Coronavirus

jtr1962

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In some ways, the way people are dealing with social distancing, cleaning hands and common surfaces, has been a normal for us, for at least the last few years, due to my wife's medical needs... :(
Normal for me as well since elderly people like my mother generally don't handle infections as well, even though as far as I can tell she has a great immune system. I was in the habit of washing off cans and bottles long before this happened simply because they were mostly genuinely filthy a lot of times. Washing your hands often has been another long-standing habit of mine, especially when cooking where you don't want cross-contamination between meat and vegetables.

A new habit of mine is washing my hands immediately after looking at the mail. And anything I don't need to keep goes in the paper recycling outside immediately.
 

DrunkenBastard

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Wife who had let her nursing registration lapse was called today by the state, asking if she could work, she had to explain that the reason she had let it lapse was because of her chronic condition. Registration has to be renewed every 3 years.

The problem is going to be having enough people to operate the ventilators for the critically ill when the numbers ramp up. Read something today about potentially having two people on a single machine.

They've also stopped testing in LA county and NYC because they are moving from the containment phase to the mitigation phase:
 

snowhiker

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I went out to do some grocery shopping today. I managed to get what I wanted, but had I been after TP, paper towels, wipes, hand sanitizer, etc. I wouldn't have gotten any of them. The grocery section of the superstore was hit pretty hard. Produce and fruit were nicely stocked. The rest of the store was hit hard, like the pasta, frozen food, canned food, meat, etc. Costco looked fairly well stocked from what I saw aside from virus supplies.
This pretty much echos my shopping experiences posted earlier in this thread. I haven't been back as I don't need anything.
My estimate is just 100k total reported cases in about a week. NIH estimated 70K by next Friday. Obviously the number of actual infections is some multiplier of that. Wouldn't be surprised if total number of reported infections is over 2 million by end of August. If testing becomes unrestrained by test kit supply, the reported number could be even higher.
I think we may see a leveling off of positive COVID-19 tests but that would probably be caused by the number to tests leveling off due to lack of test kits, lack of available personal and facilities to carry out test, or a reduction in testing to only severe cases only.
I called out from work yesterday because I had a cough. Nothing serious, though I did have a fever and swollen lymph nodes, and normally I'd work through it.
Take care of yourself.
They've also stopped testing in LA county and NYC because they are moving from the containment phase to the mitigation phase:
Yeah this will reduce the apparent number of new cases.

Of less importance, "Nikon USA no longer accepting equipment for repair (COVID-19)"
 

Stereodude

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Yeah that's unhinged. The bar is typically high for a president even though we are all used to a pretty low bar because of Trump. He made it about himself, not the topic at hand. The leading question and intent was a pitch to have Trump reassure the country... Yet he made it a personal vendetta to attack a reporter in his typical idiotic way serving no one but himself.

I'm pretty sure you missed the point. You may not be the type of person who can identify personality traits like narcissism so I won't hold it against you. This was to show you how a leader and a president should be responding using examples of people in the same party so that it wasn't a Dem is better than a Rep comparison. Good job missing it.

I did not make it sound like whatever you described; you're confused. None the less, you focused on the the wrong part like usual which is the example of how to be a leader and how to not be a leader. Well done.
I guess he should have pulled a Biden and asked to fight him outside. That would have been Presidential!

The question was a typical style gotcha attack question where the reporter injects their opinion into the question with the usual, "Some people say..." or "Some critics say..." while pretending to be a neutral 3rd party. The media wants the president and the country to fail. The worse it gets and the more bodies that pile up the better the figure their chances are in November. They think a bunch of dead Americans would be a small price to pay to get rid of the bad orange man. They should be treated with the disdain and scorn they so rightfully deserve. They're trying to sell panic and despair while President Trump is trying to sell cautious hope and optimism.
 

Handruin

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I guess he should have pulled a Biden and asked to fight him outside. That would have been Presidential!

