What kind of evolutionary arms race is resulting from everybody washing their hands? Can we win it?
1. Depends how far up your arms you wash.
My understanding is that Italy is counting slightly differently from everybody else. Most countries are counting deaths specifically attributed to COVID-19, whereas Italy is counting deaths while suffering from COVID-19, whether that is what did you in or not. Therefore if I am SARS-CoV-2 positive and I die of a heart attack in Freedonia I am not listed as a COVID-19 mortality, whereas if the same thing happens in Italy I am.
Can we please just not go there thanks
Here's an e-mail I sent to a couple of friends about various metrics (the final Brad DeLong calculation was linked from unfogged earlier but I'm including it to keep everything in one place.
[Someone I know] has thrown up a site which takes the publicly available data and lets you see charts for either US states or other countries. For example:
Washington State confirmed cases (counts) with projected forecast (which just extends the curve out 7 days)
http://microbiomeprescription.azurewebsites.net/covid/chart?last_c=US&last_s=Washington&last_t=&country=US&state=Washington&series=2&how=0&forecasts=7
Washington State confirmed cases (log(count) -- taking the log of the numbers means that exponential growth would show up as a straight line. So you can then eyeball whether it looks like it's going above or below a straight line to judge "flattening the curve".
http://microbiomeprescription.azurewebsites.net/covid/chart?last_c=US&last_s=Washington&last_t=&country=US&state=Washington&series=2&how=1&forecasts=7
Washington state -- new confirmed cases per day:
http://microbiomeprescription.azurewebsites.net/covid/chart?last_c=US&last_s=Washington&last_t=&country=US&state=Washington&series=5&how=0&forecasts=7
By comparison here are the same three charts for New York
Counts: http://microbiomeprescription.azurewebsites.net/covid/chart?last_c=US&last_s=New+York&last_t=&country=US&state=New+York&series=2&how=0&forecasts=7
Log(counts): http://microbiomeprescription.azurewebsites.net/covid/chart?last_c=US&last_s=New+York&last_t=&country=US&state=New+York&series=2&how=1&forecasts=7
New cases per day: http://microbiomeprescription.azurewebsites.net/covid/chart?last_c=US&last_s=New+York&last_t=&country=US&state=New+York&series=5&how=0&forecasts=7
Same three charts for Italy
Counts: http://microbiomeprescription.azurewebsites.net/covid/chart?last_c=Italy&last_s=&last_t=&country=Italy&series=2&how=0&forecasts=7
Log(Counts): http://microbiomeprescription.azurewebsites.net/covid/chart?last_c=Italy&last_s=&last_t=&country=Italy&series=2&how=1&forecasts=7
New Cases//day: http://microbiomeprescription.azurewebsites.net/covid/chart?last_c=Italy&last_s=&last_t=&country=Italy&series=5&how=0&forecasts=7
Also, it's good to keep in mind the uncertainty between "confirmed cases" and "people who have been infected but haven't been tested/confirmed." There's a fairly wide range but it's possible to have a sense of what that range might look like. Below is a back-of-the-envelope estimate which tries to work backwards from deaths (which should be an accurate count) to number of infections 4 weeks ago, to number of infections as of today.
One of the ways to estimate how broadly testing is being done is the percentage of people who are tested who are positive. If the percentage is high that most likely means that tests are only being done on the highest risk people. If the percentage is lower that means that testing is being done more broadly. From Nate Silver
For the most part, we're counting (coronavirus tests x 7%) or something more so than we're counting coronavirus cases. This will be less true once testing becomes more adequate but it's gonna be true for at least a week or so and probably longer in some locations.
...
For some of the same reasons I feel encouraged about Seattle, I am worried about NY. Even though a lot of the new cases reflect more testing, the number of positive tests as a share of all tests is rather high (somewhere between 9-16% in the most recent data vs. ~5-6% for WA).
...
Looked at another way: Today, 5.2% of Washington's tests came up with a positive result. Yesterday, 5.9% did. In the 7 days before that, 6.4% of them did. So, there *is* a bit of progress after all. Their number of new positives *as a share of new tests* is slightly declining.
- At the moment, 200 deaths in USA
- Takes 4 weeks to die
- At a 1% death rate, that means 20000 cases in U.S. on Feb 20
- At a 3.33% death rate, that means 6000 cases in U.S. on Feb 20
- If cases have been doubling every 7 days... Then at least 100000 cases in the U.S. right now (and our testing is missing 6 out of 7)
- If cases have been doubling every 4 days... Then at most 2000000 cases in the U.S. right now (and our current testing is missing nearly everybody)
Am I correct that the disappearance of the sidebar is some kind of sophisticated social distancing reminder?
I got a lot of problems with you people.
How am I supposed to write without a working comment box.
In a terrifying turn, several local hospitals have started asking for donations of any new, unopened PPE. Worse, they are posting a pattern for a sewn face mask (surgical mask style) and asking home sewers to make as many as possible for donation.
In a terrifying turn, several local hospitals have started asking for donations of any new, unopened PPE. Worse, they are posting a pattern for a sewn face mask (surgical mask style) and asking home sewers to make as many as possible for donation.
Oh, hey. Everything I typed and couldn't see if it loaded actually did load.
My sister dropped off donations of unused gloves from her school with friends she knows who work at two local hospitals. We are hearing that one children's hospital has been preparing for several weeks incase they have to take adult patients.
There is another story my sister heard from her college roommate, a nurse, but it's so outlandish that I don't want to repeat it. Sounds like for-profit hospitals are exactly as cavalier about employee safety as you might expect.
Two doctors have told my sister that we need to push Congress as hard as possible on protective equipment. In the meantime, they actually ARE asking for hand-sewn masks. My sister and niece made their first one tonight. They shared the pattern and I hope to start sewing tomorrow, assuming I have the supplies I need.
This pandemic is doing nothing for my hoarding tendencies. WE MIGHT NEED IT SOMEDAY, I think -- and someday is now. So far postage stamps, fabric, spare sewing machines (!) have all come in handy.
I can see the FPP tests, but comments links returns :
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The requested URL /archives/comments_17173.html was not found on this server.
Apache Server at www.unfogged.com Port 80
So far postage stamps/em>
David Brin warned us.
The metric that got me this morning is from a rather underplayed longread in the New Statesman, which basically tells me that if I get pneumonia I will die.
SPI-M's modelling also assumes that a quarter of those hospitalised will need a ventilator; this, too, aligns with the World Health Organisation's findings on coronavirus in China, and may even be an under-estimate. In short, at least 1 per cent of all cases can be expected to need ventilation, or between 400,000 and 530,000 people. Modelling released on March 16 by a team at Imperial College, which has informed government planning, suggests a 1.3 per cent rate. That rate has risen after new data from Italy. The government has said that it expects 95 per cent of all cases to occur over a nine-week period, with 50 per cent coming during a three-week peak. This reflects modelling by SPI-M in 2018, available online, and the course of the 1957 influenza pandemic in the UK. This means that during the peak, which is expected to arrive in Britain in late May or June, 15 to 20 per cent of all coronavirus cases will hit the NHS every week for three weeks. Assuming only a 1 per cent rate, rather than the higher rate in Imperial's latest modelling, the number of patients needing a ventilator would therefore range from 60,000 per week to more than 100,000. The United Kingdom has 5,000 ventilators. Many are sure to already be in use, as ventilators are deployed with intensive care beds, and Britain's intensive care beds run at 70 to 80 per cent capacity most months.
I hadn't really been thinking beyond the end of April but if these models are right, that's only going to be the start.
I'm 65 and had a heart attack eight years ago, so no one is going to waste a ventilator place on me. Age means the same is true of my mother, my sister, and two ex wives, neither of whom I want to die and one of whom I still rather love. My beloved Nell is young enough to stand a chance for a ventilator, depending on the length of the queue. Most of my male friends will also be turned down for treatment if they need it. My son should be OK. So should Nell's children.
I'm morally certain I don't have the virus right now, but I don't have much confidence in my ability to avoid it for another three months, given that I have to keep visiting my mother, and buying food at least. Nor do I think it is my moral duty to self-isolate completely if I don't have it. It's not just selfishness that makes me want to be with Nell Gwynne when she comes out of her self-isolation in her palace. I reckon the moral effect on both of us of not being alone is worth it.
