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  1. - Top - End - #1051
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    Default Re: The Corona Virus

    Quote Originally Posted by Grey_Wolf_c View Post
    I fail to see why I'd listen to it. I might as well ask Hawaiian how to pronounce Christmas. If Ancient Greek has any suggestions, though, I'll be happy to listen to it, though.

    Grey Wolf
    Depends on how ancient you want your Greek. Diphthongs are unstable. You go from eu- to ev- to possibly ef-. And of course you had alternative forms with a long e (which also has a tendency to turn into an i).

    However, I don't think Greek makes much sense for a couple of your examples; Euphrates at the very least is definitely a loanword, and Europa also most likely was. I mean, Europa is actually Latin, not Greek, but it could be a dialectal form (in Sparta, for example).
    Quote Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1955
    I thought Tom Bombadil dreadful — but worse still was the announcer's preliminary remarks that Goldberry was his daughter (!), and that Willowman was an ally of Mordor (!!).

  2. - Top - End - #1052
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    Default Re: The Corona Virus

    Quote Originally Posted by Grey_Wolf_c View Post
    Yep. More often than not, "the common cold" is an* euphemism for "sure, you are sick, but not so sick we are going to spend any resources figuring out what caused you to be sick. Take an aspirin, plenty of water, some comfort food, don't overexert, and only let me know about any of this if you get worse".

    Grey Wolf

    *My autocorrect tells me I should use "a" here, not "an". Am I about to discover you barbarians pronounce this "youphemism"?
    Yes, yes you are. Take it up with your-up.
    Last edited by Peelee; 2020-10-15 at 03:25 PM.
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  3. - Top - End - #1053
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    Default Re: The Corona Virus

    Quote Originally Posted by Grey_Wolf_c View Post
    Yes: the Johnson & Johnson vaccine trial has had to halt because of an illness in (one of) the test subjects. Which is good news, since that is why we test vaccines before mass-producing them, but bad news because it'll delay that particular trial until they positively determine if the illness was caused by the vaccine, or if it was acquired independently.



    Which is fine, that's why I acknowledged from the start I was wrong in how I pronounce it. Sure, I hate that English doesn't bother to re-spell words to match how they chose to pronounce them, but I know it is a thing English does. Besides, I'm sure that when spoken, my "euphemism" is close enough to "euphemism" that no-one will bat an eye. It's just that the actual rule of "when 'an' is used instead of 'a'" depends on knowing how to pronounce the damn words, it's not as simple as "words starts with a vowel".

    Grey Wolf
    I didn't know that Johnson & Johnson made vaccines. I thought that they only made cleaning supplies.
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  4. - Top - End - #1054

    Default Re: The Corona Virus

    Like most mega-corps, Johnson & Johnson is essentially a supermarket of various interests, including pharmaceuticals.

    edit: take a look at their wiki page. Right at the top they mention Tylenol, Neutrogena and contact lenses.
    Last edited by Rogar Demonblud; 2020-10-15 at 03:49 PM.

  5. - Top - End - #1055
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    Default Re: The Corona Virus

    Quote Originally Posted by Bartmanhomer View Post
    I didn't know that Johnson & Johnson made vaccines. I thought that they only made cleaning supplies.
    Human-grade soaps & other beauty products can have a significant overlap with pharmaceuticals. Anti-dandruff shampoo, for example, is effectively medicine for your scalp.



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    But really, the important lesson here is this: Rather than making assumptions that don't fit with the text and then complaining about the text being wrong, why not just choose different assumptions that DO fit with the text?
    Ceterum autem censeo Hilgya malefica est

  6. - Top - End - #1056
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    Default Re: The Corona Virus

    Quote Originally Posted by Rogar Demonblud View Post
    Like most mega-corps, Johnson & Johnson is essentially a supermarket of various interests, including pharmaceuticals.

    edit: take a look at their wiki page. Right at the top, they mention Tylenol, Neutrogena, and contact lenses.
    Quote Originally Posted by Grey_Wolf_c View Post
    Human-grade soaps & other beauty products can have a significant overlap with pharmaceuticals. Anti-dandruff shampoo, for example, is an effective medicine for your scalp.



