To discuss COVID-19/coronavirus topics of interest - personal observations, ongoing updates, et.
This is a continuation of Coronavirus: What are You doing ( if anything) to prepare/ What are you personally observing? It was posted at Jon Ericson’s suggestion.
As he wrote, please note:
And remember: have fun!
Thank you.
(Was posting in the other thread when it poofed on me. Cutting and pasting from there.)
As for current covid stuff, our state legislature is once again threatening to sue our governor. She extended the state of emergency order but not safer at home (goes until May 15).
Armed protesters stormed the state capital too. How on earth that’s legal, I have no idea. I used to work in that building and the images were terrifying.
Meanwhile, mr r’s work is starting to schedule clients again. They had some clients still scheduling during the safer in place order but many chose to pause therapy. It’s one of the reasons they were so lenient on him being out of work for my medical reasons. They’re pushing to get him back now and we’re not sure what we’re going to do. He’s requested until our safer at home order expires (May 15) and then we’ll make a decision.
I’m very scared we’re going to get hit hard with a second wave.
I had just come off a high from watching the Parks & Rec Reunion special. If Leslie Knope can bring friends together while taking care of herself, so can we.
My wife is an RN and has had her hours cut significantly. Her hospital isn’t really impacted, but they have canceled all elective procedures for a while. It’s a children’s hospital, so she’s seen appendectomies and tonsillectomies. Hopefully they can start taking epilepsy patients again soon.
The hospital has supply problems from time to time even if there’s no crisis. So it was good they cut back on procedures for a bit. But I’m even more happy things are picking up. It may be months or years before we are normal, but every little improvement helps.
My 16-year-old had an Animal Crossing party with his friends. He even set up games like musical chairs for them to play. Hopefully there will be more positive memories like this than negative ones.
(Thanks for listening and I hope I haven’t made your memories worse with my meddling.)
Armed protesters… it occurred to me the other day: what’s the difference between what they’re doing and an insurrection?
Maryland’s Corvid-19 reporting website
https://coronavirus.maryland.gov/
You can see from the data that over 50% of the deaths in this state are centered in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Apparently this does not include many of those residents that also died at the hospital.
In my county, Harford, the number of confirmed deaths is currently 6. The number of nursing home deaths is also 6.
The state has done a horrible job in regards to these facilities. They had to realize early on that this was where the most vulnerable were and they should have done a better job protecting them.
Meanwhile the rest of us get to be under lockdown with an extremely small chance of dying from this. Of course our economy suffers greatly and who knows when that may recover.
We really need to open the state up more and allow businesses to operate with social distancing. It’s insane to lockdown everyone when apparently the elderly, especially in nursing homes, are the ones needing to be isolated.
As of yesterday, 958 deaths in Maryland, meanwhile just over 3000 cases in nursing homes with 508 deaths there. Focus on the real fire and let everyone else get this economy going again.
If you feel the need to shelter in place do so, If you feel the risk is minimal, don your mask, social distance and get back to work.
Thanks, @CCadmin_Jon! Really appreciate the ability to share with our virtual friends about this important subject. I, like many here, are pretty physically isolated because I’m socially distancing since I and H are at very high risk of getting very ill if we get COVID-19. It’s helpful to be “connected” with out CC community. Some of us have “met” here for many, many years.
Our state is being pretty cautious. They are trying to figure out how to get people to self quarantine if they arrive in our state and having to cite the MANY who refuse to follow the order and sometimes send them back to wherever they flew here from. The people claim ignorance, though they sign a form on the plane agreeing to the quarantine, and are instructed when they get off the plane. They have to get this right before they start allowing more visitors and passengers into our state.
Armed people walking around our state would terrify me.
People in our state mostly are trying their best to help our community stay safe and healthy. There are very, very long lines of people trying to get food assistance—it’s contactless and they open their hatchback or trunk and food is deposited. The Foodbank has been tireless in coordinating and many have contributed cash and manpower.
There are other orgs also distributing food. Efforts are being made to distribute cloth masks to the homeless as well, and they have been grateful.
One of our healthcare systems will be antibody testing its >7000 workers to see how many have already had COVID-19. That is the system where my internist, lung doc and two board members work, as well as my friend’s H. I’m looking forward to seeing what they learn and publicize.
Thank you, CC_Admin Jon!
MarylandJOE, I tend to agree with you that the goalposts have been changing in sometimes alarming ways, but it is so hard to know what to do. Based on current numbers, there are states that might on paper look like they should reopen - but all it takes is a few infected people passing the virus to a bunch of people in a crowded venue, and you might get something closer to NJ and NY. Sure, even there the great majority of healthy people have recovered, but the virus certainly couldn’t be contained there by improving sanitary practices in nursing homes at this point.
We’re dealing with this in Israel right now. In a population of 9 million, we have 230 deaths (a large number among nursing home residents, most of whom were already in poor health). The rate of new infections, even with increased testing, is between 100-200 a day recently. But when the government announced a plan to open schools for K-3 students next week (with spread-out classes of no more than 15), parents and teachers pushed back. Now it may be on hold.
Another big question is tourism. It is a major industry here, and we currently have an unemployment rate of over 25 %. But many of the 16,000 + cases we’ve had in Israel (including me) came from people who had recently been abroad. To be fair, it was really hard to get tested if you hadn’t either been abroad or had contact with a known patient, but it still seems that letting in a bunch of tourists might be a recipe for disaster. I’d imagine the same issue applies in tourist areas in the US, as we’ve been hearing from MaineLonghorn and others.
Yes, in HI, nearly all the cases we had the first few weeks in our state of 1.5 million were folks who traveled and got covid and brought it back or folks who were tourists and brought it in with them.
