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"Coronavirus and the US" or "We are all going to die!!!!"

 
 
 
skepticalbip said:
Ah, but your local homeopath is probably on it.... :D
https://www.homeopathyusa.org/

American Institute of Homeopathy Launches Comprehensive Database of COVID-19 Cases

The American Institute of Homeopathy (AIH) has launched an ambitious effort to collect COVID-19 cases (homeopathic) from around the world. This project is part of a larger collaborative effort with homeopathic colleagues around the world. We will be issuing reports on findings from the data at least weekly for the forseeable future. The database can only be accessed by practitioners with the security clearance to do so.
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Interesting that a security clearance is required to see what they are doing.
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Well it's all part of their public education campaign. The less they tell people, the more they will know. ;)
 
CF's link titled: Here’s what other New England states’ reopening plans look like | Boston.com - with a Firefox extension. A similar extension is also available for Chrome.

MA is the 3rd hardest-hit state, after NY and NJ.

The article discusses plans for CT, RI, VT, NH, and ME.

CT's first phase of opening starts on May 20. Restaurants will only have outdoor areas open, and at 50% capacity. Museums and zoos will likewise have only outdoor areas open. Nonessential businesses, retail stores, and malls will reopen at 50% capacity, and they must have social distancing and masks. Hair salons and barbershops must also be at 50% capacity, only do hair, and keep waiting rooms closed. Second phase: June 20.

Governor Mills Presents Safe, Gradual Plan to Restart Maine’s Economy | Office of Governor Janet T. Mills

Its first stage has started on May 1. Anyone going into the state will be quarantined for 14 days. It's mostly outdoor activities that will be reopening, with exceptions like barbershops, hair salons, pet grooming, and some healthcare services.

Its second stage is tentatively scheduled for June 1. It will involve upping allowed gathering size from 10 to 50 people, and allow more indoor activities like at gyms andnail salons, and indoor retail shopping. More outdoor activities will open.

Its third stage is tentatively scheduled for July 1. It will involve some opening of hotels and campgrounds and boat touring. Also opening are bars, tattoo and piercing salons, and the like.

Its fourth phase has no scheduled data, but lifts essentially all restrictions.
 
A guy on my team went to the plant last week, talked to a guy in Facilities while waiting for his lab shift. He said that Facilities doesn't expect the full work force back into the plant until August.

Knowing some of the people at my company, this could mean that the company's plan is anything from 'we're for definite going to maximize WFH until school starts' to 'okay, we should be prepared for the worst, what would we have to do IF we have to WFH all the way into, let's say, August?' They can take the hypotheticals as mission statements with little urging.

But, i am surprised how none of my trumpsucker collegues are claiming this is a hoax, or political maneuvering. Probably helps that we're mostly sub sailors, and can do this isolation shit for 100 days without a sweat.
 
NH. May 4: hospitals could do some elective procedures. May 11: limited-capacity openings of barbershops, retail stores, and drive-in movie theaters. May 18: outdoor dining at restaurants.

RI. May 8: elective surgeries and service-based businesses. Retail storefronts: 1 customer per 300 square feet. For a square grid, that's 17 ft apart, while for a triangular grid, 19 ft apart. Golf courses and parks.

VT. May 4: elective health procedures. Construction workers and outdoor employees could also go back to work, though with some social distancing. Outdoor retail and farmers' markets also, but with measures to avoid crowding. Gatherings up to 10 people now permitted. Parks and similar outdoor recreations could open, except for campgrounds, marinas, and beaches. May 18: Nonessential retail stores at 25% capacity, but with employees wearing facemasks.

Looking in my current resident state, OR, Gov. Brown announces phase one for reopening Oregon; counties must meet requirements, large gatherings still prohibited
Brown, who has come under increasing pressure to reopen from rural counties, said that on May 15 she will loosen restrictions statewide on day cares and on retail shops that were previously closed, including furniture stores, boutiques, jewelry stores and art galleries.

