Tag: SARS-CoV-2

Also known as COVID-19

How to make your own Surgical Mask

TimeHorse March 27, 2020 3 Comments

What follows is a series of TikTok videos my dear friend Lena Volkova demonstrated on her account. Unfortunately, I’ve yet to find a way to remove the cranky, white border around the videos to keep it in line with the esthetique with the site, its theme, and the official category of this post as Cosplay. Nonetheless, I feel this is important so f’d up CSS be damned! We need to stop SARS-CoV-2! So, without further à Deux, here is her A/B Reusable Mask Tutorial: A Mask with a Pocket for Filtration Media Such as a Surgical or N95 Mask.!

Pretreat the Fabric

This is part of a larger effort to help those out in need.

If you’re planning on helping out with making surgical face masks, you need to pretreat and disinfect your fabrics prior to sewing.

To pretreat fabrics:
    • Prepare a cold water bath to soak your fabric.
        ■ 100% cotton is preferable for masks.
    • You can add two tablespoons of salt for dye runoff.
        ■ This is optional.
    • Add one cup of distilled, white vinegar to your cold water bath.
        ■ Vinegar works both as a color stabilizer and disinfectant.
    • Add your fabric to the bath and let saturate thoroughly.
    • Set your timer and let it soak for thirty minutes.
    • Rinse with cold water and let air dry.

@lena.volkova
@lena.volkova

Sewing your own surgical masks. Part 1 — pretreating fabric. This is part of a larger effort to help out those in need. ##coronavirus ##helpers

♬ Hold On – Moguai,Cheat Codes

Of course, first you need to find some fabric you have lying around. Perhaps some old, cotton clothes or linen sheets you could sacrifice? Either way, this pretreatment step is important as it helps keep the color from bleeding while in use and of course disinfects.

Patterning

The pattern for this A/B Mask style mask and instructions can be found on craftpassion.com.

    • Start by folding your fabric—you need to cut two of each fabric (inner and outer layer).
        ■ This is easy if the fabric is folded onto itself.
    • Using your pattern, measure out an additional one inch from the sides.
    • And three eighths around the rest of the mask.
    • Cut your fabric—this is your outer layer.
    • The inner layer is a half-inch shorter on the side than the outer layer.
        ■ Use your outer layer as a template to measure.
    • Cut out your inner layer fabric.
        ■ Set it aside.

@lena.volkova
@lena.volkova

Part 2 — A/B reusable mask turtorial: patterning. This mask has a pocket for filtration media such as a surgical or N95 mask ##coronavirus ##helper

♬ You – Petit Biscuit

For those wondering, the Face Mask Pattern can be found here.

Assembly, Part 1

    • Separate your fabrics, but keep the layers together as a pair.
    • Finish the raw edge that is curved.
        ■ This will face the inside pocket and needs to be secured.
    • Any overlocking or zigzag stitch will do.
        ■ You don’t need a serger.
    • With the right side facing inward, pin together and sew along the curved edge.
        ■ Use a quarter-inch seam allowance.
    • Do this for both inner and outer layers.
    • Open your fabric, then flatten the finished edges onto the fabric and sew the finished edges onto the fabric.
    • Align the inner and outer layers.
    • Fold the side edge of the inner layer onto itself twice—you’re rolling in the raw edge.
        ■ Pin in place.

@lena.volkova
@lena.volkova

Part 3 — A/B reusable mask turtorial: assembly. This mask has a pocket for filtration media such as a surgical or N95 mask ##coronavirus ##helper

♬ Classical – Piano Classics: Masters of Relaxing Solo Piano Music

I’ll be honest, I keep thinking about investing in a sewing machine. I know at Nova Labs, I could borrow one of their machines, but I’m nervous about doing seamwork in a public space. Plus, I need to find some decent patterns to so—like an A/B Surgical Mask!

