The Covid-19 virus.
Living here in Washington State the US hot spot. Having a very health conscious RN wife. Having now two minor foster girls living with us.
Wife and mine conclusions as well as possible to research . . . .
we will all eventually get this.
Still not one documented case of an under 10 y.o. child dieing.
The social distancing is to slow the spread giving time for a vaccine and treatments to be developed.
Personal action is to get healthy, stay healthy so you can weather the body storm once you do get infected.
Many here on immunosupression therophies are now going drug free.
Better to have flare ups (arthritis, chrone’s, psoriasis) and have an active immune system for the inevitable virus fight.
Thanks Chris, being one that is in the target group I’m lucky to be home most of the time and live rural. We can help others, the most, by staying bug free!
Yes, stay cool every one. Good luck for all that is coming. Things are changing quickly in Holland now. From one to over 500 contamination’s in two weeks. We have a lockdown (loose one because I have to go to Belgium tomorrow) in our province. There were some people laughing last week, but things are getting serious now. All social events are called off for the month, salemen staying home etc etc. Who knows what is going to happen. Shops are bought empty…
Yeah, I think this is going to get unpleasant to say the least. Good basic advice from Chris. I would add the suggestion to use a nice, fashionable pair of gloves when out. Could greatly reduce transmission risk directly, and as a reminder of just how germy people generally are…
Also, in regards to Steve’s comment, it is true that no mortality has been reported so far in children 9 or younger. However, it seems likely that they are a significant vector. And schools will be petri dishes for the spread. I suspect here schools, universities and colleges will be closed in days or weeks. The NHL etc are all suspended for the time being.
The only thing that governments can do, (because there will be no proven vaccine for perhaps years) is to try to stretch out the contagion period so that the intensive care system does not collapse, or other critical service systems, such as food transport and hydro linsemen, etc.
The mortality rate is said to be roughly 3.4 percent based on earlier data, but the disease has the potential to mutate, and to a degree mortality will depend on the population healthiness. I fear it will hit the 3rd world particularly hard. Merkel in Germany has stated that she expects 70 percent of the German population to contract the illness over time.
Yeah, just taking that percentage of 7.8 billion amounts to 312 million dead. Not counting those who will be seriously injured. Although the Italians have been seeing roughly 6 percent mortality.
Personaly l am not afraid of the virus at all but l am afraid of panic.
All schools and kindergartens closed here till further do. Flour, yeast, potatoes and oninons runing out in stores. I too refilled our stockpiles with some beans and potatoes, since we run out of homegrown. Enough meat in the freezers and on the hoof for probably a year thugh… allso hens are starting to lay and we milk 2 goats.
Growing season is starting to develop, shuld be eating first veggies in about a month. If all hell breaks loose we will be as fine as we ever were.
Need to be proactive with this, its not so much getting it. Its who you may infect. We need to take responsibility for our self’s getting this and to not infect others that may have a compromised immune system or the elderly. So that means being prepared to self quarantine before hand and not going to store to get food after the fact.
If you would like to track the numbers there are many sites that offer the global reporting numbers. Currently the Global CFR is 3.7% Ive been following since the beginning and this CFR has steadily risen. It started at around 2.1% and has been incrementally climbing. CFR and fatality rates are two different data sets. CFR stands for case fatality rate and this soly based on reported cases. Fatality rate is a based estimated total accumulated cases. So you may see rates that are lower like 1% this is the estimated rate verses the CFR that is based on hard data.
Be safe, be proactive, be prepared. Dont downplay this it is very real. Cheers
Yes, yes, yes. This is what people in general don’t seem to understand.
Wife works in the national healthcare advisory service. The telephone queue is constantly several hours these days. The common knowlidge about the virus seems pretty good but still people insist travelling and visiting events, only because they consider themselfs strong and healthy.
This article is a long read, but given the circumstances I think it is worthwhile to try to fully understand. I think the fellow makes a decent analysis of the statistics, revealing the real extent of spread, which is far above whatever the official reports are.
Our prime minister Justin Trudeau is in isolation for 2 weeks, his wife Sofie was diagnosed yesterday. They were in contact with various world leaders and US government officials and of course the important Canadian government functionaries. It seems likely parliament will be shut down soon. All major public events are cancelled, authorities are lagging in closing public schools and daycares but I expect it soon. We have pulled our children from both.
Ive just seen where michigan governor has ordered all k-12 schools closed for the next three weeks.
We have two cases over on the east side of the state.
What will happen with those parent who cant get childcare? Will they lose thier jobs because they have to stay home with young kids? What about the many healthcare providers with school age children?
