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Rah!
Feb 21, 2006


Delta-Wye posted:

got that double pfizer titer load :getin: definitely seen old people without good titers after vax so who knows

dark humor, but i laughed at this bit:

what is it with cv19 and aids researchers?

i was curious and did a google search and the first page lists two other AIDS researchers who died from covid-19, and another one who died last year of a heart attack (with covid probably)

open biden!

then i remembered how the russians shot down that plane full of AIDS researchers, several years ago

AIDS researchers can't catch a break

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Delta-Wye
Sep 29, 2005

Rah! posted:

i was curious and did a google search and the first page lists two other AIDS researchers who died from covid-19, and another one who died last year of a heart attack (with covid probably)

open biden!

then i remembered how the russians shot down that plane full of AIDS researchers, several years ago

AIDS researchers can't catch a break

mostly i see older aids folks just annoyingly telling everyone to learn to live with the virus, whatcanudo?? /cashes biggest paycheck in federal government

Bulgakov
Mar 8, 2009


рукописи не горят

the idea of it being standard for people to still be wearing masks this summer prolly also annoys the american police state and its intelligence agencies who'd surely prefer people out doing civil unrest with naked faces this time so they can more easily be identified


with nothing having improved in peoples lives this summer gonna assumedly be as rightfully spicy on the streets as the last

fits my needs
Jan 1, 2011

Grimey Drawer
https://twitter.com/thedailybeast/status/1389812512821026820?s=20

Bulgakov
Mar 8, 2009


рукописи не горят

didn't mr kimmel have the pillow man on

because all sides. except some hardcore leftist of course.

Rah!
Feb 21, 2006


Bulgakov posted:

the idea of it being standard for people to still be wearing masks this summer prolly also annoys the american police state and its intelligence agencies who'd surely prefer people out doing civil unrest with naked faces this time so they can more easily be identified


with nothing having improved in peoples lives this summer gonna assumedly be as rightfully spicy on the streets as the last

yeah

at one point while protesting, a helicopter spotlight singled me out so i was probably a temporary focus of the cop camera but i felt good knowing i was unidentifiable due to my mask

one weird trick the cops hate!

Happiness
Oct 10, 2004

fischtick posted:

https://mobile.twitter.com/Oregonian/status/1389709724715737091

Six people are dead, reads the article decorated with a cartoonish bush wearing an oversized mask. Six people died today in my state amidst a global pandemic. Doctor Bush should replace corona Chan. remember corona Chan?

the doctor has made his decision

https://twitter.com/Oregonian/status/1389738896351801346

Steve Yun
Aug 7, 2003
I'm a parasitic landlord that needs to get a job instead of stealing worker's money. Make sure to remind me when I post.
Soiled Meat

Bulgakov posted:

didn't mr kimmel have the pillow man on

because all sides. except some hardcore leftist of course.

Kimmel actually did a good job of making Mike Lindell look like a big baby. He talked to Mike like he was a kid, tried to reason with him, brought up Mike’s history with crack and several failures and spelled out for the audience that this was not a man with his head on straight, but couched it like he was reaching out to Mike out of concern

Google Butt
Oct 4, 2005

Xenology is an unnatural mixture of science fiction and formal logic. At its core is a flawed assumption...

that an alien race would be psychologically human.


shut the gently caress up dawg

Rah!
Feb 21, 2006



is that why u lied anthony is that why u keep licking those corporate boots lol

gradenko_2000
Oct 5, 2010

HELL SERPENT
Lipstick Apathy
Philippines’ workplaces a virus hotbed as economy rushes to reopen

quote:

Mandy* made it clear to her employers: she could only work from home.

She lived with her husband and their two-year-old. Mandy had a heart condition, her daughter had bronchitis, while her husband worked as a delivery man for Grab. They shared a room for rent in Manila, making it impossible to isolate if at least one of them turned out positive for the novel coronavirus.

Mandy was a call center agent. She knew she worked well. From the lockdown in March 2020 up to the renewed lockdown in April 2021, she has managed to stay afloat in the industry where companies have been pulling out left and right, leaving thousands of agents jobless.

Mandy has worked for four clients, working from home in all transfers except the last one, located in Bonifacio Global City in Taguig City.

She started in December 2020 and trained in January 2021. She said the recruits – her included – were led to believe that only the training would be onsite, until they were told to report for work when their regular shifts began.

In protest, Mandy used up all her leave credits, effectively going on a break on her first month in March 2021. She took care of her daughter.

While at home, messages poured into her inbox.

One by one, her colleagues reported testing positive for COVID-19. Still, the company only locked down parts of its office. A positive case in the first floor meant that only the first floor was shut down. The rest had to continue.

