LOL! We have a few of those lying around. But unfortunately, virus particles would settle inside the cone. Maybe wear it like a hat so that the cone covers your eyes , nose, and mouth so that the particles fall on the outside of the cone. I wonder if they come in clear, or just translucent?
We started isolating last week because we are in high-risk categories by age and diabetes. We will stay so until there is adequate treatment available — maybe a long time. All of the elders in my family are being sequestered.
Here is a big problem. My partner, Greg, a retired microbiologist, has Millennial children and grandchildren who are five and seven. Last week, he said that grandchildren will give this virus to their parents, who will give it to the grandparents.
This week, Greg’s son-in-law went to visit his grandmother in a care facility, leaving the rest of his family in the car. His mind has not adjusted to the fact that he could currently be infected himself, just asymptomatic. We are terribly worried for his grandmother because all it will take is for one of the many people who work there to become ill to create another Kirkland, WA event. How could that not happen?
Here is our personal quandary. How will we maintain a close relationship with Greg’s children and grandchildren? Every five or six weeks, they come spend a day with us on the homestead, including playing board games and preparing and eating dinner together. Clearly, that won’t work under current conditions. Not sure what our solution will be.
First trip to the grocery store since going into isolation. This is our new protocol.
- wash hands
- spray each item with 70% isopropyl alcohol
- put plastic bags into a larger bag
- wash hands, soap dispenser and spray bottle
- mark the plastic bag with the date for storage for at least two weeks
- spray the door handle, if needed
“Note: I bought some 91% isopropyl alcohol, which was marked antiseptic, but isn’t. Greg explained that 64-71% denatures (changes the shape of) the proteins in a virus, inactivating it, while 91% merely dehydrates it, leaving it available to be rehydrated and then active once again.”
Thanks! I’ve been wondering about the various alcohol dilutions. Too bad our public health agencies aren’t educating us…
On a another note, I live with my elderly parents and share a bathroom. I am prepped and safe and have lots of cleaning supplies. They refuse to believe anything about the coronavirus and constantly cough without covering their mouths or washing their hands (it’s a long-standing issue, actually, since I’ve gotten sick from these behaviors), nor will they stop their retiree group activities and large crowd, multiple table, card games five days a week.
I feel like there is no way I can avoid getting infected from them. And then taking care of them, and myself, at the same time. I am completely flummoxed.
In the following MedCram video from today, Dr. Seheult explains how viral RNA takes over the machinery of your cells, and why having enough Zn is important when it comes to mounting an immune response;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eeh054-Hx1U
As with Vitamin-D, the point of Zn supplementation is to make sure you are not deficient. More is not necessarily better, and too much might be bad. What is important is to make sure you take a type that is well absorbed, and this paper suggests that Zinc picolinate is best;
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3630857
Abstract
The comparative absorption of zinc after oral administration of three different complexed forms was studied in 15 healthy human volunteers in a double-blind four-period crossover trial. The individuals were randomly divided into four groups. Each group rotated for four week periods through a random sequence of oral supplementation including: zinc picolinate, zinc citrate, and zinc gluconate (equivalent to 50 mg elemental zinc per day) and placebo. Zinc was measured in hair, urine, erythrocyte and serum before and after each period. At the end of four weeks hair, urine and erythrocyte zinc levels rose significantly (p less than 0.005, p less than 0.001, and p less than 0.001) during zinc picolinate administration. There was no significant change in any of these parameters from zinc gluconate, zinc citrate or placebo administration. There was a small, insignificant rise in serum zinc during zinc picolinate, zinc citrate and placebo supplementation. The results of this study suggest that zinc absorption in humans can be improved by complexing zinc with picolinic acid.
https://www.denverpost.com/2020/03/06/coronavirus-denver-2-new-cases/
https://www.vaildaily.com/news/coronavirus-in-colorado-female-visitor-to-vail-valley-is-eagle-countys-first-presumptive-positive-case/
Authorities telling people they don’t need to stay home in the first article.
