We might as well kick this off. This is a thread to talk about COVID-19. I'm curious what everyone thinks and would like this to serve as a place for people to keep others updated on how things are where they live. So, I'm in the US, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We've had our first few confirmed cases. My parents live in Washington State on the opposite end of the country, which is the epicenter of the US outbreak. I have one friend in Washington who has been tested. We're still waiting on the results. Montgomery county, which is adjacent to Philadelphia, has a few confirmed cases. All the schools there are closed until further notice. Philadelphia school district is unlikely to shut down for a myriad of reasons. This is not a good move in my opinion, but I also understand the social difficulty with the decision to do so. In NYC, all shows with seating above 500 are cancelled. Anything at or below 500 has been mandated to drop capacity to 250 max. This means all broadway is cancelled until further notice. NCAA tournament (college basketball) is cancelled completely. NBA (basketball) is cancelled. Many colleges are moving to online-only classes and closing the campus, sending 1000s of students home (the sending home part I take issue with for a myriad of reasons). Schools in the Seattle, Washington area are all closed. My friends who are teachers are doing remote classes but have reported that moral and general mental health are declining with restricted social interaction (which is the point of closing the schools) and the disruption to everyone's normal schedule. People in Philadelphia are now getting the crazed shopping bug, buying up all the cleaning supplies, toilet paper and hand sanitizer. It's a weird feedback loop. You know it's dumb and that you shouldn't buy more than you need, but you don't want to be without because other people are crazy, so the correct decision (selfishly) is to buy when you can. I get it. But my wife and I have consciously kept our shopping habits the same. I found this podcast episode of Waking Up to be pretty informative, with a good balance of facts and trying to temper the fear with some measure of reality: https://samharris.org/podcasts/190-respond-coronavirus/. I'm curious how it will age. How is everyone else doing?
I'm in Alabama, which has no reported cases, but we found out that's because they essentially refuse to test for it. Even people like me and Karen who have serious lung and heart issues. So we're trying to not go out at all. That's not working too well. I have serious doctor's visits I have to get done, and Alabama has lost their minds.
Ah, Kayin, I love every time I see your name. It brings me back to the TBCS days. It's good to see you're feeling well enough to pursue some hobbies. I hope you can stay healthy in all of this. I agree, testing is a joke in the US. A nurse friend of ours here says that they have so many people coming in with almost all of the common symptoms, but if you don't meet a very rigid set of criteria, they won't give you the test. Likewise, they have a ton of people coming in with generic symptoms unrelated to the virus, like a headache, who are panicked and afraid they have it. It's a bit of a nightmare.
Sounds like UK is taking similar approach. Asking people to only phone 111 helpline if sympton doesn't improve after 7 days of unwell. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51711227 In UK, based on last 2 week's rate of data, averaging 1.3x increase per day. I expect over 1000 cases this weekend, near 9,000 cases by end of next week. Of course, the number of confirmed cases may not go up as quickly due to yesterday's change in advice. But it's still concerning that tougher measures hasn't been introduced from the government to properly delay the spread. I've asked my workplace for me to work from home. Line manager said he'll ask higher up but has prep'd me for the answer to be No. Understandable because from business point of view, no one has got it so it's still very low risk. But from family point of view, considering we have taken 2yr son out of nursery starting this week, only possible source of virus would be from my work. A risk that can be easily mitigated.
With the sheer scale the problem is going to grow to in very short order, restriction of test kits (and masks/gloves/etc) starting 5 minutes ago is not at all unwarranted. For those in relatively good health (.e. not immunocompromised, with no other respiratory issues, and not elderly) use of a test kit is relatively pointless. The absolute worst outcome for them in not receiving the test is taking themselves out of the pool of potential infection vectors for two weeks. Because if the test kit is used and comes back positive, the result will be exactly the same: go and self-isolate for two weeks. Your risk of serious complications is low, get the hell away from any hospital (with it's population of people who are at risk of complications if infected) and don't take up unnecessary resources that will be needed very shortly. The test kits are vital for those at risk of serious complications, and need to be reserved for that purpose.
What you say makes a lot of sense, and it's probably the approach taken by UK government. But on the other hand, I see South Korea taking a completely different approach, testing as much as people as possible, isolating and trace to contacts who also need to isolate. It seems to be working. Tweet— Twitter API (@user) date Apart from the peak 909 in S Korea, the trend peaked at just under 700 new cases per day. According to UK trend up to now, we will be there by mid-next week. But I don't think it will slow down like in S Korea. The virus doesn’t care about the past, it is the present and the future that is more important. The trajectory of the infection in this country is on the up. The trajectory of infection in South Korea is going down. For a virus that has an exponential growth curve for its infection, it takes some doing to mitigate it enough for it to go down so we really should take notice on why that is and perhaps implementing most if not all of their tactics.
