Coronavirus Discussion

[StormBirdRising]

1 minute ago, Astreya said:

@StormBirdRising

I concede that I was misinformed about the WHO offering the US the test kits. Although I found this on the site that reviewed this info:

"Germany released its protocol on Jan. 17, but the U.S. decided to have the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention develop its own. That protocol was published Jan. 28."

This still means that the US decided to take 11 days to develop their test from scratch which were consequently lost. Add to that that the first batch of the CDC tests gave inconclusive results, the US response was botched as they lost almost two weeks.

 

No, that is NOT what happened. The World Health Organization never gifts nor sells its vaccines and life saving drugs to the US because there are so many other nations that need these drugs and vaccines that cannot produce or afford their own. The US has the capability to produce its own drugs. It doesn't have to take away from countries that cannot produce their own. If the WHO has 10,000 test kits those test kits go to countries who NEED them, either because they cannot produce their own, or they cannot afford their own, or both, not to the United States; the United States has huge resources and can afford to make their own. Many, many countries rely on the WHO for their life saving vaccines and their life saving drugs.  Those are the countries that NEED the vaccines and drugs from the WHO. I'm surprised you didn't know that. It is common knowledge.

 

Don't just concede that you were misinformed about the test kits, you are misinformed about all the information you posted about the COVID 19 regarding the United States. I am sitting right here in the US, watching live US news conferences regarding the COVID 19. They are updating information every hour regarding the spread of the disease and the fight against it in the US. I don't know what is going on in other countries, but I do know what is going on in the US.

 

There is so much misinformation being posted on the internet regarding the COVID 19. The US government is warning its citizens several times a day that there is bogus information being printed and to ignore it and certainly not to spread it. I hope everyone heeds that information and stops spreading bogus and frequently dangerous rumors regarding the COVID 19.

 

This is really serious. It is not a game or a joke. There is no contest between the United States and any other nation regarding the COVID 19.

 

This is a global fight against the disease and hopefully the human race will win it.

[olympe]

Well, publishing "the protocols" - isn't that like a blueprint to make or build the test in the first place? So, if it was published, how could this publication be done without reachong the US?

[Classycal]

I did hear on NBC (National Broadcasting Company) that a vaccine is being tested on a group of 45 people, but it could still take 12 to 18 months for it to be available for widespread use.  

[olympe]

Heard or read the same thing, but cannot remember where. Overall, this testing is mostly a well-placed publicity stunt.

[Astreya]

So, now Ministerpräsident (state premier minister) Armin Laschet from Northrhine-Westfalia gives his press conference right now. The measures that were enacted by my home town are now valid for all of NRW.

 

Today really is the day of the pressers - starting with the Robert Koch Institute at 10:00 who set the risk factor for people in Germany to "high" which is the highest level available. Then there was the press conference of the Ministerpräsident of Bavaria and now NRW.

 

Sadly we now have 12 deaths in NRW, and there are more than 3000 confirmed Covid-19 cases. People are advised to stay at home and practically all public life is being closed down here. (NRW is the most populous German state with about 18 million people.)

 

[orrrangeee]

We really took normal life for granted

[purpledragonclaw]

10 hours ago, StormBirdRising said:

No, that is NOT what happened.

 

That is what happened. I also live in the U.S. and have been following this since January. The WHO protocol was based on Germany's, which the U.S. did not use, instead choosing to develop it here in the states. The first batch we developed was flawed, causing us to lose over a week of work on creating a vaccine. This is an excellent read on the matter. 

 

10 hours ago, StormBirdRising said:

Don't just concede that you were misinformed about the test kits, you are misinformed about all the information you posted about the COVID 19 regarding the United States.

 

They are not. Trump did try to poach employees from the German company CureVac to not only get them to develop the vaccine in the U.S., but to get exclusive rights to it. This is also a good read.

 

10 hours ago, StormBirdRising said:

The US government is warning its citizens several times a day that there is bogus information being printed and to ignore it and certainly not to spread it.

 

The U.S. government is doing that now, which I appreciate, but it does not take away from the fact that when this crisis was first brewing, Trump went from declaring it was a hoax perpetrated by the Democrats, to claiming cases in the U.S. would be "almost zero", to keeping a cruise ship out of the country because he wanted to "keep the number of cases down in the U.S.", to claiming it would be cleared up with warm weather in spring, to now taking it seriously. 

 

10 hours ago, StormBirdRising said:

This is really serious. It is not a game or a joke.

