Novel Coronavirus COVID-19

[Libby1]

2 hours ago, Happy Lemming said:

I've got three more N95 masks that only have some light wear from when I was polishing marble, does anyone know if I can re-use them??  Perhaps blow the marble dust out of them with my air compressor??

Please and thank you.

I read that they're effective for up to 8 hours and can be used intermittently ...so that if you were in a supermarket for about 30 minutes then you could wear the same mask for several trips.  Sorry to not post a link, but the delays it causes are a pain.  The CDC has guidance about this which I think is aimed at professionals rather than laypeople.  It talks a lot about the shortages of these masks and the need to prioritise their use for those professionals most exposed to infection.  If you google "cdc extended use of respirators" that should take you to the relevant advice.  If they're used intermittently then obviously that creates a potential problem in that you'll be touching the mask more.   I would just go ahead and blow the marble dust out and reuse it.  I got mine from Amazon - from China.  They were in sealed packets and they arrived pretty quickly.

Edited March 29, 2020 by Libby1

[Ellener]

19 hours ago, Happy Lemming said:

A relative of my girlfriend passed away, recently.  It was natural causes and was expected (not related to the Coronavirus).  Her daughter is doing a virtual funeral (Monday) on "Zoom" so everyone can pay their respects and still social distance/shelter in place. 

I recently set up "Zoom" on my computer for my girlfriend to use with her doctor, but now she can attend the virtual funeral, as well.

Sorry for your loss.

I just attended  church service on Zoom and it worked pretty well.

[Piddy]

I know someone who travels a lot overseas for his job.  When he came back he was required to self quarantine for 14 days.  His wife sent him to the basement for the 14 days.  Fed him thru the doggy door for the 14 days.   He asked to come out early and the wife said no way.   He made it the 14 days unscathed.  Bored as hell , but safe.

Edited March 29, 2020 by Piddy

[CautiouslyOptimistic]

6 minutes ago, Piddy said:

I know someone who travels a lot overseas for his job.  When he came back he was required to self quarantine for 14 days.  His wife sent him to the basement for the 14 days.  Fed him thru the doggy door for the 14 days.   He asked to come out early and the wife said no way.   He made it the 14 days unscathed.  Bored as hell , but safe.

HOpe there was a bathroom and internet access down there!

[Piddy]

3 minutes ago, CautiouslyOptimistic said:

HOpe there was a bathroom and internet access down there!

Yup, he had those.  He's well off.  So the isolation wasn't that hard.  The being fed thru the doggy door was the funniest for me.  No early pardon.   Served the full 14 days.  His wife was tough.  Good for her.

Edited March 29, 2020 by Piddy

[FMW]

A friend of mine is selling her house and they are having in-person showings.  I seriously don't think having strangers in your home is a great idea right now, who knows what they might touch or cough or sneeze on.  But she's always ran full speed ahead into whatever she is focused on at the moment.  Her County has a Stay at Home Order in place, but from what I found out by googling it looks like most places are exempting Real Estate showings as long as they are limited to one potential buyer at a time.    

[FMW]

5 hours ago, Azincourt said:

youngest person in Europe to die

An infant has died in the State of Illinois.

[littleblackheart]

19 hours ago, lana-banana said:

Greatest nation my ass. 

It's the same in other 'civilised' countries too, tbf. My logical brain says no country could have been adequately prepared for a pandemic of this scale. 

 

But the US and the UK deserve special mention in the unpreparedness stake by very obviously choosing one way at least in the beginning (also known as 'the economy') while most other countries went the other way (ie prioritising people). It's not a political problem at this point, it's a moral problem (imo).

 

 

I worry that post-pandemic, there will be a lot of PTSD among medics. My best friend is a medic, and every day she goes into work petrified of getting the virus (she thinks she is guaranteed to eventually get it) and / or pass it on to a loved one. All her work right now has been consumed with c19 stuff; that's all she deals with. Her usually fun-loving personality has been completely taken over by anxiety and helplessness. 

 

 

 

Edited March 29, 2020 by littleblackheart

[jah526]

About the masks - be careful when removing them. There are videos out there about proper removal. Basically you have to assume the entire outside surface is covered with virus, and you have to avoid touching it. I think the initial recommendation against using them was due to the fact that most people don’t know how to use them properly, and will end up contaminating themselves through adjustment and improper removal.

