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The, you know......virus


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If one more person....just one; comes in and starts in on what all's gonna happen; I swear I'll either overdose on a bottle of Germ-X or throw myself out the window (even if it is only a one-story building). :spaz:

(Not that I, myself, haven't already mentioned every possible dire consequence in the world 'til my other half finally told me to shut up.) 

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Not to minimize the effect on those who have contracted the disease, but it does seem a little overblown.   From what I understand, this is a very nasty flu bug that if not treated aggressively can turn to pneumonia pretty quickly.   The transmission rate is equivalent to the flu.   Is my understanding correct?

But I look at the numbers and I don't get it.   California has 40 million (give or take) residents.   We have about 250 confirmed cases.   Yet they are shutting down everything.  No church, no sports, no events, nothing can happen if more than 200 people are going to get together.   Because 250 people got the flu.

Maybe I am just not seeing this the right way.   If I am offensive, it is not my intention, but I don't see the end of the world happening, unless it is because our reaction to this disease leads to it.

Tom
Modesto, CA

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1.  The transmission rate is several times higher than the flu.

2.  No one has a  natural immunity since it's a new bug

3.  There is no vaccine for another year or two

4.  The mortality rate is somewhere between 10 to 30 times higher than the flu.

5.  The 250 positives is illusory since many sick people have yet to be tested.

Tom, I hope you're right, but it doesn't look good.

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1 hour ago, Gail in Virginia said:

Ever since this started, I have wondered if Chaz, Janitor Bob's friend that stands on the corner and drinks warm Corona, has anything to do with it.  I don't know about drinking corona warm - does that cause disease?

I prefer Dos XX.

 

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I guess I am just so jaded in this information age that we live in.   I see everyone in the media (all media, internet, tv, radio) trying to get attention, so that I don't know if I believe any of it.   I think of SARS, which was going to wipe us out.   Before that was MERS.   Before that Ebola.   The list goes on and on.

When you say the mortality rate is 10 to 30 times higher, I thought I heard it was 3%.   I know that is not good, but the flu is like 1/10 of one percent.   

I have a lot of faith that our medical facilities will find the best way to treat and control this virus, just like they did with AIDS.   When that one broke out, it was like a death sentence.   Now it is able to be medically managed and people live a long time with that disease.   I am sure in a year or two, this will be another virus that we will find a way to control.

Not saying we don't need to be careful, and wash our hands, and take precautions, but I am not rushing to Costco to get a pallet of toilet paper.

Tom
Modesto, cA

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There were a lot of deaths from AIDS before we had time to develop a protocol of anti-viral drugs, and we slowed the spread by safe sex, getting bleeding athletes out of the arena, and other lifestyle changes. Only now are we seeing a vaccine, and it's been around since the early 1980s. Without hand washing, social distancing, no hand shaking, etc., we will not slow the spread of the corona virus. It lives for hours on surfaces, so that paperwork we handle (how can I sanitize paper without the print running?), the desk or light switch we touch,  etc., can be deadly to an old lady like me with type 2 diabetes. Look at Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson and they're a decade younger than I am. Our medical facilities cannot treat (there is no cure) or control this virus. If they have enough respirators, they might be able to keep some of us old people alive long enough for our bodies to recover.

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Since I work at home, I am definitely more worried about having people come in now with my husband's heart problems. He is normally the one that helps them sign, but I am rethinking it.I am  either going to have to do it myself and make it fast or hope that they will pick them up and email the signature forms or drop them in my dropbox.They love to talk to him and he loves to talk, but I think that things will have to change and hope that it's just for this year.

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11 hours ago, cbslee said:

1.  The transmission rate is several times higher than the flu.

2.  No one has a  natural immunity since it's a new bug

3.  There is no vaccine for another year or two

4.  The mortality rate is somewhere between 10 to 30 times higher than the flu.

5.  The 250 positives is illusory since many sick people have yet to be tested.

Tom, I hope you're right, but it doesn't look good.

Lee is right on with these facts.  Since the flu mortality rate is 1/10th of 1 percent, that's where the 30 times higher comes in to get to 3% ( I don't have to tell this to a bunch of accountants).  If you calculated the rate of current confirmed cases and deaths we are around 2 1/2% now.    I am in contact with my cousins in Italy and I think we are about 3-4 weeks behind them if we're lucky.  They were dying 100 a day and the quarantining is needed to stop the transmission.  It looks like it is the only method that works.   New Rochelle NY had a serious outbreak and they are trying to stop it, imagine that happening everywhere at the same time, something not out of the realm of possibilities if we don't take serious measures.  We'll get past this but the medical community is afraid of being overwhelmed and older people are afraid of being a victim.  That's why nursing homes are in lockdown.  We need to stay calm, know the facts and take proper precautions, but a 1 month Netflix Binge Watch Quarantine Holiday would go a long way to end this, and what an amazing stock buying opportunity.  Stay safe out there, it can be an unforgiving world at times.

