Covid-19 discussion and humor thread [Was: CDC says don't touch your face to avoid Covid19...Vets to the rescue!

[Ridgewaycynic2013]

On 3/5/2020 at 9:30 AM, teef said:

i never realized how much i touch my face until recently.

Wouldn’t be necessary if we didn’t have to do so many ‘facepalms’ due to the things we read at TSW.  ?

33 minutes ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

"Home, dry, and in bed with my spouse"

Just make sure the lubricant is sterile, and that will be fine, too.

[Hapless Bills Fan]

Pretty good blog from a Public Health specialist:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cI_D3ULz6-qoBRMND8dIVz-naW92MqATphBg5bQEIjg/preview?fbclid=IwAR1WG7PEWYXDd68Mbhdn46n_ZfReXDkr6GKEFSl8xVGBNdDK6GWEhhCQEfE

 

Key points:

-Don’t pick your nose. Or put your fingers in your mouth, on your lips, or in your eyes. Surface contact works like this: you touch something dirty. Maybe it's an elevator button. Virus sticks to your hands. Then you rub your eye. Then you touch your sandwich, and put the sandwich in your mouth. Now there is virus in your eyes and mouth. See?  You may be thinking, but I don’t pick my nose because I am an adult! An observational study found that people sitting at a desk working touched their eyes, nose, or lips between 3 and 50 times per hour. Perfectly normal grown-ups, not lowlifes like my friends.

-Coronavirus does not appear to be airborne in the sense that doesn't remain floating around freely in the air for a long time, like measles does. You are probably not going to breathe it in, unless someone is coughing in front of you. If someone is coughing in your face, feel free to tell them to get their ass home and move 6 feet away from them. (Yeah I know, if you have a toddler, you're screwed.)

-Face masks should not be worn by the public right now, unless you are the person who is sick and you're on your way to or actually at the doctor's office. The mask’s function is to prevent spit from flying out of your mouth and landing on things when you cough or sneeze. It flies out of your mouth and is caught in the mask instead. If you are the person who is sick and not on the way to the doctor, go home. Let the people who really need them have the masks. Like doctors. 

 

Hap sez: I have actually heard reports of masks being stolen from hospitals, so that nurses actually caring for sick patients don't have them.  I hope the low-lifes who stole those masks rot and burn in Hell if that's true.  All that aside, if I were an immunocompromised or otherwise high risk person who had to travel or go out in public right now (to the Dr say), I would want a mask if I could get one.  Even a paper surgical mask has value IMO in that if the guy next to you does sneeze, it keeps the droplets off your nose and mouth and it provides a physical barrier that keeps you from touching your nose and mouth unawares.

 

One of the stupidest things I ever saw in my life was a friend of a friend, at a Thanksgiving gathering where she should probably not have been due to being immunocompromised, with a paper mask over her face.  That wasn't the stupidest thing, we all need social contact.  She had cut a hold in the mask so she could insert a straw and drink. 

 

[whatdrought]

On 3/5/2020 at 9:30 AM, teef said:

i never realized how much i touch my face until recently.

We realized... it’s just uncomfortable... 

[Cripple Creek]

1 hour ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

"Home, dry, and in bed with my spouse"

Have you EVER stayed at a Holiday Inn Express?

[Pine Barrens Mafia]

4 hours ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

This may not be the place to put this, but after the humor above: there is so much bull#### about Covid19 going around that I feel the need to share some actual straight info with my homies here especially since I'm getting requests in PM.  Questions will be answered with references or to the best of my ability***.  Bullcrap Youtube videos starting out "Cathedral of Misogyny" will be shot into space.  Political conspiracy theories, whinging about how "media panic" is the problem and it's really just flu will follow out the airlock.  There's a thread in PPP for that.  Further humor in decent taste is welcome.

 

Its. An. Illness.  It doesn't care about your politics or your religious beliefs.  It will follow well-understood patterns of spread, and can be contained by well-known strategies.

 

There is substantive evidence that "community transmission" of Covid19 is taking place in Washington State, with an initial case of someone who flew back from Wuhan in mid-January before the shutdown of the city. (Trevor Bedford is professor at Fred Hutch virology institute and knows his *****).  Anyone want to bet the rent that if there's community spread in Snohomish, Washington originating from travel mid-December to mid-January, there is not already community spread elsewhere in the country?  I don't.  (Yes, there are caveats here, but do we really want to bet the low probabilities vs an emerging epidemic, or do we want to test and find out?)

