Postal Concerns

Alea Jacta Est · Mar 28, 2020

fidelity said:
Yep, the time scale for lesser virulence to dominate an evolutionary landscape can be significant. Retroviral endogenization took millions of years (in classically studied examples) and it occurs over the course of an evolutionary arms race with host responses. Fast killing viruses are disfavored as they self limit their spread (and often the host is obviously sick so other potential hosts know to be careful).

This virus is like a tuned down SARS-CoV which helps expand its reach. It comes from the same reservoir of bats, and appears to have picked up sequences from a coronavirus in pangolins. Symptoms don't manifest immediately and it kills less than SARS-CoV, in or above the range of the deadly pandemic flu many have feared would eventually hit the world again.

For SARS-CoV-2 to be outcompeted by a less virulent form, a less virulent form would have to emerge that spreads more efficiently and potentially gives direct infection resistance to SARS-CoV-2 or induces a crossneutralizing immune response. Otherwise there's nothing to make the more pathogenic form disappear. Alternatively, SARS-CoV-2 has to sweep the planet and kill so many hosts that it starts limiting its own spread and a less pathogenic form is more successful in spreading because it doesn't eliminate its host pool. These things take time and significant carnage.

With flu, we've been vaccinating against H1N1 for years. We are inducing the selective tools in our bodies to limit the virus's spread.

Damn sir, that’s lots of words and a metric shitload of syllables. I think I get the gist of it. As always, I appreciate ya. A lot. Thank you sincerely.

Don’t forget us uns in the slow crowd...

Kinetic · Mar 28, 2020

fidelity said:
Fast killing viruses are disfavored as they self limit their spread (and often the host is obviously sick so other potential hosts know to be careful).

Would rabies be a good example of this?

Very deadly, comes and goes in an area and has been essentially unchanged for centuries.

As others have said, thank you to the experts on this board for taking the time to lay out the facts in a fashion that regular people can understand . I think I've learned more here than all of the other sources combined.

Especially since you guys are almost certainly busy as hell.

Combloc · Mar 28, 2020

I'll take the "experts" at their word once we see the millions dead that they are prophesizing. Until that time (which will NEVER come), it's nothing more than panic mongering hot air.

I'll be back to gloat later.

Jake4U · Mar 28, 2020

Combloc said:
I'll take the "experts" at their word once we see the millions dead that they are prophesizing. Until that time (which will NEVER come), it's nothing more than panic mongering hot air.

I'll be back to gloat later.

Because the rest of us are taking it seriously, the assholes can run around ignoring it BECAUSE responsible people are working at mitigating it. My wife works at Hopkins and my info comes from that world. This is not the flu.

fidelity · Mar 28, 2020

Pinecone said:
All the precautions are not to stop the spread. Just slow it down. To spread out the load on the health care system.

Interesting points in this article:

https://www.businessinsider.com/cor...u2oWomDG4-UCjQnnJM6O1hGySi5iCTY6sh_-vocAhJvt4

The media weren't covering this salient point initially, but the high per capita rate in Switzerland was noted here March 15 and then again on the 23rd ...

fidelity said:
With Lombardy, Italy being close to Switzerland, I was surprised the Swiss numbers were not accelerating as quickly.

No longer. 842 new infections. 2217 total. At this clip, they might pass the US in 2-3 more days unless they are under quarantine (haven't checked). As always, the jump is likely also because they're testing more.

Per capita, they're now second to Italy.

fidelity said:
Lot of infection updates from Europe (and the US is updating constantly).

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

1) per capita, infection in Switzerland is nearly as bad as Italy. They are the worldwide number 2 in COVID-19 cases by population size. Not surprising. Switzerland borders Lombardy like Maryland borders Virginia. The "mortality rate" in Switzerland is currently much lower than Italy, but it is starting to increase (and case fatality rates are comparable between the two countries).

2) the late four days of COVID-19 deaths in Italy are ...