And I need to supply some forms of reassurance to various friends and relatives who are hit harder than I am either financially or emotionally. I don't think these calculations are self-dealing. I suppose I make them because they give me an excuse for fear, and for grief. If I think my life matters to other people I can admit that it matters to me, too; if I allow myself to think how soon it may be really, absolutely true that the last contact I had with my daughter was when she unfriended me on facebook, some of the grief for that leaks through.
It's not all bad. I think I'd rather face things than back into them, hunched over. In any case, I don't seem to have a choice. But, yes: the thought that this month has seen the merest preliminary foothills of the mountains still to climb is rather distressing.
Your life absolutely matters to others, Charles. I hope you and Nell are reunited and that some of this can go well.
22: I'm not a religious sort, Charles, but you and Nell are on my increasingly long list of "remote friends to worry about." It's too much to hope your circles are untouched, but I hope you're spared the worst of what is coming. It's an unsettling way to have to grapple with mortality, but I guess at least you don't have to watch everyone else carry on as normal.
Grim news everywhere I look: Washington State says they'll run out of ventilators on April 9 at current rate of use. I read a bit on masks/disposable PPE manufacturing and was seriously distressed. If I remember correctly, 3M makes about 400,000 N95s a year, and they've added a third shift and are expecting to increase production 30% this year. That is not nearly enough (I gather other major US manufacturers are at similar, maybe smaller scales - I know other countries now have export restrictions), and I don't see a way to bridge the gap fast enough - building machines, bringing in staff. I can see how we can get more available beds by repurposing closed hospitals and other available spaces (eg hotels), but I can't imagine how we're going to magically conjure 10X the number of ventilators AND trained personnel in less than a month. (Hire former service industry workers and make them do COVID-19 bootcamp?) This awful administration is assuring the public they've ordered millions of masks with no firm delivery date. The "private partnerships" they are touting are with companies who agreed to make surgical masks, which are better than nothing and better than homemade fabric masks, but not the real deal that gives best possible protection.
5: NickS, your math is exactly what I'm doing/watching, too. Nice summary. I'm hoping against hope that we see an inflection point in about a week, two weeks after many states took more aggressive steps. I do a lot of work with curves that increase exponentially, so my brain keeps extrapolating in a very unpleasant way.
I think the US is on a path to disaster but I've seen a number of stories about how you can fairly easily adapt ventilators meant for one to work for 6 or more patients. The PPE issue is completely fucked though.
My deepest sympathies Charles II.
Not sure if I mentioned this here earlier but I had to go out to resolve a technical issue at work so I used the opportunity to pick up a digital thermometer. So relieved.
26: I'm not in any way an expert, but my understanding is that ventilators have a max displacement per time, and if you split the flow 4 ways, you'd give each patient 25% of the equipment maximum oxygen delivery (and less and less with an additional share), but I'd love to have someone tell me I'm wrong, or that ventilators are built way over capacity and can be split, or that there's some further workaround, like retrofitting the displacement volumes with bigger bellows or something. (Sorry, I'm not especially cheery or soothing this morning.)
24: Children's Boston Hospital surgical innovation team posted a "recipe" for a reusable respirator as an alternative to an n95. The link didn't work for me but it's cached. They tested it. If anyone looks at it, I'd be curious to hear if they think it would be helpful.
The President of MGH was asking companies with 3D printing capacity to make them. Similar masks are used in construction.
Tim is a chemist. His company is one of very few that haven't closed. People who can work at home are, but they are classifying him as essential. He has a fume hood, but sometimes they are supposed to use N95s, and he doesn't think they are justified in trying to buy more.
I read the techbro Medium article and it's such transparent bullshit it's no surprise Trump and Fox fell for it. Leaving aside the red flags that he's a Republican operative and his argument for understanding epidemiology is, "I've made tech memes go viral and the math of virus transmission is the same", he doesn't even read the legends on charts. He uses a March 15 Italy chart to argue they're on a declining infection curve and ignored that all the declining data points are literally highlighted in red which means "data recent and not yet completely reported." Predictably the newer data totally disprove his projection. I mean, maybe it's worth reading to understand propaganda and motivated reasoning. The bar for being flagged as violating Twitter standards of truth is pretty high but easy to see how he clears it (and his response was "but but I have charts from the WHO how can my argument be wrong Help I'm being oppressed!")
Somewhat surprisingly McMegan has been reasonable on this and strongly argues that he and similar "let it burn" people are full of shit.
I just got that techbro Medium article from my dad (with a long number of recipients). Does anyone have a link to any good debunkings by specialists other than Carl Bergstrom (I've already linked that).
A shorter less technical debunking that also links to Bernstein and some primary datasets.
Bergstrom autocorrecting to Bernstein is not likely to be a commonly desired feature, Apple.
35 thanks, sent, though I would prefer from doctors and scientists (after I told them to get their info from the like).
22: This is deeply upsetting to me (and all of us 'round the site who love you). Please stay safe and keep us updated.
Thanks all for thoughts. I am feeling much better after a bike ride and it is remarkably nourishing to think of all these imaginary friends (friends? but I am king -- imaginary colonial subjects) wishing me well.
But had a long conversation with a senior doctor in this realm who trusts me (as a loyal subject should) and says the medical staff are as frightened as anyone else and several have refused to have any contact with patients, "some for good reasons".
Stay strong. I know I'll be having trouble keeping my mood reasonable if they ever crack down on going to a walk.
Can I add another downer, I'm sorry but I think there's a good chance I won't survive this. And a good chance I'll catch it.
Sweden's still all in on an herd immunity strategy and my dad has cancer and asthma. I feel like shit.
Fuck, Barry, I'm sorry. I think you'll make it.
I'm sure you'll be fine Barry, but as Jean Paul Sarte says, "Who the fuck knows?"
41: ugh, that's so frightening. Stay safe.
42: Dave, I'm so sorry. How scary and awful.
Our health care is really badly run too, so there's shortages of everything. I'm panicking right now, I feel so bad
I don't mean were trying to let people get infected as soon as possible, people seem to do the social distancing OK, but zero interest in ramping up testing and no shutting things down either, and a shortage in both supplies and nurses. We're not necessarily in a worse spot than the UK or a lot of countries but it could get really dark in a lot of places.
47: Thank you, heebie, that means a lot
David, I'm sorry and I'll be thinking of you and your father. Can we hope they'll reconsider given that even the obviously stupid Johnson government has done so?
Barry, you're tough and I believe you will make it through this. At least to this internet stranger, you seem like you're good at surviving rough circumstances. I look forward to having the chance to meet up with you here or somewhere else in western Eurasia next year.
As for my own folks, I'm pretty worried but we just got a decent sized alcohol delivery, so I'm going to try to forget about it for a bit.
22 is distressing to read. Your life absolutely matters to many people, Charles II.
51: NY is letting liquor stores stay open, because they are essential businesses. Everyone talks about people relaxing, but nobody has said out loud that you don't want everyone who is chemically dependent on alcohol going in to withdrawal at the same time.
dammit 22; you matter.
David and Barry also, this is all pretty awful but I hope you are keeping your heads up through it and know that pseudo-anonymously we wish you well from afar (or closer. who knows?)
Barry, I forbid you to die of Covid-19, but I would also gently encourage you to write down more of those memories of Arrakis that you were hoping to throw together into a book sometime.
David W, I'm so sorry.. .I don't know if there's any leverage you can exert anywhere, petitioning the government and so on. in our country, of course, it is useless to petition the feds for anything.
Charles II: If I think my life matters to other people I can admit that it matters to me, too -- that's farther than I get almost ever. But hey, your life matters to me.
More generally, this fear is pretty widely shared right now -- I just try to suppress it, but I have an ever-increasing list of people I worry about at this point. Spending time in U.S. hospitals is kind of a nightmare under ideal conditions, and I pretty much can't bear the thought of my loved ones going through the worst case scenario here. So I hope everyone stays healthy and weathers this okay, but if the worst comes, all you regular commenters must know that after you're gone we will all remember you and talk about you and miss you, many more of us than you are aware, more often than you would imagine. I am completely sober, just very stressed.
51, thank you, really appreciate it, will do the same for you and your parents. The PM just gave a brief speech, I mean literally after my last comment, and signalled they'll probably shut some things down eventually. Very good speech that im sure reassured people, but there was a passage that made clear flattening the curve so there's enough ICU beds is still the height of their ambition, even though they've done more than that in South Korea.
