Coronavirus (non-sports related)

[Nutriaitch]

just a place to discuss its impacts on everyday life. 

I’ll start:

With school being postponed a month, we are curious if Lil Nootch will still graduate on time. He is scheduled to leave for Boot Camp less than two weeks after the original scheduled date (and needs a diploma to be eligible to leave). 

Also for Lil Nootch, there are serious discussions about just straight up not having a graduation ceremony. Just mailing kids their diploma. 

Short Kid just found out today that his last year of rec baseball is cancelled. So his career is now pretty much over. Much like me 20+ years ago, doesn’t know he’s played his last game until it’s in the rear view. Never gets that chance to take it in and savor it one last time. 

 

I really feel for these kids as these are moments they’ll never get back.  You don’t get to re-do this 

[Just Me]

that's who i feel for. the kids. the athletes who don't get to work towards their futures. the ones that depend on school to get them out of whatever world at home they get a break from when they go put their heads in a book. the camps with their friends. 

i did not know lil nootch was going into the military? what branch? goodness, i remember when he was a little thing. my old, and decrepit ass needs to sit down over this news.

[Nutriaitch]

21 minutes ago, Just Me said:

i did not know lil nootch was going into the military? what branch? goodness, i remember when he was a little thing. my old, and decrepit ass needs to sit down over this news.

 

Navy. 

It was only branch i was willing to sign for (he won’t be 18 and eligible to sign himself until 29th of this month). 

I told him when he was thinking Army that he had to visit multiple branches and convince me that it was right decision.  I never told him i wanted him to go Navy.

After 2 visits with Navy recruiter he told me basically everything i wanted to hear from him. So i signed. 

He swore in maybe a week later 

 

 

 

 

[Herb]

I'll follow.

I am currently in Sao Paulo, Brazil. This happens to be the larget city population-wise in both the Western and Southern hemispheres...let that sink in.  Bigger than New York, bigger than Mexico City,  Boom.

I was sent here for work to train an awesome team of highly intelligent, educated, and motivated peeps. It's been overall awesome helping manage and train the team here 

3 days into my stay, the manager of our Brazil operations here pulled me aside to inform me that a worker in another office in the high rise building where our Brazil office is located was confirmed as testing positive for the Coronavirus. 

The good news is that this was discovered during the weekend prior to me setting foot in the office building and the building managemengt (Cushman Wakefield) sent a team in to sanitize all common areas and the office whee this guy worked. The employees of that office are all in quarantine so I likely had zero direct exposure to any  pathogens on elevator buttons, door handles, etc.,.

The board of directors for my company took swift and decisive decions to close all of our global (13 worldwide) offies indefinately. This was effective Wednesday. My 3 week training mission lasted - in effect - 2 full days, and though that is frustrating from a planning and logistics perspective it is entirely appropriate given the the known science that currently exists surrounding the mechanics of how this virus spreads.

I'll return home Monday and be in 2 week of self-imposed quarantine. Health-wise I am currently asymptomatic and I am pretty confident that this condition will sustain for several weeks after I return. I am more worried - honestly - about what my risk is after I return home. Sao Paulo - given the size of its population - currently has way less confirmed cases than cities i the US that are a fraction of its size (percentage wise). However, worst case scenario for me would be to stay here and have an absolute travel ban imposed leaving me like the Tom Hanks character stuck living in an an airport termonal (irony noted).

To all of you that think this is less critical than the flu, I invite you to ponder a couple of facts that are inescable: A) unlike the flu, there is no shot or cure or vaccine that currently existsfor this virus and B) even though the current infection rate compared to the flu might be low right now, the death rate of Coronavirus is roughly 35x higher than that of the flu on average.

 

 

[dachsie]

Still don't know if I have been exposed but its day 9 now and I am ok so hopefully it will stay that way.  The hospital is restricting access per CDC guidelines starting Monday so that should be interesting.

I went to HEB last nite about 7:30 and holy cow!  There was no food!  Lines were snaked down the aisles to check out.  It was insane.  I only found a few things I needed so will try again in the morning when they restock.

