Cold and damp.
Yesterday stayed cool and damp all day, with overcast keeping me from seeing the sky. Today is shaping up to be the same, only cooler, with more wind.
I can’t believe it’s already Thursday. The weeks are flying by. I’ve got a bunch of stuff still left in the week to do. We’ll see if they get done.
So, what if China’s lies are REALLY BAD. What if the Tencent numbers are more accurate. In today’s world, keeping secrets is really hard. What will the world’s reaction be to finding out there are 25K dead from WuFlu, not 300? That just based on current infected, we’ll see another 25K or more dead in china. I think the world will lose its collective mind.
Violence in the streets? Marches? Panic to prep? You name it, the world coming together to help the people of Wuhan seems to be the LEAST likely outcome.
Think about the financial markets and their reaction. Healthcare providers and their stocks… Mask makers might see a bump, but who’s gonna pay for 10K cases showing up at the ER in Minneapolis?
I sincerely hope that I’m being an alarmist. I truly fear that I’m not alarmist enough. This sh!t is getting to me.
n
Violence in the streets? Marches? Panic to prep? You name it, the world coming together to help the people of Wuhan seems to be the LEAST likely outcome.
I think an effort to do exactly that is being organized now. Putin is going to be the adult in the room, and I have no doubt he and Trump communicate regularly.
The only question mark is whether the ChiComs want to cede enough authority to let the Russians and Americans lead.
I have an interview this morning at 8:30.
Work rousted me out of a sound sleep at 4AM to deal with some issue on the toll road in DC. I said, “This shoots to sh*t what I have to do at 8:30.”
“Why?”
“Interview.”
This will be a fun morning. The bosses don’t really care what I do in that regard, but the young’n’s, particularly our group’s only female developer, are watching.
Good luck finding something that suits you better Greg.
n
Panic buying is better than not having….
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7973121/Panic-buying-breaks-rumours-spread-shortage-blamed-coronavirus.html
WE shouldn’t need to panic buy though, right?
n
We’ll find out if the Chinese are lying if/when it gets into the wild in the US and Europe. That will be difficult to cover up. Mild inconvenience or deadly plague? The quarantined cruise ships are essentially floating experiments. They might give us some good information on how well the transmission of the virus can be mitigated.
The quarantined cruise ships are essentially floating Petri Dishes.
Fixed it for you.
And in other news the VA finally approved my claim for hearing loss due to the time I spent in those computer rooms over the years. Third appeal and maybe the sixth hearing test. This time I told the examiner that at the distances we were sitting, if we were in one of those computer rooms, we would have to shout to be heard, two or three days a week, some days covering 24 hours. The examiner, not from the VA, seemed to know the right words to get the VA to agree.
Good that this appeal worked as the next step would have been a federal court. Would have needed a lawyer, pro-bono by the American Legion, and probably another four or five years.
So now my disability rating is 30%, almost to my goal, for lack of a better term, of 50% due to the broken back while in the service. This next 20% is going to be extremely difficult. The VA does funny things with ratings. 20% for one item, 30% for the next item is not 50%. It works out to 44% according to the VA, which the VA then rounds to the nearest degree divisible by 10. Thus this would round out to 40%. In the case for the hearing it is 10%, the back is currently at 20%. According to the VA this is really 28% which fortunately gets rounded to the next multiple of 10 which is 30%.
My next step is to apply for mileage from my home to Murfreesboro and back, a distance of 272 miles. The VA does not calculate the fastest route, only the shortest route. I applied in July when I had the hearing exam but was denied because the hearing loss was not service connected. Now the hearing loss is service connected and dated back to April 2019. Thus the two trips should be eligible for mileage reimbursement. I have to resubmit the first request and submit the second trip. Of course the VA pays less than the official government rates. Also subject to a $6.00 deductible each way.
If anyone thinks the IRS is a clown circus you have not had to deal with the VA.
Disease goes thru a cruise ship like sh!t thru a goose….
The normal ones causing the passengers to sh!t like a goose….
It’s a bit of a hot house environment, so the comparison might not be perfectly apt, but yeah, it’s gonna be a wakeup call if everyone on board gets sick.
n
Any tight enclosed environment is a petri dish environment. That’s why cold and flu season is in the winter for most states, although Florida has one in the summer due to AC.