And a worse-case scenario where you're not allowed to be with them in the hospital. That part is so awful.
54 thank you so much. Sympathies to charles II and to everyone here really. this place's full of good people
56: I skimmed some article which said that Sweden and Denmark were taking very different approaches to this. Is that right, and if so, why?
57: Tim's Mom was actually saying that she was almost glad that his Dad already died. She'd prefer to have him healthy of course, but being terminally ill with cancer at 75 and trying to access healthcare during a pandemic could have been worse for exactly that reason.
Imaginary Lives Matter! Best of luck everyone.
Just had an email from hs friend/freshman year roommate: he got sick on their first day on vacation in Hawaii, symptoms enough eventually for a covid19 test. No results yet, but stuck waiting. Meanwhile his mom just passed away. Not covid, but it's no good being in isolation across the sea at such a time. (I always liked her; where'd the last 40 years go anyway?)
53: The PA governor ordered the liquor stores closed and at a press conference he mentioned that he got push back because of that.
60: I had a similar thought about my beloved uncles: if I couldn't have them back healthy, then I'm relieved their illnesses ran its course before this.
60, 64 I was just thinking the same thing about my father, with very mixed emotions.
My dad died of pneumonia, so it's been on my mind. Practically speaking, don't try it without morphine.
62: PA has particularly weird liquor laws. State-run wine and liquor stores are closed. Beer distributors are open. Grocery stores can sell beer and wine in small quantities. So you can't buy hard liquor, but this didn't require forcing private stores to close.
You can also get hard liquor distributed from a local distillery, if you got like $100. Most of my Facebook ads were about this. I didn't order, but I feel for the first time in my life that Zoidberg (sp?) gets me.
By distributed, I mean delivered to your house.
Barry: I am thinking of you. I think the odds are very good that you DO survive this, but I understand why you are feeling pessimistic. I think you'll make it, though, I really do.
David: worrying about parents is just so awful. It's like a reversal in the natural order of things (parents are supposed to worry about their children, not the other way around). Thinking of you and your father.
30: The respirator looks great to me. I hope they can get enough places on board printing them and not run out of the raw material, a special medical-grade plastic with antibacterial/antiviral properties. It looks like it would be just what they say: an improvement on a surgical mask but less protection than an N95. If I were going to nitpick, I'd wonder what their suggested protocol would be for changing it/how many patients you could see without removal since something like that will be less comfortable, and mask removal is a step where the user the most at risk.
We both are chemists and have been deemed essential. AJ negotiated two days to work from home per week, but I'm basically still going to have to go in. My site is extremely large, and it's getting very weird. The site uses all the same PPE medical providers would; I keep hoping we're either not taking it from providers who need it or that ours would be a drop in the bucket. That said, it's likely that our site is/will be involved in coronavirus vaccine testing, so I do hope on balance, it's worth it.
Barry, it's going to be ugly for a while, but I think you have very good odds. Take care of yourself.
Dave, I'm so sorry. I'm glum but still hoping a lot of places can manage this without reaching the point of rationing care. Sweden is a bit behind other places, right?
So, I've been confusing respirators and ventilators. Things made so much more sense now.
Sympathies to Charles II, Barry, and David, JPJ, Ume, SK, dq, and really everyone posting about their difficulties recently.
I am finding the waiting aspect of shelter in place, knowing what's likely coming, to be especially difficult. Sitting still by itself is something I feel able to handle.
73: We have to get "respirator fit tests" and approvals for use and all kind of administrative hoops to jump through. I probably wouldn't have known the difference without all those reminder emails from the various occupational health and safety departments. Glad it makes more sense now.
OMFG.
The high school is slowly releasing details of how online school will proceed. This is making me insane: they're going to have students follow THE NORMAL BELL SCHEDULE. Like, Jammies has to teach geometry seven fucking times a day for each class, the same class over and over again, and it's all synchronous. (On MWF. The plan is that T/Th are for tutoring and planning.)
That means I would be single parenting until 4 pm MWF, while also trying to hold my own fucking job and get my kids to do the bare minimum so that their teachers don't get in trouble. I'm so fucking pissed.
WHY SYNCHRONOUS? WHY? If I had multiple sections of the same class, I would sure as hell merge them in a heartbeat for the online version. What the FUCK.
Let's just say I was too impressed with what people can sew at home.
This is not on par with people's health fears and worries. It's far more annoying but much less grave.
That sounds frustrating, heebie.
Two parents working from home while the kids do homeschooling is obviously fucked. It might work for us, with one teen and jobs that don't require fixed time. But otherwise, no.
The high school thing is just such an unforced error. Like, everything I'm seeing about moving classes online says not to make it synchronous, and do to everything possible to coast through these last few weeks with as minimal stress as possible. Not to ramp it up and micromanage your teachers into doing everything the hard way.
Heebie, that's nuts, and is totally unrealistic and unenforceable. They're trying to meet state mandates of x number of hours of instruction per school year for public funding; but this is a new, and unprecedented situation, and it's just not going to work.
In the other thread we said how kids make video loops of themselves looking like they're attending class, maybe he can do something similar so it looks like he's teaching all the time.
More seriously, could he just make one video he shows to each class and pauses when there are questions or leaves time at the end? Doesn't completely free him up but at least makes it not a 100% time suck.
The whole thing is not going to work. The point is to try hard enough that it isn't your fault it fails but not so hard that you break down before it fails.
Morbid update: if I die and the NYT prints a notice about me like this one, which I quote in its entirety, please take appropriate and timely revenge.
Jeffrey Ghazarian, 34, a cancer survivor who died on Thursday at a hospital in Pasadena, Calif., liked to quote the movie "Swingers," the speech that went: "You're money, baby. You're so money and you don't even know it."
Uh, you don't actually go around saying "You're money, baby," do you?
Oh man, this thread is hard to read. I want to believe that everyone I know and love -- including here! -- is going to make it through, but...I work with stats for a living. I would miss all of you: Barry, and David, and King Charles.
I'm so unutterably angry at the federal situation now that I can't even speak. Had to take time today in the midst of my calming 12-mile hike to respond to Qs about a Congressional spending package -- so good, so important, so fucking infuriating that even at this time so much of Congress is preoccupied with making sure the biggest businesses get theirs, never mind the rest of humanity.
My sister and her family spent 9 hours today making masks. They ran out of elastic and got some dropped out of a car window (!) by a quarantinning grandfather (!!) before their neighborkids had to go next door and hug their dad goodbye for maybe the last time (!!!). [He has to go to a disease epicenter for work, cannot refuse for fear of losing his job, is sole support for his family, and has two complicating medical conditions.]
They finished a couple dozen masks, washed in hot water and dried on high heat, put into ziploc bags and delivered to my sister's good friend the ICU nurse, who was distressingly grateful. She was at home making face shields for herself.
Another friend told us that her hospital in Philadelphia has a four-day supply of PPE left. I cannot fathom -- well of course I can -- how we got to this place.
I started keeping a handwritten diary because the librarian/archivist in me knows it's important.
I didn't finish my thought in the first paragraph. The flip side of stats in big countries is that, well, most of us WILL survive. And I'm going to choose to believe that all of us will, and do everything in my power to MAKE THAT TRUE.
If he is who I think he is the survival of King Charles II matters greatly to a great many people, and not just because of the geopolitical implications. Likewise Barry and David W and anyone else I'm missing.
Barry, your medical history might be against you, but time isn't. Apparently Arrakis is flattening the curve pretty aggressively, and treatment seems to be advancing quickly. And FWIW you're a US citizen with a massive base on your doorstep.
Our school situation is totally untenable. I'm having worsening allergy/whatever symptoms to the point that I stayed in bed as much as I could today, so I'm really not excited about helping out and enforcing again tomorrow. I'm hoping after next week (the initial two weeks of planned closure) things will loosen up, because Lee is being a fucking disaster in pressuring me about the girls' school performance while also not doing anything helpful of course.
86: Oh yeah, she does it all the time. Go buy some milk: "You're money, baby." Put gas in the car: "You're money, baby." Use the plastic bendy auger hook thing to get a hair clot out of the sink drain: "You're money, baby." After a while you catch on to how aggressively you have to discount it.