Assembly, Part 2

    • Sew the roll into place along the inward edge of the roll.
    • With the right sides of the fabric facing together, align the layers and sew the top and bottom edges together.
    • Clip the curved edge of the fabric where both layers meet.
        ■ It should be approximately a quarter-inch inward.
    • Turn the mask inside out.
    • Roll the raw top and bottom edges inward onto itself to cover the raw edge.
        ■ Pin in place.
    • Do the same for the side edges.
        ■ There should be approximately a half-inch of fabric remaining on both sides.
    • Sew into place along the inner edge.

@lena.volkova
@lena.volkova

Part 4 — A/B reusable mask turtorial: assembly 2. This mask has a pocket for filtration media such as a surgical or N95 mask ##coronavirus ##helper

♬ Classical – Classical Chill Out

Remember to leave those sewing margins! You’re almost done.

Finishing

    • Fold the side flap inward, under the inner layer pocket.
    • Sew in place—both sides.
    • Insert your filter medium—cloth, a surgical mask, or an N95 mask.
    • Make sure the nose wire aligns with the nose part of the mask.
    • If using elastic, take a sixteen-inch length of one sixteenth elastic cord.
        ■ There’s a tolerance of plus or minus one to two inches for sizing.
    • Feed it through the channels you made in the sides, and secure it with a double knot.
        ■ Hide the channels.
    • To wear: Hold the mask in one hand and slip the bottom elastic over your head, followed by the top.
    • Adjust accordingly to endure a proper fit.
    • To wash: hot water, like scrubs.
        ■ Can be autoclaved.
        ■ Remove media as appropriate.
        ■ Sanitize elastic as appropriate.

@lena.volkova
@lena.volkova

Part 5– Reusable A/B mask tutorial: finishing. Mask has a pouch for removable filters like surgical masks or N95 masks. ##coronavirus ##helpers

♬ Piano Piano – Piano Solo – Charlie Glass Piano Man

I never cease to be amazed as the skills and achievements of my friend Lena. I am so astonished I can call her my friend, but then she’s one of the nicest, funniest people you’re likely to meet.

Thank you Lena. Hopefully when SARS-CoV-2 abates, we can cosplay together again!

The Thing with Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human

TimeHorse March 25, 2020 1 Comment

Once again, I finished this book just in time, despite starting it right after The Copernicus Complex: Our Cosmic Significance in a Universe of Planets and Probabilities. Only this time, it’s because my commute went from an hour each way to five seconds each day to nothing because I’m on Weather and Safety Leave. Again, that’s a long story that, like yesterday, I’m punting for another day. Such is life with SARS-CoV-2, but in this respect I’m quite luck and still have my health. However, it does mean without that long commute, my reading time has become a fraction of what it was. But, I made it!

Noah Strycker spins a fascinating tale of the secret lives of birds. Clearly, the author loves class Aves and is an avid birder himself. His love of all modern dinosaurs shines through. Each chapter and section is set with a distinct theme and a story that focuses one one of our fine, feathered friends and how it relates to we mammals. So, without further à Deux, let’s dive in like a bunch if timid penguins!

Corvidae are smart! I’d never heard of any creature outside of the mammals passing the Mirror Test. The fact that some Magpies can utterly blew my mind. Heckle and Jeckle would have been proud! Damn, that bird family is cleaver! And the way Nutcrackers can remember where they cached food photographically is astounding! If we leave, I bet they’re taking over!

Hummingbirds are crazy violent. But Chickens take the cake, they are hierarchical. I mean, keeping track in your ranking up to thirty birds deep. Of course, it does break down with more than thirty and there’s still the triangle problem. Who knew chickens weren’t condorcet?

Now I want to see a Snowy Owl. I can’t believe a bounty of lemmings could cause a spike in populations that could bring the bird this far south. At least Washington State loves them, a lot more than they do the Spotted Owl, though that did inspire Hedwig. On the other hand, I want to see the Albatross but the Falkland Islands are so far away and then never serve them in my local theatre. If only I could get get around like a pigeon, especially a Homing Pigeon in case I get lost.