I heard an explanation of why we are doing all the closures this morning that made some sense.  In China things started slow and exponentially grew and peaked and now they are on the downside - think of Mt. Everest.  But doing the preventative measures we are doing, we want our Mt. Everest to be much smaller.  Trying to keep the caseload down from where China's was proportionally.  Especially since China is threatening to withhold life saving medicines from us now.  Patience is what we all are going to need the next couple of months

[Hatchertiger]

Dachsie will pray you get the all clear.

Nootch you hug that son of yours and tell him for me thank you for serving his country. 

On a positive medical note, I have been praying for a good friend of mine who HAD cancer. That's right CANCER FREE!!!!! Amen+ 

[Eq4bits]

I’m praying that the drugs my hubs HAS to have are NOT manufactured in China

sirolimus, cresemba, valcyte, bactrim, protonix, prevastatin, to name just a few, tho he is down from 22 pills total every morning to 9 & 18 pills total every night to 8

the cresemba i can already only get a 7 day supply at a time, its mail order so at least i dont have to go out to get it... just lysol the fedex envelope lol

[LSUDad]

3 hours ago, Eq4bits said:

I’m praying that the drugs my hubs HAS to have are NOT manufactured in China

sirolimus, cresemba, valcyte, bactrim, protonix, prevastatin, to name just a few, tho he is down from 22 pills total every morning to 9 & 18 pills total every night to 8

the cresemba i can already only get a 7 day supply at a time, its mail order so at least i dont have to go out to get it... just lysol the fedex envelope lol

I friend of mine had a pacemaker implanted. In January, her company made her switch insurance providers. They covered her four medicines, but only a small percentage. Her out of pocket cost, $1,000/month. I had left Mexico early, she called me just as I was heading back to Cypress. She sent me her list of meds, my friends were still there. Instead of $1,000/month. My friends got her a 6 month supply for $306.00

Two of the meds came in 100 pill bottles, so she got two bottles, so 6 months of meds, with 20 extra pills. 
 

Amoxicillin was 500mg, 100 pills, for $5.

 

[Herb]

This graph shows what Dachs is saying about closures, etc.:

 

[dachsie]

Thanks Herb - I was trying to explain it without a graph so am glad you understood what I was saying and found one.  

 

[LSUDad]

I understand around 50 people in the US have died from the Corona, they are expecting 50k to die from the flu in the US, this season. The children and middle aged adults seem to be fine with the Corona, the older and the ones with previous immune systems deficiencies are more likely to contract it. Prayers for All. 

[Nutriaitch]

14 hours ago, dachsie said:

I heard an explanation of why we are doing all the closures this morning that made some sense.  

I'm not a doctor. but I am a numbers guy. 
Stats are not the end all, be all, but they can absolutely tell the story.

my thing is this isn't the first (and won't be the last), nor is it the fastest spreading, nor is it the deadliest pandemic of even the last decade, let alone of any historical length of time.

The death rate is plummeting rapidly because we are now actually treating people for THIS instead of just a repository infection.  This is 100% normal in the early stages of anything for the numbers to be skewed heavily one direction or the other.   
The fact the China with Billions of people stacked on top of each other, in one of the more densely populated chunks of land on the planet, still hasn't even hit 100,000 cases (not deaths, cases) of this virus tells you this thing is not spreading at even a fraction of the speed at which it is being portrayed.

[Herb]

5 hours ago, dachsie said:

Thanks Herb - I was trying to explain it without a graph so am glad you understood what I was saying and found one.  

 

I just hate it has the Michigan logo on it.

[Just Me]

1 hour ago, Herb said:

I just hate it has the Michigan logo on it.

then don't believe it. trust me. don't believe anything out of that f'ing university. 

[Nutriaitch]

also, we just set a precedent. 

because when this fizzles out in a couple of weeks and never reaches full blown Armageddon

the reaction won’t be “damn we ridiculously overreacted in this one”

it’s going to be “we saved the fornicating planet! we are the heroes! we need to do this for EVERYTHING now!”

