Here are the last few comments on the blog. Please remember to read the comments and privacy policy for the blog before jumping into a discussion.
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Comment on Your Obsession with Data by caldararo April 6, 2020 21:23Well, to refer to our ancestors, I thought you might find my book, Evolutionary Aspects of Disease Avoidance that is a survey of both animal behavior regarding perception of disease in conspecifics but also avoidance as well as a review of human societies' methods of disease avoidance and concepts of disease. It was my dissertation at Berkeley in 1970, but updated after volunteering at the SF Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic in the 1990s during the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. It was published in 2012 but can be downloaded free from the Social Science Research Network at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2001098.
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Comment on Your Obsession with Data by wzrd1 April 5, 2020 08:47Zip code or more granular data is invaluable for public health professionals to ascertain if there is some sort of leak present in the currently implemented controls. As I have no part in those processes, I'm content with the global, state and county level data that I do have access to. Still, with all that is going on and our inept human, god-king emperor leader and assorted idiocies exhibited by the public, I strongly feel that our ancestors made a bad move stepping off of the Battlestar. đ
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Comment on The White House Knew by wzrd1 March 22, 2020 04:52Today, Delaware County, PA sent a message to the alert mailing list about "DCED Life Sustaining Business FAQs". Fourteen minutes later, the following was sent via the same mailing list. " This message is from DELCO ALERT Due to the high volume of waiver requests, the Wolf Administration is delaying enforcement of Governor Tom Wolfâs order and the Secretary of Healthâs order that all non-life-sustaining businesses in Pennsylvania must close their physical locations to slow the spread of COVID-19. Per Governor Wolf's and Dr. Levineâs orders, businesses that were non-life sustaining were ordered to close their physical locations on March 19, at 8:00 PM. This order stands, only the enforcement timing will change and become effective on Monday, March 23, at 8:00 AM. Waiver FAQâs and instructions can be found here: https://www.delcopa.gov/ich/pdfs/03.21.2020%20DCED%20COVID%20Life%20Sustaining%20Business%20FAQs.pdf More information here: https://www.governor.pa.gov/newsroom/gov-wolf-secretary-levine-provide-updated-guidance-stress-need-for-compliance-as-cases-rise/ Sincerely, Adrienne Marofsky Public Relations Director for Delaware County Visit https://member.everbridge.net/index/453003085612334#/signup to change your alert subscriptions. Email Joseph Brennan @ brennanj@co.delaware.pa.us for support." So, all of the snowflakes in business have clogged the lines seeking exceptions to the policy, resulting in non-implementation of said public health business closures. I've also heard something to the effect that a specific group of physicians were exempted from quarantine by their hospital. That'd be akin to placing Typhoid Mary in charge of the NICU! I'll be trying to run that one to ground tomorrow. American exceptionalism, the surest path to extinction possible.
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Comment on The Panic People Will Have by wzrd1 March 10, 2020 14:27In reply to <a href="https://epidemiological.net/2020/03/09/the-panic-people-will-have/comment-page-1/#comment-6536">RenĂ© F. Najera, DrPH</a>. During hurricane Sandy, we were at my father's house and we had a six hour power interruption. That was mildly inconvenient, as that whole meals thing, but at least we had a gas stove. For the electrical prepared things, like our coffee maker, I ran an extension cord from my inverter in the car to the coffee pot and one television, cable box and FIOS fiber optic converter, worked like a champ and the canned and dry goods worked great. Yeah, dried things last for years, it's almost like we evolved learning how to preserve things by drying them! đ I also keep a couple of gallons of pasta sauce canned, pressure cooker sealed under the same conditions we culture medium under to prove conditions correct for sterile preparation. Those can also last for years, not that most ever last that long on the shelf! If you ever want to really blow your wife's mind, mention how long salted meats can last and introduce her to a country ham. She'll likely have her mind completely blown when she reads online how to prepare it for consumption (to include scraping off mold). đ The country ham also doubling, in a pinch, well as a mallet and tire chock. Why would beef be seasonal? High humidity making it difficult to cure in the era before refrigeration? I ran into that factor in a few other areas of the world, when the humidity was too high to allow drying of foods for a season.
