[TxCaNv]

Originally Posted by Merry Lee Gather

They put plexiglass barriers up at game tables and between slot machines at the Casinos for the reopening. Saw it on Fox 5 News. The world is plexiglass now. They have the plexiglass barriers at all the grocery stores and other stores like Lowe's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMtLdE5Zq-8

[KB71]

A glimmer of hope maybe?????????? Or just more empty rhetoric? We'll find out later today....

https://lasvegassun.com/news/2020/ma...iness-reopeni/

[KB71]

Originally Posted by Merry Lee Gather

They put plexiglass barriers up at game tables and between slot machines at the Casinos for the reopening. Saw it on Fox 5 News. The world is plexiglass now. They have the plexiglass barriers at all the grocery stores and other stores like Lowe's.

Time to start increasing my stock portfolio with plastics companies.

[mojavedxer]

Dont get your hopes up yet on making a fortune in plexi glass. That video just shows a proposal of one casinos plan in Mississippi. If that was the route everyone was going to take. There would be pallets of plexi sittings in the casino engineers shops constructing these barriers as I type this post.

[RationalExpectations]

Originally Posted by OmegaSupreme

I think it's more of a case of dense humans spreading the virus.

LOL! I see what you did there.

[equid0x]

Originally Posted by RationalExpectations

That's a fair point. In the extreme, we had Typhoid Mary (Mary Mallon). I never really bothered to read her story until the current pandemic hit. For others reading this post who haven't done so, you might find the Wikipedia article on her to be fascinating. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Mallon:

Yes. We also didn't have any effective medical treatments. While I don't want to totally disregard prior pandemics, I feel like referencing the medical actions of 100 years ago is a little... outdated. Medical care and our understanding of biological sciences has come a long, long way since then.

Originally Posted by RationalExpectations

That begs the question, what would the data look like to warrant compulsory mask wearing (assuming we somehow grant the power to the government to force such a thing)?

I would expect that we would be exceeding the numbers of prior flu seasons before any actions beyond recommendations are taken at all. Once we were approaching or exceeding flu numbers, I would expect a slow phase-in of protective measures. I would expect those measures to target vulnerable populations and the ill.

Originally Posted by RationalExpectations

Interesting. My view is a private establishment can impose a dress code.

Medical equipment is not clothing.

Originally Posted by RationalExpectations

I agree with the bold. I think it goes further: there is evidence that wearing a mask while infected & asymptotic is effective in preventing infection of others.

Given we agree on the bold in your statement, and maybe you'd concede my extension to infected & asymptotic people, what then is permissible to protect others? I think elsewhere you've said that if you were sick, you would stay home. Do you mean symptomatic? Do you include infected yet asymptomatic?

Symptomatic parties should be wearing masks. Parties who believe that they may be vulnerable should be wearing masks. There is no way to ascertain if someone is an asymptomatic carrier that doesn't involve major invasion of privacy. We don't require everyone to wear masks to prevent the spread of the flu, even though they can also be asymptomatic and infectious for days prior to becoming ill.

Originally Posted by RationalExpectations

Let me pose a hypothetical. Let's say The Powers That Be had engaged in sophisticated and accurate contact tracing. Let's say they call you & tell you that you inadvertently came into close contact with a known Covid-19 sick person, and they request of you, politely and nicely, that you self-quarantine for 2 weeks.

What would you do?

I would quarantine if I tested positive. I would expect as part of contact tracing that affected parties would also be tested. There is nothing sophisticated and accurate about the Covid-19 tests, though. Not sure if you've been reading about it, but 50% of a randomized test in Iceland tested positive for Covid-19, while a Papaya and a goat tested positive in Venezuela. What to make of that? Well, either the tests are incredibly inaccurate, or goats and papayas can get Covid-19. Either everyone has already had Covid-19, or the tests are total garbage.

This actually exemplifies the need for double-blind, controlled studies for stuff like this. These tests have been rushed to market without proper testing, and don't appear to be accurate.

The real issue I have with this whole thing, though, is that there are so many red flags surrounding what is going on. All the misinformation, backpedaling, political meddling (since when have politics been a part of medicine), exaggerated models, exaggerated numbers, classifying and re-classifying of deaths, fake news pieces with videos from other countries, fake nurses, empty hospitals, unused field hospitals, dancing nurses and doctors, the constant beating on the drum by the media.

I have to ask, why all the misdirection surrounding this thing if it was really as bad as the politicians and media are making it out to be? If it was actually that bad there would be no need to be faking any of this. This thing has false-flag operation written all over it.

