Coronavirus: What Vintage Skills Can Help Prepare for a Potential Pandemic?

Frunobulax said:

I am at a loss as to why this should be a concern.



Back in my younger days, when I was an asbestos inspector and environmental engineer, I ran into more than one person who claimed that they cleaned with bleach and that would take care of any asbestos.

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The dangers to all of us, including the rich, of such wide wealth inequality is certainly not lost on me.

Hourly workers who can’t afford to lose a few days’ pay (I’ve been there myself) or to cover the cost of a visit to the doctor because they lack health insurance (ditto) when they’re feeling a bit under the weather will go to work and pass along whatever bug is ailing them. Such a worker might recover just fine, but Joe who spends hours each day in close proximity may or may not, when the bug spreads to him. And let’s consider what might happen to Joe’s elderly mom, who lives at his place.

Pretty much everyone I know in the actual real world is far more frightened about the possibility of losing paychecks to this thing than they are of actually getting sick. I include myself in that statement.

Frunobulax said:

Back in my younger days, when I was an asbestos inspector and environmental engineer, I ran into more than one person who claimed that they cleaned with bleach and that would take care of any asbestos.

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Can't say I'm particularly shocked by this but wow.

LizzieMaine said:

Pretty much everyone I know in the actual real world is far more frightened about the possibility of losing paychecks to this thing than they are of actually getting sick. I include myself in that statement.

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It does seem the likelier hazard, especially for the younger among us.

Again, for them the bug might be no more than a minor discomfort. But for the less hale and hearty to whom they transmit it?

tonyb said:

The dangers to all of us, including the rich, of such wide wealth inequality is certainly not lost on me.

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But it's not necessarily equality of opportunity. We all make choices, some better than others, but we all have a chance to dive in the pool.

I don't envy others the outcome of their efforts.

Frunobulax said:

But it's not necessarily equality of opportunity. We all make choices, some better than others, but we all have a chance to dive in the pool.

I don't envy others the outcome of their efforts.

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If honest effort was all it took, farm workers would drive to the fields in Ferraris.

And no, we don’t all have an equal shot at material success. We don’t all get our chance in the pool. And there’s no such thing as a person who got there on his own.

tonyb said:

^^^^
But is it antiviral?

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Apparently so. "Antibiotic" is the exact word used, which implies viruses, bacteria, and other microbial life don't survive on brass. It seems that this trait comes from the copper content of the metal -- and pure copper has even stronger such properties.

So all that stuff about "don't put those dirty pennies in your mouth" my mother told me was the bunk.

Frunobulax said:

We have strayed off topic, however. I apologize.

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Is my Godson safe to drive his 1960's classic Toyota Corona? Or do you think he should put it through some sort of anti-bacterial car wash, just to be safe?

LizzieMaine said:

Apparently so. "Antibiotic" is the exact word used, which implies viruses, bacteria, and other microbial life don't survive on brass. It seems that this trait comes from the copper content of the metal -- and pure copper has even stronger such properties.

So all that stuff about "don't put those dirty pennies in your mouth" my mother told me was the bunk.

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That’s a more expansive definition than I’ve ever been familiar with.

I had thought until now that an antibiotic killed microorganisms, and that viruses aren’t organisms, micro or otherwise.

But, if anything that destroys bacteria and viruses fits the description, well, I’ll chalk it up to ours being a living language.

Fading Fast said:

...in truth [pensions] come from the investments in stocks, bonds and other assets the pension plans have made. One of the largest and, overall, most sophisticated client class Wall Street has are gov't and private pension plans.

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tonyb said:

Yet it remains that the wealthiest 10 percent own 84 percent of the shares, while the bottom 80 percent own all of 6.7 percent of shares — largely in mutual funds and retirement accounts. The next wealthiest (or less unwealthy) 10 percent hold roughly 9 percent of shares. That’s according to a couple of what appear to be reliable sources.

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Regardless of what portion of the market the bottom 80% or 90% own, that portion may be of great importance to them.

As for the top 10% or 20%, they won't be inclined to sell shares at a loss to remodel their house, buy a new boat or lease a new car. Not good if you make a living remodeling houses, building boats, or assembling cars.

PrettySquareGal said:

Bleach for surfaces but not skin, of course. Hand sanitizers are for when soap and water is not readily available. Since it's not feasible to wipe down all surfaces in public hand sanitizers are the best bet. I don't care what anyone says, I never trust a doorknob.

