quote:

Please dear god, tell me that's a joke.

Of course.

The covid condom challenge of 2020?

Meanwhile over here in MS....

I found a few bottles of hand sanitizer. The alcohol kind but brands I had never heard of. Stunk so bad we gave a few away and dumped the rest out. The yard stunk all day. Smelled like some kind of cheap Chinese plastic chemical. Terrible.

What I meant was that everyone can feel pressure to act in a desired way. Maybe overt pressure like public opinion, legacy building, etc.. Maybe be some behind the scenes pressure. Not sure I believe all the coincidental events lately have no man made influence.

What does "the message sent with Scalia's natural death was received" mean? Are you suggesting that Scalia was murdered?

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
What does "the message sent with Scalia's natural death was received" mean? Are you suggesting that Scalia was murdered?

I don't remember the details now, but seem to recall some sketchy circumstances associated with his death. I'm sure that is what he is referring to.

quote:

Originally posted by tleo205:

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
What does "the message sent with Scalia's natural death was received" mean? Are you suggesting that Scalia was murdered?

I don't remember the details now, but seem to recall some sketchy circumstances associated with his death. I'm sure that is what he is referring to.

<puts his arm around Tleo's shoulder and quietly explains to him how it's best to not get between a bird and his prey while walking him off to the sidelines>

As for my hometown, I'm seeing people getting very comfortable with being outside. I'm not worried about a "second wave" and I really hope we don't see one, but I was just talking about this with a friend this weekend, and we both really believed we learned a lot as a society and will be able to handle something like this much better and much more precise if we have to ward off another round.

oldbill, if you intend to post in this forum, one of the things you need to understand is that in this forum, I do not tolerate- nor am I interested in- anyone's amateur sleuth conspiracy theories. You will kindly refrain from posting nonsense like that in this forum.

To you and everyone else who posts in this forum, I say that if you want to waste your time with that kind of goofy shit, you'll need to do it elsewhere. Keep it out of here. I don't appreciate having to address that kind of paranoid nonsense and to have to ask you more than once to clarify your vague remarks, which, I assume, means you had at least some idea of my view on such things, before you posted it.

.gov knows best. Do not resist.

Coronavirus disinfectant spray poisons Brickell Key dogs, owners say
BY LINDA ROBERTSON
MAY 30, 2020 07:00 AM , UPDATED JUNE 01, 2020 02:47 AM


Brickell Key residents knew something was not right about the coronavirus sanitation measures implemented at their downtown Miami island. They felt as sick as dogs — their dogs.

Dozens of condo dwellers were afflicted with stomach cramps, headaches, rashes, eye irritations and nausea. Although their pet dogs couldn’t describe their symptoms, they were clearly miserable, too.

On March 12, the Brickell Key Master Association, which manages the island, began an outdoor “sanitation program,” spraying sidewalks, the perimeter baywalk, grassy park areas, benches and trash barrels with Virex Plus One disinfectant every morning from 5 to 7 a.m.

The treatments, applied by maintenance employees wearing hazmat suits, killed some foliage and left a pungent odor, like extreme body odor, residents said.

Within a week, residents and pets fell ill, particularly those who walk their dogs.


Colon and a group of concerned neighbors sought more information on the product from its manufacturer, Diversey. The company replied that while Virex Plus One, which contains ammonium chloride, is used to kill germs and clean hard surfaces at hospitals, nursing homes, schools, hotels, apartment buildings and kennels, it is not made to be applied to porous surfaces, such as concrete, where it will dry but can’t be wiped off and will also build up beneath the surface, in gaps and between pavers. Diversey said the product is not only potentially dangerous but ineffective when used in outdoor public spaces.

“There seems to be residue buildup or overspray getting into the grass and/or crevices on or near the concrete,” Ed Meeden, a technical customer support representative at Diversey, wrote in an email responding to residents’ inquiries. “My guess is the buildup is not drying fast enough and the animals are getting into it.”

A Diversey employee from the healthcare marketing department said the product was not recommended for outdoor use.

My ex is now a Director of Diversity and Inclusion at a large state university. She told me yesterday that they were resuming classes in the fall of 2020, but adjourning at Thanksgiving and not returning until sometime in 2021, like February. The school is afraid of the pre-ordained second wave hitting during the next flu season and believes seasonal flu makes people more susceptible to the WuFlu.

