From the mess at the airports it seems inevitable that there will have to be asymptomatic infected folks who will be infecting others and all will be released to their communities.
Travelers were reporting long lines and confusion at U.S. airports on Saturday as the president’s new European travel restrictions went into effect.
Yes, that’s what they fear–somebody from outside who is sick and contagious coming to visit. They’;ve prohibited visitors before during flu season. At other times they allow visitors but require them to wear face masks.
They are saying that you are most contagious before you start showing symptoms and during the first week. So it’s just not good enough protection to tell people to stay home if they are sick.
…or to take their temperature and give them a pass if it’s not elevated.
As I said we need to be smart and panicking doesn’t do anything? . There have been pandemics before like the Asian flu pandemic and polio and the world amazingly survived. We are much more advanced then that time and we all know it. We need to test test test. We have never had this advanced technology to face a challenge like this before. We have much more ability to mitigate this than resorting back to the dark ages. The high risk people should take extra precautions. We should look to adapt our hospitals and staff to handle the expected increased load that is anticipated. Korea is the best example of successfully dealing with this so far. They tested and tracked to isolate the exposed and changed behavior. We don’t know if this virus like SARS may decline or even go away during the summer months but let’s face its out of the bag around the world and much more contagious so will be around for a long time and (even dogs may get it.) We are going to have to adapt to it and find ways to battle it with vaccines and other treatments. We cannot bunker down in our houses with our supply of toilet paper forever. It is possible that a large percentage of the population will eventually get it with greater than 85% having non severe symptoms and the morbidity rate either way will be much the same. It is very likely that third world countries that have much less medical abilities and survival is a daily effort cannot possibly fight off this disease in the manner that some here are proposing. The disease will pass through these countries were they will likely have an acute outbreak and which they will attain the so called herd immunity. We are all in this together and we need to be smart on how we deal with this to help everyone. We as followers of Christ should work together to help those in our community at risk and effected by the disease and it’s effects.
(I sent it to a couple of pastors the other day, and not at all necessarily as a direct result, but the larger church is canceling all activities until further notice, and there is no one in our immediate area that is even self-quarantined.)
Most infected here have shown some symptoms, although there are positive cases with no symptoms at all. Yet, as the virus spreads, it becomes difficult to calculate the true mortality rate. In my area, hospitals don’t test COVID anymore unless you have severe symptoms, belong to a risk group or have close contact with those known to have the virus. So far, tests have shown that only 10% of persons having potential symptoms had COVID, in 90% of cases the symptoms were caused by some other virus or bacteria. For those with mild symptoms, the advice is to stay home until you are healthy. This ensures that the hospitals have time to take care of those with severe symptoms.
How is that a response to the article? You are most contagious before you start showing symptoms and during the first week. Fever is a symptom. You can pass the virus to people at nursing homes for an average of five days before anyone knows you are sick. That is the reason for the restriction on visitors.
That was my point, that screening people by taking their temperature was entirely inadequate by itself.
The ellipsis means it was agreeing and adding to what you had said.
Ahh, okay. I missed the “to” and read it something like “or just take their temperature and give them a pass.” Makes sense now.
Sorry no I wasn’t referring to Christy’s link and meant no disrespect to her. My point was that some people including our media are trying to deal with this as if we are back in 1918. Yes it seems that there can be a high communicable virus load prior to symptoms but this would mean that virus would be testable in a rapid test. Rapid test are relatively inexpensive to manufacture and can be made in large quantities. There are many influenza rapid tests available and the corona would be similar. They are not as sensitive as molecular tests but can help to mitigate the spread because people that suspect contact can be tested easily and quickly. My understanding is that the Koreans have set up an app to try identify exposure. I think that people over 65 and with those with risk co morbidity should go under isolation. there is much data on vitamin d protective effects against the respiratory distress syndrome look it up though we don’t know yet about corona. I am hoping that our docs will start to come up with protocols to treat the high risk non exposed exposed prophylatically to reduce their risk of developing severe disease as mentioned there were some docs taking the malaria medicine hydroxychloroquine to try to prevent or mitigate the virus but we don’t know if effective. I hope that our local state and federal authorities start being smart on dealing with this and we all need to assist in our community. I would hope that we in biologos would look to continuing informing and solutions with our scientific backgrounds.
But millions died.
But human nature is still the same. As a matter of fact, resistance to vaccines has brought back old killers like measles.
Seriously? We don’t have enough tests tests tests, and certainly not efficient and fast tests. We are still ramping up production, something that should have happened months ago.
What do you think most of us are doing?
But “social distancing” is an important way to avoid the virus.
There will be no herd immunity without a vaccine, which is far in the future.
What do you think is happening with the better churches?
btw, Korea is actually two countries: North Korea and South Korea.
These were some nice simple simulations on social distancing:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/corona-simulator/
My take on this is that we can bunker down, and when I was tempted to say that perhaps we can do so better than before, I remembered the responses which we had to the world wars. We have a longer history of bunking down in emergencies than many remember. And it is time to be reminded and likely to be good practice at the very least. As for the corona virus, in the long run, we need a vaccine. We just have to hold out long enough for them to develop it. We are getting better at that sort of thing.
I think a lot of the skepticism is a reaction to this being some kind of end of the world. Of course it isn’t anything like that. But it has been a while since many of us have had this kind of widespread emergency situation affecting our everyday routine.
Thanks. It’s really good talking the science here with you and if anyone wants to start to talk Science I am more than willing. I do hope that a vaccine can come sooner than later. I agree as I said I know that the testing has been too slow but it is ramping up tests capacity in a big way and that companies are also are working on the rapid tests. Social distancing and precautions particularly for the high risks are essential. No doubt as a country we have faced many challenges in the past just our generation hasn’t faced something like this ( my dad had polio) but we will adapt and figure a way to get through this together without the world ending.
Thank you.
I neglected to add the reason we don’t want to overwhelm the healthcare system with a spike in patients, is that there are only so many ICU units with ventilators, which a covid-19 patient in respiratory distress would need.
btw the 1918 flu was much worse because nobody knew what a virus was–viruses were so tiny they could only be seen with an electron microscope.
View free at no charge: Influenza 1918
(It used to be called the Spanish Flu)
The microbial world still reigns supreme!!
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