Two lawyers at a Dutch university put forward a fringe interpretation of EU legislation. This requires member states to protect biodiversity and the lawyers claimed that, because cats kill birds, letting them out breached that requirement. Ultimately that could only be tested in the courts, but the EU Commission, the Dutch government (and I imagine pretty well everyone else who's not rabidly anti-EU) do not agree with that interpretation ...
(It still doesn't say anything about pregnant women though)
Cats can give pregnant women toxoplasmosis. Pregnant women can transmit toxoplasmosis, a rare parasitic disease, to their unborn babies, and a toxoplasmosis infection can lead to miscarriage or cause malformed babies. This has nothing to do with the EU.
(It still doesn't say anything about pregnant women though)
Cats can give pregnant women toxoplasmosis. Pregnant women can transmit toxoplasmosis, a rare parasitic disease, to their unborn babies, and a toxoplasmosis infection can lead to miscarriage or cause malformed babies. This has nothing to do with the EU.
Are pregnant cats even more dangerous? (Sorry, I know it's probably innapropriate but couldn't resist.)
As an aside, I used to let my cats go outside but stopped after two of them never came home. My neighborhood has become more urban than rural over the last 20 years. I love my cats and don't want to risk them anymore like when I grew up in the sticks...
Dogs are also a vector for that disease (toxoplasmosis) often via their faeces. That is the reason why dogs are barred from an increasing numbers of children's playgrounds in the UK.
Morale of the story: don't get carnivoras as pets and look for a nice snake or three instead. They don't even need to go out for a walk! Which is clearly a plus in these corona times.
Two lawyers at a Dutch university put forward a fringe interpretation of EU legislation. This requires member states to protect biodiversity and the lawyers claimed that, because cats kill birds, letting them out breached that requirement. Ultimately that could only be tested in the courts, but the EU Commission, the Dutch government (and I imagine pretty well everyone else who's not rabidly anti-EU) do not agree with that interpretation ...
It is actually true that domesticated cats are an invasive species that cause a lot of ecological damage when they're allowed to roam outdoors. It is also true that allowing cats to roam outdoors significantly shortens their life. This is only controversial to people who wrongly believe that the only way for their cats to be happy is if they're allowed outside.
(It still doesn't say anything about pregnant women though)
Cats can give pregnant women toxoplasmosis. Pregnant women can transmit toxoplasmosis, a rare parasitic disease, to their unborn babies, and a toxoplasmosis infection can lead to miscarriage or cause malformed babies. This has nothing to do with the EU.
Cats don't transmit toxoplasmosis directly to anyone at all. It can be in their litter box but the answer is for pregnant people to not change the litter, or protect themselves when doing so.
In my country the start to give out numbers scaled to 100k inhabitants. To me it gives high values to villages while low values to cities even if the cities have much more infections. Thus, people in villages could get more scared of the numbers than city people who should perhaps be more careful due to raw higher occurrences.
What are the opinions of my esteemed fellow forumites on this?
Well we made our first big batch of hand sanitizer (1000 gallons). I work at a German company so every i had to be dotted and t crossed before proceding with production. I honestly thought the crisis would be over before we made anything more than the 5 gallon batches we started with...
Our country has shifted our scale for measuring cases. The map I've been using (since the live one sometimes doesn't load) a areas starting light pink for few cases and darkening to red at it gets worse. My state shifted from lightest pink, to second lightest, back to lightest over a couple days. The initial scale started at 1-100 cases, now the "lightest" scale is "under 1000" cases. Quite the jump. New York city is in the top 5 infected areas and the CITY itself has outdone entire COUNTRIES in cases and deaths.
Our country has shifted our scale for measuring cases. The map I've been using (since the live one sometimes doesn't load) a areas starting light pink for few cases and darkening to red at it gets worse. My state shifted from lightest pink, to second lightest, back to lightest over a couple days. The initial scale started at 1-100 cases, now the "lightest" scale is "under 1000" cases. Quite the jump. New York city is in the top 5 infected areas and the CITY itself has outdone entire COUNTRIES in cases and deaths.
