Vent some nameless dread? Don't mind if I do! My wife and I are expecting our first baby on April 30. Medically uncomplicated pregnancy so far ("geriatric," but who isn't?). I'm extremely worried (cf. Italy) that there will be no non-COVID healthcare system to see us through labor and delivery. It seems like large institutions aren't really acknowledging that things will not be better by then, so I don't think we could get any reasonable guidance on this from our doctor, hospital, or insurance company. (For example, my university has us teaching online "until April 5," but it is incredibly obvious that we won't be back to teaching in-person classes after that.) Anyway, I suppose when the time comes we'll just do the best we can, but it sure would be horrifying to have to do a home birth when that isn't at all what we want. Ugh!
2: I am working from home for 30 days. I assume it will be longer.
AcademicLurker, Moby:
Re: "herd immunity" in the UK (from last thread), I really doubt that they've thought this thru. I watched the chief science advisor on the BBC talking about it, and it was clear he was just throwing up a lot of bafflegab to avoid actually answering questions. Instead, I suggest that what they really mean is "we're gonna do jack-all, and just hope we don't get plastered for it; anyway, we've got a five-year mandate ... plennnty of time to gin up some good press before the next election".
I really do think that that's the sum total of their thinking. They just DGAF about the people who die or be crippled.
Would someone like to reassure me about these numbers: "There have been 91 deaths, and 300 people are in critical condition, half of them under 50." I was really hanging my hat on the idea that people under 50--though I'm older than that--were quite unlikely to get very sick.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/14/world/europe/france-coronavirus.html
...but it sure would be horrifying to have to do a home birth when that isn't at all what we want
I think you just need to boil water.
Also, I'm sorry things are extra stressful just when that is least appreciated.
In an attempt to be optimistic: I read an interview with an Italian doctor who is right in the worst of the crisis. It was sort of "Here's how we got here, learn from our mistakes". According to him, to keep the economy going they were very determined to soldier on with business as usual "it's just a bad flu", and took no measures - not cancelling large festivals or issuing travel advisories or anything - until the hospitals announced that they were in a state of crisis due to patient overload.
I've seen no reports of hospitals around here reporting increased numbers of people coming in with respiratory issues, and we've already taken pretty extraordinary measures.
So as late as our own response has been, it's at least been earlier than Italy's, so maybe we can still avoid their outcome.
Chetan Murthy@4: So "kick the can down the road"it is, then.
I'm not sure that was me. If it was, thanks.
It was me. Everything in my life is now before meatballs and after meatballs. The "before" world is hazy and poorly flavored.
Tomato sauce and meatballs are a good paleo meal. I should feel fit and alert no matter how much pasta and wine I had with it.
von wafer:
"I was really hanging my hat on the idea that people under 50--though I'm older than that--were quite unlikely to get very sick."
(1) there was an article written in newsweek (?) by a european doctor, addressed at young people, wherein he said two things: (a) if you fall sick (or worse, are asymptomatically infected) you'll kill old people around you, and (b) [relevant to your question] and while you'll probably recover, it'll be months of PT and your lungs will be chewed-up, maybe permanently. But you won't die. Sure, there's that
(2) the stats coming out of China already show that a significant number of younger folks end up in the hospital with respiratory distress (needing ventilators).
A relative pointed out that nobody's mentioning this. B/c "80% of people just get a mild flu" translates to "young people will get a mild flu". Not "some decent percentage of young people will suffer the worst flu they could imagine".
von wafer:
So a relative pointed out: 20% of infected in China need hospital support. But 9% of pop is over 65. So the other half of those ppl in the hospital are
You can't type a less than sign in a comment box.
From the other place. But not, I'm like 98% sure, someone who is one of us.
von wafer:
I don't mean to overload you, and this'll be my last comment on this, but: https://www.motherjones.com/coronavirus-updates/2020/03/300-people-with-coronavirus-are-in-intensive-care-in-france-most-of-them-are-under-60/
"300 People with Coronavirus Are in Intensive Care in France. Most of Them Are Under 60."
25: Serious question, are they prioritizing younger people without comorbidities for scarce ICU resources?
Bostoniangirl: Yes, it was reported that in Italy, 60yo or more, or comorbidities equals no respirator.
18 et seq: Chinese under 50s smoke heavily and grew up breathing the worst air in the world. Westerners have much better lungs to start with.
27: Triage, I assume.
French infection rates: I'd speculate younger people are much more likely to be internationally traveling/in contact with travelers. Maybe retirement ages play a segregating role too.
30.2: Please ignore, I misread BG.
2: That sounds very stressful! Have you talked to your doctor?
17: Yeah, I wheeze all winter every winter because I got pneumonia a couple years running. Also some bronchitis. And I never needed hospitalization, and am otherwise in rude health.
I am so bored of doing C25K from the very beginning every time I recover, but I am also pretty sure I need to maximize what aerobic capacity I have in order to get through the *next* time I get sick.
We need a new couch. Then maybe I'll be able to do a 5k again.. Stupid Ikea.
"300 People with Coronavirus Are in Intensive Care in France. Most of Them Are Under 60."
I was assuming that this was because they were rationing ventilators.
foolishmortal: [I could be completely wrong about all of this]
I doubt the rationing has gotten to France yet: https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/03/update-the-united-states-is-not-a-coronavirus-outlier/
https://www.france24.com/en/20200314-coronavirus-in-france-prime-minister-announces-closure-of-cafes-shops-restaurants-and-cinemas
Jerome Salomon, the head of the French public health authority, said there had been a rapid increase in serious cases, including 300 people in intensive care, half of whom were below 60 years of age.
Meanwhile. The US bioweapon conspiracy theory is apparently now the Party line.
An extra reason to despise Trump's incompetence is distraction from how badly the CCP fucked up.
Also, time to impeach for incompetence. By the time it gets to the Senate some of the Republicans could be dead and all of them will have dead constituents.
So long as Trump keeps shaking powerful Republican hands, I like him just where he is.
I am enraged by this article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/corona-simulator/?itid=hp_hp-banner-low_virus-simulator520pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans
Note - I am totally on board with social distancing. But this whole "quarantine" doesn't work line is infuriating. The article uses an ideal gas model to simulate disease transmission. A chamber is full of particles (representing people) that bounce randomly off each other and the walls of the chamber. If an infected particle hits an uninfected particle, the uninfected particle becomes infected. An infected particle becomes recovered after a certain amount of time and can no longer contact or spread the disease. A quarantine is illustrated by dividing the original chamber into two chambers, one of which contains an infected person. To illustrate that a quarantine can be leaky, they remove ONE THIRD of the separation between the chambers. An infected particle invariably crosses into the other chamber. This is assert to prove that quarantines don't work.
This model is asinine, for at least three reasons. The most important reason is that the purpose of a quarantine is to reduce the rate at which infected people enter a region. It is not to prevent infected people from ever entering the region. If you have 10,000 / day entering a region, and 1% of them are infected, then you have 100 sources of infection entering a region a day. If you institute a quarantine and 19 of 20 people adhere to it (which doesn't seem outrageous) then you would now have 5 sources of infection entering a region a day. That seems a lot more manageable. That right there is flattening the curve.
The second reason is that the model ignores any attempts to combat the infection. Consider a firebreak in fighting a forest fire. A firebreak is analogous to a quarantine. It is a physical attempt to stop the spread of fire. But firefighters don't just bulldoze a firebreak and go home for the day. The fire can spread over the firebreak, for example through burning embers carried by the wind. But any secondary fires arising from such sources are far more limited and easier to fight than the main fire. So to the occasional infection cluster arising from a quarantine violation would be easier to fight than the main outbreak.
A third reason is the ridiculously low effectiveness of the modeled quarantine. It permits a third of the particles through. How is that fairly representative of a quarantine?
