[ExI] extropy-chat Digest, Vol 204, Issue 4

[spike at rainier66.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of
Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat
Sent: Wednesday, September 2, 2020 9:28 PM
To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
Cc: Stuart LaForge <avant at sollegro.com>
Subject: Re: [ExI] extropy-chat Digest, Vol 204, Issue 4


Quoting Spike:


> The scary part: if getting out in the sun helps protect from covid, 
> nearly everything we have done to combat covid was wrong.  Not just 
> wrong, it was pi radians wrong.

>...What?!? You question the wisdom of hiding huddled in our caves to
protect ourselves from a mutated bat-virus? ;-)

>...But yes, Spike, I agree that sunlight played in a role in protecting
many of the bikers. The UV-radiation in direct sunlight would destroy most
viruses because it mucks up their genomes which is much of what the payload
of a virion is. Also considering they were bikers alcohol might have played
some small role also.  Stuart LaForge
_______________________________________________


{Please you read nothing else in this breezy commentary, do go to the last
paragraph.  The important stuff is down there, thanks.  sj}

Sure Stuart but you run the risk of agreeing with something that could get
us kicked over to the ExI-politics group.  I always heard it was a specific
brand of bleach rather than alcohol, but in any case... that alcohol
business very well might have played a role, and they do have plenty of that
flowing at Sturgis, plenty.  Hard to say however, for the Sturgis crowd is
just as likely to imbibe in similar quantities at home as well as on a bike
trip.  I dunno.

Regarding UV wrecking the virus genome, I am thinking about capillaries
beneath the skin being irradiated by some frequency band from the sun as a
possibility but a secondary one.  We have heard that a common feature of
covid fatalities had vitamin D deficiency or depletion.  This was one of the
early observations which led people to scramble for the vitamin tablets way
back in March (the local pharmacy sold out of them) however... we know that
eating vitamin D pills may or may not help all that much.  It doesn't
necessarily absorb from the gut in the right chemical.  The pills are better
than nothing.  But D production in the skin from sunlight is way better.

OK then.  We know that about half of the covid fatalities are from nursing
home patients.  No mystery, they are old and sick.  There is that of course,
but what else?  They are tightly packed.  Got that too.  Anything else?  JA!


They seldom go outdoors.  

That is why nursing home patients get that ghostly pale skin: it never sees
sun.  So... of course many of the covid fatalities have vitamin D depletion:
they are living in skin which once saw sun, but now does not.  Many of those
beleaguered patients do not even have the option of going outdoors because
they are in lockdown.

Think about it Stuart: elderly patients, even those who know the door code
and can go outside, often do not, for good reason: ah, nice warm sunshine,
fall asleep in the wheelchair as old people are known to do, lobster sunburn
in under an hour from exposure of skin unaccustomed to such abuse, many do
not repeat that error.

Perhaps if the nursing home staff took the patients out every day and gave
them half an hour of sunshine, no more, no less, they would get sufficient
vitamin D.

One way or another, here's the important observation: had Sturgis been a
superspreader event, we damn sure would have heard about it.  If it had been
a normal spreader, with numbers similar to their stay-at-home non-rallying
neighbors, then we would be seeing about one fatality per day.  Ja?  So...
what if it is a sub-spreader?  If the rally crowd gets less covid than the
stay-at-home neighbors, would we hear about it?  What if the covid fatality
rate in the bikers is waaaaaaayyyy the hell lower than the homers, perhaps
by an order of magnitude, would we hear about it?  How?  Do the medics know
about this?  How?

spike