 

No, it's not. It's nice to see more governments treating it as the pandemic it is, and not comparing it to the flu, SARS, or swine flu. I hope we, collectively, can create a cure.

[Lagie]

2 hours ago, DOLPHIN232 said:

We really took normal life for granted

We did, didn't we?

 

My shop is down to two days this week, might go down further, and we will have to limit the number of people in the door on Saturday so we don't have crowding.

Still only one case confirmed in the Bahamas, and the last cruise ships should be leaving port today.  Not sure when flights will stop.

[olympe]

1 hour ago, purpledragonclaw said:

The U.S. government is doing that now, which I appreciate, but it does not take away from the fact that when this crisis was first brewing, Trump went from declaring it was a hoax perpetrated by the Democrats, to claiming cases in the U.S. would be "almost zero", to keeping a cruise ship out of the country because he wanted to "keep the number of cases down in the U.S.", to claiming it would be cleared up with warm weather in spring, to now taking it seriously. 

 

Don't forget that the crisis is now the fault of us Europeans.

[Tiira]

Well, here in Finland everything was pretty normal until Thursday last week. Before that, basically, we were just told not to travel to the epidemic areas in China, Italy, Germany and Austria; the few cases we had were people returning from those areas or their close contacts and it was thought we could keep tracking the infections and prevent any epidemic by quarantining families, school classes etc., though the health professionals probably knew it wouldn't be so simple. On Thursday, then, our Government announced more restrictions and recommendations such as cancelling all events with an audience of over 500, avoiding crowds and people who seem sick, staying home if you have any symptoms at all, postponing all trips abroad, taking distance to people at higher risk. That's when the panic and hoarding started and the stores and pharmacies were soon out of things like toilet paper, disinfectants, pasta, canned food, drugs, and yes, alcohol. It still seemed that there were no willingness to take bigger steps.

 

On Monday another turning point took place as it was announced that a kind of an emergency law (valmiuslaki, 'the preparedness law') will be put to use for the first time in its history. The purpose of the law is to allow the public authorities to make decisions and give orders in a centralised manner when the circumstances are exceptional. These orders include closing the schools and universities in the whole country, forbidding any meetings of more than ten people, quarantining everyone over 70, limiting the buying of medicines and closing almost all public services. Restaurants and cinemas could still be open and there would be contact teaching for the youngest pupils and daycare for children whose parents work in critical sectories. Our borders will be closed but people can still return home and cargo transport continues. Additionally, they try to increase the capacity to test and treat the virus by prioritising and calling all professionals to work as needed.

 

We'll see what happens. There's still some bureaucracy to deal with and other things to consider. If I understood right, our Parliament meeting might still be going on (it's almost 1 am here at the moment).

Edited March 17, 2020 by Varislapsi

[Hanelli]

What is happening to the world…

 

Only the third day in lockdown here where I am and god, this is nuts. I miss going out and buying Mickey D’s for breakfast…

[Classycal]

Thanks for the articles PDC.  

[Kaini]

10 hours ago, DOLPHIN232 said:

We really took normal life for granted

 

Truly, we did.

 

All restaurants were ordered to shut down in my town today. There's still no toilet paper in any grocery store - my father said he had to wait in line to get a pack of rolls directly off a pallet and they were gone in ten minutes despite being 1 per customer. The store is on allocation and can only get so many at a time. The email he sent me reads like an apocalyptic novel.

 

It is truly wild to me just how fragile our system is, seemingly. Things changed quite a bit in less than a week.

 

A week ago I was happy I finally had enough hours at work to pay my rent and bills comfortably. Now, I'm worried I may not have a job at all tomorrow.

[Starscream]

We need to see how this is going to affect our move. I've got a plan for the move that hopefully will cut out contact with other people to nearly zero 15 days isolation before and 15 days after (not including the three trips, there and back which will basically be the distance of the entire length of Canada.

 

[StormBirdRising]

10 hours ago, DOLPHIN232 said:

We really took normal life for granted

 

Yes, we did. I could never even imagine anything like this ever happening to the world. If I live through this I will never complain about my life or my job or anything.

 

I was speaking with an Epidemiologist and I was asking questions about how is locking everything down going to stop the disease because it didn't make any sense to me. He told me that if we don't avoid contact with other people the disease will spread and keep spreading because if it really originated in an animal and then spread to humans, either naturally or by design, humans have no natural immunity to it. He said that the only way to prevent becoming infected is to avoid contact with it and the only way to do that is to avoid contact with other people.

