wavepruner

I can verify that driving for Uber can be very profitable if you find the right niche and only work during busy hours. My city has a huge restaurant & bar scene and when you hit the right times $20-30 profit is not very difficult. That's after maintenance, fuel, and depreciation costs. You can make even more if you are an entertaining driver and tell great stories (tips!!).

Restaurant delivery driving is a less than minimum wage endeavor in my city the last time I tried it. A lot of that has to do with growing pains: the restaurants don't have the order ready in time, and you usually have to drive across the city to do a pickup because volume is low. Regular Uber was also like this in the early days until volume picked up.

Of course, with COVID, both Uber and Uber Eats is barely worth doing. I hear grocery delivery is where it's at now.

Twitter's translation of one of the tweets in the thread:

"Considering the complexity inherent in our logistics activities and the fine of one million euros per infraction imposed by the court, the risk of contravening the decision was too high."

This seems to be a valid reason for suspending operations, although no where in the tweet-thread explains how frequent the fines would be. If they can't comply with the order fast enough, shutting down operations in order to have time to comply without getting fined seems reasonable.

During the Great Recession my industry was hit particularly hard (environmental engineering, pollution remediation). I remained on unemployment for the full 2 years while pursuing about 5 real job opportunities per year. 80% of the time employers told me they were very impressed, but decided not to hire, or promote internally, because they didn't want to be on the hook for unemployment if work dried up again.

This is an anecdote, but if unemployment didn't exist I would have had a decent paying job within 4 months of being laid off. IMO this is preferable to being trapped in an unemployment system with terrible incentives.

I ultimately changed industries after realizing that cleaning up pollution is the last thing people will pay for during economic downturns.

Terrible things happen to people all the time that are difficult to predict. Yet the legal system holds them accountable for the contracts they are involved in.

This needs to be equally true with large corporations, otherwise contracts lose meaning.

Looks like they are selling just the test for $249: https://rootmd.com/covid-19

I doubt insurance companies would cover something like this. Not a whole lot the company can do about that.

People who do not work in healthcare are perfectly capable of learning how to doff properly. Qualifications and training in ancillary issues does not matter. Training in mask donning/doffing is what matters, and anyone can be trained in this.

Most people have someone in their life they can ask to spot them as they practice removing their mask.

Also, wouldn't washing/disinfecting your hands after improper doffing prevent self-contamination?

"The safety of thimerosal is entirely possible to evaluate. It was in a bunch of childhood vaccines; it now is not. Has there been any demonstrable difference?"

If you don't believe that proper clinical trials are important to evaluate safety then there's not much more I can say. Epidemiological studies are rife with problems and the data can be manipulated to claim almost anything you want.

"Not necessarily. Could just not be worth the fight with the anti-vaxxers spreading bullshit about it. See also: Subway ditching azodicarbonamide because some blogger started a scaremongering movement around it."

Good point, but mercury is one of the most toxic substances known to man, does not break down, and is scientifically proven to bio-accumulate in mammalian tissues and never leave. It was also injected directly into the body, bypassing all the normal biological defenses a compound must go through before entering tissues. Furthermore, people can chose to not eat Subway without consequence. If vaccines had thimerosal in them again, it would be unavoidable without major life changes and being forcibly removed from large swaths of civil society. A consequence so severe necessitates a more proof than just saying you think mercury is safe in small doses with zero supporting concrete evidence.

Thimerosal was removed around 2001, well before the anti-vaxxer movement had enough influence to matter.

Your feelings and weak suppositions about thimerosal in vaccines are not science, and rather just indicate that you want to believe what you want to believe without presenting any concrete evidence.

They could just as easily say, "Data reviewed did not demonstrate convincing evidence of safety from doses of thimerosal used in vaccines."

Placebo-controlled, double-blind clinical trials have never been completed to evaluate the safety of thimerosal. Partly because it would be unethical to inject a known toxin into people to determine it's safety.

If these trials had been done, and health authorities were convinced it was safe, they would allow thimerosal in vaccines because it is a huge cost saver. But instead, through the actions they took, they made it clear it is not worth the risk.

As an environmental engineer I've witnessed this tactic over and over. Authorities claim there is no evidence of danger, but remove the toxin anyways, because they know it's danger is plausible, and the funding and time isn't there to prove it one way or the other. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

It's not like they are going to say, "we think we may have poisoned people, so we're removing this toxin." That's a great way to destroy your livelihood, reputation, and invite prosecution.

"...to a significant portion of the population."

Including health experts:

"...depending on the vaccine formulations used and the weight of the infant, some infants could have been exposed to cumulative levels of mercury during the first six months of life that exceeded EPA recommended guidelines for safe intake of methylmercury. As a precautionary measure, the Public Health Service (including FDA, National Institutes of Health [NIH], Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] and Health Resources and Services Administration [HRSA]) and the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a Joint Statement, urging vaccine manufacturers to reduce or eliminate thimerosal in vaccines as soon as possible. The U.S. Public Health Service agencies have collaborated with various investigators to initiate further studies to better understand any possible health effects from exposure to thimerosal in vaccines."

https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/vaccines/thimer...

To this day thimerosal is not included in childhood vaccines, except for some flu shot formulations.