I said they have nothing to worry about, this thing will burn out soon. She used to be a rather level headed no-BS conservative hispanic woman. Now 8 years as a university administrator and she has been indoctrinated like the rest of them. Good thing we divorced 6 years ago I guess, it would probably be insufferable now. Well, more insufferable that what caused the divorce.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Just following the herd. I think it actually makes sense. The private University I attended had students from all over the United States and the world. Giving them a break to visit with all the friends and relatives and then return to campus would have been foolish. Just my two cents.

quote:

Originally posted by Lefty Sig:
My ex is now a Director of Diversity and Inclusion at a large state university.

The fact that such a thing exists at large universities in this country scares me more than the Chinese crud ever will.

Had a real sit down dinner in a restaurant Saturday.

Went hiking in WV Sat and stayed that night at a B&B. Only 4 rooms were rented out of about 18 where rented. They had just reopened Friday. It was nice to sit down to a meal. They opened their pool the day we arrived so we got to relax by a pool also.

Had to wear masks inside except when seated at a table.

The pool had reduced seating but since only four rooms where rented, it wasn't an issue.

Used their gym also. While it's your normal hotel-style gym it was nice to have some weights and get in a real workout.

Hopefully, more things will start to open up.

quote:

Originally posted by comet24:
Had a real sit down dinner in a restaurant Saturday.

Did they delouse you before or after the Cone of Silence?

quote:

Had to wear masks inside except when seated at a table.

That makes as much sense as any of this.

Wanna throw 'em off? Be this guy What now, bitchezz?

Found an interesting article on Medium that hit my Google feed that’s interesting:

https://elemental.medium.com/c...rything-2c4032481ab2

(Medium is a pay site but this article is provided for free by the site)

Coronavirus May Be a Blood Vessel Disease, Which Explains Everything
Many of the infection’s bizarre symptoms have one thing in common
Dana G Smith

In April, blood clots emerged as one of the many mysterious symptoms attributed to Covid-19, a disease that had initially been thought to largely affect the lungs in the form of pneumonia. Quickly after came reports of young people dying due to coronavirus-related strokes. Next it was Covid toes — painful red or purple digits.

What do all of these symptoms have in common? An impairment in blood circulation. Add in the fact that 40% of deaths from Covid-19 are related to cardiovascular complications, and the disease starts to look like a vascular infection instead of a purely respiratory one.

Months into the pandemic, there is now a growing body of evidence to support the theory that the novel coronavirus can infect blood vessels, which could explain not only the high prevalence of blood clots, strokes, and heart attacks, but also provide an answer for the diverse set of head-to-toe symptoms that have emerged.

“All these Covid-associated complications were a mystery. We see blood clotting, we see kidney damage, we see inflammation of the heart, we see stroke, we see encephalitis [swelling of the brain],” says William Li, MD, president of the Angiogenesis Foundation. “A whole myriad of seemingly unconnected phenomena that you do not normally see with SARS or H1N1 or, frankly, most infectious diseases.”

“If you start to put all of the data together that’s emerging, it turns out that this virus is probably a vasculotropic virus, meaning that it affects the [blood vessels],” says Mandeep Mehra, MD, medical director of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Heart and Vascular Center.

In a paper published in April in the scientific journal The Lancet, Mehra and a team of scientists discovered that the SARS-CoV-2 virus can infect the endothelial cells that line the inside of blood vessels. Endothelial cells protect the cardiovascular system, and they release proteins that influence everything from blood clotting to the immune response. In the paper, the scientists showed damage to endothelial cells in the lungs, heart, kidneys, liver, and intestines in people with Covid-19.

A one-of-a-kind respiratory virus

SARS-CoV-2 is thought to enter the body through ACE2 receptors present on the surface of cells that line the respiratory tract in the nose and throat. Once in the lungs, the virus appears to move from the alveoli, the air sacs in the lung, into the blood vessels, which are also rich in ACE2 receptors.

