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Author Topic: Off-Topic COVID-19, Coronavirus. Its real, stay safe!

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Off-Topic COVID-19, Coronavirus. Its real, stay safe!
#110: April 02, 2020, 11:21:21 AM
Good article from the head of the CDC:
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/03/31/824155179/cdc-director-on-models-for-the-months-to-come-this-virus-is-going-to-be-with-us

2 things that stood out to me:

1) That the CDC who are the experts are not the one's calling the shots about how to deal with this crisis, and that they really should be as they are the ones with the expertise.

2) the lack of funding for public health which has been a long time issues for the US. In Canada, public health is a large part of our health care system and always has been. When I worked here in public health it was so minimal to what I was used to.

There IS a mentality of many people here that there should NOT be government involvement in the lives of its citizen's. That is the culture here and important decisions such as how to combat something as serious as COVID is left to individual states..some of which only yesterday put a stay in place order.

Perhaps lessons can be learned from all this but I doubt very much that ideology will change.

I would much prefer the CDC to be charge at this moment. The fact that so much mis-information is being broadcasted to the public by the president is alarming. The fact that many people believe him is frightening.
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"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see" Hebrews 11:1

"You enrich my life and are a source of joy and consolation to me. But if I lose you, I will not, I must not spend the rest of my life in unhappiness."

" The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it". Flannery O'Connor

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Re: COVID-19, Coronavirus. Its real, stay safe!
#111: April 02, 2020, 12:00:06 PM
Xyzcf, I agree completely!  It should not be left up to the states because they don't all want to follow the same rules, so how does that help?  Yes the CDC should be in charge of what information gets out to the public.

I don't want to make this a political thread (because I am a political junkie and could go on and on), I'll just say.. Trump scares me too, xyzcf.

Good information, Marvin.  Thank you for sharing it.
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Re: COVID-19, Coronavirus. Its real, stay safe!
#112: April 02, 2020, 12:07:30 PM
And just now Governor of Georgia finally put a shelter in place order, claiming we “did not know there was asymptomatic transmission” until now. Which is a complete lie. CDC issued its warning on March 1. Which goes to xyzcf’s great post about the simple fact that our CDC is NOT in charge of this says so much. Both about how we view the role of our institutions in our lives, and about our chances of handling this well.

On a positive note there are lots of new tests coming, and the antibody tests should allow us to know who is no longer at risk or catching and spreading and may be the path to starting to selectively resuming normalcy.
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Re: COVID-19, Coronavirus. Its real, stay safe!
#113: April 02, 2020, 12:11:06 PM
Since I live in NY I will report that the little city I live in is mostly shut down.
My son lives in New Rochelle which was the original epicenter around here.

It is scary but I am not sure we could have done much differently than what has been done.

So far my family is all healthy and all self quartered in their homes.

As far as the politics goes I am only going to say all politicians should be ashamed of themselves.

NONE of them are acting in the best interests of our country or my personal health.

Right now NY state has outlawed the use of a drug that anecdotally cures the virus or at least keeps you from dying.
I sure hope that changes soon.

I am not really interested in blaming anyone right now I just want them to do whats best for the population as a whole and keep politics out of it.
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Re: COVID-19, Coronavirus. Its real, stay safe!
#114: April 02, 2020, 12:25:38 PM
Ready, from what we saw here that did help, it's best if your parents don't come home now.

Right when Italy went into lock down, it also stated that no one was allowed to go stay in their holiday homes, nobody was allowed to move away from where they were at that time (unless they were just in Lombardy for temporary work). Because at the beginning of the crisis, when parts of Lombardy were locked down, people rushed to their holiday homes on the coast of Tuscany, or to relatives in the south, and now we have a hot spot on the coast of Tuscany, and we are expecting numbers to rise quickly in the South too. So not only can moving around from state to state raise the chance of spreading the virus in general, but as someone else said, you will be risking every time you stop for gas, food, toilet, etc.

