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[martinuzz]

That was later. Back in february, China was still trying to make it look like they had things under control.

[ChairmanPoo]

That was later. Back in february, China was still trying to make it look like they had things under control.

You mean like our goverments are doing now? 

[McTraveller]

I just saw a meme - "Do all the roadwork now!"  Sounds like a good idea actually - and it's not like road workers are right on top of each other either.

[Frumple]

Eh, they work close more than you might think, depending on the specific issue being addressed. But, yes, they're often spread out, generally not touching shared surfaces, often outside where it's harder for spread to happen if you're not bunched up, generally not interacting much with the general public or at-risk populations, etc., etc. If you're looking for a desperately needed work project that would carry relatively minimal risk of spreading the plague, you could do a lot worse than roadwork.

All that said, it's also hard work, mostly exposed to the elements, and often enough fairly dangerous for one reason (heavy equipment, material issues, other stuff) or another (idiot drivers), so it's obviously enough not to everyone. Still, something that could both do a lot of good and offer a good bit of relief for people who have lost jobs or whathaveyou? Damn straight it is.

'Course, stateside, we've been waiting for that infrastructure week and billions or trillions of dollars of investment in our decaying roads and whatnot for a good four (plus) years now. It's become something of a running joke

[andrea]

I think McTraveller was talking about already scheduled maintenance on the roads, which could be done with much less disruption to traffic now that there is basically no traffic.

That said, infrastructure projects would be a great way to help the recovery.

[Iduno]

Under the capitalist systems we have there needs to be a bounty for saving the world.  That's how things work at the moment.  That's far from the worst thing about our system, in fact it's arguably its optimal use case.  The true horror is the *normal* price fixing which we've come to accept, at least here in America.  We could even see another white knight donation of vaccine for the public good, and the true harm would be how much goodwill that would buy the vampires bleeding us dry day by day.

That, and it would most likely be done to test the vaccine that is otherwise being rushed out with no real testing. In their view, it would still be good, because it only killed off people who couldn't afford the real vaccine anyway.

The issue is that they did not follow good design principles in their project, and it shows.

Material is selected for a wide variety or reasons. Engineering students are trained to pick appropriate materials, and to work with peers in other engineering disciplines.  In this case, they should have conversed with their EE classmates, and selected appropriate materials, then specc'ed them appropriately.

The notion of "These are short term use only, so it doesn't matter" is similar to the kind of malpratice that happens with hospice patients. "They are gonna die anyway, so giving them proper treatment is not important."  You don't know if they will recover enough on their own to go off hospice, and so such a decision is callous and simply wrong on every professional level.  Likewise, the 'Its disposable!' mindset, as justification for laxity in design, is just gross negligence.

This could have been a great opportunity to actually do good design and best practices. But no. They did not.

Agreed. I wish our senior engineering design projects required us to combine multiple disciplines, so we got more exposure to different ideas and requirements.

'Course, stateside, we've been waiting for that infrastructure week and billions or trillions of dollars of investment in our decaying roads and whatnot for a good four (plus) years now. It's become something of a running joke

Worse here, where they have actually argued that because certain neighborhoods have less wealth, they don't deserve the same quality services (roads, schools, etc.). I'll let you guess how that "coincidentally" lines up with skin color.

[wierd]

for the data analytics kids...

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

lots of data there.

[Frumple]

Yeah, I've been using one of the arcgis things for florida numbers -- our dashboard is using basically the same system.

I can see the joke coming, though. "America likes our crow plague like we like our military spending: More than the next twenty countries combined."

Though so far it's only four or five. Give it another month or two.

[bloop_bleep]

Speaking of Shkreli:

https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/06/martin-shkreli-coronavirus-prison/

"
“As a successful two-time biopharma entrepreneur, having purchased multiple companies, invented multiple new drug candidates, filed numerous INDs and clinical trial applications, I am one of the few executives experienced in ALL aspects of drug development from molecule creation and hypothesis generation,” Shkreli wrote in a scientific paper posted online this week.

The rest of the paper, co-authored by two of Shkreli’s business partners and another two individuals described as “citizen scientists,” details an effort to identify existing drugs that might have a beneficial effect on Covid-19. Shkreli and colleagues claim to have used software to screen more than 100,000 compounds against a model of the coronavirus, whittling the list down to eight available drugs that could be useful in fighting the pandemic.
"

Lol. So... he found eight EXISTING drugs that could help. Found with software not his own. But he wants to get the furlough time and doubtlessly the profits from making and distributing them. Not his old patent troll behavior at all.

Also lol'd at the paper being co-authored by his business partner and two "citizen scientists." Yes, definitely a world-class scientific paper filled with expert, carefully and methodically obtained scientific information.

[scriver]

Under the capitalist systems we have there needs to be a bounty for saving the world.  That's how things work at the moment.  That's far from the worst thing about our system, in fact it's arguably its optimal use case.  The true horror is the *normal* price fixing which we've come to accept, at least here in America.  We could even see another white knight donation of vaccine for the public good, and the true harm would be how much goodwill that would buy the vampires bleeding us dry day by day.

