SARS-CoV-2 aka COVID-19

[Cool As Ice Cream]

IDONTWANNAFIGHT
EVRYSINGLENITE

[FlamingGlobes]

I'd fight you, but my chest hurts and all my limbs are aching.

[ovary]

Originally Posted by Disco King

Sophie travels the most. But she's also a survivalist preparing a doomsday bunker.

i am a survivalist. we moved here because of climate change and we keep around a lot of spare food and gas and seeds. bring on the social collapse baby, daddy's been prepping for you.

[ovary]

i often think tho that if society did collapse someone would probably just come murder us and move into our house. oh well.

[ilikeplanets]

Certainly. The best stocked houses will be first choice.

[ovary]

we try to stay on the down low but our garden is pretty visible. everyone assumes everyone has guns around here, but that only gets you so far

[FlamingGlobes]

[pavementtune]

Originally Posted by reprise85

just because people are overreacting doesn't mean this isn't going to be a big deal

Exactly.
Italy is putting a region of 16 million people under quarantine.
Past week the US film production industry went mental, because movie theaters are getting closed in Europe and the UK,and will get closed in the US, too. In a year from now, everybody here will at least know one person whose job turned into a home office job.

Overreacting causes less damage than not thinking ahead. A week ago, I was in the camp of being annoyed at the media coverage this got in Europe. Now I can't tell what's gonna happen at work within an hour and have friends under quarantine. Living your life is fine, but those thinking they won't have to adjust, be it travel or events, are kidding themselves.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...7/italy-set-to
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-51787238

[ovary]

i'm kind of wondering if a few people i know have already gotten it. there is nowhere in my state that has a test for it, acc. to local media, and there have been nasty flu-like things going around. a couple people i know with little kids got a bad ickness with respiratory symptoms within the last couple weeks that their kids didn't catch.

conspiracy theory time, but i wonder if the feds deliberately refused to release the tests to stop a mass panic when it turns out people have it all over the place.

[myosis]

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?sto...00003340269924

[reprise85]

well meaning but i disagree with a lot of characterizations

1. hospitals will be overfilled with people just checking to see if they have it, stopping people with emergencies from getting help.
combat this with: easy to get to clinics, even mobile clinics
also: there's no way people who are flu-like but without serious trouble breathing are getting in before other people with emergencies. it's like this doctor has never been to an emergency room.
HOWEVER hospitals will be overrun because 10% of people with COVID-10 require hospital care. PLAN FOR IT. but the idea that it's people with runny nose going to check on if they have it is absurd. seriously, someone with a stroke or pending respiratory failure will not be waiting behind someone who 'is just checking to be sure' that they don't have COVID-19. completely idiotic

2. "fight for yourself above all others"? who is doing that?

3. yeah, stuff's going to be cancelled. because there's a pandemic. of course it sucks for the athletes but like, there's a reason events are being cancelled. look at what the fuck is going on in iran and italy. look at how one nursing home that got infect has killed more than a dozen people. OF COURSE PEOPLE WILL MISS THINGS and it's for a good reason

panicking and prepping for doomsday is stupid and unhelpful, but the virus will have a bigger impact than some long lines for toilet paper and people waiting for hours and hours at ERs to get a COVID-19 test while people with obvious emergencies get treated first

yes the vast majority of people who get it are going to be fine, but once a million people have it that 10% needing hospital care is going to be a big number regardless.

[myosis]

i don't know if this doctor has been to an emergency room in the US, but he is canadian, and our emergency rooms are very much overfilled all-year-round.

[ninsp]

Trump’s economy in shambles over the coronavirus and oil fears lol

[myosis]

Originally Posted by reprise85

2. "fight for yourself above all others"? who is doing that?

people who steal masks from hospitals?

[FoolofaTook]

[Joey Goldberg]

cancelling SXSW definitely upped the panic factor around here, & I'm a state over

[FoolofaTook]

I like it how you've all be distracted by this "pandemic." Where is it? Have you seen it? Why is it invisible? How convenient!



Meanwhile, up above:

[Ol' Couch Ass]

Originally Posted by Cool As Ice Cream

so who is/will be the first netphorian with covid-19?

I'm a pretty good bet. I work in an ER and there's no plan or contingencies- or if there are, they haven't filtered down to the clinician level. I'm not too concerned personally but have already squared myself with the fact that I probably won't be able to see my parents again until this thing has burned through. I'm more worried about being a vector than anything.

Like someone else said, the bigger problem is how much this is going to fuck our ERs/ICUs with overflow. Here locally, we get swamped during a busy flu season and end up with huge wait times due to admission holds in the ER, often for 24-36 hours due to no rooms to admit those patients to. Often those patients are acutely ill, intubated, multiple drips- generally requiring a lot of time at the bedside to properly manage. Obviously, this wrecks our ability to treat other patients (heart attacks, strokes, sepsis, etc) because everything is stretched so thin. Couple that with hordes of dipshits turning up with stuffy noses and coughs demanding "the test!" right now and I'm expecting a really shitty next few months.

Further our ER has only 2 positive pressure rooms that are required to try to contain droplet/surface spread infections like COVID-19. I think we have like 4 admission rooms with the same capability- it's not nearly enough. The other hospital system in the area is a bit larger and with more capabilities, but not nearly enough to meet demand of even a modest outbreak. Once it's in the hospital, it will spread like wildfire through strewn together and temporary containment units.

This is going to be a big old mess. I mean there's no reason to freak out, but it's appropriate to listen to non-administration experts when they say to start planning on possibly missing work, month long school closures, locking old people in their houses for a few months, stockpiling a few months worth of essential prescriptions, getting right with your pagan gods, and all the rest. But, if it takes out Ted Cruz, it will all be worth it.