The question was a typical style gotcha attack question where the reporter injects their opinion into the question with the usual, "Some people say..." or "Some critics say..." while pretending to be a neutral 3rd party. The media wants the president and the country to fail. The worse it gets and the more bodies that pile up the better the figure their chances are in November. They think a bunch of dead Americans would be a small price to pay to get rid of the bad orange man. They should be treated with the disdain and scorn they so rightfully deserve. They're trying to sell panic and despair while President Trump is trying to sell cautious hope and optimism.
I guess he should have pulled a Pence or Obama and handle the question like a mature adult rather than spout on like a 5 year old having a tantrum. If it was a gotcha question, how was it Pence answered it very well and Trump didn't?

That's quite the fantasy world you live in. None of that is accurate if you're actually paying attention. The loss of American lives will be from his own mistakes and continuing inaccurate and false claims. He's not providing optimism, he's lying to the people.
 

snowhiker

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The media wants the president and the country to fail. The worse it gets and the more bodies that pile up the better the figure their chances are in November. They think a bunch of dead Americans would be a small price to pay to get rid of the bad orange man. They should be treated with the disdain and scorn they so rightfully deserve. They're trying to sell panic and despair while President Trump is trying to sell cautious hope and optimism.

This has been the case for a long time now. The President or government does something good = boring news. Scandal = eXCiTinG sTorY! = veiwership = ratings = ad $$$. Simple economics. It's scummy, but that's the way it works now a days with the "infotainment media." Fear & Panic & Scandal & War = media $$$.

Now I'm no fan of Trump, but the media has been, "orange man bad" from day one. Has Trump done anything questionable or illegal? Maybe, but time and again, we've heard from the media, basically, "Trump's going to jail tomorrow" only to find out it's nothing, or nothing that can be proven. It's all politics.

Bottom line. Pretty much every politician and government official is dirty one way or another, it's the only way to actually get elected these days. So when a bunch of criminals, point to another criminal, well, I just don't believe them. And I don't know who to believe.
 

Stereodude

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That's quite the fantasy world you live in. None of that is accurate if you're actually paying attention. The loss of American lives will be from his own mistakes and continuing inaccurate and false claims. He's not providing optimism, he's lying to the people.
Your powers of projection are strong. What are all these mistakes that Trump in this crisis made that are costing lives? How about you give me just the top three?
 

jtr1962

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Now I'm no fan of Trump, but the media has been, "orange man bad" from day one.
The media are that way with every GOP President, although they've carried that to an extreme with Trump. What do you expect from organizations which have had a strong liberal bias for the last 50 years, if not more? If Fidel Castro suddenly rose from the grave and became President, they would be cheering him on no matter how much he damaged the country.

I'm no fan of the current GOP politics, but what the left offers often isn't any better.

Bottom line. Pretty much every politician and government official is dirty one way or another, it's the only way to actually get elected these days. So when a bunch of criminals, point to another criminal, well, I just don't believe them. And I don't know who to believe.
Add "rich person" to that list. By rich, I mean people with a net worth in the 8 figures or more. Being dirty is pretty much the only way anyone can acquire that kind of wealth. The only honest millionaires might be people who worked hard at their own business for 30 or 40 years and now are finally worth 7 figures. Anyone worth much more than that is dirty. The higher the net worth, the dirtier they are.
 

Chewy509

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It seems odd that Morisson is refusing to close schools in Australia like the rest of the world has done.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-19/coronavirus-why-is-australia-keeping-schools-open/12070702

Another item to note, is that the Australian Government is treating this (coronavirus pandemic) as a medium term issue (6-9 months), and don't want school kids to lose 6+ months of their education. (Australia is nearing the end of the first quarter of the education year, so closing schools will mean losing several months of education).
 

Tannin

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It seems odd that Morisson is refusing to close schools in Australia like the rest of the world has done. They could switch over to just being daycare for parents in critical health care jobs etc like they are doing in the UK.