When Mandy had to finally go earn money, she had to report to their office. She returned on March 19. By the second week of April, she started coughing. The virus had reached her.

The outbreak in Mandy’s office mirrored the spike in cases happening in the National Capital Region, the epicenter of the pandemic in the Philippines.

In March 2021, NCR cities saw the infections spread doubly fast, and the Philippines saw a record-breaking rise in cases for days.

By the last week of March, the government decided to place the capital region and surrounding provinces on enhanced community quarantine, the strictest level of lockdown.

From January to April 2021 alone, the Philippines recorded over 500,000 cases, making up half of its first million cases since the pandemic started.

Experts attributed the rapid rise to the reopening of the economy and the arrival of more infectious variants of COVID-19.

The country's economic managers argued for the reopening of businesses as employers and employees could not go on without their income. The distribution of aid has also left the money reserves of local governments dry. The national government could only give a maximum of P4,000 per poor household – certainly not enough for any family to survive on for weeks.

In this trade-off, the virus spread among the country's economic frontliners, the workers.

According to contact tracers Rappler spoke with, transmission inside homes is the most common way COVID-19 spreads, but the spread of the virus in workplaces has become the most difficult to handle.

Spread of the virus in the workplace is attributed to the following:

1. Employers want to maximize operations by making their employees work onsite.
2. Employees with no option to work from home risk getting infected instead of losing their jobs.
3. The national government is undermanned to ensure the proper enforcement of health protocols in the workplace.


Quezon City, the Philippines’ most populous city and the city with the most infections, has its own office monitoring the spread of COVID-19 in workplaces.

According to Rolando Cruz, chief of the Quezon City Epidemiology and Disease Surveillance Unit (CESU), the office was needed because of how difficult it was to track and contain the virus once it penetrates work spaces.

“For community transmission, it’s easy: We find a cluster and we lock them down. That’s it. For the workplace, it is different. Everyone lives in different barangays. If you’re 10 infected in your workplace, those are 10 different barangays affected,” Cruz said.

The result: Workplaces have become a hotspot for bringing COVID-19 to communities. Then, once the virus takes root in the communities, it spreads faster, especially in the congested areas.

These workplaces involve not just private companies, but even government offices. From Malacañang, to the Congress, to the Supreme Court, offices have been closed off at one point or another.

In Quezon City, they have found that call centers make up most of the cases in workplaces.

The city has a concentration of business process outsourcing (BPO) companies in Araneta City and in Eastwood City, where agents flock to high-rise buildings with enclosed spaces.



Quezon City’s tally of BPO workers who tested positive from January 1 to April 20, 2021, showed that most of those who tested positive are not only living in different barangays in QC, they also reside in other cities or provinces, making it harder for contact tracers to isolate them.

Of the 511 confirmed cases in that period, 406 (79.45%) were found to reside outside, while only 105 (20.55%) lived in Quezon City.

Hanzel Tolentino, a contact tracer in Quezon City, said both the companies and the employees shared the liability for the spread of the virus in their offices.

He explained that, while companies insist on following health protocols, workers can only distance themselves from each other so much within their enclosed and shared spaces.

A lot of workers also have little to no choice. Tolentino recalled an employee for a BPO company concealing symptoms out of fear of losing work.

“It’s because of [the] no-work-no-pay policy, and their health cards do not cover testing,”
Tolentino said.

Hazel Campos, a nurse and contact tracer in Pasig City, said she saw malpractices in workplaces in the barangays she handled. This is especially true in private companies where employees work contractually.

“There are reports coming to our office about companies who belatedly inform close contacts. There are also employees who hide their symptoms,” Campos said.

She added: “We are a third-world country. The people need money. That is a factor why they hide their symptoms. If they declare they have symptoms, they are banned from work without compensation.”

In an interview with Rappler, Labor Undersecretary Benjo Benavidez said employees could avail of sickness benefit from the Social Security System. He lamented, however, that not all employees are aware of this, or that they may not be covered in the first place to avail themselves of this.

BPO companies employ thousands of Filipinos in the capital region and surrounding provinces. They rake in billions of dollars for the Philippine economy every year. Under the pandemic, their employees have been classified by government as “essential.”

Mandy is one of those essential workers, and she says they have been taken for granted.

She recalled that, during the early part of the pandemic, many BPO firms offered work-from-home arrangements, but, as the economy slowly reopened, more started pushing their employees to work onsite.

Mylene Cabalona, president of the BPO Industry Employees Network (BIEN) Pilipinas, stresses that the problems they face in their industry reflect what workers in other sectors face – employees live dangerously as employers push them to go to work.