March 20 - 627 new deaths
March 21 - 793
March 22 - 651
March 23 - 601 (this might inch up slightly)

Not entirely successful quarantine efforts there started March 9 (they had 133 deaths on March 8, jumping from 36 deaths on March 7).

3) the number of confirmed infected in New York jumped another 5000 and is over 20,000 (noted elsewhere on MDS today, possibly this thread). Approximately 2600 are hospitalized (13% of the total positive).

https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergei...tals-to-increase-capacity-by-50/#406a954c3a89

4) 25% of those hospitalized in NYC are younger than 50 years old ...

https://thecity.nyc/2020/03/one-in-four-nyc-hospital-virus-patients-is-under-age-50.html

5) half the infection positive individuals in NYC are 18-49 years old

6) watch the number of serious/critical cases in each country ...

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

For most, they are correlate with trends in new deaths. Except for the Chinese numbers

7) something unusual continues to happen with Chinese numbers. China had a very large number of serious/critical cases for the last few weeks. They still have a sizable number (and it finally started decreasing slowly in the last few days). Very few of these result in death. 96% are released as recovered. South Korea also has a similar recovery rate of 97% but never coded most of these infections a serious/critical.

In comparison, US recovery rates are 27% (this will improve - the nursing home hits early on impacted this rate), Switzerland is 53%, Italy is 55%, and Germany is 78% (this number has been steadily decreasing).

namrelio · Mar 28, 2020

Jake4U said:
Because the rest of us are taking it seriously, the assholes can run around ignoring it BECAUSE responsible people are working at mitigating it. My wife works at Hopkins and my info comes from that world. This is not the flu.

If someone wants to kill themselves, have at it. But the sad part of some of this is the a-holes that are ignoring this and running around like normal may kill your wife and others in a round about way. :sad20:

Combloc · Mar 28, 2020

namrelio said:
If someone wants to kill themselves, have at it. But the sad part of some of this is the a-holes that are ignoring this and running around like normal may kill your wife and others in a round about way.

This federal judge gets it:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/mar/25/what-good-are-constitutional-rights-if-they-are-vi/

By: Andrew P. Napolitano <----------- (He is the kind of "expert" I'll listen to. I know better than my elected "government". I am my own government)

What good are constitutional rights if they are violated when Americans get sick?
Beware a government of fear

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
— Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

One of my Fox colleagues recently sent me an email attachment of a painting of the framers signing the Constitution of the United States. Except in this version, George Washington — who presided at the Constitutional Convention — looks at James Madison — who was the scrivener at the Convention — and says, “None of this counts if people get sick, right?”

In these days of state governors issuing daily decrees purporting to criminalize the exercise of our personal freedoms, the words put into Washington’s mouth are only mildly amusing. Had Washington actually asked such a question, Madison, of all people, would likely have responded: “No. This document protects our natural rights at all times and under all circumstances.”
It is easy, 233 years later, to offer that hypothetical response, particularly since the Supreme Court has done so already when, as readers of this column will recall, Abraham Lincoln suspended the constitutionally guaranteed writ of habeas corpus — the right to be brought before a judge upon arrest — only to be rebuked by the Supreme Court.

The famous line above by Benjamin Franklin, though uttered in a 1755 dispute between the Pennsylvania legislature and the state’s governor over taxes, nevertheless provokes a truism.
Namely, that since our rights come from our humanity, not from the government, foolish people can only sacrifice their own freedoms, not the freedoms of others.
Thus, freedom can only be taken away when the government proves fault at a jury trial. This protection is called procedural due process, and it, too, is guaranteed in the Constitution.

Of what value is a constitutional guarantee if it can be violated when people get sick? If it can, it is not a guarantee; it is a fraud. Stated differently, a constitutional guarantee is only as valuable and reliable as is the fidelity to the Constitution of those in whose hands we have reposed it for safekeeping.