[Starscream]

28 minutes ago, StormBirdRising said:

 

Yes, we did. I could never even imagine anything like this ever happening to the world. If I live through this I will never complain about my life or my job or anything.

 

 

I always had a feeling something like this might happen. I've always had an interest in learning "old technology," so that if slag hit the fan, I'd have something of value to trade. Now not that we'll get that far, I take solace i the knowledge, I have enough ingredients to make a good supply of soap. With all the cray cray  binge buying people have been doing to wipe out soap supply, I've got enough. Also, I just need to grow it, but I have mallow which is a good plant-tp substitute. its just freaky at how plans have had to stop cold. I don't know if I am coming or going right now. 

[StormBirdRising]

4 minutes ago, Starscream said:

 

I always had a feeling something like this might happen. I've always had an interest in learning "old technology," so that if slag hit the fan, I'd have something of value to trade. Now not that we'll get that far, I take solace i the knowledge, I have enough ingredients to make a good supply of soap. With all the cray cray  binge buying people have been doing to wipe out soap supply, I've got enough. Also, I just need to grow it, but I have mallow which is a good plant-tp substitute. its just freaky at how plans have had to stop cold. I don't know if I am coming or going right now. 

 

Same here. I thought, or I deluded myself into thinking, that we would have cases of infection in dribs and drabs, and then after a short while everything would be back to normal, but there are too many things happening, not just in trying to prevent the spread of the COVID 19 but in preparing for the people that will be infected, and  predicting how many will die. The President has asked the Pentagon to set up MASH (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital) units on the east coast and the west coast. The Epidemiologist said that if we can't stop it, or turn it around, or slow it down, a surge will hit in the summer and there could be millions of deaths in the US alone. I think I am still in shock from hearing that.

 

I wish I had learned "old technology" because I don't think the world will ever be the same.

[Classycal]

I figured something could happen because of the flu pandemic in 1918.  The flu still kills people and now so does COVID 19.  I have about 3 months of food, plenty of TP,  emergency cooking supplies, and about 1 month of water.  I need to get some water purification tablets.  I should already have those, but I don't.  Oh, I have plenty of soap, too.  

[Zhiyi1015]

55 minutes ago, StormBirdRising said:

He told me that if we don't avoid contact with other people the disease will spread and keep spreading because if it really originated in an animal and then spread to humans, either naturally or by design, humans have no natural immunity to it. He said that the only way to prevent becoming infected is to avoid contact with it and the only way to do that is to avoid contact with other people.

That's true. But here in Malaysia some people seems to have a lil' tiny bits of awareness about it. Even though the whole country have been announced to lock down and citizens were urged to stay at home, people still going everywhere, sitting in the restaurants where it should only be available for take-away orders, going back to hometown because of the long holidays, meeting friends etc.

The coronavirus cases here are getting more and more serious and perhaps uncontrollable... Our government was also incapable to control the citizens which they first announced that those who want to leave the state need to report or get permission from the police station and it turns out whole bunch of people lining up at the police station making a worse crowd. So, they CANCELLED it, people can go anywhere they want (ofc not other countries). I would like to say that our government has taken the coronavirus too easy where they allowed an event with participants more than 10,000 people from everywhere without taking the scary coronavirus that spread so fast into account. Then, someone is tested positive after the event. smart. Then, the ratio increased from 22 infected:0 death:22 healed to 673 infected:2 deaths:49 healed, and people infected still increasing terribly.

Now in this situation, people could not go to work, a huge loss for companies as the holidays were classified as payleave, they have to pay for the workers when they can't even earn. Work from home? Too bad, not everything can be carried out through Internet. Besides that, some students might be happy for the extended holidays some being stressed because they might be facing the exam without finishing the syllabus. Just everything stucked. I just hope people can have more awareness and be more considerate while buying things. I have heard a youtuber said that 'Imagine a person who doesn't feel good so he/she wanted to buy a mask to protect himself also avoid spreading it to the others and he couldn't find any mask on the rack.' 

wow this is the first time I have typed something so long, I still have a lot more to say, let's leave it first.

By the way, please ignore my grammar mistakes or you can point it out so I can learn my mistakes ><. 

[Astreya]

Well, I am not so good in "old technology", but my interest is in natural medicine, so I know my herbs and non-chemical cures for many health problems (and no, sadly Covid-19 is not among the things for which I'd have a herb ready, sorry), so I fortunately have some knowledge and expertise to trade, too.

