It’s important to have the correct type of masks and change them as soon as they’re soiled (which most folks do NOT do). The N-95 respirator masks and similar are the better ones, but also more costly. They have to fit properly or they don’t help much.
For most folks, avoiding crowds and avoiding touching your face and frequent prolonged hand washing for 20 seconds is probably best. Also folks should be sure to get flu shot, as this season is having it pretty widespread already.
I don’t tolerate wearing masks well for any length of time, so I haven’t stocked up. I believe H has some, which he uses when he’s doing messy or dusty projects.
If I was to get masks, I’d probably buy N99 masks online, which are washable and have a replaceable filter. That’s what a lung transplant guy was wearing and says his (& my) lung doc like that mask and it’s easier to tolerate than most masks and provides protection.
I think even more important would be to ensure that the elderly or medically fragile people you love have the resources they need to avoid contact with sick people. Then again, that should always be the case. The flu, and viruses in general, can be very dangerous to seniors, as it’s more likely to develop into deadly pneumonia in that population. The CDC reports that in a typical year between 12,000 and 52,000 Americans die from the flu and its complications. A few years ago that number spiked to 80,000 in an especially bad year for the flu.
My guess is that the authorities are trying to keep things under wraps to avoid causing panic. ER’s have been overwhelmed with the “worried well” during other outbreaks.
In the website linked above has a graph of the number of sick people. Quite steep. Practically doubling each day. If it has been doubling since mid-December when it was reported first, it must be very wide spread. The number must be greater than reported.
I wash my hands constantly. I don’t touch my face. I get the flu shot every year. A bunch of people I work with came home from a trip to Shanghai this week. One has a cold. A bunch of other people have colds and flu and a few have pneumonia at work too, before these folks came back from China. So basically everyone is sick with various viruses. So tonight I started to develop a sore throat and stuffy nose. I’m trying to tell myself it’s just a cold. I am a little nervous.
Yes, its that time of year. I have a very sore throat this morning, so bad that I can’t sleep. It started a couple of days ago. To my knowledge, I haven’t been exposed to anyone who recently traveled to China (though if you go to a grocery store, a mall, or a movie theater, you are exposed to all kinds of unknowns).
There are many many viral illnesses that just make us feel miserable but don’t cause serious illness. Chances are you will be perfectly fine.
Is the doctor one of the doctors of 14 who operated on a patient with the virus? It jumped from 900 yesterday to 1,300! I am afraid there are a lot more. It has been spreading under the radar since mid-December.
By the way, the operating room transmission doesn’t tell us how contagious the virus is. Intubation is a procedure that carries a very high risk of putting virus particles into the air. But it does look like this virus spreads more easily than SARS. Odd, because from what I understand, SARS was relatively hard to spread because it had to gain access to the lower respiratory tract to attach, and yet this virus so far is being described as one that is causing pneumonias only, not upper respiratory tract infections. Also an asymptomatic case was identified in a familial cluster. If there are many asymptomatic cases, it means both that the virus will be hard to control and that the mortality rate is lower than it appears.
of people in the lockdown zones is now up to 50 million.
“China will halt all group tours, both at home and to other countries, from January 27, state-owned CCTV reported on Saturday as the country seeks to halt the spread of a new coronavirus.”
Sounds like there might now be 4 confirmed cases in Australia.