Coronavirus prep

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  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 34,415 Member
    Speaking of bleach, does everyone know it has about a six month shelf life before it expires?
  • kimny72
    kimny72 Posts: 16,011 Member
    cmriverside wrote: »
    Speaking of bleach, does everyone know it has about a six month shelf life before it expires?

    So you're saying in garages full of containers of bleach and packages of TP, it's the bleach that will look like a bad purchase first? :lol:

    BTW I did not know bleach expires. The more you know...
  • moonangel12
    moonangel12 Posts: 971 Member
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    COGypsy wrote: »
    moonangel12 wrote: »
    bmeadows380 wrote: »
    @AnnPT77 my pastor just put out a call saying his wife is asking church members to help her make masks based upon a few patterns she's found online. Are these masks considered disposable, or can they be washed and re-used, or bleached or something?
    That’s my question... because, I admit quite selfishly, I don’t want to use my pretty fabric if they are just going to be tossed :neutral: I have a resource for quite a bit of older fabric I was told I could have, though!

    ETA: thanks for the added info! I was posting and hubby came in from work so there was a few minutes lag, enough time for others to chime in!

    My mother and I were just laughing yesterday about people making fabric masks. We're pretty sure every quilter on the planet of Earth is probably chortling about how this is the time they've been waiting for all their lives--a deep societal need for items made from all the fabric remnants they've been stashing for years! :D

    I know the introverts thought this was their time to shine, but it looks like it's the quilters that are going to save the world!

    Being a crafter myself, I feel like the Venn diagram of quilters and introverts has a pretty decent-sized overlap.

    There are a bunch of introverts who don't quilt . . . but my experience suggests that quite a fraction of quilters are introverts. ;)
    L1zardQueen wrote: »
    Introvert quilter here. Wave. Donating these masks to my local hospital. Once you get rolling on making these it gets faster Lol
    Introvert quilter here as well! :smirk:
  • happysquatter
    happysquatter Posts: 91 Member
    lemurcat2 wrote: »
    CA currently has 3879 positive tests, with 78 deaths. Given the number of deaths I think the positives are low. There are a ton of pending tests and only about 21,000 completed tests.

    Flipping through states not reported on recently, I see 64 deaths in GA, 119 in LA (related to the NO outbreak, no doubt), 35 in MD, 92 in MI (that's awful, I didn't know that, and the testing looks really low, suggesting many more positives than currently reported), and 108 in NJ.

    You’re right about CA. True number around 45,000~ makes more sense

    The other states, barring MD are in that range or higher given this is exponential and not linear.

    I’m hopeful that there are effects to this virus we don’t fully understand - we know that in some cases high heat and humidity can reduce its Ro but it hasn’t been consistent. Maybe CA has those two things and something else too
  • happysquatter
    happysquatter Posts: 91 Member
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    snowflake954 wrote: »
    missysippy930 wrote: »
    How did Germany anticipate this well enough to have a good supply of tests available? Availability of the tests seems to be a major problem, at least in the US.

    THAT my dear is everyone's question. Or they are prepared for this. Most governments were caught with their pants down and no plan. I don't understand it because at least 15 years ago The Center for Disease Control in Atlanta was working on the possibility of an unstoppable virus. I read many articles on the topic and how they went into remote areas of the world to collect samples to try and stay ahead of any virus. What happened? I am dissapoint. :'(

    There was an interview on NPR the other day that speaks to this, to some extent. (It's an interview with Max Brooks, author of "World War Z" (Zombie book!), but also a real-life disaster planning expert.)

    I've tinyurl-ed the link because the link is basically the headline, and and the headline is too click-bait-y for my taste. The interview was interesting and provocative, but I won't go much further to claim that it's authoritative. Use your own judgement. It's not specifically partisan politics, but there is very strong criticism of US actions, not all of it aimed at the current administration.

    I promise this links to Fresh Air at NPR.

    https://tinyurl.com/thv86y2

    ETA: I know it's long (41 minutes), but I recommend the full audio interview over the summary text version. It's more nuanced, among other reasons. Your favorite podcast app may have Fresh Air; this was the Max Brooks interview, broadcast on (IIRC) 3/24.