It was fascinating to hear that dummers can keep better time than Parrots. Which is to say, a Cockatoo can keep good time, but it isn’t good at noticing a change in tempo. It makes me wonder why they’re not as coordinated as Boirds or their prototype Starlings. Parrots still may have good hearing, but one thing’s for sure, Vultures have excellent eyesight. However, only Turkey Vultures can smell you from a meter away with its great, big nostrils, though not much more.

The main takeaway for me is how similar some bird behaviors are to humans. Bowerbirds males try to impress female birds to find a mate, and humans try to impress other humans in order to get a date. The birds build little shrines, complete with vanishing perspective, and we humans buy clothes, and cars, and houses, and do sports, or just become smart by reading lots of science books. And when you get the mate, being as faithful as a Fairy Wren could mean success. Then again, female Fairy Wrens who fool around do tend to live longer? 🤔

The Thing with Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human
The Thing with Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human

All in all, a very entertaining book that made me think. And books that make you think are indeed the best kind of science book. And speaking of the human condition, next up, A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived: The Human Story Retold Through Our Genes…

Hope to see you in person soon, my sapiosexual friends!

I Am Irate

Google ate me email

TimeHorse March 24, 2020 2 Comments

From about 2020-03-23T14:30:00Z (10:30 am, Monday) to about 2020-03-23T23:30:00Z (7:30 pm, Monday), Google was redirecting all my email and either bouncing it or deleting it.

I Am Irate
Too angry for words!

Let me repeat, google deleted or bounced my email for Nine Hours, as a part of the setup of my setup for a paid Google Apps account. The setup for these accounts are a bit weird. They require you to create a new google entity with your own company URL. Fortunately, I have multiple domains I own and maintain, including this one, TimeHorse.com.

I probably should have used my writing group domain, RestonWriters.org. After all, the whole reason I wanted to get a paid Google account is because Meetup was moving to Online-Only meetings, following the outbreak of SARS-COV-2, and I needed a tool that allowed for video conferencing.

Skype was a non-starter. For one thing, it’s great for person-to-person communications, but for group chats, it has this annoying habit of muting everyone except the current speaker and you have to wait until that speaker stops to get a word in edgewise. My understanding is WhatsApp has the same problem.

Meetup actually suggested using Google Hangouts or Zoom. I happen to like Zoom. I use it for my regular NPVIC Grassroots strategy meetings and for Toastmasters and it’s always worked great. Zoom does support up to a hundred participants, both free and Pro. The only problem is, each of those Zoom sessions are either limited to the free forty-minute block or are using an up-to-24-hour Zoom Pro Account. Since most of my Meetups are at least an hour, breaking meeting up into forty-minute chunks would be tedious. And, at $14.99 a month, the professional account is well out of my price range.

Just before the first week of Virtual meetings began, my writing colleagues and I, including Elizabeth Hayes, who runs The Hourlings, tested both free Zoom and Google Hangout. Despite being limited to ten people, we decided on Google Hangout and I mapped it to our official Virtual Meeting URL.

Ten people worked fine for Reston Writers and for the Saturday Morning Review. The Saturday Morning Review actually worked out quite well because Meetup, despite suggesting we move to a virtual platform, still won’t let you delete the venue from your event and mark it as virtual, which, when editing events can cause some confusion. But when the Library cancelled all our events, I just deleted them all from the Meetup Calendar, and recreated them with no Venue and just announced them as occurring in Cyberspace.

Stay with me folks, I’m getting to the email…

As Sunday approached, I new ten participants wouldn’t be enough. Google Hangout would be fine for Bewie Bevy of Brainy Books and Saturday Morning Review, and likely The Science Book Club, as they all usually have fewer than ten participants for each meeting. The Hourlings, on the other hand, often had twelve, and sometimes as many as sixteen!

I new Zoom was $14.99 a month, but I read that Google App accounts could up the number of participants to twenty-five. Unfortunately my 2TB Google Drive account didn’t qualify. I had to get a Google Apps account.

