Joined Aug 2016
L5: Journeyman
Forum Thread
Stocking up for Corona virus
March 1, 2020 at
10:57 AM
in
Chat
Hey guys,
Is anyone stocking up on "survival items" in fear of the Corona virus? So far I haven't, but I see a lot of the supermarkets empty from people like that here. Are the fears warranted, should I do the same?
Is anyone stocking up on "survival items" in fear of the Corona virus? So far I haven't, but I see a lot of the supermarkets empty from people like that here. Are the fears warranted, should I do the same?
285 Comments
Your comment cannot be blank.
Sign up for a Slickdeals account to remove this ad.
And clueless leader is primarily worried about professionals saying things that might affect the stock market.
Arrrgh, matey!
it's possible you could get additional immunity boost from dabbing your anus with a cotton ball soaked in lavender oil
Sign up for a Slickdeals account to remove this ad.
Dear Family and Friends, as some of you may recall, when I was a professor of pathology at the University of California San Diego, I was one of the first molecular virologists in the world to work on coronaviruses (the 1970s).
The current projections for its expansion in the US are only probable, due to continued insufficient worldwide data, but it is most likely to be widespread by mid to late March and April.
Here is what I have done and the precautions that I take and will take. These are the same precautions I currently use during our influenza seasons, except for the mask and gloves.:
1) NO HANDSHAKING! Use a fist bump, slight bow, elbow bump, etc.
2) Use ONLY your knuckle to touch light switches. elevator buttons, etc.. Lift the gasoline dispenser with a paper towel or use a disposable glove.
3) Open doors with your closed fist or hip - do not grasp the handle with your hand, unless there is no other way to open the door. Especially important on bathroom and post office/commercial doors.
4) Use disinfectant wipes at the stores when they are available, including wiping the handle and child seat in grocery carts.
5) Wash your hands with soap for 10-20 seconds and/or use a greater than 60% alcohol-based hand sanitizer whenever you return home from ANY activity that involves locations where other people have been.
6) Keep a bottle of sanitizer available at each of your home's entrances. AND in your car for use after getting gas or touching other contaminated objects when you can't immediately wash your hands.
7) If possible, cough or sneeze into a disposable tissue and discard. Use your elbow only if you have to. The clothing on your elbow will contain infectious virus that can be passed on for up to a week or more!
What I have stocked in preparation for the pandemic spread to the US:
1) Latex or nitrile latex disposable gloves for use when going shopping, using the gasoline pump, and all other outside activity when you come in contact with contaminated areas.
Note: This virus is spread in large droplets by coughing and sneezing. This means that the air will not infect you! BUT all the surfaces where these droplets land are infectious for about a week on average - everything that is associated with infected people will be contaminated and potentially infectious. The virus is on surfaces and you will not be infected unless your unprotected face is directly coughed or sneezed upon. This virus only has cell receptors for lung cells (it onlyinfects your lungs). The only way for the virus to infect you is through your nose or mouth via your hands or an infected cough or sneeze onto or into yournose or mouth.
2) Stock up now with disposable surgical masks and use them to prevent you from touching your nose and/or mouth (We touch our nose/mouth 90X/day without knowing it!). This is the only way this virus can infect you - it is lung-specific. The mask will notprevent the virus in a direct sneeze from getting into your nose or mouth - it is only to keep you from touching your nose or mouth.
3) Stock up now with hand sanitizers and latex/nitrile gloves (get the appropriate sizes for your family). The hand sanitizers must be alcohol-based and greater than 60% alcohol to be effective.
4) Stock up now with zinc lozenges. These lozenges have been proven to be effective in blocking coronavirus (and most other viruses) from multiplying l
I hope these personal thoughts will be helpful during this potentially catastrophic pandemic. Good luck to all of us.
James Robb, MD FCAP
I figure most of you are already aware of these precautions but it doesn't hurt to pass this information along to those we care about. Best case, hopefully this is all overblown, but if not, prepare yourself.
2% fatality rate is about 20 times the flu fatality rate.
If we have 30 million coronavirus case (10% of the country, not an unreasonable possibility) that's 600,000 deaths.