 

Like Starscream I always expected that there might something bad to happen (my fear was more about a sun flare that might take out electrical power), but somehow I never felt like becoming a prepper either (that's pretty expensive after all). I decided my way would be to learn a lot of things by rote so that I don't have to rely on looking up things on the internet and better have a basic knowledge in physics, chemistry, biology, maths, and medicine all in my brain which can't be taken away easily (unless I might get dementia, of course).

 

We just had a fun news report about the priorities of people of some countries when hamstering:

- Germans: toilet paper and pasta

- French people: red wine

- Dutch people: cannabis (long queues before the coffee shops were forced to close)

- US people: guns and ammunition (many first time buyers, too, they reported)

 

Everybody stay safe and healthy!

[Starscream]

4 minutes ago, Astreya said:

Well, I am not so good in "old technology", but my interest is in natural medicine, so I know my herbs and non-chemical cures for many health problems (and no, sadly Covid-19 is not among the things for which I'd have a herb ready, sorry), so I fortunately have some knowledge and expertise to trade, too.

 

Like Starscream I always expected that there might something bad to happen (my fear was more about a sun flare that might take out electrical power), but somehow I never felt like becoming a prepper either (that's pretty expensive after all). I decided my way would be to learn a lot of things by rote so that I don't have to rely on looking up things on the internet and better have a basic knowledge in physics, chemistry, biology, maths, and medicine all in my brain which can't be taken away easily (unless I might get dementia, of course).

 

We just had a fun news report about the priorities of people of some countries when hamstering:

- Germans: toilet paper and pasta

- French people: red wine

- Dutch people: cannabis (long queues before the coffee shops were forced to close)

- US people: guns and ammunition (many first time buyers, too, they reported)

 

Everybody stay safe and healthy!

I have a binder which I call the BBOK (Big book of Knowlege) I stash printed copies of useful information. Plus I got a plethora of books on skills. In canada we are starting to see shut downs. My friends are laid off and most of us are asked to remain home. I want paul to leave work - hoping his job lays him off - he's quitting in 2 weeks anyway. I can knit, sew, make mead, soap, pasta (any food really) garden, compost, (hunt if necessary) make things by hand - even built a small boat in school.

 

Its a scary situation, but if precautions are taken as best as we can, if we avoid being silly about things, then it may not be super bad. It won't be great. I'm currently writing out the information on wood lye production for my BBOK -  that's one topic that I haven't stashed away - but I also have a bunch of material on bio-fuels - bio-diesel and the like.

[Classycal]

8 minutes ago, Astreya said:

We just had a fun news report about the priorities of people of some countries when hamstering:

- Germans: toilet paper and pasta

- French people: red wine

- Dutch people: cannabis (long queues before the coffee shops were forced to close)

- US people: guns and ammunition (many first time buyers, too, they reported)

 

Hadn't heard that about the US (which is where I live).  What the news is reporting is toilet paper, paper towels, and hand sanitizer.  I believe the news would have been all over guns if that were true.  We are not all gun toting fools.  

 

That's hilarious about the Dutch, but surely that can't be true.  

[Starscream]

1 minute ago, Classycal said:

 

Hadn't heard that about the US (which is where I live).  What the news is reporting is toilet paper, paper towels, and hand sanitizer.  I believe the news would have been all over guns if that were true.  We are not all gun toting fools.  

 

That's hilarious about the Dutch, but surely that can't be true.  

I've seen the guns thing, and yes, it can be true with the dutch. My stepfather was dutch and he mentioned such things about cannabis - its quite available there.

[TerraAnne]

3 hours ago, Starscream said:

We need to see how this is going to affect our move. I've got a plan for the move that hopefully will cut out contact with other people to nearly zero 15 days isolation before and 15 days after (not including the three trips, there and back which will basically be the distance of the entire length of Canada.

 

Funny I and Borntobefree are moving on April 1st. Here in the US (not sure if you're here) they actually stopped all inspections on new housing the day our new apartment was to be inspected. Thankfully the inspector still did our apartment somehow (I think by face time video maybe?) so we will be able to move in now.

If they hadn't inspected we would have been in limbo without a home on April first as all other things and forms have been finished with the rental owners and HUD stuff for a few weeks now.

