Not real worried for me; very worried for some friends who live there. Especially since I haven’t heard from the one in two weeks now. I have a trip planned but not for two years.
At this time, there are more people killed in motor vehicle collisions that have been reported to have died from this outbreak. I’m far more likely to be killed or injured that way than from this virus. I’m not doing anything more than standard hygiene practices at this time, but those are also good against things like the common cold.
First, I would hardly call skiing inherently dangerous; yes, people get injured, & even occasionally die from those activities but we just had another doper break a foot missing a step in their house. If you’re new to the sport, take a lesson & new or experienced, ski/snowboard within your ability, ie. don’t do the double black diamond run if you a novice. Typical skiing injuries are things like a sprain/fracture. They can be treated at an urgent care facility & don’t even require an ER visit, let alone a hospital stay. I see no reason to not do them because of this.
As other have stated, antibiotics would be useless against a corona virus. Further, any doc giving you a prescription for one prophylacticallyshould probably have his or her license suspended because I don’t think they know what they’re dispensing prescriptions for & antibiotic overproscription is a real thing.
I’m not a prepper but it’s not a bad idea to have at least a couple of days worth of supplies in the event of a natural disaster. What are you going to do if an earthquake disrupts gas & water lines along with trashing the main road to/from your neighborhood?
Article on the novel coronavirus infections in Wuhan, from Eurosurveillance, which purports to be, “Europe’s journal on infectious disease surveillance, epidemiology, prevention and control.” Real-time tentative assessment of the epidemiological characteristics of novel coronavirus infections in Wuhan, China, as at 22 January 2020
Abstract: Information on reported cases strongly indicates human-to-human spread, and the most recent information is increasingly indicative of sustained human-to-human transmission. While the overall severity profile among cases may change as more mild cases are identified, we estimate a risk of fatality among hospitalised cases at 14% (95% confidence interval: 3.9–32%).
I think it’s worth your time. The authors claim uncertainty about whether this bug can be easily passed person-to-person, despite increasing evidence of multiple generation transmission in China. AIUI, the same was true of SARS communicability rates in Canada vs. China, despite the death toll in Canada.
Personally, I am not worried as yet, in the States about this bug. There is one confirmed case in Washington state, AFAIK, and one suspected case in College Station, Texas. WHO doesn’t think it’s a global emergency. Yet. China’s reaction to it, with using the army to quarantine 20+ million people in several major cities, allegedly cancelling Chinese New Year celebrations in Beijing (which I understand is like the US deciding to cancel the Super Bowl.), is much more concerning than the public facts as we know them. I don’t recall hearing about such public health measures since reading about the Spanish Flu epidemic.
Aside, there’s a certain irony in that China’s first BSL-4 containment lab was built in 2018. In Wuhan.
Anyway, I thought the article was interesting.
In North America, you are far more like to catch (and die from) influenza than this new bug. Yet, people procrastinate getting, or simply decline to get the influenza vaccine (NB - cost is not an issue at least in Canada where it is given for free at most pharmacies).
We had rounds this morning about the new virus in/from China and the bottom line is that, sure, we’ll be vigilant for it, but there is far more urgency (and likely benefit) in directing our efforts to get more people vaccinated against influenza. There were something like 3500 influenza deaths in Canada last year and over 60000 in the US. It is bizarre that people seem to panic about a new flu-like virus yet do nothing to protect themselves from the more common and readily acquired influenza virus.
ETA: I am in Toronto where we are very aware of SARS and potential ‘SARS’ yet still feel this way.
Remember when Ebola and Zika were supposed to kill all of us four years ago? People here were legitimately saying Zika was going to cancel the Brazilian 2016 Olympics.
When I said it would be a good idea to get a flu shot, I didn’t mean that in any sense related to this virus. I don’t know hardly anything about medicine. But I do know that a flu shot would be extremely unlikely to help anyone afflicted with this virus. I just meant to relay some advice that my doctor had given me. That is that a flu shot is a good idea for most everyone.
My intention was to start a discussion from which I might be able to glean some advice for things that I could do to help prepare should this problem continue to grow and spread.
I probably could have worded my OP much better and I apologize if I was responsible for any confusion.
I also want to thank all those people who tried to suggest some constructive advice people can use to help protect themselves. Thank you all very much.
And specifically, the Wuhan region and the other cities mentioned.