Not really. It is very much in keeping with Morrison's actions right through this crisis, and through the bushfire disaster before that. His standard MO is "too little too late". Many schools are finally closing as we speak, but even now that is none of Morrison's doing. It is the state premiers who are providing the leadership once again ( just as they did during the bushfires). Tasmania closed the borders to prevent more cases coming in, NT, WA and SA have all followed. Victoria has closed all schools. Tasmania and NSW have kept them open but encouraged parents to keep the kids at home. Apparently, more than 50% of children here in Tasmania are doing the sensible thing and staying home. Meanwhile, Scotty from Marketing has, once again, done nothing but react passively to events. He is still focussed on business and the economy rather than lives, having apparently forgotten that dead people do not produce, vote, or consume.
 

snowhiker

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Canada drops out of the 2020 Olympics. Why doesn't the IOC just postpone games until summer 2021. By then, hopefully, things will be getting back to normal and hopefully the economy will be on the upswing.


Edit: Maybe Nikon can delay launch of their D6 till Feb'21 and actually update the camera!
 

Tannin

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Australia has done much the same, Snowhiker. Meanwhile, the IOC have their heads stuck firmly up their own backsides and are living in cloud-cuckoo land. There is no way the Olympics can go ahead, and hasn't been for at least a month.

WANTED: 1 plot. Lost somewhere neat Tokyo, hasn't been seen for weeks. Answers to the name "IOC".
 

Tea

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Living on 20 acres near Ranelagh, DB, five minutes out of Huonville. Been here for about a year. Our Coronavirus strategy is to stay at home seeing practically no-one and going out as little as possible - i.e., pretty much life as usual. :)
 

snowhiker

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Johns Hopkins University modified their COVID-19 update page and stripped out the Chinese specific data from the graphs as the Chinese now represent less than 25% of all confirmed cases and deaths. Unfortunately two days from now Italy will have suffered twice as many deaths as China while having less than 5% of China's population.

Maricopa county in AZ has an estimated pop of 4.4M but just 81 cases of COVID-19. While NYC (2x pop) has nearly 11,000.
 
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Stereodude

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Australia has done much the same, Snowhiker. Meanwhile, the IOC have their heads stuck firmly up their own backsides and are living in cloud-cuckoo land. There is no way the Olympics can go ahead, and hasn't been for at least a month.

WANTED: 1 plot. Lost somewhere neat Tokyo, hasn't been seen for weeks. Answers to the name "IOC".
I saw a pretty funny headline about the whole thing the other day on Yahoo. I belive it was:

Coronavirus no match for corruption of IOC
 

sedrosken

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I still don't feel significantly better, but the swelling in my lymph nodes went down, and as with yesterday and Saturday, I don't have a fever. It's just that every time I cough or sneeze feels like razorblades coming up my throat. My cough dried up, sometimes it was productive before, but that's actually more disconcerting than helpful right now. I don't miss this feeling from the last time I had it and I won't next time -- I'm still pretty sure it's just a seasonal thing, maybe my allergies getting mad at me again since it's finally getting warmer.

I'm holing up in my room regardless.
 

snowhiker

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Canada drops out of the 2020 Olympics. Why doesn't the IOC just postpone games until summer 2021.

Finally. Olympics delayed until 2021, from USA Today, "IOC member says 2020 Tokyo Olympics will be postponed because of coronavirus pandemic"
My brother is a pharmacy technician at Flushing Hospital. He said they have somewhere north of 10 cases just at his hospital. NYC is the epicenter of this for sure in the US.
Without a doubt. High population density, international city, etc, etc.
I saw a pretty funny headline about the whole thing the other day on Yahoo. I belive it was:

Coronavirus no match for corruption of IOC
Nailed it!
I still don't feel significantly better, but the swelling in my lymph nodes went down, and as with yesterday and Saturday, I don't have a fever. It's just that every time I cough or sneeze feels like razorblades coming up my throat. My cough dried up, sometimes it was productive before, but that's actually more disconcerting than helpful right now. I don't miss this feeling from the last time I had it and I won't next time -- I'm still pretty sure it's just a seasonal thing, maybe my allergies getting mad at me again since it's finally getting warmer.