Apart from the model, the article also seems to postulate quarantines and social distancing as incompatible alternatives. Why not do both? They both seem to have their place in the arsenal of public health authorities. Why not quarantines to separate regions with a high prevalence of infection from regions with a lower prevalence of infection, with social distancing practiced wherever appropriate.
Also - I was looking into the effectiveness of quarantines and noticed that a lot of the literature describes social distancing and self-isolation as being types of quarantines. It is odd that people are now distinguishing between them - as if they were two separate things.
I wonder whether a semantic game is being played here. Are the opponents of quarantines acceding to certain forms of quarantine - that they cannot under the circumstances practicably argue against - while trying to maintain the apparent validity and consistency of their position by more narrowly defining what they mean by "quarantine"?
nope@nope.com:
(0) I'm not a bio-scientist, just a used-to-be-smart guy, getting old and slow and stupid
but (1) the simulations are supposedly pseudo-random, and are different each page-view. When I read the article, the quarantine failed when it the gap was -barely- open. I mean, a few infected people crossed over almost instantkly. It didn't require the wall to be down by a third.
(2) quarantines have historically been difficult-to-make-work, b/c people violate them for all sorts of reasons. All. Sorts.
(3) we do have the evidence of the 1918 flu and Philadelphia (no distancing) vs. St Louis (draconian policy on distancing) to show that distancing works
(4) reason they're being distinguished, I suspect, is that quarantines are sold as "build the wall and carry on life as before within it" where social distancing is "change the way you live your life, all of you".
I actually thought it was pretty well-done.
Last thing (5) It's true that quarantines work ... eventually, when the plague runs out of victims. That's not what we want. . In the past, that's always the way it worked.
nope@nope.com: look at this: this is what happens when you merely try to quarantine by region:
https://twitter.com/DoctorYasmin/status/1239023573261357057
Now, surely they could have done that, and ALSO implemented a massive reception protocol with sufficient staffing, PPE suits, etc, etc, etc, to keep this safe? But they didn't, did they? And that's b/c they pretend themselves that "a quarantine is enough -- we'll build our wall, hunker down behind it, and let them kill each other out there; they're animals anyway."
It appears that whatever Trump is doing at customs is now having the effect of creating massive crowds of potentially infectable people at JFK, O'Hare, and DFW.
Dulles too. There is new enhanced screening at customs but no increase in staff to support it.
Spike @ 43:
Some enterprising bio-scientist with AI friends is requisitioning that all the security-camera footage be retained so, 2mos from now, they can match it up against infections and see if they can discern who infected whom, and how far it traveled. There are some people in the crowd shedding, and assuming they're not in there more than 12hr, it seems unlkely somebody infected there will become a shedder while inside there. So it's purely aerosol/depositing/rubbing transmission.
They are also running variations on the model. For example, there were handing out hand sanitizer at O'Hare but not at DFW.
So, now they're saying that one of our six cases is the Commissioner of Higher Education. They think maybe he picked it up at a board of trustees meeting a week ago.
Flying into ohare international terminal tomorrow. Fun!
39: given the finite medical resources, I can't really see it that way.
Flying into ohare international terminal tomorrow
You might really want to reconsider that.
@41
1) Yes, the page is pseudo random. Yes, your trial had an infected individual break quarantine quickly. Not the point. As I said - this is about managing the rate of transmission, not wholly preventing infected people from entering a quarantined area. Modeling the effectiveness of quarantines using an outrageously permeable quarantine remains dishonest.
2) I don't really care if people violate quarantines for all. sorts. of. reasons. The question is what percentage of people violate quarantines. If that percentage is low, then quarantines can be a useful public health tool. We are asking people to self-isolate and self-isolation is a form of quarantine. Some people might break self-isolation for. all. sorts. of. reasons. Do we stop asking people to self-isolate?
3) I'm not arguing against social distancing. It's a great idea.
4) I'm not seeing quarantines sold as one weird trick to defeat coronavirus. But the Washington post article was all to happy to slay that straw man, which is one reason I objected to it. Quarantines are a tool, among many.
5) This is just a bald assertion that quarantines don't work. Where are you getting this? The Chinese locked down Hubei in February, reducing the spread of coronavirus to other provinces. We don't just have evidence that they work - we have recent evidence. And conversely, two of the countries that did not impose travel restrictions on China - Iran and Italy - are epicenters of the epidemic.
HK doctors went on strike to try and force the government to restrict entry from mainland China. Were those HK doctors epidemiologically ignorant?
nope@nope.com:
> We are asking people to self-isolate and self-isolation is a form of quarantine.
Uh, no. Self-isolation doesn't mean you literally have no interactions with other humans. B/c that's unimplementable. It means you reduce them to the bare minimum possible, and you make all interactions be with as few other humans (again) as possible. And you do that rigorously. It's meant to effectively reduce the rate of spread, and That. Is. All. Nothing more. Just reduce it.
> Were those HK doctors epidemiologically ignorant?
No, they were not. When you have a geographically isolated region, and the infection is outside it, you can try to control things, while the infection is brought under control. HK had no Covid at the time, after all. But once it's in community spread, there's no point in quarantine.
> I don't really care if people violate quarantines for all. sorts. of. reasons. The question is what percentage of people violate quarantines. If that percentage is low, then quarantines can be a useful public health tool.
No. My friend Z. told me -in January- that people fail to understand the power of exponential growth. If you don't reduce the rate of transmission, if you don't reduce the doubling time, then all you're doing, is allowing another outbreak. B/c once somebody gets thru, with decent likelihood they'll infect others (because quarantines don't reduce the rate of spread -within- a quarantined zone.
[Again, I'm not an epidemiologist, but this is what I've read, and it makes sense.] Why do you think they harp so much on R0?
Woke up with a sore throat. Supposedly someone should come by today to test us (based on Iberian Fury's exposure through her PhD student).
Yeah rebooked to a one-stop that clears customs at IAH (Houston), which is not one of the 13 airports flights from Europe are routed through.
@53
"Quarantine activities can range from only passive or active symptom monitoring or short-term voluntary home curfew, all the way to cancellation of public gatherings, closing public transportation, or, under extreme circumstances, to a cordon sanitaire"
ISOLATION AND QUARANTINE: CONTAINMENT STRATEGIES FOR SARS 2003
Martin Cetron, M.D., Susan Maloney, M.D., M.H.Sc., Ram Koppaka, M.D., and Patricia Simone, M.D
"short-term voluntary home curfew". Self-isolation is considered a form of quarantine.
Also - there were already 15 confirmed cases in HK on Feb 3rd when the doctors went on strike.
Anyway...
I am arguing for social distancing, plus quarantines when they can be imposed effectively. Some people may get through - just like some embers may waft across a firebreak. But because a quarantine should be paired with a vigorous public health response, any infection clusters that result can hopefully be addressed. Even when there is local transmission "travel restrictions might also be used to delay the peak of the epidemic in an isolated location where heavy seeding by incoming infected persons could accelerate local transmission." [1]
If you have a full blown outbreak in an area, then yes, a quarantine between that area and another has no point. But quarantines, in the form of travel restrictions and boarder closures, can be effective when implemented early and decisively. They can delay the arrival of the epidemic by multiple weeks to months. [1]
[1] Nonpharmaceutical Measures for Pandemic Influenza in Nonhealthcare Settings--International Travel-Related Measures
@53
"Quarantine activities can range from only passive or active symptom monitoring or short-term voluntary home curfew, all the way to cancellation of public gatherings, closing public transportation, or, under extreme circumstances, to a cordon sanitaire"
ISOLATION AND QUARANTINE: CONTAINMENT STRATEGIES FOR SARS 2003
Martin Cetron, M.D., Susan Maloney, M.D., M.H.Sc., Ram Koppaka, M.D., and Patricia Simone, M.D
"short-term voluntary home curfew". Self-isolation is considered a form of quarantine.
