10X

The government wanted to catch the bombers, and any associates they might have had. That wasn't some nefarious 'test', just to see if they could do it.

This is also the appropriate method for testing pets, and any livestock you might have in your area. Time to grab a USPS flat rate box and go looking for any cows you think might be feverish.

So, you're stocking up on blanks, then?

This might end then. Too soon to tell. Plenty of seasonal viruses are out there, but the coronaviruses SARS and MERS weren't seasonal, they were a threat all year long. SARS only for one year, fortunately. By far, the biggest questions in my mind (in a lot of minds) are: Is this a seasonal virus, and if so, will it come back? I'm confident a vaccine will be developed, and could be available as soon as next year, which would blunt the return enormously. Is the viral genome sufficiently stable so that a person who has caught it once, cannot be re-infected? If this proves to be a one-and-done infection, the population will become increasingly resistant over time (although having to catch the disease once is a sucky way to develop resistance). Current speculation leans towards re-infection being unlikely, but that's far from certain at this point. A stable genome also means you only have to develop a vaccine once, like for measles or MMR, rather than every year, like for flu. It's going to be a few months before we have good answers to either of these questions.

Yes, PA really should have sent their AG to prison sooner; it's a shame it took as long as it did. They're not the only state to make that mistake.

It would eliminate the attendant breathing in my window at the beginning and end of every transaction. Also, I can easily sanitize my hands after touching the pump. The attendant isn't doing the same after dealing with each of the 1000 snot covered, ass picked hands he comes in contact with. Plus, I'm sick of NJ refusing to allow me to have access to cheaper self-serve gas.

It seems like this should finally be the incentive needed to allow us to have cheaper, self serve gas in NJ. There's no more useless social interaction than having to go through an intermediary, who is also handling cash and charge cards from hundreds of other people a day, just to put gas in your car.

Yep, that’s exactly what I think. Because it would serve no purpose, and make no more sense than testing for SARS today. But if I was worried about the government wanting to test anyway for some unfathomable reason, I’d know that testing 300MM+ people would cost in the 10’s of billions of dollars range, and I’d come right back to thinking it ain’t gonna happen.

We're not China, for starters, that's a rather significant distinction. As for mandatory testing of 300MM+ citizens, this will all be over a long time before 300MM+ test kits are available.

It does not appear that any such ban has been enacted. The declared emergency gives the mayor broader powers (that's the point of declaring an emergency), but there is no indication that the full laundry list above will be enacted. Why would they? It bears watching, yes, to see what is actually done, but the ordinances listed above seem tailored handle specific types of emergencies...Riots? Close the bars, stop selling gas in portable containers. Natural disasters? Cut off power and gas until emergency services have finished looking for survivors. Pandemic? Restrict ingress and egress.

Cough hard in their face, then close your door.

Now it's really getting bad. The NCAA National Rifle Championships (yes, that's a thing) was just cancelled! I was curious and checked late this morning and it was still on, so this is very recent news. NCAA Rifle Championships

Quite true. Also, and this is a critical point, there are brand new strains every year, and you can't build up immunity to something to which you've not been exposed. But you can be vaccinated against it. I favor the latter approach to developing immunity, as it doesn't involve me getting sick with the flu, and passing it on to other people. The yearly vaccine development efforts look at new strains emerging in the far East, predicts which ones are most likely to be a problem here, and then rush to get a vaccine out against those strains. In years when the predictions are good, the vaccine has high effectiveness. In year when the predictions are off or a strain undergoes genetic drift during the months when vaccine production is scaling up, the vaccine is less effective. But given the multi-month lead time to produce and distribute the vaccine, you can't wait for the flu to arrive, you have to make the best prediction you can, and act on them. The predictions are imperfect, and so the protection is imperfect. But what's the alternative--developing a vaccine to last year's strains? That's worse. The tri- and quadrivalent vaccines typically cover some mix of known strains likely to return, and brand new strains making their first appearance. This year's trivalent vaccine covered one returning strain and two new strains, for example. At the outset of the flu season, no one had immunity to the new strains.

