I play tennis with a Pharmacist. She quit her job last summer because of the conditions she had to work under. She said it was simply intolerable.
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/339/6125/news-summaries.full.pdf
*For some reason I canât get the link to post properly, but google âThe Metropole, Superspreaders, and Other Mysteriesâ from the March 15, 2013 edition of âScienceâ
The relevant info is in paragraph #4.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1308.6534.pdf
WHO, investigating the case of this superspreader two months after his hotel stay found âcopious amounts of viral remnantsâ in the carpet outside the doctorâs hotel room door. The theory is that he may have vomited in the hall.
We first bump at end of our tennis matches instead of the traditional hand shake., but only in the winter.
I must admit Iâm not a big hand sanitizers/ donât touch things with my bare hands type of person and Iâm sure I touch my face frequently, too. I do get a flu shot every year and I got the pneumonia shot a few years ago,
Since Iâve been getting the flu shot I havenât even had one cold. I know there isnât really a correlation but I used to get at least two colds a year, but now never.
I saw the question about the legality of quarantine a few pages back and didnât see anyone answer it (sorry if I missed it and this is a repeat).
The simple answer is yes, the US federal & state governments can forcibly quarantine people - both citizens and non-citizens alike.
Iâm not sure what the federal penalties are (if any) for breaking a quarantine, but in most states itâs a misdemeanor.
The question becomes where to put people. Quite bluntly, weâre in absolutely no way prepared for a pandemic. We can barely keep up with bad flu seasons.
Re: the US declaring a public health emergency in the U.S. allows the government to tap additional resources to send to states, such as emergency funding and if necessary drugs or equipment from the national stockpile, and to suspend certain legal requirements (quarantines for one).
South Korea reported five new cases on Friday, including three human-to-human transmissions in country.
Hereâs a look at the course of the disease from a US patient:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/31/health/washington-coronavirus-study-nejm/index.html
Spain confirms a case in the Canary Islands. The man had been in contact with a German man with the virus. Didnât find other details so unclear where the exposure took place.
India flew out 324 of their nationals today. 6 individuals who were supposed to be on the flight were held back by Chinese authorities because of high fevers.
Interesting read about how the cases in Wuhan are likely undercounted and some reasons why.
More in the article but here are some takeaways:
"A shortage of testing kits and overworked hospital staff areâŠhampering efforts to accurately track how many people have the pathogen. The result is a hectic and imprecise process thatâs creating bottlenecks
Hubei⊠province can process about 6,000 tests a day, health commission director Liu Yingzi told a press briefing Wednesday, noting that Hubei had about 50,000 test kits in stock. But with 5,806 confirmed cases and 32,340 people under observation, itâs uncertain if that is enough.
Complicating the situation is the elusive nature of the disease and how it is transmitted, as well as the difficulty in diagnosing it. Evidence has emerged that the disease can be passed by people before they show symptoms, or who may show no symptoms at all.
Jonathan Yu, a doctor at a university hospital in Wuhan, is on the front lines, testing patients for the coronavirus. Accurately spotting the virus isnât easy and can take several attempts, he said.
âA patient may be found as negative for the first or second test, and then found to be positive the third time,â said Yu. âIt is like fishing in a pond: You did not catch a fish once, but that does not mean the pond does not have fish.â
China is making moves to improve the situation. Health officials approved two new kits on Tuesday, in addition to the existing four types, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. One of the two new kits can give results in about 30 minutes, shortening the time needed to diagnose cases"
Wowâhaving to do repeated tests on lots of people sounds very cumbersome. If there are so many negatives and then a positive, is the positive a false positive or the test not good enough?
âWHO, investigating the case of this superspreader two months after his hotel stay found âcopious amounts of viral remnantsâ in the carpet outside the doctorâs hotel room door. The theory is that he may have vomited in the hall.â
@Sue22 - Couldnât accesst he Science article.But I wasnât questioning the existence of superspreaders. I was questioning the claim that live virus could persist on surfaces for months. âViral remnantsâ doesnât sound like live virus to me. SARS virus is estimated to persist in the environment for 2-4 days.
melvin123 thank you for pointing this out. I have had the same experience when picking up prescriptions at the pharmacy and cringed as I had to use the pinpad.
