Coronavirus prep

AnnPT77 wrote: »

MikePfirrman wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

mph323 wrote: »

Chinese billionaire Jack Ma is donating a million face masks and 500,000 coronavirus test kits to the US. I'm grateful for the support and hope that our government can work with people like him to tap into international sources for desperately needed medical supplies.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/14/tech/jack-ma-face-masks-us-donation/index.html

This is really out there and sounds like a bonkers conspiracy theory, but can anyone shoot down my thought that testing is being throttled not just for lack of resources but because the fewer people who get tested, the lower the number of confirmed cases and the better the numbers look politically?

It's dark and rainy here, and I've been sitting by myself all day recovering from trying to find tomato sauce for dinner and finding the apocalypse playing out at Safeway. My thoughts are dark.

I guess it's just me, but I think that would require a pretty large-scale, multi-participant conspiracy, a thing that humans are historically pretty bad at sustaining for very long.

And it would have to happen, now, in a leak-ridden political environment where plenty of journalists (and journalistic bottom-feeders besides) would be all too happy to find an break a well-documented version of that story . . . maybe even a poorly-documented one.

If that political conspiracy is happening, it can't hold, IMO.

There's already been reporting on it. And yes, it was reported that they decided not to test as a political hunch that warmer weather would kill it.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-reportedly-rejected-aggressive-coronavirus-121835790.html

Anonymous sources, but I for one, wouldn't doubt this one bit.

I never said certain people in the administration - maybe quite a few - wouldn't manipulate or lie. I said I thought a conspiracy to throttle testing would not hold, i.e., could not be sustained for long.

And it didn't hold.

Various entities started developing their own tests. Parts of the central bureaucracy, and bureaucrats/politicians in the states, pushed back. People leaked stuff. Etc.

Large-scale conspiracies tend to fall apart, especially in relatively non-authoritarian, relatively open societies. When there are too many people involved, they have competing interests, opposing political views, motivations like jealousy/old grudges/revenge/financial benefit, and sometimes a few intended conspirators even turn out to have ethics. It's not that I think no one tries to conspire in nefarious ways; of course they do. Arrogance and hubris mean some startling things are attempted. Big conspiracies are just really hard to sustain.

ETA: Not trying to pick on you here, Mike, even though I'm replying to your post. There have been a few posts replying to mine that seemed to me to be disagreeing with something I didn't think I said (didn't intend to say, anyway), or something tangent to my PP. I'm sure that's because I was unclear, so trying to clarify . . . which will probably make it worse. :drinker:

It sounded to me like you were saying that there was no way that testing was limited in the US on purpose for political gain, because it would require a wide ranging conspiracy that wouldn't be possible. I do disagree with that, because I don't think it would require much of a conspiracy.

I totally agree that wide ranging conspiracies are damn near impossible to carry out and even more impossible to sustain for long even if you can get them started, because humans gonna human.

This little version of the telephone game brought to you by the coronavirus


I have been watching a few episodes of the Leftovers every time there is a free HBO preview weekend and I should be able to finish it this weekend. Not quite post apocalyptic but kinda sorta. Not sure I could watch Contagion or Pandemic right now, this is as close as I get

I heard from one of my high school friends today - we are planning on getting together online since we can’t meet up in person this year. He’s concerned about his mom who is in a nursing home which stopped accepting visitors to prevent exposure.

I made reassuring noises, but what bothers me about his mother’s situation is that I remember when my own dad was in a nursing home and the staff were completely untrustworthy. Once when I came for a visit I found my dad’s dinner tray sitting untouched on a table across the room from him - he wasn’t ambulatory and needed help with eating - they were just bringing in the tray and leaving it out of his reach, then taking it away again later so that he was actually starving. The “speech therapist” claimed she was “having great sessions” with him after he became completely non-verbal so I checked up on her, and her idea of a great session was sitting in silence reading a book to herself and then charging our insurance for a session. Since my dad had MRSA I asked for gloves to visit, and they didn’t know where the supply of gloves was. So yeah, it’s not like they were using them when changing IVs or fiddling with a picc line. Only by making sure someone visited every day at random times did he stay alive, and when I got a cold and couldn’t come for a week, not surprisingly he died. And the thing is, I talked to a friend who is an RN about what to do about the place, and did some research, and found - none of this was news, they were already under warnings for all kinds of violations - but they were the only place we could get my father into and we weren’t able to keep caring for him at home. And even if we had been able to pick a different home, pretty much every place else had a long list of the same kinds of violations, and according to my nurse friend it was standard practice to just sort of blow off care, since the staff felt that the residents were “circling the drain” anyway, why try?