I'm holing up in my room regardless.

Take care. How many days have you been sick now? Longer than a "normal flu?"
 

jtr1962

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As much as I was looking forward to the Olympics, I realized over a month ago there is NO WAY it was going to happen. Let's put aside for a moment the foolhardiness of having large crowds at a time when the pandemic will likely be peaking, or not much past its peak, in some countries. The athletes need to prepare properly, and there's no way they can do that given the current restrictions on movement. Besides that, if I were a young athlete in prime health I'm not going to risk my career for an Olympics. If you contract COVID-19, even a mild case, it might affect your lung function enough if you're at elite athlete levels to end your career.

I'm sure the Tour de France isn't going to happen this year, either, nor will any of the other classic tours. If we're lucky enough to have a vaccine within a year, and flatten the curve before that, things might finally be back to normal in the spring of 2021. I'm not seeing it happening any sooner. Despite Trump thinking we should relax the restrictions on movement after March 31, I say keep them in place at least through the end of June. If we're lucky the summer will slow the spread of the virus while existing cases recover and we'll be diligently testing lots of people so we can prevent another mass outbreak.
 
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sedrosken

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Take care. How many days have you been sick now? Longer than a "normal flu?"

Longer than a normal cold maybe, but I'm not exhibiting my normal flu-like symptoms -- I'm not lethargic at all, just sneezing my head off and hacking up a lung every three minutes. Plus, the flu knocks me flat on my ass for a week at least, so I'm still well-within that range.
 

Chewy509

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As Australia is implementing lock-down procedures, hundreds of thousands have been left without jobs in the space of less than a week...

So much so, that the Centrelink website (Centrelink = Social Services) where people can register online for unemployment benefits went offline due to load. Public information indicates the site was capable of 35K concurrent users, but usages peaked at 160K concurrent users on the first day of the lock down, as peple were being told they no longer had a job and were trying to register for benefits.

Unemployment is expected to hit 11% in the coming months (up from 3%) based on official figures.

https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/no-industry-spared-as-job-losses-soar-20200325-p54dqw
 

Newtun

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There are similar overloads of unemployment-benefit websites in the U. S. And probably in other nations.
 

snowhiker

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Spain has unfortunately seen a doubling of their fatalities from 1800 to 3600+ in 3 days. Spain has passed China in total number of COVID-19 deaths. The U.S. is currently third in the number of infections but it looks like the U.S. will pass Italy and possibly China tomorrow and have the most cases of COVID-19.
 

jtr1962

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Well over 20K confirmed cases in NYC alone but I suspect that number will pass 50K within two weeks. Being that it's likely only those who develop serious symptoms have been confirmed, probably over two million have it or have had it but did/will have mild symptoms. We still would need to flatten the curve though so the remainder of the population gets it over a period of months, rather than weeks, in order to not overwhelm hospitals. Assuming this scenario (i.e. that maybe 5 or 6 million people here get it) we'll probably have herd immunity sometime in the summer. At that point, there's no sense staying in lockdown, at least in NYC. However, it will still be making its rounds elsewhere, so travel within the US should remain highly restricted. I'm curious what the percent of mild/moderate cases will be in NYC? Being that the city is filthy, especially the subways, many of us probably have great immune systems. It wouldn't surprise me if moderate/mild cases here are well over the 95% seen elsewhere.