Because the folks in government, with very few exceptions, suffer from what St. Augustine called libido dominandi — the lust to dominate — when they are confronted with the age-old clash of personal liberty versus government force, they will nearly always come down on the side of force.
How do they get away with this? By scaring the daylights out of us. I never thought I’d see this in my lifetime, though our ancestors saw this in every generation. In America today, we have a government of fear. Machiavelli offered that men obey better when they fear you than when they love you. Sadly, he was right, and the government in America knows this.
But Madison knew this as well when he wrote the Constitution. And he knew it four years later when he wrote the Bill of Rights. He intentionally employed language to warn those who lust to dominate that, however they employ governmental powers, the Constitution is “the Supreme Law of the Land” and all government behavior in America is subject to it.

Even if the legislature of the State of New York ordered, as my friend Gov. Andrew Cuomo — who as the governor, cannot write laws that incur criminal punishment — has ordered, it would be invalid as prohibited by the Constitution.

This is not a novel or an arcane argument. This is fundamental American law. Yet, it is being violated right before our eyes by the very human beings we have elected to uphold it. And each of them — every governor interfering with the freedom to make one’s own choices — has taken an express oath to comply with the Constitution.
You want to bring the family to visit grandma? You want to engage in a mutually beneficial, totally voluntary commercial transaction? You want to go to work? You want to celebrate Mass? These are all now prohibited in one-third of the United States.

I tried and failed to find Mass last Sunday. When did the Catholic Church become an agent of the state? How about an outdoor Mass?
What is the nature of freedom? It is an unassailable natural claim against all others, including the government. Stated differently, it is your unconditional right to think as you wish, to say what you think, to publish what you say, to associate with whomever wishes to be with you no matter their number, to worship or not, to defend yourself, to own and use property as you see fit, to travel where you wish, to purchase from a willing seller, to be left alone. And to do all this without a government permission slip.
What is the nature of government? It is the negation of freedom. It is a monopoly of force in a designated geographic area. When elected officials fear that their base is slipping, they will feel the need to do something — anything — that will let them claim to be enhancing safety. Trampling liberty works for that odious purpose. Hence a decree commanding obedience, promising safety and threatening punishment.

These decrees — issued by those who have no legal authority to issue them, enforced by cops who hate what they are being made to do, destructive of the freedoms that our forbearers shed oceans of blood to preserve and crushing economic prosperity by violating the laws of supply and demand — should all be rejected by an outraged populace, and challenged in court.
These challenges are best filed in federal courts, where those who have trampled our liberties will get no special quarter. I can tell you from my prior life as a judge that most state governors fear nothing more than an intellectually honest, personally courageous, constitutionally faithful federal judge.
Fight fear with fear.
• Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is a regular contributor to The Washington Times. He is the author of nine books on the U.S. Constitution.

lazarus · Mar 28, 2020

fidelity said:
Yep, the time scale for lesser virulence to dominate an evolutionary landscape can be significant. Retroviral endogenization took millions of years (in classically studied examples) and it occurs over the course of an evolutionary arms race with host responses. Fast killing viruses are disfavored as they self limit their spread (and often the host is obviously sick so other potential hosts know to be careful).

This virus is like a tuned down SARS-CoV which helps expand its reach. It comes from the same reservoir of bats, and appears to have picked up sequences from a coronavirus in pangolins. Symptoms don't manifest immediately and it kills less than SARS-CoV, in or above the range of the deadly pandemic flu many have feared would eventually hit the world again.

For SARS-CoV-2 to be outcompeted by a less virulent form, a less virulent form would have to emerge that spreads more efficiently and potentially gives direct infection resistance to SARS-CoV-2 or induces a crossneutralizing immune response. Otherwise there's nothing to make the more pathogenic form disappear. Alternatively, SARS-CoV-2 has to sweep the planet and kill so many hosts that it starts limiting its own spread and a less pathogenic form is more successful in spreading because it doesn't eliminate its host pool. These things take time and significant carnage.

With flu, we've been vaccinating against H1N1 for years. We are inducing the selective tools in our bodies to limit the virus's spread.