 

Why don't we know that there's community transmission underway all over the country?  Until this week, testing was 100% focused on returning travel from known infected places because the "case definition" included these.  Seriously.  If you hadn't traveled but had symptoms, you couldn't be tested (except apparently by a bunch of rogue Fred Hutch researchers who had already collected flu samples, apparently).  Meanwhile, places we once scorned as 2nd rate like Taiwan "get it": "Furthermore, they proactively sought out patients with severe respiratory symptoms based on records in the national health insurance (something which all developed countries can deploy with relative ease, with the notable exception of the US [my note: but we could still do it, just harder])."  Meanwhile, In US, people in hospital with severe respiratory symptoms who tested negative for flu were NOT being tested for Covid19.  Even a nurse who became ill with respiratory symptoms AFTER CARING FOR A KNOWN COVID19 PATIENT in CA struggled to get tested - and this is a critical test, because if a HCP falls ill caring for a patient, it's a Red Alert that the infection control protocol needs revision.  That nurse shoulda been first in line for a test.

The second reason is maths - if one is dealing with a disease where the vast majority of those infected have a mild form easily mistaken for seasonal flu, community spread will easily pass unnoticed until enough people get sick that a cluster of cases with severe illness show up at the hospital in need of treatment AND ARE TESTED.  That can take ~a month and has an element of chance (one of the sick people has a relative in a nursing home and visits regularly vs. the sick person lives in a town of 30,000 college students who might all get sick, but are at low risk to become severely ill). 

Why do we care about containing this disease if 80% of those who contract it have only mild symptoms, another 15% have a severe flu-like illness requiring treatment for weeks, and only 5% become severely ill and require artificial ventilation?  Again, maths: If too many people fall ill at once, it pushes the healthcare system to failure point.  Covid19 infected people who need the highest level of care won't be able to get it because equipment, beds, and skilled HCP will simply not be available.  (This is one reason why the initial fatality rate in Wuhan was so high, 5.8% - they ran out of equipment and beds to care for the most seriously ill).  People who need care for other reasons will not be able to get high-quality care: be sure to schedule your heart attack or your child's meningitis accordingly.

 

Why should we worry about the disease - it seems it's already declining in China and never took off in Taiwan as predicted?  It's declining in China because they got to grips with the problem.  China instituted a very aggressive and effective set of disease control strategies.  From this reddit which is an accurate bullet-point summary of an international WHO team that visited China:

"One of the important reasons for containing the outbreak is that China is interviewing all infected people nationwide about their contact persons and then tests those. There are 1,800 teams in Wuhan to do this, each with at least 5 people. But the effort outside of Wuhan is also big. In Shenzhen, for example, the infected named 2,842 contact persons, all of whom were found, testing is now completed for 2,240, and 2.8% of those had contracted the virus. In Sichuan province, 25,493 contact persons were named, 25,347 (99%) were found, 23,178 have already been examined and 0.9% of them were infected. In the province of Guangdong, 9,939 contacts were named, all found, 7,765 are already examined and 4.8% of them were infected."    Likewise, Taiwan was very proactive in implementing effective disease control strategies in a matter-of-fact way that did not cause public panic.

Bottom line: the disease is genuinely declining in China, but it's not because it's a "paper tiger" just seasonally going away as a threat, it's because China is taking proactive and effective disease control strategies and has tested and implemented the most effective disease treatments nationwide.  The overall death rate in China is now <1%, but that's not because the disease isn't significantly more serious than flu - by reliable accounts, it is - it's because China is now pursuing aggressive disease testing to keep outbreaks within the limits the health care system can treat, and has done a lot of work testing and developing more effective disease treatment protocols that are now implemented nationwide.  China can now produce 1.6 million test kits for the novel coronavirus per week that delivers a result on the same day.  Across the country, anyone who goes to the doctor with a fever is screened for the virus.

 

We can do this.  But we aren't.  You want to keep your Grandma or Gramps or heart disease suffering, immunocompromised friend or loved one alive, call your Congresscritters and Senators and ask why China can produce 1.6 million test kits a day and proactively test everyone with fever to determine the scope of the disease, while we're still worrying about where ya traveled recently and we aren't testing.  Demand that we drive response to this disease with science and proven epidemiology not political appointees. 

 

***ability and disclaimer.  I have a doctorate in biochemistry and spent a decade doing research at a major med school and a decade in pharma R&D including work on vaccines.  I am neither a virologist nor an epidemiologist by training, I believe my training and background enable me to "get" both.  Substantive correction and contribution by trained virologists and infectious disease specialists welcome.

