Coronavirus in the US

Parent Cafe
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The Russian military will start sending medical help to Italy from Sunday in order to help it battle the new coronavirus after receiving an order from President Vladimir Putin, Russia’s Defence Ministry said in a statement.

Putin spoke to Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte on Saturday, the Kremlin said, saying the Russian leader had offered his support and help in the form of mobile disinfection vehicles and specialists to help the worst hit Italian regions.

Italy recorded a jump in deaths from coronavirus of almost 800 on Saturday, taking the toll in the world’s hardest-hit country to almost 5,000.

The Russian Defence Ministry said military transport planes would deliver eight mobile brigades of military medics, special disinfection vehicles, and other medical equipment to Italy starting from Sunday.

Russia itself has reported 306 cases of the virus, most of them in Moscow, and one coronavirus-related death. (Guardian)

[ Worth noting, the US has 7 military bases on Italian soil. ]

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Hmmm, this is the 1st mention I’ve read of with loss of smell as a symptom.

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He was once homeless. Now he’s providing sinks, water and soap to help protect those on the streets from the coronavirus
From CNN’s Christopher Dawson

Terence Lester is placing portable sinks with soap and water where the homeless congregate in Atlanta.

“All the news reports are saying wash your hands,” Lester told CNN. “But the homeless population often can’t.”
Lester knows the challenges of living on the streets. He was homeless as a teenager and he is currently the executive director of the nonprofit Love Beyond Walls, which is dedicated to helping the homeless. But the difficulties the homeless now face with this pandemic are hard for him to fathom.

“I was trying to think of how they will survive,” Lester said. “How can they get through this when they can’t even wash their hands? So, I decided to start there.”
He found a solution with portable washbasins that are sold for RVs and camping. These sinks have a foot pump to bring water from a 5-gallon tank to the faucet. A soap dispenser is built into each station.

The Love Beyond Walls team picks up the sinks daily to clean them and refill each unit with water and soap. The nonprofit is raising money to place more sinks in the city and to ship them across state lines to other homeless communities.

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Several WA cities closed park playgrounds and picnic shelters in order to encourage social distancing.

(Saw one of such closes playgrounds during our evening walk. Several others were widely open and in use. Sigh.)

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Frankly, there’s a part of me that is glad I have the virus. Given that I first displayed symptoms over a week ago and was exposed, at minimum, two weeks ago, it seems very likely that the mild and now waning symptoms I’ve had is as bad as it is going to get for me. I haven’t had to use up any medical resources, beyond the test itself and a twice a day phone check-in from a nurse, and exposed very few if any people other than my partner (he may have exposed more, but also not many). I will also presumably emerge from this with at least some immunity.

Even so, I’m not getting near my fiance unless we find out for sure that he’s already infected (he got a test yesterday) because there is no guarantee that other people - even healthy people in their thirties – will have simlar experiences. I have two friends in their late twenties/early thirties who are having significant breathing problems as they wait for test results. While they are statistically very likely to recover, there’s a reasonable chance they are going to need some medical support, which diverts resources from more critical cases.

And, of course, any person exposed is more likely to expose others, including some who may be high risk. Not everyone in a high risk group has the luxury of staying home and not interacting with a single other person; , for instance, elderly people who rely on visiting nurse services or at home care aids. Or people who are hospitalized for issues other than Corona.

This simply isn’t a situation where we can respect people’s right to make their own risk assessment.

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The study on hydroxychloroquine and azathioprine gave 6 people that treatment. SIX. It might be a great drug combination. But a non-double-blind study where only 6 people got the drug treatment is hardly definitive. There are numerous double-blind tests going on now with hydroxychloroquine with and without azathioprine.

I just listened to an excellent seminar from the UCSF Department of Medicine, about various aspects of covid-19. The doctor who discussed potential drug treatments, as well as the doctor who was an expert on acute respiratory distress syndrome, both emphasized that any anti-viral regimen, such as hydroxychloroquine, has to be taken at the beginning of the illness. Once the respiratory problems begin, antivirals are no longer of use and it’s time for symptomatic treatment. This is a bit of a problem, because for a lot of patients, at the beginning of the illness they don’t know they have COVID-19 rather than a different disease.

I learned a lot from the seminar. Another interesting fact was that their infectious specialists now believe that for providers taking care of covid-19 patients and not doing treatments like inserting breathing tubes, surgical masks are adequate protection and n95 masks are not needed. They say that this disease is spread by droplets. They acknowledge that this is a hard sell for doctors, but they think it’s true.

This is a technical seminar, because it’s aimed at doctors, rather than laypeople. But it’s well worth listening to, and wide-ranging.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt-BzEve46Y

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I wish the US would shut down everything for 2-3 weeks on a mandatory basis. The only people allowed movement should be essential employees: cops; fire, medical etc.

On a bright note DJ Nice has been hosting IG live parties. Last night over 100k signed in, I danced the night away!

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@“Cardinal Fang” The numbers in the research are small. There simply weren’t a lot of cases just a few weeks ago outside of China.

