Posted on 03/11/2020 6:35:07 AM PDT by Kaslin
There's good news and bad news about Coronavirus.
First, there's reason for optimism. The virus struck only four months ago, yet we already know its genetic features. It took scientists years to get that far with HIV/AIDS. Antiviral drugs are in development, and a vaccine could be available within 18 months. The pace of scientific progress is breathtaking.
So is human ingenuity. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will soon offer home coronavirus testing kits, starting in the hard-hit Seattle area. Anyone who's worried can fill out an online questionnaire, receive a nasal swab kit in the mail, use it and send it to the lab. Positive results will be shared with public health officials, who will help infected people get medical care and self-quarantine. That's progress.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Monday that in Korea, no one under 30 has died from coronavirus. In Japan, no one under 50 has died. Our children appear safe. That's a blessing.
But there are serious concerns. Doctors at Johns Hopkins University are cautioning that your hospital could become a "disease amplifier." If you don't have coronavirus before you go into the hospital, the risk is you'll get it while you're there.
The CDC is warning that the outbreak is only beginning and "there's a good chance many will become sick."
No one knows how many will need hospital care. But hospitals in New York and across the nation expect to be overwhelmed. The impact will be "severe in the best of circumstances," warns the Johns Hopkins report.
To make room for the infected, hospitals are devising emergency strategies that include discharging other patients sooner than usual, converting single rooms into doubles, creating makeshift isolation facilities, buying nearby motels, and even erecting temporary wards in parking lots.
Surgeons are alerting patients that elective procedures may have to be canceled.
Hospitals will be short on space and equipment, and worst of all, short on staff. Already the coronavirus is infecting some health care workers and forcing others into self-quarantine because they've been exposed.
Last week, Congress passed a whopping $8.3 billion coronavirus emergency bill. It's larded with giveaways to international groups and projects overseas, including money for the CDC to purchase "official motor vehicles in foreign countries." That agency ought to be called the Center for the Disbursement of Cash Around the World.
Paying to fight disease overseas is smart, but the bill goes overboard. The bureaucrats running the federal health agencies need to adjust their globalist bias and focus on protecting Americans.
The bill ignores one of the most urgent needs -- an aggressive infection control campaign to prepare hospital staff. That's a serious oversight. The incident last week at St. John's Episcopal Hospital in Queens, New York, shows why.
On March 3, an Uber driver walked into the St. John's emergency room unknowingly infected. He complained of flu-like symptoms, but the staff sent him home. He returned sicker a few hours later. By the time he was put in isolation, up to 40 doctors, nurses and other hospital staff had contact with him and are now being monitored. Worse, the incident exposed numerous patients and hospital visitors to the virus.
Expect this mistake to be repeated all over the city and nation, needlessly infecting patients and hospital staff. Health care workers need more training on how to recognize patients at risk of infection and isolate them quickly. They need to get up to speed on cleaning their hands, wearing protective gear and making sure medical equipment like wheelchairs and blood pressure cuffs are disinfected between each use.
On another front, research announced Monday explains why coronavirus is so menacing. People infected with it shed 1,000 times more virus than people infected with SARS, an earlier global virus. Shedding the virus in saliva, sputum and other bodily fluids is what makes people contagious. SARS infected only 8,000 people before petering out, while the new coronavirus has already infected 110,000 worldwide and continues to spread.
Fortunately, scientists are arming us with the knowledge to battle this contagion.
“Doctors at Johns Hopkins University are cautioning that your hospital could become a “disease amplifier.” If you don’t have coronavirus before you go into the hospital, the risk is you’ll get it while you’re there.”
—
Yup, Italy provided a “Coming Attractions” reel on that account. Pray you don’t break a leg or need an urgent operation of any sort, e.g. have appendix removed.
Just had to point out the guy was an Uber driver. Why don’t they mention the occupation of other victims? Besides doctors and nurses I mean. What are the occupations of the other patients who were exposed? One thing we can be sure of, none of them were Uber drivers. And, apparently the vehicle he uses isn’t an SUV or that would’ve been pointed out as well.
On March 3, an Uber driver walked into St. John's Episcopal Hospital in Queens, New York's emergency room unknowingly infected.
He complained of flu-like symptoms, but the staff sent him home. He returned sicker a few hours later.
By the time he was put in isolation, up to 40 doctors, nurses and other staff had contact with him and are now being monitored.
Worse, the incident exposed numerous patients and hospital visitors to the virus.
