These drugs work in part by blocking the lysosomes within your cells from achieving the acid pH they need to work. The theory for why it might work against the virus is that the viral particles need the acid pH to uncoat and properly enter the cells. The problem is that lysosomes do a lot of important stuff unrelated…

I think they should just be reported to their employers, who can then decide whether they want people who are likely to get their stupid ass and their coworkers infected. 

Have we reached the point in our societal collapse where we can start tarring and feathering people? 

It’s OK, once Dr. Fauci is fired, I’m sure there’s some Young Republican college senior who took a biology class pass/fail once all lined up to replace him

Yea I think we’ll run out of respiratory therapists and trained nurses before we run out of physicians, as they have even more exposure to the patients with inadequate protection. As for physicians, I have some papers with my notes on vent management from my ICU rotations in residency, but I’d be a piss poor…

Vents are very complex machines. - not just a pump. Basically they have to provide the right amount of pressure on inspiration and expiration - otherwise you’re either not providing oxygen effectively or can literally pop the lungs like a balloon. All of this has to be exquisitely synchronized to the patient’s…

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. I heard that you can make a really nice ventilator out of a copy of Atlas Shrugged and some tape. 

If only there were a way to calculate some reasonable amount of water that a typical household uses for necessities, and then charge people using far more above that for things that are less necessary, like lawn care and pools. But sadly such math is beyond our current technological capabilities. Even ISPs haven’t…

Taxes typically pay for that kind of thing. Kind of like how taxes paid for the interstate highways and pay for their upkeep, which the use fees (tolls and gasoline tax) don’t come close to covering. 

You want the salary to be reasonably high. There are a lot of politicians who are already wealthy for whom that salary makes no difference, but our goal is also to get people who may not be independently wealthy but who have a lot to contribute. Generally, I think public servants should be paid well enough to bring in…

He’s ophthalmologist. Great for when you’ve been poked in the eye or want to flex your spelling skills, absolutely useless for anything else (sorry ophthalmologist friends...)

Unless the ship arrives with a bunch of doctors, nurses, ventilators, and PPE, a better use for it would be to lure all the current White house inhabitants and the congressional Republicans on it and set it adrift at sea

He already has a supply of submarines ready to go. The health workers just have to get into the submarine, and they’re protected from coronavirus. Plus then it’s easy for them to get to that hospital boat

This will primarily affect the third year med students who are doing their required core clinical rotations. Most programs do pre-clinical lectures and small group sessions for the first 1.5-2 years, and those should not be affected. My med school had all lectures available for viewing online (at faster speed) about…

Just for context, there are no approved mRNA based vaccines yet. It’s a promising technology, but it’s very different from prior vaccine approaches, which involve either a live modified virus, killed inactivated virus, or more recently purified synthetic proteins from the virus. 

I think the ghoul realized that he has at least a 1 in 10 chance of dying if he gets infected

I think the main reason the numbers haven’t exploded is that there aren’t enough tests.

I look forward to a website that directs everyone with a fever and a cough to a drive-through where they will be told there are no kits available.

The actual testing itself takes under 4 hours. It’s basically purifying virus RNA and doing a PCR, with appropriate control reactions. It’s something most science labs and clinical labs do all the time. I assume as president, his sample got couriered to a testing facility and went to the front of the line.

In a functional country, the screening would be done by a national public health agency and not left to the private sector. It’s not google’s job to figure out how to get the pandemic screening up and running.