[Philosopher]

What I am shocked by is just how badly prepared most western countries seem to have been for this pandemic. It seems that a pandemic was inevitable sooner or later, so you would have thought wealthy western countries would have prepared for it. Just how hard can it be for governments to stockpile stuff like PPE and ventilators and prepare facilities for testing. I might be wrong but a lot of this stuff such as face masks does not even seem to be that expensive, so it might not have even cost that much in the long run.

[justwhoiam]

7 hours ago, Happy Lemming said:

Not in this case, she had a long drawn out debilitating illness.  Her heart finally gave out, it was very much expected.

This was not a case of coronavirus.

Again, you can't know without a swab. Because an infection might have accelerated the death. In which case, the cause of death would be the infection, not the debilitating illness.

[justwhoiam]

1 hour ago, FMW said:

An infant has died in the State of Illinois.

It looks like that's the second case of an infant dying from Covid 19. A 10-month old baby died in China.

A 16 year old healthy girl from Paris died in France. Julie at first was just coughing, for around a week. She had taken cough syrup and had used a nebulizer. Then she experienced shortness of breath, nothing apparently serious. After seeing her family doctor, she was admitted to hospital. A TC to her lungs revealed problems. In the night, respiratory failure happened, and she was moved to a pediatric hospital in Paris. A first swab resulted negative. The next day, that was corrected: the swab was positive. The girl was intubated when she was already unconscious and in a few hours she died.

[NuevoYorko]

7 hours ago, gaius said:

But what they're conveniently forgetting is that in the early stages of this pandemic the only thing liberal news sites were talking about was how wrong China was for enforcing travel restrictions, how quarantines have a long and racist history. How we instead needed a civil rights based approach to the problem that focused on education. Well, they got what they wanted and now we're about to become the new epicenter of the pandemic.

 

I actually read what many of you consider to be "FAKE NEWS," for example the New York Times and The Lancet, consistently.  I have no recollection of either carrying stories about racism / quarantine / civil rights.  Both published reports about the Novel Coronavirus in early January for sure (I just looked back) and maybe earlier.  Neither mentioned civil rights, racism, education, etc.  They've continued coverage consistently and I have not seen that angle.

 

 

[Tamfana]

Why does anyone claim "fake news!" any more?  Trump explained to Leslie Stahl of 60 minutes that his “fake news” accusation is BS, to con the public: “I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you.”

Edited March 29, 2020 by Tamfana

[Marc878]

Fake news is a fact and has been around forever.

Nothing new here. I doubt anyone is naive enough to not realize that.

[justwhoiam]

I don't like the arrogance of those media claiming "we know better". I much prefer those that are cautious with any information and add things  like "it's being investigated" "it seems that", "studies suggest", etc. Like how long the virus stays on surfaces...

The CDC has recently issued the following clarification:

"A recent documented SARS-CoV-2 RNA was found on surfaces in cruise ship cabins up to 17 days after cabins were vacated on the Diamond Princess, before disinfection occurred. Live, infectious virus was NOT found. The authors’ finding does not indicate SARS-CoV-2 was transmitted from these surfaces."

And I'm suspicious - like many others - about quick (faster than light) statements on how the virus is undoubtedly not man-made. Those statements were out right away, without any direct verification and based on Chinese sources. We have people manipulating DNA and RNA, I wouldn't be surprised about people manipulating sources/documents. I'm wondering how any serious scientist/biologist/virologist can vouch anything done by someone else in a foreign country (thousands of miles away) where political censorship is the norm. I'm not into any conspiracy theory or anything, I simply think that shouldn't be dismissed. I know a team of scientists tried to prove the virus certainly came from nature, but we also have other scientists claiming otherwise. I'm not a scientist and I think both sides need to be equally considered for now.

From Asia Times:

Quote

 

National Taiwan University has claimed the highly infectious virus could be “synthetic” in nature, or man-made. 

“Researchers likely synthesized the Covid-19, although more studies are needed to be certain,” NTU professor Fang Chi-tai told a forum on disease control and prevention in Taipei held by the Taiwan Public Health Association earlier this month.