Last week when I took my sick son to the doctor I was handed an iPad and told it was their new format to check in. So there I was, stuck using an iPad (many fields to get through ) ,that every sick person checking in before me had used. What are they thinking?
Same think happens when some office handles you a pen and a paper form to fill. Or even when a store gives you a pen to sign a receipt, or the new self check out touch screens at Walmart, for example.
I have carried my own pen for years. Now I use Apple Pay whenever possible (less likelihood of having to touch anything.
@emilybee Everyone gets fewer colds with age. There are hundreds of viruses that cause colds, but in general, you can only catch each one once. So as people age, their immune systems have likely âseenâ more viruses (even if they didnât cause illness) and developed immunity to them.
The reason the number of people with the new virus is likely an undercount is because it causes only mild symptoms in some people, and they donât seek treatment. That is true of almost every virus, including the yearly flu.
And one year with the flu, we were all pretty sick, only my DH sought treatment, so he was the only one counted.
This guy sounds like a nut. Why potentially strain Chineseâs health care and other systems right now? Political theater.
"Cambodiaâs Prime Minister Hun Sen has said the government will not evacuate nationals in China amid the coronavirus outbreak, so as not to âstrain relationsâ.
The decision to leave Cambodian citizens in China was described by the prime minister as âsoft diplomacyâ during a press conference on Thursday.
Hun Sen also used the press conference to chastise reporters who wore masks to the event, threatening to remove them, and also criticised Cambodians for wanting to leave China.
He said: âWe decided not to evacuate Cambodian students. Evacuating them would probably bring an end to opportunities for Cambodians to study there. China would stop offering scholarships.
âWe are keeping them there to share [Chinese peopleâs] happiness and pain and to help them solve this situation.
âDonât run away from the Chinese people during this difficult moment,â he added. âLoving each other during the time of adversity, being good friends during these difficult circumstances. This is the slogan of Cambodia since our ancestral times.â"
âHuanggang â a city of about 7.4 million people â became the first in Hubei to impose strict restrictions on people leaving their homes, saying that just one family member was allowed out to buy necessities every two days.â
'a hospital in Xinyu, Jiangxi, has shut down after 14 of its staff were confirmed to be infected with the coronavirusâŠForty staff at Number Four Hospital in the city had been isolated⊠15 of the 17 new confirmed cases involved hospital staff." (SCMP)
It becomes clearer that the counted cases in China are only the tip of the iceberg. The mortality numbers are also difficult to calculate at this point, since most of the infections are not counted and neither are some of the deaths. Even so, it is hard to extrapolate the mortality rate in China to the rest of the world for several reasons : the lack of resources of the Chinese medical system ( especially respiratory supportive care for large number of patients- oxygen, nebulizer machines, ventilators, medication to increase blood pressure, etc )and the pollution in China which over the years may have weakened the lung capacity of healthy patients ( it would be interesting to see some trustworthy studies ).
It is also clear that it will have some impact in the worldâs economy, since China is a big manufacturer and exporter.
Also, I bet the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party are afraid for their lives and future, because if enough people die and enough chaos is spread through the country, their future may not be so certain this time.
That is one of the reason Iâm not into all the hand sanitizing stuff etc., - especially for young children. etc. itâs important to be exposed for oneâs immune system. It used to drive me crazy when my MIL visited and kid was young. She was constantly telling him to wash his hands - like every hour. Meanwhile, I was pretty chill about it. And my kid never got sick from anything. Never missed a day of school from illness until 10th grade It was very short lived.
And my mantra was âdirt is good for you.â He still never gets sick and heâs 26.
He does get the flu shot because he is not stupid. 
Along the lines of communal iPads, pens, touch screensâŠ
Our community has decided to charge and additional $.25 at each and every coffee place unless you bring your own cup. Leaving aside this new virus threat, the idea of having so many used cups touching the coffee dispensers, the hands of the employees, counters, sugar/cream dispensers etc is really disgusting.