 

Amazing how effective things can be when a totalitarian state gets involved.

[Hapless Bills Fan]

4 hours ago, Joe in Winslow said:

Amazing how effective things can be when a totalitarian state gets involved.

 

Eh, PRC stumbled a bit early on.

 

Taiwan has probably done the best job of reacting to and effectively containing the virus.

They're not only a democratic, Constitutional government, they had an election in January.  74.9% turnout.

 

Singapore has also done very well.  Parlimentary democracy with a gov't roughly analogous to GB

 

Please don't make this about politics.  It's about leveraging a century of learnings about epidemiology and public health, and employing effective strategies other countries have used here. 

 

 

 

[bbb]

On 3/5/2020 at 9:30 AM, teef said:

i never realized how much i touch my face until recently.

 

I think it must be a symptom of the Coronavirus - I keep touching my face!

[Hapless Bills Fan]

Oooooh Burrrrrn!    I think a lot of the Bills players I might say this about so I don't want to draw the analogy....

 

[Pine Barrens Mafia]

17 minutes ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

Eh, PRC stumbled a bit early on.

 

Taiwan has probably done the best job of reacting to and effectively containing the virus.

They're not only a democratic, Constitutional government, they had an election in January.  74.9% turnout.

 

Singapore has also done very well.  Parlimentary democracy with a gov't roughly analogous to GB

 

Please don't make this about politics.  It's about leveraging a century of learnings about epidemiology and public health, and employing effective strategies other countries have used here. 

 

 

 

 

How do you propose we lock down entire cities in a free society?

[Hapless Bills Fan]

42 minutes ago, Joe in Winslow said:

How do you propose we lock down entire cities in a free society?

 

Neither Taiwan nor Singapore locked down entire cities.  They didn't even close schools.

Locking down an entire city should not be necessary if the disease is known to be present and effective early containment measures are taken such as identifying as many people who are ill as possible, quarantining them, and contact tracing/testing/quarantining as necessary (We are not doing this.  We are focused on returning travelers and are assuming there is no community transmission ongoing from previous returnees in Dec/early Jan.  We are also telling people with symptoms but no "known contact" with a traveler or ill person they need not be tested unless they are at higher risk for severe disease.)

 

On the other hand, shutting down entire regions is what Italy is doing right now because they let the situation get out of control.  "Free societies" typically take emergency measures when needed.  (We had travel restrictions in the US during WWII.  And internments.)  Will Italy pull it off?  Stay tuned.
"The coronavirus has already inflicted serious damage in Italy, one of the Continent’s most fragile economies. It has led to the closing of all of the country’s schools and, by Saturday, it had infected the leader of one of the two parties in the governing coalition.

The measures will turn stretches of Italy’s wealthy north — including the economic and cultural capital of Milan and landmark tourist destinations such as Venice — into quarantined enclaves. Mr. Conte did not say how long the restrictions would last, but an earlier draft weighed by the government on Saturday night said the decree would be in force until at least April 3. The travel bans will prevent the free movement of roughly 16 million people."

 

Then there's this in a city near me:

-patient returning from Italy goes to hospital Friday for testing.  She is asked to self-quarantine and have parents/sister self-quarantine pending result

-father and patient's sister go to father-daughter school dance on Saturday just as positive test result is communicated (whoopsie)

-entire school is now closed down

https://fox2now.com/news/woman-who-tested-positive-for-covid-19-coronavirus-is-sister-of-villa-duchesne-student-school-to-close-on-monday/

 

 

 

[Poleshifter]

I saw an ad in a health magazine for a device called the CopperZap for $69.95.

 

It is a piece of pure copper. They claim that swabbing each nostril for 60 seconds will kill off any viruses present.

 

Hapless, any thoughts on this "copper kills viruses" info?

 

I have some leftover copper wire which I may fashion into something like this. 

 

[bbb]

10 minutes ago, Poleshifter said:

I saw an ad in a health magazine for a device called the CopperZap for $69.95.

 

I'm selling them for an even $69....

[Gray Beard]

I find it disheartening that there have not been any federal government public service announcements that give out useful advice. It’s as if the government is hoping this whole thing blows over without significant damage to the economy. If advice such as no unnecessary travel, stay home if you’re sick, wash your hands, etc. was presented as a federal government PSA, it might help to reduce the impact.  However, such statements would definitely have a negative impact on economic growth, and that is perceived as a problem, especially in an election year. 
 