"Key findings: For the 62 COVID-19 patients, 46.8% (29 of 62) were male and 53.2% (33 of 62) were female, the mean age was 44.7 (15.3) years. No difference in the age and sex distribution between the control group and the HCQ group. But for TTCR, the body temperature recovery time and the cough remission time were significantly shortened in the HCQ treatment group. Besides, a larger proportion of patients with improved pneumonia in the HCQ treatment group (80.6%, 25 of 32) compared with the control group (54.8%, 17 of 32). Notably, all 4 patients progressed to severe illness that occurred in the control group. However, there were 2 patients with mild adverse reactions in the HCQ treatment group. Significance: Among patients with COVID-19, the use of HCQ could significantly shorten TTCR and promote the absorption of pneumonia."

Yes, the liposomal form facilitates better absorption. They are structurally identical to vesicles used in cells for transporting materials. They can merge with your intestinal cells and release their contents, bypassing the usual limited transport mechanism that ascorbic acid uses.

Sci-Hub link: https://sci-hub.tw/10.1001/jama.2019.11825

See Figure 3 on page 1268.

As an anecdote, I've been experiencing symptoms in-line with COVID-19, mostly sore throat and intense fatigue. I've been using liposomal Vitamin C at 30-50g per day with great improvement of symptoms. I generally dose every 3 waking hours. If I wait too long between doses I can feel the fatigue come back, which then reduces shortly after taking another dose.

Here's a source that supports OP's claims: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3373043

I studied drinking water treatment in school and worked on a treatment plant design in Ecuador, so I do not have professional experience inside the current modern industry. But as far as I know slow-sand filtration and it's variants are still commonly used. Most of the improvements come from additional processes.

Improvements on slow-sand filtration are from additional pre-treatment methods, disinfection, more advanced filtration media like activated charcoal, and additional stages of filtration using a variety of media. Some high tech treatment plants are using biological membranes for wastewater-to-drinking-water treatment, but that's quite rare as far as I know.

Here's a decent primer of the commonly used processes: https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/drinking/public/water_treat...

The virus particles would be filtered out at the top layer of the sand filter, where a layer of microbes grow. This layer is referred to as the schmutzdecke. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schmutzdecke

Most of the filtering action happens in that layer. Viruses have no problem getting past sand particles.

I'm an environmental engineer with some experience in drinking water treatment.

I doubt it's in the drinking water. One of the oldest drinking water treatment methods would remove the virus: slow-sand filtration. Most places in China would at least use this, and South Korea is likely using more advanced technology.

Thanks for this. As a chronically ill patient I've spent years struggling to understand why doctors get so uncomfortable and sometimes hostile when I pursue experimental treatments. Knowing that you go through the devastation of watching people do reckless and dangerous things helps me understand.

I'm just trying to find a way to stay alive. I don't understand why I get so much hate for that. I can't take care of the oppression other minorities face. I can't even take care of myself.

I should have clarified in my original post that I'm referring to men with disabilities that are not immediately apparent. I imagine visibly disabled men are not treated as if they are awash with privilege.

There are power structures being built to counteract the older power structures of predominately white male society. These power structures aim to exclude white men in an attempt to make up for historical discrepancy. Unfortunately, disability is often not taken into account, and so we now have power structures that discriminate against white men whether they are disabled or not. Empowering a healthy, able-bodied woman/black-person/whatever at the expense of a disabled person of any background is not okay, but it is done all the time. I've personally experienced this a lot in the past few years. It never happened pre-2016.

If you don't agree that there are power structures discriminating against white men, then we would have to have a much longer discussion for me to get my point across.

"the status quo is still in 2020 that a baby born in America white and male is among the luckiest babies in history."

Millions of these "luckiest" babies are suffering from crippling illnesses, yet they are treated like they are awash with privilege solely because they are white and male. This is racism and sexism. Disabled white men are not privileged.

There's no point in delaying the inevitable. The Chinese ruling party / dictatorship has been very clear: they will not respect the rights of independent nations like Taiwan and Tibet. Why would they respect a space-treaty, or even sign one?

The only way to prevent the CCP from taking whatever they want is with military a force capable of defending our interests. Fortunately, our relationship with China is good enough that we will only need it as a deterrent.

Agreed, although I do believe there is an objective reality, but that it is impossible for any one consciousness to know it. So for practical human purposes it does not exist.

Furthermore, it indicates that we do not need to paint vaccine hesitant people as harbingers of societal collapse. That belief has been used to justify hateful rhetoric that is divisive, unproductive, and cruel to those who believe they were injured by vaccines.

Sci-Hub helped me identify the appropriate life-saving drug for my disabling illness. I could barely sit up and now I'm walking around. It's going through FDA approval very slowly, so I just buy it from a manufacturer from China.

I have zero confidence that existing political structures can solve this problem. So much so that I view any political attempts at addressing climate change as a net increase in carbon emissions (because it is a waste of energy).

Even if a carbon tax was implemented in some countries, emissions would just move to countries with no tax. The only way to enforce it on a world-wide scale is war. War would emit so much carbon that it would defeat the purpose of enforcing carbon taxes.

Michael Moore films and edits his documentaries in a similar fashion.

I have seen this happen as a chronically ill patient for the past 30 years. There is a wave of poorly understood chronic illness and doctors are powerless to treat it. It must be exhausting to tell so many people that there is nothing they can do. I say this with 100% sincerity. It must be a nightmare to work so hard without the reward and satisfaction of significantly improving people's lives.

remote work

travel less

focus on developing strong local relationships

Great point. Thank you!