I suspect that if you can dilly dally for a week over this discussion with your dad, Trump will close off access between states anyway and then your parents will have to stay put, which is really the safest bet.

Regarding the herd immunity, which is clearly logical, just that it's a bit cruel. Obviously if we just let the virus do it's thing, it will pass much quicker and we can all get back to work. I'm like Treasur, though, I can't accept letting hundreds of thousands of people die if I know I could prevent it. And methods like lock down aren't going to stop the virus completely, of course it can't. But it will put the health service in a position of being able to cope with the seriously ill. As we discovered here, when the ICU beds were totally filled up, it meant there weren't any beds for people with other critical problems either. People here waiting for cancer surgery are having to wait. People needing a bone marrow transplant are having to wait. This is was the herd immunity method causes when we are dealing with a virus as aggressive as the coronavirus.

I think we have to be careful of pointing the finger at anyone. When we are frightened, we need to find someone to blame, just like after BD, right? But as we're seeing with this crisis, those who pointed the finger originally, are in as big a mess themselves now. I think that it was just that nobody had ever experienced anything like this before in our day.

To remind people who might not know, I'm in Italy. We seem to be in our peak right now. The numbers are still very bad but not increasing, so we seem to be floating in the bad numbers. We judge our politicians, our health service, Europe, the banks, and it goes on...Two definite causes that we are aware of already that created the situation we are experiencing in Italy were:
1   In spite of the Health Ministry issuing warnings about the Coronavirus and how to prevent its spread to all hospitals and medical facilities in early January, no body seems to have read it or adhered to it, which allowed for the virus to be spread in the hospitals by the staff as well as patients.

2  Lack of protective material for medical staff, lack of ICU beds, lack of ventilators. If there had been enough masks and gloves and gowns, the virus would have spread less. If there had been enough ICU beds and ventilators, many could have been saved. Because of the lack of beds, people were only brought to hospital when they weren't breathing, making it very hard to save them at that point.

It's not even a question of money, it's a question of organization and preparation. Underestimating this crisis seems to have been a major contributing factor everywhere.

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COVID-19, Coronavirus. Its real, stay safe!
#115: April 02, 2020, 12:40:11 PM
No trust me I do not want this to become politicalized. I think we can share our thoughts/ concerns and worries  in a respectful way. Indeed who else can we share this stuff with? I trust the CDC because I spent years working in infectious diseases so I admit to being biased by my own personal experience. And I do appreciate other’s points of views because we can all learn from each other.
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"Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see" Hebrews 11:1

"You enrich my life and are a source of joy and consolation to me. But if I lose you, I will not, I must not spend the rest of my life in unhappiness."

" The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it". Flannery O'Connor

https://www.midlifecrisismarriageadvocate.com/chapter-contents.html

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COVID-19, Coronavirus. Its real, stay safe!
#116: April 02, 2020, 12:59:19 PM
This is a very interesting piece written by an eminent neurosurgeon and author.
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#117: April 02, 2020, 01:08:10 PM
I think too that here, more than most maybe, we can genuinely understand from personal experience how powerful normal reactions to the trauma of the previously inconceivable affect our decision making. I assume that this is no different for those who hold political responsibilities. The great advantage of folks like the CDC or individuals with experience like Dr Fauci in the US is that it isn't inconceivable to them bc they have spent years looking at the unthinkable or dealing with other epidemics.

I grew up in a developing country that had frequent power cuts bc it had a constrained capacity. It seemed entirely possible to me that if this situation runs for long enough or effects a big enough percentage of infrastructure employees, power cuts could be an issue here in the uk. (I didn't share those thoughts with friends lol) And then just a couple of days ago, a news article raised it as a concern. It shocked some people but not me bc to me it was already something I had experienced....so not unthinkable. Whereas the churches closing did shock me even though it made sense that they did. Our paradigms shape what we find unthinkable i suspect.....and slowly we adapt as events unfold.

