Poor people in other parts of the world don’t feast on dogs and bats

The wet markets are bad but the US factory farming is just as despicable, gross and abusive. Most if not all infectious diseases start from zoological origins and jump to humans. Anthrax, aids, bird-flu, swine-flu, mad-cow, SARS, MERS, Covid-19 etc. If you've seen any factory farming...its not for the faint of heart. Its worse than any horror you can imagine. High density feed lots, and processing plants. You probably wont see a lot of open reporting because they have "ad-gag" laws that make it a crime to report a crime. If people are worried that their mail might have Corona but 80% of pigs have pneumonia when they are slaughtered. So they don't die before they die, we inject them with anti-biotics which of coarse get passed to people, leading to anti-biotic resistant diseases, leading to us dying from ever evolving diseases.

We are on the cusp to returning to a pre ant-biotic era where strep throat was a death sentence. If we (world) keep producing food the way we do, we are going to get sick with something medicine cant fix.

Daditude - Sorry to hear about your great-uncle man. My Father similarly living in an assisted living facility and worry constantly about him and others there.

“A government-run study of Gilead’s remdesivir, perhaps the most closely watched experimental drug to treat the novel coronavirus, showed that the medicine is effective against Covid-19, the disease caused by the virus.

Gilead made the announcement in a statement Wednesday, stating: “We understand that the trial has met its primary endpoint.” The company said that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is conducting the study, will provide data at an upcoming briefing.

The finding — although difficult to fully characterize without any data for the study — would represent the first treatment shown to improve outcomes in patients infected with the virus that put the global economy in a standstill and killed at least 218,000 people worldwide.”

https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/29/gilead-says-critical-study-of-covid-19-drug-shows-patients-are-responding-to-treatment/

Mc Donald’s Canada has always been marketed as 100% Canadian beef. The Cargill beef processing plant in Alberta has been closed due to 700+ cases of covid. Grocery stores are getting low on beef in the West and Mc Donald’s Canada announced they will need to source beef from outside Canada. I doubt that meat will come from the suffering American supplies, is there anywhere in the world right now with surplus beef, at Canadian food grade standards?

If Mc Donald’s closed because they have no supply of meat, people will loose their minds in some areas. I work in some communities where fast food is the only food in walking distance.

They didn't use a control group. That article is vague as hell...

My wife left the house for the first time in 8 weeks yesterday.
We decided to take a 2 hour car excursion around town and into
a couple nearby towns in the next county across the Willamette River.
One thing we noticed was that the homeless downtown
(normally with belongings piled up along the sidewalks were now all gone)
and the activity on the streets and neighborhoods was fairly heavy
with more people jogging or walking than what one would see normally,
and most disappointedly is that most of them were not wearing masks.
Driving around town, one might never have been aware of a virus epidemic or lockdown going on.

My wife is normally a homebody who rarely leaves the house
maybe once or twice a week to go thrift shopping.
These past 8 weeks the only time she had been outdoors was to pee the dog
with her staying on the porch. But the isolation was finally getting to her
and she was getting depressed and even crying about the whole situation.
I, being retired, have not been too affected, as I have been able to get out a bit more often
to see the real world, like going to the post office to drop off ebay packages my wife has had listed (&sold)
and maybe going shopping once maybe twice a week or maybe once in a while picking up some take out.
It has affect my wife's niece and family in San Diego, as they have lost their regular stream of income.
Her husband is a process server working for a lawyer and 95% of his jobs were to serve eviction notices,
so that stream of income is gone for at least 3-4 months and he is unlikely to get unemployment,
as he was basically an independent contractor and paid by the job (notices delivered).
What the end result is going to be for them is that they will be giving (30 days) notice to their landlord
and vacate to leave and move up here to Salem ORegon. They will move into the house we just bought late last year
that was to be our future downsize home. We had planned on renting it out for a few years prior to the time we actually downsize,
as we have so much stuff, that is why the wife is selling our junk on ebay or craigslist.
But with the virus situation we were reluctant to rent to a stranger
who (in weeks) might turn around and say they could not pay the rent and become legal squatters.
Now the plan is to let the niece's family (husband and kid) move in.
They can stay rent free except to pay their own utilities.
Once they get on their feet and find jobs maybe at "freddie krueger's" (Fred Meyers Kroger Market),
Or government job, as Salem is capitol of Oregon, or Amazon warehouse nearby;
we will let them pay some minimal rent to help us cover property taxes and insurance, ( we already paid off the mortgage),
thus allowing them to save up for down payment to buy a home here;
which was impossible in the more expensive housing environment in California.
What we will get out of it is having family near by to help out in our old age and
maybe babysit our nine cats and dog, if we decide to go on vacation or weekend getaway.

