Coronavirus and Pandemics

The FDA has revoked the emergency authorization for chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine for covid-19:

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The FDA said it had concluded that it is no longer reasonable to believe that hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine are effective in treating the disease. Nor is it reasonable to believe, the agency said, "that the known and potential benefits of these products outweigh their known and potential risks.

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It is still possible that these drugs could prove of some value in treating covid-19, but their safety and efficacy for this purpose should still be demonstrated by quality studies, and recommendations about them should come from the health profession and not from politicians.--Percy

Here's another chapter in the continuing saga of why you do not want to catch this virus. From the New York Times:
Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Father Dies From Complications of Covid-19 - The New York TimesThe article contains no details about Nur Omar Mohamed's death, other than that it was Covid-19 related.--Percy

Who should wear masks? The consistent advice is that only the infected need wear masks to avoid infecting others, and that masks don't protect the uninfected.I have strongly repeated in this thread that this advice is wrong. Everyone should wear masks. They prevent the infected from spreading contagious droplets, and they prevent the uninfected from inhaling contagious droplets. This is just plan and simple logic.Finally Dr. Anthony Fauci has given this same advice. Quoting from https://thehill.com/...y-the-public-wasnt-told-to-wear-masks:

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"Masks are not 100 percent protective. However, they certainly are better than not wearing a mask. Both to prevent you, if you happen to be a person who maybe feels well, but has an asymptomatic infection that you don't even know about, to prevent you from infecting someone else," Fauci said.

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"But also, it can protect you a certain degree, not a hundred percent, in protecting you from getting infected from someone who, either is breathing, or coughing, or sneezing, or singing or whatever it is in which the droplets or the aerosols go out. So masks work, Fauci added.

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Now that a known authority has finally repeated this advice it is very clear: Everyone should wear masks.Get an N95 mask if you can. Cloth masks and surgical masks are much less effective, especially for small droplets and aerosols.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Typo.

At his Tulsa rally yesterday Trump said he'd told his administration he wants to decrease testing, which of course would impact contact tracing since we wouldn't know who's infected. The reasoning seems to be that testing only makes the number of cases increase, which makes him look bad.Trump also made fun of masks. Here's a puzzler for everyone. Guess why Japan's unemployment rate is 2.6% while the U.S.'s is 16% (see U.S. unemployment rate: What is the real rate? How many unemployed? Why was the jobs report shocking? FAQ | Fortune). Here's a hint, that's Japan on the left, the U.S. on the right: --Percy

Here's today's bar graph of deaths per day from The Washington Post Coronavirus Page. The trend is still mildly downward. We're at over 118,000 deaths now: From the same source, here's today's bar graph of cases. The trend is now clearly upward On Meet the Press today the medical guest said that given how poorly we're handling the pandemic in the U.S that there won't be a second wave. The first wave won't end. What we'll have is a raging forest fire.No news from this weeks grocery shopping trip. I was wearing my AirPods Pro for the first time and was just blown away, never noticed anything about masks.--Percy

The tripod of pandemic defense is social distancing, widespread testing and contact tracing. The Trump Administration is examining the possibility of "pool testing." It doesn't matter what kind of testing they're proposing, just the fact that they're going to give testing any attention at all is a giant leap forward. I thought Trump was going to try to eliminate testing in order give liberals one was less fact to complain about.Pool testing means combining the samples of 20 people and running one test on the whole batch. If it comes up negative then you move on. If it comes up positive then you test everyone in the group. This would have to be a fairly sensitive test since a single virus-positive sample combined with 19 virus-negative samples would be very dilutive.If his poll figures continue to be dismal then I'm expecting Trump to do an about face sometime in the next month about direct federal involvement in fighting the pandemic. Ignoring the virus plays with his core base but alienates too many others, so he'll come to understand that his strategy must change. It'll be a tight course he has to plot since he has to keep his base or he'll have no chance at all. Maybe he'll just figure that his core base will stick with him no matter what, and so this summer he'll be sticking it to them.Source: The Health 202: The Trump administration is eyeing a new testing strategy for coronavirus, Anthony Fauci says--Ted