I very much appreciate 88, and 88.3 is heartbreaking.
I also genuinely laughed at the morbid humor of 85. That is remarkable.
I almost certainly have it now. I have all the symptoms and a known exposure. I guess I'll see if I can get a test tomorrow.
Thinking good thoughts for you, Tia. If there is anything more substantive I can do, please say so.
I think I'll be okay. I don't have any complicating conditions. In truth the isolation had started to cause a more dangerous health condition but a friend (who knew I was sick and who believes she has already had it, and is also constantly exposed at her job) invited me to come stay, so I'm doing much better.
Oh man, sorry Tia. I thought the (frustrating) new testing regimen in NYC was no outpatient testing; I mention this less because I think you don't know and more so you can reassure us that you're not looking for inpatient testing.
Maybe that's the new regime. My aunt was saying something like that. I'm not looking for impatient, no! This far I'm fine although I'm not banking on continuing to be so because my illness has had the long slow ramp up many people describe and sometimes it does get serious quite quickly after that. But statistically I am likely to be ok! I am just glad I'm not trying to force myself to stay alone on my apartment anymore. That was untenable.
I'm glad you've found some company, especially because of that turning-on-a-dime aspect to the pathology (trying not to worry about that too much, but it makes me jumpy when I hear about stable positives). This is the testing policy I was thinking of. I think the Bay Area is in similar straits vis-a-vis PPE and other resource limitations.
I've been realizing that I don't know where some commenters are, geographically, and that now I really want to know -- for reporting-on-the-ground purposes but more because I like picturing you all where you are in this bizarro world. I know location compromises anonymity for some, but if it doesn't, I'd love to know, even in vague terms. I'm in Austin.
In other news, people suck: "As its user base rapidly expands, the videoconference app Zoom is seeing a rise in trolling and graphic content."
2nd 55.
Good luck Tia.
I fear the death toll will be severe in Mossheimat. Nearly 300 cases, some known community spread already. The state in general and healthcare in particular are inadequate at the best of times; many millions of people immunocompromised for various reasons; maybe tens of millions without the money or physical living space to self-isolate effectively.
My parents and surviving grandparent, OTOH, are retired in free-standing houses and should be able to self-isolate for months (but will very likely die if infected).
Will very likely die if requiring hospitalization, I should say.
100: Am in the DC metro area, Maryland side.
Have been pretty well isolated with no symptoms for 10 days, with the exception of going to the grocery store Wednesday and having a woman cough repeatedly as she walked by me. I followed her long enough to see that she was clearly unwell, coughing throughout the store. Vexing.
The Missus and I occupy different risk groups, but not the most severe risk groups. The 2 kids are blessedly without any obvious risk factors.
Good luck to everyone!
I'm in southern California right now, in a county so far not hit as hard as bigger CA counties. But I'm normally in the Bay Area and somehow I have to figure out when to go back. I'm having mail held by the post office, and either need to get it forwarded here or will go back before the hold ends. I worry a lot about not being able to come back to help my parents if they need more help, either because they're in isolation, I'm in isolation, travel is restricted, or some number of us are actually sick and quarantined.
I'm in western Massachusetts. The metrics are my obsession: Berkshire County has twice the percentage of positive results, based on population, of Massachusetts overall. On the other hand, the doubling rate is six days here, versus three days in Massachusetts overall. Do those two factors cancel each other out? This is a rural area; the only hospitals equipped with ventilators are fifty miles away or more. Pre-existing respiratory issues mean I'm already low on O2. Not a good look.
Charles II, Barry, Tia, others - my warmest wishes from this anchor-hold. Do we know how Megan is?
Thanks everyone! DW has it right above, this place's full of good people.
Good luck Tia, I'm glad you're at a place where you have care and company.
Best of luck to everyone here.
My sister says that the tests Quest does for them (LA, large public hospital) are taking seven frustrating days. So, there's that lag too. Here, across the river from 45, things continue to be okay for me while the general news worsens. This county is a hotspot. I also now have a number of friends in Boston who have been tested or preëmptively quarantined. It is all dreadful.
Do we have any system here for checking in on those concerned about their condition? The problem with semi-imaginary online friends is knowing when to be concerned if people go offline for a while. I'm with Witt in terms of general optimism. Even for the highest risk groups in the worst areas (say Italy) there's still a high chance of recovery, although obviously still scary for individuals in those groups.
I have a ~90 foot x 4 inch roll of elastic in my basement although I won't be home to do anything with it for at least another week. It's the stuff used for exercise bands. SPouse uses one for daily exercise and they either get lost or eventually lose elasticity so a couple years ago she bought a multi-lifetime roll of the material. I've seen some local emails about sewing masks so I assume I can just offer it there once I have access to it.
And on the flip side of optimism is the total rage I have every couple minutes reading another example of total incompetence at any broader coordination of response. University of Washington says the have unused testing capacity at the moment, 12 hour turnaround on their latest batch. Either more people in that area should be getting tested to lock down transmission or someone should be flying samples there in currently empty passenger jets.
I'm up at 4am because I heard banging downstairs and found the dog had gotten out of the kid's room he was in and had gone through the trash. Now have to wait to see if he gets sick.
My small personal attempt at contributing to a solution is I asked a colleague at work to run a computational analysis of our set of existing drug candidates against the main viral protein target. A long shot unlikely to find anything actionable but why not, at this point it's just pushing electrons around. We're not really set up to contribute anything useful besides making sure our existing manufacturing pipeline (which makes medicines for a high risk population) stays up- we used to do antivirals but haven't for many years.
I hope this doesn't get him fired but really what's the chance someone in the White House reads Science? I also hope his head doesn't explode, mine probably would in his situation.
109: I was born in Boston, but I live on the other side of the river now (a little bit to the west of that fair city). My county had been one of the hardest hit by the numbers because of all of those Biogen people.
We've been finding it quite hard to get out and get some fresh air. There's just too many people. We can get along the towpath and across the canal into a quiet nature reserve, which has a fair number of people walking dogs and playing, but it's possible to maintain a decent clear distance (5 - 10 metres, no problem). But getting along the tow path ... there's too many people and it's making me nervous. One of our neighbours ran a little exercise class for his friends, yesterday, from the little park under our window. Which is nice for them, but bringing in a group of strangers, not sure that's a fucking great idea.
We've basically been at home for 3 weeks now, as my wife and I both had colds. Kid has been at home for a week. I was fairly sure the colds were just colds, but we both still have tight/sore chests -- no breathing problems* -- and intermittent coughing, a couple of weeks out, so .. maybe it wasn't just a cold. Who knows. No-one is being tested, so it's not like we'll find out for potentially months.
* although chasing the (7 today!) sprog round a field yesterday, I did get more out of breath than I would normally expect.
London is going to have astronomical numbers of very sick people, within 5 - 10 days. So, while no-one in my family is in an at risk group, there's shit all chance of medical care if anything does go wrong.
116: This. It's going to be very bad.
I'm in the process of registering for NHS Blood & Transplant. Things are going to get bad for medical care generally, and I think given how isolated and presumably healthy I am, and the decreased number of blood donations, I think it's worth the risk of having contact with strangers. (Although NHS protocol is apparently to still not have their people wearing masks...)
117: As of yesterday my hospital is requiring all staff - clinical and on clinical - to wear a mask at all times. They each get one a day. They want to reduce the risk of unknowingly infected staff transmitting it to patients and their coworkers.
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Amusing me slightly in these times (and a sign he might be a good guy with a sense of humour about himself), is watching Kirk Hammett from Metallica, in a "wah off" guitar contest with drag queen shred guitarist, Mrs Smith.
>
119: Even the vet I go to wore a mask when I dropped the cat off. Which was done via a dead-drop on the sidewalk. NHS B&T says: "Are you asking staff to wear facemasks? We are following PHE guidance which is not to wear facemasks. Facemasks are only recommended to be worn by symptomatic individuals (advised by a healthcare worker) to reduce the risk of transmitting the infection to other people. PHE recommends that the best way to reduce any risk of infection is good hygiene and avoiding direct or close contact (closer than 2 metres) with any potentially infected person." PHE is Public Health England.
Not inspiring, unless masks are in such short supply. What your hospital is doing seems right to me.
Was there a box on the sidewalk to leave the cat in? It could simultaneously be a dead drop and a live drop.
