Alrighty. I have waited long enough. I am not going to mrrf this year (unless it gets significantly postponed, and then it will be a maybe). I will hopefully bank some credits for next year, and try to make it then.
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Governor of Indiana just banned any gatherings of over 250 people, so now just waiting to find out when it’s going to be postponed to. Jard to find a place that can host 500 3d printers at once.
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Poop.
Thanks for the heads up.
I was going to miss MRRF this year anyway for other reasons, but I could support a mass streaming event (facebook live or zoom anyone?)
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Please no fb… but I would be happy to join in a livestream, or host one (if I had anything interesting to share).
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I’m on call about 3 weeks out of each month and generally limit myself to 1 beer with a burger or something maybe once a week, as a result. After years of doing this I can really feel it on those rare occasions I have a second…
I do believe a little alcohol on occasion and in moderation is beneficial. I call it the “culling the herd” theory. Alcohol kills brain cells, but like predators hunting herd animals, it tends to kill the weak and slow cells first. A little alcohol induced brain cell predation will make you quicker and sharper. 8^)
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Excess, of course, will make you stupid and slow…
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The article was very interesting so thanks for sharing.
However the figure he quotes is wrong. First, he changed it for 2.5% apparently because it is not one percent anymore in his article, and second I had a look at the source and the figure of 2.5% he quoted actually was a statistic concerning just a few part of the patients, not the total study. The ones that follow are the ones he should have quoted instead:
" A majority of the patients (58.0%) received intravenous antibiotic therapy, and 35.8% received oseltamivir therapy; oxygen therapy was administered in 41.3% and mechanical ventilation in 6.1%; higher percentages of patients with severe disease received these therapies (Table 3). Mechanical ventilation was initiated in more patients with severe disease than in those with nonsevere disease (noninvasive ventilation, 32.4% vs. 0%; invasive ventilation, 14.5% vs. 0%)."
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But that is 6% of patients that go to the hospital right? Not 6% of patients overall.
From what I understand it’s 6% of the people who have been diagnosed with the virus, which, in China means they either passed the test or have been showing all the consistent symptoms. It is possible to make assumptions about people who weren’t tested yet but that can only be a wild guess.
What makes me think that this figure is quite close to the reality is that it comes from China, it was really hard here to avoid being spotted if you were infected, you had lots of temperature checks everywhere, people coming to your home to record your daily temp, and everyone was really pushed to report any suspect people, which they did without hesitating twice. Personal story here, but my in laws had neighbors who caughed a bit too much: the other neighbors actually nailed planks to the suspected people’s doors in order to prevent them from going out, while waiting for them to pass the test.
They tested negative…
And it wasn’t even in Wuhan, it was like 1000km away, but the whole country went in full lock down and full control, which ultimately saved many lives. Yesterday they were only around 20 new cases in China, and in total there were only about 3000 dead.
So I guess in China the percentage of infected people who got away without being detected is very very low.
That will not be the same elsewhere, all the western governments didn’t do shit while they had more than two months to prepare, plus I suspect they will not be as well organized and fast to react as China anyways. So be prepared for the situation to be really serious very soon. It’s kinda funny to have witnessed most other government criticizing China’s management of the epidemic, now we’ll see if they’ll actually do any better. My guess, unfortunately they won’t, China actually did an impressive job and it will be really hard to do any better.
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Hell, Big Chief Cheeto is apparently whining about getting tested despite there being photographic evidence of him standing next to a Brazilian official who has since tested positive…Probably figures he’s healthy as long as he doesn’t have a positive test result, regardless of what’s actually breeding inside that bloated meatsack. 
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There are huge legal and cultural differences that are not to our benefit here in the US when it comes to fighting a pandemic. And underlying health is not great. We have somewhat fewer smokers but a serious problem with obesity compared to China. Not to mention all the other political and structural issues, the outlook is pretty grim.
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That’s something I’ve heard from people in France or in Italy, it’s mostly true, bue not in the way people imagine.
China is always pictured like a horrible dictatorship, but that’s actually far from being the truth. The gvt is indeed capable of taking really big actions which may seem authoritary, but that’s not coming from constraint on the people, that’s actually the opposite, it is coming from people’s demands.
Basically, the government is listening closely to whatever people are complaining about, through various ways which nowadays mostly consist on monitoring internet and social medias, and it takes actions accordingly in order to match as much as possible whatever people wants. What seems to us like a horrific big brother stuff is actually, in most cases, helping people. (not sayin it’s always done in a good way though, but most of the time it seems like it is). I know it’s probably hard to believe for most people and it took me a while living here to actually understand this.
We had an example before the Covid crisis: a few years back, people were starting complaining a lot on social medias about pollution. Government started by calming down the protestation, censuring a bit the information about that on social medias. But while it was doing that, at the very same time, it started working on some laws to tackle down pollution in order to actually assess the problem. Here again, the government took real measures, with really high standards which led to many companies closing because they couldn’t make the necessary investments to meet the new pollution rules. It’s been 3 years now and pollution, while remaining high, have significantly dropped. It is actually clearly visible when you look at the sky, it’s now blueish instead of yellow/gray.
So that’s quite a good example of how the chinese system works, people complain, when governments notices it it starts by limiting the information about the problem so that people calm down a bit, and meanwhile it does take action to address the issue so that people actually see that the problem is being dealt with. In my opinion, it is a different form of democracy, which seem to have its own advantages, like things actually being done instead of just showing off and doing nothing. Okay you don’t directly choose your big boss, but he does listen to you and try to solve your problems. As opposed to you do choose your big boss from a limited sample of two guys and then this boss doesn’t give a shit about whatever you need.
One other good thing about chinese government is that its being lead by engineers and technical people, not professional bullshiters, so they have a better chance of knowing what they are doing.
What I don’t think is that people are fundamentally different. I’m pretty sure people would mostly obei the same way in the US than in China, provided they have a similarily reliable government and trust in whatever it says. Our governments told us for weeks if not months that this virus wasn’t a threat, so they cannot expect people to continue trusting them if they start telling that it is actually dangerous. That’s the problem we are starting to have now in France: the government and scientists just started realizing they were wrong this weekend. Now they start understanding that it is actually a big deal and consider martial law and strict chinese style quarantine… How can they expect people to comply immediately after telling them there was nothing to worry about for weeks?
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The table cover and banner showed up today…so fancy. Back in the bag it goes.
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Wow. That’s got to be disappointing for sure. I hope you can keep your supplies up because I think a lot of folks are going to be doing some serious home hobby stuff in the coming months.
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I guess the new one has to be called the, Boredom Buster 5000.
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#RobotsDoMyIsolationWork
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#RobotsKeepMeCompany
#RobotsAreMyPeeps
#IElbowBumpMyRobot
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