We always went to sea with our favorite cold medicine on the submarine because we all would get sick for the first week or so. After that nobody got sick, but we didn’t make port calls to introduce new germs.
From @MrAtoZ yesterday:
It’s hilarious watching the LibTurds praising Bishop Mittens. He voted Not Guilty on the second count. I guess that doesn’t count. He’ll be trashed in a couple of weeks.
Bishop Mittens is one of those fellows who thinks that he can pick up a turd by the clean end.
IT’S MOVING DAY !
I’ve got Miss Sharon and her gang of four strapping men running in and out of the house starting at 830am. Three of the men are taller than me, one is 6’5″. He just picked up the couch by one end with one hand and shrink wrapped it with the other hand. They have a 24 ft bobtail truck and and a 15 ft bobtail truck. This may be three trips. We did not throw away very much PRECIOUS stuff. And of course, the wife followed me to the curb with the trash and brought precious stuff back in for moving.
We went to bed at 2am so, the wife and I are zombies. The wife has been up since 6am with the daughter. She moved her to a safe house while the nightmare XXXXXXX moving is going on.
If anyone thinks the IRS is a clown circus you have not had to deal with the VA.
Yup, the VA is future of healthcare in the USA. Get used to it.
To give the VA a break though, their typical customer is an 75 year old man who went through minimal corpsman training at the age of 18. They know everything that the doctors “should” be doing and will tell them so.
Worse is my father-in-law who was a army medic and then an x-ray tech for 15 years in the army and 30 years in civilian life working for the VA. My wife sat in the room with my FIL screaming to the VA doc that he had leukemia (which he did not) while his heart was racing at 150 beats a minute due to afib. He thought thought he had leukemia because “all” x-ray techs got leukemia from the leaky x-ray machines. And he had to hold the quadriplegics on the table while he took their x-rays. So he would waste their time and delayed his heart treatment by 10 years, doing damage to his heart and organs.
xkcd: Satellite
https://xkcd.com/2264/
Uh, this may be a commentary on something I just cannot put my finger on.
Explained at:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2264:_Satellite
In his case, wouldn’t that be lifting himself by his bootstraps?
Actually the doctors I have seen at the VA have been very good. Seem to be well versed in healthcare and genuinely care about the patient. The supporting staff has generally been good. This is at the clinic I use and the facility in Murfreesboro.
The issue is the management, red tape and paperwork that are the issue. So many hoops to jump through to get things accomplished. Lot of rules and regulations that must be navigated.
The care has also improved markedly over the last five years. Many changes for the better. Many things now covered that were not covered. The ability to get treatment from private doctors if there is no VA facility offering the service within 30 miles.
Prime example is hearing aids. VA used to provide really crappy hearing aids, bottom of the barrel. Generally not work having as the aids simply amplified everything, were bulky and cumbersome. Now the VA provides top of the line, expensive and excellent devices. Contracts renegotiated every year with manufacturers. VA is the number one provider of hearing aids in the U.S., second is Costco.
Mine are almost the best offered. Only model higher up is rechargeable. Hearing doctor said I could get those if I wanted but advised against the rechargeable. When the battery dies they take time to recharge. With disposable battery types the battery is just replaced, less than a minute. I carry two spare batteries on my key ring.
The hearing aids I got from the VA run $2,500.00, each, at Costco. $5K a pair. How people afford these things is beyond me. A lot of people just do without I guess. Medicare or private insurance do not cover the devices.
https://www.zerohedge.com/health/original-china-virus-whistleblower-doctor-dies
— not elderly, infirm, or sick
RIP, and thanks for the warning.
n
A guy that works for me, no military service, describes the same cost he found when he looked into getting them. He declined to buy them. Six months later, the company called and offered them to him for essentially half price. He declined again. A few months later, they called back and offered both for $1600. He got them at that price. It seems, like a lot of things, the price really isn’t the price.
is not incompatible with
Indeed. It seems as if hearing aids on the commercial market are horribly overpriced. Price gouging comes to mind.
Looking at my devices they do less than a $300.00 smartphone. Few parts, nothing technically challenging. Charge that amount because they can. There is probably less than $100.38 worth of parts in a hearing aid.