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Comment on The Panic People Will Have by René F. Najera, DrPH March 10, 2020 12:03In reply to <a href="https://epidemiological.net/2020/03/09/the-panic-people-will-have/comment-page-1/#comment-6535">wzrd1</a>. My wife got angry at me for buying a couple of pound of dried beans and rice. She asked how long it would keep. I told her they would last years. She didn't believe me. I remember my grandmothers having sacks of rice and beans and flour and making it all last through the winter and well into the next summer with the occasional protein from chickens and -- gasp -- rabbits. Beef was a summer only kind of thing in Mexico. Like you said, it's not a prepper thing. If the food supply gets interrupted at that scale and in the big cities all around me, we're going to have bigger issues than lack of food. It's just cheaper to toss a cup of beans and a cup of rice into hot water and then make some delicious burritos.
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Comment on The Panic People Will Have by wzrd1 March 10, 2020 05:42I do buy bottled water, my wife demands it, claiming GI discomfort if she drinks tap water. While, there is a bit of truth to her sensitivity to changes in water and I'm legendary in being able to drink anything from swamp water (don't ask, it wasn't fun, but I was fortunate enough to manage to filter out any sea monkeys that might've made me ill) to overchlorinated water that actually burned my esophagus mildly (a comedy of errors, where one man was assigned testing and chlorination, the cooks and company medic also chlorinated and didn't test, as they didn't have the test kit) with minimal to no discomfort. So, it's a bit irritating that bottled water isn't available currently, even more annoying the new shortage in toilet paper, as my hyperthyroidism is telling my GI tract to dump loads of fluid and has been for several weeks. I've had people think that I'm some kind of prepper, as I'm infamous for having at least a month's supply of shelf-stable, canned or frozen foods and my twice a week shopping list tends to be milk and bread, occasionally peanut butter or coffee grounds. I don't do it for some zombie apocalypse or anything, it's cheaper to buy in the case quantity on common food items and well, I'm lazy. Grab the big haul once a month, all that's left is items that barely fill one shopping bag.
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Comment on Local Indicators of Spatial Association in Homicides in Baltimore, 2019 by René F. Najera, DrPH March 4, 2020 13:08In reply to <a href="https://epidemiological.net/2020/03/03/local-indicators-of-spatial-association-in-homicides-in-baltimore-2019/comment-page-1/#comment-6533">wzrd1</a>. If you really look at it, John Snow failed to control for socioeconomic status. Yeah, everything is uphill when you have to walk.
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Comment on Local Indicators of Spatial Association in Homicides in Baltimore, 2019 by wzrd1 March 4, 2020 01:29Huh, I thought the first law of geography was, "Whichever pump handle has the most cases in common gets removed". đ The second law being, "Any point of interest that is central to one's theory of source of disease is downhill from every nearby point, just to confound your data".* *I corollary is literally the case where we live, "All points are uphill from the departure point - both ways". We're on a complex saddle, so it is quite literally true, to leave, one goes uphill to the crest, then downhill to the destination, to return, go uphill, down a short bit, then uphill again. As the car is down hard (bad catalytic converter, bad plugs and a bent unibody, well, walking to the supermarket is keeping the lard off. đ
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Comment on When You Only Read the Abstract, You End Up Thinking That Vaccines Cause Sudden Infant Death Syndrome by wzrd1 December 31, 2019 15:32In reply to <a href="https://epidemiological.net/2019/12/30/when-you-only-read-the-abstract-you-end-up-thinking-that-vaccines-cause-sudden-infant-death-syndrome/comment-page-1/#comment-6521">René F. Najera, DrPH</a>. Way back when I was in school, back during the last ice age, required reading was Nineteen eighty-four. So, I'm rather good at doublethink. Although, these days remind me of another work, also required school reading. Animal Farm.
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Comment on When You Only Read the Abstract, You End Up Thinking That Vaccines Cause Sudden Infant Death Syndrome by René F. Najera, DrPH December 31, 2019 10:54In reply to <a href="https://epidemiological.net/2019/12/30/when-you-only-read-the-abstract-you-end-up-thinking-that-vaccines-cause-sudden-infant-death-syndrome/comment-page-1/#comment-6520">wzrd1</a>. You can bet that they would...
