Coronavirus (way, way, off topic)
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I'm curious how it's going with you all in whatever country you're in. Nothing better than first hand reports.
Here, the US is effectively shut down for now. I predict the military will be deployed to set up emergency field hospitals to handle the expected surge that will undoubtedly overwhelm existing hospitals. If they do it now, there may just be enough time to pull it off and train soldiers to intubate people. Fingers crossed. NY has already asked for federal help, so it's either that or the national guard. What else is there? FEMA couldn't handle even a hurricane, and the scale of this is, I'm guessing, 1000x bigger than that.
Canada has closed their US boarder to keep US health refugees from flooding into their country. I can't blame them.
Unfortunately, the true limiter may be the number of ventilators. Time for an epic open source project?
Perhaps people can 3D print their own intubation stents though. Not a perfect solution, but perhaps better than nothing? Might have to use chemical sterilizers to avoid melting it. I haven't seen any yet on thingiverse, but something to think about for those who have the skillz....
As for me, I wouldn't be surprised if I've already had it. My family and I have been pinned down for the last couple of weeks with some kind of flu/who--knows-what. My wife thinks we got hit by something else, but if it isn't coronavirus, it's a flu that's damn similar and quite a coincidence. No way to know, though, as test kits aren't easily available.
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@NeverDie
I guess here (FR), it's quite like in others countries.. very sad.
Shutdown for two weeks at least, borders closed for 30d. Going out without a paper=penalty (130€).
Military deployed to help overwhelmed hospitals (especially in East which is epicenter here), "hopefully" I live in West. Hospitals missing protection, intubators etc..
We're a "small" country, with good healthcare, hopefully for sick people. Still It doesn't touch only old persons, there are reports of 25-40years old people deaths too.
Today, deaths have doubled here.Personnaly, I started to limit my visits when it started in China, because I never trust when someone tells me the big cloud stopped at the borders, and didn't want to get caught and transmit to people I love..
I think govs should all have taken decisions when it started instead of waiting "will I get the flu or not??" And here we are now .. :grimacing:Well, it's very sad. Praying for sick people, doctors, nurses who are on the frontline. I hope a lab will find the remedy soon.
And I hope it'll be fine for you and your family too.
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I'm curious how it's going with you all in whatever country you're in. Nothing better than first hand reports.
Here, the US is effectively shut down for now. I predict the military will be deployed to set up emergency field hospitals to handle the expected surge that will undoubtedly overwhelm existing hospitals. If they do it now, there may just be enough time to pull it off and train soldiers to intubate people. Fingers crossed. NY has already asked for federal help, so it's either that or the national guard. What else is there? FEMA couldn't handle even a hurricane, and the scale of this is, I'm guessing, 1000x bigger than that.
Canada has closed their US boarder to keep US health refugees from flooding into their country. I can't blame them.
Unfortunately, the true limiter may be the number of ventilators. Time for an epic open source project?
Perhaps people can 3D print their own intubation stents though. Not a perfect solution, but perhaps better than nothing? Might have to use chemical sterilizers to avoid melting it. I haven't seen any yet on thingiverse, but something to think about for those who have the skillz....
As for me, I wouldn't be surprised if I've already had it. My family and I have been pinned down for the last couple of weeks with some kind of flu/who--knows-what. My wife thinks we got hit by something else, but if it isn't coronavirus, it's a flu that's damn similar and quite a coincidence. No way to know, though, as test kits aren't easily available.
@NeverDie Worth a read as a lot of info not explained by the political crew or the media... The infectivity and when it peaks is the most illuminating, it explains why it spread so dramatically, and why isolation, distancing, sitting tight and testing were so effective...
As an aside to the lunacy, Chinese sent a planeload of gear and advisers to help in Italy with their experience in dealing with COVID.
No use to Trumpland of course, the CHINESE VIRUS is unknown outside the US ;)
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-most-contagious-before-during-first-week-symptoms -
RO instigated guidance on distancing, touching etc., no more than 50 in a group, as of last Monday, not a huge problem but for old habits like shaking hands, it looks like a game of rock, scissors paper on occasion.