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Counties that have very small numbers of coronavirus cases and that have seen declining infection numbers can also apply to reopen beauty salons, gyms and bars and restaurants for sit-down dining on May 15 with a number of rules and limitations, Brown said on Thursday. Those areas can submit their plans to the state for approval starting Friday and must also have a system in place for contact tracing for people who become infected and have isolation facilities lined up for homeless residents who have no way to observe a quarantine order.

"I think it’s safe to assume that the majority of Oregon counties will be in a place by next Friday that they meet those metrics to be able to successfully reopen," said Pat Allen, the OHA director. Limits on the number of people in public gathering in counties that qualify would also increase from 10 to 25.

However, that doesn’t mean you should be traveling outside your community.

"The fact that things are open, isn’t an open invitation to travel 200 miles across the state and flood into a region," Allen said.

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Rural counties in eastern Oregon may be ready to meet the criteria, but Marion County and the Portland metropolitan region are still weeks away, said Nik Blosser, Brown’s chief-of-staff. State health authorities will be monitoring infection rates closely and will take action if they can't trace the origins of at least 75% of new infections or if the number of new cases or hospitalizations increase for seven consecutive days, he said.
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Italians report coronavirus disease recovery can take months | TheHill
noting
Surviving Covid-19 May Not Feel Like Recovery for Some - The New York Times - "Debilitating symptoms can last long after a person’s body has gotten rid of the coronavirus, a reality Italians are now confronting."
When Morena Colombi tested negative for the coronavirus on March 16, the official tallies counted her among the Covid-19 recoveries, a success amid the tragedies overwhelming Italy. But she was nowhere near recovered, her cough and crippling fatigue nowhere near gone.

Five weeks later, on April 21, she returned to her job developing colors for a cosmetics company, but with shortness of breath and aching muscles, she found herself unable to take even short walks. Another test confirmed that she was no longer infected. But 11 weeks after testing positive, on the same day Italy first quarantined towns, she is still not back to normal.

“It takes a long time,” said Ms. Colombi, 59, who lives in Truccazzano, outside the northern city of Milan. “I can’t get back into my natural rhythms.”
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One of many examples of such persistence of symptoms. Meaning that the virus's damage may take a long time to heal.
 
US germ warfare research leads to new early Covid-19 test | World news | The Guardian

Scientists working for the US military have designed a new Covid-19 test that could potentially identify carriers before they become infectious and spread the disease, the Guardian has learned.

In what could be a significant breakthrough, project coordinators hope the blood-based test will be able to detect the virus’s presence as early as 24 hours after infection – before people show symptoms and several days before a carrier is considered capable of spreading it to other people. That is also around four days before current tests can detect the virus.
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Yay DARPA.
 
Opinion | Coronavirus Is Making Young People Very Sick. I Was One of Them. - The New York Times
24,000 NYC people have died of COVID-19 over the last two months - twice the number murdered over the last 20 years.
The day before I got sick, I ran three miles, walked 10 more, then raced up the stairs to my fifth-floor apartment as always, slinging laundry with me as I went.

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The second day I was sick, I woke up to what felt like hot tar buried deep in my chest. I could not get a deep breath unless I was on all fours. I’m healthy. I’m a runner. I’m 33 years old.

In the emergency room an hour later, I sat on a hospital bed, alone and terrified, my finger hooked to a pulse-oxygen machine. To my right lay a man who could barely speak but coughed constantly. To my left was an older man who said that he had been sick for a month and had a pacemaker. He kept apologizing to the doctors for making so much trouble, and thanking them for taking such good care of him. I can’t stop thinking about him even now.

Finally, Dr. Audrey Tan walked toward me, her kind eyes meeting mine from behind a mask, goggles and a face shield. “Any asthma?” she asked. “Do you smoke? Any pre-existing conditions?” “No, no, none,” I replied. Dr. Tan smiled, then shook her head, almost imperceptibly. “I wish I could do something for you,” she said.