I did read the VA gets the devices for about 80% off retail. Thus my units cost the VA about $1,200.00. Still too high but apparently the vendors still make money at that price. Thus your coworker still paid too much but may be the best he can do on the private market.
No no and more no….
“Police lock up suspected patients in their home, vigilantes beat up sufferer’s family and woman fights off cops with a meat cleaver as they quarantine her in shocking videos”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7973915/Coronavirus-China-Police-lock-patient-home-vigilantes-beat-sufferer.html
“do you have enough rice and vegetable?” -FOR HOW F’ing LONG?
Nice riot shield wielding squad, like they need MORE patients….
===========================
Cruise ships, read Ringo’s Black Tide Rising zombie plague books to see why they’re a bad idea…
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7974721/Japan-blocks-foreigners-disembarking-cruise-ship.html
=================================
I know it’s futile to rail against stupidity on the internet, but dang people, they are not building these hospitals from scratch. They are pre-packaged ‘kits’. Maybe thinking about the implications of the chinese .gov having at least 2 1600 bed plague hospitals ready to deploy causes heads to explode, but THAT is what is going on here, not “building from scratch.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7974641/China-finishes-second-new-hospital-built-scratch-Wuhan.html
========================================
And the WHO wants….. wait for it….. MOAR MONEY !! ! !!!111 1 11 What exactly are they doing to control the situation that they need more than half a billion MORE dollars for? (in 2007 they had just over 5000 staff, I’m sure they have more now.)
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-7973253/World-Health-Organization-appeals-520million-fight-deadly-coronavirus.html
n
And these two stories are why we are overdue for culling the herd.
–they found it too hard to party after working 40hrs / week, SO THEY GAVE UP WORK and embraced homelessness.
and their families enable this.
–an instagram idiot has enough money to HIRE SOMEONE to organize her kitchen pantry. And people applaud. And there are enough of these idiots that whole companies exist to do it….
jeez.
n
Actually the doctors I have seen at the VA have been very good. Seem to be well versed in healthcare and genuinely care about the patient. The supporting staff has generally been good. This is at the clinic I use and the facility in Murfreesboro.
The issue is the management, red tape and paperwork that are the issue. So many hoops to jump through to get things accomplished. Lot of rules and regulations that must be navigated.
Trump has been spending money at the VA. The theory my wife and I have is that the return on investment is obvious and immediate — he can make a difference.
The side benefit is helping Republican members of Congress. Reminding the electorate of his VA pork is how our walking stiff incumbent beat “Doors” (hit YouTube and use that word with “MJ Hegar” as search terms).
The problem creeping up on the VA is the increasing number of GPs from the Subcontinent, particularly female, who only work part time. It has reached a critical mass where they dominate Primary Care in Austin, and my wife has nearly walked out several times dealing with their passive-(very)-aggressive nonsense. From what she understands, the demographic gets physically violent with each other behind closed doors. Physicians!
“Physicians”
–I believe you are using professional courtesy by using that word for them. PA or NP might be closer to the truth….
n
–I believe you are using professional courtesy by using that word for them. PA or NP might be closer to the truth….
On paper, they’re qualified doctors from Indian schools. The VA will hire them for Austin without specific Texas licenses as long as they are US Citizens, can qualify for a DEA number, and pass an abbreviated residency at an accredited program.
I’m guessing UT and other schools running the abbreviated residencies are either not paying them during the training or pay them at a reduced rate.
I think a VA medical facility is considered federal property and thus not subject to state licensing requirements. It was this way at Randolph AFB when I had a doctor who bragged about losing her Texas medical license and was hired by the USAF. I quickly made an appointment to see another doctor the next day.
My medical care has been really good at the VA facilities. Treated well by the staff. The VA hospital in downtown Nashville had some really ancient equipment 10 years ago. I hope that situation has improved. The clinic in Harriman where I go seems well equipped for a clinic and the staff has always been helpful. Speak English to boot with a slight southern accent.
“A person in Texas is being tested for coronavirus, Beaumont public health officials announced on Wednesday.
The patient is a man who recently went to China…”
—they no longer list the A&M patient as a suspected, so I guess s/he was cleared. Just in time for one in Beaumont, which is not far from here at all.
n
My medical care has been really good at the VA facilities. Treated well by the staff. The VA hospital in downtown Nashville had some really ancient equipment 10 years ago. I hope that situation has improved. The clinic in Harriman where I go seems well equipped for a clinic and the staff has always been helpful. Speak English to boot with a slight southern accent.