    GW
    Wow. That's awesome. I'm glad that Johnson & Johnson are trying to create a vaccine against the coronavirus.
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  7. - Top - End - #1057
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    Default Re: The Corona Virus

    Quote Originally Posted by Grey_Wolf_c View Post
    Wrong, obviously. I hate the English language. Essentially, with an "eu" sound, you know, 'cause that's how it's spelt? Same I pronounce Europe and Euphrates and eustachian tube.
    At least in my dialect, all four of those words would take "a" and none of them would take "an". The "eu" in all of those words is pronounced pretty much the same, so if you are consistently pronouncing it differently that me, you aren't necessarily wrong, just speaking a different dialect.

    Quote Originally Posted by Grey_Wolf_c View Post
    If Ancient Greek has any suggestions, though, I'll be happy to listen to it, though.
    Technically of those only "euphemism" is actually using the Ancient Greek "eu-" prefix: Euphrates is a loanword from some Persian language, Europe is of unknown origin (we got it from Latin, they got it from Greek, the Greeks claimed to have gotten it from some Phoenician language), and eustacian tubes are named after the Italian doctor Bartolomeo Eustachio who discovered them.

  8. - Top - End - #1058
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    Default Re: The Corona Virus

    It's probably worth observing that the first sound in "you" isn't a vowel, but a semivowel, so it's normal that it doesn't use "an". It's a sound of the same category as the "w" in war.

    It's certainly not evident from the orthography alone.
    Quote Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1955
    I thought Tom Bombadil dreadful — but worse still was the announcer's preliminary remarks that Goldberry was his daughter (!), and that Willowman was an ally of Mordor (!!).

  9. - Top - End - #1059
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    Default Re: The Corona Virus

    Quote Originally Posted by Grey_Wolf_c View Post
    Which is fine, that's why I acknowledged from the start I was wrong in how I pronounce it. Sure, I hate that English doesn't bother to re-spell words to match how they chose to pronounce them, but I know it is a thing English does. Besides, I'm sure that when spoken, my "euphemism" is close enough to "youphemism" that no-one will bat an eye. It's just that the actual rule of "when 'an' is used instead of 'a'" depends on knowing how to pronounce the damn words, it's not as simple as "words starts with a vowel".

    Grey Wolf
    Bah. You know people would give us guff either way. Look at the uproar over removing the useless "u's" from words like color.

  10. - Top - End - #1060
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    Default Re: The Corona Virus

    Quote Originally Posted by Bartmanhomer View Post
    Any update on the vaccine yet?
    I heard on the radio this afternoon that the vaccine closest to being done in the US won't have safety data until mid-november. It might have been Johnson & Johnson, but I think it was Pfizer.

    Quote Originally Posted by Rynjin View Post
    Bah. You know people would give us guff either way. Look at the uproar over removing the useless "u's" from words like color.
    Truly Americans can do nothing right linguistically. We should have adopted German as the national language back in the 1790s. Although if we had we would probably have ended up mangling it to the point that Austrians and Swiss wouldn't want to talk to us.
    Quote Originally Posted by Wardog View Post
    Rockphed said it well.
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  11. - Top - End - #1061
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    Default Re: The Corona Virus

    Quote Originally Posted by Rockphed View Post
    Truly Americans can do nothing right linguistically. We should have adopted German as the national language back in the 1790s. Although if we had we would probably have ended up mangling it to the point that Austrians and Swiss wouldn't want to talk to us.
    *laughs in Pennsylvania Dutch*
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  12. - Top - End - #1062
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    Default Re: The Corona Virus

    Quote Originally Posted by Rockphed View Post
    I heard on the radio this afternoon that the vaccine closest to being done in the US won't have safety data until mid-november. It might have been Johnson & Johnson, but I think it was Pfizer.
    Pfizer, yes.