“[The virus] enters the lung, it destroys the lung tissue, and people start coughing. The destruction of the lung tissue breaks open some blood vessels,” Mehra explains. “Then it starts to infect endothelial cell after endothelial cell, creates a local immune response, and inflames the endothelium.”

A respiratory virus infecting blood cells and circulating through the body is virtually unheard of. Influenza viruses like H1N1 are not known to do this, and the original SARS virus, a sister coronavirus to the current infection, did not spread past the lung. Other types of viruses, such as Ebola or Dengue, can damage endothelial cells, but they are very different from viruses that typically infect the lungs.

Benhur Lee, MD, a professor of microbiology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, says the difference between SARS and SARS-CoV-2 likely stems from an extra protein each of the viruses requires to activate and spread. Although both viruses dock onto cells through ACE2 receptors, another protein is needed to crack open the virus so its genetic material can get into the infected cell. The additional protein the original SARS virus requires is only present in lung tissue, but the protein for SARS-CoV-2 to activate is present in all cells, especially endothelial cells.

“In SARS1, the protein that’s required to cleave it is likely present only in the lung environment, so that’s where it can replicate. To my knowledge, it doesn’t really go systemic,” Lee says. “[SARS-CoV-2] is cleaved by a protein called furin, and that’s a big danger because furin is present in all our cells, it’s ubiquitous.”

Endothelial damage could explain the virus’ weird symptoms

An infection of the blood vessels would explain many of the weird tendencies of the novel coronavirus, like the high rates of blood clots. Endothelial cells help regulate clot formation by sending out proteins that turn the coagulation system on or off. The cells also help ensure that blood flows smoothly and doesn’t get caught on any rough edges on the blood vessel walls.

“The endothelial cell layer is in part responsible for [clot] regulation, it inhibits clot formation through a variety of ways,” says Sanjum Sethi, MD, MPH, an interventional cardiologist at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. “If that’s disrupted, you could see why that may potentially promote clot formation.”

Endothelial damage might account for the high rates of cardiovascular damage and seemingly spontaneous heart attacks in people with Covid-19, too. Damage to endothelial cells causes inflammation in the blood vessels, and that can cause any plaque that’s accumulated to rupture, causing a heart attack. This means anyone who has plaque in their blood vessels that might normally have remained stable or been controlled with medication is suddenly at a much higher risk for a heart attack.

“Inflammation and endothelial dysfunction promote plaque rupture,” Sethi says. “Endothelial dysfunction is linked towards worse heart outcomes, in particular myocardial infarction or heart attack.”

Blood vessel damage could also explain why people with pre-existing conditions like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and heart disease are at a higher risk for severe complications from a virus that’s supposed to just infect the lungs. All of those diseases cause endothelial cell dysfunction, and the additional damage and inflammation in the blood vessels caused by the infection could push them over the edge and cause serious problems.

The theory could even solve the mystery of why ventilation often isn’t enough to help many Covid-19 patients breathe better. Moving air into the lungs, which ventilators help with, is only one part of the equation. The exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the blood is just as important to provide the rest of the body with oxygen, and that process relies on functioning blood vessels in the lungs.

“If you have blood clots within the blood vessels that are required for complete oxygen exchange, even if you’re moving air in and out of the airways, [if] the circulation is blocked, the full benefits of mechanical ventilatory support are somewhat thwarted,” says Li.

A new paper published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine, on which Li is a co-author, found widespread evidence of blood clots and infection in the endothelial cells in the lungs of people who died from Covid-19. This was in stark contrast to people who died from H1N1, who had nine times fewer blood clots in the lungs. Even the structure of the blood vessels was different in the Covid-19 lungs, with many more new branches that likely formed after the original blood vessels were damaged.

“We saw blood clots everywhere,” Li says. “We were observing virus particles filling up the endothelial cell like filling up a gumball machine. The endothelial cell swells and the cell membrane starts to break down, and now you have a layer of injured endothelium.”
Finally, infection of the blood vessels may be how the virus travels through the body and infects other organs — something that’s atypical of respiratory infections.

“Endothelial cells connect the entire circulation [system], 60,000 miles worth of blood vessels throughout our body,” says Li. “Is this one way that Covid-19 can impact the brain, the heart, the Covid toe? Does SARS-CoV-2 traffic itself through the endothelial cells or get into the bloodstream this way? We don’t know the answer to that.”