There’s a lot of talk on Facebook about the virus (or something very similar) being patented, so therefore this virus was made in a lab and is being leashed upon us like Captain Trips, to wipe out humanity. :smack: Yes, it’s patented due to intellectual property issues that go along with research, and don’t forget that some people have believed that (among others) AIDS and Ebola viruses were made in a lab, never mind the annual flu shot viral strain.
I’m personally not worried about myself here in the American Midwest.
I just heard on my local news that several Chinese students at a Wisconsin college are being monitored for fevers, etc., having just flown in from the Wuhan region. None so far have any symptoms.
And I agree that this person needs to stay in the hospital until s/he is deemed to no longer be contagious.
Lots of good advice here, particularly from KarlGauss who did battle against the SARS virus when it infected his patients and colleagues. He knows of what he speaks. I consider him a legit hero among physicians.
During the 2014-15 Ebola outbreak, one of my Facebook/IRL friends posted that her then-15-year-old daughter had come to her with tears in her eyes and said, “Mom, I’m scared.”
“Of what, honey?”
“I’m afraid we’re all going to die from Ebola.”
She flipped her laptop open and showed her daughter some stories which explained that it was not a threat to the overwhelming majority of people in the U.S., and that this had turned into a long conversation about AIDS, a disease that she herself first heard of at age 15, in the early 1980s, and that people were MUCH more frightened of AIDS, and rightfully so because we knew so little about it.
Further research indicated that it was not easily transmitted, and also not as new a disease as most people thought. My response to that post was “Give your daughter a great big hug for me, and tell her that we don’t have to worry about Ebola in this country.”
I personally believe that many of the Zika-exposed babies with microcephaly also had pesticide and other chemical exposures in utero, which doesn’t make their fate any less tragic.
During the SARS outbreak, I was working at the big hospital, and I remember having a conversation, along with another pharmacist, with a technician who asked if we thought SARS would be an issue in our region. We explained that in the area where SARS originated, people live much more closely with their livestock than farmers do here, and are much more likely to do their own butchering, in addition to the big open-air markets you see on TV and You Tube.
(You Tube didn’t exist at that time, but TV certainly did.)
I haven’t seen a good name yet. Unfortunately, that’ll probably mean it gets some stupid acronym that no one can remember the expansion of. But if we’re going to make something up, how about the Wuhan Wu.
Order them online from India? I don’t know if that’s possible, but my understanding is that antibiotics are much more easily available there than pretty much anywhere else.
I’m guessing that most people interested in these kinds of infections may have seen the film “Outbreak” (1995) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt00000114069
That film may be one of the best to deal with Ebola and similar outbreaks. It may exaggerate some of the events. But it is still worth seeing. The film is absolutely terrifying. So please be careful when watching it in front of children. For anyone who wants to know more about these kinds of outbreaks, please be sure you take the events with a grain of salt, but I believe it is worth watching this film to get some idea of what the worst case scenario might be.
Even here in the US there are many, many places to get flu shots at low or no cost - yet people won’t. I suspect even if you paid people to get them many would not.
I resisted the flu shot for many years because I worried that sometimes people get sick from an injection (notably from vaccinations). I had read that the way vaccinations work is that they actually give the subject a very small dose of the illness and are then able to give the subject immunity from that illness. Ultimately, my doctor had helped me with several serious matters and I decided to trust him. He advised me to get the flu shot and so I did.
I’d still like to know just how vaccinations work and what the percentages are. I mean, for a serious diseases:
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What percentage of people who do not get the vaccinations contract the disease?
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What percentage of people who get the vaccinations contract the disease?
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What percentage of people are actually worse off for having taken the vaccination? (meaning how many take the vaccine but still contract the disease)?
That varies from vaccine to vaccine and is different for different population groups and different vaccination patterns.
The flu shot does not use a live virus. The flu nasal vaccine does use a live weakened form of the virus.
I am a little confused as to what the difference is between #2 and #3. Both are asking “What percentage of people who get the vaccinations contract the disease?”
As a follow-up, how is one worse off if they contract the disease even though they have received a vaccination? That is, are you looking for instances of people getting sicker because they received a vaccination for the disease? I believe in most cases, even if one contracts a disease for which a vaccination has been given, they are less sick then they would have been had they not received a vaccination.
Now, there are instances where someone will have a adverse reaction to a vaccine. That is a very, very low occurrence, but it does happen. Statistically, I believe the vaccine is so much more likely to prevent you from serious illness or death than it will cause harm.
I never got the flu or anything else as an adult til I started getting the flu shot 4 years ago; then I got sick all the time. SO I am not getting the shot.
How much is being offered?