121: We have an ER doc who is an expert in disaster medicine and one of our infectious disease docs commanding the whole hospital along with one other administrator. I'm working remotely.
110: We've had some updates from Californians. I hope that we will hear more from the New Yorkers. (Thanks Tia for letting us know how you are!) In particular, I have been thinking of LB. Anyone know how she is doing?
A gentle reminder: masks don't do much of anything for the general population. If you don't trust your decadent Western health authorities, here's Taiwan CDC:participating experts emphasized that healthy students don't need to wear face masks and recommended local governments to reinforce the propagation of three situations that require face masks. The three situations are when individuals visit a doctor, accompany a patient for a doctor appointment and visit a patient; when individuals are sick with symptoms of respiratory infections; and when individuals with chronic diseases go outside.
(Not that anyone here necessarily is saying otherwise.)
124 this makes no sense to me, if you can be contagious while being asymptomatic then surely a habit of the general public wearing masks is good, no?
My guess is that too many people were holding up banks.
125: Take it up with the COVID CHAMPIONS OF THE WORLD.
But really. The paper masks soak through and become useless after ~2 hrs. They only protect anyone if worn and removed properly (which no-one does) and lose efficacy immediately once removed (which everyone does 17000 times a day to eat/drink/scratch their nose). Here they're rationed to 2/person/day which in theory would cover everyone's commutes but not their workplaces, much less classrooms, and is somewhat offset by half the goddamn country lining up outside pharmacies everyday to buy masks.
Nobody holds up banks here. The cash in transit guards don't even have guns, just telescoping batons. An adorable country really.
They don't hold up banks because the cash transit system is easier to target?
The cash transit system here uses armed guards and armored trucks, but the banks are in the habit of not resisting robberies because it's cheaper and easier to catch them later.
124: That's fairly old--from the end of January--and I would consider their other instructions. Here they give instructions for people who have been to certain areas:
Moreover, asymptomatic travelers with a history of travel to Level 1 Area or Level 2 Area are advised to avoid taking public transportation. If it takes long time for travelers to return home without public transportation, travelers should wear face masks when traveling back home.
What are Level 1 and Level 2 Areas? Definition here:
Level 1 Area indicates areas with significant community transmission which is hard to control, and Hubei province has been listed as Level 1 Area; Level 2 indicates areas with suspected community transmission, and individuals with a history of travel to such areas should be required to be under home quarantine.
Their definition of a Level 2 Area sounds like it includes substantial portions of the west. That second quote is from early February; on February 6 they promoted all of China, including Hong Kong and Macau, to Level 2. So those precise rules seem to be based on thinking that people in Taiwan are significantly unlikely to have it, and the rules are different for anyone who has been in a situation that corresponds to most of the rest of us.
And here we are: an alert putting various European and Middle Eastern countries, including the United Kingdom, on Level 1 or Level 2 Area status, and asserting that anyone returning from them will have a 14 day quarantine.
They don't hold up anyone. I was at the supermarket* an hour ago and two CIT guys were refilling an ATM. Right in among crowds of shoppers, less than a meter away, both of them bending over looking at the machine. I think I could taken the both of them just with a can of peaches.
*Where the cashiers are for the first time working at anything approaching the efficiency of their counterparts in benighted Mossheimat. Weird. Anyway #silverlinings
131: Okay fine. You're all fucked. (They declared the entire world Level 3 a couple of days ago.)
My grandfather had a dog named Peaches. It had something to do with an umpire he didn't like.
Could have taken them with a dog too. But carrying a dog into a supermarket might draw attention.
They considered various scenarios, the most extreme of which called for the trade in 95% of goods to be suspended for 12 months. The impact on the U.S. economy? A fall in real gross domestic product of 48%.
Hey, I am working from home and as of now totally fine. Newt's been home from Canada for a week, so if he'd brought it home with him I'd plausibly be sick by now and I'm not. Sally is sheltering in place in her coop in Santa Cruz.
The only problem is that on my first day working from home, last Monday, my goddamn cats smashed my phone (knocked a mug and the phone off my desk at the same time, so that the mug landed on the phone screen. Took it completely out -- not just cracked glass, no function.) And then when I ordered a replacement, someone stole it in the delivery process. I am hoping to get a second replacement today.
I saw my first mask this morning, on a dog walker. have been interviewing NHS staff for work and as a result am beginning really to worry about my mother's care home staff. How long will how many of them stick it out?
LB, they're trying to protect you from all those alerts!
The woman in the apartment next to me is very old and dependent on her home health aide. The aide was still coming in last week, but I need to keep checking that she's been able to continue.
I commented in an earlier thread that masks don't protect their wearer much, but now what I hear is that they are worth wearing even though not perfect. Even an improvised mask will tend to decrease the dose of virus you take in the event someone coughs on you. I dunno. I'm going to start wearing a mask when I go out. I'm pretty sure I don't have it, but I and my wife both have some risk factors, so I want to start to do anything I can to avoid it now.
138: I've been very concerned about the at-home aides helping my father care for my mother. There are I think three or four of them. They all visit a number of houses. One of them is in her early 20's and my father finds her a bit carefree, so she could be an asymptomatic vector. Both my parents are in their early 70s.
Last Sunday, during our weekly conversation, I begged my dad to stop having them come in. It sucks, it's very hard on him but he can handle taking care of my mom on his own. He didn't see what the risk was, thinking it was the same as going to the supermarket. No. It's not. He only saw this as a risk to my mother; he didn't see himself as being in a risk category, saying that all the old people who die of it have pre-existing conditions. No. That's not true. We had a shouting fight over this.
Yesterday he was a bit more sensible. He wore gloves when he went to the store, and he at least had talked it over with the aides; they're all hunkering down except for their jobs. So I figured we'd compromise: don't have the aides come in for two weeks, but continue to pay them as if they showed up normally, and then bring them back assuming they had correctly social distanced. My dad listened to me--and he surprisingly wasn't opposed to the pay-but-don't-show-up thing, since he's a Trumper--but no avail. I said fine, I said my piece, you're an adult and can make your own decisions, I'm washing my hands (ha) of this but I really don't want to be heading back to the states in two weeks to see you in a box.
We'll see what he does.
141 is exactly what I'm thinking. I'll take some N% reduction of risk to me, and a much higher M% reduction of outbound infectious particles, even if it isn't perfect. Furthermore it signals to others that I'm taking this seriously, and also that you should be afraid of me and keep your distance.
And to be clear, my main concern in 142 is that my father weigh the risks of infection/sickness/death on one side and burnout on the other rationally. Last week he completely scoffed at the idea that it could affect them; at least now I think he's starting to make a rational calculation, even if he weights both probability of events and his personal risk tolerance differently from how I would.
has added a fourth designated disease prevention hotel
So absolutely no shitting the bed you hear.
[...]
Towels and bedding are cleaned with bleach for 15 minutes before being washed separately, it added.
MA under stay at home order, although te list of essential workers isn't much different from what's already de facto happened. But it's ok, Trump is signaling he's going to tell everyone except high risk groups to go back to work in two weeks.
110: we could have a daily check-in thread or something. (I finally heard from my friend in Manhattan whose wife was an ICU nurse for ten years, then transferred to a lower-stress job; she is indeed being pulled back into the ICU now and is expecting it to be hell. Those guys are up there on my worry list.)
Do we know how Megan is?
Fine, 99% recovered. Late night of Day 6, my partner got pretty sick, had chest pain and aches, slept 36 hours. But when he got up, morning of Day 8, he felt almost entirely recovered. Since then, we've been back to ourselves and steadily re-gaining energy. Starting to chafe at home quarantine. But that's only until this Thursday, and then we can switch to Shelter in Place, which is much less restrictive.
I'm trying to get us serology tests, to show we're in the clear.
For my household it looked like:
Kid - entirely miss-able day with low fever and dry cough.
Megan - a week of a noticeable cold (fever, dry cough), felt tired and had weirdness (headaches, dizziness, fatigue, malaise)
Partner - More flu-like, downed for 36 hours with chest pain.
By day 8, recovered. I think that's where the pneumonia kicks in and we avoided that path.
How far we've fallen from the usual "hooray!"
I see now that it starts tomorrow. When did he announce it? I'm hoping Tim can get his idiotic company to class him as non essential. He does nothing related to antivirals or vaccines, and they keep sending e-mails about the importance of productivity.
