Corona Virus, general conversation

for your reading pleasure, the overly broad definition of 'essential'
https://www.cisa.gov/publication/guidance-essential-critical-infrastructure-workforce

btw, i know a bunch of dudes who actually got letters to carry with them, one for travel and the other to buy gas. so if they decide to crack down, some are way more essential than others.
I've got one of those letters. By essential, I'm in the financial institution category working at a credit card processor. Working from home though like a lot of us.
 
I received a letter today to cover me for both Nevada and California under current definitions. I've been doing nothing but going to and from work anyway and that won't be changing. I've got about another week (minus using my 5 gallon can) before I'll need to make a stop for gas. Everything has been fine for us so far, but all it takes is one case and our whole facility will close until we are clear. I think temperature checks are starting first thing tomorrow morning and will continue daily... might get interesting. Currently policy is 2 weeks paid sick leave if diagnosed.
 
The lack of a united message by the leadership from Washington DC is disturbing. The lack of care by so many in the country is scary. The over use of hyperbole in the news is frustrating. The sheer greed from Wall Street is destroying peoples retirement. Still not enough tests for everyone that needs one, or needs to be tested( we need to be testing all healthcare workers, police, fire, EMS, transportation/shipping/delivery, military, teachers, political leaders, grocery store workers, food production workers).

Yes this pandemic seems like a really bad trip. Much of the country is still employed. Many companies are covering much to all of the their employees salaries/wages in businesses that have been ordered closed. Money is being spent, goods are being shipped. People/companies with 3d printers are making masks and face shields, other people are sewing face masks, not to profit, but for doing the right thing.

Now a politician has said seniors should be will to bear the risks of this virus for their grandkids.

There is a lot of good being done by ordinary people, we need to be focusing on that also.

For some of us, staying home is the only thing we can do.
 
I have compromised immune system from chemo treatments which I just finished March 3rd of this year. I'm more worried about the flu than this virus. We have more people in this country walking around with the flu than this virus.
I wouldn't say "the lack of united message by the leadership from Washington DC is disturbing." I really do think this leader is doing the best he can what was dealt to him by China. China didn't inform the world of there blunder until months later, then lied about the severity of this virus & illness count behind it, matter of fact they censored there staff from saying any thing about it. If anything we all should be piss'd at China for disrupting the entire world & it's economy.
You have many companies like Ford, 3M, GE ramping production of mask, ventilators & other sophisticated air pumps needed for critically ill coronavirus patients. You also have polls showing high approval ratings for President Trump on how he's handling this crisis. They also been testing with success on chloroquine, a drug used to treat malaria, azithromycin, hydroxychloroquine achieved a 100 percent success rate in preventing hospitalization for 500 coronavirus patients using a combination of three different drugs.
I'm a proud Christian man who teaches adult Bible study group @ our church I don not use profane language hardly but you have politicians & the media using this crisis as a tool to politicize things & to scare people into political gain for the election year. I hate this sh*t, the drama, chaos how a politic party & the media has changed this virus into an actual political disease & it is spreading far more faster than the virus is. For what?...…….. among certain politicians & news networks who are looking for another way to expel this current President Trump from winning another election...….how sick to put politics in front of the health & well being of American citizens to win a election all because of those who can not handle a 2016 election loss. F"ing sicking I say, almost makes me ashamed to be a American.
 
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Very good video explanation below of how coronoviruses act and react.

Hopefully this will spread the word more than just watching TV news or reading extremist websites from one 'side' or the other. Both the 'right' and 'left' are having a field day with this to push their own agendas.

How about we just all work towards flattening the curve and slowing the spread way down so our health system and other supports can handle this thing more appropriately.

I especially appreciate how well this vid explains flattening the curve and shows how much more contagious a coronavirus is compared to the flu.




Stay safe, stay clean, stay positive!
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I have compromised immune system from chemo treatments which I just finished March 3rd of this year. I'm more worried about the flu than this virus. We have more people in this country walking around with the flu than this virus.

You've likely been vaccinated for many different strains of the Flu and be exposed many times before over the course of your lifetime. You have never been vaccinated in any way against the current pandemic, that has shown a very high mortality rate amongst older men with comprised immune systems. I think you need to rethink your position.

Also, let's leave the political opinion out of this, please.
 
Trump, No I haven't vaccinated for many different strains of the Flu and be exposed many times before over the course of your lifetime. I actually took my 1st flu shot & pneumonia shot ever when I started my chemo treatments. I have disagree on re-thinking my position. Sorry if you think I was political. I was simply stating IMO that the hysteria & the drama behind the crisis that some think this is not being handle correctly.
 
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GREAT EXPLANATION......