It’s astounding to watch this unfold. It seems fairly obvious that there has been no comprehensive planning around this scenario. Even though it was so obvious that movies have been made about it decades ago. I don’t see that authorities are acting quickly enough or effectively based on what is known of the contagion of this disease or statistical models of how these things can be predicted to move through populations and compared to the always out of date official information. The math seems simple, as do the social problems such as child care and paying the bills. In hindsight it would probably have been far better to have halted international travel and increased monitoring sooner. Referring to the link I posted above it looks like parts of the US are about to be hit at least as hard as northern Italy. Washington state seems to be entering an unregulated outbreak.
That’s apparently pay grade performance from our public leaders and planners.
I can understand why people in their prime and full of piss and vinegar, would have no fear of a tiny virus. After all, they may not even know when they get it. However, if they could begin to understand that they could vary well infect someone that would indeed die from their boldness, hopefully they could come to understand this selfish act. Hopefully ! ! !
Hoefully not too many loose a job over the sick days, since its looking like the whole world economy should temperarily shut down. Some companys may have too loose there buisness, till this is over.
Garry I have to disagree with most of your statements here. I think our country is doing a respectable job of combating this “thing”. We are prepared for fires, floods, and earthquakes at all times. We get a 'flu epidemic every year that is mutated and different from any other years flu. It takes over a year to develop a vaccine for each and yet we generally come up with something, every year when it is required. We are living in real life, not the movies. In the movies they can get 10 shots out of a 6 shooter. If they need an antidote, they go into the lab for an hour and whoola; they have an antidote. Math is a finite subject, but social problems are variable. Child care, what do you do if you are a single parent and have 3 children under the age of 6 and you work out? Your child care is closed as are the schools. You don’t have money to have a weeks stock pile of food on hand. It has taken intestinal fortitude for people in “positions” to close down transportation routes, close schools, call off shows and sports. All things that have NEVER had to be done before. Everyone IS earning their “pay grade” during this time. TomC
Tom with all do respect this is nothing like the normal flu. Here is a video from Italy about 4 days ago.
In France the prime minister announced new measures effective tonight at midnight: all non-essential commerces are closed. Basically France is going into lockdown similar to Italy and Spain.
This is uncharted territory. No time in modern history have countries been forced to make such hard choices. It is very important that countries act quickly to monitor and slow down the spreed of CV19 or our medical systems will be overwhelmed and people will go without treatment not only for this virus but for any treatment requiring ICU care because both will be competing for limited resources in the hospitals.
Well this stinks. Talk about messing up plans. All my university programs are cancelling. And all our other programs seem in serious jeopardy. We had people recruiting for a new 10 month internship program that was going to be great and start in September, but ??? Likely we will not be able to make this trip in May. We’re still debating the southern trip this weekend. I’m off to town now to stock up on a few things just in case: toilet paper, PVC glue, Epsom salt for the garden, diesel, chainsaw gas.
Otherwise we’re about where Kristijan is with things. I suppose we have enough food and other stuff tucked away to live a couple years. And we estimate we have about 27,000 pounds of prepared wood chunks to run things on. Just need to make an electric generator to run things like the well pump off of wood or char. If the boys get sent home from school, we’ll probably put Jakob to building one quick. He got his truck back from the painter today too, so we’ll even be able to ride in a pretty truck if nned be.
Hey if things get too bad and fuel runs out, maybe we’ll start a trucking company using wood.
On another note. We had some fun with some Hoosiers who came through Thursday…hope they didn’t bring any of the little critters up from FL.
I am referring as much to what I perceive of the various government authorities, and school districts etc here as anywhere else. There is a lot of denial amongst decision makers that anything is beyond the ordinary. This situation has the potential to put most everything beyond the ordinary, conventional thinking no longer applies. And it shouldn’t have for quite some time. People in responsible positions didn’t act appropriately to deal with this situation. Obviously with people traveling around the world every 24 hours with virtually no regulation was going to spread it far and wide. And the math of the link I had posted is obvious and should be the bread and butter of any competent decision makers.
As for the flu vaccine, it took a long time to come up with that technology, and it is made starting every August for use in October. As pointed out, this disease is 20 to 30 times more lethal, apart from being reported as leaving some people badly disabled, and now there are reports of it being capable of re-infecting people, could be mutating. It has 7.8 billion people to experiment on, largely because those who were in charge have failed to act effectively at critical junctures. I fear a real medical care horror story is about to unfold in some places. The Italy situation is nothing anyone wants to experience.