So now, all across the US, these same staff members are in charge with no family members to keep tabs on them. They haven’t suddenly changed and become better people. They aren’t any better trained, or smarter, or more conscientious, they just know they don’t have to worry about what things look like when someone’s kid or spouse shows up. Some of them are the same staffs you have seen on the news in past years letting old people sit covered by filthy flood water after disasters, or not bothering to move them across the street to a hospital when their power went out and grandma’s ventilator stopped working. And now all across America they know no one is watching to make sure they do their jobs, plus, they are suddenly the front line who are supposed to be preventing the spread of deadly disease.

AnnPT77 wrote: »

kimny72 wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

MikePfirrman wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

mph323 wrote: »

Chinese billionaire Jack Ma is donating a million face masks and 500,000 coronavirus test kits to the US. I'm grateful for the support and hope that our government can work with people like him to tap into international sources for desperately needed medical supplies.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/14/tech/jack-ma-face-masks-us-donation/index.html

This is really out there and sounds like a bonkers conspiracy theory, but can anyone shoot down my thought that testing is being throttled not just for lack of resources but because the fewer people who get tested, the lower the number of confirmed cases and the better the numbers look politically?

It's dark and rainy here, and I've been sitting by myself all day recovering from trying to find tomato sauce for dinner and finding the apocalypse playing out at Safeway. My thoughts are dark.

I guess it's just me, but I think that would require a pretty large-scale, multi-participant conspiracy, a thing that humans are historically pretty bad at sustaining for very long.

And it would have to happen, now, in a leak-ridden political environment where plenty of journalists (and journalistic bottom-feeders besides) would be all too happy to find an break a well-documented version of that story . . . maybe even a poorly-documented one.

If that political conspiracy is happening, it can't hold, IMO.

There's already been reporting on it. And yes, it was reported that they decided not to test as a political hunch that warmer weather would kill it.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-reportedly-rejected-aggressive-coronavirus-121835790.html

Anonymous sources, but I for one, wouldn't doubt this one bit.

I never said certain people in the administration - maybe quite a few - wouldn't manipulate or lie. I said I thought a conspiracy to throttle testing would not hold, i.e., could not be sustained for long.

And it didn't hold.

Various entities started developing their own tests. Parts of the central bureaucracy, and bureaucrats/politicians in the states, pushed back. People leaked stuff. Etc.

Large-scale conspiracies tend to fall apart, especially in relatively non-authoritarian, relatively open societies. When there are too many people involved, they have competing interests, opposing political views, motivations like jealousy/old grudges/revenge/financial benefit, and sometimes a few intended conspirators even turn out to have ethics. It's not that I think no one tries to conspire in nefarious ways; of course they do. Arrogance and hubris mean some startling things are attempted. Big conspiracies are just really hard to sustain.

ETA: Not trying to pick on you here, Mike, even though I'm replying to your post. There have been a few posts replying to mine that seemed to me to be disagreeing with something I didn't think I said (didn't intend to say, anyway), or something tangent to my PP. I'm sure that's because I was unclear, so trying to clarify . . . which will probably make it worse. :drinker:

It sounded to me like you were saying that there was no way that testing was limited in the US on purpose for political gain, because it would require a wide ranging conspiracy that wouldn't be possible. I do disagree with that, because I don't think it would require much of a conspiracy.

I totally agree that wide ranging conspiracies are damn near impossible to carry out and even more impossible to sustain for long even if you can get them started, because humans gonna human.

This little version of the telephone game brought to you by the coronavirus


I have been watching a few episodes of the Leftovers every time there is a free HBO preview weekend and I should be able to finish it this weekend. Not quite post apocalyptic but kinda sorta. Not sure I could watch Contagion or Pandemic right now, this is as close as I get

To the bolded: Maybe the difference here is between attempting a conspiracy, and succeeding at one. (One can think of a conspiracy more as an event, or more as a process in a context. I'm talking process.)

Would a limited number of people in the administration be able to make such a plan, attempt such a conspiracy? Sure.

But in order for it to ultimately succeed, thousands of people would have to, at minimum, ignore events in the rest of the world and STFU, which isn't likely at all. Which thousands? Civil service types at CDC, opposing politicians, state/local government health officials, epidemiologists and infectious disease experts employed outside the government, researchers in related fields, health informatics people with access to world health data and news . . . and generally anyone with intelligence, knowledge of what's happened/happening in the rest of the world, access to information about the 1918 pandemic or even to information about smaller-scale more recent epidemics, etc. Plus, then, the journalists (or social media influencers, or whomever) that those people will start talking to.

Under current circumstances, such a conspiracy is highly, highly unlikely to succeed for very long at all. Too many people have reasons not to STFU.

