Coronavirus prep

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Replies

  • paperpudding
    paperpudding Posts: 8,926 Member
    that's interesting - turn around here is only day, day and half at most.

    If you get it done in the morning it is back by next day.

    You are asked to self isolate until your results come back - something anyone can do for 1 or 2 days.

    Regional South Australia.

  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,899 Member
    edited July 2020
    T1D - I know you think there is an easy fix for everything, but there really isn't.


    Your experience with the testing is just one of many reasons I won't get tested unless I'm being admitted to hospital or I am reallllllllly sick.

    What good does it do to test healthy appearing people who will go right back out that afternoon and have a possibility of getting infected just 20 minutes after they take a test? Healthy, asymptomatic people who have no reason to think they've been exposed getting tested seems like a huge waste of resources right now.

    If you had tested Positive they would have told you in that 48 hour period - or sooner.

    The lab result came in 48 hours, so I would hope to have known in 48.5 hours. I would have then come into contact with a lot fewer people over the following14 days. That is the benefit of testing even asymptomatic people regularly.

    However, with as long as it took to actually get result and the way I was treated while waiting, I also probably won't get tested again unless I'm near death. It's unfortunate, but the logistical failure has led me to that conclusion rather than the merits of testing itself. If testing was done and results were communicated in a timely manner, I still believe it is beneficial to test everyone regularly. Hopefully they get their processes fixed soon.

    But my point is that even if you got your results in (say 1-48.5 hours...it's not the timing...) AND you tested negative, you could still pick it up in 48.75 hours. No one is going to be getting tested every 48 hours. There aren't enough medical/lab personnel to process that many tests. The only solution to your continued plea would be self-administered 100% accurate tests that could be used at home and would give immediate results - like the at-home pregnancy test. I think that is a relatively good idea, but even if that were to be developed - how would you keep people home who tested positive? How would anyone track that? It would have to be a mail-back test so they could track you - but this virus isn't virulent enough for that kind of meticulous tracking.

    I mean, you're wanting safety and I get that but life isn't safe - maybe you've noticed? :lol:



    If we put aside issues of cost, I'm picturing each at-home test being an IoT device that would automatically link to the nearest open Wi-Fi network and report your results automatically. And if you want to toss civil liberties out the door, there could be a mandate that you be tested, and they would have your DNA on file to be sure that the person who was being tested was you, and if you failed to submit a test at the required intervals, they would send a "medical team" out to bring you and be tested in quarantine. For your own good, of course. To be sure they could find you, they could put subdermal cellular transmitters in everybody.

    Some of that I pretty much lifted from Sylvia Engdahl's Stewards of the Flame, if you're looking for some medical dystopian fiction to read during the pandemic. I also recommend Geraldine Brooks's Year of Wonders, which is fiction but is based on an actual village in England that voluntarily self-quarantined when the plague struck in the 1770s, so as not to spread it to surrounding towns. I don't want to spoil it for anybody, but if anyone has read it, do you feel as I do that the epilogue could be expanded into a fascinating novel of its own?


    Edited to bold the specific portion of the quoted text I was commenting on.

    Along the same lines, a book I may have mentioned early in the thread is Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis. It's part of a series of time-travel novels set at Oxford in the future (mid 21st C). The time-travel plot is someone who makes the first trip back to the middle ages, and ends up in a slightly different time than planned (you can guess what's going on there, probably, but I won't spoil it). What I had forgotten, until I reread during the beginning of our stay at home order, was that in the world of the book there was a pandemic (flu, but still) in the past (around now, in fact) which killed a bunch of people -- and disproportionately in the US, because people resisted quarantine and such. As a result of the past experience, the world has all these procedures for dealing strictly with a virus outbreak.

    Re the Geraldine Brooks book, I felt like the epilogue came out of nowhere, but I did think at the time that she probably planned to write another book about that.
  • paperpudding
    paperpudding Posts: 8,926 Member
    .


    Re the Geraldine Brooks book, I felt like the epilogue came out of nowhere, but I did think at the time that she probably planned to write another book about that.

    I have read Geraldine Brook's The Year of Wonders
    Like her other books that I have read: March and Caleb's crossing, loosely based on real events/people.I recommend all of them.