During his presentation, Fang outlined several hypotheses raised by Taiwanese and overseas researchers, including the probability that the virus was “man-made” and was leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology due to gross mismanagement.

Fang said the Wuhan facility’s biosafety level-4 laboratory was used to store, handle and research samples of SARS, Ebola and other deadly infectious viruses.

“Given China’s poor track record of lab safety management, including a leakage of the SARS virus at a state lab in 2004, it is possible that a virus escaped from the Wuhan facility and resulted in the epidemic,” Fang was quoted by Taiwan’s Central News Agency and the Taipei Times as saying. 

He added that analyses of the Covid-19 virus have shown that it had a 96% genetic similarity with an RaTG13 bat virus also stored at the institute, and that the Covid-19 could be “manufactured” by modifying the RaTG13 virus.

Fang also revealed that French researchers had discovered four more amino acids in the gene sequence of Covid-19 than other known coronaviruses, which could be added artificially to make the viral transmission easier.

Fang’s theory is that natural mutations of viruses will only result in small, singular changes, and it is suspicious to see a naturally mutated virus suddenly take on four amino acids.

Determining the source of the virus would have important implications for epidemiology, he added, saying that if the virus was indeed synthetic, then it could be easier for it to be eradicated. 

Meanwhile, Taiwan’s top research institute Academia Sinica said its researchers had already developed an antibody testing method for Covid-19 infection and made encouraging progress in synthesizing remdesivir, a medicine that many believe could cure the infection.

Taiwan’s Center for Disease Control on Tuesday sent serum samples from three people who had contact with Taiwan’s first Covid-19 fatality to the Academia Sinica, as part of a joint effort to determine the source of that infection and if the three had developed antibodies. The initial tests showed that only one sample had antibodies for Covid-19 and SARS.

The sample was obtained from a Taiwanese businessperson who was not listed as a confirmed case, as researchers believed his immune system had beaten the virus. Yet the institute said it was still a mystery whether a person who had recovered from a novel coronavirus infection could contract it again. 

 

Another team at Taiwan’s Institute of Chemistry has also succeeded in synthesizing 100mg of remdesivir. 

The synthesized drug cannot be used without the consent of a US pharmaceutical firm that manufactures remdesivir. It was reported that Taiwan was negotiating a technology transfer deal to start mass production of the antiviral drug. 

Remdesivir is a novel drug developed by the California-based Gilead Sciences as a treatment for Ebola virus and Marburg virus infections, and it has subsequently been found to show antiviral activity against other viruses.

Based on its success against other coronavirus infections, Gilead provided remdesivir to physicians that treated an American patient infected with Covid-19 and was offering the compound to China for a pair of trials in infected individuals with and without severe symptoms. 

The mystery of how and where the virus started may take longer to discover than the cure.

 

 

Edited March 29, 2020 by justwhoiam

[gaius]

52 minutes ago, NuevoYorko said:

I actually read what many of you consider to be "FAKE NEWS," for example the New York Times and The Lancet, consistently.  I have no recollection of either carrying stories about racism / quarantine / civil rights.  Both published reports about the Novel Coronavirus in early January for sure (I just looked back) and maybe earlier.  Neither mentioned civil rights, racism, education, etc.  They've continued coverage consistently and I have not seen that angle.

Perhaps like most people you breezed over a lot of the coronavirus articles until recently. Here are a few examples of the attitudes common on liberal sites in late January/early February. NYTimes included.

https://www.vox.com/2020/2/7/21126758/coronavirus-xenophobia-racism-china-asians

"While some efforts to contain the virus seem fairly practical — like the suspension of flights to mainland China — others seem to be unfairly targeting Asian people. Australia is quarantining people who’ve recently been to China’s Hubei province, many of whom are of Asian descent, on an offshore island."

https://slate.com/technology/2020/01/coronavirus-2019-ncov-china-quarantine.html

"Many of China’s actions to date are overly aggressive and ineffective in quelling the emerging outbreak." "What does work are lawful, ethical, and human rights-based interventions that entail public health powers that are tailored to specific risks and encourage people to voluntarily comply where possible to accomplish legitimate, communal objectives."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/22/world/asia/coronavirus-quarantines-history.html

"Historians have noted that quarantines have often targeted marginalized populations. During the plague epidemic of the 14th century, European city-states posted armed guards on roads and access points to keep out merchants, people with leprosy and minority groups such as Jews, according to Eugenia Tognotti, a researcher in Italy who has written on the history of quarantine. And during a wave of cholera outbreaks in Europe in the 1830s, Naples restricted the movement of prostitutes and beggars, who were thought to be carriers of the contagion, she wrote."

