Have you caught yourself saying “the new normal” yet? I haven’t, but it takes constant vigilance. We are being conditioned by the best in the game, and the fear porn is relentless. Apparently yodelling can kill you.
From the Daily Mail:
The coronavirus pandemic has not deterred the Swiss from sending yodels echoing across their mountain valleys, but a concert attended by 600 people is believed to have made one canton a European virus hotspot.
At the late September yodelling event in the rural Schwyz canton, Switzerland, people in the audience were asked to maintain social distancing, but mask-wearing was not required.
‘We can’t do anything about what happened with this yodelling group. We found out nine days after the performances that several people from the group were infected,’ event organiser Beat Hegner told RTS public television.
An Australian study last month suggested that singing can spread coronavirus via airborne droplets and pose greater risks than talking. A choir singing indoors can saturate the air with infected particles which float.
The researchers, from the University of New South Wales, Sydney, added that if singers wear a face mask and venues practice social distancing and allow smaller audiences, then the risk from singing can be reduced.
All those scary particles. The XYZ has obtained exclusive footage of what they look like under the microscope:
I guess choirs better practice outdoors then. Or maybe not.
From the ABC:
If you think you’re safe from coronavirus just because you’re outdoors, think again.
While the wind and the large volume of air make the outdoors less risky than being indoors, circumstances matter.
Someone who is infectious can cough or sneeze, or just talk and, if you happen to inhale those respiratory droplets or they plop into your eye, you can get infected.
If you shake hands with an infected person and then touch your eyes, nose or mouth, you also run a chance of getting infected. You don’t have to be inhaling an infected person’s air for very long. What matters is the dose.
As an infectious disease doctor, I get a lot of questions from patients about COVID-19 risks. Here are some answers about the risks outdoors.
Air was already scary thanks to global cooling global warming climate change, now it just went up a notch. I couldn’t be bothered reading through the rest of the article, although I am impressed the ABC managed to fit coronavirus hysteria and Trump Derangement Syndrome into the same headline.
Our rulers are going to extraordinary measures to keep us safe from air.
From DHHS:
Viral fragments of coronavirus have been detected in wastewater taken from the sewer network at Apollo Bay.
While the preliminary result may not mean there are currently active cases of COVID-19 in the Apollo Bay community, the Department of Health and Human Services has stepped up testing in the area with local health services.
People from Apollo Bay and nearby communities who have even the mildest of symptoms are urged to get tested and isolate as they await their result.
They are literally checking our poo.
It’s all so tiresome. As said, the fear porn is relentless. Every other day there is a new headline warning of a scary new symptom, side effect, or way we can catch the Chinese Diversity Flu. It’s all nonsense, and you only need to compare two graphs to know it:
The number of new daily cases has escalated regularly, and is now at 400,000, apparently. Yet the daily death rate (of people who have died with coronavirus reported to be in their system, note the wording) has averaged 5000ish for months.
Actually here’s another graph, just for kicks.
Coronavirus has barely made a dint. There is possibly a justification for shutting down the entire world for a virus that could kill hundreds of millions, but this is just silly.
Which brings us to our last hysterical headline.
Actually, I take it back, this last headline makes perfect sense.
It’s your XYZ.