[Disco King]

Originally Posted by reprise85

Cancelling stuff now makes sense to slow down the endemic conclusion that will come. If there's 50k hospital patients we can handle that way better if it's over a year vs over 3 months.

That makes sense

[yo soy el mejor]

The doctor is IN

[killtrocity]

Originally Posted by Ol' Couch Ass

I'm a pretty good bet. I work in an ER and there's no plan or contingencies- or if there are, they haven't filtered down to the clinician level. I'm not too concerned personally but have already squared myself with the fact that I probably won't be able to see my parents again until this thing has burned through. I'm more worried about being a vector than anything.

Like someone else said, the bigger problem is how much this is going to fuck our ERs/ICUs with overflow. Here locally, we get swamped during a busy flu season and end up with huge wait times due to admission holds in the ER, often for 24-36 hours due to no rooms to admit those patients to. Often those patients are acutely ill, intubated, multiple drips- generally requiring a lot of time at the bedside to properly manage. Obviously, this wrecks our ability to treat other patients (heart attacks, strokes, sepsis, etc) because everything is stretched so thin. Couple that with hordes of dipshits turning up with stuffy noses and coughs demanding "the test!" right now and I'm expecting a really shitty next few months.

Further our ER has only 2 positive pressure rooms that are required to try to contain droplet/surface spread infections like COVID-19. I think we have like 4 admission rooms with the same capability- it's not nearly enough. The other hospital system in the area is a bit larger and with more capabilities, but not nearly enough to meet demand of even a modest outbreak. Once it's in the hospital, it will spread like wildfire through strewn together and temporary containment units.

This is going to be a big old mess. I mean there's no reason to freak out, but it's appropriate to listen to non-administration experts when they say to start planning on possibly missing work, month long school closures, locking old people in their houses for a few months, stockpiling a few months worth of essential prescriptions, getting right with your pagan gods, and all the rest. But, if it takes out Ted Cruz, it will all be worth it.

Any projections on when it's going to start manifesting en masse throughout the population? Until the new death rate figures came out, I sort of thought people and specifically the media were overreacting. 3% is pretty serious though. And since we don't have paid sick leave in this country, all of the people in the Amazon warehouses and making your shamrock shakes or whatever the fuck are essentially gonna accelerate the spread of this thing. And, you know, everyone who can't afford to miss a day or two without missing a rent payment, which I suspect is like half of the population since about that proportion of people don't have $1k in savings. Combined with the fact that this federal government led by President Doctor Big Brain Mountain Dew is fucking inept and believes the world is 6,000 years old, it's only a matter of time, right?


So like, a month or so?

[Ol' Couch Ass]

Not sure about any projections. I'm no expert, just an ER/rapid response RN and former paramedic. Talking head experts seem to think it will be more a slow burn as spring will help slow transmissions like it does with all upper respiratory infections. All we've gotten at the field level is a few powerpoints about screening procedure (ya been anywhere foreign there, fella?) to flag isolation patients (which we don't have the capability to isolate in any numbers) and a review of how to wear personal protective equipment.

Problem is, half the patients this time of year present with a fever and cough, congestion, sinus shit. Most come sashaying through triage, flinging droplets like constellations- hacking and coughing as you hand them a mask. Lots are flu +, plenty more negative and diagnosed with cover-all "flu-like illness" and sent beating feet to self medicate for fever with tylenol/motrin and told not to return to work until fever free for 24 hours.

There's no way we're testing all of them, not anytime soon. It's going to be an ordeal to get testing performed on a high risk patient- someone just off a cruise of the damned or in from Italy. Now that there's increasing transmission stateside, unknown numbers of CV+ patients will be out in the population. They'll be pressured to return to work early, to help with child/elder care, be out the community. We won't know how bad it's going to be until we start seeing the elderly and at risk populations turning up via EMS acutely ill and requiring ICU level care.

I still have lots of friends in EMS from my time as a paramedic and they've only gotten about the same info which isn't much. We just had our first case diagnosed here locally and I feel like health system administrators (both mine and the other local boheamith) and local/state health authorities are just whistling through the graveyard. I mean honestly, I just assume that I'm going to get it at this point. I'm not that old and am in decent health so I'm sure it will be fine. I'm just hoping it's mild so that I can just chill, drink some sprite, and watch price is right for a few weeks while getting paid. Like I said before, it just bums me out that my wife and I (she works in healthcare too) have resolved that we pretty much have to hermit ourselves from most friends and family once it really heats up locally.

[yo soy el mejor]

Even ol Dumpster said the virus would slow down in the warmer months, but he is using that as an excuse quell any worries. The Spanish flu (H1N1) pandemic in 1918 also calmed in the warmer months, but came back worse in November and killed more people than the first rash (~200,000 in one month).

[yo soy el mejor]

what does 'whistling through the graveyard' mean? sounds like not worried about or oblivious to the death and trouble all around them, but i like to be sure.

[FlamingGlobes]

doesn't know what whistling through the graveyard means

[FoolofaTook]

doesn't know how many dimples there are on a golf ball

[Disco King]

If Big Golf Ball were lying about how many dimples a standard golf ball has, none of us would know.

[slayed23]

You have to legitimately wonder what they are going to do with the election in November if this lingers until then. I mean, you will have 1 hundred million people all voting in packed rooms that are going to be filled with germs. If you are cancelling sports events and concerts, then the election procedure has to be looked at with alternate ways to vote because the chances of cross contamination would be high.

[FlamingGlobes]

...we are still talking about golf balls, right?

[FlamingGlobes]

I vote 28.