I don't read the lancet so I can't comment on that site, but that was basically the attitude I saw from the liberal left. And it's the same attitude a lot of the public health officials are still clinging on to even as it becomes clear as day apparent that travel restrictions are one of the most effective tools in fighting the virus.

 

 

[Happy Lemming]

1 hour ago, justwhoiam said:

Again, you can't know without a swab. Because an infection might have accelerated the death. In which case, the cause of death would be the infection, not the debilitating illness.

You seem argumentative and want to have the last word.  I am only responding so other readers of this thread won't be confused.  The woman in question had a long term debilitating illness that is fatal 100% of the time.  Everyone knew the end was near and all were prepared for it. She exhibited no signs of coronavirus and died peacefully as her heart gave out. 

I do want to thank those posters that assisted me with setting up "Zoom" on my computer.  Initially, it was to be used so my girlfriend could converse with her doctors/therapist while "Sheltering in Place".  My girlfriend was contacted about this upcoming "Virtual" funeral on "Zoom", so "Zoom" will be performing that task, as well. 

The daughter wanted to have a funeral for her mother and saw this as a way so relatives (near and far) could attend without the risk of travel or exposure to the coronavirus. 

[Happy Lemming]

President Trump just extended Federal Social Distancing guidelines to April 30.

[gaius]

5 hours ago, Libby1 said:

Yeah, I've been totally ignoring that "expert" advice about masks being ineffective.  I don't care how arrogant and superior a tone they adopt when they give it, and although I have a bit more concern about people smirking at me for wearing one in an area where it just isn't done, I will wear a mask anyway when I go to the supermarket.  The experts' primary concern is about ensuring that there are enough supplies of these items for health workers...but trying to con us into believing that we oughtn't wear them is a real dick move.  A lot of us have to look after vulnerable people who will become another problem for health workers if we fall sick.

I hope there's some sort of ulterior motive involved. That they really know the truth and are just lying to try and protect supplies for health care workers. But at this point I'm not so sure. The people formulating our response to this whole thing might just really be that stupid.

[carhill]

 

[CautiouslyOptimistic]

4 hours ago, Tamfana said:

Why does anyone claim "fake news!" any more?  Trump explained to Leslie Stahl of 60 minutes that his “fake news” accusation is BS, to con the public: “I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you.”

Fake news to me is when the content of the article doesn't match the sensationalized/fake headline.  And it happens all the damn time and people don't do their own research to find the truth.

[CautiouslyOptimistic]

6 hours ago, FMW said:

An infant has died in the State of Illinois.

Just saw a pic on Facebook tonight of a young friend of mine snuggling with the brand new infant nephew of her girlfrend (so she was also snuggling the newborn).  I do not get this.  Why are the parents allowing visitors to see their newborn baby???

[amaysngrace]

It saddens me to think that so many in our nation are so weak that they can’t even adapt for two weeks.  

It’s pretty pathetic when you think about it.

[Ellener]

8 hours ago, jah526 said:

I think the initial recommendation against using them was due to the fact that most people don’t know how to use them properly, and will end up contaminating themselves through adjustment and improper removal.

yes, it's the same with gloves, I can't tell you how many times I've talked to staff in nursing homes over the years about putting on a pair of gloves then going from task to task where without the gloves they would have washed hands between tasks! One of the stores here was handing out gloves this weekend but if people touch surfaces then their eyes/nose it's no different.

The masks are meant to be changed regularly ( between each patient for nurses ) and one of the reasons people were asked not to use them routinely was if everyone stockpiles them there aren't enough in the supply chain for the people who are treating the sick.

I do think there's a comfort effect in feeling like 'we're doing something protective', but it's best to just stay home or six feet away from others when outside for now.

Stores here are now trying to facilitate that distance with signs everywhere and ground markers.