Yeah but, we’ve sort of already caught them. Congressmen are writing to demand to know why the WHO tests were turned down, and no answers are forthcoming. The decision was made by a single person with only a handful of peers and superiors. The only thing that isn’t known at this point is what the motivation was for not accepting the same tests other nations accepted and then conducting testing they could perfectly well have done. We know they blew off testing, we just don’t know why. Was it stupidity or malice? Those are pretty much the only two possibilities.

And on the lighter side (I guess)

Australian here. My husband and I called into a local supermarket this morning for 'a few things' I usually grocery shop exclusively online and rely on my small, independent local grocer for occasional purchases. Due to many items not being available online, we braved the supermarket.
Queues for the checkouts took 45 minutes and people were snaked through the store waiting to be delegated to a cashier. The shelves were practically bare of all dry staples and the only frozen vegetables left were kale and brussel sprouts.
There was a young woman lined up in front of us with a baby strapped to her chest and a toddler in her trolley. Her cart was full of essential food and baby items. I could see she was getting stressed about how much her groceries were going to cost and asked the cashier to stop scanning at a certain amount. My husband and I looked at the items left on the belt and asked the cashier to scan them with our items. No way could we let that poor Mum take her babies home without things that she clearly needed. She said her partner works FIFO and she has no family nearby. I've been there and know what it's like to barely get by. This current panic and 'need' to stock up is incredibly stressful for people who live week to week
In stark contrast, my sister works in a supermarket and they had to call the police on a man today who refused to line up for his groceries, screamed abuse at staff and tried to leave the store without paying. Insanity...

You know--reading this thread is like watching a movie for the second time. It's sad for me because here, in Italy, we went through this all 3 weeks ago.

News from Northern Italy is very bad. They don't know where to bury all the dead. People are trying to flee to the South or the islands where they have vacation homes. The virus will spread so they're trying to stop that. It's better than being shut up in an apartment with little kids, or bored teens, is the reasoning of most people. To tell the truth, I wish I was at the beach house. Too late now. This morning I got up at 6 and went fast walking for half an hour around the piazza half a block from us. At that hour, only 4 people were around. My husband refused to get up that early, so I went by myself. I think I'll do it again at 6 this evening when it starts to get dark.

Stay safe everyone.

smithker75 wrote: »

@Nony_Mouse I'd like to think everyone could extend a little kindness and compassion at the moment but I'm afraid these things don't always bring out the best in people.
Our Prime Minister for one...want to swap?...

@smithker75 Yes, it would be nice to think everyone would extend kindness and compassion. Hopefully the majority will.

I think the plan is just for NZ to take over and name you guys West Island, isn't it? I see in the news that Aus is now following us on the 14 self isolation for anyone coming into the country. Better late than never, I guess

lleinphx1 wrote: »

Have you seen the pictures of DFW & ORD customs? It’s a nightmare. Hundreds of people arriving from Heathrow from god knows what country they’ve visited, standing shoulder to shoulder for hours. Insanity.

In other news, I’ve been eating like a lumberjack for days and unraveling months of progress. No exercise, just food and Twitter. I know I should put the phone down, but this is, you know, a big deal. Le sigh.

Me too. Stress eating and using this virus as an excuse. I need to get my act together and get back to it. Weighing 25# more certainly isn't going to be helpful.

My dh works at our local high school, with around 1000 students, more than 125 of those dorm kids from lots of different countries plus up until the big spread in Italy happened, students were still on trips abroad. They can't even get more than 2 cases of disinfectant wipes. Their school is big?? I really hope they decide to shut down even though dh said it's not that easy to do. I realize there must be a LOT of planning that goes into that but......?? Even taking 1 class into consideration such as culinary or automotive, it'd be difficult to shift from on-hands teaching to online. But still, I think it'd be a very wise proactive move to make.

I hope and pray my family, friends, and all of you stay safe and healthy through all of this. My dd lives in Seattle, which scares the beejeezus out of me. My ds lives in a county with known cases and he's diabetic. My other dd lives in NC with more cases every day. My dh is a smoker and at age 69(almost) I wish he'd just retire. My sister and her dh are both elderly and in very compromised health. ::(
My brother told me yesterday, the Mormon church(he's a member) has closed all services for the unknown future and he heard there are 2 cases about 15 miles away from us(a place where I go to a LOT). It's hard to know what's true, what's not, what to worry about and when you're simply being paranoid.

rheddmobile wrote: »

I heard from one of my high school friends today - we are planning on getting together online since we can’t meet up in person this year. He’s concerned about his mom who is in a nursing home which stopped accepting visitors to prevent exposure.