Just wanted to say, excellent post. Thank you.

lazarus · Mar 28, 2020

Jake4U said:
Because the rest of us are taking it seriously, the assholes can run around ignoring it BECAUSE responsible people are working at mitigating it. My wife works at Hopkins and my info comes from that world. This is not the flu.

Actually no, them running around thinking they know better than people who’s jobs it is, is what will get a ton more people killed. Which is why we need mandatory shelter in place with teeth behind it. Because so many just wont give a damn and get others sick. If it was just them getting sick, and people who think like them, and also not taking up health care resources when they do get sick, I could careless.

It’s just like antivaxers. If it was just them and their kids, *shrug*, but their anti-science BS gets other people sick and killed.

randomuser · Mar 28, 2020

GrimReaper said:
Put the mail in the oven. 170 degrees or however low it will go, put a sheet of foil over or under it depending on where the burner/element is.

Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk

If it's a bill should I set it to 500 deg. For 2 hours?

lazarus · Mar 28, 2020

Combloc said:
This federal judge gets it:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/mar/25/what-good-are-constitutional-rights-if-they-are-vi/

By: Andrew P. Napolitano <----------- (He is the kind of "expert" I'll listen to. I know better than my elected "government". I am my own government)

What good are constitutional rights if they are violated when Americans get sick?
Beware a government of fear

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
— Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

One of my Fox colleagues recently sent me an email attachment of a painting of the framers signing the Constitution of the United States. Except in this version, George Washington — who presided at the Constitutional Convention — looks at James Madison — who was the scrivener at the Convention — and says, “None of this counts if people get sick, right?”

In these days of state governors issuing daily decrees purporting to criminalize the exercise of our personal freedoms, the words put into Washington’s mouth are only mildly amusing. Had Washington actually asked such a question, Madison, of all people, would likely have responded: “No. This document protects our natural rights at all times and under all circumstances.”
It is easy, 233 years later, to offer that hypothetical response, particularly since the Supreme Court has done so already when, as readers of this column will recall, Abraham Lincoln suspended the constitutionally guaranteed writ of habeas corpus — the right to be brought before a judge upon arrest — only to be rebuked by the Supreme Court.

The famous line above by Benjamin Franklin, though uttered in a 1755 dispute between the Pennsylvania legislature and the state’s governor over taxes, nevertheless provokes a truism.
Namely, that since our rights come from our humanity, not from the government, foolish people can only sacrifice their own freedoms, not the freedoms of others.
Thus, freedom can only be taken away when the government proves fault at a jury trial. This protection is called procedural due process, and it, too, is guaranteed in the Constitution.

Of what value is a constitutional guarantee if it can be violated when people get sick? If it can, it is not a guarantee; it is a fraud. Stated differently, a constitutional guarantee is only as valuable and reliable as is the fidelity to the Constitution of those in whose hands we have reposed it for safekeeping.

Because the folks in government, with very few exceptions, suffer from what St. Augustine called libido dominandi — the lust to dominate — when they are confronted with the age-old clash of personal liberty versus government force, they will nearly always come down on the side of force.
How do they get away with this? By scaring the daylights out of us. I never thought I’d see this in my lifetime, though our ancestors saw this in every generation. In America today, we have a government of fear. Machiavelli offered that men obey better when they fear you than when they love you. Sadly, he was right, and the government in America knows this.
But Madison knew this as well when he wrote the Constitution. And he knew it four years later when he wrote the Bill of Rights. He intentionally employed language to warn those who lust to dominate that, however they employ governmental powers, the Constitution is “the Supreme Law of the Land” and all government behavior in America is subject to it.

Even if the legislature of the State of New York ordered, as my friend Gov. Andrew Cuomo — who as the governor, cannot write laws that incur criminal punishment — has ordered, it would be invalid as prohibited by the Constitution.

