outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

What you need is a license to ill. It's your right!

You are completely correct but I've got two disabled dependants in my home, one with autism and one with MS who might be very vulnerable to coronavirus. I can't complain though it is probably still a better situation than people who don't get paid by their employer when folowing correct self-isolation instructions.

Japan hasn’t closed its schools as much as it has brought forward the start of spring break by a couple of weeks.

Australia launch its pandemic response plan yesterday. Given the government is dealing with a major bribery scandal and coming up with new ways to be disingenuous about not dealing with the climate crisis. Launching and taking ownership a plan made over several years (and several admin) by career civil servants and doctors is a timely distraction.

Having read what’s in it I’m saying bring on my caseof the corona virus. Get it now and you get a couple of weeks in hospital care for by spacemen. Once we all get it down to the MCG for quarantine camp between the goalposts.

I’ve got a friend coming from Hiroshima in a week, maybe I get lucky and she can be my vector.

I'm wondering at what point it makes sense to change my daily routines - stop going to the gym, stop going to my dance class, avoid public transportation, etc. I don't want to overreact and hibernate unnecessarily (not to mention that it won't do me personally much good unless the other people in my shared house do the same thing, which they won't), but at the same time, if everyone hibernated a bit more, presumably the virus would spread more slowly.

Or fewer people would build immunity. I dunno, I think if there's no outbreak nearby or even lone patients in your area, avoiding other people seems like (for lack of a better word) overkill. Though I was just talking a few weeks back with my wife how I sometimes think going to the gym makes me more prone to illness, just being around all those people breathing hard through their mouths while grasping machines ...

"Specifically, if 60% rather than 20% of air travelers maintained clean hands, it could slow down the spread of infections by almost 70%, according to the researchers."

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/why-hand-washing-really-could-slow-down-an-epidemic

I'm not allowed to be ill.

100% understand that. You're the lynchpin.

So I'm starting to get targeted ads for both Corona Light and Corona Seltzer.

xxpost The gross thing about that is 60% is the ambitious high number, rather than, you know, 100%.

What worries me is the lack of testing. A couple weeks ago my housemate came back from Hawaii with a cough and a fever. She called her doctor to ask if she should be tested for coronavirus, and was told that they wouldn't test her unless she developed pneumonia symptoms. So far, two more of the people in my house (there are six of us) have gotten whatever it is. It seems like it was horrible and has left them with a lingering cough but otherwise didn't last too long. (We're all under 40 and healthy nonsmokers, for context.) Now, was that flu, or was it a mild coronavirus? Probably flu, but there must be tons of other cases just like it where people could have been tested but weren't, and some of them are going to turn out to be the coronavirus.

^bingo!

How long did it last? The thing about the flu is that it knocks you out for days, often as long as 10 to 14. A lot of people who avoid flu shots think that they've had the flu and it is no big deal when in fact they just had bad colds or some other 4-5 day bug or virus. And then if they get the flu they remember, oh yeah, this is what it likes, it really sucks. Coughs tend to linger, regardless.

The lack of testing resources has epidemiologists greatly concerned, too. At this point in the process they are working to clarify the situation as best they can, making broad assumptions, based on very limited data sets.

The bad part of it only seems to have lasted two or three days, but with a high fever for 1-2 of the days. Mostly cough, sore throat and body aches, no sniffles. So not a normal cold, but not a flu lasting weeks, either. I haven't gotten it yet. I think it's unlikely to be the coronavirus, but just in case I'm avoiding my parents for a few more days to make sure I'm not coming down with it.

I don't usually get really sick, but the last time I did it was pneumonia. This was several years back. High fever, cough, felt like shit. The tipping point was recognizing that even Advil or whatever only brought my temperature down to around 100. Even then I made it several days before I went to the doctor. I was functioning, as far as I was concerned, I just felt like shit. To my doctor's credit they suspected what was up pretty quickly, and a chest x-ray confirmed it. Point being I guess that sick and feeling bad can ultimately be pretty subjective, both fortunately and unfortunately, which makes it really tough to know if what you have is an emergency or just common.