    Year of Wonders was really good But IMO let down by the unlikely and unrealistic ending.

    #literarytangent.





  • T1DCarnivoreRunner
    T1DCarnivoreRunner Posts: 11,502 Member
    edited July 2020
    For fellow runners, there has been much discussion for a long time about the Chicago Marathon. This is the only big marathon (World Major) that is still planned this fall (Oct.) aside from MCM (not a world major, but big race which has changed rules and such so many have gone virtual, including myself). Most of us who are registered have an idea that this will not happen and are awaiting the announcement. A leading theory is that the race organization is waiting for the city to make the decision not to grant permits because then their insurance will cover some of the loss since it isn't the race organization's decision that led to cancellation. I know the Mayor said earlier this week that she had been in contact with the race organizers. I thought we might get the official announcement by now. Why can't they just do it so we can officially cancel our travel bookings and start planning accordingly?!

    ETA: Details about MCM (Marine Corps Marathon).
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,899 Member
    edited July 2020
    I can't imagine it will happen.

    Looks like you can just go ahead and cancel: https://www.chicagomarathon.com/apply/entry-cancellation/
  • debtay123
    debtay123 Posts: 1,327 Member
    T1DCarnivoreRunner-
    I am sorry about your grandma too- and I hope and pray that she continues to make progress.
  • autumnblade75
    autumnblade75 Posts: 1,660 Member
    Here in Illinois, the governor's mandate has been overturned - the law only allows for a 30 day public health mandate, and it's been in effect for 3x that long - and after that, my workplace has finally requested that employees wear masks. Not that they're doing a particularly good job of enforcing it, though. Supervisors have been required to wear masks for at least a month, and they've been wearing them mostly on their chins, not covering any of their breathing holes. That seems to be about the level of compliance they're seeking with employees, too. There are 3 theories: 1) The employee that caught Covid19 (just one!) died... 2) It's to shut up the employees that are asking for hazard pay... 3) It's tied to some of our coworkers vacationing in states that a new mandate requires a 2 week quarantine when returning from (but there are exemptions for essential workers, anyway, and UPS is not giving an extra 2 weeks off work just to quarantine.)

    After the mask requirement at work (Wednesday) a union representative had a table set up by the door with a petition for hazard pay. So, that seems to point to theory #2. That doesn't mean we're not all curious whatever happened to the driver that got sick... If it's a breach of HIPAA to tell us if he's died, I guess passing a card and collecting donations for the widow would be, too. I don't socialize with the drivers, so I don't even know which one has been absent for the past 6 weeks.

    With coworkers vacationing in Florida and New Jersey and returning to work with their naked faces and lack of social distancing, it's a wonder that more of us haven't gotten sick. I stopped wearing my masks at the beginning of June, when it started being 90 degrees inside, and volume picked up so that we were working twice the hours. After all, my mask protects all those other jerks and their lack of mask doesn't protect me... The extra discomfort isn't worthwhile in those circumstances. I've taken to spending my breaks in place so that nobody comes within 6 feet to socialize with me. My antisocial tendencies are serving me well.

    Back in March, I asked not to work at the bay I had previously worked at, because there's no room to social distance, and my supervisors have mostly honored my request. But due to the nature of the work, we change bays as the trucks arrive, and at least once a week I spend at least half an hour less than 2 feet from the next guy. I still figure I'm more likely to bring it to work than catch it there - my husband still works at the hospital, after all - but they're no longer having daily briefings, and they've stopped telling him to expect to catch it.

    I have not used hand sanitizer a single time since this madness started. I do my best not to touch my face, but since I'm taking the mask off to drink water every 15 minutes or so, so I don't dehydrate, I don't think I'm doing a great job of that. There's a single large container of hand sanitizer next to the bathroom that it is not feasible to visit every time I have to unmask to drink - besides, if I'm Right There, I'll just go in and wash with soap. The best part of this whole mess is that we've had paper towels and soap regularly since March. That's where they keep the wipes, too. Guess how often the equipment gets wiped, then? The SHARED equipment. Yeah.

