Sent this around to my family yesterday because I found it so practical and helpful. https://t.co/2LCdNjhrc8
— Lizzie O'Leary (@lizzieohreally) May 24, 2020
This actually is a good, “sensible” at-this-point-in-time guide (with charts, for science!), if you want something not too depressing to share:
… In particular, so-called superspreading events seem to be a major cause of infections. One London School of Hygiene analysis suggested that 80% of the secondary transmissions were caused by just 10% of infected people. In other words, if you want to avoid getting COVID-19, one of your major focuses should be avoiding a superspreading event.
So as Utahns leave their homes and reengage with society, we thought now would be a good time to scour the research to note where these events have been documented and where they haven’t. We can also learn about the circumstances that led to each superspreading event, and do our best to avoid them…
TL; DR — Stay away from bars, clubs, buffets, and sports venues. Be cautious about buses, planes, gyms, malls, and offices. Grocery stores (grab & go) and (possibly? probably?) voting sites should be okay, though! As for church-going and family gatherings: “Churches can be the site of community-changing superspreading events… Avoid hugging and sharing food, especially while sick.”
(Jesus and your grandma both love you, but they didn’t raise you to be an idiot.)
Doctors on the front line tell us, in their own words, what they've learned about coronavirus after months of treating patients.https://t.co/JRVGTZKfN7
— BBC South East (@bbcsoutheast) May 25, 2020
This, on the other hand, is just plain terrifying:
When you talk to intensive care doctors across the UK, exhausted after weeks of dealing with the ravages of Covid-19, the phrase that emerges time after time is, “We’ve never seen anything like this before.”
They knew a new disease was coming, and they were expecting resources to be stretched by an unknown respiratory infection which had first appeared in China at the end of last year.
And as the number of cases increased, doctors up and down the UK were reading first-hand accounts from colleagues in China, and then in Italy – in scientific journals and on social media – about the intensity of infection.
“It felt in some ways like we were trying to prepare for the D-Day landings,” says Barbara Miles, clinical director of intensive care at Glasgow Royal Infirmary, “with three weeks to get ready and not a great deal of knowledge about what we would be facing”.
But what arrived in the UK as winter turned into spring took even the most experienced ICU specialists by surprise.
Most people infected with the coronavirus have only mild symptoms, or sometimes none at all. But in many thousands of patients who fall critically ill, Covid-19 is a disease of alarming complexity.
What follows is a summary, often in their own words, of what doctors have learnt about how Covid-19 attacks the human body, and what they still need to know…
Opinion: America’s seniors, sacrificed on the altar of reopening https://t.co/ZQF3eZNcAn
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) May 23, 2020
Dana Milbank, in the Washington Post:
… For the past couple of months, I’ve been juggling my day job with helping my wife, sister-in-law and brother-in-law to provide care in our homes for two elderly relatives with serious health conditions, cancer and diabetes among them. We removed them from their assisted-living facility when the first covid-19 case hit there. “GET THEM OUT!” their doctor demanded, and he was probably right. Cases there quickly grew to more than a dozen. Though our lives became a blur of doctors, quarantines and prescriptions, we figured that if we could keep them safe for a while, federal and state governments would fix the group-living problem with the necessary testing, equipment and infection control.
That didn’t happen. Now we’re sending them back to the facility, aware that it could be a fateful choice. But they would be no safer with us as the economy reopens: Kids return to their orthodontists, camps and schools, and we return to postponed appointments and eventually offices and mass transit.
Our struggle between two bad choices is nothing compared with what many Americans have had to confront. Some 40 million have lost their jobs (not to mention the nearly 100,000 who have lost their lives). More than 8 million are in the care of long-term facilities, home health-care agencies and the like. One in 5 U.S. households handles caregiving for family members, most of them old — and few of them have the luxury of juggling hours or taking time off to do it.
For frail seniors in the United States, there simply is no haven. The unspoken, if inherent, trade-off in reopening the economy without safeguards is the lives of our elders…
In an open letter, 77 American scientists say they're "gravely concerned" about the abrupt termination of a federal grant for coronavirus research in China — and are calling for a review of the decision.https://t.co/dODySfkjY5
— NPR (@NPR) May 22, 2020
Politics have superceded science in the US response to #Covid19. Nowhere is that clearer than in the silencing of @CDC. https://t.co/c3wnorxanR
— Helen Branswell (@HelenBranswell) May 20, 2020
Lapassionara
As always, AL, thank you for posting these resources.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
DeWine is allowing gatherings of up to 300 to go forward, such as weddings, wedding receptions, etc. I worked in a banquet center for 4.5 years. It’s going to be impossible to enforce social distancing in these spaces imo, because it requires everybody to self-police and follow the guidelines. I know my former employers are not going to play policeman. Restaurants are in the same boat to me.