I'm inviting "you" here generally, btw.

invoking!

Yeah, what's going around my house does not seem to be an emergency, just very unpleasant. My concern is that if, as they keep saying, a lot of coronavirus cases are mild, we or people like us could be infecting others and we would have no way of knowing.

How long did it last? The thing about the flu is that it knocks you out for days, often as long as 10 to 14. A lot of people who avoid flu shots think that they've had the flu and it is no big deal when in fact they just had bad colds or some other 4-5 day bug or virus. And then if they get the flu they remember, oh yeah, this is what it likes, it really sucks. Coughs tend to linger, regardless.

^^^This. Up until several years ago I was an idiot that didn't get a flu shot. I then got the flu and it took me almost a month to really feel better (I was 44 at the time). The major symptoms were gone in a week, but I still had general fatigue for a while. Then the cough lingered for almost three months, basically until the weather turned warm.

In regards to how severe this is, I've seen a lot of folk claim it's more likely to be fatal than the flu, but they arrive at that by comparing the global Coronavirus fatality rate with the US flu fatality rate, which is significantly lower than the worldwide fatality rate.

Isn't it difficult to say what the fatality rate will be in the US vs globally since we don't have a large enough sample size of the infected vs the deceased here yet?

What is the 2019 global mortality rate for the seasonal flu? I can't find it.

Think we all agree it's serious, but worldwide impacts hard to define ...yet

https://www-health-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.health.com/condition/infectious-diseases/coronavirus-worse-than-flu?

xp:

The CDC has been a mess here. Inbound non-citizens from China blocked, but no such restrictions for Italy, South Korea or other hotspots. South Korea is on target to have tested 87,000 people by Friday, while the US will have tested under 500.

Mind, this doesn't need to be an expensive test. Throat swab, labeled sterile tube, return envelope is all clinicians need on hand. At most molecular biology labs, the main additional element required would be PCR primers specific to SARS CoV-2. Then the other reagents required for any RT-PCR are added (all automated in better funded labs), samples loaded into a 96+ well block heater, and cycle them for 30 minutes. Drop in a fluorescent probe for dsDNA and get a reading. Once routine, results turnaround could be under 24 hours. Even if the test is imperfect, even if it gives out too many false positives and negatives, its still valuable in identifying individuals that should self-quarantine, and clearing individuals that were exposed.

Should add above that while most molecular biology labs do RT-PCR routinely, I'd restrict US testing to labs with biosafety level 3 and above. I'd suspect there's still several dozen that would qualify.

this thread, jesus Christ how does this admin manage to fuck up everything in the worst way possible

So here's what appears to be chain of events:

The Trump administration repatriated infected Americans over the objections of the CDC.

HHS then sent federal workers to interact with the infected population without adequate training or protection

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) February 27, 2020

As mentioned, our schools here in Vietnam have been closed since Lunar New Year and could be closed another month. The official decision is coming today I believe. The ministry of education has said that schools have to finish the school year by mid-summer so the current plan being floated is to allow some grade levels, the ones with important end of year exams, to resume school, in order to stagger students turning to school. The small test prep school I work for has pivoted hard to online lessons to stay running

it's odd to me -- trump is such a germophobe (remember his comments about the ebola doctor?) i figured he'd lock the infected americans out. but i guess he's worried about panicking the markets . . . and also the infected americans were probably white

I saw it reported that he supposedly did not make the decision and was upset that the decision was made.

xpost how has it been playing out, practically speaking?

There was an item about the first person to test positive for the virus locally (ie, not via travel), but the chaser was that this person had been hospitalized for a week-plus and only was able to be tested for it yesterday. So basically, it's far more widespread than people believed because the test is so hard to meet the requirements for.

Every time he opens his fucking mouth downplaying this he is panicking the markets.