And that’s where my troubles began.

At first, I could only sign up for the $12 per month account, even though I’d read it could be had for $6. Since the setup has a fortnight trial period, I didn’t worry about the financial discrepancy. I set up the account with my business email address for TimeHorse, LLC. I associated it with with that email, it connected to my Gandi Registrar, and my account was ready to go. I created a Google Hangout and assigned it to the Virtual Meeting URL, hoping it would allow twenty-five. The plan was to use it with the Hourlings to verify that fact.

It failed! We still could only get ten people into the meetup despite it being a paid account.

Unfortunately, since Monday I’ve been on Weather and Safety Leave from work because my Telework agreement was revoked, but that’s a story for another day as this post is long as it is! However, it did allow me to speak to Google and they suggested I try Google Meet. Meet was included with all Google App paid accounts, and it would allow for up to a hundred people and could be as long as I needed. Also, I could downgrade to the $6 per month account and I would still be able to use it. I thus downgraded.

We tried it with Reston Writers Review and it worked wonderfully. We had up to twelve connections simultaneously! But I’m getting ahead of myself.

At around 10:30 am, that Monday, after chatting with Google, I was examining my Google Apps account more closely. It was telling me I had one last step I needed to complete: integrate me email with Gmail.

Stop
Stop, do not pass Go. You’re done!

That’s when my troubles began. You see, what this innocuous, turn-key step says it does is it says it sets up GMail for your company. What it actually does is obliterate all the MX Records (email routing information) of your DNS (Internet routing information) Zone File (routing configuration file) on Gandi and replace it with MX Records that point to Google. The setup wizard doesn’t actually tell you this and I’m totally oblivious.

At current writing, I have 188 forwarded email addresses set up on Gandi with their MX Servers. One of those is my business email, the one Google took over and is my Google Apps login. That’s the email google set up as the official email address used in GMail. Once the GMail setup goes through and I send an email from the GMail interface to my personal email address on the timehorse.com domain.

It never arrives. All day long, I watch my email and, strangely, nothing arrives after 10:30 in the morning. I refresh and refresh, and it’s still nothing. Where have all my emails gone?

It’s not until I’m setting up for Reston Writers that I decide to contact Google about this. I’m crazy-busy setting up the Google Meet, opening up the pieces we’d be reviewing on my computer, and, simultaneously, chatting with Google, trying to figure out why I’m not receiving any email.

Eventually, Google Tech Support starts talking about MX Records and a chill runs down my spine. As you probably gathered by now, I am well versed in DNS records and Zone File manipulation. I even have a Python script which updates my DNS A Record when the IP Address for this server changes.

With trepidation, I logged into my Gandi account and saw the damage. Google had modified my Zone file and added a bunch of strange new MX Records pointing to Google. They had nuked all my Gandi Email forward since they’d redirected all email traffic to google. As google only had one account registered on the domain, timehorse.com, namely my business email address, every other email address I possessed was either being deleted or bounced by google!

Fortunately, Gandi’s Email Forwarding page provides a warning when the Zone file doesn’t point to their email server, listing the correct MX Record settings to use Gandi as the mail hosting server. I quickly commented out the Google MX Records and pasted in the Gandi MX Records around 7:30 pm, in the middle of my Reston Writers meeting.

Needless to say, I was miffed that I could not give my full attention to my writers during our weekly writing gettogether. But it’s good I finally did figure out the disastrous actions committed by Google after only nine hours, and not a day or more.

I may never know what was contained in those nine hours of lost emails. I suppose there is one blessing, though. I get too much email already and still have dozens of unread messages I’m desperately trying to catch up on. One Covidapolis, novel-length email after another from every business under the sun. STFU companies, you’re all doing the same thing and I don’t like reading the same message again, and again, and again! You have a plan, that’s all I need to know!

Maybe Google was doing me a favor?

In the end, I was able to solve the problem because I got skills and I’m available for hire!