Also - there were already 15 confirmed cases in HK on Feb 3rd when the doctors went on strike.
Anyway...
I am arguing for social distancing, plus quarantines when they can be imposed effectively. Some people may get through - just like some embers may waft across a firebreak. But because a quarantine should be paired with a vigorous public health response, any infection clusters that result can hopefully be addressed. Even when there is local transmission "travel restrictions might also be used to delay the peak of the epidemic in an isolated location where heavy seeding by incoming infected persons could accelerate local transmission." [1]
If you have a full blown outbreak in an area, then yes, a quarantine between that area and another has no point. But quarantines, in the form of travel restrictions and boarder closures, can be effective when implemented early and decisively. They can delay the arrival of the epidemic by multiple weeks to months. [1]
[1] Nonpharmaceutical Measures for Pandemic Influenza in Nonhealthcare Settings--International Travel-Related Measures
Fingers crossed for you, X. Trapnel. And toes too.
But quarantines, in the form of travel restrictions and boarder closures, can be effective when implemented early and decisively.
that ship sailed how many weeks ago? The WaPo isn't writing an article about life on that alternate timeline; they're writing about life in this timeline, where we need to convince people to socially distance, b/c it's -everywhere- already.
It's much too late for boarder closures.
The UK statistics are completely juked. People in the choir who've developed symptoms after exposure at the gig and called to request a test are being told that they are a "presumptive case" and won't be tested. So in this instance it's around a 10:1 ratio of confirmed:actual cases.
Ume: Same as here in America, eh? We've all read the stories of people trying to get tested and being told to GTFOH. The tests in the US are massively under-reporting infected.
Travel bans have neither stopped spread of novel #coronavirus nor prevented it from becoming a pandemic.
— Tom Bollyky (@TomBollyky) March 13, 2020
Today, @ThinkGlobalHlth launched a new tracker of #COVID19 cases in countries with and without travel restrictions on China. Will update regularly https://t.co/Uk9OXjyNWr pic.twitter.com/QwD804BE09
Via B-J:
I'm NERVOUS again- about young adults. Korea's pop wide #COVID19 tests have revealed something scary: YOUNG PEOPLE are leading carriers. (Italy only tests the rather sick, biases to old people). If the socially active age20-29 truly carry 30% of all cases-- that means trouble! 😨 pic.twitter.com/r9RxAeTVrF
— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) March 15, 2020
OK, reading a bit about the tweeter, he seems to have a bit of a history of alarmism. Maybe this is real, but I'll wait until I see some other people confirming. Not saying he's wrong, just that since I can't read Korean, I don't have any idea, and his prior alarmism makes one naturally suspicious.
64: Well, even more so because contact with a confirmed case is supposed to be one of the criteria for testing, but they aren't even doing that now.
Re the immunity/reinfection discussion from the other thread, I haven't found anything useful. There are studies of reinfection with rhinoviruses in susceptible patients, such as those with asthma or COPD, but some of those assume that the same strain detected after 8 weeks must be a persistent infection whereas others class it as a reinfection.
A longitudinal study of immunity in recovered SARS patients found that after six years most had no detectable specific antibodies and none exhibited a memory B-cell response, but some did have a memory T-cell response. Can ydnew or someone who actually knows about immunology explain what that means?
... someone else who actually knows about immunology ...
And this study suggests that SARS patients may be susceptible to reinfection from three years after exposure.
This study ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3335060/ ) doesn't give a lot of joy for a vaccine: the still-not-ready vaccine for SARS .... didn't do such a great job, and test animals exhibited pathologies when infected with SARS. Sigh. I hope I'm just reading it wrong, not being an immunologist.
WRT immunity, here (2 days ago), 09:45, says we simply don't know yet; probably there will be short-term immunity but not long-term ("year-to-year" IIRC is the phrase used).
NOW they tell us our insurance doesn't cover epidemics/pandemics and we need to apply for a separate insurance card, I need two photos two but damned if I can find any. Oh, and apply in person.
Good luck Barry. How's the pneumonia?
69/70: Your first version was entirely correct. I remember trying valiantly to understand B cells vs T cells a decade, and I remain an utter failure. Cryptic ned is your bona fide expert, I think. I'm just an asshole pontificating about fields I know nothing about on the internet. All I know is what the paper concludes:
Whether the T cell anamnestic response is adequate to protect a person from reinfection requires further investigation. The findings are expected to have implications for disease management and surveillance in case of disease reemergence. It would also be important for making a decision on vaccination strategy, as vaccine is supposed to be the most effective way to confer active and sustained protection against a future reemergence of SARS.
B-cells are what make antibodies, and if they don't work, you don't get a robust immune response.
And yes re: vaccine development. The 12-18 months is the result of a scientist answering the theoretical, "How fast could we have an available vaccine?" The long answer is that no one knows. Efforts on a SARS or MERS vaccine haven't panned out yet, but with more funding and more interest, it might be quicker. Vaccine development isn't plug and play. A thing that seems unusual in this case and would be very interesting to understand is that some patients seem to be having a damaging immune overreaction (called "cytokine storm") to this virus, which is causing the apparent relapse and severe lung damage (and some of the fatalities). This may be happening more in younger folks, hard to say with the data currently available. I would guess that is going to make vaccine development trickier. It's always a balance of having enough material in a vaccine to train people's immune system vs having people actually get sick, and I'm worried about the latter. It is what they're seeing in the vaccine paper linked by Chetan Murthy - the researchers are seeing lung damage caused by immune response, not vaccine.
More on the 12-18 month guess - think of all the viruses we don't have vaccines for and those we do. Also, we've had a flu vaccine in some form or another for about 80 years, and it takes at least 5 months to develop one against a novel strain.
I wake up every morning feeling so panicked.
(Then I spend the day that way and go to bed that way.) It's true that I'm more well-rested, though.
Has anyone heard the word "quarantine" used in Christian services (maybe esp. Catholic or Episcopalian) meaning the forty days of Jesus' temptation?
I'd hope so. Christ knows what viruses those locusts were carrying.
The temptation was just at the end of the forty days, not the whole time.
Presumably Jesus spent the other 39 days stopping himself with his hand halfway to his face.
Very abruptly, and snatching the locust from the air with His teeth.
They are now closing liquor stores in eastern Pennsylvania.
75 Still here, a couple who are some of my best friends here are having a very small gathering on their rooftop to view some short films she produced. I love going to their parties but 75 really drove my anxiety through the roof so I think I'm staying in.
Austria has banned gatherings of more than five (5) people. My mind immediately went to the question of how this would work casa Heebie. Draw lots to see who gets to sleep in the yard?
I need to go to the store. Will try to remember not to touch stuff.
It turns out having a bunch of food doesn't mean I have a bunch of food people will eat.
It was all a little too Masque of the Red Death for me
79: Yep, also this Jim Crace novel which had quite a good Jesus as I remember.
78: I wake up every morning feeling so panicked.
My daughter (~30) had been home from work since Wednesday with respiratory symptoms that she was pretty sure were not due to COVID-19 but says the constant well-meaning calls and discussion from friends and family (yes, we were guilty of this) tipped her anxiety to where she went to the an urgent care place yesterday where she was prescribed anxiety medication for the first time in her life (she has always had borderline treatable anxiety). But trying to distinguish panic attack not being "able" to breathe from respiratory illness not being able to breathe is what finally triggered her to go (so maybe she would have gotten there without everyone's voiced concerns, who knows). She was told that she probably did not have it (and certainly not a virulent case; her actual respiratory symptoms were on the wane and she never had a fever). I am not 100% convinced that she does not actually have it; but she was nowhere meeting current local standards for testing.