    Thanks for the NPR link. I’m afraid of what a reckoning might look like if current camps blindly hold onto their own views. That is to stay, if they don’t listen to Max Brooks’ last line.

    Reminds me of Michael Lewis’ The Fifth Risk.....scary
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,885 Member
    edited March 2020
    IL has actually been pretty proactive in testing and has been testing a bunch since we got the tests to do that. IL currently has done 21,576 tests, which is only behind CA, FL, MA, NY, PA, TX, and WA. Plus, positives per test in IL are 14%, vs 18% in CA, 9% in FL, 11% in MA, 35% in NJ, 31% in NY, 10% in PA, 7% in TX, and 7% in WA. That suggests that FL, MA, PA, and TX have been testing even more without serious symptoms, but that CA, and esp NJ and NY have been testing fewer as a percentage of those who may have it. WA, of course, had the earliest outbreak so has been testing longer.
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 10,091 Member
    edited March 2020
    bmeadows380 wrote: »
    kimny72 wrote: »
    lynn_glenmont wrote: »
    cwolfman13 wrote: »
    GaleHawkins wrote: »
    snowflake954 wrote: »
    Spoke too soon. After 2 days of a downward trend in new cases, the North jumped again. Sigh.

    Do you hear any reasons why Germany has a much lower death rate than Italy?

    Because Germany has been way more proactive in testing and tracking, not just social distancing and shutting things down. The last I checked, Germany was testing 160K + per day and immediately quarantining those infected and then tracing their movements and contacts and quarantining those individuals as well. From what I understand in Italy, it was much the same as the USA...an early laissez faire approach and attitude and only really testing when people are symptomatic to leave a whole bunch of non symptomatic people who are infected running around and infecting others

    South Korea had the same general approach as Germany, and both of those countries have fared far better than anyone else in this.


    Russia only has 800 or so cases right now (only about 100 more cases than were on one cruise ship, the Diamond Princess) and 3 deaths, with a population nearly twice that of Germany (about 44,000 cases/267 deaths) and about three times that of South Korea (about 9,000 cases/139 deaths).

    I just noticed that on the Johns Hopkins covid tracker site, and got curious how they were handling it. There's an interesting New Yorker piece speculating on whether they're just lucky or doing a great job.

    https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/why-is-russias-coronavirus-case-count-so-low

    Or cooking the books.

    I assume that Russia has tighter controls on who goes in and out of the country, and is in a better position to force someone who arrives in the country to be tested and effectively quarantined. That, the state controlled media, and the vast sparsely populated areas would IMHO make it likely to be one of the last European countries to show outwardly obvious signs of clusters and overwhelm. Just my barely informed view from across the pond though!

    I'd be inclined to agree on the cooking the books. While I completely disagree with my best friend who thinks all the numbers are bogus and being ramped high to scare the world into crashing the economy (we have agreed to disagree on this one), I also don't believe all the numbers I see, such as the numbers given for Iran. I don't trust anything coming from a regime known to lie in the past and to oppress their people. (not meant to start a political discussion!) And as we've seen here in the US, it also depends on how well and how many people they are testing. WE know the actual number of cases in the US is already higher because of the lack of testing and the restraints that many states are putting on testing - such as only testing those with symptoms or, as in the case in WV, only testing those with symptoms that are life threatening.

    Just curious: Do you think Iran is overreporting or underreporting?

    ETA "think"
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 10,091 Member
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    COGypsy wrote: »
    moonangel12 wrote: »
    bmeadows380 wrote: »
    @AnnPT77 my pastor just put out a call saying his wife is asking church members to help her make masks based upon a few patterns she's found online. Are these masks considered disposable, or can they be washed and re-used, or bleached or something?
    That’s my question... because, I admit quite selfishly, I don’t want to use my pretty fabric if they are just going to be tossed :neutral: I have a resource for quite a bit of older fabric I was told I could have, though!