I actually miswrote above, schools only get one extra month to finish the school year, so it'll be beginning of summer they have to finish by. It's been rather difficult. Lot of teachers out of work, lot of parents struggling to find someone to watch their kids, and like you suggested, Josh, I see a lot of kids hanging out together anyway (what else are they gonna do?). But I suppose it's still better to have those kids in isolated groups. Some of the international schools have not stopped lessons, they just teach them online; not sure about the public schools. There's still mask and hand sanitizer shortages here, no food shortages yet thankfully

Should also mention that this is the first case in the USA that the patient has contracted the virus from an unknown source:

https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/coronavirus-patient-and-precautions-uc-davis-medical-center

This patient was transferred to us from another Northern California hospital. Since the patient arrived with a suspected viral infection, our care teams have been taking the proper infection prevention (contact droplet) precautions during the patient’s stay.

Upon admission, our team asked public health officials if this case could be COVID-19. We requested COVID-19 testing by the CDC, since neither Sacramento County nor the California Department of Public Health is doing testing for coronavirus at this time. Since the patient did not fit the existing CDC criteria for COVID-19, a test was not immediately administered. UC Davis Health does not control the testing process.

Sunday (Feb. 23), the CDC ordered COVID-19 testing of the patient, and the patient was put on airborne precautions and strict contact precautions, because of our concerns about the patient’s condition. Today the CDC confirmed the patient’s test was positive.

(I guess when I wrote locally, it could mean local to my region or local to all Americans)

Our household also contracted what Lily Dale experienced a bit upthread in the past 6-8 weeks, came back for seconds (thirds with my wife). Our little one had to get an injection at the pediatric ER for her cough (they deemed it common croup based on obvservation i.e., no swab/sample/bloodwork).

It occurs to me that if anything could get the attention of the Trump administration properly focused on mitigating the COVID-19 outbreak, it would be the stock market completely tanking over fears that a pandemic will slow down or shrink the economy... in a presidential election year.

it's too late, it will slow down the economy

Do we really need 372 million ppl in America?

We need to downsize IMO

We were supposed to meet someone today and they oddly missed the time and they texted they had to go to Costco. And now I've learned that today is the day where everyone seems to be stocking up. So many people seem to be symptomatic here but like above not meeting the full criteria to test even though there are no kits. Supposedly they might try to get some from outside the US?

PSA: supposedly in 90% of coronavirus cases, you do not get a runny nose.

good to know

The symptoms that are pretty common in early stage cases are fever, fatigue and dry cough.

80+%: fever, fatigue, dry cough
~30%: shortness of breath, sputum production
~10%: muscle ache, confusion, headache
~5%: sore throat, runny nose, coughing up blood
~2%: chest pain, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting

Not looking forward to my turn with this.

also if you have an iphone you're *not* the villain -- apple does not allow films to show bad guys with their products

Buckle up America, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

xp lol

I'm feeling kind of run down and am going to an international convention tmrw... pray 4 me

pretty impressive how 3000 ~particular~ people dying can transform the world

It's something of a grassroots virus.

Yeah, I kind of had mild versions of all these things last month (sore throat, sooo tired) for three weeks but it never got bad enough so I chalked it up to extended jetlag and ennui. A friend thought it was mono but my lymph nodes were fine. And no one else around me caught it so i think it was just me. Xpost

Like I said mookieproof this is basically 9/11, Trump’ll be interning Chinese nationals within weeks

Regarding schooling at home in China, via https://lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v42/n05/wang-xiuying/the-word-from-wuhan

Children were presumably glad to be off school – until, that is, an app called DingTalk was introduced. Students are meant to sign in and join their class for online lessons; teachers use the app to set homework. Somehow the little brats worked out that if enough users gave the app a one-star review it would get booted off the App Store. Tens of thousands of reviews flooded in, and DingTalk’s rating plummeted overnight from 4.9 to 1.4. The app has had to beg for mercy on social media: ‘I’m only five years old myself, please don’t kill me.’

pretty impressive how 3000 ~particular~ people dying can transform the world

they may be the most powerful beneficiaries of global capitalism, but global capitalism would survive their deaths and continue on with scarcely a hiccough.