Less severely the husband of my wife's best friend is stuck on the other side of the country caring for a sick elderly mother. His work is epidemiology-adjacent and she is trying to let him know that his spending 95% of their conversations going into details of the possible spread is not helping her state of mind.
It is anxiety all the way down isn't it? And all wrapped in the already ongoing anxiety of this dreadful president and administration in an election year, plus now getting to stew about how they are "managing" this fucking thing, and that they are putting in place spin packages for the demented and deluded followers (~ 40 fucking percent still) no matter which way the thing goes.
Brawndo stops coronavirus. Borught toy you by Carl's Jr.
Question for those in the US, has the mainstream media been talking about how much of this is due to Trump's fuckups (closing the NSC pandemic response team, decreasing CDC budget, the testing fiasco, etc.,)? I'm not trusting my read from my obsessive twitter habit.
I don't really know, but I think it's very bimodal.
95: I live in a curated media bubble where it is being screamed from the rooftops. That disclaimer aside, I think not really. I think here, most people are looking at local media for information - state and district level, where, mercifully, it looks like a better, more organized and coherent response.
Glad you are doing better. Here, my (very large) company pushed for full coverage on our standard insurance - no copays for testing, etc., coverage by short-term disability coverage without a 5-day wait for those affected, and a few other details. I was really pleased at what they rolled out. I'm sorry your workplace isn't doing the same.
92: Why don't people talk about Jim Crace more? Harvest is one of the best books I've read in the last ten years.
96: It is, depressingly, incredibly bimodal:
And 79 percent of Democrats say that the worst is yet to come, versus just 40 percent of Republicans who hold the same opinion.
That partisan split also carries over to plans and activities.
Forty-seven percent of all voters say they've stopped or plan to stop attending large public gatherings, which includes 61 percent of Democratic respondents but just 30 percent of Republicans.
What's more, 36 percent say they've canceled or plan to cancel travel, which includes 47 percent of Democrats but just 23 percent of Republicans.
And 26 percent say they've stopped or plan to stop eating out at restaurants, which includes 36 percent of Democrats but only 12 percent of Republicans.
Because they probably confuse him with Jim Croce.
Part of the bimodal response, however, is because the coasts have been hit harder than the flyover states. People in blue areas are in fact in a different part of the crisis than people in red areas (maybe by a week?)
(But also not to downplay the role of the conservative media.)
I wake up every morning feeling so panicked.
(Then I spend the day that way and go to bed that way.)
Heebie, I know you have larger concerns than your own self, but you do realize that your personal subjective experience is likely to be:
HUGE MENTAL PREPARATION AND EFFORT TO QUARANTINE
mild cold
WAITING FOR EVERYTHING TO RETURN TO NORMAL
Yes, this is more dangerous for the old and sick than the flu, yes you should be a good community member. But by numbers, the overwhelming experience of COVID 19 is either no symptoms at all (don't even know they have it) or mild case at worst. This almost certainly won't fuck you and yours up personally. (And you can't do anything about your olds, either.)
What I just wrote is statistically true, even if all y'all feel compelled to tell me about the cases of young people getting sick. Those are rare, even if you read about them. Young, in good health, not a smoker? The terrible parts almost certainly (99.98%) won't land on you. Conscientiously do your part, but don't panic all day.
I'm not particularly worried about my family, although I do appreciate 103 because some of the pushback on "It's just old people!" had started to make me fret.
I am super worried about the broader impact.
But also, I think my gut can't keep up with my head, so to speak. The world is upside down and I'm having trouble explaining it to my lizardbrain.
I'm not sure how good a handle we have on what happens to the young. It's still fairly early days and this is could be just an anomaly, but... https://twitter.com/mcgaw71/status/1239172308197150723?s=21
Pets across the nation are so happy right now. If it's a conspiracy by anyone, we need to be pointing fingers at them.
100: That would make more people read it.
Whole Foods wasn't bad. The frozen food aisle was close to empty, but I prefer fresh.
My niece is only 21 but she has pulmonary hypertension (meaning her lungs don't work right and she would almost certainly need a respirator). Her college has shut down and she's going to stay with us, so we have to be super-extra careful. We're going hardcore on social distancing (which we were planning to do anyway), but I am somewhat worried.
I bought corned beef and Tullamore Dew for a low-key St. Patrick's Day at home. I bought very expensive Irish butter because the regular butter was all gone.
This is all awful, but I am really built for never going out and cancelling all social engagements.
"Pets across the nation are so happy right now. If it's a conspiracy by anyone, we need to be pointing fingers at them."
We can't take our guy to the park to play fetch but at least he's going to get lots of pet time.
This is all awful, but I am really built for never going out and cancelling all social engagements.
That was my initial thought, for myself, but am becoming conscious of the fact that I tend to go grocery shopping on foot and go to the store 3-4 times per week. I would also really prefer to not work from home (mild risk, we're a small company, and I have my own office but there is a single shared bathroom and sink). I also like getting restaurant meals somewhat regularly (to balance out limited cooking time).
All of that feels fairly low risk in terms of social contact, but there would be a big difference between being conscious of reducing contact, which is easy, vs never going out which would be much more difficult.
110: oh no, how scary. But so good that you and M/tch be there for her.
116: Yeah. She could stay with one of her parents, but her dad (my brother) is kind of a jerk and at her mom's house she doesn't have her own bedroom (she bought a smaller house after my niece left for college and her teenaged brother and sister are there). Plus we're cooler, obvs.
There's going to close the restaurants in Ohio. If you want a three way, get it now.
Don't get a four way with beans if you don't have TP.
I have a question about airport health screenings. What can they do besides take your temperature? And will that do any good considering that most young people get it without any significant symptoms?
118:. Have to give credit where credit is due. DeWine hasn't let any of Trump's nonsense stop him from listening to the public health experts and taking decisive action.
I've met two Ohio governors, but not him. Skinny Taft and the one before him whose name I can't spell.
Probably. His office was across the street. I guess I really only met Taft. Voinocich was just someone I saw.
120: This blogger I like flew back from Luxembourg on Thursday and there was no testing whatsoever.
Selah's congestion has been bad all weekend and low she has a low fever. I'm convinced it's just her regular allergies that become bronchitis or pneumonia most of the time, but everyone else seems fine so far. And that should mean Lee keeps her distance, because she won't take custodial time with sick kids. This also gives me a good reason not to work and to pressure the shop owner to close down.
A craft store near me is having people look at their stuff and order online (it's a reuse-resale store; they might even be walking around the store holding a cellphone to take orders) and then they bag it and take it out to the curb when the purchaser is nearly there. Not *zero* contact, but much reduced, adn it's keeping the store running.
And getting cheap craft supplies to people stuck at home, which is apparently much appreciated.
There were two yarn stores by me. The one everyone called the mean yarn store closed and they turned the space into a Tiki bar. My wife bought a bunch of yarn from the nice yarn store, but she took away the scarf she made me because I guess I wasn't protecting it enough. Then the nice yarn store closed, but it was open several years longer than the mean yarn store.
I also learned that asking for a sweater is seen as a bit demanding. I guess sleeves are hard.
Sweaters are hard all over! People are a very complicated shape and they have to fit. The second sweater I ever knit was meant for me but would have fit Charles Barkley.
Or mail it to Sir Charles. He's retired, so probably into sweaters.
Or give it to Charles Barkley.
I kept it for twenty years and then gave it to a large friend of Sally's. It's wandering around the Bronx now looking disconcertingly Irish.
I didn't really get the point of sweaters until I got into the spirit of middle agedness.
My parents had been sick with almost certainly regular flu and/or cold (might have had different things) two weeks prior to the start of the US response and I drove over to help them the night I officially went remote full time for work. They've steadily improved since I arrived.