From what I can see there were red flags in January but I'm not sure that any country acted on those, even if individuals behind the scenes were trying to encourage them to do so. And now we are all learning from those who are a couple of steps ahead of us and working with the flaws and advantages of the political and social systems we have. Political with a big P is rather different from political with a small p perhaps?

Missing link, Nerissa....? Or are you just whetting our appetite with a little tease lol....?
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Re: COVID-19, Coronavirus. Its real, stay safe!
#118: April 02, 2020, 02:11:40 PM

Thunder I like to look at data as a good way to understand issues. This is one of the more recent polls by reputable outfits. This quote is why I say political lens has now overtaken science, facts and information:

https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/304646/five-emerging-conclusions-public-opinion-covid.aspx

"Our most recent Gallup data on worry about virus exposure show a 27-point gap -- 48% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are very or somewhat worried, compared with 75% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents. This is essentially the same size gap we saw in Gallup data earlier in March."

Political and personal beliefs are coloring peoples understanding of reality in the US to a level I have not seen in my lifetime. I am not talking about which side of the divide, rather this simple thing. We are entitled to our opinion, but not our facts. I think whether its a majority or not it is entirely way too large a percent of the population and its harms us all. And we are seeing it in the behaviour of some who refuse to take advice on what we all need to do collectively.

Here's where I don't understand your reasoning where it's a "political" thing. The words in your quote are " very or somewhat worried". How much you are worried about something has absolutely NO bearing on how seriously it is taken. I take this 100% seriously. And I am not all that worried. Why? I'm working in my house. Any elderly relatives I have are already deceased.  I worry incessantly about my children but they do not live with me and I have no control over them. I do not go out and about for random reasons, except to my own yard. I sometimes drive if I cannot stand it in the house any longer and bring gloves to refuel my car.

I take this seriously. I would not consider myself  "very or somewhat worried" in general about my own exposure. Terminology when people ask poll questions is VERY important. Circumstances for the people being asked are also very important. People who run more on emotions are "worried" people. People who run more on logic might take it seriously, but look more towards "what can be done to mitigate this" and don't "worry" because what is the point of "worrying". Just do what you can do to mitigate it.  Does that make sense?

And thank you for the informative posts, Marvin.
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« Last Edit: April 02, 2020, 02:12:41 PM by OffRoad »
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COVID-19, Coronavirus. Its real, stay safe!
#119: April 02, 2020, 02:25:16 PM
Hello,

I have been limited in my travels and go shopping about once a week. Just as everything was about to break, my parents flew to Texas to visit my brother. Now they are stuck there and my father has hatched a plan where I will drive 800 miles to meet them at El Paso as my brother will drop them off. We will spend the night and then head back to California. 

I am not a huge fan of this idea and feel that they would be safer just staying with my brother and riding out the storm. However, my father is bound and determined to go back to his home. He wants to do this the weekend of April 17. Now, he has a Urostomy pouch and we will have to make several stops on the way back so he can dump his bag. He is 82 years old and my mom is 79. Of course mid-April is being predicted as the time as everything really begins to hit hard until mid May when it should start to go down. I am trying to figure out ways to convince them to wait.

Just wondering, am I off in my thinking? Please feel free to chime in!

Thanks,

Ready
It's your Dad's ostomy bag that is the real sticking point, IMO. If you could put them in the car, have enough food for the trip, have one (maybe two) place to fill up, preferably where it is already warm, like Yuma, and wear gloves and NOT HAVE TO GET OUT OF THE CAR FOR ANY OTHER REASON, I could see it working and maybe even being preferable. But going into a public restroom for the ostomy bag? No way. That is a direct line into his body. 800 miles without using a rest room for either of your parents? I could do it, you might be able to do it, but they could not. That alone would be a "No" to me.

By the same token, I have camping gear and a portable toilet. If I could get my elderly parents to their own home, where they feel safe in this mess by stopping at random sides of the road and setting up the portable toilet and pop up tent around it, I'd do that. BUT, only if I knew they could take care of themselves once they arrived home. If they could not, still a no go. That's just me, though.
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