All discussions on coronavirus (and all politics for that matter) have only three possible conclusions:
• “You just don’t understand.”
• “FU and the horse you rode in on.”
• “Welcome… to the Twilight Zone.”
Coronavirus Conclusions
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Category Archives: Peculiar Science
Coronavirus Confusion
The coronavirus has caused so much confusion that people have associated the virus with Corona beer and the manufacturer had to stop production.
Why didn’t scientists call it the colonoscopy virus?
Coronavirus Clarity
Many of you may be confused about the procedures to follow during the coronavirus pandemic. Thankfully, FOAF (friend of a friend) has mercifully given us the clear, official coronavirus guidelines.
Follow. Them. Exactly.
- Basically, you can’t leave the house for any reason, but if you have to, then you can.
- Masks are useless. But they will protect you. They can save you, no they can’t. They’re useless, but wear one anyway. Now they’re mandatory. Maybe. Or maybe not.
- Stores are closed, except for the ones that are open.
- You should not go to the hospital unless you have to go there. Stay out of the ER at all costs unless you’re having a medical emergency. Then it’s okay.
- This virus is deadly but still not too scary, except that sometimes it actually leads to a global disaster. Stay calm.
- There is no shortage of groceries in the supermarket, but there are many things missing when you go there in the evening, but not in the morning. Sometimes.
- The virus has no effect on children except those it has affected or will affect.
- Animals are not affected, but there is still a cat that tested positive in Belgium in February when no one had been tested yet, and a tiger – and one really deadly but also possibly fictional but very sick bat.
- You will have many symptoms when you are sick, but you can also get sick without symptoms, have symptoms without being sick, or be contagious without having symptoms.
- In order not to get sick, you have to eat well and exercise, but also never go out to the grocery store so eat shelf stable processed crap and stay inside your four walls but also stay healthy.
- It’s better to get some fresh air, but you may be arrested if you’re getting fresh air the wrong way and most importantly, don’t go to a park because the fresh air there is deadly.
- Under no circumstances should you go to retirement homes, but if you have to take care of the elderly and bring them food and medication then fine. Just wear gloves. The same ones. All day.
- You can get restaurant food delivered to the house, which may have been prepared by people who didn’t wear masks or gloves. But you have to leave your groceries outside for 3 hours to be decontaminated by the fresh air that also may have virus particles floating around in it. Or you can wipe your groceries with Lysol. But not the food because that will make you sick. No, it’s totally unnecessary to wipe the groceries. Even though the virus can stay on cardboard for 24 hours. Also, you can’t get the virus from eating food with contagions on it. But you can get it by putting it in your mouth. Wait. What?
- Taxi drivers are immune to the virus apparently since you can still take a taxi ride with a random taxi driver. Just don’t take the taxi to your mom’s house because you know. Stay away from your mom.
- You can walk around with a friend if you stay six feet apart but don’t visit with your family if they don’t live under the same roof as you. Even if you’ve all been locked inside for two months already. You may still have the virus and just not know it yet. You’ll find out. Wait another week. Wasn’t that already a week? Might be the next one. Keep waiting.
- You are safe if you maintain the appropriate social distance, but you can’t go out with friends or strangers at the safe social distance. Social distancing means you shouldn’t leave your house and don’t be social, except you may go to the liquor store but don’t socialize there while you’re being socially distant.
- The virus remains active on different surfaces for two hours, no, four, no, six, no, we didn’t say hours, maybe days? But it takes a damp environment. Oh no, not necessarily.
- The virus stays in the air – well no, or yes, maybe, especially in a closed room, in one hour a sick person can infect ten, so if it falls, all our children were already infected at school before it was closed. But remember, if you stay at the recommended social distance, however, in certain circumstances you should maintain a greater distance, which, studies show, the virus can travel further, maybe.
- If you have symptoms, call to book a diagnostic test. We will hear your symptoms on the phone and if you are eligible for a test, you don’t need the test. Assume you have it and quarantine for two weeks. If you don’t have symptoms, you are ineligible for the test. Quarantine for two weeks or better yet until we lift restrictions, which may be in a week, a month or six months. Also, whoever wants a test can get a test.
- Wash your hands. There are no statistics whatever about whether this matters but you might as well.
- We count the number of deaths but we don’t know how many people are infected as we have only tested so far those who were “almost dead” to find out if that’s what they will die of.
- The virus will only disappear if we achieve collective/herd immunity… but stay inside until the virus disappears because we have no immunity.
Any questions?
How’s Uranus?
Never one to shirk from gutter humor in times of stress and anxiety, I was amused to read a recent article from Popular Science that “…our image of Uranus hasn’t advanced substantially beyond the featureless blue beachball captured by Voyager 2’s vintage instruments in 1986.”
Uranus is an odd planet. Where others spin, Uranus rolls, tipped on its side with its poles pointing generally toward or away from the sun. Its magnetic field is bonkers too, offset from the planet’s center and tipped at a wild 60 degrees to the side. Planetary astronomers are blind to that magnetic field from Earth, although the Hubble Space Telescope can occasionally catch an indirect glimpse via Uranus’s auroras—which can shine far from the poles.
Last year, while combing through NASA’s archives of the Voyager 2 mission, two planetary scientists noticed something earlier analyses had overlooked—a blip in Uranus’s magnetic field as the spacecraft cruised through a magnetic bubble of sorts. They spotted a special 60-second long section of Voyager 2’s 45-hour flyby where the magnetic field rose and fell in an instantly recognizable way.
They deduced that it might be a plasmoid. Plasmoids are charged globs of atmosphere blown out into space when the solar wind whips around planets. Losing such blobs can dramatically transform a world over a long period of time, and studying them can provide insight into how planets live and die.
The Voyager team initially assumed the magnetic wackiness was linked to the Uranus’s belly flop position, but when the spacecraft flew by Neptune (which stands up straight) three years later it saw the same apparent mismatch between the planet and its field. Now researchers assume that something about the worlds’ inner workings must set their magnetic fields apart.
The article was titled:
“Uranus blasted a gas bubble 22,000 times bigger than the Earth.”
In other words:
Uranus farted!
Love in the Time of Coronavirus
I see that our ‘crack’ U.S. Government, after its leader, President Rump, proclaimed coronavirus to be a hoax, has reversed itself and declared a national emergency. A task force, under the superlative direction of cardboard cutout Vice President Mike Dense, gives us reassurance that everything is under control provided we take safety precautions through abstinence and prayer.
Nonetheless, despite consulting the world’s foremost experts on diseases and epidemics – people like Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson and Rush Windbag – the government’s task force has a glaring omission in getting citizens through this crisis:
What do I do when run out of toilet paper?
Well, I am here to help.
First, that usual question – paper or plastic? My own preference is paper. Plastic has a number of issues, not the least of which is slipperiness. Besides, aren’t you environmentally concerned and using paper or your own bags to cart items from the grocery store?
So, paper. And where do we get unused paper? Most of us have stopped reading the daily newspaper and few of us use writing paper. And, truth be told, your environmental concerns do not rise to the level of replacing plastic bags. On the other hand, we tend to order online and get delivery by – cardboard paper! Yes, I know that it does not have the silky-smooth quality of your store-bought ultra-smooth Charmin’ or the plushness of Quilted Northern but – hey – we’re in a crisis here so we have to accept these challenges.
And what happens when we have neither plastic nor paper? Nature, in the form of trees, provides us with an abundance of leaves. I would seek out large leafed hardwoods – Sycamore or Red/White Oak – over small leafed varieties or softwoods. And I really don’t want to tell you about the experience one poor fellow had when reduced to using pine needles.
Curmudgeon at Large 