The authorities are watching like hawks and will respond rapidly to any emerging pattern, much as all european countries now are after Lombardy went from OH to SHIT in days.
The greatest risks are in cities obviously because of proximity, but with Chinese and Korean on experience on mass disinfection gives them all they need to know what to do.
Glad I'm out in a nice village with plenty of space around, no guarantee that will last of course but no report of anything close.The medics are those in greatest danger in all this, thereby compounding the problem when they are not protected, screened, tested. The UK could be next to go into meltdown with catastrophic leadership and response for the above reasons, will leave those there to example why it is the perfect storm...
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@NeverDie Worth a read as a lot of info not explained by the political crew or the media... The infectivity and when it peaks is the most illuminating, it explains why it spread so dramatically, and why isolation, distancing, sitting tight and testing were so effective...
As an aside to the lunacy, Chinese sent a planeload of gear and advisers to help in Italy with their experience in dealing with COVID.
No use to Trumpland of course, the CHINESE VIRUS is unknown outside the US ;)
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-most-contagious-before-during-first-week-symptoms@zboblamont said in Coronavirus (way, way, off topic):
CHINESE VIRUS
I think he's calling it that as a reaction to and to sandbag against Chinese allegations that it was started by the US.
It turns out there is a basis for those Chinese suspicions. USAID actually created a man-made chemeric coronavirus in their lab and reported the results in November 9, 2015 Nature.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nm.3985 If that article doesn't make the hair on the back of your neck stand on end, I don't know what will. Here's an excerpt:Here we examine the disease potential of a SARS-like virus, SHC014-CoV, which is currently circulating in Chinese horseshoe bat populations1. Using the SARS-CoV reverse genetics system2, we generated and characterized a chimeric virus expressing the spike of bat coronavirus SHC014 in a mouse-adapted SARS-CoV backbone. The results indicate that group 2b viruses encoding the SHC014 spike in a wild-type backbone can efficiently use multiple orthologs of the SARS receptor human angiotensin converting enzyme II (ACE2), replicate efficiently in primary human airway cells and achieve in vitro titers equivalent to epidemic strains of SARS-CoV.
And, there were alarms raised at the time:
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/lab-made-coronavirus-triggers-debate-34502
And the CEO of USAID just recently resigned for no good reason. So, while proving nothing, maybe that is grounds for suspicion. Or, maybe the Chinese themselves were conducting similarly foolish experiments and something got into the wild (https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/theory-that-coronavirus-escaped-from-a-lab-lacks-evidence-67229). After all, the Chinese have a history of letting SARS viruses escape from their labs (https://www.the-scientist.com/news-analysis/sars-escaped-beijing-lab-twice-50137), so it's not unimaginable. That said, it's worth noting that scientists in the field don't even consider a man-made virus as one of the possible origens:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9
perhaps because there's no need to reach for that. It shall be interesting if Patient Zero can be identified and whether he/she was a bat eating weirdo, which is the popular theory, or whether this is the Chernobyl of bio-research.Personally, my bet is on the animal source. When I visited China in the 1980's, any and every animal that could be caught by humans was caught, flattened, dried out, and sold in the markets. And by that I mean rats, lizards, snakes, you name it. Fairly disgusting, but maybe not if you were raised eating that and your alternative is death by starvation. So, for those reasons, I suspect poverty may be the root of it all, just as it was with bush meat in Africa leading to Ebola. It's hard to heap blame on people of limited means who are trying to survive and just barely hanging on. For that reason, I see it as a societal failure, and I hope covid-19 will motivate them to fix it (and not just make empty promises that they'll fix it, as was the case with previous SARS). Sigh, it probably won't happen though unless covid-19 turns out to be so terrible that the whole world unites and truly demands it. And so, to avoid that, I think that's why the Chinese are busy trying to blame it on to the US, which, let's face it, did immoral research on its own population in the past (e.g. in 1950 the US military dosed the San Francisco population with bacteria just to see how it would spread: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray).