Daily cases, while trending slightly downward, are still more or less holding steady. 500+ cases statewide today.
PsiFighter37
History repeats itself. It will be interesting to see what things are like in a couple of weeks.
Steeplejack
Looks like we’re going to hit 100,000 deaths by tomorrow: current U.S. total is 99,805, according to Worldometer.
Nicole
Thanks for these links, AL. My first internet visit every day is your morning post on Covid 19 and I’ve sent so many links from those posts to friends.
Some good news- a friend of mine recently (like this spring recently) graduated from nursing school and went straight into a nursing home where he was soon working with residents with Covid 19. Very stressful for him, as he has 2 small kids at home, but he and his wife made the decision it was what he should do. JetBlue recently announced they were giving 100,000 health care workers free round trip tickets anywhere they fly for a vacation when this is all over. I nominated my friend and they picked him! So glad for him and his wife, who have not had a vacation… god, I don’t know how long. Ever? She said they’re having fun looking at the JetBlue website just to daydream where to go when things are safer.
NotMax
Thought this worth sharing.
CaseyL
To the GOP, anyone not filthy rich isn’t really a person, just “human capital stock.” Fungible, disposable, trivial.
They’ve been like that since Reagan; T* has simply emboldened them to be overt and obvious about it.
Brachiator
I find some of this as frustrating as the attempts of people to just want to declare everything open. I think as Americans, conservative or liberal, we want to reduce everything to a matter of individual choice and personal decision.
But isn’t there also an issue of what adjustments we need to make to social spaces to make moving about safer?
And are we going to tell the elderly and those most at risk that they must choose to be exiled from society until a vaccine is developed.
Some states are obviously mandating changes. Some of this may be overkill or too specific. I think that California may have essentially outlawed buffets and self service stations in fast food restaurants.
Who knows whether sports venues and movie theaters will come back. But people may not have a choice when it comes to riding buses or returning to offices. And some cities and states seem determined to pretend that the pandemic is harmless. This could stymie individual efforts to take reasonable precautions.
Also, I think we may be forced to see if the actions of thoughtless people increase the spread of the virus, and how governments respond.
And places where people don’t have a choice about being in a confined social space continues to be a problem. Prisons, care homes, naval vessels.
Also, pretty soon I am really going to need a haircut.
rikyrah
Thanks for the information
Percysowner
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): DeWine forgot he was a Republican for a month, maybe 6 weeks, but in the end, he IS a Republican and is folding to the members of his party who demand the economy be opened.
I do understand. My kids are employed by public entities, the state and a city government, and the tax base is simply not there right now, so it’s scary. I’m a retired Public Employee so my retirement could be in danger. OTOH, I’m over 65 and a tad overweight and I’d like to live to see my granddaughter grow up, or at least be old enough to remember me.
WaterGirl
@Brachiator: For what it’s worth, I don’t think this is too extreme.
I think we are absolutely still at the point that all of that is warranted.
Ohio Mom
DeWine okayed gatherings of 300?! Oh crap.
Ohio has yet to see a downward trend in cases or deaths. Sometimes it looks like we are headed downward a little but then the numbers jump right back to creeping upward (I check the NYT map and case count everyday).
I look at those numbers and wonder what the lockdown is accomplishing; then I tell myself, probably would have been a lot worse without it. Now it *will* be worse.
Guess I’d better get going a little faster on taking advantage of this relative lull: keep working on stocking the pantry, take care of a few medical appointments, go out for lattes al fresco with a friend or two. And a haircut.
NotMax
@Brachiator
Read somewhere that Indiana is allowing movie theaters to open but they must keep their rest rooms off limits.
Which is doubly patently ludicrous.
Another Scott
@Brachiator: The DC metropolitan transit system – WMATA – serves lots of people (obviously), but have shut down much of the system.
wmata.com/service/status/
(Emphasis added.)
It’s going to take months (years?) for things like transit systems to approach normal operations. Unless there’s a vaccine (which doesn’t yet exist) that is quickly distributed. People who live far from their jobs and used transit in the Before Times are going to be hurting (even more) when they are asked to return to work.
