Coronavirus and Pandemics

My daughter's SO's 84-year old grandfather died last week from complications of pneumonia. He had been in robust health, shoveling snow from his driveway the week before he was diagnosed with Type A influenza in mid-February. Unexpectedly he declined rapidly after seeming to be on the way to recovery. He had no other health issues.He received the flu shot last fall, which raises the probability of false positives to 50% for Type A influenza testing, so in my mind it is possible he actually had coronavirus. He was never tested for it.But NBC News knows that soundman Larry Edgeworth, age 61, died this past week from coronavirus because he *was* tested. His wife says he also suffered from other health issues.--Percy

Yes, you're quite correct, but there's more than just that possibility. If the rate of severe illness is 6% based on the number of confirmed cases, but the actual number of people infected is not 35,000 but a million, then the rate of severe illness is actually much, much lower, and then our healthcare system should not be overwhelmed as long as the sheltering-in-place rules are effective at flattening the curve.But if the rate of severe illness is really 6% and we just haven't seen the critical period of the illness for most infected people, then if a million people are actually infected right now then the healthcare system will be overwhelmed.Our statistics are untrustworthy because we're mostly only testing those showing symptoms, which seriously skews them. We need to test a statistical sample of the population. As long as the sample is random only 1700 need be randomly tested to give 95% confidence. If the sample isn't random (and it won't be) then many more need to be tested to provide high confidence, how many more depending upon the degree of randomness and the nature of the exceptions.--Percy

In my view all possible vectors of the coronavirus threat should be taken seriously. Certainly there's a point where the probability becomes so low we ignore it. For example, the possibility of infection while walking outside alone in the country must be extremely minute.But given that coronavirus can survive 24 hours on cardboard and up to 72 hours on polypropylene plastic, I think delivered packages should be treated with great caution because it could have been handled, possibly even coughed on, by someone with coronavirus.When my package arrives (it should be small) I will not have any contact with the delivery person. I will spray the outside of the cardboard package with 70% isopropyl alcohol and then let it sit for a couple hours. I will then open it with gloves and mask on in the garage and presumably find the item in a plastic or plastic/cardboard package. I will spray this, too, with 70% isopropyl alcohol and wait a couple hours. Then I will open the packaging and bring the item in the house where I will carefully wash my hands, just in case. I will leave the mask and gloves in the garage for 48 hours before using them again, carefully following procedures while removing them.--Percy

Since the number of N95 masks in the stockpile (12 million) is minuscule compared to demand, FEMA head Gaynor's claims that they were shipping masks to the states "yesterday, today and tomorrow and on into the future" (he repeated words to that effect many times) was a hand wave meant to imply something effective was being done when it wasn't. The stockpile doesn't have anywhere near enough masks to make a difference.The article quoted Steven Adams, acting director of the stockpile program (of course he's acting, everyone in the Trump administration is acting), saying that 300 million masks a month are needed. My own estimate was 250 million per day for a pandemic, but his estimate is 10 million per day and since he probably knows a lot more about pandemics than me I'll go with his estimate. If the stockpile shipped out enough masks to meet demand then their supply would be entirely used up in 1.2 days. Gaynor was being very misrepresentative. At least as far as masks go, the stockpile is a mere drop in the ocean compared to what is needed, not even worth mentioning.--Percy

If only someone of this level of competence were in charge nationally: Cuomo Live Update--Percy

Cuomo mentioned a very good reason for expanding testing to include blood tests for antibodies to identify people who unknowingly, because they had a mild case, contracted the disease and recovered. These people are immune and can return to work. Since somewhere north of 96% of people recover, they could be a valuable and growing source of manpower while we attempt to keep the economy in a healthy enough state so that when all this is over it will only be a matter of recovery rather than rebuilding.--Percy