I'm about to drive to the school to turn in Selah's packet of work from last week and get her report card, though the teacher called Friday to tell me how good it was. She only completed 34 of the 54 pages for the first week, but now I'll pick up her school iPad and she'll be able to do more work on that. The other two basically only have online work, though they had packets sent home too. Her teacher knows she was sick and I emailed to consider her absent for two days, so maybe it won't matter at all that she's not finished and why am I even supposed to worry about this stuff? (And actually I'm NOT headed to the school yet because Nia's case coordinator called and I forgot we had an appointment for that.)
I'm also trying to get the idiot who owns the yarn store to officially close us since our state has gone to only having essential businesses open. But apparently non-essential businesses can still do pickup and so she still wants me there two hours a day three days a week because we're the only shop in the area that's allowed to be open at all since the rest are in Ohio under shelter-in-place. This seems immoral and creepy, but capitalism.
Glad you're feeling better, Megan & household.
Announced about 10:30.
List of essential classifications here:
https://www.mass.gov/doc/covid-19-essential-services/download
So, now I am scared. Tim has hypertension and a stable congenital heart issue. His company is planning to issue an essential employee letter.
we could have a daily check-in thread or something.
This is easily done. Maybe twice weekly? Tuesday/Friday Reassurances or Worrisome Updates of Community Well-Being.
I'm glad we were sick enough to notice (but no sicker). Better that than still fearing it or questioning a light cold.
Questioning a light cold and/or allergies is pretty common in this house.
158: I'm so sorry, that is awful.
Uh, is hypertension still an issue if it is controlled by medication? Asking for a friend.
164: according to CDC,
"COVID-19 is a new disease and there is limited information regarding risk factors for severe disease... Based upon available information to date, those at high-risk for severe illness from COVID-19 include:
People aged 65 years and older
People who live in a nursing home or long-term care facility
Other high-risk conditions could include:
People with chronic lung disease or moderate to severe asthma
People who have heart disease with complications
People who are immunocompromised including cancer treatment
People of any age with severe obesity (body mass index [(BM]I)≥40) or certain underlying medical conditions, particularly if not well controlled, such as those with diabetes, renal failure, or liver disease might also be at risk
People who are pregnant should be monitored since they are known to be at risk with severe viral illness, however, to date data on COVID-19 has not shown increased risk"
So I think hypertension is fine. Or at least not something that suggests increased risk in combination with COVID-19.
We just went from "bars restaurants, theaters and gyms closed" to "non-essential businesses closed". Apparently because people were still congregating in groups. It's funny the announcement made a point of explicitly noting that liquor stores are exempt from the order.I guess they didn't want to trigger a last minute stampede.
They're planning to convert a hotel and the Baltimore convention center to impromptu hospitals to increase capacity.
So far in Maryland 288 cases and 3 deaths. So at least we're hopefully getting our measures in place early enough to make a difference.
164 Probably not it is probably situational. As I understand it the problem with (chronic) hypertension is overall strain on the system causes damage over time. So controlling it with any kind of mitigation should stop that damage and even allow some repair. So if you were close to hypertensive heart disease but not yet clinically diagnosed, and only recently started bringing it down - you may have additional risk factor. If you've been been controlling it for a long time it might not factor in... on the other hand I'm not a medical doctor, so take with (a doctor-approved amount of) salt.
I'm reading stuff on twitter from cardiologists at my hospital saying that patients w/ hen appear to have elevated risk. There is a theoretical risk because of how COVID works with ACE2 I believe. He also has a bicuspid aortic valve and a small aneurysm.
They are definitely saying not to discontinue ACE inhibitors or ARBs. He actually switched to a calcium channel blocker.
To elaborate, hew switched a while ago due to side effects from the ACE and the ARB (itching) not related to COVID.
169 is interesting. One of the problem with something going this fast is we don't actually know about a lot of these things, and clinicians on-the-ground are sometimes going more off gut than science.
I'm absolutely sure I'm not the only one who has been thinking this but I've seen no one mention it, with the halt of major economic activity, airline travel, etc, what is this showing on climate data?
172: I'm not sure about carbon emissions, but pollution is way down in the California metros, Italy, etc.
And as soon as I posted that right on cue
Why would anyone be listening to Trump in 2 weeks? I mean why would you listen to Trump in general, but I think especially in 2 weeks. ICUs everywhere in the US will likely be being overwhelmed then.
emissions are recovering nicely in china, I've heard.
172 - IIRC after 9/11 the lack of contrails over the US brought the temperature down by 0.5C. There's still flights, but far fewer, and it'll last longer than just three days, and it's worldwide...
So, we're now under a stay at home order. We're allowed out for exercise. I'm not sure if that allows me to stop while on a walk to battle a gym in Pokemon Go.
Huh. It's raining here today, but I remember noticing after 9-11 that the absences of contrails from the sky was very noticeable on a clear day -- the sky looked sort of unrealistically tidy.
I don't think coronavirus is transmissible to pokemon.
All delivery slots for amazon fresh and local supermarkets are completely booked up. I guess this means I have to go to the store. :(
I upped my meal delivery kit from 3 to 5 meals a week last week, because I figured this stay at home stuff was coming.
Ugh, and M just got a text from a friend of his who just got attacked by racists at the Ralphs a mile away from here, so this is going to be fun.
The town is (googling) 16% Asian, so hopefully if there are racists in the store there will also be other Asian people there to draw their fire away from us.
182 fuck that so hard. I'm starting to worry about friends .
Maybe I'll fake a cough to keep people away from us.
I've actually had a sore throat/chest tightness/nausea for the past week or so, but I'm pretty sure that's attributable to seasonal allergies/terror/a perpetual hangover from drinking so much.
178: Do you have the actual text of the order? Ours allows going outdoors as an activity not limited to exercise. The FAQ: "Spending time outside improves mood and well-being, and is particularly beneficial to children. You can go for walks, go to the park, and engage in other similar activities, but should maintain social distance..."
172, 173: The air quality maps of Southern California are the only news items that brighten my day rn. All green!
I'm working from home starting today. The mayor issued a "hunker down" order on Friday, which was a little confusing but seems to be essentially comparable to what other places are doing. Detected cases jumped a lot yesterday but still at a low absolute level.
The cases locally seem to be concentrated on the military base, which is cracking down on movement probably to a greater degree than the civilian authorities can.
182: Shit. I've been wondering if I'd run into anything like that because there are few Asian people in this area, but so far shopping has been ok. Sometimes people have given me what seems like extra space but it hasn't been distinguishable from just being extra careful.
191: I went to the supermarket yesterday, and at some point my paranoia kicked in. Maybe it was the trauma of being told I wasn't allowed to bring reusable shopping bags into the store. Anyway, it wasn't crowded, but there were a fair amount of shoppers around the store, and I found myself maneuvering to avoid even getting within 20 feet of anyone. Any one of these people could have the virus! Any surface I touch could give me the virus! My nose itches! Don't touch it!
Aaaaaaaaa! I wound up forgetting to get the most important things on the list and had to go back this morning.
My neighborhood has a majority with Asian ancestry if you take Judaism very seriously. Visibly Asian people are probably closer to 20 percent, but that will drop off the students have fled. Anyway, I haven't seen any trouble like that.
the trauma of being told I wasn't allowed to bring reusable shopping bags into the store
Oh interesting I haven't seen that yet, I wonder how widespread that is?
187: Minivet, where is this order applicable to? I've been taking long mental health walks through London while social-distancing like a mf (to the point of stepping into the road and nearly into traffic to move away from oncoming groups of people) thinking I was A-OK and then woke to a lot of online moaning about how shit Londoners were being at this whole business and maybe they were going to have to order people home. I do feel like guidance, such as it is here, is gradually shifting from "it's okay to get outdoors" to "stay in your goddamned house."
I am surprised by the way NY and CA seem to be diverging:
California - testing rate is low and unlikely to go up soon, but mortality is seemingly not exploding yet
New York - this number is actually low; latest # positive tests is 20,875 via.
New York had a huge testing spike, which explains the high number of positives, but the death rate is also spiking. Is CA understating the number of deaths due to Covid-19 because they don't know who has Covid-19? Am I missing some obvious discriminant? Maybe this speaks ill of me, but I wouldn't have expected the two to be that starkly different.