Edited March 18, 2020 by TerraAnne

[Astreya]

That BBOK sounds like a pretty good idea, too. I have a large shelf of books about medicine, natural sciences etc as I always told people who asked me why I wouldn't buy my books electronically (this is so practical, they said...) - but what will you do when you don't have any electrical power? Then your kindle will be useless within a few hours.

 

As for the contact bans as protection against Covid-19 - I think one can best imagine it as "starving the virus". If one imagines Covid-19 to take about 14 days to show up, you should know you are "clean" after that time (okay, that's slightly simplified as there have been incubation times over 14 days and you might be an asymptomatic carrier, too, but that's the general idea).

The problem is if you never had contact to the virus, it could still infect you as Covid-19 is a "new" pathogen that made the jump from animals to humans (many diseases are so-called "zoonoses", that is their pathogens jumped from the vector (animals that carry the virus but usually stay healthy) to humans and thus found a host with no immune defence against them whatsoever).

 

If the infected people are isolated, then the people carrying the disease are put away (until they either eliminated the virus with their immune system and hopefully stay healthy at least for this wave of the disease, or they die). As a virus desperately needs a host (a virus is a pathogen that can't replicate on its own - it is even debatable whether one can consider a virus a living entity in the first place), the virus simply fades away when it can't invade a host, take over the host's cells and force them to mass produce new copies of the virus.

 

So by isolating the infected people, one hopes that their immune systems will kill off the virus so that they will be both immune and not be able to infect others, and by infecting the healthy people, one tries to keep them away from possibly infected people unless the virus was killed by not finding new victims. The problem is if people don't stay away from other people, one infected person is enough to start the whole chain anew.

 

As for the idea "well, let's run the disease its course and then we'll get herd immunity" is very, very risky - and callous, too. Let's say 80 percent of the people only have a mild form of Covid-19, this means 20 persons have a severe case, and about 5 percent of them need an ICU bed with a respirator. Let's crunch the numbers.

 

Imagine you have a country with a population of 100 million people. If the virus runs through the population unchecked, about 70 to 80 million people will get Covid-19. (The 70 to 80% is derived from the R0 value, which means the number of persons one infected person will infect. I will not bore you with the math, but you can look up the formula if you like.)

 

So let's say there are 80 million infected person, of which 80% get the disease and recover. That's about 64 million people. They will be mostly fine and immune to this particular strain of the virus.

 

This leaves 16 million people that get a severe form of the illness and thus have to be admitted to the hospital. This means you need 16 million hospital beds and the appropriate number of doctors and nurses to deal with them. 5 percent of the 64 million infected with get a very severe form, though and need ICU treatment and respirators. This would be 3.2 million people who would die without access to ICU beds with respirators.

 

If you look up the number of hospital beds per 1000 population you'll find there are 12.27 hospital beds per 1000 in South Korea, 8 in Germany, 6 in France, 4.34 in China, 3.18 in Italy, 2.77 in the US, 2.54 in the UK etc. The number of ICU beds with respirators is much, much lower. (There are 34.4 ICU bests per 100 000 persons in the US, 29.7 in Germany, 12.5 in Italy, 11.6 in France, 6.6 in the UK.)

 

As you can see it is very likely that the capacity of the health system will soon be overwhelmed if the spread of the disease and thus the number of infected persons isn't kept as low as possible.

 

One problem is that we don't have an antibody test yet (as far as I know) which will give you information about the people who went through the infection. (If your immune system fought the virus successfully, your blood contains antibodies that show you had contact with the virus). As soon as we have that we can determine how many people are actually immune (against the current strain of the virus), so these people should be able to get to work and don't need to fear any (new) infection.

 

That's why it is absolutely mandatory to follow the recommendations and keep away from other people as much as possible. Wash your hands properly with soap often, but absolutely as soon as your return home from shopping or pharmacist.

 

Everybody please stay safe and healthy!

 

 

@Classycal

Maybe it differs between the states? I'd think it sounds pretty logical for Texas at least. ^^

By the way, here's an English language article on the guns in the US: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/16/us-sales-guns-ammunition-soar-amid-coronavirus-panic-buying

And here's an English language report about the Dutch people panic buying cannabis: https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/16/dutch-panic-buyers-queue-round-block-cannabis-12405192/

 

 

Update - breaking news from German TV: Dietmar Hopp says that he hopes CureVac will have a vaccine ready by Autumn 2020.

Here's a source (in German): https://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/unternehmen/curevac-dietmar-hopp-hofft-auf-corona-impfstoff-im-herbst-16684254.html

 

Edited March 18, 2020 by Astreya