Brazil grows a lot of beef but Brazil is not exactly the picture purity with 73,000 case and 5,100 deaths.

Argentina also grows a lot of beef, but only has dealt with 4,100 cases and zero deaths. But I don't know about its beef industry.

What if everyone just wore masks (outside the home) for a month (or longer)?

717XqUNQSPL._UL1500_ (resized).jpg

First, there were not enough N-95 masks. And we were told we don't need to wear masks, at all. I'm not sure how many drank that Koolaid, but eventually, people starting making their own masks out of any old kind of cloth laying around the sewing room. The authorities start telling us we need to wear masks and more and more homemade masks start coming on strongly.

And now, this: " First responders say KN95 masks are not as advertised."

https://www.boston25news.com/news/health/first-responders-made-china-kn95-masks-are-not-advertised-according-mit-researchers/WKU2LIMY5FGTPNFY5M2Q3E53SY/?outputType=amp

"The Brockton Police Department sent out a memo warning all of their officers about the Chinese-made KN95 masks, saying the masks aren’t really protecting them against this deadly virus."

" An email update sent out to officers said that tests conducted by MIT researchers determined that “they should have a filtration efficiency of 95%, but they tested at 28.1%.″
===========================================

My question(s): If this mask KN95 is not any good, what the hell chance does grandma's homemade mask have in providing protection?

It makes no sense.

What little trust I have had with the government putting out honest information has, rightly or wrongly, evaporated.

=========================================

Grandma isn’t directly in peoples faces touching them and giving them CPR or getting spit at by some idiot. Grandma isn’t in an infected crime scene for several hours sweating her ass off to keep the scene secure. Grandma isn’t intubating a patient as spit flies everywhere. Those are just a few reasons why we wear N95’s. You get spit on or go in an infected area and you might change your mind

So much for social distancing.

"‘This is not okay’ — Sunday was the busiest day for air travel in weeks."

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-not-okay-sunday-was-the-busiest-day-for-air-travel-in-weeks-2020-04-28?mod=mw_more_headlines
.
.================================================

Since I do see a couple of people wearing masks, so I assume the picture is accurate. And I don't see much social distancing going on here. Everything I have been reading was saying the middle seats would not be used. But it looks like this airline company could not avoid the temptation for get those seats filled.
.
.

Screen Shot 2020-04-29 at 11.14.50 AM (resized).png

..also, the first test they did with remdesivir showed negative results in treating Covid-19.

Alcohol-and-COVID-19-what-you-need-to-know(1).pdf

Wrong attachment!

Simply put -- 'not all mask debates are over the same thing'

That’s correct, it was a single arm study to look at whether a higher dose patient fared better than a lower dose patient. Both arms showed improvement but the lower dose arm seemed to actually do a little better.

Remdesivir has had some effect against MERS and SARS in the past so the assumption is it could have some effect on this virus as well. The lead researcher even says in the article that remdesivir is not a magic bullet or a cure but a tool in the toolbox.

On the other hand, I saw an article in Lancet today that was a randomized placebo controlled trial of remdesivir in severe COVID patients and there wasn’t a significant difference overall between the two groups. In the patients who had symptoms for less than 10 days when starting remdesivir there was a possible trend towards reduction in symptom days but it wasn’t statistically significant. Probably a larger trial will be done to see if there is a difference in that group. This trial was about 250 patients as I recall.