Ive read and heard that the number was 30 and 6 was a subset not treated.

Nonetheless, if some docs and cdc types think it has some merit that is promising at least. That’s the hope.

I’d not this one perhaps one of the other avenues being fast tracked will help in the interim.

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@greenwitch

Thanks for the links and information.

I figured there was already a product available.

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https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

has the percentage of cases per population on the far right of the grid.

That said, with so many places now only testing those coming in for medical help, the numbers are skewed. This goes along with not doing much testing before in some places.

I think all of those out and about getting their jollies due to “not being at risk” or thinking “getting it and getting over it” is better for the population/economy should take shifts in the hospitals helping them getting rooms cleaned/disinfected, or running as gofers. It might give them a different perspective, but if not, it will certainly help ease the strain a little bit on the staff there.

I feel for everyone on the front line knowing most of them are facing such severe shortage issues due to these folks and their ability to stick their heads in the sand or simply not give a hoot.

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Wow, sorry to hear you are. COVID-19 positive. When were you diagnosed?

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Wow! The virus was circulating in general public already in November. It was brought o the attention of medical professionals in early December. 6 weeks later, they were still denying human to human transmission misleading the world? WHO is or was in Xi’s pocket.

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Sooner or later, we are all getting the virus. The alarming speed it is spreading probably means we will all be infected before any vaccine is available for general public. The best we can hope for is to avoid the chaos that may come with wide infection. Luckily, the illness is mild for many people. If we can infect them only and have them develop immunity, we will be in a much better shape. It will also help the vulnerable population since the virus has to spread among 80% who don’t react to it and won’t transmit to others. They will make a great buffer.

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Photo of all the Delta planes parked on a runway and taxiways. https://www.ajc.com/blog/airport/flight-cuts-delta-planes-parked-atlanta-airport-runway-taxiways/OWiNuoo6IzULD9ovSC3EwL/

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This NY Times story has me livid. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/us/coronavirus-cruise-ship-costa-luminosa.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

400 cruise ship passengers - some with coronovirus – flew home. Their flight home was horrible, but the outrageous part is that when they landed, they were allowed to take other airplanes home – no quarantine for 400 people clearly exposed to this virus. Here’s the relevant section (which the Times buried, so poor journalism on their part):

"Kristen Nordlund, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the plane was diverted to a remote part of the Atlanta airport and that all the passengers were screened. The sick passengers were separated, she said.

“C.D.C. is working with the state of Georgia and other federal partners to determine a plan for these passengers,” she said in a statement. “Passengers with no symptoms upon arrival were given health information advising them to stay home for 14 days after returning from travel, monitor their health and practice social distancing as they continued to their final destination.”

Several passengers acknowledged that they or someone in their party had high temperatures when the C.D.C. checked. But as long as their temperatures fell after repeated tries, they were allowed to go home.

Passengers said they booked flights to California, Arizona, Florida and elsewhere across the United States and Canada.

Ms. Nordlund did not respond to questions asking whether it made sense to allow people who had been instructed to self-isolate to travel on commercial aircraft, potentially exposing them to other passengers.

“We got off the plane and you had to mark off a form asking, ‘Do you have a fever? Do you have a cough?’ I put that I had a fever and I went through secondary screening, because I was feeling terrible,” said Kelly Edge, a passenger from Miami. “I watched three-quarters of the people from the ship, and they did not do that. They marked themselves safe, got their temperatures taken and that was it.”

“They are roaming free,” she continued."

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I would sure like Dr. Fauci to address this at the next presser (or a reporter to ask about it). Truly unacceptable.

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That’s interesting. I read an account of COVID illness by a young American woman (in her 20s) who had been in Italy when she became ill and went to a doctor. She was told it was just a bad cold. A few days later, she reported losing her sense of smell. Again she went to a doctor but was told she just had a cold. She flew to the US still symptomatic but wasn’t diagnosed until she got back here. She reports that she was pretty sick but her sense of smell has returned and she is doing better.

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Yes, me too. But you could temporarily lose or have a degraded sense of smell if you are congested, have a mild cold or just sinus drainage. It seems like a wide net to cast to specify that people should self quarantine for that. Though of course, if everyone self quarantined, the disease would spread slower.

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I have used hydroxychloroquine for years, soring and summer, to prevent getting sick from sun exposure due to my (mild) systemic lupus. I also took it for a long time, with azithromycin or Biaxin, for Lyme disease. Hydroxycholorquine alters the pH of cells and makes the antibiotic more effective. In the absence of bacterial infection, I always assumed it tamped down immune response but perhaps its main action is anti-inflammatory. It seems to work for many different situations. Hope it proves helpful for COVID-19.

For preventing sun sickness, I am supposed to take it months in advance of the season for strong sun. So its effectiveness in that context takes time to ramp up. Wonder if that is true for the virus.

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Thank you to the people who responded to my question above.

I think my desire for more data is partly a reaction to the fighting, here and everywhere, about who is “wrong” and who is “right.”