Thank you, Smacky.
1 Like
Can you provide the URL for that?
Oh jeez, I’d heard/read that one of the reasons for the US to slow the spread is to keep from overwhelming resources with flu + COVID-19 patients (since the spread may be inevitable, but after flu season there will be more resources), but I hadn’t thought about the Southern Hemisphere going into flu season. That sucks. Good luck to you guys.
10 Likes
Thanks. The detail about the hospitalization rates was not something I’d seen in other articles. I’m currently reading this very detailed article on Ars Technica (my favorite source of science news because their science team is excellent) that I’d skipped past yesterday due to lack of time because clearly I need to have more knowledge about this 
1 Like
Thanks a lot!
1 Like
That Ars piece was quite helpful. (The author has been a health reporter for quite some time, and has a PhD in microbiology.)
The public health response does seem to make more sense now, though it will be interesting to see what the mortality rate ends up being, as well as other details about the virus, as researchers get a more complete picture.
The point of that article, I found, was to reinforce that there is no mortality rate “fact” to be discovered. How many human beings (not abstract, real) die in the coming months is dependent upon the resources we have available to save them, which is dependent upon how well we react to prevent our hospitals from being overwhelmed.
We are not set up to handle 10% of our population needing acute care on top of the number of people already needing care.
It is not a thought exercise. It’s something we may have to witness.
I, for one, am not planning on visiting my nephew until I can be sure that Partner has not brought home anything from her travels to New York. It sucks. I might not be able to see him until May at the earliest. A simple cold would devastate him, COVID-19 would probably kill him.
We all need to be thinking critically about how we might spread this virus to others who are not healthy or might otherwise be extra vulnerable. We also need to be thinking what we can do to make sure we don’t tax our system unnecessarily by being foolish and putting ourselves at risk.
Best case scenario? We all wash our hands more than we need to and everything is fine.
I’m okay with that.
Worst case scenario? Look at Italy. That is real.
16 Likes
My little dude, who has no regard for personal hygiene, has been given a new rule: wash his hands with soap each time he enters a building, uses the bathroom (I wish he had been doing this all along but we all know he hasn’t) and eats.
I don’t know if this will be enough to make any difference at all, but it’s a simple set of rules that he can do, and will remember when he is feeling stressed about this situation.
11 Likes
The reason I mentioned about the CFR is that I feel like this will determine as a society how we want to respond to this in the future. Do we take the basic precautions like we do when flu season is active, especially if we know the annual vaccine is not as effective as normal, or do we need to continue to respond with drastic society and economy altering measures like we are now? Because I get the drastic response with a lot of unknowns in the air, but I wonder if society will decide they are worth it if with more information the virus is less severe in mortality and contagiousness than initially thought.
There was a great article I want to share explaining why this is worse than the flu, but since it’s a couple of weeks old, it’s outdated.
Another piece I want to raise, in addition to the risk of health care collapse, is the direct threat to government. How many countries have infected or self isolated members of parliament? How many have governments largely made up of people over 50? We have plans to maintain order in the case of war… I presume we have them for pandemics, but I’d rather not exercise them.
Is holding an election even ethical in a pandemic?
To be clear, my prepping consists of washing my hands extra and asking guests to wash upon arrival. But I do see 2 years of chaos ahead.
5 Likes
I ran errands yesterday, including going to a grocery store. I didn’t get that much, but a while after I got home I finally realized how many things I had touched (that had previously been touched by potentially dirty disease vectors)!! And also how many times I had touched my face since then. I washed my hands.
Another fun fact - Most people don’t do a very good job of washing their hands. At home I have an old toothbrush that is handy to scrub under my nails. But I do always wash between my fingers.
Does little dude have a song to sing while washing his hands? That’s one way they use to get people to wash long enough.
3 Likes
Dude, we are lucky this is the pandemic we got, because we’ll (,mostly, sorry seniors) survive to see it turn endemic. But to go back to a novel disease of the 80s, which had high mortality rates and is now a chronic disease when caught in Canada…yes you should still wear a condom.
Quarantines are being enacted humanely in most countries, we aren’t nailing doors shut. But we should continue handwashing and staying home when sick even after we have a vaccine. and we should quarantine new diseases with a threat of going global
4 Likes
Should I try to convince my wife not to fly to visit her parents tomorrow? Both of them are in poor health (late 60s one, 70 the other).
Edit: I should add there are a small handful of cases in my state (WI) and she would be flying to a major hub airport (BWI).
1 Like
Circling back to a different topic, @AllHat I remembered to download this neat pic my wife took of our oil lamp a while back to give you an idea of the effect.
3 Likes
There are so many factors…generally I’d assume your wife and her parents have considered them.
For example, if they are going to die this year, do they want to see her first? Is she particularly risky as a disease vector? Has your public health department suggested social distancing in your town or her town? Is your wife generally better or worse at hand hygiene than smackys kid?
4 Likes
They’re not imminent death as far as we know, my wife has chronic sinus stuff that crops up now and then I keep asking her to get checked out but otherwise normally healthy. She has excellent hygiene, used to train her entire company (food industry) on hygiene practices and regular audits practices as part of her current positions
My dad has a pretty severe autoimmune disease that has landed him in the hospital too many times over the course of his life. He’s 70. My parents live 6 miles from me. I’m forgoing any visits for the time being. I may wind up delivering groceries to them though because I don’t really want them going anywhere.
I’ve been pondering the climbing gym (which feels like a damn petri dish on good days) and I think I’m going to stop going for at least a few weeks to see how this all plays out.
I feel like we need a COVID-19 specific thread to discuss these things…
6 Likes
Started a new thread:
1 Like
My phone bit the big one. I need a smartphone for work (two factor auth + calling in to meetings). Recommendations?
Desire: Reliable. Works on Verizon. A decent camera would be awesome. I prefer Android to iPhone but am not puritanical about it. I would like to not spend fifty jillion dollars.
ETA: We may have gotten it to work. I should probably still get phone recs, this one is 4 years old and starting to be tempermental.
3 Likes