Dr. John Campbell, who seems to know what he’s talking about, recommends vitamin D. But even if you don’t believe in that, his videos are worth watching.
That sounds like a very bad idea. UK cases are currently 800 (per wikipedia) which is roughly where Italy was on Feb 28th - just two weeks ago. By that stage they’d already been trying to lock down Lombardy for four days, and a week later they quarantined the whole country. And this has yet to affect case growth rate - it’s still about 20% per day.
So in order to not be in the state Italy’s in right now by the end of this month, the UK needs to take stronger measures than Italy did, and earlier. Otherwise you’re going to have a huge systematic meltdown. Please don’t have a huge systematic meltdown! I have a vested interest in the health of the UK 'cos my elderly parents live there, so be safe 
There are reasons to take vitamin D for bone health (with calcium foods) and in Northern climes with less sun. But multivitamins usually have a good dose (800 units).
The Economist (Economist.com) has some great, detailed articles on coronavirus treatments and has just been updated. I think you get a few free reads if you don’t subscribe.
We need to be thinking for the long term. Remember that the 1918 flu actually went around three times before dying down and the third cycle was the deadliest.
#1) Increase testing-identify infected people ASAP and isolate. Worst case scenario is that you are isolating people that are not highly infective along with those who are.
#2) Flatten the curve. Give our healthcare systems and workers the best chance to treat people by spreading out cases over as long a time as possible. Let people know that social distancing is going to be necessary for a long time. Don’t expect everything to go back to normal in 2 weeks. We can’t afford a delayed peak; we need to spread out the cases.
#3) Work on a vaccine. We don’t know if people develop immunity or not and if so how long it lasts. There are cases in China of people clearing the virus then testing positive again. It is not known if this is early reinfection or if they were never fully cleared and the virus can bounce back from low levels. Either way, this virus is not going anywhere unless a critical mass of people are immune either by having had the virus or a vaccine. This is different than SARS, MERS or Ebola where people got sicker faster and it was easier to isolate people. It’s harder to isolate people who don’t feel seriously ill.
Just to clarify a point from above: when I say the third wave of the 1918 flu was the deadliest, I mean death rates as compared to cases. The second wave killed the most people overall, since that was when the most were infected and those who were hit in the first two waves were immune from the third wave so there were a much smaller number of people who got sick during that third wave.
That is not what he wrote and it is not true in any case.
145,810 confirmed infections
5,436 dead
72,531 recovered
In the US:
2,466 confirmed infections
50 dead
41 recovered
From the Trump Clusterfuck thread:
Good find, jasg; thanks!
We have a grocery delivery for tomorrow. It’ll be interesting to see which things we won’t get because they’re out of stock.
I went to the nearby Wegman’s to pick up one or two more things (including a bottle of wine for a recipe) and it was shocking. The produce bins were largely empty. No onions or bell peppers. Little fruit of any kind. They seemed to have bananas though.
It got worse. The frozen vegetable section had a few packs of sweet potatoes, butternut squash, and pearl onions. It was otherwise completely, utterly wiped out.
They actually had a decent bit of ground beef. I hadn’t been looking for that but i figured I’d grab it and make some spaghetti sauce… which meant i needed canned tomatoes.
That aisle was nearly empty too. The only canned tomatoes i could find were the gallon size. I found sauce, and a few cans of stewed.
The beer and wine section didn’t look too picked over which surprised me given how many people are joking that they stocked up on alcohol.
People are not going nuts over ice cream, to my surprise; that section was a little picked over but they still had a good selection.
I didn’t even look in the TP aisle!
As i checked out, i said to the cashier that i bet he was glad the day was nearly over (this was about 10:30 PM). He said it had been crazy but was even n worse Thursday.
It isn’t true - we know a bit. The Economist article goes into detail on treatments effective for the SARS coronavirus. But there are enormous gaps in our knowledge. DSeid spends most of the last three paragraphs outlining what we don’t really know.
I saw a newspaper article comparing two towns during an epidemic decades ago - one of which held a parade, one which cancelled it. The death rate was higher in the town which allowed the parade. The author drew the conclusion was parades and public gatherings are bad. It could be. But there are a thousand other things that could have made a difference too. In science and medicine, as in life, it is surprisingly easy to draw false conclusions.
A couple of articls discussing smoothing the spike / flattening the curve:
(apologies if these have already been mentioned).
The idea is that ultimately everyone who’s gonna get it, will get it, but if the transmission can be gotten to a lower pace, we’ll have fewer patients needing critical care and swamping hospitals at a time.
We’d rather have hospitals be very busy for 4 months, than utterly inundated for 4 weeks.
What I’m worried about is: all the drastic shutdowns happening right now will slow things, all right, but the shutdowns can’t last forever - and the minute things start trying to go back to normal, it’ll flare up again.
Spain is likely to be the next Italy.
Today’s figures show a 66% increase over the day before, and cases have been reliably doubling every two days for a couple of weeks now. If the data from Wuhan are a guide, it’s probably about ten days between strict measures being announced (as of today) and when they actually take effect. If the pattern holds, then Spain will be at 160,000 cases by the Tuesday after next
[Someone may have already posted this.]
German researchers have found that SARS-CoV-2 uses a protease (a type of enzyme) found on human cells to enter lung cells. Link to paper. There’s a drug, camostat mesilate, that’s known to inhibit this enzyme. So it’s a potential treatment for COVID-19. The drug is currently used for another medical purpose, but I imagine someone is doing some rapid testing to see if it’s effective against COVID-19.
Ah, to be able to reclaim that long-lost naive innocence of like… ten days ago. :rolleyes:
Active cases have been at a new all-time high for the past couple of days, and are fast approaching the number of cases with an outcome, after which there will be more cases active than have so far gone through the illness.
Also, belated thanks to whoever posted the article by Tomas Pueyo first, it’s been a real eye-opener; I’m not in a position of making influential decisions, but I’ve canceled all social engagements and will work exclusively from home for the next few weeks.
As far as I can tell, the powers that be know this, but are hoping it’ll do enough good to justify the pain in the end, even if it does happen that way.
My concern is public reaction if we have to shut everything down again. Will they go along the second time, the third? To an extent, they probably won’t have a choice, but having some kind of financial assurances in place and getting businesses, especially the big and high-profile ones (like sports leagues) on board will likely help, as well more clearly communicating that this might be necessary.
Israel very close to a vaccine because they can modify one they were working on.
Dude.
Um… that’s pretty much it.
Stay home, rest, plenty of fluids, OTC meds for fever and other symptom relief. That’s it.
If you have trouble breathing call for help.
A thread by former U.S Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, posted yesterday:
Yeesh.
With a huge side-helping of AVOID OTHER PEOPLE.