    ETA: thanks for the added info! I was posting and hubby came in from work so there was a few minutes lag, enough time for others to chime in!

    My mother and I were just laughing yesterday about people making fabric masks. We're pretty sure every quilter on the planet of Earth is probably chortling about how this is the time they've been waiting for all their lives--a deep societal need for items made from all the fabric remnants they've been stashing for years! :D

    I know the introverts thought this was their time to shine, but it looks like it's the quilters that are going to save the world!

    Being a crafter myself, I feel like the Venn diagram of quilters and introverts has a pretty decent-sized overlap.

    There are a bunch of introverts who don't quilt . . . but my experience suggests that quite a fraction of quilters are introverts. ;)

    My mother quilted at home alone, but for my grandmother, aunt, and sister, it is at least in part a social pursuit. Of course they work on stuff at home alone, but they also work together on projects with other people, sometimes quilting a single quilt together (what used to be called a quilting bee), other times getting together for classes on new techniques for making blocks, or going on trips together to various quilting destinations, gathering for quilt shows, etc.
  • bmeadows380
    bmeadows380 Posts: 2,981 Member
    lynn_glenmont wrote: »

    Just curious: Do you think Iran is overreporting or underreporting?

    ETA "think"

    could go either way, though I'd lean more toward under-reporting. At the very least, I'd have more trust in what was being posted online by individual citizens than what the government there report - this is the country that just recently tried to cover up that they had shot down a civilian plane after all.

    Then again, I think the under-reporting is happening everywhere, for reasons ranging from a desire to suppress numbers in some places, probably, but mainly because of lack of testing and many mildly symptomatic people not getting tested or thinking to ask to be tested. Its like when I look at the map and see that there aren't that many cases showing up in Africa being reported. I'd love to think that's because it hasn't spread much there, but then I think of the plight of many of the people on that continent and realize that testing is probably non-existent there just because resources are so scarce.

    Where would I go to find the currently mortality statistics for the 2019-2020 flu season? I've tried the CDC and the WHO and can't make heads or tails of what they are showing and can't find a total cumulative number to compare to.

    I keep hearing 30,000 bandied about, but I don't know if that is supposed to be total US flu deaths or world flu deaths.


    And the map confirms now that there definitely has been a case now reported in my county.
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,885 Member
    edited March 2020
    bmeadows380 wrote: »
    Where would I go to find the currently mortality statistics for the 2019-2020 flu season? I've tried the CDC and the WHO and can't make heads or tails of what they are showing and can't find a total cumulative number to compare to.

    I keep hearing 30,000 bandied about, but I don't know if that is supposed to be total US flu deaths or world flu deaths.

    And the map confirms now that there definitely has been a case now reported in my county.

    It varies a lot by year, but according to this (https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html) that number would have been for the US (and would actually likely have been higher). Last year was a bad flu season, and I think I'd heard that this one was too.

    This is useful: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/faq.htm#hospitalizations

    "CDC does not know exactly how many people die from seasonal flu each year. There are several reasons for this. First, states are not required to report individual flu illnesses or deaths among people older than 18 years of age to CDC. Second, influenza is infrequently listed on death certificates of people who die from flu-related complications. Third, many flu-related deaths occur one or two weeks after a person’s initial infection, either because the person may develop a secondary bacterial co-infection (such as bacterial pneumonia) or because influenza can aggravate an existing chronic illness (such as congestive heart failure or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). Also, most people who die from flu-related complications are not tested for flu, or they seek medical care later in their illness when influenza can no longer be detected from respiratory samples. Sensitive influenza tests are only likely to detect influenza if performed within a week after onset of illness. In addition, some commonly used tests to diagnose influenza in clinical settings are not highly sensitive and can provide false negative results (i.e. they misdiagnose flu illness as not being flu.) For these reasons, many flu-related deaths may not be recorded on death certificates. These are some of the reasons that CDC and other public health agencies in the United States and other countries use statistical and mathematical models to estimate the annual number of flu-related deaths."

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