    Anyway, I guess think about that when you collect your packages from the front porch. We're choosing between keeping the PPE on, or keeping hydrated. The masks are definitely interfering with my hydration strategy.
  • ExistingFish
    ExistingFish Posts: 1,259 Member
    Here in Illinois, the governor's mandate has been overturned - the law only allows for a 30 day public health mandate, and it's been in effect for 3x that long - and after that, my workplace has finally requested that employees wear masks. Not that they're doing a particularly good job of enforcing it, though. Supervisors have been required to wear masks for at least a month, and they've been wearing them mostly on their chins, not covering any of their breathing holes. That seems to be about the level of compliance they're seeking with employees, too. There are 3 theories: 1) The employee that caught Covid19 (just one!) died... 2) It's to shut up the employees that are asking for hazard pay... 3) It's tied to some of our coworkers vacationing in states that a new mandate requires a 2 week quarantine when returning from (but there are exemptions for essential workers, anyway, and UPS is not giving an extra 2 weeks off work just to quarantine.)

    After the mask requirement at work (Wednesday) a union representative had a table set up by the door with a petition for hazard pay. So, that seems to point to theory #2. That doesn't mean we're not all curious whatever happened to the driver that got sick... If it's a breach of HIPAA to tell us if he's died, I guess passing a card and collecting donations for the widow would be, too. I don't socialize with the drivers, so I don't even know which one has been absent for the past 6 weeks.

    With coworkers vacationing in Florida and New Jersey and returning to work with their naked faces and lack of social distancing, it's a wonder that more of us haven't gotten sick. I stopped wearing my masks at the beginning of June, when it started being 90 degrees inside, and volume picked up so that we were working twice the hours. After all, my mask protects all those other jerks and their lack of mask doesn't protect me... The extra discomfort isn't worthwhile in those circumstances. I've taken to spending my breaks in place so that nobody comes within 6 feet to socialize with me. My antisocial tendencies are serving me well.

    Back in March, I asked not to work at the bay I had previously worked at, because there's no room to social distance, and my supervisors have mostly honored my request. But due to the nature of the work, we change bays as the trucks arrive, and at least once a week I spend at least half an hour less than 2 feet from the next guy. I still figure I'm more likely to bring it to work than catch it there - my husband still works at the hospital, after all - but they're no longer having daily briefings, and they've stopped telling him to expect to catch it.

    I have not used hand sanitizer a single time since this madness started. I do my best not to touch my face, but since I'm taking the mask off to drink water every 15 minutes or so, so I don't dehydrate, I don't think I'm doing a great job of that. There's a single large container of hand sanitizer next to the bathroom that it is not feasible to visit every time I have to unmask to drink - besides, if I'm Right There, I'll just go in and wash with soap. The best part of this whole mess is that we've had paper towels and soap regularly since March. That's where they keep the wipes, too. Guess how often the equipment gets wiped, then? The SHARED equipment. Yeah.

    Anyway, I guess think about that when you collect your packages from the front porch. We're choosing between keeping the PPE on, or keeping hydrated. The masks are definitely interfering with my hydration strategy.

    Why not hand sanitizer? I have small bottles in my car and purse, I use before and after going in places. I am required to use it going into the gym (the bathroom is across the building) - their stinks. I swear it is just alcohol. Really liquidy.

    Just wondered because I have almost never used hand sanitizer, my use has increased exponentially.
  • autumnblade75
    autumnblade75 Posts: 1,660 Member
    I have not used hand sanitizer a single time since this madness started. I do my best not to touch my face, but since I'm taking the mask off to drink water every 15 minutes or so, so I don't dehydrate, I don't think I'm doing a great job of that. There's a single large container of hand sanitizer next to the bathroom that it is not feasible to visit every time I have to unmask to drink - besides, if I'm Right There, I'll just go in and wash with soap. The best part of this whole mess is that we've had paper towels and soap regularly since March. That's where they keep the wipes, too. Guess how often the equipment gets wiped, then? The SHARED equipment. Yeah.

    Why not hand sanitizer? I have small bottles in my car and purse, I use before and after going in places. I am required to use it going into the gym (the bathroom is across the building) - their stinks. I swear it is just alcohol. Really liquidy.

    Just wondered because I have almost never used hand sanitizer, my use has increased exponentially.