Report about Gunnison, CO, one of very few places that escaped the 1918 flu pandemic: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/01/gunnison-colorado-the-town-that-dodged-the-1918-spanish-flu-pandemic
Well, I think this may reinforce my layman’s guess on why transmission within cruise ships is so easy. Back when the Diamond Princess had its outbreak, coupled with the apartment sewage line transmission within a building, and combined with the knowledge that this may be spread via aerosol = IMO… It is being spread via the sewage lines as well within cruise ships. From a person who has taken around 8 cruises, I remember every one of them had little water, and extreme high air pressure waste disposal; similar to airplanes. I remember on almost all of my cruises, when a neighboring cabin flushed, there would be a short blast of air that would come into my commode / bathroom. Again, I’m just a layman observing, but it still makes sense to me. Now… Think about the new Princess ship dilemma. Not good!!
There are oral zinc solutions available to test if you are zinc deficient. ( Zinc Tally.) You take a measured amount daily until you can taste the stuff. Seniors who lose taste and smell faculties are usually zinc deficient.
A general daily amount of zinc supplement is 15 to 20 mg, but it should be balanced by 2 mg. of copper. In my personal experience, taking too much unbalanced zinc caused a rise in blood cholesterol.
Curious what Chris might have to say about this one.
First coronavirus vaccine trial in the US is recruiting volunteers (Live Science)
“The vaccine does not contain the virus that triggers COVID-19, called SARS-CoV-2, and cannot cause infection, according to a report by Kaiser Permanente. Unlike vaccines developed for other viruses, such as measles, this new vaccine does not utilize a weak or dead virus as its base. Instead, the vaccine contains a short segment of genetic material called messenger RNA, or mRNA, generated in a laboratory. In a typical cell, mRNA encodes instructions for building different proteins.
The artificial mRNA prompts cells to build a protein found on the surface of the virus, according to the Kaiser Permanente report. A person’s immune system should react to this new protein by building up an arsenal of antibodies that target and latch onto this protein, tagging the virus for elimination. Then, the mRNA should break down and be eliminated by the body, leaving the vaccinated person better prepared to fight off SARS-CoV-2, should they ever encounter it.
Designing the vaccine to work in this way allowed Moderna to fast-track the development process, as the company did not need to isolate and modify live samples of SARS-CoV-2 as it would for a more conventional vaccine, according to Kaiser Permanente.”
- Double Celsius value (35c -> 70)
- minus 10% (70-7=63)
- add on 32 F (63+32= 95F)
I flew helos for uncle sam years ago, dang computer had to be punched in with metric values…
The machinery behind the RNA idea was covered in really good detail in today’s MedCram video, which has already been linked to twice here today. My question: has this concept been used for vaccines before or is it novel? Thanks, Jim
Hospital is running out of masks, holy sh!t. They are scrounging from constructions sites. I have friends who are nurses at local hospitals. This is not good. Should we expect police knocking on our door asking if we have masks and then taking them?
ADDED: The paranoid in me, says this indicates the government by not supplying this hospital with mask out of the national reserve has given up on containment, and is saving the masks for the forces of enforcement. If you can’t save people, then you need to maintain control of the chaos, otherwise you lose power. When I see a executive order activating the military for domestic support (aka deploting them Stateside) I’m going to seriously worry. And head towards greyman status and the underground.
Good point Kunga… the Zinc picolinate I bought today is 30 mg along with 2 mg Copper. Too much Zinc can actually lead to Copper deficiency.
Diamond Princess all-age CFR is estimated at 2.3%. For individuals aged 70 and over, the CFR is 14-18%. This to me is a low estimate as I would expect 60% of the critical cases to die (34 times 60% = 20). They estimated only 15 total deaths while I believe the number will be closer to 27 (7 current deaths plus 20 estimated ICU deaths) based on reports out of China (ICU Percentage death rate).
https://cmmid.github.io/topics/covid19/severity/diamond_cruise_cfr_estimates.html
Note ICU deaths will be common in countries that do not have ICU facilities or in countries where hospitals do not have any empty ICU rooms. If I am correct, you are looking at a CFR of 6% (7 deaths plus 34 ICU patients = 41 possible deaths). Please note that the 6% CFR is for an older population group.