I made reassuring noises, but what bothers me about his mother’s situation is that I remember when my own dad was in a nursing home and the staff were completely untrustworthy. Once when I came for a visit I found my dad’s dinner tray sitting untouched on a table across the room from him - he wasn’t ambulatory and needed help with eating - they were just bringing in the tray and leaving it out of his reach, then taking it away again later so that he was actually starving. The “speech therapist” claimed she was “having great sessions” with him after he became completely non-verbal so I checked up on her, and her idea of a great session was sitting in silence reading a book to herself and then charging our insurance for a session. Since my dad had MRSA I asked for gloves to visit, and they didn’t know where the supply of gloves was. So yeah, it’s not like they were using them when changing IVs or fiddling with a picc line. Only by making sure someone visited every day at random times did he stay alive, and when I got a cold and couldn’t come for a week, not surprisingly he died. And the thing is, I talked to a friend who is an RN about what to do about the place, and did some research, and found - none of this was news, they were already under warnings for all kinds of violations - but they were the only place we could get my father into and we weren’t able to keep caring for him at home. And even if we had been able to pick a different home, pretty much every place else had a long list of the same kinds of violations, and according to my nurse friend it was standard practice to just sort of blow off care, since the staff felt that the residents were “circling the drain” anyway, why try?

So now, all across the US, these same staff members are in charge with no family members to keep tabs on them. They haven’t suddenly changed and become better people. They aren’t any better trained, or smarter, or more conscientious, they just know they don’t have to worry about what things look like when someone’s kid or spouse shows up. Some of them are the same staffs you have seen on the news in past years letting old people sit covered by filthy flood water after disasters, or not bothering to move them across the street to a hospital when their power went out and grandma’s ventilator stopped working. And now all across America they know no one is watching to make sure they do their jobs, plus, they are suddenly the front line who are supposed to be preventing the spread of deadly disease.

THAT is terrible!!!! We don't have a lot of rehab or nursing homes close by so our options are limited. BUT we certainly know which ones to consider if we ever needed one and they had beds available. When my parents went through times when it became necessary, my sister and I saw more than our share of questionable neglect; though I don't recall anything as bad as what you're talking about. My B-I-L just spent 3 months in a nursing home and my sister traveled there 98% of the time and everything she saw was wonderful. I also visited with her several times and was treated the same way. They treated her like gold, they treated him like gold, they were friendly and helpful. It was amazing. BUT the downside to all that is they hardly ever have empty beds. With health situations like this virus and even with the simple math of the baby boomer gen increasing the need, expansion of facilities should be happening at an enormous rate.

And your 'circling the drain' comment hit home so hard from when my parents were going through it. I cannot tell you how many times our concerns weren't held up as much as they should've been. We brought our dad from the 'home' to the ER(right across the street) because he was fading fast, waiting for a pacemaker from the VA. The ER doc said he's doing fine and to just go back and pinch some 'nurses' *kitten*'. Yep, his exact words. Brought him back to the ER because the 'home' wouldn't accept him back, said to put up a stink. So we did. They put him in the hospital, talked to the VA to up the pacemaker appt. and we had our dad for a few more wonderful years.
My mom had fallen and broken her vertebra, gone to a 'home' recovered okay, went back to live at home, fell again, went to the ER, dr. gave her morphine and asked her 20 minutes later if she felt any pain. Of course not, so she must've been miraculously cured, sent her back home where she couldn't even walk.
We really need to be the voice for ourselves and our loved ones because others don't listen unless pushed hard.

If it is a nice day where you are can I encourage you all to get outside even if just to your yard or local park. I am not sure and the evidence is not in for covid-19 but Vitamin D in normal get some sun every day levels been shown to help immune system fight off other viruses. Also a bit of fresh air and exercise helps with anxiety, depression. So yeah get outside if at all possible at least 20 minutes a day.

pinuplove wrote: »

snickerscharlie wrote: »

bmeadows380 wrote: »

hmmm. a post I put up an hour ago never appeared here. My luck, it'll show up tomorrow and be repeated 6 times.....

pi day, but I didn't have any pie ;(

I was in McDonald's today and was just wondering if they would go to drive thru only. I would be behind that - they could focus on the kitchen and prep areas and not have to worry about constantly trying to keep the lobby clean, and they would be limiting the number of people the crew would be exposed to. That particular McDonald's actually did that last summer during their remodel, as did the local Arby's, so the precedent and procedures are there for it.

I think that's a great idea.

I wonder if they would allow pedestrians in the drive-through? Because otherwise *someone's* gonna get their panties in a twist about it being discriminatory to the car-less.