But now I'm worried I could have been an asymptomatic carrier even when I left because I'm not feeling great lately but also not obviously sick, and I can't tell how much is just anxiety and exhaustion dealing with everything. I've been counting the days since I left to judge where I am in the incubation scale but it's always possible a mild case will just stay mild. I haven't felt short of breath or feverish but have thought for a few days that I could be getting a cough, without getting one yet.
I've felt that way since late December.
I'm supposed to be working but instead I'm drinking beer and watching Harry Potter. It's called self-care.
139: it's equally likely you caught whatever they had, as opposed to giving them whatever you were carrying.
(That was supposed to be comforting.)
I just stepped into some comments (on a friend's page) from some local conservative types in my red county and it is so upsetting reading their aggressive confrontational ignorance. I don't want anything to do with them. Yeesh. I still hope they don't kill my friend's grandpa with their enthusiastically continuing bowling league.
Bowling should always require enthusiastic consent.
That and rented shoes are what it shares with sex.
I actually have to go to work for an hour tomorrow for a training on remote work. We're trying to set up telehealth to keep people home but there's no webex training on how to do the work remotely.
142: that's my hope. I wouldn't be as worried if the area where I live didn't keep announcing more confirmed cases every day, and some must have been developing before I left.
I'll be here another week so there will probably be enough time to learn whether I brought anything, not that we couldn't all get sick via other routes.
Let me be the first to recommend self care.
Biden almost just said that he and Bernie agree on Medicare for ALL. I've been muting the TV off and on, so I might be wrong about this, but I think Joe Biden has been saying that he didn't like the Bankruptcy Bill and added a couple of amendments to soften it. He sponsored it!!
I sponsored an episode of Sesame Street and I fucking hate puppets.
So, parents of children under 10: how is your sanity? Ready for three more weeks?
You rent your sex shoes, you take your chances.
You know, all other things being equal, I'd be just as happy electing a president who tells the truth.
Re: My posts 66-67, about 20-29 year-olds in South Korea constituting 30% of infected:
I added that the tweeter was previously a bit of an alarmist, and hence maybe I'd wait to get confirmation of what the report actually said. I got that confirmation: a Korean friend got a Hangul-reading cousin to read the PDF (which comes from the SK national covid site) and confirm that it said what the guy claimed.
So: all I can say is: *until we have tests like South Korea* we have to assume that the young are all Typhoid Mary. All of them. Sigh.
Honestly, I'm still mad at them for not voting often enough.
401 cases now, the population here is just under 3 million.
Still livid I have to run a bunch of errands and put myself at risk in order to get insurance for this.
Time passes really, really slowly when somebody is trying to explain to you what Link is supposed to do.
Fight monsters and collect objects, no?
Apparently, the very tedious details matter.
Unlike work, you can't just get people to go away by asking who the conversation is supposed to be billed to.
157 hasn't happened in our lifetimes, why change now?
159: this is presumably driving the lower death rate in South Korea (that they are actually finding the younger people who have it but don't get seriously sick)
Data can be found here.
DB: Oh, nice. The first link ( https://www.cdc.go.kr/board/board.es?mid=a30402000000&bid=0030&act=view&list_no=366557&tag=&nPage=1 ) and scrolling down to "[Table 2. Distribution of the cases by sex and age groups]" provides confirmation. In English! Thank you so much!
We know you're the only one here who doesn't read Korean.
118/119: What's a three way/four way? Is that what they call burritos in Ohio?
This should go viral: A message from Italians to themselves, ten days ago
http://www.openculture.com/2020/03/quarantined-italians-send-a-message-to-themselves.html
171. Cincinnati chili.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cincinnati_chili
I'm sad about the debate. I think Biden is probably correct in his assessment that no matter how blatently he lies to the American people there will be no consequences for it.
I've been wondering to what extent the lack of density in the US relative to many other countries will affect the spread of the virus. Guess we'll find out soon enough.
And... Heeeere goes the NHS.
From this morning's Guardian exclusive https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/15/uk-coronavirus-crisis-to-last-until-spring-2021-and-could-see-79m-hospitalised?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Pinboard
The document also states that:
The health service cannot cope with the sheer number of people with symptoms who need to be tested because laboratories are "under significant demand pressures".
From now on only the very seriously ill who are already in hospital and people in care homes and prisons where the coronavirus has been detected will get tested.
Testing services are under such strain that even NHS staff will not be swabbed, despite their key role and the risk of them passing the virus on to patients.
Note that if the can't test enough, and knew from the beginning that they would never be able to, the "tough it out and wait for herd immunity" strategy comes inevitable.
Worth remembering now that they claim it never was the plan
What do you all think is the best case scenario for how long we'll be stuck at home? I'm assuming at least 6 weeks, barring a public health miracle.
I wonder if the states that are acting sensibly now will try to shut their borders to people from the stupid states, Ã la California during the Dust Bowl. I'm only half kidding.
NW:
Narrator: "it was always the plan"
Chorus: "We are ruled by monsters"
à la California during the Dust Bowl
Free do re mi testing at the border. But this time you can only get in if you ain't got it.
This is incredible:
"However, the briefing raises questions about how Britain would continue to function normally, warning that: "It is estimated that at least 10% of people in the UK will have a cough at any one time during the months of peak Covid-19 activity."Â
NOOOOO A COUGH
OK. I am too stupid to work this out but I have been frightcrastinating on this forecasting website and one of the assumptions it makes is that it takes, on average, 17 days from infection till death, if you are going to die. So they count back 17 days from recorded deaths and look at the number of then known infections compared to the number of undetected (assuming a constant ratio of deaths to cases). This ratio gives a measure of underdetection. You then multiply today's known cases by that ratio to get a figure for today's real cases. So far so good.
But the 17 days figure assumes full, heroic, medical efforts. At some stage those are going to stop. 17 days will go down, maybe to 10, maybe 12, maybe 15 - I just don't know. And when that happens the model will be affected. I think it will start to overestimate the number of future casualties, but is this right?
178.last: I'm on sabbatical in CA, and need to drive back to the midwest in the end of May. So I'm kinda worried about scenarios like that. I also worry a little about whether the uselessness of the federal government could lead to some states declaring independence in order to borrow their own money. All of that seems pretty unlikely though in just two months.
But the 17 days figure assumes full, heroic, medical efforts. At some stage those are going to stop
Why? There is a huge amount of effort right now, in the UK and elsewhere, to improve medical capacity - most obviously more ventilators. And also the state of the art in treatment of serious or critical COVID patients is going to advance very rapidly. It's not obvious to me at all that we will be less good at keeping COVID patients alive in May than we are at the moment.
176: seriously, the Guardian journalist who wrote that piece needs to take a very hard look at themselves and their professional ethics, because they have done a very bad job and they should feel bad about themselves and their value as a human being.
Take this:
"The document also discloses that an estimated 500,000 of the 5 million people deemed vital because they work "in essential services and critical infrastructure" will be off sick at any one time during a month-long peak of the epidemic. The 5 million include 1m NHS staff and 1.5 million in social care."
Holy crap! 10% absentee rates!
But wait. What share of people in essential services are in work on any given day anyway? They all have a minimum of four weeks' annual leave, for one thing and most of them will have more. So that means that... ENGAGE GUARDIAN MATHEMATICS BRAIN... four divided by 52... at any given moment in normal times at least 385,000 of the 5 million people deemed vital because blah blah will be off on holiday. And realistically they don't stagger their holiday perfectly. So what they mean is "they might have to postpone their holidays". Well, no shit. I think a lot of them might have done that anyway.
Why? Because I don't think there are more ventilators or ITU beds to be had. I could be wrong, of course. But we're not going to see a response that involves thousand bed hospitals being thrown up in a week.