“Last week, Congress passed a whopping $8.3 billion coronavirus emergency bill. It’s larded with giveaways to international groups and projects overseas, including money for the CDC to purchase “official motor vehicles in foreign countries.” That agency ought to be called the Center for the Disbursement of Cash Around the World.”
No kidding. You knew when you heard the price tag that the bill would be loaded with pork. Absolutely abominably disgusting.
bookmark
Open Letter to the world from an infectious disease specialist about Covid-19
https://www.facebook.com/abdu.sharkawy?__tn__=%2CdCH-R-R&eid=ARDIStwGP8KCBe-SzZ8wj1mdvQ2JWwKV6WYIJ3Z | 03-05 | Abdu Sharkawy
Posted on 3/10/2020, 6:01:51 PM by MNJohnnie
I’m a doctor and an Infectious Diseases Specialist. I’ve been at this for more than 20 years seeing sick patients on a daily basis. I have worked in inner city hospitals and in the poorest slums of Africa. HIV-AIDS, Hepatitis,TB, SARS, Measles, Shingles, Whooping cough, Diphtheria...there is little I haven’t been exposed to in my profession. And with notable exception of SARS, very little has left me feeling vulnerable, overwhelmed or downright scared.
I am not scared of Covid-19. I am concerned about the implications of a novel infectious agent that has spread the world over and continues to find new footholds in different soil. I am rightly concerned for the welfare of those who are elderly, in frail health or disenfranchised who stand to suffer mostly, and disproportionately, at the hands of this new scourge. But I am not scared of Covid-19.
What I am scared about is the loss of reason and wave of fear that has induced the masses of society into a spellbinding spiral of panic, stockpiling obscene quantities of anything that could fill a bomb shelter adequately in a post-apocalyptic world. I am scared of the N95 masks that are stolen from hospitals and urgent care clinics where they are actually needed for front line healthcare providers and instead are being donned in airports, malls, and coffee lounges, perpetuating even more fear and suspicion of others.
I am scared that our hospitals will be overwhelmed with anyone who thinks they “ probably don’t have it but may as well get checked out no matter what because you just never know...” and those with heart failure, emphysema, pneumonia and strokes will pay the price for overfilled ER waiting rooms with only so many doctors and nurses to assess.
I am scared that travel restrictions will become so far reaching that weddings will be canceled, graduations missed and family reunions will not materialize. And well, even that big party called the Olympic Games...that could be kyboshed too. Can you even imagine?
I’m scared those same epidemic fears will limit trade, harm partnerships in multiple sectors, business and otherwise and ultimately culminate in a global recession.
But mostly, I’m scared about what message we are telling our kids when faced with a threat. Instead of reason, rationality, openmindedness and altruism, we are telling them to panic, be fearful, suspicious, reactionary and self-interested.
Covid-19 is nowhere near over. It will be coming to a city, a hospital, a friend, even a family member near you at some point. Expect it. Stop waiting to be surprised further. The fact is the virus itself will not likely do much harm when it arrives. But our own behaviors and “fight for yourself above all else” attitude could prove disastrous.
I implore you all. Temper fear with reason, panic with patience and uncertainty with education. We have an opportunity to learn a great deal about health hygiene and limiting the spread of innumerable transmissible diseases in our society. Let’s meet this challenge together in the best spirit of compassion for others, patience, and above all, an unfailing effort to seek truth, facts and knowledge as opposed to conjecture, speculation and catastrophizing.
Facts not fear. Clean hands. Open hearts. Our children will thank us for it.
#washurhands #geturflushot #respect #patiencenotpanic
But but but but it's no worse than the flu, bro!...Bring Out Your Dead
Post to me or FReep mail to be on/off the Bring Out Your Dead ping list.
The purpose of the “Bring Out Your Dead” ping list (formerly the “Ebola” ping list) is very early warning of emerging pandemics, as such it has a high false positive rate.
So far the false positive rate is 100%.
At some point we may well have a high mortality pandemic, and likely as not the “Bring Out Your Dead” threads will miss the beginning entirely.
*sigh* Such is life, and death...
If a quarantine saves just one child's life, it's worth it.
Thanks for the ping.
Betsy is always ahead of the curve, on medical issues. She’s the one that actually took the time to read through, decipher and WARN about the entire, horrid 0CommieCare bill...before Nan deemed it passed.
FTA...