Let Kurzgesagt explain how to Flatten the Curve

TimeHorse March 20, 2020 No Comments

I love Kurzgesagt on YouTube, and as I was thinking of a way to explain what it means to flatten the curve, I noticed that the channel had just posted an excellent video on both SARS-CoV-2 and on the best way to keep the death toll down. Simply, shelter in place, and follow the instructions in my the post I just linked to.

Overall, I don’t think every Kurzgesagt video is up to the same scientific rigor that I try to maintain for my science posts, but that’s because, like this site as a whole, it’s not entirely a science channel so I can forgive it its minor excursions into Fiction. But this time, they did an excellent job explaining how the virus works, how to keep it at bay, and how to not overwhelm the healthcare system of your nation.
Simply put, it’s another in a long list of great videos.

Enjoy.

Kurzgesagt on the Corona Virus

SARS-CoV-2

TimeHorse March 11, 2020 19 Comments

This post is about the Pandemic Novel Coronavirus discovered in 2019, commonly known as COVID-19. Unless you’ve been vacationing on Mars, you’re almost certainly aware of this latest pathogen and heard enough frightening tales about it to keep make even Michael Crichton blush.

The trouble is, what are the facts and what is misinformation from all corners of everyday life. What I want to do is instead do some research, share my sources, and give my best interpretation on what best practices should be based on all the information that’s been made available to date.

First of all, we know the Coronavirus is related to SARS and the Common Cold. It is not a novel Flu bug. For one thing, it hits similar respiratory beats that those the Cold and SARS do. Indeed, the official name given to the Novel Coronavirus by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses is SARS-CoV-2. The virus is also rather spikey, just like the Cold and SARS—Corona comes from the Latin word Coronam, meaning crown. For another, it’s the first pathogen to, within months of its discovery, to be entirely, genetically sequenced.

The virus itself is driven by a Positive-sense, Single-Stranded RNA, +ssRNA. The one of the first to decode a complete RNA sequence were the Chinese on 11 February, 2020, from a December 2019 sample. In that sample, the proteins encoded in the RNA are listed, where each letter in the sequence corresponds to a different protein. Since the Chinese sample, as of this writing 146 sequences have been decoded, though not all of them have the Protein analysis.

The beauty though is that, as we build a digital model of how the virus works, we will be able to much better adapt and derive pathways to block its effects or transmission, maybe even helping to develop a vaccine. That said, a vaccine at least a Phase 1 Clinical Trial to prove that it’s safe and non-toxic and what the right dose is among healthy individuals. Because it’s a vaccine, it’s unlikely to require Phase 2 and later trials in individuals with the condition as the vaccine is meant to be prophylactic. However, if the Phase 1 trial is small, a second trial is likely with just a larger healthy cohort. This whole process, however, will take months. With the sequences, it will be faster, but it’s not instantaneous.

From what we know about SARS, we expect the virus to mainly be transmitted from sneezing and coughing. Thus, it’s good to try to maintain a physical distance from others of about 2 meters (around 6 feet). Normally, beyond that distance, the respiratory droplets will desiccate and render the virus inert. But, some surfaces provide platforms which allow it to survive for hours or even days. Thus, it’s necessary to make sure you keep surface clean and disinfected.

Wash Your Hands!
From the Virginia Department of Health, remember to wash your hands frequently to prevent the spread of viruses.

Try to wash for at least 20 seconds, get between your fingers and rub the soap into your palms. Then rinse thoroughly and turn off the tap with your towel. Also, please wash your hands frequently—and don’t forget to moisturize to prevent them from cracking from the increased cleanliness. If a sink and fresh water isn’t available, try a 60%-alcohol sanitizer.

Consider washing after you step away from your computer or video game. Generally, after you touch anything that may have been touched by others. Also, avoid using your hands when possible. For instance, use your hips and elbows to open doors without a handle. And be mindful of where your mobile phone has been been.

The safest thing you can do is be mindful of your behavior. The western habit of shaking hands may finally become as outdated as spitting. Namaste, y’all!