Good point. Maybe carry out only? Pedestrians in the drive-thru seems like a recipe for disaster.

for those restaurants who have two drive through signs, I supposed they could mark the outer one for pedestrians, and then direct them to walk to the closest door for pickup.....

But it doesn't matter what they do, someone is going to get their knickers in a knot - whether they stay open, don't stay open, be drive through only, etc lol

Just like I was going to say that with mobile ordering now a thing, they could direct foot traffic to order through the app and pick up at the door, but then there'd be all those people who don't have the app, don't have smart phones, or don't have internet access (which is actually a pretty big thing where I live - cell service is very spotty, and decent, reliable internet access is only available to a fraction of people)

lynn_glenmont wrote: »

PAV8888 wrote: »

Nice, not

https://www.businessinsider.com/wuhan-coronavirus-risk-of-reinfection-2020-2

I had been hearing and reading statements from medical authorities saying they hoped, based on other viruses, that those who recover from covid 19 would have immunity for some period of time, but that so far they didn't have any idea how long that immunity might last. Lay questioners on talk shows seemed to assume that it was a question of whether immunity would last for just a few years (like vaccines that you need boosters for) or for essentially your whole life. but I noticed the experts' responses didn't seem to commit to even "a few years." I guess they were right.

ETA: on the other hand, from the article PAV8888 posted, it appears they've only seen one case of presumed reinfection so far, and it's not clear that this individual ever tested negative. just that they were discharged from the hospital after "showing signs of recovery." I don't know how they decide whether it's a (so-far) rare case of reinfection, or a (rare?) case of an individual who has remained infected for a long time without fully recovering, just going through ups and downs as their body fights the disease.

EATA: Unlike the headline and the paraphrasing by the writer, the actual quotes from medical experts in the story PAV8888 linked seem to be speaking about relapse, not reinfection from another individual.

Thanks for posting this...I feel the same way about the scare-mongering "news" articles but I'm tired and when I started posting a rebuttal to that, "You will re-catch it!!!!!!!!" article I was so tired yesterday...you said it all. That article was badly written and had zero science behind the known facts we have about how virus immunity works.




@MikePfirrman
Maybe you missed Just Em (moderator) who came in on the last page telling us to keep politics out of this.


I'm going to make an attempt today to not get into the "discussion" about it. Seattle continues to be scared. I have enough food and TP for a month.

Yeah. I need to stay out of this thread.

pink_mint wrote: »

AnnPT77 wrote: »

I belong to an international online group for "Elder Orphans": People over 55 living alone, with no spouse, partner, children, parents, siblings - at least not any close enough (geographically or emotionally) or able to be a support systems.

We have a number of issues that those with families don't (health care power of attorney, will and estate issues, even logistical stuff like making it to outpatient surgery if there's no one to drive us there and wait while the surgery happens, as many medical facilities now require; and much more).

I'm not whining at all, just describing; mostly, this is manageable. It's just non-standard.

In one of the local branches of my "Elder Orphan" group, a nurse/member is setting up pairs of people (who ask for this) to get each other's contact information, and commit to check in daily or on some other agreed basis, with instructions between the two of them about what to do if that contact can't be made.

This group includes people so isolated that they have few/no real-life relationships (sometimes because reasons ). But of course there are similar people without even online connections.

@AnnPT77 I never knew something like this existed. I am married and have young children. However my extended family is both small and a sad, fractured, alienated mess.

Husband's family has issues too. There are most definitely reasons (birds of a feather flocked together in our case, part of why we hit it off initially). Having a good spouse is definitely a source of support. But raising young children with zero extended family support... you have more energy going out than coming in.

I wonder if there is something like this for me. I'm 40 so maybe not in the required age range for that group.

It's times like this that a support system or lack of is something you really start to feel.

I didn't know such things existed, either, but would really be interested in knowing if such a group was something that is available in my state. Right now my parents are right across the road with my sister, but they are getting on in years, aren't the best of health, and my sister is completely unreliable. My brother is about 1 hour's drive away, but I don't know if I could depend on him, either. I have acquaintances, but very few that I'd consider close enough to call for help, and my church is made up of a lot of older people.

I'm also thinking of my best friend; I'm her only point of contact for help. She is not close to her brothers, and the one brother that she would be willing to work with is a couple of states away and has his own problems and wouldn't be able to come if she needed him.

I do think about the future as a single person with little family, no spouse, and no children, what I will do if I get in the shape I can't easily care for myself any longer. I hope I will be like my grandparents - my dad's parents are in their late 80's/90's and still living at home and independent, as is my mom's 81 year old grandmother, but I also know I can't depend on being able to be like that if I get to their age.