterday 5/15 return is still a possibility. Will be interesting to see if they do reopen schools, as I know a lot of parents who have already said they won't send their kids.

I've said from the start that we probably have double the recorded deaths and 15 times the recorded cases. We just haven't tested close to the amount of people to feel any confidence in these numbers. Trends are really all you can look at it with these daily numbers (and that is also extremely questionable). If you could wave a magic want to test 75%+ of the USA, I bet you would see atleast 15 million that have/had it and around 120K who died from it. But, we keep following these 1K-2K daily reported deaths like it is massively important if it is 1,300 vs 2,300.

Our approach to testing is like the drunk guy who drops his house keys in a dark parking lot at night. There are two street lamps and he keeps looking under them but can't find them. Of course, the street lamps only cover about 10% of the parking lot. That's the USA/World testing for coronavirus.

I'm finding the "excess deaths over average" metric useful as a rough way of trying to capture how many people have actually died of COVID-19.

But until we get a handle on how deadly the disease is, that still tells us little about how many are/were infected.

I think it is important, and I don't think the trend in deaths is nearly as questionable as you do. I agree we aren't close to accurate in terms of number of cases, but deaths is different as a lot of those people are actually dying in hospitals. That number is naturally going to be a lot closer to accurate than cases, and it also means the trend is significant.

We were at 2k+ for a week and a half or more. If it drops to closer to 1k for an extended period (today's number will be important on that), I don't see how that's not indicative of a trend. The experts have also said that deaths are pretty much the furthest-lagging indicator, so once that starts going down we are past the worst of the current bump.

Russia gonna Russia

Second Russian Doctor Falls From Hospital Window Amid Coronavirus - The Moscow Times

"Second Russian Doctor Falls From Hospital Window Amid Coronavirus"

Fall from window. Very sad.

SI

My doctor is calling in scripts for my wife and me to get a blood test for the antibody. Will be a relief to see if I have had it.

I think it's more the hospital load than the number of deaths. We may have a massive number of deaths over 3-4 days, but if the load of hospitals drops to 50%, that means more to me than fewer deaths but a load at 80%.

My kidney Doctor called to let me know he sent my prescriptions in and to reschedule my April appt for June. Let's hope I can make that one this time.

One good thing from all this stay at home stuff? I've learned the names of many of my neighbors now on my daily walks through the neighborhood.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/28/polit...ply/index.html
Trump with an executive order to save our bacon (couldn't resist the pun)

SI

I can only remember their dogs' names. It's something, I guess.

Keeping meat processing going is good, but just ordering plants to stay open without helping them devise ways to keep workers safe is thee wrong way to go. If the workers get sick, it doesn't matter that the President says the plant has to stay open.

The hamberders must flow

Any particular reason, or is it more widely available now if you ask? Last I checked they still had high error bars so it wasn't something I was looking to pay $100+ out of pocket for unless necessary, but I'm also curious.

(I'm also curious if the newer testing starts showing even a 20-25% antibody rate, and nothing shows re-infection, if they start allowing those people not to wear masks or we start using it for non-essential air travel etc.)

There wasn't really going to be a meat shortage. It was just a ploy to loosen liability and change the narrative.

My brother works in the lab of one of the biggest food processors in the country.

I asked about accuracy. He said it is a blood test and very accurate. We all showed some symptoms a while back and what we thought was the flu ripped through our kids school in January. We live in a hot zone and it would just be nice to know. He also said insurance should cover it, but if it doesn't the government should. TBH I would pay OOP within reason to know.

Going to be close to 2k today at a minimum, so if it is going down it's not by that much yet. My best guess is that we're just past the peak.

I'm seeing just over 2,400 deaths in the US today

edit: I think the site I'm looking at might be screwed up. They are showing different figures for the same stats in two different places

Yup.

"We can't keep our workers safe without spending some money to do so."

"OK. You don't have to keep your workers safe."

The combination of no unemployment if you don’t go back and liability waivers for corporations is perfectly GOP.

Worldometer was at 1900 when I posted originally, now 2300. So either way, obviously not at the 1.4kish that we were seeing for a couple days there.

There's a whole lot of people flat out making crap up if that's the case. I've seen numerous reports of excessively high numbers of animals being euthanized because there's nowhere to process them, and we do know of major processing plants that really have been shut down or lowered capacity. What I've been reading says there's plenty of frozen meat, but fresh meat is likely to have shortfalls in May.

I'm not saying you are being untruthful here, I just don't see how to connect the dots. Are all the people who used to work at, say, Smithfield just lying and they really are still working there but just saying they're not? I would think we'd know if that was the case.

Yeah, that part is fun. Amazon is going back to their normal time off policies starting Friday (getting rid of the one where you could skip a day if you felt sick & you wouldn't get paid, but it also wouldn't come out of your 20 hours per quarter of Unpaid Time Off), and probably getting rid of the $2/hour pay increase & 2x OT pay (vs the normal 1.5x) on May 15. Guess it was a pipe dream to assume they'd still have that little extra hazard pay as long as they're requiring everyone to show up wearing masks and enforce 6 feet of separation (officially at least, there's plenty of stuff in my department that is impossible to do while maintaining 6 feet of separation all day.)

All your doctors need to be careful next to windows. You should be worried about them. Windows are dangerous.

Well partially inspired by COVID I decided to jump back into Nutrisystem

I say inspired because I figure Nutrisystem would cut down on my grocery shopping which I hate to do these days.

So I get my box from Nutrisystem and they leave out 5 breakfast items. The bastards.

Well I'm 202 pounds on a 5'3 frame. Let's see how this goes.

Good luck.

Maybe it's how you define shortage, my guess is ... no shortage of meat at the source, the shortage is in the inability to process them and get them to the consumers.

BTW, anyone else notice there seems to be more SPAM commercials?

Thanks, I'll need it.

I have a small business and office space. We have been fortunate that we can remain in business and productive remotely, but I don’t see how places like mine are supposed to open back up to clients until cleaning supplies become readily available again.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...oll-total.html


Yikes... those graphs are seriously frightening. Without testing we can't really know how many have the virus, but the much higher than normal death tolls (even when you exclude COVID 19 positive people) seems to indicate the undercounting is substantial.