Regardless, I think investigators should dig as deep as they need to in order to be certain as to the true cause of it all. Let's get all the facts and leave no stone un-turned. The name calling is just a distraction from that.
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Here in Vietnam as a China neighbour they took things very seriously from the start. There is a very strict quarantine rule, where everyone in contact with sick people is quarantined or home-quarantined, and then all their contacts, and so on up to sometimes 4-5 levels.
It helps but there are still people who are in the incubation period in the country, and this morning they announced there was one case in my building, a guy who came from UK 10 days ago. So they have quarantined the building and we can't go out for 2 weeks. The same will probably happen to all visitors (they know have to sign a register so it's easy to trace them), the people we have been in contact with, etc etcI was sceptical at first when seeing the extreme precautions they used as we had 3 weeks without any new case in the country but they still didn't want to reopen the schools (closed since early February, right after Têt = Vietnamese new year). But now we can see things in Europe, US etc, while here we have less than 80 cases for 100 millions pple, and less than 10 cases per day, most of them being fresh arrivals to the country, I realize they were one of the very few countries in the world to take enough precautions.
They knew the limits of the medical system here, so they planned ahead and "sacrificed" tourism and economy earlier than the others, in the end it might prove less damaging to the economy. They started research early so now they can produce their own tests at a very low price to test people massively despite limited financial resources. Local companies started to produce a lot of alcohol too so hydroalcoholic gel is available everywhere at cheap price. Mask is mandatory in public places so it's not that easy to find some, but a lot of garment companies are already producing them in big quantities so they are more and more available.
With the very hot weather here at the moment I hope it will be enough to contain the virus, we will know in the coming weeks now that the arrival of people from abroad is seriously limited and controlled with quarantine.
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In Sweden it seems like Stockholm is preparing now for a big increase in sick people. So far its been very quiet where I live (except on the news of course). Schools still open and most work places open, but people are limiting their social contacts and working from home if possible. Toilet paper out of stock everywhere, but most other products are still there.
But I live quite rural, so hard to say how its going in the big cities. We dont have any confirmed cases in my town but I guess its just a matter of time.
Controller: Proxmox VM - Home Assistant
MySensors GW: Arduino Uno - W5100 Ethernet, Gw Shield Nrf24l01+ 2,4Ghz
MySensors GW: Arduino Uno - Gw Shield RFM69, 433mhz
RFLink GW - Arduino Mega + RFLink Shield, 433mhz -
In Sweden it seems like Stockholm is preparing now for a big increase in sick people. So far its been very quiet where I live (except on the news of course). Schools still open and most work places open, but people are limiting their social contacts and working from home if possible. Toilet paper out of stock everywhere, but most other products are still there.
But I live quite rural, so hard to say how its going in the big cities. We dont have any confirmed cases in my town but I guess its just a matter of time.
@sundberg84 said in Coronavirus (way, way, off topic):
Toilet paper out of stock everywhere
Great thing in Vietnam about that is most people use a bidet shower aka "bum gun", so toilet paper is not seen as an interesting thing to hoard, and shelves are still full :)
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Sadly, I'd say the US is full of sitting ducks. I went to the post office yesterday, and I was the only one wearing a P100 respirator or gloves. No one else was wearing a mask or gloves of any kind. People were standing in a fairly long line at the normal separation, not enhanced 6 foot separation. The only precautions I saw anyone take was a woman who managed to open the exit door with her elbow.
I normally wouldn't even go to the post office, but the place I normally use to accept pre-paid packages for shipment has totally stopped taking them. I presume the reason is to protect their employees from exposure to the public, but this has the consequence of concentrating the public in larger numbers at the post office.
The supermarkets, which used to be nearly 24/7, have reduced their hours to 8am to 8pm so that their employees have enough time to restock before the customers come flooding back in. Maybe it's also to better protect their restockers from the public as well? While all that may be great for the grocery store, where business is booming, this has had the unintended consequence of making the supermarkets more crowded for customers, which is the opposite of what it should be. And, for whatever reason, the grocery stores seem perpetually packed with people, and even their parking lots are constantly full.