...On another front, research announced Monday explains why coronavirus is so menacing. People infected with it shed 1,000 times more virus than people infected with SARS, an earlier global virus. Shedding the virus in saliva, sputum and other bodily fluids is what makes people contagious. SARS infected only 8,000 people before petering out, while the new coronavirus has already infected 110,000 worldwide and continues to spread...
==
Ah, so....this isn’t Just the Flu™, as many have been trying to force feed.
I am 100% likely to die, drowning in the fluids in my lungs.
What a wuss. We’re all going to die, except for me, who will die 27 times.
So scads of sick, untrained people are going to be collecting and putting their (undoubtedly contaiminated) germ containing samples through the postal system for unreliable results. Another gem from the mastermind of Windows.
“What a wuss. We’re all going to die, except for me, who will die 27 times.”
Ground Hog Day at Laz’s?
An article published in Nature Medicine in 2015 with a co-author from Wuhan institute.
If you read the abstract it says they have assembled a virus in the lab that can transmit from bats to humans.
Remember that time when a virus escaped from a Chinese lab...
The 1977 H1N1 human influenza pandemic
Due to lab mishandling, a strain of the H1N1 influenza managed to escape from a Chinese facility that was likely trying to create a vaccine for the disease. The virus spread globally and had an infection rate of 20% to 70% among those exposed. Luckily, the strain of the virus caused only mild disease and few fatalities.
Various SARS outbreaks
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) was a global epidemic in 2003 that caused 8,000 infections and 774 deaths across 29 countries.
Since the original epidemic, there have been six escapes of the virus from laboratories — four in Beijing, and an additional one each in Singapore and Taiwan.
In all cases, the virus escaped due to negligence and human error. Fortunately, none of those escapes led to a renewed outbreak.
Smallpox outbreaks in Great Britain
From 1963 to 1978, there were three smallpox escapes from two different laboratories. All three were due to poor standards and bad practices within the labs. Three cases and at least 80 deaths were linked to the outbreaks.
The 1995 Venezuelan equine encephalitis (VEE) outbreak
In 1995, 10,000 people in Venezuela and 75,000 people in Colombia fell ill with a VEE strain that had escaped from a lab. The outbreak caused upwards of 311 deaths and 3,000 cases of neurological complications.
Just last year a lab explosion tore through a Russian bioweapons lab that stores Smallpox, Ebola and other nasty things.
1970 The Aral smallpox incident was a July 30, 1971 outbreak of the viral disease which occurred as a result of a field test at a Soviet biological weapons facility on an island in the Aral Sea. The incident sickened ten people, of whom three died, and came to widespread public notice only in 2002.
What scares me is not this current outbreak but what the future holds. We are truly not prepared for the “big one” and I am worried about weaponized disease. Government only has a certain capacity to protect a minimal amount of its people. Government’s first task is always taking care of government.
Here’s my ‘worst case’ scenario: (1% chance of it happening)
virus was an intentional release...
First wave kill-off the elderly and those with compromised health.
Second wave - healthy people get mild case - their health is compromised.
Third wave - those who had the mild case now get the more serious case.
Fourth wave - large scale die off of medical personnel, first responders, politicians (those who ‘network’ and routinely move within large groups of people), and military brass.
Abandoned children...
Panic.
Chinese come in to ‘help’...
The over hype from the media is akin to pulling fire alarms when there is no fire, a crime.
This person is in a position to expose a lot of people. When I taught school, I was aware that I came in contact with 180 ppl each day. When I thought I was coming down with strep, I asked my doctor to provide antibiotics immediately because of my job. I got the drugs over the phone. So I have no problem with the article highlighting the occupation in this case. Should be one of the first questions that emergency room staff ask for respiratory patients.
Have an appointment with my primary care doc today and was told by his office that they are not seeing any upper respiratory patients at that office, the hospital has set up a special entrance for these patients. I would say they are better prepared for this virus than John Hopkins.
China didn’t tell the world that they had a problem. Wuhan is a travel center. 60,000 people a day fly in & out of there.
Perfect vector for sending contaminated people out to harm the rest of the world.
China needs to literally PAY for all this damage.
Their own economy will be sharply cut back when the USA & other countries stop making so many products there.
Pharmaceuticals in particular need to NEVER be made there for consumption in other countries. Why would the health of BILLIONS of other countries be controlled by China?
BEYOND STUPID.
WILL CHINA WIN THE PANDEMIC WORLD WAR?
Posted by Matt Bracken | Feb 26, 2020
https://www.americanpartisan.org/2020/02/will-china-win-the-pandemic-world-war/
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