outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

please don’t police other functioning adults

that italy thread xyz posted is hideous. Jesus fucking Christ.

I’m not a functioning adult so it’s my prerogative.

next they’ll be telling me not to go outside

i switched to vaping from smoking bowls largely to relieve my lungs! idk what to tell yall but i’m not stopping, i’ll let you know if i die immediately for the schadenfreude

Thanks for the well wishes everyone. Still no fever so that’s a good sign. I guess the uh...good news is that if this is gonna get serious we’ll know pretty soon

Btw with respect to vaping, if you’re just doing dry herb through a convection style vape I don’t think that’s gonna do much to your lungs other than irritate them with hot air

Just make sure it doesn't contain vitamin E acetate.

And good luck, frogbs!

yeah, I am not anyone's mother but a nurse friend in CA was venting last night (while we were talking about how younger people in the US were ending up in the hospital) and the least controversial things she said was that people "need to stay the fuck home and stop vaping anything."

( I am not an expert on anything vape)

NYT (no paywall); four days old, sorry if already posted

Working at a breakneck pace, a team of hundreds of scientists has identified 50 drugs that may be effective treatments for people infected with the coronavirus. Many scientists are seeking drugs that attack the virus itself. But the Quantitative Biosciences Institute Coronavirus Research Group, based at the University of California, San Francisco, is testing an unusual new approach.

The researchers are looking for drugs that shield proteins in our own cells that the coronavirus depends on to thrive and reproduce. Many of the candidate drugs are already approved to treat diseases, such as cancer, that would seem to have nothing to do with Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. Scientists at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York and at the Pasteur Institute in Paris have already begun to test the drugs against the coronavirus growing in their labs.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/science/coronavirus-treatment.html

this thread is on the blood test we'll need to show immunity which we'll need to reopen the country. has any U.S. official mentioned... how far off they are? https://t.co/du8RhazCRa

— 'Weird Alex' Pareene (@pareene) March 20, 2020

thanks for easing my fears about vaping bud frogbs

Was talking with a friend yesterday whose sister in law is Chinese but was in America while it was at its worst in China. She was all "screw that" and didn't go back. But last week she decided to go back to China, because she didn't think the US had its shit together the way China does. She may be right!

Regardless, the station at home stuff is really just (at least in America) a strong recommendation of social distancing, a strategy of mitigation. Has any country truly implemented a literal lockdown? Did China? For how many people, just the cities at the center of the outbreak(s)?

Anyway, afaict the best way to protect yourself (aside from staying in) remains: wash your hands a lot and don't touch your face, and don't get close to people exhibiting symptoms. Stay home if you feel sick, but going outside is not otherwise bad, going for walks is not bad. Even seeing friends (from a distance) shouldn't be bad. I also assume going to work, while not ideal, is also not necessarily bad. Though I don't know how companies notorious for imposing rigid productivity standards will adjust to recommendations of distancing and hygiene and so on. Amazon, Walmart et al. have all announced they are adding hundreds of thousands of jobs. Will they be given gloves? Will be they be allowed to wash their hands as often as they need?

I disagree, going to work if you're not in an "emergency" field is bad. I walked past thru a crowded urban park (Prospect in Brooklyn) to get to chemo yesterday and did not feel good about it. Of course I am immunocompromised, my standards need to be higher.

Current Worldometer percentages.

Active cases: 96% in mild condition, 4% serious or critical
Closed cases: 89% recovered/discharged, 11% death

I would think you'd want it the other way around--this suggests many more cases move from mild to serious than the other way around. But there could be lots I'm overlooking (I'm groping around in the dark on whatever theories I derive from these statistics I post)--cheer me up and let me know what I'm missing.

the fuck? 11%?

xpost the staying at home thing doesn't mean people can't go outside to get exercise/air as long as they keep distance from other people. but people generally seem to not be able to make this determination for themselves so I think the people already overworked and stressed in a dangerous environment (and the US is only at the beginning of this) just want to convey a simple message. I also agree w/ morbs that people should not be going to work in non-essential fields.

ugh, i should've made my mom go to stay in taiwan and now that's not an option.

lots of people jogging yesterday near pier 76, where i had to pick up my car from the pound. they were not staying 6 feet apart.

on the sidewalk, people are not trying to keep a distance either. i was briefly on the jersey shore, and there people were, but not here in midtown.

Has any country truly implemented a literal lockdown? Did China? For how many people, just the cities at the center of the outbreak(s)?

Wuhan was on literal lockdown (remember when the Western media thought China were basically imprisioning an entire population against their will?) for months (pop is ~60 million, so that's like Italy or the UK). I can believe the cases have gone down even if the figures aren't exactly as reported.

xp To Clemenza, that's what I got from it, too. Death % and absolute numbers are ramping up

Very good (and mostly optimistic--realistically so) interview with the technical advisor on Contagion. I took out a subscription to Wired a few days ago, so this may be behind a paywall, I don't know.

http://www.wired.com/story/coronavirus-interview-larry-brilliant-smallpox-epidemiologist/

Can read it fine

I don’t think it really matters if you pass a couple of feet away from someone jogging outside. If you’re queuing in a shop or working at your job - i.e. next to people for some time, hard surfaces everywhere that people are constantly touching - that’s different

In other news I washed some change today

Whenever you use the word "optimistic" now, I feel it's important to differentiate between the helpful kind of optimism and the brainless Trump variety.

xpost ha, partner made last trip to the grocery store today for the foreseeable future (he said they sprayed everyones' hands down before they were let in the store). I totally wiped down his glasses, credit cards, wallet, phone when he came back and made him take a shower.