This is not a novel or an arcane argument. This is fundamental American law. Yet, it is being violated right before our eyes by the very human beings we have elected to uphold it. And each of them — every governor interfering with the freedom to make one’s own choices — has taken an express oath to comply with the Constitution.
You want to bring the family to visit grandma? You want to engage in a mutually beneficial, totally voluntary commercial transaction? You want to go to work? You want to celebrate Mass? These are all now prohibited in one-third of the United States.

I tried and failed to find Mass last Sunday. When did the Catholic Church become an agent of the state? How about an outdoor Mass?
What is the nature of freedom? It is an unassailable natural claim against all others, including the government. Stated differently, it is your unconditional right to think as you wish, to say what you think, to publish what you say, to associate with whomever wishes to be with you no matter their number, to worship or not, to defend yourself, to own and use property as you see fit, to travel where you wish, to purchase from a willing seller, to be left alone. And to do all this without a government permission slip.
What is the nature of government? It is the negation of freedom. It is a monopoly of force in a designated geographic area. When elected officials fear that their base is slipping, they will feel the need to do something — anything — that will let them claim to be enhancing safety. Trampling liberty works for that odious purpose. Hence a decree commanding obedience, promising safety and threatening punishment.

These decrees — issued by those who have no legal authority to issue them, enforced by cops who hate what they are being made to do, destructive of the freedoms that our forbearers shed oceans of blood to preserve and crushing economic prosperity by violating the laws of supply and demand — should all be rejected by an outraged populace, and challenged in court.
These challenges are best filed in federal courts, where those who have trampled our liberties will get no special quarter. I can tell you from my prior life as a judge that most state governors fear nothing more than an intellectually honest, personally courageous, constitutionally faithful federal judge.
Fight fear with fear.
• Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is a regular contributor to The Washington Times. He is the author of nine books on the U.S. Constitution.

I guess you’d be sadden to know that quarantine orders have been declared legal and constitutional in every country I am aware of.

It’s been upheld as constitutional in the US also, but it is a power reserved for the states.

The federal Constitution nowhere expressly mentions quarantine, although Article I, Section 10 does acknowledge state power to enact and enforce “inspection laws.” More broadly, because the Tenth Amendment reserves to the states those powers not delegated to the federal government, it has long been understood that states may quarantine. Thus, in the landmark 1824 case of Gibbons v. Ogden, Chief Justice John Marshall’s unanimous Supreme Court opinion stated unequivocally that enacting quarantine laws is among the powers reserved to the states (and by extension, to local governments acting with authority granted by the states).

In addition, Marshall acknowledged that two federal statutes—one enacted in 1796 and the other enacted in 1799—authorized the federal government “to assist in the execution of the quarantine and health laws of” the states. He added that no one denied the validity of these federal laws. Nonetheless, there is some doubt about the current scope of federal authority to adopt quarantine measures.

Notice those dates. Some of the very earliest laws in our country were on quarantines.

Yes, someone’s individual rights do end when they expressly threaten those around them. And when some one has or is likely to have a deadly communicable disease, their freedom of movement becomes limited. When a disease is wide spread in a community, that means everyone is likely to transmit it and thus the communities freedom of movement becomes limited.

I completely disagree with things like limiting 2nd amendment rights in a quarantine. But some rights do by necessity become limited.

That is literally what we’ve done since our founding. We held ships in quarantine since before our founding. The largest early quarantine was of Philly in 1793 due to an outbreak of yellow fever.

Quarantines have yet to be found to be unconstitutional.

6-Pack · Mar 28, 2020

Looks like Amazon itself is recommending either disinfecting your packages or leaving them out of your house for 24 hours.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/fox6no...hat-an-expert-and-amazon-recommend-doing/amp/

lazarus · Mar 29, 2020

6-Pack said:
Looks like Amazon itself is recommending either disinfecting your packages or leaving them out of your house for 24 hours.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/fox6no...hat-an-expert-and-amazon-recommend-doing/amp/

Mine gets the three day treatment. End of each day I open all the packages in my garage from 3 days before. Then collect all the packages from that day and move them in to my garage. I have note cards I shift between the piles so I remember which days’ packages and mail is which. Wife or kids open the door in to the house, I leave my crappy shoes in the garage and then go in and wash my hands throughly. I then bring in the stuff I took out of the packages an hour or two later and wash my hands again.