I don't think there are more ventilators or ITU beds to be had
There are because they are building more. Ford, Dyson, Unipart, Honda and JCB are getting involved - either refitting their lines to produce more ventilators, using spare space in their factories to set up more lines, or lending their workers to existing manufacturers to keep the existing lines running 24 hours a day. A ventilator is a complex but not overly complex bit of equipment.
we're not going to see a response that involves thousand bed hospitals being thrown up in a week.
This is not actually that difficult a thing to do. I know people who can put up a 240-bed hospital - literally going from "here is an empty field from which we have recently evicted some cows" to "you may now start bringing in the ambulances" - in no more than 24 hours. When everything goes well they do it in less than 12 hours. They do it for a living and they are really good at it. They can do it in tundra, they can do it in 50-degree heat, they can do it while wearing full chemical warfare kit including respirators. The Chinese made a huge propaganda splash about this, which a lot of UK papers swallowed whole (including the fake photos) but they were not ready to take in patients at the end of that week. We, on the other hand, really can do it, faster than them, and better.
I mean, last year the WEF looked at preparations for a pandemic, and the UK ranked second in the world. China was 51st. Civil Contingencies have not just been sitting on their arses for the last twenty years dreaming up new ways to oppress the population; they have actually been planning for things like "what if we need an extra four thousand hospital beds in Greater London all of a sudden". They have planned for a scenario based on the 1665 plague, ffs.
It's not obvious to me at all that we will be less good at keeping COVID patients alive in May than we are at the moment.
I really hope you're right. I know emergency capacity is being ramped up behind the scenes. But even with lots of shiny new ventilators and prefab hospitals (how many does the army actually have ready to go?), I still don't see how the NHS will be able to cope with the sort of patient numbers that will be coming in in May if we don't start practicing severe containment now. That sort of treatment needs trained staff as well as facilities, and reallocating staff from other specialities is going to mean that the patients with the diseases that they normally treat - cancer, heart attacks, strokes, kidney failure - are going to die instead. A significant proportion of medical staff are going to get the virus, too. Plus there will almost certainly be shortages of drugs and supplies by then - sedatives like propofol (essential for intubated patients), anesthetics, maybe antibiotics, even oxygen. We can come back to this thread in June and see who was right, but my prediction is that this is overoptimistic.
They have planned for a scenario based on the 1665 plague, ffs
Tired: rereading La Peste
Wired: rereading Journal of the Plague Year
From yesterday's Daily Telegraph:
Top intensive care specialists have warned that Britain is not ready for the coronavirus crisis, with the 'overwhelmed' NHS in danger of running out of protective clothing, drugs, beds and oxygen supplies.
In a special webinar organised by the Association of Anaesthetists, watched by around 1,000 medics this weekend, experts admitted that there was not enough equipment or staff available to fight the crisis.
The experts predicted that a hospital with 10 patients with coronavirus would run out of the crucial sedation drug propofol within 11 days and alfentanil - a painkiller and anaesthetic - in less than 24 hours. They also warned that there was already a national shortage of opioid fentanyl.
Stricken hospitals could also run short of oxygen within "hours rather than days", warned the president of the Intensive Care Society Dr Ganesh Suntharalingam, who said that medical oxygen from BOC Healthcare was being quadrupled ahead of the emerging crisis.
Military drivers will also be brought in to drive tankers of oxygen to hospitals so they do not run out.
Professor Tim Cook, Consultant in Anaesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine, Royal United Hospital NHS Trust, Bath, said: "These are scary times.
"We have yet to reach the point of acceleration in the UK and when that hits us that will be fairly horrific, the NHS will be overwhelmed. Good luck is all I can say. It's going to be pretty tough for everybody."
Matt Hancock, the health secretary, said that operating theatres would be turned into wards to treat the sick, while hotels could be co-oped as make-shift hospitals.
The government is also asking industry to repurpose their production lines to help make missing equipment.
But consultants warned that some hospitals have no protective equipment at all and are being forced to borrow supplies from elsewhere.
Some 46 per cent of consultants said their trusts had not yet planned for more intensive care isolation rooms.
Last week, analysis by George Batchelor of Edge Health, calculated that cases are likely to peak at 1.2 million by mid-July, requiring an extra 30,000 normal beds and an extra 26,000 critical care beds with ventilators.
Medics warned that the NHS "does not have the ability" to provide the amount of support needed for the expected number of kidney injuries that will come with severe infections.
And one consultant said that 20 per cent of specialists were missing from his hospital in the east of England, some trapped behind closed borders in countries in lockdown.
Dr Matt Davies, of the Association of Anaesthetists, said he was expecting a shortage of ventilators and pumps.
"We had a pandemic plan and we thought we could just wheel out that plan and all will be well. It's a start but it will be nowhere near enough," he told medics.
"We may possibly have enough physical space in the building but we will not have enough equipment and not enough people to deliver the care. We are not ready."
Dr Davies, who said the situation is keeping him awake at night, warned that patients are so infectious that the NHS will get through nearly 200 masks for each patient in hospital for 14 days.
"Quite quickly the number of masks that will be exhausted," he added.
"I've been lying awake at night thinking 'Am I catastrophizing about this and shroud waving and I am, but probably for very good reason.
"There is a huge regional and national variation in what people have got on the shelves in their buildings. There are some areas with no PPE (protective clothing) and masks and they are having to borrow them from other trusts. PPE will or may run out. What do we do then?"
Currently when hospital oxygen tanks run low an automatic message is sent to BOC Healthcare who organise a delivery. But doctors warn that the supply may be depleted too quickly for the company to keep up.
Dr Suntharalangiam said: "There needs to be a greater heightened sense of urgency about this.
"Oxygen supply is not something we're used to thinking about. But there is no guarantee that won't run out in a matter of hours rather than days."
Mr Davies added: "It is going to be more of a problem than we predicted.
"As we increase the number of patients that will be very difficult to predict but may not allow that time for that automated message to get through and deliver the oxygen when every other hospital in the country is in the same position to supply our patients."
The consultants also warned that "controversial" guidelines on visitor access in hospitals would soon be published which may stop relatives visiting their loved ones to limit the spread and to keep masks and protective clothing for medics.
Hospitals have started to order webcams so they can carry out tele-medicine and allow people to talk to relatives if they are banned from visiting.
I see from the Telegraph that there is also a threatened national shortage of Fentanyl. That seems a problem that is crying out for a public/private partnership with some kind of international drug distribution business, perhaps one based in Colombia if we don't want to deal with an EU-based organisation. Global Britain for the win!
how many does the army actually have ready to go?
Thirteen field hospitals, plus another ten medical regiments (including the evacuation support regiment) whose personnel could be used to augment them or backfill civilian medical facilities.
And there are extensive areas for non-RAMC/QARANC troops to get involved too; logistics, for example, just needs HGV drivers. Dual crewed ambulances could be recrewed with one civilian paramedic and a military driver/medical technician. Military laboratory staff from the Joint CBRN Wing (and the RAVC for that matter) could be brought in to support civilian pathologists. And so on. I don't have any specific knowledge of what these plans are, but this is all pretty obvious stuff.
The assumption that we'll run short of basics like oxygen (!) really seems unnecessarily pessimistic. There are LASU plants in the UK that are currently producing hundreds of tonnes of oxygen per day and they are not running flat out. Well over 80% of it goes to industry (steel, metal fabrication, chemical) not to medicine - there's a huge amount of room for reallocation. We have an extremely large pharmaceutical industrial base in the UK and they are not running flat out either.
Are those oxygen plants producing medical-purity oxygen?
It's the same plants producing oxygen for all users - it's all BOC. I don't know if it's medical purity (or even what the definition is).