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Any thoughts as to how much bleach to use in, say, a gallon of water?

So long ago that the details are fuzzy at best I had reason to know how many capfuls of bleach to put in the disinfectant sink behind the bar. It was one of three such basins — a wash basin, a disinfectant basin, and a rinse basin. You put the glasses in the wash basin, which was kinda sudsy and had a built-in scrubber thingy over which you put the glasses and gave ’em a twist or three to remove lipstick or whatever; then you dipped ’em in the disinfectant bath; and then in the rinse before putting them upside down on the drying rack.

It was good enough for the health department inspectors.

Paisley said:

Regardless of what portion of the market the bottom 80% or 90% own, that portion may be of great importance to them.

As for the top 10% or 20%, they won't be inclined to sell shares at a loss to remodel their house, buy a new boat or lease a new car. Not good if you make a living remodeling houses, building boats, or assembling cars.

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That’s all true enough, as far as I know. My point wasn’t that the not-rich aren’t subject to the effects of market fluctuations (doo-doo does roll downhill, after all), but that the wide disparities in stock ownership is a reflection of the wider economy, and that shareholders taking a loss when the company guesses wrong and overproduces face masks or hand sanitizer or whatever is near the least of the injuries this current threat presents.

tonyb said:

That’s all true enough, as far as I know. My point wasn’t that the not-rich aren’t subject to the effects of market fluctuations (doo-doo does roll downhill, after all), but that the wide disparities in stock ownership is a reflection of the wider economy, and that shareholders taking a loss when the company guesses wrong and overproduces face masks or hand sanitizer or whatever is near the least of the injuries this current threat presents.

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Here's your exact quote:

tonyb said:

Pity the poor stepped-on shareholders! You know, that wealthiest 10 percent of households that own 84 percent of all stocks.

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Paisley said:

Here's your exact quote:

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And?

I stand by it. As I said, diminished share values are among the least of the threats posed by this virus.

Of course I hope the more dire scenarios never come to pass. I’m among those whose age and co-morbidities leave me likelier to succumb, should the bug find me. Whatever economic injuries the shareholders might suffer are as nothing in comparison.

Frunobulax said:

But it's not necessarily equality of opportunity. We all make choices, some better than others, but we all have a chance to dive in the pool.

I don't envy others the outcome of their efforts.

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Héctor Fernández said:

This is the greatest country in the world, and I have traveled the world, anyone with the right attitude and the right motivation can make anything of themselves, anything else is just excuses.

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These messages were brought to you by The American Dream Co.®. com.

Never thought i’d say it but...back to viruses??
B

That's the funny thing about viruses. A pandemic couldn't care less about your philosophy of life or how much money you have or how you got it or what country you live in or how passionately you argue about it on the internet. A dead capitalist is every bit as dead as a dead socialist. Death is the greatest leveler of all. And the time will come when everything we beat our chests about will be completely and utterly forgotten.

I recommend reading George R. Stewart's novel "Earth Abides," written in 1949, dealing with the question of exactly what would happen if a global pandemic wiped out enough of humanity that the population dropped below the level required to sustain the day-to-day operations of civilization. There's no zombie biker gangs or any other such nonsense -- instead it's a very sobering look at exactly what "civilization" means, and how fragile and potentially ephemeral it really is. And also how completely irrelevant human "beliefs" are once that civilization fades away.

Not that this is likely to happen now. But who knows?

tonyb said:

And now I see an ad here for a face mask called an N95 filter.

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Big Brother is watching you.... so he can sell you things. Oh brave new world...

tonyb said:

An old classmate now lives and works in Hong Kong. She posted photos yesterday showing an all-but-empty light-rail car (just one other person aboard); people wearing face masks and improvised protective (it is hoped) attire (think large plastic bags); plastic wrap over elevator buttons, which is said to be easier to disinfect than the buttons left uncovered; et cetera. She tells that the movie theaters are leaving entire rows empty, every other one, so as to limit close contact.

I couldn’t speak to the effectiveness of any of that.

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Masks are common in large cities all over China; often, people wear them on the street at times when air quality is bad. Beijing has improved enormously on that front in recent years in my experience, though sandstorms can still sometimes be a problem in parts of the City. If resorting to a mask when there's a concern about what you breathe in is a cultural norm as an approach to a health risk, it seems likely it will increase at this time. I'm not sure whether it will have any effect or not, but I can't see how it could hurt. Avoiding overcrowded spaces is a definite plus - of course China generally and especially Hong Kong is so densely populated and culturally for so long so many people have lived and socialised much more closely together than tends to be the case in the West, avoiding crowds and the absence thereof is immediately more noticeable.