“We’re only asking for what we deserve. This is the state of our industry now: precarious. This is also what our brothers and sisters in other industries experience,” said Cabalona.

Cabalona says call center agents find themselves in oppressive situations because there are no unions to represent them. She dispels the “misconception” that call center agents are “better off” compared to other workers.

“We’re not represented, people don’t listen to us because they think we have it good,” Cabalona added.

Cabalona’s group specifically flagged Department Order No. 215 of the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), which allowed companies to float employees from 6 months to 12 months.

This means that employees can still be under one company and not earn for as long as 12 months.

In an interview with Rappler, Labor Undersecretary Benavidez said the order was intended to protect employees because the order would allow companies to extend the employment of workers instead of firing them after six months.

“Would you rather extend or outright lose your job? That’s the rationale behind that,” Benavidez said.

Where does the government intervene in all of this?

The DOLE crafts labor policies and enforces them. Under the pandemic, this has included policies to curb the spread of COVID-19 in workplaces.

Benavidez admitted that they were severely undermanned to fulfill this role.

Ideally, the DOLE visits workplaces to monitor whether employers are following quarantine rules. But their backlog appears to be insurmountable: The DOLE only has over 150 inspectors to monitor around 74,000 businesses in Metro Manila alone.

These 150 inspectors also have no service vehicle and would have to plan their trips on their own and use the restricted public transportation.

The DOLE also does not have a database of infections in workplaces to monitor trends and respond to them accordingly. At best, local governments keep track of them on their own, like in the case of Quezon City and Pasig City. Benavidez says data collection is the responsibility of the Department of Health.

The DOLE managed to get a snapshot of the situation based on its visits. The department managed to visit 21,161 businesses from January 1 to April 22, 2021 – less than a third of the total number of establishments.

It reported that 81.35% of the businesses complied with health protocols. Among those who failed to comply, the following make up the most common violations:

1. Failure to submit the monthly COVID-19 reports to DOLE
2. Failure to formulate and implement an Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) program
3. Failure to follow the minimum health protocols

An OSH program consists of the company drafting a plan for handling COVID-19 within the workplace and setting up a team of point persons in case the virus reaches their office. This means that thousands of workplaces do not have these contingencies in place.

As for the enforcement of health protocols, the department confirmed the suspicions of health experts and the workers – that the spread of the virus in their workplace has a lot to do with ventilation.

The DOLE issued Department Order No. 224, which mandates “stricter measures for adequate ventilation” in workplaces. The guidance was issued on March 3, 2021 – a year after the pandemic was declared.

As the Philippines continues to be a laggard in pandemic recovery and immunization, workers still don't see an end in sight in having to risk themselves and their families in order to earn money.

Mandy recovered from COVID-19 on April 24. She counts herself lucky as she was finally allowed to work with relative safety.

She told Rappler in a text message, “I am now again working from home.”

Rah!
Feb 21, 2006


MY FAUCI OUCHIE
a BDSM ventilator adventure
by Chuck Tingle

Steve Yun
Aug 7, 2003
I'm a parasitic landlord that needs to get a job instead of stealing worker's money. Make sure to remind me when I post.
Soiled Meat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFTL-dRkOLs

Lol Modi is still holding rallies

Bastard Tetris
Apr 27, 2005

L-Shaped


Nap Ghost

Herman Cain as gently caress

Antonymous
Apr 4, 2009


drat, I'm triggered

Real Mean Queen
Jun 2, 2004

Zesty.


Fluffy Bunnies posted:

Hi friend,

It's going to be okay. I got both of my shots and I was super nervous about them, too. Two weeks after my second Moderna, I'm totally fine. You will be, too. You're gonna do great and you'll have cool kids with cool antibodies.

Go get your pokes and kick covid's rear end.

Hey, glad you’re posting here.

Skippy McPants
Mar 19, 2009

Rah! posted:

MY FAUCI OUCHIE
a BDSM ventilator adventure
by Chuck Tingle

The Great Tingler would never stoop to something so tasteless.

starkebn
May 18, 2004

"Oooh, got a little too serious. You okay there, little buddy?"
Uhhh, this seems like a really bad way to run things

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-05/indonesian-company-fires-staff-for-reusing-covid-test-swabs/100114412

Rah!
Feb 21, 2006


Skippy McPants posted:

The Great Tingler would never stoop to something so tasteless.

no, theres taste

the taste is rotten meat

open biden

blatman
May 10, 2009

14 inc dont mez


Rah! posted:

MY FAUCI OUCHIE
a BDSM ventilator adventure
by Chuck Tingle

I figured there was a chance that he actually wrote this so I googled it on bing, didn't find this one but apparently Chuck Tingle has branched out a bit:

https://www.amazon.ca/Chuck-Tingles-Complete-Guide-Void/dp/1544123817

quote:

Hugo nominated author Dr. Chuck Tingle is well known for his thoughts on love and romance, but there is another side to this revered modern philosopher that is needed now more than ever. Dispensed within this non-fiction volume is everything that you need to know about The Void, a terrifying place outside reality that is constantly overflowing with cosmic horror. Will you know what to do when The Void starts leaking into your timeline?

apparently it's regularly bought with a copy of his "Tingleverse" pen and paper RPG rulebook which I guess is a thing now??? with products like these I'm not sure we need to open er up anymore, closer down boys we got something better than bloomin' onions on the menu

Rah!
Feb 21, 2006



:trumppop:

Rah!
Feb 21, 2006


blatman posted:

I figured there was a chance that he actually wrote this so I googled it on bing, didn't find this one but apparently Chuck Tingle has branched out a bit:

https://www.amazon.ca/Chuck-Tingles-Complete-Guide-Void/dp/1544123817


apparently it's regularly bought with a copy of his "Tingleverse" pen and paper RPG rulebook which I guess is a thing now??? with products like these I'm not sure we need to open er up anymore, closer down boys we got something better than bloomin' onions on the menu

lol

The Void
a Goatse adventure
by Chuck Tingle

Rah!
Feb 21, 2006


lol





also....Truckman??



:vince:

Tzen
Sep 11, 2001

silicone thrills posted:

hell yeah covid office buddies.

So what finally got me looking for another job for real today? The HR lacky who told me "Why don't you ask people to put their masks on" just got promoted while 2 other people got laid off.

fuckin priorities are in order.

Also another coworkers kid probably has covid now. they did a rapid test that said no but the doc was like "I think its covid, please come back in 3 days for another test"

Oh and every person at the office who has covid now? Lives with in a mile of me lmao.

NORTH SEATTLE BLOWIN UP (oh wait not like the time it blew up from a gas explosion.. gently caress that was twice )
fuuuuuck

Anyways, my company's annual picnic is in 2 weeks! Everyone is really looking forward to it. (Safely) Hope you can make it!!!!

lmao just a big :rip: to all my colleagues that i've already lost all respect for

Tzen
Sep 11, 2001

Accretionist posted:

Ugh, poo poo.
lol

The Oldest Man posted:

Bahahahaha



ok well yes he was a real person who did definitely just die and here's a bunch of verified twitter accounts from folks who knew him talking about it

but maybe he just died with covid
lmao

Tzen
Sep 11, 2001

Bastard Tetris posted:

Herman Cain as gently caress
lol it's accelerationist Trump
let the death waves continue i guess :shrug:

Tzen
Sep 11, 2001

Nonsense posted:

Whitmer is one of the most incompetent governors in the country
Sorry what was that? I can't hear you over the awards being granted to Gov. Whitmer.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/gov-whitmer-among-7-awarded-for-courage-by-jfk-foundation/
:smug::smug::smug:

Steve Yun
Aug 7, 2003
I'm a parasitic landlord that needs to get a job instead of stealing worker's money. Make sure to remind me when I post.
Soiled Meat
You can’t really blame Whitmer when her GOP legislature took away her emergency powers

UnfortunateSexFart
May 18, 2008

𒃻 𒌓ð’‰𒋫 𒆷ð’€𒅅𒆷
𒆠𒂖 𒌉 𒌫 ð’®𒈠𒈾𒅗 𒂉 𒉡𒌒𒂉𒊑


spaceblancmange posted:

Sydney has a mystery case.

The list of places they visited tells a simple yet inspiring story of a man and his quest for the perfect steak



Surely this guy works in the beef delivery industry or something?

kyojin
Jun 15, 2005

I MASHED THE KEYS AND LOOK WHAT I MADE

thank u india

thank u terror

thank u disillusionment

thank u frailty

thank u consequence

thank u thank u silence


fe:
How 'bout unabashedly bawling your eyes out
How 'bout not equating death with stopping (openrup)

DesertIslandHermit
Oct 7, 2019

It's beautiful. And it's for the god of...of...arts and crafts. I think that's what he said.

Louisgod posted:

patiently waiting to create protagonists that don't exist because I'm a huge scared pussy

https://twitter.com/wakeari60/status/1389581890949206024?s=20

I'd totally fake a post like this if I were the guy that used the money for the squid so people would defend it valiantly.