I think the concern is more that hospitals will use it so quickly they'll run out before fresh stocks can be delivered. That sounds like a manageable problem. The shortages of drugs, staff, and equipment less so.
IIRC medical is 99% pure, industrial as little as 75%.
In the US medical oxygen is 99% pure and industrial oxygen 99.5% pure. http://www.airproducts.com/products/Gases/gas-facts/industrial-and-medial-gas-specifications-us.aspx
Okay then. I got that from someone who did know his shit, so maybe varies by application.
We can come back to this thread in June and see who was right, but my prediction is that this is overoptimistic.
It might be helpful in this context to look back at the archives from early January, immediately after the Soleimani killing and see how many people thought:
1) The US will now be forced to leave Iraq
2) ISIS will sweep into the power vacuum left
3) This will lead to a war between the US and Iran because the US will retaliate to the inevitable Iranian revenge attacks
I don't think that we, collectively, have a problem with overoptimistic predictions.
I don't think that we, collectively, have a problem with overoptimistic predictions.
In general, sure. Personally, I've made precisely two predictions on here to date: so far this one is looking pretty accurate, and this one will have to wait a few months and is anyway a fear rather than a prediction. But on the NHS being unable to cope, I feel pretty confident.
193.1 How many of these people are full time? My former GP was a territorial medic and was occasionally deployed to Afghanistan. But when he was he couldn't attend to patients at home. There's not much point in mobilising territorials who are already doing what you would need them to do in the dat job.
Also on the testing point, it is worth looking at this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_testing
More COVID-19 tests done in the UK than anywhere else in the world, with the exception of three countries with serious outbreaks - China, ROK and Italy - and, for some reason, Russia (though they may be lying about that). More than France and the US. More than Switzerland and Canada and Japan. Many more than, to my surprise, Taiwan, but that probably represents how bloody amazing the Taiwanese government has been from day one on this, so they just haven't had enough contacts to need testing.
It would help if I knew how to link to my own comments.
1: http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_17154.html#2065225
2: http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_17160.html#2066015
207: Since Thursday only patients in hospitals and care homes are being tested. If you're in the community, the official advice now is to self-isolate for seven days of your own accord, without even notifying the NHS.
Japan has been undertesting from the start, but the low death rate suggests that the flatness of the curve there is probably genuine rather than the result of too few new cases being picked up.
MI joining states shutting down restaurants (carry out remains open) and bars, effective 3 pm today. 53 positives out of 300 or so tested.
I did not have "Ted Cruz is actually giving reasonable, reliable, and compassionate advice on the pandemic" on my scorecard.
So, is having a sore throat every morning but that goes away after I'm up and moving a symptom? I also have headaches and sniffles, but I think the headaches are because I have only outdated glasses.
Iberian Fury and the Infanta just got tested (unfortunately waking the latter up right after she'd finally gone down for a nap), so we should have results in a day.
Trump yesterday: ""People in the market should be thrilled," he said, "We're the strongest country in the world, financially and every other way."
Kevin Bacon is really, really old.
He must have been like forty when he made Footloose.
Or maybe Animal House and Footloose aren't as far apart as I thought.
207: Thanks for that link. (I notice Iran is not on it.)
190: ha, I remember picking up the Defoe when I was a teenager, on an older friend's recommendation, because I'd loved La Peste so much. I might actually reread it.
158: is that Adderall working so well that you can start to imagine life 8 weeks out? Three is a massive stretch for me. Anyway, here's some public TV -- I think we're going to tune in for the "Ancient Skies" program at 10 PDT.
Last week's observation that London seems unperturbed is no longer operative. Noticeably fewer people on the streets, even if not tumbleweed-style yet. Went to the BFI for a movie on Saturday, decided against the movie (my movie date's boyfriend is high-risk) and just had dinner instead, as one of only 3 or 4 seated tables.
Had a hard time finding loo roll anywhere and panic-bought 500mL of hand sanitizer for £20.
Still not going to stay away from work until forced, though work is pretty solitary anyway and I'm walking there so I figure I'm already socially distancing. I have a few friends working from home already going stir crazy and trying to think of socially responsible ways to get some contact -- I think meeting up for walks is going to get pretty popular. I'm more nervous about catching it from my flatmate, who is a gym rat (weight benches/machines seem like they'd be fomite-central) and is taking a very blase attitude toward the whole thing.
Although I'm generally healthy, my lungs are kind of shit from childhood asthma & frequent bouts of bronchitis and I really do not want to get pneumonia.
I'm enormously encouraged by ajay's 187 & 188 since the gov't do not *seem* to be doing much (genuinely surprised by 207). Btw ajay -- from last thread, was the Selkie's company you mentioned the ones that make swimsuits? If so: nice swimsuits!
Local Bowling Alley is *on* it with the good advice.
(For Moby.)
223.last: the Selkie's company does not make anything remotely like swimsuits. And, yes, empty shelves are becoming more common: tomatoes and pasta gone for a while from my local shops, flour and eggs now gone as well. (Who the heck stockpiles eggs??)
This stuff Ajay is talking about resources being mobilized and redirected for pandemic response sounds like it's coming from a different solar system. Is anything remotely like that happening in North America?
I mean we're hearing stories about universities working with their respective hospitals to 3D print parts, and somebody offering prizes for new technological solutions. Not "OK, now to shift Siemens to making nothing but ventilators for the next 3 months, following Protocol J".
226: we are well behind some of the east Asian nations on this, in particular Taiwan but also South Korea. They mobilised their army reserve and sent suitable soldiers into the factories to allow PPE production lines to run constantly.
222.2: I am so grateful for that damn rx. Unstructured days at home are the hardest for me.
I should say, unstructured days with kids. If I was on my own, I could happily be an unmedicated housecat for years.
228 Singapore too I think. They have national service, and had the army involved weeks ago.
226: Totally. My class action lawyer colleagues are all dropping their regular business--depositions and trials are cancelled anyway--and concentrating on ways to sue large companies about corona virus. One case was filed by passengers on a stranded cruise before they got off the ship.
226: Totally. My class action lawyer colleagues are all dropping their regular business--depositions and trials are cancelled anyway--and concentrating on ways to sue large companies about corona virus. One case was filed by passengers on a stranded cruise before they got off the ship.
173: Thanks. Macedonia conquers the world a second time.
One case was filed by passengers on a stranded cruise before they got off the ship.
From the "what a difference a week makes" files. John Scalzi on march 7th.
Another year, another JoCo Cruise! I'll be updating the site while I'm on the boat... but not a whole lot. Because I'll be busy, you know, having a vacation. And before you ask, don't worry, I'm washing my hands and the whole ship is sanitized. We'll be fine. It's you all who should be careful. I want there still to be a country when I come back, please. Thanks.
I snapped a picture at the Ft. Lauderdale airport yesterday while I was trying to head home and posted it on Twitter with the requisite snarky comment, and then it went viral (so to speak). One thing led to another and now the AP is distributing the photo. Now I have an AP photo credit to my name, which as a former full-time journalist, is kind of neat. I also talked to the AP's local reporter (Terry Spencer of the byline you see above) of the mood, etc of that very packed airport.
from the linked twitter thread.
The last of the cruises that managed to launch were returning, and their passengers were going home, and the people who has come in for their cruises only to find them cancelled were trying to get home as well.
My wife and I are expecting our first baby on April 30 . . .
Really good article from The Stranger interviewing a nurse about how labor and delivery in Seattle is affected by coronavirus concerns.
"Normally we have super minimal personal protective equipment," said the nurse I interviewed, who agreed to talk to The Stranger on condition of anonymity. "Right now we have only three days of gloves left. Because people are stealing them. People are hoarding them. That's why the government is saying: 'Please stop hoarding these. Please stop stealing these.' Because imagine delivering a baby without gloves. It's a messy business."