Now, don't get me wrong, I believe the virus is real. I believe that our response to it has been cooked up based on false numbers and a fake backstory. Something really doesn't add up about all of this.

[equid0x]

Originally Posted by RationalExpectations

Makes sense. I've been thinking about that as well.

Among the cleanest places on the planet are high-end semiconductor fabrication plants, called "fabs" or sometimes called "foundries." The place inside where all the magic happens is called "The Clean Room."

A fab clean room is where they grow the 8+ billion transistors on a sliver of silicon about the size of your thumbnail that ultimately becomes a processor inside a computer. Something as large as a virus could destroy a batch; indeed, an errant cosmic ray passing through the building at the wrong time during manufacture could be the difference between a processor working and not working. Actually, the manufacturing process grows the billions of features on a circular wafer of silicon about the size of a dinner plate (300 mm). Later, they test every semiconductor feature; they cut the wafer into its individual "die" which are tested to see if they work.

A key economic metric is yield - how many of die on the wafer work, and how many are scrapped because they don't. Cleanliness is frequently the difference. About once per decade or so, every single die on the wafer pass a test - that is, all of them work & go on to become microprocessors. It's called a perfect wafer, and it is rare. The engineers & scientists in the fab typically have absolutely no idea what went right to create a perfect wafer. It is only >< that far away from magic.

My point is the air handling & purification technology exists to make large casinos really, really, really clean. They are not going to be "semiconductor fab" level clean, but we can certainly make them about a billion times cleaner than they currently are.

To do so wouldn't even require breaking a sweat. It isn't new science. It is off-the-shelf components.

*****

I recall about a decade ago being recruited to join the Board of Directors of yet another pre-revenue startup back when I lived in Silicon Valley. They were attacking the cost of HVAC in office environments (in contrast to warehouse/industrial). One of the gating items was the noise generated by HVAC in the typical office. It has long been known you could make the office-based commercial HVAC more efficient by spinning up the speed of the blowers quite a bit. That is, with very fast air handling, you could make the environment comfortable to office workers while using less energy. The reason that technique wasn't employed was that fast air handling was quite noisy (air turbulence) which is inconsistent with the typical office environment - either a sea of cubicles or stuffy offices of ambulance chasers. This startup thought it could address this by using sophisticated noise cancellation techniques that are now common in noise cancelling headphones - but enlarged to the entire office building. Think microphones and noise generators inside duct work and at air supply grills, etc, controlled by processors that were add-ons to the existing HVAC systems. Their pitch was the improvements would pay for themselves within 18 months. (I didn't join the board.)


Think of a major casino. Imagine a system of extremely high-volume air handlers, air scrubbers, air sanitizers, purifiers, humidifiers, etc - all designed so that each exhaled breath of a human being at a slot machine or table game goes straight down to a system of floor-based air returns, with extraordinarily clean, purified, sanitized air showering down from the ceiling - all with minimal sound pollution.

It could be done. It isn't rocket science. It does not depend on invention of new technology.

They can probably add UV disinfection to the air handlers if they don't already have it. They may have it already, given that there have been several problems with Legionella on the strip.

[equid0x]

Originally Posted by Merry Lee Gather

They put plexiglass barriers up at game tables and between slot machines at the Casinos for the reopening. Saw it on Fox 5 News. The world is plexiglass now. They have the plexiglass barriers at all the grocery stores and other stores like Lowe's.

Great. It will be just like living in a giant ghetto!

[equid0x]

Originally Posted by mojavedxer

Dont get your hopes up yet on making a fortune in plexi glass. That video just shows a proposal of one casinos plan in Mississippi. If that was the route everyone was going to take. There would be pallets of plexi sittings in the casino engineers shops constructing these barriers as I type this post.

If everyone is going to have to live like the "boy in the bubble" then why bother. May as well shut everything down and leave it shut.

[Merrily Gather]

https://vegas.eater.com/2020/5/6/212...virus-pandemic

What restaurants have to do to reopen. Seems like a lot. They recommend no groups larger than 5 sat together when we can congregate in groups of 9 or less. They also recommend everyone make reservations prior to arriving instead of standing around with others together waiting.

Bars and buffets inside restaurants will remain closed. Not sure what this does for happy hours and Indian buffets across town. No spas, happy hours, Indian buffets or hair dressers and Mani/Pedis allowed yet. At least we can go out to eat and go shopping I guess. Sigh.

Also today at 3pm the Governor is going to reveal the new reopening date. It will be prior to May 15th because of the steady decline here. Last I heard Phase I could begin as early as May 12th. I guess we'll see today.