well_red

I thought it was suspected early on that Pangolin or "Scaly Anteater" was the probably source at the Wuhan market. Evidently its meat is considered a delicacy, its scales have therapeutic properties, and it is the most heavily trafficked mammal in the world! Can't believe this thing exists.

What about China? Italy? Spain, France? Germany now has now forbids groups of more than 2. England has also upped their restrictions. There are no common political threads across all these countries, unless you believe in an X-Files conspiracy. The whole world is heading toward lockdown.

Looks like the fatality rate was quite low (0.03%): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8406723.stm

I live in Arrowhead, which is around 70% vacation homes supposedly, and I'm shocked we haven't seen more of an influx of them this week. I certainly wouldn't want to be in a big populated area right now. On the other hand, we only have a tiny hospital that could get overrun pretty easily, and the closest big hospitals are in San Bernardino, probably the last place you'd want to end up.

well-made visualizations about the spread of the virus: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/22/world/coronavirus-spread.html

There's plenty of blame to go around. Wuhan officials held back information from Beijing, China held back information from the WHO. The WHO waited too long declare an international emergency, the US and Europe waited far too long to act, and half-assed at that. Lucky for Taiwan, they have been through this before with SARS and jumped on it ASAP. Wuhan wasn't even shut down until late January, but Taiwan was screening airline passengers Dec 31, the same day the Chinese CDC was notified of a possible new virus. The Taiwanese government is actually functional and acted decisively and saved their population the pains we are facing. Downplaying the severity of the virus is misguided.

oh boy

https://www-bloomberg-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.bloomberg.com/amp/opinion/articles/2020-02-29/coronavirus-end-game-will-be-nuisance-more-than-terror Experts say it's common for new flu strains epidemics to take about 2-3 years for enough "herd immunity" to build up such that the new virus is just another part of the seasonal cold/flu bugs that go around each winter. Until then who knows, though it seems we will barely be at the beginning stages of this in two weeks or a month or two, restrictions could go on for a while. Someone tested positive up here in the mountains, found out today. Tiny community, tiny hospital, but makes me think over the next few days it is going to pop up at every hospital in southern California.

Imagine the outcries of rage if these measures actually work to curb the spread, "see, we told you it wasn't that serious, all left-wing media conspiracy, now they've ruined our economy!"

Now SF Bay Area ordered to "shelter in place" for 3 weeks. Sounds like a tornado warning.

great sobering article, long story short, countries that lock it down can curb the infection rate and focus medical resources, if we don’t it’s gonna get ugly https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca

ummmm, I think I know the answer to this already:

I love the second-level panic. You need to make a run on Costco not because of the virus, but because of the unfolding attack on our democracy!

For anyone who wants to geek out on the simple mathematics of infection and how this could play out, pretty interesting toward the end on how changes in the infection rate due to changes in behavior can have mind-boggling alterations in the total number of cases. Guess we'll know in about 3 months!

Sinclair Media is probably the real bad guy here. But will Youtube TV drop prices now that these sports channels are gone, probably not. Guess I'll go with Hulu TV until they inevitably "can't reach an agreement" too. From the chatter online, people think Sinclair wants to set up it's own streaming service for these regional sports channels and hence is getting out of all the existing agreements with streaming providers.

damn it. i switched from sling to youtube tv last year because of this, and i really like youtube tv. son of a bitch.

we're just f'ing cursed, time for the angels to think outside the box.

4 strains of the coronavirus are responsible for variations of the common cold. 3 others are SARS, MERS and now this one. SARS had a death rate of 10% but only infected a few thousand people, MERS had a death rate of 30% but infected even less, so they didn't transmit so easily between people. This one seems to transmit more like the common cold with around 80,000 cases already. The death rate is lower, around 2-3%, but if this thing transmits all the way around the globe then imagine 2-3% of the world dying because of it (hundreds of millions of people).

Over/under on Trout's OPS if he knew offspeed vs fastball?

I was in Philly for work recently, co-workers wanted to hit up an authentic "cash only" Italian restaurant. We ended up at Villa di Roma, food was great, not too expensive, very old school. Found out later it used in the Irishman. Also, we stayed at an airbnb on s 20th and dickinson. Insane deal, only $99 a night (maybe because it was on weekdays, was basically brand new, nice furniture, 4 bedrooms. Not the best neighborhood but felt safe.

In olden days there used to be a big deterrent in that, if you suspected the other team was stealing signals, the next batter would get one in the earhole, can't do that anymore. It is easy enough to obfuscate the signals, silly to act like people aren't watching the third base coach or a runner on second can't see in to the pitch call. Maybe going forward catcher's will need to do more complicated signaling, even with no one on base.

There is a big difference when you are picking signs live via cameras and signaling to the batter in real time.

I was 10 when it came out. It was great then, it was great when I was 20, 30, now I'm 43 and it's still great. Actually psyched for the sequel, and I'm never excited about anything.

How could they not take away their WS ring, if they feel the proof is irrefutable? is there a bigger advantage in baseball besides knowing what pitch is coming? OK, maybe facing Kershaw in the WS, but other than that...