I am one of the lucky ones. I never needed a ventilator. I survived. But 27 days later, I still have lingering pneumonia. I use two inhalers, twice a day. I can’t walk more than a few blocks without stopping.

I want Americans to understand that this virus is making otherwise young, healthy people very, very sick. I want them to know, this is no flu.

Even healthy New Yorkers in their 20s have been hospitalized. At least 13 children in New York state have died from Covid-19, according to health department data. My friend’s 29-year-old boyfriend was even sicker than I was and at one point could barely walk across their living room.
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Opinion | America’s True Covid Toll Already Exceeds 100,000 - The New York Times
Many supporters of President Trump believe that the figures for coronavirus fatalities are inflated, and Trump himself shared a tweet doubting the accuracy of some virus figures.

He’s right that the death toll seems off — but not in the direction he would suggest. We’ve crunched the numbers, state by state, and it appears that somewhere around 100,000 to 110,000 Americans have already died as a result of the pandemic, rather than the 83,000 whose deaths have been attributed to the disease, Covid-19.

That’s my estimate reached with the help of a Harvard statistician, Rafael Irizarry, based on a comparison of death rates this spring with those in previous years. Some states have been largely unaffected — death rates in some even appear to have dropped, perhaps because of less driving and fewer car accidents — but others have seen huge surges in deaths.

Over all, in a bit more than two months, the United States lost more Americans to the coronavirus than died over seven decades in the Korean, Vietnam, Persian Gulf, Afghanistan and Iraq Wars.
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Coronavirus super-spreader events reveal which gatherings to avoid - Business Insider
  • An average person with the coronavirus infects about two other people, but sometimes an infected person passes the virus to far more people during a "super-spreader event."
  • There have been reports of super-spreader events in South Korea and the US that have sparked local outbreaks.
  • Most super-spreader events are similar: The infected person attends an indoor gathering with lots of people, like a religious service, choir practice, or birthday party.
  • The commonalities of these events inform health officials about the types of gatherings with the highest chances of facilitating the virus' spread.
In mid-February, a 61-year-old woman attended church services in Daegu, South Korea. Soon after, she tested positive for the coronavirus — then so did dozens of others. South Korea's coronavirus case count quickly jumped from 29 cases on February 15 to more than 2,900 two weeks later.

Throughout this pandemic, clusters of coronavirus infections like this have cropped up almost overnight, sprouting outbreaks that spiral out of control. Such spikes in cases can often be traced back to a super-spreader event like the one in Daegu, in which one person infects an atypically large number of people.

...
During the last two decades, super spreaders have started a number of measles outbreaks in the United States," Elizabeth McGraw, an infectious-disease expert from Pennsylvania State University, wrote in The Conversation in January. "Sick, unvaccinated individuals visited densely crowded places like schools, hospitals, airplanes and theme parks where they infected many others."

Research has found time and again that the risk of the coronavirus spreading is much higher indoors, in poorly ventilated spaces where lots of people have sustained contact. That's because it primarily spreads via droplets that fly through the air when an infected person coughs, sneezes, or speaks.

A preliminary report from scientists in Japan (which has not been peer-reviewed) suggested that the odds that an infected person "transmitted COVID-19 in a closed environment was 18.7 times greater compared to an open-air environment." Another preprint study examined 318 outbreaks in China that involved three or more cases and found that all but one involved the virus jumping among people indoors.

...
Singing and projecting your voice might be particularly risky activities, since that can send droplets farther than the recommended 6 feet of social distancing.
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I like that research - it indicates what to watch out for. This raises an interesting question: how safe are large *outdoor* gatherings? They have the downside of crowding and the upside of being open-air.

Also, how might we make indoor environments more safe? Doing stronger air circulation with filtering? Getting air from outside?
 
Airports test thermal cameras, sanitation booths and other technologies to mitigate coronavirus | TheHill
Airports across the United States and around the world are testing technology like thermal cameras and sanitation booths in an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus among travelers and airport screeners, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The number of people traveling by plane has dropped by approximately 96 percent amid the ongoing pandemic, according to multiple reports, leading airlines into an economic downfall.