By the way, there's a possibility I already had it. When I went to the store on Friday March 9, a little girl coughed on me as I passed by. A few days later my urine smelled terrible, which has happened before when I've come down with something bad. Then I was nauseous for a few days, ran a low-grade fever, and had stomach discomfort. Maybe it was a mild case of COVID-19, maybe not. I appear to be better now, and my mom seems fine. Being that it seems my mom has a better immune system than me, she may well have had it and not had any symptoms. Hopefully in the coming weeks they start testing large numbers of people for antibodies. No point keeping people who already had it, and got over it, at home.
 
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time

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Actually, a stronger immune system is potentially a liability with COVID-19. It has that in common with its cousin, SARS.

It's actually an overreaction from your immune system that causes the really severe symptoms such as pneumonia and organ failure.

How fit you are or how few colds you seem to get is completely irrelevant here - no-one has any antibodies.

Remember that everyone is still catching miscellaneous respiratory and other viruses and bacterial infections. COVID won't stop people getting seasonal flu, although the personal distancing won't hurt in that regard.
 

Handruin

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A record 3.28 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week as the coronavirus pandemic shut down much of the country. The Labor Department's report Thursday was one of the first official indicators of how many people have suddenly been forced out of work nationally.

"This marks the highest level of seasonally adjusted initial claims in the history of the seasonally adjusted series," the department said. "The previous high was 695,000 in October of 1982." The Labor Department's records go back to 1967.
 

Newtun

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I've seen some reports that Germany is much better off regarding COVID-19 than other European countries, such as this one. From that:

Germany, like South Korea, has been aggressively testing its population from the outset. Aggressive testing likely will identify persons otherwise too well to come to medical attention, thereby diluting the tested pool with a large set of infected but otherwise well people who are likely to remain so.

Another report said the Germans started their aggressive testing in January.
 

jtr1962

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Testing is the key here, both to avoid spreading it, and to minimize the hit on the economy. Those who already had it and recovered can go out and about at no risk to themselves, even if they must still take precautions to keep from transmitting it to others.

As for the mortality rate, we know the numerator but really have no clear idea of the denominator. Since most of the testing has been on people who were sick enough to be admitted to hospitals, doubtless the denominator is much larger. Germany's 0.3% mortality rate might be accurate but we won't know until we test enough people.
 

Handruin

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We are going to have some serious issues in the states in the not too distant future.


The CDC normally takes the lead in outbreaks, ranging from the 2009 flu pandemic to Ebola to the lung injuries caused by vaping. Its recent absence from the national stage has led to fears that the agency's objective, science-based approach is being ignored, especially as Trump signals that he hopes to relax restrictions on social gatherings by Easter to help revive the economy.


On February 25—a day before the appointment—Dr. Messonnier warned during a regular briefing that it was only a matter of time before the pandemic began spreading in the United States and the situation could turn bad quickly. "Disruption to everyday life might be severe," she said as she urged Americans to prepare their families for those disruptions, which are now being realized.

But that frank—and demonstrably accurate and appropriate—messaging was at odds with statements from the president. Earlier that very same day, Trump said that the spread of SARS-CoV-2 is "very well under control in our country," which was untrue.
 

DrunkenBastard

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Apparently the latest corona fiscal package includes additional federal unemployment benefits of $600 per week for up to 4 months, in addition to normal state benefits. For many low level positions people may make more in unemployment benefits than they did at their prior jobs.
 

DrunkenBastard

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NYS approves two patients on one ventilator....now this didn't seem like it would work out too well to me, and apparently it won't.


Why would you potentially do harm to two patients instead of converting over the 70,000 anesthesia machines?
 

jtr1962

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The US is now at #1 in total cases, although a lot of countries are still way ahead of us in terms of cases per 1M population. Considering China has 1.4 billion people, they actually got through this fairly well.
 

Handruin

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The US is now at #1 in total cases, although a lot of countries are still way ahead of us in terms of cases per 1M population. Considering China has 1.4 billion people, they actually got through this fairly well.
This was expected given the US lack of preparedness and continued mismanagement for this event. There isn't much we can do at this point other than stay isolated as much as possible and ride out the pandemic and care for our friends and family.
 
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