PlagueWatch 2020-23 - Coronavirus

[left_hook_lacey]

Heard that they are closing NC beaches..This includes surf fishing..ugh

Public beaches maybe. But if you put a boat in on the Cape fear river at a place that runs through your buddy's farm, and then ride out to salt water to an island, no one knows. 🤫

[Bob Green]

...pretty soon we can sit on the deck, sip cocktails, hope for the best (I bet some of you are well into that time of year now). And maybe the increased warmth will temporarily, at least, slow down the virus

I am planting seeds today to get my garden started.

[budwom]

I am planting seeds today to get my garden started.

all we have are some daffodil shoots about two inches high.

Friend who has been vacationing on Topsail for six weeks says all short term renters have been given the boot for the time being, he somehow got himself reclassified as a contractor so he can stay.

[devildeac]

Public beaches maybe. But if you put a boat in on the Cape fear river at a place that runs through your buddy's farm, and then ride out to salt water to an island, no one knows. 🤫

Ima gonna alert the Coast Guard...

[bundabergdevil]

Public beaches maybe. But if you put a boat in on the Cape fear river at a place that runs through your buddy's farm, and then ride out to salt water to an island, no one knows. 🤫

You sir are living the pirate’s life!

[rsvman]

Which brings to mind what one of my infectious disease docs said to me in medical school: "Viruses are God's way of communicating with all forms of life." What's being said?

I was taught that viruses are "bad news wrapped in protein." Makes more sense to me.

[Bob Green]

Today’s numbers in Virginia.

Cumulative: 739 positives/9,166 tests equals 8.0%

Last 24 hour period: 135 positives/1,829 tests equals 7.3%

Death toll is 17 with 99 people currently hospitalized.

[Bostondevil]

This is a good read https://hbr.org/2020/03/lessons-from...to-coronavirus

[fisheyes]

Watching Gov. Cuomo's news conference now.

NY State has bought 7,000 ambu bags (bag-valve systems) to manually ventilate people if they run out of ventilators. He is training the National Guard to manually ventilate people with these devices. If this comes to pass that we need the National Guard to manually ventilate people we are in deep trouble. Someone has to squeeze the bag 12-22 times a minute, every minute, every hour, every day that person needs to be ventilated. It is not remotely possible to do this. I saw this up close in Viet Nam when I did a medical mission in Ho Chi Minh City. There, if you can't afford the ventilator, your family member will bag you while you need to be on a ventilator. If that person falls asleep, you die. If this comes to pass we are deep into Third World medicine. Hard to believe.

[JasonEvans]

I did not realize this but the US and South Korea each discovered the Coronavirus in country on exactly the same date, January 20th. How they each responded is a story of polar opposites and , some would say, a catastrophic miscalculation by the Trump administration. Here is a very sobering article from The Guardian that looks at the differences: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...ealth-disaster

Within a week of its first confirmed case, South Korea’s disease control agency had summoned 20 private companies to the medical equivalent of a war-planning summit and told them to develop a test for the virus at lightning speed. A week after that, the first diagnostic test was approved and went into battle, identifying infected individuals who could then be quarantined to halt the advance of the disease.

Some 357,896 tests later, the country has more or less won the coronavirus war. On Friday only 91 new cases were reported in a country of more than 50 million.

The US response tells a different story. Two days after the first diagnosis in Washington state, Donald Trump went on air on CNBC and bragged: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming from China. It’s going to be just fine.”

The article contains a lot of scientists just slamming the US Government's response to this crisis. I hope folks do not find this too partisan. I actually think the non-partisan CDC bears a tremendous amount of blame for their utterly failed testing strategy.

-Jason "we are going to have the worst outbreak of this virus, that seems all but assured" Evans

[PackMan97]

I did not realize this but the US and South Korea each discovered the Coronavirus in country on exactly the same date, January 20th. How they each responded is a story of polar opposites and , some would say, a catastrophic miscalculation by the Trump administration. Here is a very sobering article from The Guardian that looks at the differences: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...ealth-disaster



The article contains a lot of scientists just slamming the US Government's response to this crisis. I hope folks do not find this too partisan. I actually think the non-partisan CDC bears a tremendous amount of blame for their utterly failed testing strategy.

-Jason "we are going to have the worst outbreak of this virus, that seems all but assured" Evans

No. Not even close. Iran. Russia. India. Most of Africa. Argentina. Brazil are all ready to hold out beer.

But it's going to be bad. Some folks still in denial.

[94duke]

And then when you turn 30, your life clock crystal starts to glow and you know it's time for Carousel.

I hate when my life clock crystal runs down.
(I need to spread some sporks OPK)

[bundabergdevil]

No. Not even close. Iran. Russia. India. Most of Africa. Argentina. Brazil are all ready to hold out beer.

But it's going to be bad. Some folks still in denial.

The more appropriate phrasing would probably be, "the worst outbreak in a country that has the capacity and expertise to have known/done better."

[budwom]

the testing bunglement was absolutely critically important.

[mattman91]

I did not realize this but the US and South Korea each discovered the Coronavirus in country on exactly the same date, January 20th. How they each responded is a story of polar opposites and , some would say, a catastrophic miscalculation by the Trump administration. Here is a very sobering article from The Guardian that looks at the differences: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...ealth-disaster



The article contains a lot of scientists just slamming the US Government's response to this crisis. I hope folks do not find this too partisan. I actually think the non-partisan CDC bears a tremendous amount of blame for their utterly failed testing strategy.

-Jason "we are going to have the worst outbreak of this virus, that seems all but assured" Evans

If you believe China's official numbers.

[Bob Green]

If you believe China's official numbers.

Why do lots of folks assume China is not telling the truth?

[PackMan97]

The more appropriate phrasing would probably be, "the worst outbreak in a country that has the capacity and expertise to have known/done better."

As world renowned as the CDC is supposed to be, I agree. This is embarrassing, made even worse by the fact our country disagrees on whether or not our response had been good.

[curtis325]

Why do lots of folks assume China is not telling the truth?

Because China.

[Rich]

I did not realize this but the US and South Korea each discovered the Coronavirus in country on exactly the same date, January 20th. How they each responded is a story of polar opposites and , some would say, a catastrophic miscalculation by the Trump administration. Here is a very sobering article from The Guardian that looks at the differences: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...ealth-disaster

The article contains a lot of scientists just slamming the US Government's response to this crisis. I hope folks do not find this too partisan. I actually think the non-partisan CDC bears a tremendous amount of blame for their utterly failed testing strategy.

-Jason "we are going to have the worst outbreak of this virus, that seems all but assured" Evans

Maybe this was already answered in this thread, but the US didn't initiate pandemic protocol for SARS or MERS so, presumably, the administration felt the coronavirus would peter out in the US just as those did. I'm in no way defending this administration or the CDC, I'm just asking what made this situation different than those situations at the time we learned of the virus, both from a medical standpoint and policy standpoint? And for the medical practitioners, what's the difference between coronavirus and SARS/MERS that makes it so much more difficult to control?

[JasonEvans]

No. Not even close. Iran. Russia. India. Most of Africa. Argentina. Brazil are all ready to hold out beer.

But it's going to be bad. Some folks still in denial.

Yeah, sorry. I did not mean to get into a debate about the degrees of awfulness. There is no question that this is going to be truly terrible in terms of deaths, illness, and economic devastation. Measuring it up against others really isn’t very productive. It’s really, really bad. We can leave it at that.