In our Church on Sunday we have adapted communion as a reaction to official health advice. What we've been told to date is that there's more risk from shaking hands than sharing a communal communion cup (which seems counter intuitive to me, but those giving the advice known much more about it than I do) than doling out the wafers. I'm sure there will be further changes to come around how we do things.

LizzieMaine said:

I'm not so sure about that. We had our entire downtown area evacuated and cordoned off by police because of a bomb scare once, and when I got back to the theatre there was an angry old lady standing in front of the box office demanding to know why we weren't there to sell her ballet tickets. There's always going to be someone who insists on having it their own way no matter what the consequences.

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This is my fear as to how it could spread badly in the UK. The first known case here was a guy who came back from Singapore before it was known to have spread there - he had no symptoms and infected a bunch of people. Innocent in his case... but then there are the many, many cases of Brits abroad who are tested positive and then start demanding and screaming they be flown back to the UK, bringing their infection with them. In a largely individualistic culture like the UK, the sort of common, inbuilt selfishness like this would make it a nightmare to enforce sensible measures that may need to be taken should it come down to it. SAdly there are always those who consider themselves above the rules.

Lean'n'mean said:

The best vintage skill I can think of is fire making. Build a nice big pyre & if anyone approaches looking slightly under the weather, throw them on it. The Coronavirus doesn't like heat apparently.

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And we can test whether they are positive by weighing them against a duck.

LizzieMaine said:

And they also come in the "middle aged" variety. "What do you mean Hayden and Jayden can't go to school because they're sick? Do you know how much I'm paying to send them here? Well, they can't stay home, I've got my hot yoga class today."
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Don't even... Not so long ago, there was an antivaxxer mother in the New York area who went apoplectic and sought legal action against a school which refused her child entry because she refused to vaccinate said child. The disturbing thing was that the mother fully accepted the medical evidence that this raised the risk of her child catching certain diseases and passing them to others, but she insisted her right to put both her child and others at this risk was more important than the rights of these children to be protected from the same. Never underestimate the mindless selfishness of those who must have everything their own way at any cost.

LizzieMaine said:

Pretty much everyone I know in the actual real world is far more frightened about the possibility of losing paychecks to this thing than they are of actually getting sick. I include myself in that statement.

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Undortunately this is a risk here in the UK too. While there is statutory sick pay for many, it's not close to what most earn; its' also not available for the increasingly casualised workforce on 'zero hours' contracts. The biggest danger is that anyone 'self-isolating' to minimise any risk of spreading it but who has not been declared ill is not entitled to sick pay, so unless companies voluntarily do "the right thing" (which will vary from employer to employer), there's a strong motivation for people who know they've been put at risk of having and spreading it to go to work anyhow.

Basic hygiene, as long practised, will definitely help. Basic decency and understanding, trying to be as flexible as possible and actually a bit of good old fashioned consideration for community over self are probably the most important things that will get us through this current outbreak. With luck, Europe will be able to contain it and the US won't be affected by the spread we're currently experiencing.

The 2009 flu pandemic or swine flu was an influenza pandemic that lasted from early 2009 to late 2010, and the second of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus, the first of them being the 1918–1920 flu pandemic, albeit in a new version. First described in April 2009, the virus was a new strain of H1N1 which resulted when a previous triple assortment of bird, swine and human flu viruses further combined with a Eurasian pig flu virus, leading to the term "swine flu." It was estimated that 10% to 20% of the then global population of around 6.8 billion, or around 700–1400 million people, contracted the illness. More in absolute terms than the 1918/1920 flu pandemic. It was estimated that there were 150,000–575,000 fatalities, a much lower case fatality rate of 0.01-0.08%

In 2009 we had all the jokes, the knee jerk reactions and the inevitable silly celebrity reactions, without these supposed pandemics, no-one would have heard of Gwyneth Paltrow. As with every other epidemic, the scaremongerers go into overdrive. More disturbingly, many deaths of natural causes get portioned to the current scare of the day, creating yet more scaremongering. I intend to go on as usual, chances are, I am far more likely to become a road casualty victim statistic, than a statistic of coronavirus.