Clearly the guiding hand of self-interest alone isn't working so well to optimize public health in the large.
It sounds as though Vietnam is the model we should all be following. As near as I can tell, though, Vietnam's success has had nearly zero press coverage here. That's a tragedy in itself, but not altogether surprising given that the press here has been fairly terrible ever since the collapse of newspapers and magazines.
@nca78 What do people in Vietnam do for food when they suddenly find themselves under quarantine? I presume they aren't allowed out for it, as it would defeat the purpose of the quarantine. Do they order it delivered, or do they just manage to scrape by on whatever reserves they have on hand?
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Sadly, I'd say the US is full of sitting ducks. I went to the post office yesterday, and I was the only one wearing a P100 respirator or gloves. No one else was wearing a mask or gloves of any kind. People were standing in a fairly long line at the normal separation, not enhanced 6 foot separation. The only precautions I saw anyone take was a woman who managed to open the exit door with her elbow.
I normally wouldn't even go to the post office, but the place I normally use to accept pre-paid packages for shipment has totally stopped taking them. I presume the reason is to protect their employees from exposure to the public, but this has the consequence of concentrating the public in larger numbers at the post office.
The supermarkets, which used to be nearly 24/7, have reduced their hours to 8am to 8pm so that their employees have enough time to restock before the customers come flooding back in. Maybe it's also to better protect their restockers from the public as well? While all that may be great for the grocery store, where business is booming, this has had the unintended consequence of making the supermarkets more crowded for customers, which is the opposite of what it should be. And, for whatever reason, the grocery stores seem perpetually packed with people, and even their parking lots are constantly full.
Clearly the guiding hand of self-interest alone isn't working so well to optimize public health in the large.
It sounds as though Vietnam is the model we should all be following. As near as I can tell, though, Vietnam's success has had nearly zero press coverage here. That's a tragedy in itself, but not altogether surprising given that the press here has been fairly terrible ever since the collapse of newspapers and magazines.
@nca78 What do people in Vietnam do for food when they suddenly find themselves under quarantine? I presume they aren't allowed out for it, as it would defeat the purpose of the quarantine. Do they order it delivered, or do they just manage to scrape by on whatever reserves they have on hand?
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There's some debate about whether a mask is helpful protection or not. I'm not sure what the science indicates. Hackaday has an article on how to DIY one, and it seems to indicate that the coronavirus particle size is actually larger than some bacteria, whereas I had always thought viruses were generally smaller than bacteria. Clearly healthcare workers are wearing them, so that's maybe one sign that they do work. I guess I'm lucky in that I have a P100 dust mask for when I use my circular saw or 3D printing. I'm not sure what might be better than P100. Plainly Home Depot isn't normally stocked for a virus attack. Is there anything commonly off-the-shelf that's better than P100?
One theory is that even if the virus size is smaller than what a P100 can completely remove, the virus is likely to be lodged inside a globule of spittle or mucus from when someone coughed, rather than floating about in the air in isolation, and so the filter can filter those globules, which are comparatively large, and so thereby block the virus, albeit indirectly.
I see no downside to it, so if you have one, you might as well wear it when going about in crowded public places. It's still quite easy to breathe with it on. Perhaps it will become the new fashion. :muscle:
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There's some debate about whether a mask is helpful protection or not. I'm not sure what the science indicates. Hackaday has an article on how to DIY one, and it seems to indicate that the coronavirus particle size is actually larger than some bacteria, whereas I had always thought viruses were generally smaller than bacteria. Clearly healthcare workers are wearing them, so that's maybe one sign that they do work. I guess I'm lucky in that I have a P100 dust mask for when I use my circular saw or 3D printing. I'm not sure what might be better than P100. Plainly Home Depot isn't normally stocked for a virus attack. Is there anything commonly off-the-shelf that's better than P100?