    (The news are characterising this as "a delay" but, leaving aside politics, this is remarkably fast progress for a vaccine)

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    Quote Originally Posted by The Giant View Post
    But really, the important lesson here is this: Rather than making assumptions that don't fit with the text and then complaining about the text being wrong, why not just choose different assumptions that DO fit with the text?
    Ceterum autem censeo Hilgya malefica est

  13. - Top - End - #1063
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    Default Re: The Corona Virus

    Quote Originally Posted by Rockphed View Post
    Truly Americans can do nothing right linguistically. We should have adopted German as the national language back in the 1790s. Although if we had we would probably have ended up mangling it to the point that Austrians and Swiss wouldn't want to talk to us.
    English is a Germanic language. Back when the Vikings were still raiding, English speakers could kinda understand and be understood by speakers of other, closely related Germanic languages. That means that during Viking raids, both sides could hurl insults at each other, and mostly be understood, though there might be some difficulty due to people's ridiculous accents. That all changed after 1066, when the Normans (Viking who'd settled in Northern France, with permission by the French crown, with an agreement that they'd pay taxes and defend the coast from other Vikings), who'd Christianized and bastardized the Germanic they spoke to the point where it was just another weird dialect of Northern French, invaded and took over England, and turning England's upper crust into speakers of their brand of weird French. Five hundred years later, when the English fancy folk finally fell out of love with French, and decided to start talking English again, that English had been so Latinized that it was nearly indecipherable to other Germanic speakers. English is still technically a Germanic language, though today about the only thing a German speaker is going to readily understand of English, will be the curse words, which have mostly retained their meaning and pronunciation.

  14. - Top - End - #1064
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    Default Re: The Corona Virus

    Quote Originally Posted by Rockphed View Post
    Truly Americans can do nothing right linguistically. We should have adopted German as the national language back in the 1790s. Although if we had we would probably have ended up mangling it to the point that Austrians and Swiss wouldn't want to talk to us.
    Eh, it's not like anyone can understand Swiss German anyway (even the standard German used there is a bit odd)... Apparently, however, there are some Amish in the US who speak it, or a sister language.

    If you like Dürrenmatt, there is a scene in a book written completely in standard German where his character switches from Bernese to High (=standard) German to pretend to be a foreigner in Bern.
    Last edited by Vinyadan; 2020-10-17 at 06:49 AM.
    Quote Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1955
    I thought Tom Bombadil dreadful — but worse still was the announcer's preliminary remarks that Goldberry was his daughter (!), and that Willowman was an ally of Mordor (!!).

  15. - Top - End - #1065
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    Default Re: The Corona Virus

    Quote Originally Posted by Rockphed View Post
    Truly Americans can do nothing right linguistically. We should have adopted German as the national language back in the 1790s. Although if we had we would probably have ended up mangling it to the point that Austrians and Swiss wouldn't want to talk to us.
    I half don't talk to Americans already!
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  16. - Top - End - #1066
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    Default Re: The Corona Virus

    Quote Originally Posted by Rockphed View Post
    Truly Americans can do nothing right linguistically. We should have adopted German as the national language back in the 1790s.
    Bad idea. That way the tagline for WW2 becomes "Whoever wins, we'll end up speaking German", and that just sounds too much like a comedy horror movie.
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  17. - Top - End - #1067
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    Default Re: The Corona Virus

    What does language get to do with COVID?
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  18. - Top - End - #1068

    Default Re: The Corona Virus

    Thread drift. Otherwise known as 'trying to keep our spirits up in trying times'.

  19. - Top - End - #1069
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    Default Re: The Corona Virus

    Quote Originally Posted by Tvtyrant View Post
    Exactly. The cold isn't even really a thing, it's a collection of similar symptoms more then a classification of viruses.

    https://www.cdc.gov/features/rhinoviruses/index.html
    Thanks for the handy source.

    I am honestly surprised that people are still uninformed enough to think that "the cold" is caused by a single virus. Early in the pandemic, when media outlets still felt the need to introduce people to the idea of COVID-19 virus itself, most of them would convey some variation of "This is a new (to humans) form of the coronavirus, a class of virus that includes several that have infected humans for centuries, generally causing a mild cold." I get that not everyone is interested in science for its own sake, or have the time to dig deep into wikipedia--or better yet, take the time like you to look up sources and share them. I also understand that not everyone has the time, energy, or inclination to constantly scrutinize every facet of their personal knowledge against all new information. Still, it's demoralizing to see that people who are invested enough in "common sense" facts such as "the cold is caused by the cold virus" to go around "correcting" other folks can be bombarded with conflicting information for weeks and never feel the need to do research to try to reconcile the inconsistency.