That, and it would most likely be done to test the vaccine that is otherwise being rushed out with no real testing. In their view, it would still be good, because it only killed off people who couldn't afford the real vaccine anyway.

The issue is that they did not follow good design principles in their project, and it shows.

Material is selected for a wide variety or reasons. Engineering students are trained to pick appropriate materials, and to work with peers in other engineering disciplines.  In this case, they should have conversed with their EE classmates, and selected appropriate materials, then specc'ed them appropriately.

The notion of "These are short term use only, so it doesn't matter" is similar to the kind of malpratice that happens with hospice patients. "They are gonna die anyway, so giving them proper treatment is not important."  You don't know if they will recover enough on their own to go off hospice, and so such a decision is callous and simply wrong on every professional level.  Likewise, the 'Its disposable!' mindset, as justification for laxity in design, is just gross negligence.

This could have been a great opportunity to actually do good design and best practices. But no. They did not.

Agreed. I wish our senior engineering design projects required us to combine multiple disciplines, so we got more exposure to different ideas and requirements.

'Course, stateside, we've been waiting for that infrastructure week and billions or trillions of dollars of investment in our decaying roads and whatnot for a good four (plus) years now. It's become something of a running joke

Worse here, where they have actually argued that because certain neighborhoods have less wealth, they don't deserve the same quality services (roads, schools, etc.). I'll let you guess how that "coincidentally" lines up with skin color.

Well, I'd they got less money, they got less tax money

If they've got less tax money, they can pay for less services

Moving wealth from the rich districts to the poor districts would be redistribution of wealth

Redistribution of wealth is communism

Communism is bad

You've been logicked

[misko27]

Strictly speaking the US has the advantage of being vastly less dense than Europe despite the greater population. If we were as urbanized as they the deathtoll here would be already at least about the total count of Europe.

Also, don't forget, this is a slow-motion disaster. There are quite a few countries I am keeping an eye on for outbreaks which may soon explode. Particularly I've been watching Brazil and Russia, which for, similarish reasons have been slow to act, haven't done so on a national level (only local, which isn't enough), and are almost certainly undercounting the numbers (that said note that despite having similar population sizes and similar numbers of infected per capita, Brazil's death toll is 10x Russias despite infected numbers being only 7k apart (20k for Brazil, 13k for Russia). That is not right, so someone's numbers are wrong, and I doubt the correct direction to revise is downwards...). That's the same recipe for disaster we've seen over and over. And there are others which seem to be grappling with an unfolding crisis (Ecuador and Turkey come to mind), and other countries I just straight up worry about, namely India...

Also, Politico arranged a rather interesting map cross-referencing the NY times effort to track Coronavirus cases by county, with how vulnerable each county is based on risk factors like age, median income, ICU beds per capita, tendency to be hospitalized over cardiovascular problems. (It doesn't work for New York City or Kansas City, since the New York times doesn't track the infections in individual counties of those two, so it amusingly says "no cases" in manhattan).

[Dunamisdeos]

Color me ignorant, but isn't Russia more rural than the US?

[misko27]

Yes it is. But the United States' 32 per km² and 92 per mile², compared to Italy's 206 per km² or 532 per square mile. France has 119 per Km² (309 people per mi²). Spain has 94 per Km² (243 people per mi²).

As for Russia, Russia has the other factor that it's much colder than the US, which may make it more vulnerable to the virus (unknown whether that has been confirmed?). Also, bear in mind that Russia's population density is 8.6 per Km², but that's an average, and much of its population is concentrated where density reaches 58, 60 per Km². Which is still less than Italy or Spain, but a lot more.

[Iduno]

Yes it is. But the United States' 32 per km² and 92 per mile², compared to Italy's 206 per km² or 532 per square mile. France has 119 per Km² (309 people per mi²). Spain has 94 per Km² (243 people per mi²).

As for Russia, Russia has the other factor that it's much colder than the US, which may make it more vulnerable to the virus (unknown whether that has been confirmed?). Also, bear in mind that Russia's population density is 8.6 per Km², but that's an average, and much of its population is concentrated where density reaches 58, 60 per Km². Which is still less than Italy or Spain, but a lot more.

If it's cold enough to be affecting your immune system noticeably, it's probably cold enough to just stay inside.

[ChairmanPoo]

). Also, bear in mind that Russia's population density is 8.6 per Km², but that's an average, and much of its population is concentrated where density reaches 58, 60 per Km². Which is still less than Italy or Spain, but a lot more.

This is also true of Italy and Spain, and likely many others. In the particular case of Spain the worst outbreaks are in Madrid and Barcelona, which are, not coincidentally, the largest cities (together they have around 25% of the population).
 Probably the same thing applies to many other countries. Big outbreaks are happening largely in big metropolitan areas, whereas smaller settlements fare relatively better.