You can check out but you can never leave.
195:
(1.) California started its lock down sooner, and SF even sooner than the state as a whole.
(2.) New York City is denser that LA and I think than SF. True social distancing might be harder? Though there are a lot of delivery options in NYC.
I've wondered a lot about urban density and infection, especially under pre-lockdown social arrangements. It's very easy for me to stat away from most people when not taking transit to work.
It's surprising the GOP thought they would get away with an unmonitored $500b slush fund, to the point of holding more than one vote. Groupthing, or the bustout?
201 I think they're trying to set out a counter-argument for November. By then, with any luck at all, Trump will have vanquished the virus, with, it'll be plain to see from the soundbites from this period, nothing but obstruction from Democrats.
Ugh, I'm sorry and worried about the rising racism. It's unreal that we have a President who is single-handedly making it unsafe for people, intentionally, as hard as he can. (Of course it's real. I'm just searching for a strong word.)
Back from the supermarket! It was fine. The store was doing a pretty good job of encouraging/enforcing precautionary distancing -- it let in only a small number of people at a time, and had tape on the floor spaced six feet apart, to mark where you were supposed to stand in line. It was reasonably well-stocked, too, even with apocalyptic rarities like toilet paper and bottled water, except that for many items, your choices were really limited (only preminced garlic, for example, and only pint-sized boxes of flour). Everyone was really polite and for the most part tried their best to stay away from each other. The only bad moment was when a guy in the produce section (which was the most populated area of the store -- not really crowded, but people were less than six feet apart) coughed. Everyone froze, and we were all very tense and stared silently ahead for about three seconds.
OMFG. I've been on Nextdoor recently (I know, I know but I wanted to offer help to neighbors) but I need to stay the fuck off. Today's gem:
Just want to put this out there.....I was walking my dog last night when a black muscle car with dark tinted windows came driving up, slowed down, and the passenger in the front and back seat sneezed out the windows! Bojangles and I dove into the bushes. I've heard they're doing this in East LA and Southside Chicago for gang initiations, but never imagined it would happen in ______! Just be careful!
Jammies reassured me yesterday that the high school plan couldn't possibly be implemented as I was imagining. He just got off a call with the principal and his department, and it's being implemented exactly as I'm imagining. I'm so fucking angry, I'm almost in tears.
I'm so fucking helpless and can't do anything about this enormous UNFORCED ERROR of an imposition. They're going to make Jammies teach in front of a computer from 8-4 MWF, (and then more flexibility on TTH but not enough IMO). I'm so fucking angry about what this puts on me to cover - the four kids and their school work with my own classes. I don't understand why they're choosing such a hellishly rigid schedule. I'm so fucking mad that our somewhat manageable quarantine is going to be turned into a hellish awful quarantine.
Well, this new lifestyle where I spend every hour of every day failing at parenting, work, and civic duties simultaneously is just fantastic.
san francisco and other inner bay area counties went to shelter-in-place close to/about a week before los angeles.
i don't find the density argument convincing, wuhan and seoul are much denser than new york or rome, let alone milan, bergamo, etc. and you can absolutely maintain sufficient distance from neighbors in high rises, cue those videos of everyone exercising/making music - each from their own balconies. tokyo? pretty damn dense.
Ok, 206 is hilarious. That has to be a joke, right? A gang initiation via sneezy pox?
But evidently it could be much worse! Can Jammies connect with his colleagues to see if they are also finding this a hardship, and present some unified complaint?
It's amazing -- from what I can tell my kid's teacher is logging onto the computer for five minutes every day to see what digital work the kids have done, then managing her own four-kid household the rest of the time. I think this is a temporary thing while she tries to figure out how to run a digital classroom, but I would appreciate a little more involvement, tbh. My daughter was finished with her "assigned" work by 9:20 this morning and has been getting steadily more depressed and withdrawn as the day goes on. I should just take a week of PTO and be done with it. This shit is not working.
206, 210: Now this jackass says "JK! Just for funsies!" (Not his actual words.)
I want to, but am not going to, shout at him that 1. PEOPLE ARE STUPID AND THEY BELIEVE THINGS. 2. AS SOON AS YOU USE THE WORD "GANG" YOU'RE BEGGING FOR SOMEONE TO SAY SOMETHING RACIST 3. IT'S A LOUSY JOKE ANYWAY. SHARPEN YOUR SKILLS BEFORE YOU TRY AGAIN.
Jammies got hired about three days before the schools closed, so he feels a little bit like the low man on the totem poll. But I did ask some friends w high school kids to email the principal.
212: I totally agree that it's not actually hilarious because of the consequences of posting something like that on a public forum. I'm walking back my use of that word.
I love that white people think that gang initiations are just frat pledging, but with more murder.
People reported me on Nextdoor when I suggested that instead of getting a home alarm system, you should just steal the little sign from a neighbor.
Heebie, that's absurd. What a stupid waste of employee time. And what are families with more high school-aged children than internet-enabled computers supposed to do?
209: Yes, but their governments were enforcing different rules earlier. New York voluntary social distancing would look different from SF. Korea had massive testing for one.
Yesterday I watched a presentation on What worked in Wuhan. Social distancing worked some and got the R0 below 2, but what got it below 1 was isolating individuals who were asymptomatic or with mild symptoms from their families. They took over university dorms and a couple of hotels. Washington State was looking into something like this.
216:. People? It was some from the home alarm company.
Now that I thought of it it seems obvious that 1/2 of the Nextdoor postings are from home security company reps posing as neighbors.
regarding my previous concerns, I guess the latest UK news is at least helpfully clarifying
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/23/uk-lockdown-what-are-new-coronavirus-restrictions
Sorry about the shittiness, heebie.
218: that seems to be consistent with the places that have really pulled the rates down: test like mad in a funnel (e.g. temperature at every doorway, filter high temps to a secondary review, send everyone for proper testing with any indication) and isolate literally everyone who is positive. So if you show up at your grocery store with a slight fever, you're going into the system - it will either kick you out and send you home a few hours or a day later with a negative result, or you are going to be isolated.
i guess to do the "test like mad" part, you need to first be, you know, testing.
How reliable is Kyodo news?
But the doctor, who works at a quarantine facility, said the government tally "cannot be trusted." The number of patients currently undergoing treatment is deliberately being reduced in an effort to show the Xi government's success in combatting the epidemic, he said. The doctor, in his 40s, whose responsibilities include determining whether a patient is discharged from a hospital expressed strong concerns that if the truth remains hidden from the public, another outbreak could occur. Guidelines from the National Health Commission stipulate that patients must test negative for the virus twice and be cleared for pneumonia via a computerized tomography scan before being discharged. But according to the doctor, from around the time of Xi's visit, even though his patients still exhibited signs of pneumonia, the patients were released from quarantine at the discretion of a "specialist" from the epidemic prevention and control authority. From then on, the criteria for discharging patients became loose, and "a mass release of infected patients began," he said.
218: yes, bostonienne, i was just pushing back against the idea that density alone is problematic. on the most cursory scrutiny that cannot be true. and to the extent that what works/is necessary includes widespread testing and isolation at home, e.g., south korea, all of that happens much more efficiently in an urban rather than suburban environment. rural, i suppose you just do what that one little town in italy did - test everyone, and then roadblock the hell out of the perimeter.
225: I don't think anyone really knows much about the reliability of PRC numbers. But S. Korea, Taiwan, Singapore seem pretty solid numbers.
related news of the first chloroquine related death in Arizona.
Knew that was going to happen, but damn. Wish I had any faith Trump was going to wear that.
Now this jackass says "JK! Just for funsies!"
Poe's Law strikes again.
Context is everything. The same statement in comments here could have been pretty funny.
Wendy or Witt or others, could you direct me to a pattern for home-sewn respirators? There are a bunch online, but I can't tell how reliable they are (they mostly look really flimsy). If there is one that any that a medical facility has already reviewed and approved, I'd like to use that.
228: More in Lagos! Where chloroquine is available because it's actually useful for, you know, malaria.
An almost exaggeratedly cautious article about reinfection:
"We have almost no information about [MERS] reinfection because there has only been a total of 2,500 cases over eight years," says Perlman, who notes that the odds of anyone getting reinfected with that virus are not great, especially considering that 35 percent of people who had it died. Survivors of MERS did generate an immune response to the virus that can be detected up to two years later, he says. And the more ill the patient was, the more robust and long-lasting the immune response.