In the absence of available testing I read this earlier, it describes how there are four categories of people who get COVID-19:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/21/coronavirus-what-happens-to-lungs-covid-19

And I think (in the absence of fucking testing) I had category 2 mid-week:

The least serious are those people who are “sub-clinical” and who have the virus but have no symptoms.

Next are those who get an infection in the upper respiratory tract, which, Wilson says, “means a person has a fever and a cough and maybe milder symptoms like headache or conjunctivitis”.

He says: “Those people with minor symptoms are still able to transmit the virus but may not be aware of it.”

The largest group of those who would be positive for Covid-19, and the people most likely to present to hospitals and surgeries, are those who develop the same flu-like symptoms that would usually keep them off work.
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A fourth group, Wilson says, will develop severe illness that features pneumonia.

Had a slight fever and a weird little dry cough during the day that went on for most of the week, and then I had a pounding headache at 4am one night.

Today the cough is gone so hopefully I am done with it but I'll keep as far away as I can from everyone for another week.

I’m not so sure about joggers passing close by each other and pedestrians you guys. Generally aren’t joggers pumping out a lot of air forcefully?

If they're exhaling, that's bad enough for me.

did you get a mask, morbs?

Just don’t kiss them like you normally do Jon

I do have a cheap mask, it's all the hematology nurses could give me. (They laid off half their staff and are staggering the treatment appointments to minimize the office traffic.)

What are people wiping wallets and keys down *with*? Soapy towels or Purell? Since I'm only going out once a week now my cache will probably last awhile, but not forever.

I would never go to the length of wiping down a credit card except I dropped one in the toilet last night.

I'm not going to Connecticut for the foreseeable future. Navigating Grand Central and the MetroNorth train would freak me out, plus I don't want to expose my sister's family if I'm incubating and don't know it.

I'm going to miss kissing. All kinds.

I got some clorox wipes, but I have also used hand sanitizer when that's all I had. Washing in soapy water would probably be fine too.

I washed my keys in dish soap last week and have used ammonia-based wipes on my phone, wallet, car door hands, house door knobs, etc. I think I've wiped down my debit card, yes. I also went through C's cabinets and found bottles of rubbing alcohol, peroxide, gallons of ammonia, etc. Hm maybe I need to order some empty spray bottles from the hardware store....

Active cases: 96% in mild condition, 4% serious or critical
Closed cases: 89% recovered/discharged, 11% death

Maybe I’m looking at this wrong but to me I’d say the “closed” cases occurred earlier, when less testing was happening, so mainly just serious cases were being diagnosed, leading to a higher documented/official mortality rate. “Active” cases are more recent, and with more testing and more general awareness, more people with mild symptoms are getting tested, thus more documented mild cases and lower rate of serious/critical conditions.

don't get close to people exhibiting symptoms

If talking partners/family, sure. But out in public, assume everyone including the asymptomatic is shedding viral aerosols.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ETonrLbUUAAo83p?format=png&name=medium

I went to town one day wiping every single light switch, all handles, toilet seats etc. It probably needed to be done anyway. xpost

one thing that suck about this disease is that you can't just get it and "get it over with." people have been infected, recovered, and then been reinfected

epistantophus: thank you, that does make sense.

treeship: I've seen a lot of skepticism about reinfection from credible people (I think it comes up in the Wired interview, and from Fauci too).

There is no real indication as of yet that anyone has been reinfected. There have afaict been like three cases reported, but at this point (again, correct me if I'm wrong), it's more likely to be human testing error than reinfection.

If talking partners/family, sure. But out in public, assume everyone including the asymptomatic is shedding viral aerosols.

Yeah, but what is the radius? Can you get infected just standing next to someone who is not coughing or sneezing or anything? My understanding was ... no?

1) Questioner: "Since it's novel, we’re still learning about it. Do you believe that if someone gets it and recovers, that person thereafter has immunity?"

Larry Brilliant: "So I don't see anything in this virus, even though it's novel, (that contradicts that). There are cases where people think that they've gotten it again, (but) that's more likely to be a test failure than it is an actual reinfection."

2) "I would project that once you're infected and you recover that if you get exposed to this exact virus you will not get reinfected," Fauci said.

Not definitive, but I do trust both sources.

that is reassuring, clemenza

How can you not trust Larry Brilliant

my partner is working at a testing facility in the bronx. we're holing up in a borrowed apartment otherwise, staying away from roommates and family as much as possible. it sucks.

and i am resigned, now, to the idea i will probably get it, even though i'm doing the distancing/hand-washing thing -- it's more for others.

I also, I should say, want desperately to believe that reinfection is impossible. One of the things that helps keep me calm is the idea that, if I do get it, the job is then to fight through it and I'll be in the clear. The thought that this fear would become a permanent part of life is a little too much to think about.

i mean, eventually there will be a vaccine.

if the world shifted to veganism, would this curb the risk of zoonotic infections? i've been mostly vegan recently and it's not that hard.