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Not to be doom and gloom, but about the mortality rate that's mentioned, those are averages, and CoVid-19 mortality rates goes up significantly in age brackets over 60 and even higher for the aged that also have other underlying illnesses or disease processes. The rate can be as high as 14% for those with heart disease, diabetes, any sort of lung disfunction, etc.  I am sure that similar patterns exist for the flu for the elderly with those sorts of ailments.  

I am worried for my mother at 93. She just came home from a short stay in a rehab facility 2 days ago and is supposed to have some ongoing in-home PT.  I'm not thrilled with that idea of having strangers coming directly into her home at this point. Before her release, the wing of the building went through very restricted visitation and other protocols for active flu cases, then last week started with restrictions on visitors for this new virus. I was visiting at lease once every day and was being screened each time entering, having temperature taken, masks, hand sanitizer, and the smallest sniffle would be cause to be examined by a nurse.  The facility was going on full lockdown the afternoon of her release, no visitors allowed at all.   

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I fell like i have been self-quarantined for the last month anyway, since there are never large crowds in my office, lol.  Seriously, I am not upset about not shaking hands and hope that perhaps that change will stay even after the virus is contained - i have arthritis in my hands and some handshakes are downright painful! 

Mostly, I think right now we don't truly know (at least in the US) what the mortality rate is because we cannot identify everyone who has the illness.  The area I am in has no confirmed cases in this end of the state.  Might mean there are none, might mean the people who have it are young and healthy and don't know that they have it. 

I have always washed my hands, with soap, multiple times a day.  I am trying to not touch my face but usually that is an unconscious thing so I don't know if I am succeeding.  I don't feel a need to hoard supplies, and I am really too busy right now to need much. 

I will miss March madness, though!

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We didn't have it confirmed here until a U of Del professor visited someone out of state that has it, and every state around us has cases. Now multiple cases related to that one professor, and how many did he infect before his results came back?  Because we are so small, we have many out of state workers coming from neighboring states, and in reverse, many residents in my county working in those other states.  It was only a matter of time before it got here anyway.  Those of you in less densely populated areas will hopefully be less affected.

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Quote

 

`Sorry about all the typos in my previous post.  I was a little sleepy after having just returned from a week in India.  (Incidentally, that is the country with roughly the same population as China squeezed into 1/3 the land mass, but with only 75 cases of Hunan Flu and 1 death thus far.  So essentially the safest place to be at present if one is overly concerned about the virus)

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Westchester County, NY, with a big outbreak, is right next door to Fairfield County, CT, so it's leaping this way.

One man at a large party in Westport, CT, who didn't show symptoms until days later (he'd gone back to his home country, so a communication lag added more days) led to 14 more cases in Westport who didn't show symptoms until days later. How many people did those 14 contact before showing symptoms? Their own children, work colleagues, children's school events, religious services, more parties and social events, political events, grocery shopping, routine doctor visits, etc. During that time, my hubby was at Westport stores (Stop & Shop, Trader Joe's, dry cleaners, post office, and nearby Costco, plus three different doctor check ups for eyes, feet, etc.). Did he come into contact with one of the 14 or any of the people that previously contacted the 14? Hubby did our shopping and touched everything in this house. How many other people touched the soup can, frozen food box, dry cleaning, etc.?

One of the CT cases is a hospital worker in TWO hospitals. How many people, including those with already compromised immune systems, did he contact before he knew he was sick? Another lives in NY so counts as a NY case, but worked in two CT hospitals. All of our doctors provide services in those hospitals. The CT cases will grow exponentially, not linearly.

If one of us -- both old and type 2 diabetic -- gets sick, the other can't isolate, is the caregiver. How much higher is the 14% for TWO risk factors. How much higher for the second to get sick after spending weeks caring for the first?

Do you understand why I don't want my clients in my home office? I need to protect them and their families, as well as my family, and everyone we come into contact with before we know we are sick.