"Based on other infections where you get a deep lung infection, you are usually protected against the second infection. If you just have a mild COVID-19 infection that involves your upper airway, maybe it will behave like a common cold coronavirus and maybe you can be reinfected again," says Perlman. "We just really don't know. It's even hard to speculate."
Those seem really hard to sew. Maybe if I crocheted.
226: I think that those measures were more easily implemented in an East Asian country. Given the political culture of the US and the lack of acceptance (thus far) of those kind of communal, enforced quarantine sites, I think the density of NYC vs California cities could be a contributing factors the variation.
But obviously California introduced stricter regulations earlier - though not sure how much earlier relative to when their epidemic started.
Chronicle now reporting 39 dead in California, but I don't know the source. That is very significantly higher than the tracker's number.
Sorry for the frivolous complaints about my work-life balance upthread; if someone else had written them, I realize, I would have found it annoying to read.
230: In all honesty, I'm not in love with the three patterns provided by our big hospital. I'll link them, but then will hunt a bit more.
https://www.bronsonhealth.com/app/files/public/8380/Kalamazoo-County-Face-Mask-Pattern.pdf
https://www.deaconess.com/How-to-make-a-Face-Mask
https://www.instructables.com/id/AB-Mask-for-a-Nurse-by-a-Nurse/?fbclid=IwAR3VVdSoPE29IZnJsU4nezV4883Ef_5zLEbLSRFScr1KflZ88U4OLYiYCs8
Out of an abundance of caution, I'm not going to start apologizing for frivolous stuff or for annoying people.
OK, I think these look better:
https://www.joann.com/make-to-give-response/
When you put on a respirator that is meant to seal, you do a positive and negative pressure check. Fabric doesn't really seal, but I'd probably check one or two different styles this way to see what fits your face best.
https://www.ihsa.ca/pdfs/safety_talks/respirators_fit.pdf
They won't really seal like a proper respirator, but they should puff a bit at positive and buckle at negative. If they don't, they aren't fitting as well as they could.
The data are also not at all clear to me whether these are helpful or now. Some papers say better than nothing; some say about the same. Some say they provide a false sense of security. I don't really know, but I don't think they'll make much difference for regular joes.
I've been reporting tweets, especially by elected officials, telling people to go out and work and socialize normally as "advocating self-harm".
This is an imperfect explainer for what's going on in Sweden, but it's something.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/23/swedish-pm-warned-russian-roulette-covid-19-strategy-herd-immunity
I think things are just a little bit more explicit in Sweden. Few if any governments will pursue an ambitious test and trace strategy, and they probalby won't shut down most of the whole economy a whole year, so a lot of people will needlessly die. Or maybe governments will change course in time, not impossible.
Anyway, the Republicans are preparing for a "What's a few dead people compared to money?" push right now.
Context is everything. The same statement in comments here could have been pretty funny.
Totally.
I didn't know about Poe's law. Very handy!
"Come on you apes. You want to live forever?"
Trump-Pence 2020
Amazon is making money, hotels are losing hugely even if they can profit by laundering bribes from foreign governments. Next week, he's going to open things up.
I love 216 so much! And now I'd like proof that 219 isn't true. It would explain so much.
My local NextDoor has turned momentarily kind. Usually it makes me hate humanity.
240: I've been handing out spare sewing supplies to a DE group that's grown to about 500 over the past few days. Hospitals and nursing homes are calling and *begging* us to make these and bring them to their facilities.
From the FB group page:
*Masks*
More than 40 facilities in DE have requested masks. They seem to prefer masks with a built-in pocket that can hold a disposable filter. Ties seem preferred over elastic, though some of each may be ok. Strong preference for tightly woven cotton.
*Popular Patterns*
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnVk12sFRkY
https://www.providence.org/-/media/Project/psjh/shared/Files/providence/psjh-faceshield.pdf
https://www.craftpassion.com/face-mask-sewing-pattern/
I've caught up with the thread, and thank you, jane, ydnew, fake accent, mossy character.
Good luck, Tia. So happy you had that friend.
And good luck NW, and everyone else.
Check-in threads was a great idea.
225: Kyodo is reliable. It's one of the two main independent Japanese news agencies.
Good luck, everyone. I'm leaving the boys in Japan, but aaargh, the ex finally replied and is being horribly complacent. HE TOOK THE BOYS OUT TO SEE THE CHERRY BLOSSOMS IN A CROWDED PARK, then sent them back to their vulnerable grandparents. He expects Hitsuji's school to reopen and thinks he should go back. He's planning to have the boys help him move house in a couple of weeks. If I let myself actually feel my rage it would consume me entirely. Hopefully now the Olympic denial is slowly being overcome the Japanese exceptionalism that says the country is uniquely successful in dealing with the virus and that this state is going to continue indefinitely will have less to nourish it, and people will start making preparations before the curve starts inching upwards there too.
240: Did you see the children's hospital Boston setup? They used existing hospital equipment to put together a mask and were able to Pressure check it to some degree.
i was just pushing back against the idea that density alone is problematic
This was not an idea being pushed forward. What I have been wondering is if prior to any behavioral changes, prior to detection, if the spread of infection has been wider in denser areas, so that the cost of delayed action may have been correspondingly higher. Obviously, it's possible to establish distancing, and take other precautions like wearing masks, in dense environments. Density isn't destiny.
I don't think anyone really knows much about the reliability of PRC numbers.
Given that Xi has gone all in on "we beat the virus through our superior government and now we will send aid to the poor benighted west", I think you can safely ignore Chinese numbers completely. If there was a second wave, would it really be reported promptly and accurately? Would Xi really go on TV and say "oops yeah back to lockdown everyone, looks like we didn't beat this thing after all"? Of course he wouldn't.
Very tentative sign of hope from Italy, as reported by Josh Marshall: the number of new cases per day, and the number of deaths, have been falling since 21 March, 13 days after they imposed lockdown measures. Of course early days, uncertainty, etc, but maybe it's good news? https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/looking-for-patterns
252: I have a friend who runs a bar in Nagoya; it's still open. The complacency is worrying. I would also be enraged if a relative behaved how your ex is.
255: Absolutely this. If only three people have died in Xinjiang, hell if only three people have died in the Xinjiang gulag system, I'd eat my hat. Which I'm quite fond of, even if it's a bit silly looking on me.
Good luck, everyone. Meanwhile the Infanta is still sick (though not COVID); we think she got a new cold during the 3 days she went back to daycare 2 weeks ago, which apparently then led to (again) bacterial bronchitis. So now she's back on antibiotics, plus an inhaler, nasal spray, and prednisolone. Which would be reassuring (prescriptions! science!), except we have no faith in this doctor, because when we saw him yesterday he was *shaking hands* (and even reaching out to touch my hand unprompted when I didn't move to shake!), not wearing any kind of PPE, and touching his face. And at least one of the admin assistants was coughing (no masks there either) and not disinfecting; they of course constantly hand things back and forth to patients.
Speaking of "hard to take this person seriously as a professional", the real estate broker we're forced to deal with prefers to communicate by WhatsApp. Which apparently has robbed me of any sense of decorum or dignity: in explaining why we're underbidding, I actually used a scream-emoji. So, so wrong.
The thought of emoji-ing an estate agent gives me pleasure.
254: this idea is v explicitly being pushed forward, this is partly the fever talking (god why can't i sleep sleepsweetsleep) i'll probably delete this wo posting like a million other times on thus website but jfc check yr dismissive tone.
Feeling OK but biting my nails for the next few days. My 9th-grader had a sleepover at a friend's house on the 13th, where the mom is a nurse, and in my innocence I thought "Perfect, that's the safest place he could be." The day after she dropped him off -- and shook my hand! -- she started having cold symptoms. Now she's tested postitive. Neither my son nor I feel any less crappy than usual this time of year; I have a lot of sinus issues but the lungs don't tend to get involved. I'm 56. Two weeks from the dropoff/ handshake would be Saturday morning.
Ooops wrong thread. Damn lurkers. Delete if possible.
I don't think lurkers have the authorization to delete comments.
Folks who see me at the other place may have seen a change.org petition I just signed. A friend is due to give birth in two months, and is looking at hospital policies that prevent patient advocates from attending.