COVID-19

[Flying Squid with Goggles]

Well, this is some really shitty news:

Originally Posted by The Washington Post

The two samples look almost identical genetically, said Trevor Bedford, a computational biologist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle who announced the results of the research on Twitter late Saturday night.

“This strongly suggests that there has been cryptic transmission in Washington State for the past 6 weeks,” Bedford wrote. “I believe we’re facing an already substantial outbreak in Washington State that was not detected until now due to narrow case definition requiring direct travel to China.”

This, coupled with the testing debacle at the CDC, is to me an indication this isn't going to burn out quickly like SARS in 2003 or MERS (and thank gawd it isn't MERS - that fucker has a terrifying case fatality rate.)


Case in point, went shopping on our usual grocery run last night here in the PNW, and Trader Joe's had a bunch of empty shelves, especially toilet paper. PCC (the local expensive co-op) does have toilet paper, so we know we're not in Mad Max territory yet!

Note - if anyone's following this story - this is a good resource if you haven't seen it yet.


Anyway, be careful out there.


ETA: Sorry, forgot to put in a link to the article