Hot off the presses: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31022-9/fulltext

It sounds like Remdesivir could end up being a bit of a nothing burger.

Fauci: "slightly lower mortality rate" in a trial that did not appear to have the approved 50% placebo comparison sounds like it is within the range of error and bias. Only a 3% lower mortality is not impressive to me. Does not change the way we live.

Whatever happened with last month’s game changing miracle drug hydro what’s its name?

Is that thing over?

For now the focus is on injecting Lysol I thought?

It’s hard to explain to someone who has not been to one of these markets, but you can not fathom how bad these markets are. You may have seen them on tv, but even then they are incredibly white-washed. As bad as factory farming is, it so much worse in these markets. Cages of stacked animals, sick from capture and transport, stacked on top of each other with puke, shit, and piss dripping onto each other. Live Sea turtles on blocks of ice, having their bodies cut in pieces to order over the span of a day. These places are beyond sadistic and unhygienic.

Change my mind? I'm not knocking anybody wearing an N95. And I did not say anything such.

The article suggested the cop shop got a lousy batch of KN-95s. And I did not know there could be a lousy batch. I thought a mask was a mask. But apparently not. My point is the cops don't feel safe with their batch of masks, so why should anybody feel like they are doing any good by wearing a homemade mask that goes through no quality control measures are far as filtering out the bad stuff.

Still in trials, but probably will not be a significant med.

I would think any medication would be hard to test as who really wants to do a double blind test on a deadly disease. Nobody would want to be on the placebo side of a deadly medication when the other half is making full recoveries in a short amount of time.

It’s an issue militant activists had to face during the aids crisis. It was finally understood they HAD to do a real, scientifically and medically sound test of the retroviral drugs.

Surely some lives were lost but the drugs were confirmed and have saved countless lives over the past 25 years.

Trump has signed an order requiring the meet packers to stay open.

In the 20th Century there were several times that employees went on strike such as the coal minors or other items critical to the economy and the President made a call to action requiring the strikers to get back to work. But these were employee driven strikes over wages and benefits.

This is different meat packing stuff is different due to the health risks.

"Meat plant workers to Trump: Employees aren't going to show up."

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/29/business/meat-processing-plant-workers-reaction-executive-order/index.html

The meat packing employees say they are not coming back to work because of the health risks. Can the government require them to go back to work in an unhealthy work environment? I mean, if a group of employees flip the govt. off and say they are not going back in, could they be taken to jail for refusing to work?

The homemade mask likely does nothing (or very little) to keep the person wearing it safe. What it does is limit a carrier from spreading the virus to others. If people are only wearing the homemade mask in an attempt to keep themselves safe, I'm not going to tell them otherwise if I think it can help the population at large.

Precisely. The theory is that if everyone wears a mask when in public, the people who are contagious won't as easily spread it to others. I think this logic is sound.

It's not about 100% effectiveness... it's about reduction of efficiency of transmission...

IMG_7342 (resized).jpg

The meat plants thing is pretty nuts.

No they can t force employees - who are sick and scared - to show up to work. But the order authorizes the company to bring in foreign workers, temps, whatever it takes to keep the places running.

They say they’ll provide proper PPE and make the workplaces safer but they don’t say how.

Just seems like a big FU to the people who work in these plants, and a giant favor to the meat companies. If the question is, can America survive with slightly less meat than before, at the benefit of protecting workers, I’d say “yes.”

But I guess the feds live in terror of a bacon shortage? Or what any kind of disruption in the meat supply chain will do to the markets?

Like a lot of our actions over the past 2 Months seems like a pretty rash decision that isn’t terribly well thought out, for very short term benefit of markets. I don’t like it. We didn’t use the DPA to produce more PPE for health care workers, but well use it to protect bacon and meat companies?