Boris Johnson has ordered strict new measures to deal with the coronavirus outbreak in Britain, including closing down all non-essential businesses and ceasing all gatherings larger than two (https://www.cnbc.com/...-to-halt-spread-of-coronavirus.htmlz).It's good to see the risk of gathering size acknowledged. One must assume that anyone could be a carrier, and only in a group of two will people be able to maintain a safe distance from everyone since there's only one other person to be conscious of, and the concentration of exhalations will be less.The "six foot safe distance" rule that seems to be cited everywhere is nonsense. I remember walking down a street in New York City years ago and being able to smell a cigar from at least 50 feet in front of me. People's exhalations can travel great distances. They are diluted by time and distance in the vast volume of air that is our atmosphere, but the closer you are to someone and the longer the time spent with them the more likely it is that you will breath in their exhalations, and they yours. If you have them, wear masks. If you don't have them, make them (requires skills and equipment) or wear scarfs or bandanas over your mouth and nose. Toss them and your clothes in the wash when you get home and take a shower.Many people probably saw video of college students crowding the beaches in Florida during spring break and declaring that they weren't afraid of the virus. Colleges have for the most part closed, so when these students returned home some municipalities ordered them quarantined for two weeks.It might hit fifty here later today, but right now it's 30 with somewhere north of five inches of newly fallen snow on the ground, so I'll be snowblowing soon. The power was out for about six hours from roughly midnight to six AM. We have a generator that comes on automatically, but some neighbors have manual models.I was about to go out to start a neighbor's generator for her (her husband is traveling, if you can believe it) when the power came back on. But had I gone out we wouldn't have met in person, and I would have had my mask with me in case it became necessary to meet. The neighbor is an oncologist getting ready to go to work at the nearby hospital where she says the work has become very demanding as the number of patients increase. To provide the necessary coverage they're asking doctors, nurses and other staff to add rounds to their schedules in parts of the hospital they don't normally cover.Oh joy, our Internet has just gone out (from cable provider). Cellular is still working so I'm back on the Internet using my cell phone as a hotspot.I wonder how shutdown efforts will affect essential infrastructure like electricity and Internet. Naturally our local problems today are due to the snowfall (when it's a heavy snow like this one it's usually due to the weight of snow causing a tree branch to break and take down power lines), but if too many essential staff become affected either by having to quarantine or by actually becoming ill then issues could arise.--Percy

When I'm home I use soap and water. When I'm not at home, or when I have something I need to disinfect that can't be washed, I use a spray bottle of 70% isopropyl alcohol. Why soap is preferable to bleach in the fight against coronavirus says bleach is extremely effective but has other qualities that render its use less than ideal.--Percy

Trump says he may soon push businesses to reopen, defying advice of public health officials. This is what he's up against, data as of March 22:

Graph of US Coronavirus Infections

Dr. Fauci, the person correcting Trump's misinformation at the TV briefings, has not been present at the last two briefings, and I'll be surprised if we see him in a Trump briefing again. I doubt he'll be fired anytime soon, but it is likely that he'll be gone from the job he's held for 26 years across six presidential administrations as Director of NIAID (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases) within a few months. His age, 79, will be cited as the reason.Trump, driven by the news cycle and needy for deference and flattery, is threatening to change things up at a time when we need consistency, focus and single-mindedness of purpose. He'll get considerable pushback from Democratic governors, and I'm expecting he'll get the same level of pushback from Republican ones in populous states. Republican governors in low density states will likely follow Trump's lead, and it is safer for them to do so. For example, Wyoming, the least populous state, has only 29 confirmed cases and no deaths. New York City has 125 deaths alone, and that metropolitan area has an infection rate estimated to be as high as 1 in every 1000, by far the highest anywhere in the world.--Percy

I was wondering if that would be hard to come by. We bought a couple quarts of 70% isopropyl alcohol a couple months ago figuring it would be more than enough. Now we're not so sure because we didn't expect there would be a run on the stuff.We also have a quart of 90% that just happened to be sitting around and that we'll dilute down to make it last longer if we end up needing it.We purchased 24 rolls of toilet paper and 12 rolls of paper towels at the same time, but just because we were running low and that's the size we always get. We had no idea there would be a run on paper products, too.I'm hearing reports that some grocery stores are out of meat, but ours is only out of chicken. There's plenty of all other meats, from breakfast sausage to ribs to steak. The paper products aisle is empty except for store brand tissues (they must be pretty bad, there were plenty), there's no rice, flour or pasta, very little pasta sauce, and the soup aisle was hit pretty hard. Chips, soda and beer were plentiful. You could tell which breakfast cereals are unpopular because they were the only ones left on the shelves, like Kellogg's Corn Flakes (not Frosted Flakes - they were gone).Our grocery store has set up a seniors-only time from 7-8 AM, and I think I'll go then this Friday. My wife wants to bake bread, and maybe I'll be able to find some flour.--Percy