Edit:  I just saw an announcement warning people with compromised immune systems to avoid cruises. I guess that’s a start. 

Edited March 9, 2020 by Gray Beard

[row_33]

Asked why this person at the store was buying 200 bottles of anti-bacterial hand stuff to combat a virus.

 

 

Edited March 9, 2020 by row_33

[Hapless Bills Fan]

1 hour ago, Poleshifter said:

I saw an ad in a health magazine for a device called the CopperZap for $69.95.

 

It is a piece of pure copper. They claim that swabbing each nostril for 60 seconds will kill off any viruses present.

 

Hapless, any thoughts on this "copper kills viruses" info?

 

I have some leftover copper wire which I may fashion into something like this. 

 

 

Play the flute over the virus, that should work about as well. 

 

Look, even if the copper swabby thing works.... it will only kill any virus that is lingering at the nostril depth you swab.  The minute you inhale some virus or insert it into your nostrils (you know what you do), mouth or eyes, it will start migrating into your body.  Virus will not hang around swab-deep in your nose.  And cut your nostrils by sticking a piece of metal inside them, you've just created a door for easy viral entry.

 

You need to wash or sanitize your hands, and swab down surfaces you or others touch with dirty hands. 

If you don't do that, sticking a piece of copper wire up your nose at intervals won't protect you from any virus you inhale or carry to your eyes, nose, and mouth the rest of the time.

 

I'd invest that $69.95 in disinfectant wipes and a bottle of high-proof vodka and aloe vera gel, myself.   Maybe get two bottles, one for you and one to mix with the gel and make hand sanitizer.

 

Note that people do develop sensitivities to metals, including copper.

 

1 hour ago, Gray Beard said:

I find it disheartening that there have not been any federal government public service announcements that give out useful advice. It’s as if the government is hoping this whole thing blows over without significant damage to the economy. If advice such as no unnecessary travel, stay home if you’re sick, wash your hands, etc. was presented as a federal government PSA, it might help to reduce the impact.  However, such statements would definitely have a negative impact on economic growth, and that is perceived as a problem, especially in an election year. 
 

Edit:  I just saw an announcement warning people with compromised immune systems to avoid cruises. I guess that’s a start. 

 

Yes, the difference in governmental responses is pretty striking. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcJDpV-igjs&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR1rqO_-f64mYXVFY4n0FpP4NnHdCdVlgZC6u7_WZIPiIZvi2qzagNKv4b4

 

[Hapless Bills Fan]

1 hour ago, row_33 said:

Asked why this person at the store was buying 200 bottles of anti-bacterial hand stuff to combat a virus.

 

I'm not sure what anti-bacterial hand stuff you mean, but standard alcohol-based hand sanitizers and standard disinfectant wipes should (very high confidence) be effective against Covid19.  Coronaviri are way easier to kill off than Noroviri

[Hardhatharry]

My buddy and his family are going on a 5 day cruise in 3 weeks... Wonder what things will look like then.

 

I am supposed to take them there and drop them off.

Edited March 9, 2020 by Hardhatharry

[Hapless Bills Fan]

17 minutes ago, Hardhatharry said:

My buddy and his family are going on a 5 day cruise in 3 weeks... Wonder what things will look like then.

 

I am supposed to take them there and drop them off.

 

You couldn’t pay me enough to get me on a cruise ship right now.

[teef]

8 hours ago, Hardhatharry said:

My buddy and his family are going on a 5 day cruise in 3 weeks... Wonder what things will look like then.

 

I am supposed to take them there and drop them off.

a rep from the cdc just told people to avoid cruises.  not an official statement, but rather a, "if you were smart, you'd avoid a cruise" type statement.

[row_33]

9 hours ago, Hapless Bills Fan said:

 

I'm not sure what anti-bacterial hand stuff you mean, but standard alcohol-based hand sanitizers and standard disinfectant wipes should (very high confidence) be effective against Covid19.  Coronaviri are way easier to kill off than Noroviri

That’s product advertising you are parroting 

 

the FDA again has asked them to stop making up an ad pitch to hawk the product against reality

 

It’s a virus, not a bacteria

 

having dealt with both, the bacteria is far more lethal but you have drugs to take, for the virus you sit and wait cause they can’t do anything for it and “there’s a lot of it going around”

Edited March 9, 2020 by row_33