Rah!
Feb 21, 2006



lol

Delta-Wye
Sep 29, 2005
https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/221/Supplement_4/S375/5731483
Serological Evidence for Henipa-like and Filo-like Viruses in Trinidad Bats

twiv was talking about this neat paper that gives some insight that the ecohealth allience (represented by the Other Epstein here) is now loving around with other viruses from new world bats. super cool and super good.

im sure it will be nothing

Kreeblah
May 17, 2004

INSERT QUACK TO CONTINUE


Taco Defender

:rip: the US if it really is that bad, I guess.

I wonder whether there's any threshold at this point where Blue MAGA would go back to pretending to give a poo poo about COVID. Probably not, but who knows.

euphronius
Feb 18, 2009


he was correct. he must be mad that Biden is doing exactly what he did and the media went along with it.

Snowglobe of Doom
Mar 30, 2012

sucks to be right

UnfortunateSexFart posted:

Surely this guy works in the beef delivery industry or something?

This BBQing "self-restraint" bullshit attitude is the exact reason why you'll never be allowed to hold full citizenship in this country :colbert::australia:

Koirhor
Jan 14, 2008

by Fluffdaddy
imagine being a viral researcher your entire life and understanding all of that, get vaxxed knowing vaccination is never 100% fly to largest hot spot and die anyway, lmao

Pingui
Jun 4, 2006

WTF?
We've talked about diabetes prompted by COVID before, but in this article there is some numeration of what exactly that risk is:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-05/two-pandemics-clash-as-doctors-find-that-covid-spurs-diabetes posted:

Two Pandemics Clash as Doctors Find That Covid Spurs Diabetes
Veterans study shows 39% increased risk six months after Covid
Doctors probe possibility virus harms insulin-producing cells

(..)
Among Covid-19’s many ripple effects, the worsening of the global diabetes burden could carry a heavy public-health toll. The underlying mechanisms stoking new-onset diabetes aren’t clear, though some doctors suspect the SARS-CoV-2 virus may damage the pancreas, the gland that makes insulin which is needed to convert blood-sugar into energy. Sedentary lifestyles brought on by lockdowns could also be playing a role, as might late diagnoses after people avoided doctors’ offices. Even some children’s mild coronavirus cases can be followed by the swift onset of diabetes, scientists found.
(..)
Al-Aly and colleagues were the first to measure the effect in the U.S. based on evidence from the national health-care databases of the Department of Veterans Affairs. They found that Covid survivors were about 39% more likely to have a new diabetes diagnosis in the six months after infection than non-infected users of the VA health system. The risk works out to about 6.5 additional diabetes cases for every 1,000 Covid patients who don’t end up in the hospital. For those who do, the probability jumps to 37 per 1,000 -- and it’s even higher for patients who required intensive care.
(..)
Worried About Kids
In Los Angeles, meantime, doctors report a worrying pattern among children with new cases of type-2 diabetes -- the chronic form linked to obesity and sedentary lifestyles that’s mainly seen in adults.

They found one in five new pediatric type-2 cases last year required hospitalization for diabetic ketoacidosis, a dangerous buildup of acid in the blood due to inadequate insulin supply. By contrast, only 3% of new patients faced this life-threatening problem in 2019. While none of the children in 2020 had active Covid-19, doctors weren’t systematically testing for a prior SARS-CoV-2 infection. Of those who were tested, a third were positive.
(..)

DR FRASIER KRANG
Feb 4, 2005

"Are you forgetting that just this afternoon I was punched in the face by a turtle now dead?
I'm 48 hours from my second Pfizer dose and I still have a low grade fever and can't stop sweating.

I'd like to get off the ride please.

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Real Mean Queen
Jun 2, 2004

Zesty.


Kreeblah posted:

:rip: the US if it really is that bad, I guess.

I wonder whether there's any threshold at this point where Blue MAGA would go back to pretending to give a poo poo about COVID. Probably not, but who knows.

I don’t think that threshold exists. One of my fully vaccinated neighbors had some guests over a month or two back, the guests weren’t vacced, they got sick, she felt really bad about it, but she’s having people over again because she doesn’t have cave syndrome.

If America is going to be great again for even a few seconds, it needs to be now. The Biden afterglow is wearing off, Chauvin’s conviction is turning out not to have done anything, and the west coast is going to be more on fire than it was last year as soon as the first power line falls. If there’s going to be a glorious liberal summer, that means covid needs to not exist starting right now. There are between four and eight Sunday brunches between now and when it’s no longer safe to go outside without a respirator and it’s perpetually 60 degrees because all the smoke and ash in the air keep the sun from working. Think of the brunches.

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