That’s just one real-life complication of the pandemic.
This “opening up” mania is soon going to be shown to be a big bust. :-(
239 days, 14 hours to go.
Eyes on the prizes….
Cheers,
Scott.
Gin & Tonic
HR is working overtime this Memorial Day. Franklin Templeton Investments has announced that Amy Cooper has been placed on administrative leave pending an investigation.
Ohio Mom
We are told the pandemic will reshape the world but we tend to (understandably) focus on the medical science aspects — how it spreads, what we can do to stay safe — as well as the geopolitics as the virus races around the globe.
Here is a story about one possible major change in American Judaism propelled by the pandemic’s fallout.
The Reform and Conservative Movements are considering merging. It seems to me we American Jews could end up with a split parallel to what happened to Christainity when Protestantism began, with Liberal Judaism and Orthodox Judaism sharing a common root and nothing else.
forward.com/news/national/446607/reform-movement-coronavirus-layoffs/
Ohio Mom
Gin & Tonic:
My first reaction: who the hell is Amy Cooper and why am I supposed to have heard of her?
A quick google later: oh yeah, I know who she is, the racist abusive dog owner who can’t follow the signs that say Keep Your Dog Leashed and who called 911 with false alarm.
That’s some 15 minutes of fame she’s creased for herself.
WaterGirl
@Ohio Mom: How would merging lead to a split? I am clearly not understanding some critical piece.
Gin & Tonic
@Ohio Mom: Even further OT: why are women like that called “Karens”? There are a lot of things related to current popular culture that I’m unaware of.
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
However, you cannot simply close things down until a vaccine is discovered.
And if people continue to ignore reasonable suggestions, infections will increase. Governments and people have to react to reality.
Brachiator
@Ohio Mom:
Wow. Talk about an unintended consequence. Had things been moving in this direction before the pandemic?
Bill Arnold
I haven’t attempted to understand the math in that paper. If it assumes that defensive measures are uniform through the population, this is incorrect; households are close, long periods of contact without social distancing, and generally unmasked. Outside the household, most people are taking much more intensive precautions. This means that in-household spreading is common. (The people I know personally who’ve had COVID-19 were two RW couples. All 4 survived, no hospitalization; one comment was “worse than the worst flu I ever had”.)
Not sure how to protect against in-household spreading, other than to make sure everyone is cautious outside the house, and vigilant about early symptoms.
dopey-o
@Brachiator: no one ever died from lack of a haircut! /s
NotMax
@dopey-o
From a rundown of a number of cases of follicular fatalities:
;)
Ohio Mom
There have long been tensions between Liberal and Orthodox American Jewry. But everyone has considered themselves one people sharing the same history and a common future.
It’s getting to my bedtime and this is a big subject. The short version is, the merger of both of the Liberal movements will lead to two separate American Judaisms, the Liberal tradition and the Orthodox tradition. All kinds of things like Jewish charitable and social service organizations will be upended. It will be a 1,000 year flood of an event.
Too bad Adam isn’t around to chime in, I’m sure he will have an interesting slant.
See you all tomorrow.
Ohio Mom
Brachiator: Most of what is speeding up the split is money. The movements’ bureaucracies were hit hard by the Great Recession and now it looks like we are going to have another huge economic disaster.
In a way, they are businesses that are looking at financial failure.
A lot of cherished institutions aren’t going to survive or at best, are going to be very smaller versions of themselves. It’s hard times for any cultural, arts and social service organization.
And now it’s really lights out.
Steeplejack
@Another Scott:
The Metro closings are the reason I am driving my friend to and from work. They closed the two train stations that gave her a 15-minute commute, and the reduced bus schedule left her with 60-90 minutes on multiple buses.
When I signed up I had everybody’s quarantine idea of “Sure, I can do this for a month or two.” ?
Steeplejack
@WaterGirl:
As I read it, “liberal” Judaism would include Reform and Conservative, and Orthodox (ultraconservative, not included in the merger) would be the other branch.
Steeplejack
@Gin & Tonic:
The Karen meme.
Brachiator
@dopey-o:
Ha! Well, there are all those Philistines at the end of the story of Samson.
glc
Very useful.
Another interesting item (maybe it was already up here):
nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01543-x
Scientists “baffled” – that’s very polite, but I doubt that it is the case.
@Brachiator: a very good point.