    Quote Originally Posted by Grey_Wolf_c View Post
    Pfizer, yes.

    (The news are characterising this as "a delay" but, leaving aside politics, this is remarkably fast progress for a vaccine)

    GW
    I am genuinely curious how much of this accelerated timeline comes from the government/regulatory end of things (either in terms of relaxing requirements or simply speeding up the bureaucratic response time) and how much comes from the companies themselves making this more of a priority. It probably comes at a cost, both financial and opportunity. You can probably increase your amount and efficiency of research labor by hiring more people (and possibly paying more on average to attract them) and expanding or upgrading your facilities. However, all this effort is most likely taking away from other, previously important projects. Even if--for example--Pfizer itself isn't primarily staffing its COVID efforts with people pulled off of its own internal projects, those new hires (particularly those on the more skilled end of the spectrum) were most likely previously working on other, most likely health-related, research.
    Last edited by Xyril; 2020-10-30 at 01:25 PM.

  20. - Top - End - #1070

    Default Re: The Corona Virus

    It's probably yes to all of the above, but it should be noted that one of the first principles of triage is that the more immediate problem is dealt with first. Which right now is the COVID-19 vaccine. So robbing Peter to pay Paul actually is the right move.

  21. - Top - End - #1071
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    Default Re: The Corona Virus

    Quote Originally Posted by Rogar Demonblud View Post
    It's probably yes to all of the above, but it should be noted that one of the first principles of triage is that the more immediate problem is dealt with first. Which right now is the COVID-19 vaccine. So robbing Peter to pay Paul actually is the right move.
    Oh, I agree completely. I just wanted to note that while it's certain noteworthy--and commendable--that we were able to drastically accelerate the timeline compared to typical vaccine development, it doesn't necessarily reflect any kind of scientific or systemic progress that would imply more permanent improvements in how we do this sort of work even after the crisis passes.

    If the vaccine were a building that would normally take five years to build, and we pull it off primarily due to a combination of regulatory changes and structural innovations, then when things went back to normal we might be building similar buildings in four years. However, if we pull it off because primarily because we were willing to temporarily divert all the resources from five or six identical building projects, then it doesn't imply any lasting progress--if anything, we are behind because we had reallocate resources inefficiently for the sake expediency. Similar projects will still take five years, and those particular five or six projects will have delayed a year's worth of progress. I would like to believe that the crisis has forced the legal and the logistical sides of things to find ways to gain efficiencies without drastically undermining safety, and that those innovations will result in lasting gains that partly offset what we have lost. However, that may be too optimistic of me.

  22. - Top - End - #1072
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    Default Re: The Corona Virus

    Random info I found mildly interesting https://www.worldometers.info/corona...untry/belgium/ have y'all looked at belgium case graph? If you ignored their death graph you would think they never had a first wave.

  23. - Top - End - #1073
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    Default Re: The Corona Virus

    Quote Originally Posted by Ibrinar View Post
    Random info I found mildly interesting https://www.worldometers.info/corona...untry/belgium/ have y'all looked at belgium case graph? If you ignored their death graph you would think they never had a first wave.
    Judging from their death rate, I'm pretty sure that's an artifact of low testing.
    COVID's bad, but it's not "30% death rate" bad.
    That's all I can think of, at any rate.

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  24. - Top - End - #1074
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    Default Re: The Corona Virus

    Of course it is just impressive how limited the tests must have been for one of the hardest hit countries to have a barely noticeable first wave in their case stats.

  25. - Top - End - #1075
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    Default Re: The Corona Virus

    Quote Originally Posted by Strigon View Post
    Judging from their death rate, I'm pretty sure that's an artifact of low testing.
    COVID's bad, but it's not "30% death rate" bad.
    Low testing and a meticulous count of the dead, in this case.