Jail is worse than the meat plant. The one in my county has a major outbreak. Aren't a lot of the meat plant workers immigrants? They might be looking at deportation vs. jail.

That's pretty horrible to hear. I knew they were bad...real bad. I just didn't want to hear/read/see it as an animal person. People may be animal people but they should choose more wisely in what and how much they eat. This virus is pretty deadly and going to be costly in more ways than one. The next virus/pandemic may do us all in if we don't wise up quick.

I'm sure they will do a deep cleaning and open back up, if those workers refuse, hire ones that will. Of course safety measures need to be increased like masks and partitions. It is doable!!

Think of a mask as a spaghetti strainer. Now picture 2 spaghetti strainers in between someone with the virus and you. Its not full proof as maybe a noodle gets loose but maybe your strainer will block it.

Now imaging a piñata filled with Pizza sauce on a train going 120 mph...

https://twitter.com/CHIZMAGA/status/1254855467165028352

This is a very good article about the crazy situation we currently have in Georgia:

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/04/why-georgia-reopening-coronavirus-pandemic/610882/

https://nypost.com/2020/04/27/ive-worked-the-coronavirus-front-line-and-i-say-its-time-to-start-opening-up/

It is a slippery slope. Coal is more crucial than meat, but coal mining is more dangerous than working in a meat packing plant. I personally wouldn't want the government telling me to do either job if I did not feel it was safe.

They won’t force people to go to work, they can’t.

They will however replace them with more immigrants or temps. Trust me, meat plants are basically the 3rd ring of hell, they are awful places. Nobody is going to be clamoring to scab these jobs if the usual workers are too scared or sick to show up.

These two articles are a perfect example of how the same topic is covered so differently from a media outlet that leans left than a media outlet that leans right. It's no wonder people in this country are so confused.

You don’t care because you don’t work in a meat plant.

It’s “doable.” But the whole point of this order is they now don’t really have to do anything, and now they’ll be shielded from liability after they kill their workers.

It’s really awful. These companies were barely doing jack shit to protect their workers before, what makes you think they’ll step it up now that there’s an executive order with zero teeth as far as safety forcing them to stay open?

Not sure if this was covered, but you can add a coffee filter (new) to your existing mask. Adds a little more coverage.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/29/trumps-latest-executive-order-highlights-our-inequality-crisis/

I'm a meat eater, and I still don't understand why meat production is so fundamentally important that we can't make do without it until the job can be done safely again. Will people starve if they don't have meat for a month? Don't we have plenty of fruits, vegetables, grains, fish, eggs, etc ...?

What would you do with all the heads of cattle in the que ready for processing? This industry runs on a clock and needs to move along.

You kill them. Pigs, chickens, cows are bring killed because there is nowhere to process them.

Pig farmers are putting their hogs on diet feed so they take longer to fatten up.

The other answer is to order the plants to stay open regardless of cost or what you have to do to keep them staffed. I wonder if we'll see prison labor used.

This story seems to be all over the news outlets at the moment:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/brooklyn-rabbi-funeral-social-distancing-bill-de-blasio-nypd-williamsburg/
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/nyregion/hasidic-funeral-coronavirus-de-blasio.html
https://nypost.com/2020/04/29/nypd-warned-big-crowd-would-turn-out-for-nyc-rabbis-funeral/
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/mayor-de-blasio-nypd-break-up-williamsburg-streets-packed-for-brooklyn-rabbi-funeral/2394306/
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/29/us/new-york-city-mayor-large-funeral/index.html
https://abc7ny.com/health/rabbis-funeral-draws-massive-crowd-angers-mayor/6136795/

Just going to post some Killer Mike lyrics.

"Cos free labor is the cornerstone of US economics
Cos slavery was abolished, unless you are in prison
You think I am bullshitting, then read the 13th Amendment
Involuntary servitude and slavery it prohibits
That's why they giving drug offenders time in double digits"

...says the gentleman living in a small apartment in NYC.

Comparing a home to a workplace is not quite equivalent...