It's the battle of the nobody cares. Hannity and Savage's expertise and talent is getting people to tune in night after night. That's it. They have no expert health knowledge. Good for you for finding some entertaining programming, but for coronavirus you should be listening to the health experts.--Percy

Of course I care. In the most profound way I want to help you develop the ability to tell truth from fiction, integrity from charlatanism. Are you sure you're a Christian? Serious and sincere health professionals would tell them they're promoting quackery, though perhaps in politer terms. I told you not to get your health advice from talk shows (which includes Maddow, too) but from health professionals. Dr. Fauci, for example. Truth and accuracy don't have a left or right bias.The right *is* a bit handicapped at present when it comes to truth and accuracy because it's very difficult to do while not contradicting Trump at the same time. So while I include Maddow among talk show hosts, she doesn't suffer the same handicap as those on the right, so her show is more likely to contain accurate health information.Tonight you'll probably hear Hannity backing Trump's call for getting the nation out of social distancing and back to work early:

quote:

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America will again and soon be open for business very soon...We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself.

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All serious health professionals think this is a very bad idea. Let us know what Hannity's "health professionals" say, won't you? It's difficult to ignore someone blatantly parading error and ignorance. So does The Bachelor, so what? Ratings are a reflection of entertainment value, not truth and accuracy.--Percy

Yeah, it's kind of this weird combination of inhumanity and ignorance. You can almost hear him doing an Emily Litella imitation: "What, my age group is just as affected? Never mind."--Percy

In a message further on you ask what it is you've said that was error or ignorance, so before replying I'll note that this message of yours is yet another filled with error and ignorance. Here's what Cuomo is doing about it:

• Closed non-essential businesses
• Reduced street density, particularly in NYC
• Increased testing to highest level in US and highest per capita level around the globe
• Requested supplies from the national stockpile, which even if it were all shipped to New York would be insufficient.
• Initiated investigations of possible alternative means of treatment, such as Hydroxychloroquine and Zithromax, DOH plasma injection, and testing for antibodies to detect those who were unknowingly infected and have recovered and are now immune.
• Increasing hospital capacity by converting the Javits Center (1000 beds), Westbury, Westchester Convention Center and Stoneybrook. Thinks can get to 100,000, need projected to be 140,000.
• Working to addressing problem of beds, staff and equipment
• Instructed existing hospitals to increase capacity by 50%-100%
• Contacting all medical professionals not currently active (retired, otherwise employed, etc.) to staff hospitals.
• Working to acquire ventilators. Have 7,000, need minimum additional 30,000. Need is urgent because the time when they'll be needed is only 14-21 days off. Pence says they are shipping 2000 ventilators per day to New York.
• Experimenting with splitting ventilators between two people.
• Pressuring federal government to invoke the Defense Production Act.

Now you tell us what Trump is doing, besides spreading a great deal of misinformation.Cuomo was wrong about one thing. He said, "No American is going to say, 'Accelerate the economy at the expense of human life.'" He's wrong because there are at least a couple Americans saying exactly that. The Lieutenant Governor of Texas said that elderly Americans would gladly sacrifice their lives to get the economy going. And more notably, Trump himself wants business restarted by Easter, less than two and half weeks away, a move widely opposed by health professionals. You're promoting a conspiracy theory that Trump pulled from Gateway Pundit, a website "known for publishing falsehoods and spreading hoaxes." (The Gateway Pundit - Wikipedia)--PercyEdited by Percy, : Wordsmith the first sentence, the original was poorly written.

Wrong again. I said you shouldn't be getting your health information from them.--Percy