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For years I've been doing everything possible to keep my clients out of my office so I could get some work done.  I've migrated as many of them as possible over to email, text, and even private messages on social media.  Seems like I can now add another reason to the stack - "I don't want to risk getting your Hunan Flu or giving you mine if I contract it. "

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On 3/13/2020 at 5:04 PM, BulldogTom said:

but it does seem a little overblown.

I agree and I disagree.  There is a HUGE push towards panic by the media looking for clickbait.  So the panic is most decidedly being pushed.  Cui bono?  Who benefits?  What important issues are no longer in the public eye?  Distraction works, no doubt.

However, there is a long time between exposure and symptoms, but not between exposure and sharing the wealth (as it were), which means that for every case known, there are up to hundreds that are not yet known.

The emergency measures are a good idea, but not because it's "so dangerous" rather it's logistics.  Most people who get this will have mild cases; the younger the milder - so with kids it's almost un-noticeable.  Serious cases tend to be those compromised (by age, by pre-existing condition, by smoking, by local pollution levels, by general sanitation, and more).  That's a big factor in the seriousness they had in China; older population living crowded with bad sanitation, some of the world's worst pollution levels, and adult male smoking rates near 50%.  

If you get a boatload of serious cases needing ICU support *at once* you overwhelm the system.  Then death rates skyrocket, because people who could recover with care can't get the care because the necessary equipment is in use for someone else.  Plus anyone who has another health issue (bad accident, heart attack, who knows - acute scrofula, fer gosh sake) also cannot get care.  Health workers are exhausted; they get sick.  Or make sloppy, exhausted-people errors.  

When you slow down transmission, that overwhelmed system does NOT happen.  The serious cases can all get attention, because there is space within the system to provide it.  Death rates plummet.  They found in the Spanish Flu in 1918 that cities like St Louis, that instituted school shut-downs etc earlier (before there were any cases in the city) had incidence rates and death rates far lower than cities like Denver, that didn't shut down until after cases cropped up.  (Side note:  as it turns out, a lot of the young, healthy people who died in the 1918 incident died from massive *aspirin* overdose - Bayer had a new drug, and was recommending dosage levels that turned out to be lethal.  That got covered up for them, but the symptoms presented of hemorrhage etc in the younger victims were not signs of flu, but rather of aspirin overdose.)

Transmission rates are high, yes - but transmission rates are far higher for measles or chicken pox.  I remember being sent to the neighbor's house when the three boys had measles, so my brother and I would catch it and get it over with.  We shared lollipops with them.  Neither my brother nor I got measles.  I'm sure most of us here are old enough that we remember similar events.  

Death rates will go DOWN as more cases are identified.  There are so many mild cases simply not being reported currently that death rates are over-stated since those diagnosed are largely the more-seriously ill cases.

If you are under 70 or so and healthy (and don't smoke or vape), there is a very low chance of having a serious case.  Those who do get a serious case need substantial care for a longer than normal (for a flu or pneumonia) time.  So slowing the rate of incidence of all cases will keep us better able to treat anyone who needs more help than a box of tissues, motrin, and chicken soup.

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That was excellent Catherine, I read it twice.

Something must have happened about an hour ago.  At close to the same time I got an alert from the NY Daily News that NYC schools would be closed immediately, then a red alert call from the small city I live in that our schools will be closed, and all this while watching governor Baker telling us, no in restaurant dining allowed from March 17th on.  That's going to be a lot of lonely corned beef.  What I think happened today was Dr Fauci hitting all 5 Sunday morning news shows and telling us that we need to do better.  He probably saw  the kids partying in bars Saturday night like it's 1999.  Then they come home and infect their family members .  Like governor Baker said with a serious face, "it's not all about you," so he pulled the plug on bars.  And yes, poor St. Paddy's Day, I assume they were considering that day is one of the biggest party days on earth, at least that's what I remember from all those parades.

Fauci explains that the current rate of infection is exponential and it will probably double every 3 days, that's 100 million people by May 1st.   Whoa!  Put on the brakes!  I think that's what happened.

 

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Well, Tom, the problem is that very few have been tested, and that was intentional by those in charge. Partly because they knew how bad it would be for the stock market and hospitality industries, both of which a certain "person" is heavily invested in. The problem with that approach is you can't bulls4!t a virus. You can't bully a virus. You can't payoff a virus to keep quiet. You can't threaten it or ask it to "do you a favor, though". You can't impugn it's character with baseless charges. You can't fool it with talk about God or fluff news pieces.

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