If I need some quickly I open the package and my wife reaches in and pulls out the item. Then we disinfect the item and wash our hands.

Likely overkill. But at worst it just means waiting a little longer.

Combloc · Mar 29, 2020

Yes it is, without a doubt, overkill.

I go to the box every day and get my mail. I'm still alive and well!

The coo koo in this thread is quite amusing.

Jake4U · Mar 29, 2020

Combloc said:
Yes it is, without a doubt, overkill.

I go to the box every day and get my mail. I'm still alive and well!

The coo koo in this thread is quite amusing.

Unless you have a family member in a nursing home in Mt. Airy. This is how it tilted toward exponential growth in Washington state - it started in their nursing homes and spread out into the community by all the people who worked there. Likely it got in there because some ******* thought, "It's just the flu, no big deal."

https://patch.com/maryland/westminster/coronavirus-outbreak-66-test-positive-mt-airy-nursing-home

lazarus · Mar 29, 2020

Combloc said:
Yes it is, without a doubt, overkill.

I go to the box every day and get my mail. I'm still alive and well!

The coo koo in this thread is quite amusing.

I pulled the trigger in Russian roulette and survived, people are way over blowing the risk.

I’d repeat how you don’t understand risk factors and all that and try to explain them again, but it’s pretty obvious you can’t. The number of people who laughed at the Spanish Flu also was staggering even during the worst of the outbreaks. It helped fuel huge numbers of deaths. Communities where they took it incredible seriously had relatively minor outbreaks.

6-Pack · Mar 29, 2020

lazarus said:
Mine gets the three day treatment. End of each day I open all the packages in my garage from 3 days before. Then collect all the packages from that day and move them in to my garage. I have note cards I shift between the piles so I remember which days’ packages and mail is which. Wife or kids open the door in to the house, I leave my crappy shoes in the garage and then go in and wash my hands throughly. I then bring in the stuff I took out of the packages an hour or two later and wash my hands again.

If I need some quickly I open the package and my wife reaches in and pulls out the item. Then we disinfect the item and wash our hands.

Likely overkill. But at worst it just means waiting a little longer.

I do the 3 day treatment too. I used to only have three boxes, but it got confusing which day went in which box, so now I have 6 boxes labeled Monday through Saturday. Mail goes into the box and packages are placed under the box, so everything is in order and we can quickly tell what can come into the house.

I don’t think it’s overkill. I also don’t think having a years’ supply of TP or food is overkill either. Maybe Combloc is trolling MDS to compensate for lack of preparation?

Threeband · Mar 29, 2020

Some people think owning a gun for defense is overkill. They think gun owners live in fear, obsessing over delusional imaginary dangers. Nobody needs a gun.

Peacefuloutrage · Mar 29, 2020

I just want to say this:

I encourage everyone to engage in safe behaviors (to whatever extent you feel that doesn't violate someone else's rights). What I do want to mention is that unlike the police (who have been instructed to do so) the postal service has not reduced the quality of service as a necessary part of this country's infrastructure. Please, even if you need to get some dollar store tongs to use while wearing a HAZMAT suit, remove your packages from the mailbox or supply some other receptacle for for all of the goods you order. There is anecdotal evidence (also corroborated here) that people aren't getting the mail and the parcels they have ordered. If your box fills up, the carrier is within his/her rights to discontinue delivery and send everything back. If you are unsure what you want to do you can put a hold on your mail delivery while you formulate a decontamination plan.

That is all.

Blaster229 · Mar 29, 2020

This forum makes me PROUD. A man who makes a thread about mail and package concerns because he may be of higher risk, wants some suggestions. This epic train wreck went 10 pages of death statistics totally unrelated to receiving mail.

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