#1 in cases. #2 in deaths. #44 in testing per million citizens. South Korea and us (famously at this point) had our first cases the same day. Our population is 6.5x larger. We have 75x their deaths. It's not like they are all living on farms. Seoul is one of the major cities in the world. The only metric we have going for us is deaths per million, because we're so spread out. Our cases per million are still going up significantly each day. Many think we have hit the plateau the last few days, but the numbers so far today (and I check them from multiple sources a half a dozen times at least) suggest we may still be looking at one of our worst days yet. By tomorrow night, it is very likely we pass Italy for most deaths. If not, Saturday for a 100% certainty.
The Lufthansa Group shows generousity in these difficult times and donates Easter chocolate to clinics and Die Tafeln foodbanks. The sweets were originally intended for flight passengers during the holidays said the airline on Wednesday. Over 300,000 chocolate Easter bunnies would be donated to social institutions and hospitals nation-wide.
That's so sweet. Almost too sweet for anti-sweet tooths like me. I get terrible heartburn from chocolate and similar sugar bombs. But that move's at least better than throwing perfectly fine food away. It's not like they will get flight passengers any time soon after all.
Breaking News - Boris Johnson is still in hospital but no longer in icu. Also, while true that the elderly are more likely to die from this your age does not necessarily mean catching covid-19 is a guaranteed death sentence. Even so the recovery of this 98 year old (BBC News web page) is still something to celebrate. I got the impression from watching the interview that she was a bit puzzled by all the fuss as she served in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force during world war 2.
Breaking News - Boris Johnson is still in hospital but no longer in icu. Also, while true that the elderly are more likely to die from this your age does not necessarily mean catching covid-19 is a guaranteed death sentence. Even so the recovery of this 98 year old (BBC News web page) is still something to celebrate. I got the impression from watching the interview that she was a bit puzzled by all the fuss as she served in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force during world war 2.
Honestly I thought I was through with this topic... But now it seem that it is no longer a case of false positive and we can recatch covid-19 after recovering from it.
Wow, I mean, just DO NOT make any trips that aren't necessary. Do as much shopping as you can in one place and do it maybe once every two weeks. This is crazy:
Honestly I thought I was through with this topic... But now it seem that it is no longer a case of false positive and we can recatch covid-19 after recovering from it.
There have been reports of this happening in China from near the beginning of the pandemic.
A potential problem with the "once you get it you're immune" hypothesis that we all were hoping for is that people who get it and get over it might not create enough antibodies to stave off reinfection in the future. So we're still learning about that.
Since people are seemingly getting reinfected that might be a very valid concern.
Here in Italy the quarantine was supposed to end on April 13th, but it will continue until May 3rd.
And while it is a pain, it makes sense - before getting to "Phase 2", the number of infections needs to be significantly decreased (currently it is, but it is not enough yet), otherwise the lockdown would be useless.
Despite the reporting issues pointed out the last time I mentioned this, Seattle does appear to be slowing down. And yes, the article mentions limitations in the data.
Comments
Hah! I initially thought you meant that the EU forbids pregnant women from going outside!
As the Telegraph put it, this is just "fake mews"
Two lawyers at a Dutch university put forward a fringe interpretation of EU legislation. This requires member states to protect biodiversity and the lawyers claimed that, because cats kill birds, letting them out breached that requirement. Ultimately that could only be tested in the courts, but the EU Commission, the Dutch government (and I imagine pretty well everyone else who's not rabidly anti-EU) do not agree with that interpretation ...
https://eufactcheck.eu/factcheck/uncheckable-eu-requires-member-states-to-ban-cats-from-roaming-outside/
(It still doesn't say anything about pregnant women though)
Cats can give pregnant women toxoplasmosis. Pregnant women can transmit toxoplasmosis, a rare parasitic disease, to their unborn babies, and a toxoplasmosis infection can lead to miscarriage or cause malformed babies. This has nothing to do with the EU.
