Coronavirus Diaries

And this is just the beginning.

I hope my post didn't seem whiny because I feel really fortunate to be free to stay home to teach without losing my income. I'm mad as **** -- per usual-- about my healthcare situation and that of others who are under-insured or uninsured, but I cannot imagine losing my income during this time. I consider myself very fortunate--my son's business is threatened and I'm concerned about what will happen to my daughter who really should stay home (but it will be without pay) for two weeks.

Very few people can give up half a month's income and be ok. This country is about to find out what poverty is and how many people are affected...

You right, and nothing about what you said struck me as "whiny." This is serious stuff.

yeh, so far what Ive heard from almost everyone isnt whiny. I see that even the lefties and righties seem to be on the same page. Only one or two are in total denial or think this is a Chinese plot(even though there is firm genetic evidence on the entire "family" of covids.)
Were all in this together .

Tuesday—

All local restaurants and bars are closed (in theory, by mandate today). I can imagine them going under after two weeks of little or less revenue (again, guessing they can do take-out business.)

My son begged me to come over and get food from his pantry. He’s only 12 minutes away from me, but he seems very concerned traffic will be somehow impeded by ... curfews, officers, something... within days.

Did my normal shopping at yet a third grocery store. No tp to be found, no eggs. Otherwise, I got everything I wanted.
People seemed calm.

I feel calm.

I am curious why people are hoarding eggs (in fact none of this hoarding behavior makes any sense).

The farms are still work, chickens are still laying eggs (as chickens do). Truckers will still be driving trucks. These products are going to keep coming as always. Maybe canned goods being in short supply might make a little sense?

This is an epidemic where people will get sick and die. But, the government isn't going to collapse over this.

I don't know about where you are, the traffic is eerily light.

On NPR today, the news commentator said (completely straight) "Now for Sports: nothing happened."

That made me chuckle.

My brother is a nurse - I just found out his floor is going to be set up for the coronovirus. He is already working longer hours.

Trying times, and the path ahead isn't yet clear. There are lots of published statistics about the incidence and fatalities associated with the coronavirus in countries around the world. However it's hard to discern patterns in them, due (I believe) mostly to wide variations in both the stage of the infection's spread, and likely large variations in the fraction of the cases actually detected and reported in each.

Mortality due a disease is usually an after-the-fact finding based on the ratio of deaths to the sum of deaths and full recoveries. Hard to know that while the disease is spreading and data on outcomes lags. Most attention now is on the ratio of deaths to cases reported. However using reported death and recovery data for China, where the infection is most mature, one gets a mortality rate of 4.5%, which is higher than the current 4,0% deaths to cases rate for that country - and both are a good deal higher than the 1% -2% rates widely noted for the disease. The strange high communicability of the infection and, frequent absence of symptoms among many infected, may well raise both the measured case and recovery rates as time passes, erasing these differences.

China's case load appears to have leveled off at about 56 total cases per million population, and, more significantly, 6.4 active cases per million population. For the U.S & Canada the latter number is about 13.2, while for European countries it is between ~97 (France and Germany) to above 250 (Italy, Switzerland and Norway) ! Hard to figure what this may eventually reveal. However it does indicate the likely reason for Trumps' termination of flights from Europe and Trudeau's even more draconian measures (Though Canada's southern border is likely more easily managed than ours.)

One bit of good news is that both the rate of increase and number of new cases reported has been decreasing in both America and most European countries for the last few days - following patterns already established in China & S. Korea.

Can you link to this? I don't believe this is true.

This is the source I have been using for up-to-date statistics. The rate of new cases and the rate of deaths are still growing exponentially and doubling every 3-4 days.

The data I see shows no indication the infection rate is slowing in the US. There were 18 new deaths, and 983 new cases yesterday. I do suspect and hope that the social distancing measures (closing schools, restaurants and events and scaring people into compliance) will start showing results soon.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

I just checked: The average incubation period is about 12 days, meaning that the social distancing we have all been doing will take 12 days to start working.

To see the data to which I referred you would have to have recorded the daily totals from the same site you addressed and compared the results. That's what I did and what I wrote is entirely accurate.

Can you please link to that?

I gave the link to my source for data.

Ugh. ❤️ for brother.

Linkat, is your brother expressing frustration that people aren't taking this seriously?

My brother is suiting up and working in a corona virus ward in upstate New York (which is getting hit hard already). I made some dumbass comment making light of the situation. He nearly bit my head off.

He is on the front lines. He sees what is about to happen. They are now drafting everyone with medical skills, doctors nurses medics, internals... to try to have enough people to deal with the impending wave of sick people.

So let me speak for my brother (and probably Linkat's brother). This is a serious health crisis; literally life and death. Do not make light of this.

If you are minimizing the situation so you can go to a cafe when doctors and nurses are having to literally put their lives on the line to deal with this crises... maybe you can see understand the frustration that nurses and other public health professionals are having.

The site I linked to has fully sourced up-to-date data. It is correlated for each day and even plotted for you on either a linear or logarithmic scale. I don't even know what it means that you "recorded daily totals". From where? What is your source?

I think you are full of ****. I don't believe there is any real data showing that the rate of infection in the US is slowing down at all.

What is worse is that you are minimizing this public health crisis. Right now we need everyone to take this very seriously.

Again, as I wrote above, I used the same source.

Here is the latest graph of cases up until yesterday. do you see any evidence of a slowdown in this? If you think that there is a "better" graph that supports you claim, please post it. This is a pretty standard curve for unabated exponential growth. The number is doubling every 3 - 4 days.

This is important. If you are minimizing the extent of the problem, you are hurting the effort to get people to take social distancing seriously.

The State of New York is now preparing to bring retired Nurses and Doctors back into service.

https://apps.health.ny.gov/pubpal/builder/survey/retired-health-professional?fbclid=IwAR19J0d0lJuq0vJhOjEDAN5vUuH9aNPI-jyVI7uld5B3thEFVonaqeIomtM

I haven't been able to talk with him - I just texted him a bit ago for two reasons to see how he is holding up and I just found out about my friend's son and he is at that hospital.

My friend's son had a kidney transplant this past year so any exposure to this virus could be very serious. He just had tonsillitis - last night his fever spiked so his mom brought him to the ER. They wouldn't even let her in. She had to drop him with the medical staff and leave.

He has been given an IV and is feeling better. I asked my brother if he could check up on him for her.

No one can visit due to the virus. They are also testing him for the virus to ensure he does not have it.

And you evidently have a serious problem in reading comprehension.