Before entering the hospital, people going into labor are screened by phone and asked about symptoms: Any respiratory issues? Fever? Shortness of breath? Diarrhea? Have any of their family members traveled to high-risk areas or been in contact with someone who's COVID-19 positive? If the answer is yes to any of those questions, they have to be screened in person outside of the hospital as well, where they might be met by medical staff wearing a PAPR, a negative-pressure suit that looks like a hazmat suit, or a spacesuit. "And we bring a mask for the patient," the nurse said.
...
... to allow PPE production lines to run constantly.
God forbid we should run out of cabinet ministers and fast track civil servants at this time.
Shouldn't that be a positive-pressure suit?
235: It'll be interesting to see what happens to the JoCo cruise people. It seemed massively ill-advised.
What ajay said is heartening; the government's visible response isn't inspiring, and seems a little galaxy brain. Too many people are still out and about, though. While doing a quick, necessary grocery run, I walked past a crowded gastropub yesterday. Not enough people are taking this seriously.
Are we supposed to keep people from being infected or spread it? I forget, like how the Surgeon General forgets that South Korea is a democracy.
Shouldn't that be a positive-pressure suit?
I had the same question.
217 Three months older than me, so, yes, really old.
ajay: You might be right. I -sure- hope you are. What I'd ask to discern, is how the UK compares to Italy in all the attributes you mention: does Italy not have as many medical regiments? equipment stores for their military? are there no medical-equipment plants in Italy? No light industry in the north that could have been repurposed? etc, etc, etc.
Re testing, seems like total # of tests per capita is the relevant measure? https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covid19-tests-per-million-people
And there the UK is .... #12, solidly in the pack of other European countries. I'm not saying that the UK is worse-off than other European countries. Just that, like the US, it seems on-track to replicate Italy's experience in the firestorm.
God I hope I'm wrong. Stay safe.
If your protective suit were accidentally set to negative pressure that would really suck.
244: I think part of the difference may be that Italy got hit earlier. We are where Italy was on 1 March, in terms of deaths, but we have tested twice as many people as they had by 1 March and found about 30% fewer cases than they had. (I don't think the tests-per-million metric is relevant here in assessing the size of the epidemic though it may have relevance in comparing different responses across countries.)
It's possible that British people touch each other less than Italians do.
Italy and Spain are both in bad shape, otherwise known the Axis of Dos Beses.
The governor of Pennsylvania just ordered all non-essential businesses to shut down, which is apparently a thing he can do. It's clearly the case that "essential" is poorly defined because they already closed the liquor stores.
If you die from alcohol withdrawal, I wonder if your estate can sue?
Probably not because you can now buy beer and wine in some grocery stores. And there's always vanilla extract.
Which I learned from a very special episode of Family Ties where Tom Hanks taught kids how to hide alcoholism.
Apparently, we can't even flee to Canada anymore.
Apparently, we can't even flee to Canada anymore.
Huh . . . googles . . . what I'm seeing only applies to air (and sea?) travel it looks like the border is still open (for now) for cars and trucks.
I was reading too quickly. They are exempting American people. Otherwise, you need to be Moose- born or a permanent resident.
ajay @ 201:
You rightly point out that people are sometimes too pessimistic. And you cite Soleimani/Iraq. But surely you're aware of: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-51914600
The US -is- being slowly forced-out. Or, erm, we're declaring victory and taking our toys home, take your pick.
I have a friend who pointed out back in January that most people don't understand the power of exponentials to ruin your day. A factor of two is .... a constant number of days. Re: testing, the problem is, without adequate testing -per- -capita- you don't actually know how many cases you have.
@240 and unless there's more offered to both businesses and people we aren't going to see significantly greater amounts of effort.
and so I have some of the same questions as @244 -- besides which, is there is a factory for churning out field hospitals, because even another 3000+ beds would seem to be on the low side.
Ohio primary vote is being delayed.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine wants to extend Ohio's primary election through June 2 via mail.
In-person voting in Ohio would occur on June 2. The news comes one day before Ohio's scheduled primary.
Should we keep this thread going or move to the new one for new stuff (not replies)?
Astonishing little video showing the level of social control, and coercion, needed to keep the virus down: https://youtu.be/YfsdJGj3-jM
255: We are exempting Americans for fear of US trade retaliation.
So I went early this morning with all my documents in order to get my Arrakis Medical insurance card since my employer insurance does not cover it. The person there wasn't for a good 45 minutes. Then she told me only emergencies. I explained that I have asthma and don't want to die if i get this. Then she said this was a family only facility even though there was absolutely no signage on or about the facility or on the website to indicate this. Then she said I needed a letter from my manager (?!), I showed her my Arrakis Foundation ID card. Then she disputed my address on the lease I showed her, thank god they instituted this national address program just a couple of months ago, I logged on and showed her. I persisted and blew past all her resistance and now I have my government medical insurance card. Oh, and none of the sanitizer dispensers but one had sanitizer and they're all pump action so once you touch one you really need it, and the bathroom soap dispenser was empty. I expect better here.
Then I did another big shopping. I have enough pasta on hand to open an Italian restaurant.
On an alarming note, I never got a digital thermometer, completely forgot, and now I think I may have a fever coming on but maybe that's paranoia. I have no way to tell at this point.
I need to go back out yet again tomorrow (!) to fix some work thing, is it worth going to a drugstore and buying one? Just for peace of mind. On a positive note everyone here is taking the social distancing thing very seriously and malls and shops are pretty empty.
Definitely worth getting a thermometer, I would say. It will do wonders for your peace of mind. Got myself one a couple of weeks ago.
The shops here were completely sold out of thermometers at the weekend; they may have restocked now. But my local mutual-aid-in-the-time-of-coronavirus FB group has been full of people exchanging rumors that maybe this corner shop in that distant village might still have one or two kids' ones in stock.
I'm just getting sick of all this. I'll be so glad when I can stop washing my hands.
When this is over, Moby is never going to wash his hands again.
268: Yes, that was an impressive triumph over bureaucratic obstructionism.
And yes, get a thermometer! I have something flu-y and you cannot judge these things without one. Today I'm just pouring out sweat in a 69 degree house but I have no fever at all. Two nights ago I was kind of achey and uncomfortable and was at 102.5. Going to get a flu test this morning since they don't have enough covid tests to give one to me.
264: We waited until a week ago to get a thermometer, and that's exactly what happened to us. The only ones left on Amazon were cutsie ones for children, so now when I check to see if I'm dying of the virus I get to look at an adorable frog sticking out of my mouth.
How else could one wish to go?
We have two old mercury thermometers that my wife has laid down strict rules of use for, basically only using it (and most importantly shaking it down) while sitting on the bed or the couch. Had three but one was broken about ten years ago.
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Stormcrow, geographer! What do YOU think about dams and sediment transport on the Brahmaputra?
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Peeve: Why is it always the "sickly-sweet" smell of death? When I've smelt rotting animals (almost certain it was animals all the times) it wasn't sweet at all, just sickly. Or rather, sickening.
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274: I need to read up. In general upstream dams cause "premature" deposition of sediment (delta at entrance of Lake Mead, for instance). So the downstream usually experiences greater net erosion downstream of the dam for a while and in the somewhat less deposition at the final outlet delta.On most rivers this is all complicated by removal for irrigation (or sometimes channeling).
Maybe I will read the article now ...
Stormcrow, geographer! What do YOU think about dams and sediment transport on the Brahmaputra?
Stetson!
You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
When I've smelt rotting animals (almost certain it was animals all the times) it wasn't sweet at all, just sickly. Or rather, sickening.
I smell a revolting-sweetness. (But maybe I was just primed to categorize it that way, from the phrase.)