    Many places only counted a death as a corona death if the person had tested positive, maybe they'd make an exception if you died in a hospital (as opposed to say a nursing home) and the doctors had diagnosed you. It was found that in most western countries this meant that if you compared the official numbers to the excess mortality, the number of extra people that died compared to previous years, they had missed about half of all corona deaths. New York had done exceptionally well, their official death count accounted for approximately 95% of their excess mortality. Belgium counted so rigorously that their official death count is actually higher than their excess mortality. I've added up the numbers myself on another forum. Compared to the last three years they have roughly (gotta keep some room for error) between 6000 and 10,000 extra deaths this entire year, with over 11,000 official corona deaths. (This does not actually mean they need to have counted wrong, there could be less people dying from the flu and general old age for instance because corona got them first. Also the data for excess mortality were missing the last three weeks or so, while there have been significant numbers of corona deaths in that time.)


    On top of that there seems to be an effect of hospitals better knowing how to care for their patients now. The risk of dying if infected really seems to have gone down a bit. But yeah, it's mostly a testing artifact.
    Last edited by Lvl 2 Expert; 2020-10-31 at 02:58 AM.

  26. - Top - End - #1076
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    Default Re: The Corona Virus

    Third possibility is catching some people that would have died from something else in the time interval otherwise. But looking it up https://epistat.wiv-isp.be/momo/ (second graph) subtracting corona they are still in the prediction range but at the lower end sometimes.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Xyril View Post
    If the vaccine were a building that would normally take five years to build...
    The 'accelerated pace' basically skips the long-term efficacy studies to prioritize immediate need.

    Tetanus, for example, isn't as effective as it was at 7-10 years. Diptheria can do a booster every 10.

    For C19, though, they don't care if it'll need a booster at a mere 3 years. They need it NOW. So all they care about is: will it protect people for a few months, which would hopefully be long enough to stop transmission. Okay, sure, it may not provide the same level of protection in 10 months, but if C19 has been driven into nothing in that timeframe, who cares?
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  28. - Top - End - #1078
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    Default Re: The Corona Virus

    They will probably do those long-term studies later on, to see how long it provides protection. And with a large population vaccinated, they can even more easily check, right?

    And some vaccines don't offer long time protection. Yellow fever lasts only 3 years and flu is a yearly vaccination.
    I do think that if this virus stays and we have to switch to yearly vaccination, they will try to merge the fly and COVID vaccines in the long run, like they did with other vaccines.
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  29. - Top - End - #1079
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    Quote Originally Posted by farothel View Post
    They will probably do those long-term studies later on, to see how long it provides protection. And with a large population vaccinated, they can even more easily check, right?
    They're already running those. The initial recipients are inherently part of the long-term study.

    The more people vaccinated does mean a larger pool size to pull from for future blood draws to check for the antiviral markers.

    Sample size 1000 versus sample size 10000. You get more data points to 'dial in' the length of effective protection.

    flu is a yearly vaccination.
    Mostly because the strains of flu change from year to year, and they mutate pretty regularly. No flu vaccine is identical to the one from the previous year, and some virii change enough that the vaccine needs a 'tweak'.

    And, yeah, H1N1 is a good example of adding...
    Last edited by sihnfahl; 2020-11-02 at 12:57 PM.
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    Default Re: The Corona Virus

    On top of that there seems to be an effect of hospitals better knowing how to care for their patients now. The risk of dying if infected really seems to have gone down a bit. But yeah, it's mostly a testing artifact.
    That's something I have also heard. Let's see how it works out during this new phase. I have even read of countries calling asymptomatic doctors back into hospitals. I am not very clear of how they will handle the danger of contagion for other workers.

    Not strictly relevant, but the plural of virus cannot be virii, because it has no plural in classical Latin (scientific Latin has a plural "vira", because virus is an irregular neuter word). Viruses would be the English norm.
    Quote Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1955
    I thought Tom Bombadil dreadful — but worse still was the announcer's preliminary remarks that Goldberry was his daughter (!), and that Willowman was an ally of Mordor (!!).

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