One theory is that even if the virus size is smaller than what a P100 can completely remove, the virus is likely to be lodged inside a globule of spittle or mucus from when someone coughed, rather than floating about in the air in isolation, and so the filter can filter those globules, which are comparatively large, and so thereby block the virus, albeit indirectly.
I see no downside to it, so if you have one, you might as well wear it when going about in crowded public places. It's still quite easy to breathe with it on. Perhaps it will become the new fashion. :muscle:
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@NeverDie It is also said to enter via the eyes, so airtight eye protection is also needed or the mask may well be useless.....at least that is what I have heard....
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@NeverDie It is also said to enter via the eyes, so airtight eye protection is also needed or the mask may well be useless.....at least that is what I have heard....
@skywatch True, but the greatest danger is the airways because you are inhaling.
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Just a follow-up: Hackaday's reported size for the virus (https://hackaday.com/2020/03/18/homemade-masks-in-a-time-of-shortage/) is the right order of magnitude but nonetheless a bit off. Hackaday reported 0.1 to 0.2 micron in size, whereas analysis under an electron microscope reports it is 70 to 90nm in size (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7045880/). The hellish thing is definitely smaller than even the smallest known bacteria.
From what I've read so far, there are (obviously) respirator filters that can filter out virus's of even that small particle size, but they are cause for labored breathing and so unpleasant to wear. I guess that's why the ultimate is a powered air purifying respirator (PAPR), which the CDC says offers good protection (https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npptl/topics/respirators/factsheets/respsars.html) Interestingly, hackaday has a design for one of those too (https://hackaday.com/2007/05/25/diy-powered-respirator/), but who can say how well they work. I may have the parts for one, though, as I was a year or so ago trying to create an air purifier for a 3D printing enclosure. There was a design on thingiverse that I used to house the HEPA filter. It turned out the computer fan I was hoping to use was just nowhere near strong enough to push air through the HEPA filter. Besides, since it wouldn't be formally rated for this use, it would be a total crapshoot as to how well it would actually work.
Fortunately, the above CDC article says that airborn transmission of small particles is thought to be a relatively rare way to contract COVID-19. It seems that the protective eyewhere is therefore meant to be a guard against being directly sneezed/coughed upon at close proximity.
So, unless anyone has a better idea for something better than P100, I guess that's about it. I will, though, add over-glasses shop goggles, for whatever good they might do, if anything, since I have them anyway for when working with power tools. Perhaps overspray goggles would be even better? That way it might guard against someone "painting" my eyeballs with their cough. LOL.
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Which sources of information about coronavirus have you all found to be the best? I've read CDC, WHO, and FDA, but the best source I've found so far has been Harvard: https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/coronavirus-resource-center
Useful info reported there:
- advised to take acetaminophen instead of ibuprofen if you have a fever.
- an experiment where a nebulizer was used to send coronavirus into the air shows that infectuous virus laden droplets can remain airborn for up to 3 hours. So, this idea that you see everywhere in the press that the particles can travel only up to 6 feet before they simply drop to the floor just isn't so, and plainly droplets can travel quite some distance in three hours.
- Coronavirus tests are prone to false negatives, and it's not even known yet at what stage of the disease a test might indicate positive.
- Cancel your kid's play dates.
- The incubation period is thought to be anywhere from 3 days to 13 days. The 5 days you commonly read about is just the average (presumably, the median).
What I like about Harvard is that it's fairly frank about what still isn't known, as compared to, say, the FDA, which makes pronouncements like "there's no evidence that coronavirus can be transmitted by food", which may be literally true, but which probably misleads some people into thinking that such a grand pronouncement is being broadcast because it means food poses zero threat from coronavirus, which isn't what a more careful, literal reading actually implies. It would have been more honest to say that there "isn't yet any evidence." As my high school English teacher was fond of saying, "Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence." Not surprisingly, fresh produce companies are quick to quote the FDA and reference the FDA as the source. Harvard is more clear that the matter isn't settled, and that the risk may depend a lot on the health of who may have touched the food (and their personal hygiene) before it gets to you. We know that the virus dies in 3 days on plastic or stainless steel, but what about on butter lettuce? That doesn't lend itself well to pealing off of layers, and sanitizing it with common sanitizers... yuck. So, here we won't be buying certain kinds of produce until more is definitely known about this.