If Covid-19 is a vascular disease, the best antiviral therapy might not be antiviral therapy

An alternative theory is that the blood clotting and symptoms in other organs are caused by inflammation in the body due to an over-reactive immune response — the so-called cytokine storm. This inflammatory reaction can occur in other respiratory illnesses and severe cases of pneumonia, which is why the initial reports of blood clots, heart complications, and neurological symptoms didn’t sound the alarm bells. However, the magnitude of the problems seen with Covid-19 appear to go beyond the inflammation experienced in other respiratory infections.

“There is some increased propensity, we think, of clotting happening with these [other] viruses. I think inflammation in general promotes that,” Sethi says. “Is this over and above or unique for SARS-CoV-2, or is that just because [the infection] is just that much more severe? I think those are all really good questions that unfortunately we don’t have the answer to yet.”

Anecdotally, Sethi says the number of requests he received as the director of the pulmonary embolism response team, which deals with blood clots in the lungs, in April 2020 was two to three times the number in April 2019. The question he’s now trying to answer is whether that’s because there were simply more patients at the hospital during that month, the peak of the pandemic, or if Covid-19 patients really do have a higher risk for blood clots.

“I suspect from what we see and what our preliminary data show is that this virus has an additional risk factor for blood clots, but I can’t prove that yet,” Sethi says.
The good news is that if Covid-19 is a vascular disease, there are existing drugs that can help protect against endothelial cell damage. In another New England Journal of Medicine paper that looked at nearly 9,000 people with Covid-19, Mehra showed that the use of statins and ACE inhibitors were linked to higher rates of survival. Statins reduce the risk of heart attacks not only by lowering cholesterol or preventing plaque, they also stabilize existing plaque, meaning they’re less likely to rupture if someone is on the drugs.

“It turns out that both statins and ACE inhibitors are extremely protective on vascular dysfunction,” Mehra says. “Most of their benefit in the continuum of cardiovascular illness — be it high blood pressure, be it stroke, be it heart attack, be it arrhythmia, be it heart failure — in any situation the mechanism by which they protect the cardiovascular system starts with their ability to stabilize the endothelial cells.”

Mehra continues, “What we’re saying is that maybe the best antiviral therapy is not actually an antiviral therapy. The best therapy might actually be a drug that stabilizes the vascular endothelial. We’re building a drastically different concept.”

All tables and chairs at the pool at the KOA Kampground in Forsyth, GA have been removed, but you can bring your own. Also, strict limit of 26 people in the pool enclosure. I have yet to see a single masker in the campground and they still bring free cookies right to your site.

We'll be traveling through TN and KY today and stopping in Northern Ohio. We'll see how many maskers we come across. Michigan tomorrow which should be exciting. As I read Whitler's Executive Orders, they only apply to people currently residing in Michigan when the orders were issued. This is how us out of staters can go to our vacation homes, but you in staters can't. I'd tell you how much TP were bringing, but I don't want do risk getting hijacked.

Came into hospital today where my group works, first time since they started slapping a sticker on your chest with the day/date on it after you passed the question/temp/mask gauntlet.

The symbolism of everyone in the building walking around with a label and number on their chest is a little off..... but I'm sure nobody's thought of that.

quote:

Originally posted by DanH:
Found an interesting article on Medium that hit my Google feed that’s interesting:

https://elemental.medium.com/c...rything-2c4032481ab2

(Medium is a pay site but this article is provided for free by the site)

Coronavirus May Be a Blood Vessel Disease, Which Explains Everything
Many of the infection’s bizarre symptoms have one thing in common
Dana G Smith

Great article. Thanks for sharing, DanH.

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:

quote:

Originally posted by Lefty Sig:
My ex is now a Director of Diversity and Inclusion at a large state university.

The fact that such a thing exists at large universities in this country scares me more than the Chinese crud ever will.

I believe it is for the graduate business school or perhaps the entire business school, I'm not sure. Business schools are at least a little more sane than the liberal arts and "studies". Before that she was an admissions director for the graduate business school and one part of that job was to increase hispanic enrollment.