Are pregnant cats even more dangerous? (Sorry, I know it's probably innapropriate but couldn't resist.)
As an aside, I used to let my cats go outside but stopped after two of them never came home. My neighborhood has become more urban than rural over the last 20 years. I love my cats and don't want to risk them anymore like when I grew up in the sticks...
TR
Dogs may take a bit longer than hours, but they'll form into packs and fend for themselves quite nicely if they need to.
It is actually true that domesticated cats are an invasive species that cause a lot of ecological damage when they're allowed to roam outdoors. It is also true that allowing cats to roam outdoors significantly shortens their life. This is only controversial to people who wrongly believe that the only way for their cats to be happy is if they're allowed outside.
Cats don't transmit toxoplasmosis directly to anyone at all. It can be in their litter box but the answer is for pregnant people to not change the litter, or protect themselves when doing so.
TR
On topic then.
In my country the start to give out numbers scaled to 100k inhabitants. To me it gives high values to villages while low values to cities even if the cities have much more infections. Thus, people in villages could get more scared of the numbers than city people who should perhaps be more careful due to raw higher occurrences.
What are the opinions of my esteemed fellow forumites on this?
#1 in cases. #2 in deaths. #44 in testing per million citizens. South Korea and us (famously at this point) had our first cases the same day. Our population is 6.5x larger. We have 75x their deaths. It's not like they are all living on farms. Seoul is one of the major cities in the world. The only metric we have going for us is deaths per million, because we're so spread out. Our cases per million are still going up significantly each day. Many think we have hit the plateau the last few days, but the numbers so far today (and I check them from multiple sources a half a dozen times at least) suggest we may still be looking at one of our worst days yet. By tomorrow night, it is very likely we pass Italy for most deaths. If not, Saturday for a 100% certainty.
TR
98? That youngster has nothing to brag about.
A "resilient" 104-year-old man who lived through the Spanish Flu, the Great Depression and World War II has now recovered from the coronavirus.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bill-lapschies-oregon-veteran-coronavirus-recover-104-years-birthday/
and a 103 year old recovering in Italy
https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2020-04-09/103-year-old-italian-says-courage-faith-helped-beat-virus
That being said here's a 17 yr old who died of corona but they changed their mind (to keep the count down?) and said it was something else
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/24/us/california-coronavirus-death-child.html
A 13 yr old in Britain
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/01/did-britains-youngest-coronavirus-victim-die-alone/
A couple babies have died from it as well:
a under one year old
https://www.the-sun.com/news/605000/baby-youngest-coronavirus-victim/
6 week old
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8177621/6-week-old-Connecticut-baby-youngest-coronavirus-fatality-anywhere.html
and a baby born prematurely after her mother contracted the disease and was put on a ventilator lived for one day.
https://q13fox.com/2020/04/06/louisianas-youngest-covid-19-victim-a-premature-baby-who-lived-for-one-day/
"Coronavirus: India makes face masks mandatory for more than 300m people, punishable by up to six months in prison"
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/coronavirus-india-face-masks-prison-police-who-delhi-mumbai-a9458516.html
The Indian argument here is that their urban slum-like conditions don't allow for any kind of social distancing.
And here is another example of the Law of Unintended Consequences:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/coronavirus-masks-racism-police-video-racial-profiling-walmart-video-a9458221.html
(Maybe this one should be in the politics thread.)
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/491950-Coronavirus-patients-testing-positive-again-after-recovery-report
There have been reports of this happening in China from near the beginning of the pandemic.
A potential problem with the "once you get it you're immune" hypothesis that we all were hoping for is that people who get it and get over it might not create enough antibodies to stave off reinfection in the future. So we're still learning about that.
Since people are seemingly getting reinfected that might be a very valid concern.
https://health.usnews.com/conditions/articles/if-i-get-coronavirus-can-i-get-it-again
And while it is a pain, it makes sense - before getting to "Phase 2", the number of infections needs to be significantly decreased (currently it is, but it is not enough yet), otherwise the lockdown would be useless.