tingilinde

relative humidity and covid

Staying between 40 and 60 percent appears to help.

 

chicken checker!

Look up the salmonella records for the processing plant your chicken or turkey came from.

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Chickens and turkeys carry salmonella in their guts. In the U.S., poultry can be raised in crowded conditions where the bacteria can easily spread. By the time the birds are sent to slaughter, their skin and feathers are often highly contaminated with salmonella. Processing can result in further cross-contamination. Salmonella is found less frequently in less processed poultry.

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a miniature massage gun

About a half year ago a friend recommended the Hydragun massage gun over the competition.  Sukie got one and finds it works very well with a high quality construction.  It's also extremely quiet compared with the competition.  The company now has a smaller gun called the Atom  It's a bit less powerful (the power may not be an issue) and has fewer massage heads, but is more portable, less expensive and appears to be getting favorable review.  The company is having a $25 off Black Friday sale on the November 25 if you're interested (promo code BLACKFRIDAYFLASH).

 

 

 

one of the best comments on endemic

I posted this about a year ago and just ran into it again.  It holds up very well.

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To an epidemiologist, an endemic infection is one in which overall rates are static — not rising, not falling. More precisely, it means that the proportion of people who can get sick balances out the ‘basic reproduction number’ of the virus, the number of individuals that an infected individual would infect, assuming a population in which everyone could get sick. Yes, common colds are endemic. So are Lassa fever, malaria and polio. So was smallpox, until vaccines stamped it out.

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the economic downside of getting covid

What happens to your income if you get long covid?  Of course it varies depending on a lot, but some statistics..  

Not a good thing for the economy.

 

predicting bat → human virus spillovers

It turns out it's possible to predict when spillover events may become more likely.

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Australian flying foxes are of interest because they host a virus called Hendra, which causes a very rare but deadly respiratory infection that kills one in every two infected people. Hendra virus, like Nipah, SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic) is a bat virus that has spilled over into people. These viruses often reach humans through an intermediate animal, sometimes with deadly consequences. Scientists know that spillovers are associated with habitat loss, but have struggled to pinpoint the specific conditions that spark events until now.

After a detailed investigation, Eby and her colleagues can now predict — up to two years ahead — when clusters of Hendra virus spillovers will probably appear. “They have identified the environmental drivers of spillover,” says Emily Gurley, an infectious-diseases epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. And they have determined how those events could be prevented.

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And it's something we'll see increasingly as global warming and human incursion is leading to habitat loss.

a tip of the hat to Sukie

 

 

 

with thanksgiving on the horizon

A piece on persuasion fatigue 

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In ongoing research, we are investigating the consequences of this experience. Our initial findings—still unpublished—suggest that persuasion fatigue is widespread. Of 600 people in the U.S. who participated in recent studies, 98 percent reported having experienced this fatigue, sparked by discussions of topics such as politics, religion and health. Our work also suggests that most people believe debates hit dead ends because the other person in the conversation was at fault.

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long covid

More from a prof of medicine at the Cleveland Clinic

The condition appears to be very complex. Why it impacts some and not others is a mystery, but it's anywhere from 5 to 15% of the infected population at some level.  It also appears to become more likely if you've had multiple infections,.  Most people won't get it, but it's worth avoiding.

 

the crisis in ontario

noted by Professor Raywat Deonandan. Epidemiologist, Health Sciences, uOttawa.

 

 

the other extreme

China's zero-covid policy.  They're starting to loosen tiny bits here and there.

Serious masking and ventilation and making sure the elder generation is vaccinated could probably let them operate with minimal risk.