Why is Diamond Princess so important? This is the only population sample we have where everyone was tested. You were tested whether you showed symptoms or not. Of the 3,711 passengers, 301 who showed symptoms tested positive and 318 who had no symptoms tested positive. Unlike China, South Korea, Italy etc. this is the only sample we have where everyone was tested. This gives us the best CFR estimate for this population group (85% of the infected passengers on this ship were over 50 with 75% over age 60). When all the cases have resolved (696 cases with 212 recoveries/7 deaths/34 ICU cases with 453 cases still open) either through recovery or death, we will have a final CFR for this population group.
LOL whodda thunk, Agent 86 was ahead of the curve for pandemic planning! Do you think this will work in restaurants & bars? [ps: I can tell we are all getting tired… ;-)]
Portable Cone of Silence
Stay well and laugh when you can - not a lot else we can do at this stage!
Jan
I wanna point out that we’re suffering from the Time Lag at this point in time!
Those numbers used to be 81%/19% mild/serious, but that was because China was leveling off BEFORE the EU started accelerating and the Italian/Iranian clusters where known.
What’s happening now is everybody’s started testing because of the italian cluster. However, we’re 3-4 weeks away before the 19% of those cases which will go serious/critical, actually have.
Remember, we’re talking about exponential curves on a slow burning virus. If you detect a ultimately fatal case on day 1, it won’t count as severe until day 15 (assuming 1 week incubation and 1 week mild symptoms). Since cases double a day, when that case was measured it was 1 of 5 cases (20%), but when it went “severe” it was on a day that 40,960 new cases where reported!
Because that’s what happens if you double 5 every day for 14 days. You end up with 41k. Of course, within 14 days, 20% of that 41k also has gone critical.
It won’t stay at 15% for sure. I trust the Chinese study that looked into all cases from december 6th to february 6th (something like the first 60k) and found a 81% mild, 14% severe and 5% critical case rate. As well i trust the peer reviewed study of 52 critical cases that said 62% of all critical cases die, implying a 3,4% natural death rate.
That’s the floor. 81% mild, 14% severe, 5% critical, 3,4% dead. It will NOT get better then this. Hospital Overload comes on top of these numbers. And it’s the reason why this is such a big big problem.
EDIT: I just want to add to it; Yes i know, Chinese data. But if you are continually suspect of everything all the time, that is exactly how you get got. Because the truth gets lost. You can’t prepare for everything
I’m sure in this forum it’s already been addressed at some point… but in places where the virus is most virulent, how humid is it out there? Are there a lot of moisture droplets (i.e. snow, rain, fog) in the air? If it truly aerosolizes and spreads that easily in air through droplets then wouldn’t corona basically plume and make transmission even easier in wetter areas (if people weren’t practicing personal hygiene properly)?
The Grand Princess, the latest floating virus petri dish now slowly circling off San Francisco, visited Hawai’i recently. I just heard from my sister who lives in Hilo, Hawai’i, that the ship spent the 29th of February in port there, all day. She says that the usual routine for these cruise ship visits is that the crew goes ashore, shopping, usually at Walmart, while the passengers take tours to the Volcano and other points of interest. This has not been mentioned in the news concerning the Grand Princess, as far as I know. But what has been reported is that she carries a crew of 1,100 and was “recalled” back to San Francisco from her visit to Hawai’i. Only 46 of her 3500 passengers and crew have been tested, according to the news, of whom 21 tested positive, including 19 of the crew. It will be interesting to see if a cluster of cases develops in Hilo, Hawai’i, in the next couple weeks.
For reference, Hilo is a seaside town of about 25,000 souls on an island the size of Connecticut with a population of around 130,000. That ought to make a fine site to observe how this virus behaves in a relatively controlled setting.
I was going to post this on our PP site but have not figured out how to post a new message, so I send it to you a one who is obviously well informed and keenly interesting in all of this. We live in interesting times.
Aloha,
Mike
We just had a death down here in Santa Rosa Florida.