Here’s a good explanation about the COVID-19 virus that I copied.....From an immunologist at Johns Hopkins University...

Feeling confused as to why Coronavirus is a bigger deal than Seasonal flu? Here it is in a nutshell. I hope this helps. Feel free to share this to others who don’t understand...

It has to do with RNA sequencing.... I.e. genetics.

Seasonal flu is an “all human virus”. The DNA/RNA chains that make up the virus are recognized by the human immune system. This means that your body has some immunity to it before it comes around each year... you get immunity two ways...through exposure to a virus, or by getting a flu shot.

Novel viruses, come from ANIMALS....the WHO (World Health Organization) tracks novel viruses in animals, (sometimes for years watching for mutations). Usually these viruses only transfer from animal to animal (pigs in the case of H1N1) (birds in the case of the Spanish flu). But once one of these animal viruses mutates, and starts to transfer from animals to humans... then it’s a problem. Why? Because we have no natural or acquired immunity. The RNA sequencing of the genes inside the virus isn’t human, and the human immune system doesn’t recognize it so, we can’t fight it off.

Now sometimes, the mutation only allows transfer from animal to human. For years it’s only transmission is from an infected animal to a human, before it finally mutates so that it can now transfer human to human. Once that happens, we have a new contagion phase. And depending on the fashion of this new mutation, that’s what decides how contagious, or how deadly it’s gonna be.

H1N1 was deadly, but it did not mutate in a way that was as deadly as the Spanish flu. It’s RNA was slower to mutate and it attacked its host differently too.

Fast forward.

Now, here comes this Coronavirus... it existed in animals only, for nobody knows how long...but one day, at an animal market, in Wuhan China in December 2019, it mutated and made the jump from ANIMAL TO PEOPLE. At first, only animals could give it to a person... But here is the scary part.... in just TWO WEEKS it mutated AGAIN and gained the ability to jump from human to human. Scientists call this quick ability, “slippery”

This Coronavirus, not being in any form a “human” virus (whereas we would all have some natural or acquired immunity), took off like a rocket!! And this was because humans have no known immunity...doctors have no known medicines for it.

And it just so happens that this particular mutated animal virus, changed itself in such a way that it causes great damage to human lungs.

That’s why Coronavirus is different from seasonal flu, or H1N1 or any other type of influenza.... this one is slippery AF. And it’s a lung eater...And, it’s already mutated AGAIN, so that we now have two strains to deal with, strain s, and strain L....which makes it twice as hard to develop a vaccine.

We really have no tools in our shed, with this. History has shown that fast and immediate closings of public places has helped in the past pandemics. Philadelphia and Baltimore were reluctant to close events in 1918 and they were the hardest hit in the US during the Spanish Flu.

Factoid: Henry VIII stayed in his room and allowed no one near him, till the Black Plague passed...(honestly...I understand him so much better now). Just like us, he had no tools in his shed, except social isolation...

And let me end by saying....right now it’s hitting older folks harder... but this genome is so slippery...if it mutates again (and it will). Who is to say, what it will do next.

Be smart folks... acting like you’re unafraid is so not sexy right now, and frankly stupid and selfish.

#flattenthecurve. Stay home folks... and share this to those that just are not catching on.
 
Fired the lumber plant back up today. Employee participation is on a voluntary basis, those that don’t feel comfortable or have weaken immune systems can request furlough with full unemployment compensation. About 2/3 of our guys and gals showed up this morning.

We have a list of procedures and guidelines that must be adhered to in order to continue operations. All employees are thermal scanned to insure they don’t come in with a temperature. Employees calling in sick or leaving because of feeling ill have to be tested and cleared for CV-19 or wait until the two week quarantine period expires for reinstatement. No gathering of employees during break...6’ separation or isolate in their cars at break. We implemented rotating break times between the various production lines to limit the amount of folks off at one time. Strict adherence to hand washing...I’m a nursemaid now...and separation distant. We have a couple guys that are close talkers and touchers...after the 2nd warning I told them either back off or go home. Truck drivers must stay in their trucks for loading or unloading, not that we got any today. Gloves at all time plus we have nitrile gloves for people using the common computer stations and other IT units. We also have a couple volunteers that are the hygiene crew and will spend their days cleaning and disinfecting all common areas, computer stations, shared tools and what not.

This will only last as long as we can receive lumber or until we get shut down. Already had an inspector from the Dept of Health check out our compliance (we did good) and had a State cop checking out to see if we were permitted to be running. All employees have a copy of the right to work sheet with them in case there is a shelter in place order and they get pulled over by the rossers. Gonna do this hour by hour, day by day and see what happens.
 
It appears the state did not lose my wife test report. Her sample has not been processed, after 10 days.