[dachsie]

This may help you understand it

https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2020/03/a-covid-19-coronavirus-update-from-concerned-physicians.html?fbclid=IwAR3__JQnOYz0viBYaPk4zlLQQBB0IpQyfjMqgUqIZOB2eVE-cn9nxGesnHA

[Nutriaitch]

to put things in perspective. 

0.00001% of the world population has caught this virus. 
That’s right, four zeroes after the decimal and before you get to a number bigger than zero. 

even in the doom and gloom absolute “worst case” countries (Italy and China) the number is  0.0005% & 0.00004% respectively. 

this thing is not spreading at anywhere near the historical rate they are making it out to be. 

[Nutriaitch]

oh and of that 0.00001% (US right at the same % as the world), less than 2% die. 

that is 0.00000019% of the population. 

that’s six zeroes after the decimal before getting to a 1. 

 

[houtiger]

Wuhan is the main city in China that was affected, where they believe it started.  It's a city of 11 million, compared to our largest city of NYC at 8.5 million.

China took action in Wuhan that most believe the US will not implement.

Quote

 

As soon as it was clear that the virus was swamping healthcare in Wuhan and threatening to engulf China more broadly, the Chinese government implemented radical social distancing measures, coupled with abundant free testing, attempting to slow the virus’s spread.

Yet, even these social distancing measures – stopping outbound transportation, stalling public transit and driving, implementing mandatory mask-wearing, cancelling social gatherings, and requiring home quarantines – proved insufficient to halt the expansion of the virus.

Then, on 1 February, Wuhan switched to centralized quarantine, a decision that research has shown was essential in containing the spread of the virus to such a small portion of the city’s population.

 

They went to all of the roads out of town and erected man'ed barricades, nobody could leave Wuhan.  Closed the airport also.  Nobody could leave their house and food was delivered by city workers.  They denied it for a month, then worked hard on it for 3 months and got it under control.  Will the US use the same measures?  What will our infection rate be if we do not?  If we don' do what they did, our infection rate MIGHT be different.  The world has four months of experience with this thing, there is a lot we don't know.

Edited for LSUDad and dramatic affect:  The Firestone store at Fry Rd and Saums Rd is closed due to a suspected case of COVID19.  The store was closed and all employees are on self quarantine.  That's 4 miles from my house.  They are contacting all customers with work tickets in the store recently to ask them to observe themselves for symptoms.

Edited March 16, 2020 by houtiger

[LSUDad]

 

 

[dachsie]

Relief - the patient did not have it.  So far I am in the clear.  Will see how it goes seeing patients everyday

[Hatchertiger]

By comparison, the CDC estimates that from from April 2009 – March 13, 2010 12,270 died from the H1N1 virus.

https://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/estimates/April_March_13.htm

I'm not a doctor nor a scientist so I can't really say what precautions should be taken in response to the current virus referred to as the Hunan or Corona virus but I don't recall many of the same actions that are being taken now being taken back then.

Edited March 16, 2020 by Hatchertiger

[Nutriaitch]

30 minutes ago, Hatchertiger said:

By comparison, the CDC estimates that from from April 2009 – March 13, 2010 12,270 died from the H1N1 virus.

https://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/estimates/April_March_13.htm

I'm not a doctor nor a scientist so I can't really say what precautions should be taken in response to the current virus referred to as the Hunan or Corona virus but I don't recall many of the same actions that are being taken now being taken back then.

 

that’s an average of 1,023 per month. 

we are more than 1-1/2 months since the first reported case in the US. 

Total deaths = 63. An average of 42 per month. 

so currently 981 per month behind schedule. 

[LSUDad]

https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/mar/11/positive-signs-for-future-of-coronavirus-in-us/?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetwork

[COTiger]

I prefer an overreaction to the virus rather than ignoring it.  I think it's going to get worse before it gets better.