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@NeverDie It is also said to enter via the eyes, so airtight eye protection is also needed or the mask may well be useless.....at least that is what I have heard....
@skywatch you're missing the point of the mask. Here it's not worn to protect you, but to protect others if you are infected. So you don't need to have an efficient/medical one, a cloth mask is enough to block saliva spray if you cough or just when you speak. I everyone is wearing a mask, you don't need glasses because no one can project the virus in your face.
@NeverDie most people starting to put food aside in February here, because with China next door people were afraid it would spread. It's the case for us we had plenty of food in stock and my wife was outside when the quarantine was enabled so she boughts fruits and other fresh food.
But we can also get deliveries at the entrance of the building and guards will give us so we are not in direct contact with delivery people. -
Which sources of information about coronavirus have you all found to be the best? I've read CDC, WHO, and FDA, but the best source I've found so far has been Harvard: https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/coronavirus-resource-center
Useful info reported there:
- advised to take acetaminophen instead of ibuprofen if you have a fever.
- an experiment where a nebulizer was used to send coronavirus into the air shows that infectuous virus laden droplets can remain airborn for up to 3 hours. So, this idea that you see everywhere in the press that the particles can travel only up to 6 feet before they simply drop to the floor just isn't so, and plainly droplets can travel quite some distance in three hours.
- Coronavirus tests are prone to false negatives, and it's not even known yet at what stage of the disease a test might indicate positive.
- Cancel your kid's play dates.
- The incubation period is thought to be anywhere from 3 days to 13 days. The 5 days you commonly read about is just the average (presumably, the median).
What I like about Harvard is that it's fairly frank about what still isn't known, as compared to, say, the FDA, which makes pronouncements like "there's no evidence that coronavirus can be transmitted by food", which may be literally true, but which probably misleads some people into thinking that such a grand pronouncement is being broadcast because it means food poses zero threat from coronavirus, which isn't what a more careful, literal reading actually implies. It would have been more honest to say that there "isn't yet any evidence." As my high school English teacher was fond of saying, "Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence." Not surprisingly, fresh produce companies are quick to quote the FDA and reference the FDA as the source. Harvard is more clear that the matter isn't settled, and that the risk may depend a lot on the health of who may have touched the food (and their personal hygiene) before it gets to you. We know that the virus dies in 3 days on plastic or stainless steel, but what about on butter lettuce? That doesn't lend itself well to pealing off of layers, and sanitizing it with common sanitizers... yuck. So, here we won't be buying certain kinds of produce until more is definitely known about this.
@NeverDie for point 2) it's not comparable to someone coughing, nebulizer makes really tiny droplet that can stay in suspension, when you cough/spit the droplets are much bigger and don't stay airborne for long. But still, I think wearing tissue or even paper masks can limit the spread by blocking the saliva droplets.
For 3) it happened in Vietnam, a flight attendant was tested negative 4 times before testing positive. Some people have a long incubation period and it seems during part of this incubation period the test fails to detect the virus :(
For the FDA unfortunately at some point they have to give recommendations to people, as raw scientific data "It might, it might not" is not enough for people&companies to take a decision. So they have to opt for the most probable situation, and take into account the price and feasibility of things too I guess. If transmission rate is possible but likely extremely low with food, it's not worth spending huge amounts of money to avoid the few cases that it will cause.
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Here in the Netherlands, schools and daycares are closed for a week now, and stays so at least until the 6th of April. Only people with vital occupations can drop their kids off (hospital personal, and people who work for food companies etc. )
For the rest, they advise to stay at home and if you need to go out, stay at least 1,5m away from one another. No lockdown yet, they hope these measures will help flatten the curve.
But people are so very stupid atm. "hey its sunny, let's all go to the park/beach/(fill in crowded place)". I fear that for this reason, they will have a lockdown anytime soon.
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