At Los Angeles International Airport, one of the busiest airports in the country, a COVID-19 recovery task force has entertained the use of thermal cameras, touch-less kiosks and other methods of screening flyers for the virus, the Times reported.
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CDC issues advisory about severe coronavirus-related illness in children | TheHill
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued an emergency advisory about a mysterious inflammatory illness believed to be connected to the coronavirus in children.

The CDC asked that health care providers report instances of pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C), a condition health officials say is similar to Kawasaki Disease — a rare illness that causes inflamed blood vessels, typically in young children.
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Klobuchar, Rubio ask CDC to investigate reports of coronavirus causing strokes in younger patients | TheHill
Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) are asking the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to assess the risk of strokes in younger and middle-aged coronavirus patients.

“We believe it is critical that the CDC evaluate the prevalence of stroke in COVID-19 patients, including the potential link to stroke from the development of blood clots caused by the virus,” the two wrote in a letter to CDC Director Robert Redfield.

“With over one million confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States as of May 13, even a relatively low prevalence of stroke in this particular patient population could lead to a significant increase in the number of stroke patients in our country,” they added.
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So it's not just old people who are vulnerable. What a nightmare.
 
It is a nightmare and nobody knows how the virus will impact them if they become infected. I just read a piece in the NYTimes written by a healthy, thin, physically fit 27 year old woman who became very sick with the virus and after several weeks, she is still recuperating and still feels very weak. She lives in New York City, so of course she had a higher risk of becoming infected, compared to those living in smaller cities, but she wrote her editorial to try to make other healthy young people understand that they are not immune from becoming seriously ill and even dying from this horrible infection.

Last night I read some doctors and nurses arguing about whether or not wearing cloth or surgical masks gave people any protection. The consensus was that we don't know enough, but it certainly doesn't hurt to wear one. The best we can do is remain apart from others when we have to go out in public.

And, now Georgia has over 36,000 cases as of last night. My county hasn't had many new cases in the past week or two, but I will still stay home other than going out to buy groceries.
 
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And, speaking of how he immune system can sometimes turn on itself, I found another interesting article about cytokine storms. It seems to me as if this new anti-inflammatory COVID-19 related illness that is being found in children might be related to cytokine storms or something similar.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/05/how-quieting-cytokine-storms-could-be-key-to-treating-severe-cvd/?cmpid=org=ngp::mc=crm-email::src=ngp::cmp=editorial::add=SpecialEdition_20200508&rid=0058A7930211DE4692EB260C90292BEB


While essential for defending against pathogens, the immune system can be a blunt and potent weapon that sometimes harms healthy cells. One version of a runaway immune response, called a “blood storm” or cytokine storm, causes excessive inflammation. It’s suspected to play a major role in some of the most critical COVID-19 cases—including those that land patients in the ICU or saddle them with ventilators.

Cytokine storms are “one of the main ways that people with COVID-19 end up passing away,” says Anna Helena Jonsson, a rheumatologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

Clinicians and researchers are still trying to figure out how common cytokine storms are among those with COVID-19, as well as the factors that trigger them. Because these types of immune overreactions aren’t exclusive to the coronavirus, scientists have already identified several existing anti-inflammatory therapies that could help rein them in. Coupled with other promising drugs that directly target the virus SARS-CoV-2, these treatments could speed recovery times and perhaps even reduce death rates while researchers race to develop a vaccine.
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I liked this article because it explained how this works in very simple terms.
 
Whisky kills Covid19.

How Did They Come to This Conclusion?

''Pfaender and her team used a viral strain from a patient from Munich, then infected animal cells with it. The cells were then placed into alcohol solutions with various degrees of strength. Those were about 85 percent ethanol with water(this was recommended by the World Health Organization for hand rubs when commercial good was not available). Next, they repeated the same technique with 10 and 20%; this left the virus still able to thrive and remain intact. When they reached 30%, however, this is where they saw the sudden change that it was just like the 85 percent that the WHO has recommended.