An article on The Atlantic included the following:

Her patient got tested on March 12, and is still waiting for results. “My patient’s test was sent from Baltimore to a lab in Utah, then due to a reagent shortage [a substance needed to process the tests] sent from Utah to Arizona, Arizona back to a lab in North Carolina,” she said. This is a mirror of the dysfunction and delays surrounding the country’s testing crisis, a major factor hamstringing the fight against the virus.
 
I know what you mean by thermal scan but my mind went immediately to this.
:aliens
 
The world just keeps getting crazier and crazier . . .

Brazilian drug gangs are taking coronavirus prevention measures into their own hands.

Gangsters in Rio de Janeiro’s City of God — a sprawling complex of slums made famous in a 2002 movie by the same name — blared a message to
residents instituting a curfew to curb the spread of the virus

“We’re imposing a curfew because nobody is taking this seriously,” said the message, according to Rio’s Extra newspaper.

“Whoever is in the street screwing around or going for a walk will receive a corrective and serve as an example. Better to stay home doing nothing. The message has been given.”

At least 2,201 people have been infected across Brazil, with 46 related deaths, according to the Health Ministry.
 
I didn't think this belonged in the humor thread. It's not really all that funny.

cartoon.gif


Just a reminder that a lot of people who just get up and go to their jobs everyday are pretty heroic.
 
The coronavirus appears to be mutating pretty rapidly.

Scientists in Iceland found 40 mutations of the coronavirus among people with the deadly bug in the country — and that seven infections came from people who attended the same soccer match in the UK, according to a report.

The researchers discovered the mutations — or small changes in the genome of the virus — by analyzing swabs of COVID-19 patients in the
country, where nearly 648 cases had been reported as of Tuesday afternoon, according to the Iceland outlet Information

Health authorities, along with biopharmaceutical firm deCODE Genetics, tested 9,768 people, including those who had already been diagnosed,
people with symptoms and high-risk populations.

Some 5,000 people who did not show any symptoms agreed to participate — and 48 came back with positive results for the virus.

The results ultimately helped deCODE Genetics determine how the rampant virus entered Iceland in the first place.

“Some came from Austria,” Kári Stefánsson, director of the company, told the outlet, according to a translation by the Daily Mail

“There is another type from people who were infected in Italy. And there is a third type of virus found in people infected in England. Seven people had attended a football match in England.”

The study has yet to be formally reviewed by other scientists.

But Allan Randrup Thomsen, a virologist with the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at the University of Copenhagen, told the Iceland outlet that the findings “make good sense.”

“It is interesting with the 40 specific variants that fall into three clusters that can be traced back to specific sources of infection,” the professor said. “Coronavirus is known as a virus that can mutate reasonably violently. We have seen reports of variants from China already. That way, it fits well with what one expects.”

A previous study conducted in China and published early this month indicates that two separate types of the novel coronavirus — one more
aggressive than the other — had been infecting people since the start of the outbreak.

Over time, it’s likely that the new virus will become more contagious, but the variants that cause severe symptoms may die out, Dr. Derek
Gatherer, an infectious disease specialist at Lancaster University, told the Mail.

That process, he said, “may take a couple of years.”
 
Grant Cunningham is a pistolsmith (some consider him the finest Colt Python smith still practicing) and firearms trainer. A small excerpt from his latest blog:

Vacation Retreat?

The concept of the second home as a bugout retreat has been very popular in recent years. The idea is to buy a vacation home and visit it frequently. This allows for maintenance and rotation of the survival supplies kept there, but it also supposedly gets the neighbors used to seeing you. This, the proponents believe, will make you “one of the locals”, and in difficult times ensures that they’ll accept you as one of their own.

Being a rural dweller myself, I’ve never believed that to be true — any more than I believe locals would welcome people camping in their forests and poaching their deer. As it happens, my skepticism has been validated by the current coronavirus panic.


Maybe It Isn’t Such A Good Idea

Reports are coming in from far away places like Scotland, and chatter from the coastal communities here in my own state of Oregon. People who own vacation homes have been encouraged (or, in some cases, ordered) to leave and go back where they came from.

The general feeling in these smaller municipalities is that rural areas — which are the most popular for retreat homes — have very few resources to take care of affected locals, let alone the tourists and vacation home owners who visit for a few weeks out of the year.

When something bad happens, they want those scarce resources to be spent on the people who live there and make the community what it is.

When there isn’t enough to go around, rationing will happen, and people tend to want to see rations go to their friends and neighbors first.

Despite the predictions of retreat protagonists, the full-time residents of these areas most definitely do not consider part-time residents to be “their own kind”. In fact, the part-timers appear to be about as welcome as carpetbaggers in the postbellum South.
 
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