I agree with all of @TatinG’s points about reliable information concerning how people are contracting Covid 19. I’ve been saying this all along! (Not here, but to anyone I can have a conversation with in real life.)
My friend who recently tested positive has “no idea” where he got it, which I think is code for “I don’t want you to know how stupid I was.”
I enjoy the different viewpoints on this thread, and have changed some of my opinions because of it. I don’t enjoy the bullying and personal attacks. I’ve never reported a post.
From what I’ve seen, in many cases each test is added to the total even if from the same person over and over. That’s the way Maryland is counting them.
It’s worth remembering that there may be chaos and crisis at one hospital (or hospital cluster), but not at another, even in the same city. This is particularly the case with a city as geographically large as, say, Houston.
So it’s completely possible for both reports about Houston upthread (one that there’s chaos and hospitals are overwhelmed, another that everything is business as normal) to be correct, and to be correct simultaneously.
@shuttlebus in our hospital those are in fact counted as a Covid hospitalization. I’m not sure there’s any consistency though across various hospitals.
I still don’t know anyone who has (to their knowledge) gotten COVID. In April, one of the contractors we are going to be using soon informed our builder that they had an employee who came down with it. That’s as close as I have come. I’m knocking wood as I say this.
My interior decorator, however, says she knows about 5 people who have had it. Her BIL was in ICU (home now) and allegedly has lost 1/3 of his lung function. No idea if that is permanent.
That’s true. Along those lines some areas may be purposely funneling cases to specific hospitals also. Perhaps some are more prepared for cases so they are getting more.
It’s entirely possible that any system can handle what it has now and still want people to be cautious when they go out considering we’re dealing with an exponential function.
If they wait to send warnings until they are overwhelmed, then there are serious problems that are unlikely to have a fix.
There is a very good informative article today in the Wall Street Journal about how the coronavirus is contracted. Unfortunately WSJ puts everything behind a paywall. I was shocked that I was able to read the article so maybe WSJ has made this article available to all. It can be googled.
I think that we can agree that the WSJ is not part of the liberal elite media, as least I’m pretty sure it’s not, even to the most conservative of readers . Hence why I mentioned it,even though it’s behind a paywall
Just a general internist here, so you can take my pronouncements with a grain of salt.
Your questions are hard to answer for several reasons. We don’t know how many virus particles you need to come into contact with to get sick. Clearly, it’s more than just 1 or 2, or a lot of people would be getting sick from grocery shopping. Also, most people who are infected don’t seem to shed enough viruses to infect others efficiently, while a small proportion of people are “superspreaders.” This means that several people could be exposed to sick people under similar conditions and, depending on who the sick person is, no one might be infected, or several might. It becomes a matter of numbers and luck. Briefer exposures are less likely to result in transmission. Most, but not all, cases occur after an exposure of at least 15 minutes. I don’t see how mask wearing would not decrease risk of infection, as it decreases the dose of virus particles that you may be exposed to.
It’s known that the virus is found in stool, and that flushing the toilet (especially a commercial toilet with a powerful flushing mechanism and no lid) can briefly aerosolize the virus. I would avoid public toilets when it’s practical to do so… but I doubt they are a major route of spread, from what has been described to date.
Airlines haven’t been participating in contact tracing, so it’s hard to know for sure, but I would be shocked if COVID is not being transmitted in airplanes. People often don’t wear masks correctly and they take them off to eat and drink, and then there’s the fact that the masks aren’t impermeable to viruses and you may be sitting near an infected person for hours.
Surfaces are no longer thought to be a major route of transmission. I don’t know how you could prove that someone had or had not been infected from virus on a surface. We know that viral particles can remain viable on some surfaces for several days, but in ever decreasing numbers. To be infected from a surface, you would probably need to touch something with a heavy concentration of virus, and then touch your face soon after. Again, numbers and luck. But washing your hands sure isn’t going to hurt!
Some like reading observations, some like reading news and statistics, some like both.
Let people post what they want and we can all read what interests us and scroll by the rest. Easy peasy.
I tend to read the vast majority of posts. Even if I don’t agree with all, I do find it informative to know that there are different viewpoints out there and to observe what they are.
This is what happened both where my lad is in NY and where we are. In NY they were purposely sending Covid cases to one hospital to try to limit exposure elsewhere. TBH I’m not sure if that is still happening or not. I haven’t asked within the past couple of months. I know where he’s working now they have cases. It’s the hospital they sent them to before.
Where I am, one of our neighbors is an ER nurse. I asked him once how things were and he said, “It’s way overblown. We have no one.” I breathed a sigh of relief that it hadn’t hit our area until the next week when I talked with someone else who worked at a different hospital nearby and it wasn’t what she said. They had several cases there and everyone was on edge. These places are within 30 miles of each other (fairly close for rural areas), though are different systems.
They are. But I have a feeling that if the surgery was elective, rather than urgent, the person wouldn’t count in the hospitalization count because they’d be sent home until they recovered from covid, before having the surgery.
And researchers have found viable virus particles in patients’ feces, as well as traces of viral RNA on toilet bowls and sinks in their hospital isolation rooms, although experiments in the lab have suggested that material may be less likely to be infectious compared with virus that is coughed out.
I find getting perspectives from others who don’t live in my NE Ohio bubble useful. I’ve never read anything on here that I would take the step of reporting or flagging. I welcome all viewpoints, even though I know that there will be some that I’ll probably skip. I love the posting of all the articles, bc in general, I’m pretty busy, and this thread moves fast with information and articles.