600,000 deaths.
In China, a number of young healthy doctors died, even getting the best care, and they actually got pretty good care, looking at some of the clinical papers that have been published.
If, more likely when, this gets out of hand, we'll probably run out of hospital beds and respirators, and we'll end up triaging care. If you're old, you may not get a ventilator.. Even if you're young you might not get a ventilator.
I'm a doctor who has run ICUs. This virus scares me.
If we have 30 million coronavirus case (10% of the country, not an unreasonable possibility) that's 600,000 deaths.
600,000 deaths.
In China, a number of young healthy doctors died, even getting the best care, and they actually got pretty good care, looking at some of the clinical papers that have been published.
If, more likely when, this gets out of hand, we'll probably run out of hospital beds and respirators, and we'll end up triaging care. If you're old, you may not get a ventilator.. Even if you're young you might not get a ventilator.
I'm a doctor who has run ICUs. This virus scares me.
Sign up for a Slickdeals account to remove this ad.
If we have 30 million coronavirus case (10% of the country, not an unreasonable possibility) that's 600,000 deaths.
600,000 deaths.
In China, a number of young healthy doctors died, even getting the best care, and they actually got pretty good care, looking at some of the clinical papers that have been published.
If, more likely when, this gets out of hand, we'll probably run out of hospital beds and respirators, and we'll end up triaging care. If you're old, you may not get a ventilator.. Even if you're young you might not get a ventilator.
I'm a doctor who has run ICUs. This virus scares me.
The quoted death rate is all over the map, literally. China's net rate is in the 2-3% (JAMA [jamanetwork.com] data which is dated puts it at 2.3%) however even within China it's very disparate; Hubei proper (ground zero effectively) is higher, like 3 - 4% (admittedly sources also indicate the standard of care has improved) [worldometers.info] whereas the rest of China is less than 1% (this source indicates 0.16% in other provinces [worldometers.info]), more like 0.7% [statnews.com].
Meanwhile, other *large* outbreaks range from ~ 4% (Italy), 2.1% (Japan), 0.6% (SK, which is also the largest sample outside China), 0.85% (Diamond Princess). Then you have places like Iran at 3.3%. Meanwhile, many in Europe have basically a 0% rate. In the US, if you simply divide numbers, it's like 9%.
From the JAMA data we also know that the virus isn't particularly "bad" for those under, say, 50-60 years old (the data isn't discretized well in the middle ages), where the mortality rate is 0.4%, but after 60's-ish and particularly 80+, the mortality rate jumps to 15%. We also know having a comorbidity is bad (e.g. high blood pressure, diabetes, heart issues, respiratory problem) and can multiply your risk by up to 12x. Lastly, given that Chinese men seem to be worse off than women, I'll attribute that to the fact that around 54% of Chinese men are daily smokers whereas less than 5% of women are (shouldn't be a stretch to believe that being a smoker makes respiratory diseases more difficult to overcome). [I also do not know if those mortality rates by age control for comorbidities; e.g. it may be that if you're an otherwise healthy 50 year old your mortality rate lowers to 0.2% rather than 0.4% because the 0.4% includes people that have heart issues, I don't believe the data discusses that]
So this should tell you that the nature of the population (demographics) as well as the overall general health of the public, and the standard of care matter very much. The deaths in the US are basically all tied to/at a nursing home (which checks all the boxes I mentioned above), the last place you'd want any kind of virus to go through.
Lastly, a few cases have shown where the individual had no known contact with anyone recently traveling from China, etc; this tells me that there are likely many infected that not only don't develop the disease, but aren't affected at all. This is bad because it makes containment more difficult and spread more likely, but it also means that the denominator in the mortality calculations is much larger than we know.
If you look at how the CDC estimates flu deaths, since the flu is cyclical, they've developed models that *estimate* all of the numbers above, for the flu, based on the number of cases that we DO know about (and not everyone runs to the Dr when they get the flu).
Lastly, to highlight the dangerousness of doing simple division, thus far in CT alone [patch.com] there have been 58 deaths from the flu and 10286 positive tests - that's a 0.56% death rate.