Sars and Mers needed about 35% alcohol to eliminate any of the strains effectively, but for COVID-19, it is surprisingly weaker than the two.''
 
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/18/health/coronavirus-vaccine-moderna.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage


The first coronavirus vaccine to be tested in people appears to be safe and able to stimulate an immune response against the virus, its manufacturer, Moderna announced on Monday.
The findings are based on results from the first eight people who each received two doses of the vaccine, starting in March.
Those people, healthy volunteers, made antibodies that were then tested in human cells in the lab, and were able to stop the virus from replicating — the key requirement for an effective vaccine. The levels of those so-called neutralizing antibodies matched the levels found in patients who had recovered after contracting the virus in the community.
The company has said that it is proceeding on an accelerated timetable, with the second phase involving 600 people to begin soon, and a third phase to begin in July involving thousands of healthy people. The Food and Drug Administration gave Moderna the go-ahead for the second phase earlier this month.
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It's too early to get too excited but this is a hopeful sign. Can't wait to see what happens after the vaccine is tested on the 600 volunteers.
 
Here are some links to the re-opening plan for Massachusetts revealed today with Phase 1 starting today.

https://www.boston.com/news/coronav...massachusetts-reopening-plan-livestream-video

The governor stressed that getting back to work and continuing to fight further transmission of COVID-19 will be “inseparable” in the state’s approach.

“We cannot move forward unless we commit to continuing to slow the spread,” he said.

Phase 1 of the four-step reopening of Massachusetts begins Monday, May 18, with the construction and manufacturing industries, as well as houses of worship, being allowed to resume operations, Baker said during a press conference.

All reopening businesses will be required to follow public health guidelines specific to their industry or sector.

Baker emphasized that moving through each phase of the reopening will hinge on public health data tracking the outbreak.

“We’ll progress through four phases, opening more sectors of the economy and activities only when the public health data indicate it’s appropriate to do so,” the governor said. “Each phase will last at least three weeks, but may last longer if the public health data doesn’t support moving forward.”

Houses of worship will be limited to 40 percent occupancy of the building’s maximum permitted occupancy level, including attendees and staff, according to the checklist of safety requirements for the reopening of the facilities. Everyone is required to wear masks, and non-immediate household members must stay at least six feet apart. Communal gatherings before or after services remain prohibited, though food pantries and the distribution of pre-packaged food run out of houses of worship remain allowed. Child care services must remain closed.
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While I've largely approved of Baker's handling of this, I personally think that allowing Church services to resume even at only a 40% capacity and with PPE's and Social distancing requirements that this is too soon. The state will really need to enforce this and be sure that these churches report any cases that are observed and contact tracing really needs to be up to the task.


Here is a link to the 4 stage plan.

https://www.boston.com/news/coronavirus/2020/05/18/full-massachusetts-reopening-report

Not so easy to read. Still looking to see if I can download the PDF.
 
crazyfingers said:
Here are some links to the re-opening plan for Massachusetts revealed today with Phase 1 starting today.

...

The governor stressed that getting back to work and continuing to fight further transmission of COVID-19 will be “inseparable” in the state’s approach.
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Ha! He misspelled "incompatible".
 
bilby said:
crazyfingers said:
Here are some links to the re-opening plan for Massachusetts revealed today with Phase 1 starting today.

...

The governor stressed that getting back to work and continuing to fight further transmission of COVID-19 will be “inseparable” in the state’s approach.
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Ha! He misspelled "incompatible".
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I think what he means is that the only way to safely open up is to have more than enough testing, ideally rapid testing, and massive contact tracing. We would not have to be in this mess if the Federal Government had taken those priorities seriously way back in January and February. Instead Trump blew it massively and all these these deaths and massive economic impacts are on his hands.
 
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