That's kinda true. The development of antibiotic resistance is a big friggin' deal when an antibiotic leaves part of a microbial population behind due to some genetic modification that confers resistance. That resistance gene gets passed on to new generations, and that's trouble. Resistance isn't a big concern with non-specific means of killing microbes...boiling, intense UV exposure, soap and water, alcohol--because they cause catastrophic yet non-specific damage. It's hard for an organism to become resistant to so many bad things happening at once.

Those may be marginally effective at best. Does it say what the alcohol content is? 60% or higher is recommended for killing the virus, and that assumes your hands are wet and kept wet with the solution for 20-30 seconds or more. They may be of some value even if ineffective at killing the virus, if they are removing some contamination from your hands. Just remember to think of your hands as 'less contaminated' rather than 'virus free' after you use them.

We don't know that. It might come back seasonally, and remain a problem until an effective vaccine is developed (at which point a vocal minority will stop demanding that something be done now, and resume demanding that they not be forced to vaccinate ). Or, Covid19 could simply vanish after this year. SARS was also a coronavirus, and after emerging in 2003, it hasn't been seen anywhere since 2004. Similarly, MERS is a coronavirus that was a big deal in 2012, but now only infects a handful of people a year. No vaccine or treatment exists for either.

TCNJ is sticking to their regularly-scheduled spring break, but all classes will be online-only for the first two weeks thereafter. The campus will remain open, just no classes or athletic events during that time. TCNJ will forever be The College of New Jeresy to me. Anyone here remember when they changed their name from Trenton State, and had the big name-change ceremony, unveiling the big new sign at the campus entrance, to assembled press, dignitaries, students and parents? And when the big new sign was revealed, they had misspelled 'Jersey'? It was hysterical. The College of New Jeresy

Mad River is the only place to ban boarders in the east. Alta and Deer Valley in Utah do as well. I think those are the last three holdouts

It’s about time somebody in Sussex county got a computer!

Exactly right. That was a big factor in the development of both vaccines and treatments for ebola. Groups would develop an idea to the point where it was working well in the lab, go into small scale production in advance of clinical trials...and then entire years would go by during which no human on earth contracted ebola. Great news overall, but it sure derails a clinical program.

I've added my comments in bold, to a few of the points I've underlined in the linked article. Scientists in Texas had developed a vaccine to protect against a deadly strain of coronavirus four years ago, but were forced to stop work on it because they didn’t have enough money to test it on humans, NBC Newsis reporting. The vaccine was developed in 2016, more than a decade after the viral disease SARS had killed more than 770 people in China. The disease was an earlier coronavirus similar to the one now impacting the globe. “We tried like heck to see if we could get investors or grants to move this into the clinic," said Peter Hotez, co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children's Hospital. "But we just could not generate much interest." It's hard to generate interest or attract funding for a potential vaccine to a disease that had largely run its' course a decade earlier. Yes, it would be nice to have a vaccine stockpiled in case SARS comes roaring back, but given the enormous costs of clinical trials, I can understand why funding didn't materialize. I suspect a lot of those dollars ended up going to MERS and Ebola vaccine research instead, once they became the larger threats. “We could have had this ready to go and been testing the vaccine's efficacy at the start of this new outbreak in China," said Hotez, who is convinced the vaccine could provide cross-protection against the new coronavirus. Maybe it would provide cross-protection. Certainly one would test for it, and I'd hope they are doing exactly that with the remaining stocks they said they have frozen. But the immune system is exquisitely selective, and cross-protection is the exception, rather than the rule. You don't see it with flu vaccines, and it is why we've never had a cold vaccine. "It's tragic that we won't have a vaccine ready for this epidemic," Hotez said. "Practically speaking, we'll be fighting these outbreaks with one hand tied behind our backs." Sadly true, though I don't know how one could ever have a vaccine ready at the outset of an epidemic caused by a previously-unknown organism. Best one can do is be ready to quickly start up a research and development effort to attack the new threat.

If you don't know where they were taken, "I don't know" is a perfectly acceptable answer. If you do know, saying where the photos you posted were taken is also a perfectly acceptable answer. If you do know, but don't want to tell us, that's odd...but enjoy keeping your little secret.

Context matters. Where were those Costco pictures taken?

Where were those Costco pictures taken? Top one shows 'Tyre Center'. I don't recall Costco using that spelling domestically.

Blue is reporting 39 of 40 trails open today. The season ain't over yet! (though I can't personally use more Blue tickets this season).