Coronavirus Outbreak

[joshuabgood]

And it's good-bye Ohio schools...NYC in emergency state.

All sports cancelled. Makes me wonder how long before PA reacts similarly. We'll see...

[AnthonyMartin]

And it's good-bye Ohio schools...NYC in emergency state.

All sports cancelled. Makes me wonder how long before PA reacts similarly. We'll see...

All Montgomery County PA just closed schools.

[Josh]

And it's good-bye Ohio schools...NYC in emergency state.

Technically, spring break is extended an extra three weeks starting Monday (in Ohio).

My nieces go to a conservative Mennonite school - the principal isn't sure if he should cancel tomorrow. 25% of the kids didn't show up today (however, it's not a very big school).

[Josh]

All Montgomery County PA just closed schools.

I'm wondering when King of Prussia mall will close.

[appleman2006]

43 pages in and I do not think I have commented yet. Perhaps I am sick?

Most of you know I am not a big fan of our political leaders here in Canada on the best of days right now. However on this one I have been very slow to criticize. This is such a fast moving thing it is really hard to be critical of them. I have no idea what I would be advising if I were in their shoes. And so instead I am choosing to pray.

My theory right now is that the biggest threat is actually the long term results of the potential economic collapse. The disease will kill many however the side effects could actually kill many more indirectly. People have become so accustomed to thinking that we as humans are in control of everything that I expect things will not have to get to bad until they will just really get ugly and it will more or less become each man for himself. I always suspected that our economy was only one disaster away from collapse. I am hoping this is not the big one.

Here is a list of things I am praying for.
1. That my predictions above will turn out to be very wrong.
2. That our political leaders will be given the wisdom and courage to act quickly and responsibly when needed.
3. That this will cause people to take a deep look at what is really important in life and that they will be drawn to the only one who really can help.
4. that the people of God will be shining lights and through calmness, generosity, and love show people a better way.

May God help us all.

[DarkShallNotPrevail]

The first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in ME this afternoon.

My sister's university, along with a number of ME colleges have moved their classes online and asked students to leave campus. Commencement ceremonies may be cancelled as well, pending the spread of the disease over the next few months.

I'm worried for my parents, as my mom works in an assisted living facility that will in all likelihood be hit hard; ME has a very high population of elderly folks, posing a bigger risk of fatalities.

Meanwhile I'm grateful (for once) to live in the boonies of northeast PA! All confirmed cases are still 2+ hours away, and we live in an area with very few travelers this time of year.

[Josh]

The first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in ME this afternoon.

My sister's university, along with a number of ME colleges have moved their classes online and asked students to leave campus. Commencement ceremonies may be cancelled as well, pending the spread of the disease over the next few months.

I'm worried for my parents, as my mom works in an assisted living facility that will in all likelihood be hit hard; ME has a very high population of elderly folks, posing a bigger risk of fatalities.

Meanwhile I'm grateful (for once) to live in the boonies of northeast PA! All confirmed cases are still 2+ hours away, and we live in an area with very few travelers this time of year.

Don’t hold your breath (or do hold your breath, I guess). I would expect to see outbreaks in places like Lancaster County, based on people’s behaviour there.

The plain community seems to not understand at all how serious this is.

[Ken]

People keep asking for testing, but what tests? The tests involved require people to be presenting with symptoms, and do not meet U.S. standards for specificity.

It should be obvious after Italy that running a second-world (or third-world) health system doesn't make things better. I'm going to take a wild guess that a hand-held test kit that gets results in 10 minutes doesn't meet U.K. standards, which is why it's not being used there.

Bad information is often worse than no information. Do you want people to get tested who get false negatives?

They should make a hierarchy of testing facilities. Any academic lab can run this assay- I would guess in the Seattle area there are at least a 100 labs that could. They’ll be less accurate but we’d have to determine statistically whether that is worse than having no tests at all. Positive results (“possible positives”) could be elevated to state testing (currently called “presumptive positives”) which then go to CDC (“confirmed positives”). Negatives could be run in duplicate with the greatly increased capacity available to reduce false negatives.

According to the CDC web site they ran a total of 6 tests on Tuesday. South Korea is testing over 10,000 per day and doing drive-through testing at medical facilities.

Our national leadership is showing utter incompetence. The authority and funding for all of this could be granted with the stroke of a pen.

[Ken]

The University of Washington School of Medicine is now defying the Trump Administration orders and running its own drive-through testing facility at the med school parking garage. Stanford University is also getting feisty and announced plans to do the same thing. (open in an incognito tab to bypass the paywall and read the article):

https://www.modernhealthcare.com/provid ... ts-garages

UW Medicine has been testing staff, faculty and trainees since March 6 at a drive-through site in a parking garage at the University of Washington Medical Center-Northwest in north Seattle. Nurses stationed in tents are conducting the tests on employees who remain in their cars. As of yesterday, 231 patients had been tested. UW Medicine plans to open another drive-through testing clinic for its patients, spokeswoman Leila Gray wrote in an email.

[Josh]

Non-FDA approved “medicine” is a bad idea. A test that gives inaccurate information doesn’t really help anything.

In Italy, a lot of people are sick and even on ventilators and need supplemental O2 yet the tests they are using come back negative.

The right way to test this is monitoring symptoms. We don’t have a magic piece of technology that can sequence every virus in your body right now and tell you which of the 219 viruses that infect humans, you have an excessive viral load of.