The World Health Organisation have just released a statement confirming that dogs can not contract nor carry the virus and have advised that all dogs currently in quarantine can be released. Just to confirm, WHO let the dogs out.
The question is: can the UK manufacture the required quantity of test-kits to implement this strategy? An alternate would be to use China's (as effective as RoK in getting to the other side of the infection bell-curve) method of enforced quarantine. Shut down public transport, close roads/ban car use, implement a curfew, isolate infected communities. Unpopular, but effective. --- One thing that would be valuable looking into if you care for someone who is in the vulnerable population, and in the rather likely event that hospital beds become unavailable very soon, is creation of a DIY ventilator to reduce the risk of respiratory failure. Nasal cannula, ~60L/min of airflow without O2 assist (i.e. using atmospheric air and not an O2 cylinder), run that airflow through a 32-40°C water bath to heat and humidify it (to prevent drying airways and causing damage). Anyone here can probably build a big air mover out of a stack of 120mm fans or a large blower, but the real trick is in keeping that water sterile to prevent infection. If domestic water supply holds up then total-loss flow (water from tap, heated with immersion heater, pass through bubble chamber (essentially a really boring bong), then dump it down the drain) can work, otherwise you need to regularly replace the water with boiled water and regularly clean and sterilise the bubble chamber walls. Chemcial treatment is probably not viable, bleach etc would offgas into the breathed airflow.
If this was happening half a year earlier, I would be worried, but now, all close family who would be at highest risk are dead so if I'll need to sit in isolation for 2 weeks at some point, so be it, maybe i'll finally get around to doing some home renovations. Otherwise, all educational institutions are closed here till Easter, all entertainment places, sport clubs, etc are closed for at least two weeks, outside events that gather more than 100 ppl are also banned. 6 confirmed cases in country so far. Getting UV-C lamp for sterilizing clothing/home would prob also help. Could also use aquarium UV-C filter to sterilize water in your contraption, keeping water at 32-40C for extended time would create breeding ground for legionella bacteria
The problem is that China managed to do so while the spread of the virus was still relatively contained (in the geographical sense)... Compare that to Italy where they very quickly discovered that it was too late to lock down a specific region. And that leads to a problem: Italy can justify their nation wide extreme measures (because they've had a lot of deaths in a short time), but politically it wouldn't fly to take such stark measures until it is too late.
I read this article last night and have been passing it around since. It was pretty convincing to me that, even if my family is healthy and safe, the best move is extreme social distancing, if not for myself, for those who I could spread the disease to if I end up with a very mild case. https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca
Businesses in my area (and sector) are already sending people home to work remotely. A studio in the same building as us is doing it next week, and we will likely follow suit, depending on guidelines at that time. I'm surprised that the Scottish government isn't being more proactive in discouraging people from travelling, but hey, all that's going to happen is people who are carrying the virus will continue to infect others, and so it goes on.
This is Bit-tech: where we mod our own ventilators. Well, I can assure you that UK Hospital Trusts are in full-on contingency planning mode. You may not hear about it, but they're organised, they're thinking ahead, and they are preparing. They're on it.
I can still program one after Snort. Never forget that. Bought groceries today. Sheer insanity. I still have to go out next Wednesday for vital medications. Can't get them filled early (controlled substances.) I'm cancelling nonessential visits, even if they would help a lot.
They're guided by Public Health England/Scotland/Wales and the HSC Public Health Agency, but they are also planning ahead. Worst case scenarios, duration of the crisis, impact assessments etc.
I did shopping today in Philadelphia. The line to check out was about 30min, but while the store looked light on many items, it didn't look empty or picked over. I still had my choice of what I wanted to buy. Meat was particularly low in availability, but I don't eat it very often, so that was no big deal to me. Also, here is a live tracker of the outbreak. This will be very limited by the differences between how different countries are choosing to test or not, but it's something. https://ncov2019.live/data
While that is appreciated and all... The numpties in Westminster and no 10 clearly lack the political will to flatten the curve to help out, so unfortunately preparation done by Hospitals may prove a drop in the bucket further down the road.
The problems with that, as i understand it, is because there's no vaccination as yet the likelihood of it returning is incredibly high, you can't stop all possible infection vectors forever or until you develop and vaccinate an entire population, at least not without some seriously draconian measures. I guess I'm consider to be in the high risk group (30 years a smoker, dodgy ticker, more years behind me than in front) but despite that i think the UK is taking a fairly sensible approach to all this.