    Washing with soap is more effective, anyway. It gives me a headache when my husband uses the stuff, I'm certainly not going to inflict my own hands with that odor.

  • GaleHawkins
    GaleHawkins Posts: 8,160 Member
    Sounds like COVID-19 wants to go full bloom in my end of KY like much of the southern USA.

    https://kfvs12.com/2020/07/09/graves-county-covid-cases-increase/

    https://wkms.org/post/crittenden-and-calloway-schools-set-delayed-start-date

    https://studyfinds.org/adem-rare-brain-disorder-stroke-covid-19/

    Having used Wobenzyme N for about 5 years this morning I found a e-book that a ND who pulled together research on many Wobenzyme studies over the last 30 years that sound interesting in light of COVID-19 symptoms. While it is no cure if it may prevent or lessen a cytokine storm, etc it has my attention. I was going to upload the PDF file but never figured out how. https://www.yourhormones.com/content/systemic-enzyme-therapy-experience-with-wobenzym-formulations.pdf
  • T1DCarnivoreRunner
    T1DCarnivoreRunner Posts: 11,502 Member
    Here in Illinois, the governor's mandate has been overturned - the law only allows for a 30 day public health mandate, and it's been in effect for 3x that long - and after that, my workplace has finally requested that employees wear masks. Not that they're doing a particularly good job of enforcing it, though. Supervisors have been required to wear masks for at least a month, and they've been wearing them mostly on their chins, not covering any of their breathing holes. That seems to be about the level of compliance they're seeking with employees, too. There are 3 theories: 1) The employee that caught Covid19 (just one!) died... 2) It's to shut up the employees that are asking for hazard pay... 3) It's tied to some of our coworkers vacationing in states that a new mandate requires a 2 week quarantine when returning from (but there are exemptions for essential workers, anyway, and UPS is not giving an extra 2 weeks off work just to quarantine.)

    After the mask requirement at work (Wednesday) a union representative had a table set up by the door with a petition for hazard pay. So, that seems to point to theory #2. That doesn't mean we're not all curious whatever happened to the driver that got sick... If it's a breach of HIPAA to tell us if he's died, I guess passing a card and collecting donations for the widow would be, too. I don't socialize with the drivers, so I don't even know which one has been absent for the past 6 weeks.

    With coworkers vacationing in Florida and New Jersey and returning to work with their naked faces and lack of social distancing, it's a wonder that more of us haven't gotten sick. I stopped wearing my masks at the beginning of June, when it started being 90 degrees inside, and volume picked up so that we were working twice the hours. After all, my mask protects all those other jerks and their lack of mask doesn't protect me... The extra discomfort isn't worthwhile in those circumstances. I've taken to spending my breaks in place so that nobody comes within 6 feet to socialize with me. My antisocial tendencies are serving me well.

    Back in March, I asked not to work at the bay I had previously worked at, because there's no room to social distance, and my supervisors have mostly honored my request. But due to the nature of the work, we change bays as the trucks arrive, and at least once a week I spend at least half an hour less than 2 feet from the next guy. I still figure I'm more likely to bring it to work than catch it there - my husband still works at the hospital, after all - but they're no longer having daily briefings, and they've stopped telling him to expect to catch it.

    I have not used hand sanitizer a single time since this madness started. I do my best not to touch my face, but since I'm taking the mask off to drink water every 15 minutes or so, so I don't dehydrate, I don't think I'm doing a great job of that. There's a single large container of hand sanitizer next to the bathroom that it is not feasible to visit every time I have to unmask to drink - besides, if I'm Right There, I'll just go in and wash with soap. The best part of this whole mess is that we've had paper towels and soap regularly since March. That's where they keep the wipes, too. Guess how often the equipment gets wiped, then? The SHARED equipment. Yeah.

    Anyway, I guess think about that when you collect your packages from the front porch. We're choosing between keeping the PPE on, or keeping hydrated. The masks are definitely interfering with my hydration strategy.

    I've got a bottle of hand sanitizer in my car for after being in stores and laundromat. We have sanitizer placed around areas with food/drink (break rooms, vending) at work and at entrances. We also have Lysol wipes available to clean off work spaces and surfaces.