We have 37% unemployment claims since so much of our economy is tourism and restaurants. Our state is trying to find a good path forward. We have had very few cases in nursing facilities and very few clusters, fortunately.
People are trying to get takeout food to support local restaurants.
We’re still going to SAH regardless of what various states or people do. I feel fortunate we are in a position to do so.
With 60,000+ deaths in just two months (and most feel that has been undercounted), even if one half or one third were in care homes, others weren’t - and this is with most places shutting down. Antibody tests seem to be showing most people have not already had the virus - ditto tests for it currently - not even close to a majority in almost all places. There are a lot of people who have yet to catch it and spend time spreading it.
If they all want to do that, let them. If they’re ok with taking their chances knowing they or others they love might draw the short straw, so be it. We teach all about natural selection at school. (Survival of the fittest OR smartest OR luckiest) I’ll be honest and say if we lose some of those who felt the need to bring their guns to a protest I won’t shed a tear. Good riddance.
I feel for those who have to work (vs want to - eg health care workers, bus drivers, etc). Too many of them will be casualties too just as they already have been. It’s fine to elect to be one who takes their chances, but it’s horrid to be forced or feel obligated to do it.
It saddens me to know we could have already gotten rid of the virus had everyone gotten on board with the need to do so. Such is life.
PS To end the Shingrix rabbit trail - I’m back to feeling 100% now aside from a sore arm. For those of you who only had a sore arm you’ve got nothing to complain about. 
H fits into that category. I’ll definitely get the booster in 2-6 months. It was only a day and a half - no biggie. Ironically it also shows us just how much there can be luck of the draw in such things - same as with Covid.
Given the experts predictions that this pandemic will last another 2 years, I do not think it likely that we could have already gotten rid of the virus if we had all gotten on board. You might wish to thank all those who make it possible for you to remain at home-the grocery clerks, food supply chain, paper product factory workers, delivery drivers, and all the others whose work gives you the ability to choose to remain at home.
An article about a student from Massachusetts returning to Lebanon because he feels safer there. Makes me feel better about my son going back on June 12. I’m more concerned about the political unrest than the virus.
“Massachusetts has roughly the same population as Lebanon. But while Massachusetts has over confirmed 53,000 cases of COVID-19 and more than 3,000 deaths, Lebanon has just over 700 confirmed cases and around two dozen deaths, as of April 28, 2020.” That’s even less than Maine!
Update on my post from last night.
Our power came back on at 1:50am. I was awoken by bedroom tv and the lights on and all over the house (it was rainy and dark yesterday,) H slept right through it.
So, I got up and turned everything off and pushed the heat up to get chill out of the air. Thought for a minute about emptying the cooler but decided it could wait until morning. And now it has to wait until I’ve had my coffee.
I’m reposting what I said last night right before thread was closed because I think it’s important.
Seems to me that what most people want is opening up for a bit, lots of people getting sick, with many dying, so shutting down again when hospitals get overwhelmed again or soon will be.
There are very bad outbreaks In the rural areas of the Great Plains - specifically Iowa and Nebraska and that while not doing hardly any testing at all there. Can’t imagine what the real numbers of infected people are. Theses aren’t people in nursing homes (but it’s in those now, also. These infections started in the meat/poultry plants. And then spread everywhere in those communities. Nothing is being done by the states or the Feds tn these plants.
It only takes a few super spreaders to cause widespread infections everywhere.
Of course, it didn’t help that those states never shut down at all.,
It is going to get way worse there.
Hokkaido is now on their second shut down because they opened to early.
All these states opening up too early are going to get hit bad in about a month.
Without large scale testing and tracing it’s going to be a disaster.
Quite likely there will be a surge regardless of when opening occurs-this month or next January, whenever it happens, more will be exposed and get sick. That is how herd immunity works.
None of the doctors I know have confidence in the tests. They say they can test the same person on the same day 4 times in a row, and 3 of the tests will come back negative, 1 positive. The tests give such a high false negative rate as to be unreliable.
CT here. Our governor has listed out the places that will re-open first. He is aiming for May 20 for phase one but that will depend on how this CV19 trends in the next week or so. Right now here, hospitalizations are down, but new positive diagnoses are up (maybe due to increased testing finally) and deaths are as well.
At this point, a sunny day with temps above 50 would be welcome! I’d sit outside on my little porch and read…but in the rain…no thank you.
Hi all! Just joining the thread to ask if anyone has ordered surgical masks online and received a good product in a timely manner. When we downsized recently I got rid of my old sewing machine and threw out most craft supplies, including fabric, since the kids were past the school project age. I also threw out my rags and old clothes. Regardless, I hate sewing and making and would prefer to buy something decent for DH, DD and myself since our governor just mandated masks. I’ve been using a bandanna but it slips and I get too many cowboy, stick 'em up comments. I admit to being puzzled about how everyone else here has real medical gear. Initially we were asked to save it for doctors and nurses, and PPE were and remain scarce for even the essential personnel. So I figure I’m out of the loop.
We are pleased with the fabric masks we purchased on Etsy.
If you’re on neighborhood FB pages post something there - chances are there is someone right in your neighborhood who is making them.
The stats here in LA County are similar to those reported by @MarylandJOE . 42% of the deaths are in nursing homes. 92% of the deaths are in people who have serious underlying health conditions. Those are the people who need to be protected. Those who come in contact with them need to take serious precautions. I think the rest of us could wear masks, sanitize, wash hands, and physically distance but otherwise, go about our regular lives. The public authorities need to stop treating us like children. I am getting really tired of Big Brother.