Broadway star Nick Cordero contracted Covid-19 back in March. Placed on a ventilator and developing blood clots that forced the amputation of his right leg, he died July 5 at a Los Angeles hospital. Increasingly receiving central roles in such Broadway hits as Bullets Over Broadway and A Bronx Tale, Cordero's career was headed toward even bigger things. This is another significant loss to the novel coronavirus. Here is a list of other well known people who have died: Celebrities Who Have Died From the Coronavirus (Photos)Source: Nick Cordero, Tony-nominated Broadway star, dies at 41 of coronavirus--Percy

Here's today's bar graph of deaths per day from The Washington Post Coronavirus Page. The trend remains mildly downward, but given the recent spike in cases should begin moving upward soon. Mitigating deaths is the increasing experience and knowledge of the medical establishment, and worsening deaths will be that hospital capacity of hotspot regions is being increasingly strained. We're at over 127,000 deaths now: From the same source, here's today's bar graph of cases. The trend is now strongly upward This week's grocery store trip was a few days ago. Everyone wore a mask except for two employees. There were several people wearing their mask below the nose, and several others wearing it across the tip of the nose.At PetSmart maybe 75% were wearing masks. Dog people don't seem to like masks.--Percy

We took our first vacation since the coronavirus pandemic began last week, spent it on Cape Cod. Masks were mandated in Provincetown and everyone was wearing one. Even the street musician in front of town hall was wearing one.The nearby beach was another story. Social distancing was very easy to maintain on the uncrowded beaches, but once I was in the water I completely forgot myself. I approached two women who I heard say they'd just seen a seal, and I asked where. They appeared horrified when I approached too close, and I only realized why later.Another time I was watching a family play a beach game with a ball and small trampoline and they invited me to join. It's played in pretty close quarters, four people in maybe a six-by-six area. I completely forgot about the virus and joined the game.We did several hikes and had our masks around our necks and only pulled them up when someone passed, but the last hike we did we completely forgot ourselves and never pulled our masks up.Several times we got out of the car to walk into stores and completely forgot our masks until we got to the door.It is so easy to forget. Fortunately most people were very nice when we needed reminding. Here's a nice picture of Ptown from one of the town beaches: --Percy

Dr. Fauci in response to a question from NYT interviewer Jennifer Senior:

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But Jennifer, would you want me to say something that’s directly contrary to what the president is doing? That’s not helpful. Then all of a sudden you don’t hear from me for a while.

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Source: Opinion | I Spoke With Anthony Fauci. He Says His Inbox Isn’t Pretty. - The New York Times--Percy

Sorry for taking so long to reply, but it is even more timely now to be very clear about this: A cloth mask is better than nothing, the higher the thread count the better, but much better and more trustworthy (do you know the thread count of your mask?) is an N95 mask.Also, masks protect you whether you're the infected or the infectee. A droplet that cannot be exhaled through a mask cannot be inhaled through a mask, either.Wear a mask, preferably an N95 mask: Feradyne N95 Mask--Percy

Testing has found that surgical masks are less effective than cloth masks (thread count dependent) are less effective than N95 masks.Fit is important. Surgical masks and N95 masks have a strip of soft embedded metal that can be bent so that the mask conforms precisely around the nose. Be sure the mask is right side up. It is easy to see the metal strip on an N95 mask, but not on a surgical mask because it is sewn inside - you have to feel for the metal strip.Cloth masks have no metal strip. People wearing a cloth mask usually have an open area around the nose. People wearing a cloth mask on the tip of their nose (which is quite common) have a rather large open area around the nose. Because of the fit problem around the nose, cloth masks are probably worse than properly fitted surgical masks, and certainly worse than properly fitted N95 masks.Wearing a mask below the nose is like wearing no mask at all.Having a condition that makes it impossible to wear a mask does not render one invulnerable or uncontagious. If you cannot wear a mask you should never go near anyone who is also not wearing a mask.Lastly, falsely claiming you cannot wear a mask is despicable.--Percy

Amazon.com is a Chinese mask approved by the FDA as equivalent to a US N95 mask.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Render link