Austin VA Outpatient is a nice facility. I’d rate it as higher in quality where my wife did private practice, but the VA building is brand new.
My wife is definitely paid more than private practice.
VA patients will, without question, be better off than the rest of us receive on Medicaid For All.
(Unlike the politicians, I don’t pretend about the name)
Dubai has had one of five die.
n
Perhaps I’ve been hanging out in the south of India for too long, or perhaps, and more likely, the “sub-continental” kids in medicine who end up here are good at *tests* but not so good at critical thinking. Same goes for the American PCP I just acquired, but that’s another story.
I hope Greg has the good sense not to paint everyone from an Asian continent with the same brush as I’m sure he knows some guys, or even gals, whose brains are commensurate with some common sense.
എന്നെ മലയാളം പഠിപ്പിക്കുക
I hope Greg has the good sense not to paint everyone from an Asian continent with the same brush as I’m sure he knows some guys, or even gals, whose brains are commensurate with some common sense.
Sure, but we seem to see a lot higher percentage of that part of the world’s spoiled, wealthy nit-wits in this country than the segment of the population that actually gets things done, especially working in tech.
Medicine is a new one and kinda concerning.
When you measure the consequences against the costs, it is beyond me how you can form ANY argument against self-quarantining for the 14 days it seems to take for symptoms.
With disease transmission apparently occurring pre-symptom, this is baffling.
https://www.ktva.com/story/41665164/students-recently-returned-from-china-are-back-in-asd-classrooms
@jenny, didn’t you know? It’s the most important thing ever that the child and family not be stigmatized….
Kinda like the name for the WuFlu ” must not contain geography, human names or cultural references, they said, to avoid abusive backlash or potential racism, and it should avoid animal or food names because they could be inaccurate.”
‘cuz “racism” is what I think about first when talking about a killer plague FROM CHINA, killing CHINESE.
Can’t have anyone get aggravated…..
n
When you measure the consequences against the costs, it is beyond me how you can form ANY argument against self-quarantining for the 14 days it seems to take for symptoms.
Reading between the lines in the story, my guess is that the family was in China for the Lunar New Year celebrations. They either have money/connections or worked the PC guilt of the school board.
The San Antonio talk station is reporting that the first plane load of China evacuees will arrive tonight for quarantine at JB Lackland. How long do you think it will be before someone uses their influence to break the quarantine?
We just went to San Antonio for my wife’s birthday last weekend. We didn’t wander out beyond the hotel’s restaurant overlooking the river, but it was obvious that the tourist district had a celebration in progress for Lunar New Year and the subsequent Lantern festival. The area was busy. All it will take is one evacuee.
https://www.takimag.com/article/viruses-real-and-imagined/
I live in SA and I’m not a prepper. I’m starting to regret that…
I have some masks, at least.
I am leaving for San Antonio on Sunday. I’m starting to regret that. Will be in the area just south of Lackland, close to Kelly AFB.
I don’t have any masks.
@mark, it’s never too late to start.
There is plenty of good advice under keywords to the right———>
I’m thinking self quarantine for a month, or more might be required. Probably 3 months , but if that’s the case, our society probably won’t survive the secondary and tertiary effects.
Food, water, fuel, TP, everything you need to isolate yourself. You do not want to be rounded up into a Superdome situation, abandoned to die alone.
n
I have masks, some water, filled up the car today and 10 gallons in tanks, water filters, TP. Need food. Need to test my little generator.
I am leaving for San Antonio on Sunday. I’m starting to regret that. Will be in the area just south of Lackland, close to Kelly AFB.
I don’t have any masks.
Something stupid happening will take a while.
The quarantine will be tight at first, but complacency will set in. The city proper and the Pentagon have a weird relationship based on San Antonio’s desire to assimilate the suburbs for the tax base and the military’s interest in having fewer restrictions placed on their activity at Lackland and other facilities, especially at night, in the face of complaints by the neighbors.
The Air Force would love to have the base annexed by the city since the county tends to be more sympathetic to the private property owners’ concerns. Cities’ bottom lines always come first, and base closure threats get taken more seriously than a group of ranchers complaining about night drills affecting their cattle.