Coronavirus - worldwide spread and control

Thanks for that!

I thought recipes using vodka had already been thoroughly debunked? Maybe some folks had not gotten the message yet.

(Edit - forgot to comment on the witch hazel and tea tree oil recipe - that one I had not seen before, very weird)

I did not see them testing a recipe that uses 91% isopropyl alcohol mixed with aloe vera gel. Does that recipe also not work?

If that's a bad recipe then I want to delete my post that has a link to that recipe! I don't want to spread incorrect info.

I know nothing about chemistry! I know that ethanol and isopropyl alcohol are different but I don't know (can't remember) details.

I searched a bit and found this article (only skimmed it) which says that if the alcohol is strong enough then either should work in a homemade sanitizer recipe? Which contradicts the video, but I don't know anything about that website (Hunker) or how reliable it is. Maybe the separation of the homemade version is a problem?

I have not tried to make sanitizer using online recipes (we had some before all the hoarding started) so I have no personal experience.

Again, I do know that washing hands with soap and water is best!

PS. Every time you write "meths" my brain reads it as "meth" which is a completely different thing

FINAL EDIT - Just to be safe I decided to remove the link to the homemade hand sanitizer recipe that I posted earlier.

 

Watching talk about the Olympic games on tv this morning. Surely they will cancel the Olympic games this year? 200 countries attending! Last thing we need is an outbreak there and everyone returning home to all these countries with the virus.

 

Merged thread
A few hours ago, the WHO formally designated the novel coronavirus a pandemic. For a full account of this declaration, see WHO declares coronavirus a pandemic, citing ‘alarming levels of spread and … alarming levels of inaction’ .

For many people, it is a bit confusing why the coronavirus, which so far has infected far fewer people the annual seasonal flu and caused far fewer deaths, is being taken so much more seriously than the flu. For example, here in the US, the CDC estimates that for this year's partial flu season, running from October 1, 2019, through February 29, 2020, there have been between 34 and 49 million cases of the flu, and between 20 and 50 thousands flu deaths. When contrasted with the current number coronavirus cases, which is 1275 as of this writing, and the number of coronavirus deaths, which is 37, there seems to be no comparison; there are about 40 thousand times as many flu cases, and a thousand times as many flu deaths. Why is the coronavirus causing so much more concern than the flu?

The answer is manifold. First, so much about the coronavirus is still unknown, or only tentatively known. An excellent survey of these unknowns can be found in the article The unknowns of the coronavirus nearing a pandemic.

Second, the long-term responses of countries around the world is unknown and hard to predict. The way countries respond to this pandemic will have a huge effect on how severe it becomes.

Third, there is no vaccine for the novel coronavirus, and large-scale production of such a vaccine is at least 12 to 18 months away.

In light of this situation, exponential growth of the number of cases of the virus can be expected either until the virus is brought under control by massive governmental efforts and possibly the release of a vaccine, or until a large proportion of the population has been infected. The latter case, which is near the worst case on the spectrum, is what happened in the 1918 influenza pandemic (the Spanish flu), which infected about half a billion people, or about 27% of the world's population, and which caused an estimated 50 million deaths. It is useful to remember that the current world population is about four times the size of the 1918 population. Also, travel both internationally and within countries is far more prevalent today for the general population than it was in 1918. It is for this reason that German Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned that up to 70% of the country's population could contract the coronavirus; similar percentages could well apply in large numbers of countries.

How does exponential growth work, specifically in the case of viral spreading, what factors influence it, and what are the upper and lower bounds predicted by such growth? Also, what affects the rate of exponential growth? I have found the following video to be extremely helpful in answering these questions. Only a grade-school knowledge of math is required to understand it; no knowledge of exponential growth is required. Here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kas0tIxDvrg

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I have found that the information gleaned from this video can be combined with current coronavirus statistics to get a good idea of where things are headed in the near future. The sources I have found useful for coronavirus statistics are Coronavirus Update (Live), which presents worldwide coronavirus data updated in real time, as well as broken down by country; Coronavirus Cases: Statistics and Charts, which gives a more detailed breakdown on the worldwide situation; and the individual country pages referenced in the first link in this paragraph, such as United States Coronavirus, which supplies detailed statistics for a given country. (Only a mall number of countries have their own pages.) On the US page, in figures such as "Total Coronavirus Cases in the United States" and "Daily New Cases in the United States", the shape of an exponential curve can clearly be seen, especially in the last week. This exponential growth can most easily be seen in countries with larger numbers of cases that have reliable reporting. It's not clear how reliable the reporting from China is.

I am posting this not in any attempt to create alarm, but rather to give people time to make plans for dealing with this virus, especially if governmental efforts fall short (as the WHO announcement indicated it believed was happening). We really don't know for sure what the effect of the coronavirus on PWME will be, but by all indications, we can expect to be on the more severe end of the range of reactions. Fortunately, a lot of us who are most at risk have been effectively self-quarantining for quite a while (though not by choice), and many of us have also learned how to avoid infection-spreading contacts, which can be quite dangerous for us just on a normal level. Combining these practices with frequent and thorough hand washing can go a long way toward minimizing our chances of acquiring this virus, which has a high mortality rate among people in poor health. Although no coronavirus cases have been identified within a hundred miles of me, they will come, and I have been preparing myself by assuming that everyone I come in contact with has the virus. I have found this to be very helpful in developing habits that will prove useful when the virus eventually makes its way down to this part of Oregon.

Good luck to everyone in dealing with this situation!

 

Is this the correct thread to speculate or ask how we are likely to fare after catching this bug? Seems like a different topic, but I don’t know where to post the question/topic.

 

My hands are already starting feel overly dried out.

 

This interactive map allows you to see cases on a country by country basis:

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

 

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That's a great video!

I've also run across references to a concept originating in the 19th century called "Farr's Law," which asserts that the upslope of an epidemic's curve is mirrored in shape and duration by its downslope. This seems to hold true even in "epidemics" that are not spread by pathogens, such as the "epidemic" of deaths due to opioid overdose. https://time.com/5604693/drug-overdose-deaths-declining/

[ ETA: I'm not sure that this would apply to a pandemic, though, where you would probably have geographically isolated curves. ]
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I'd like to see a new thread created where we can post and track over time cases of Covid-19 that occur in any forum members who would like to share their experience, as it's likely at least some of us are going to contract this virus at some point. I guess in the members only section?

Also, as this is a relatively exceptional situation, any new guidance on posting treatments that help alleviate symptoms while staying within the rules of no medical advice? For example, if you believe vitamin C, or whatever, is helping to reduce symptoms, I think it's ok to report your personal experience, but not ok to actively encourage others to do the treatment? Is that right? Thanks.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1237934525281259521

 

Salut ,
Nous aussi, avec la pandémie annoncée par l'OMS, Covid-19 arrive au Canada. Pour le moment, les mesures prises par les gouvernements sont rassurantes. Et ce qui me touche, c'est que je ressens entre les gens un niveau de solidarité qui me réchauffe le cœur. J'ai vécu cela dans différentes épreuves de ma vie. Et là, ce côté réapparaît. Je suis également touché par cette force des personnes qui se soutiennent mutuellement. Je suis avec toi!

 

I use something called Dermol 500, which has been a game changer – combining it with twice-daily Omega 3 means my hands look completely normal. Even with application of emollients every time I washed them, they used to look as if I'd just finished a three-month stint on a fishing boat in the North Sea.

 

This news is, perhaps, encouraging:
https://twitter.com/user/status/1237746362122452993

 

A link to a letter in Nature:
“
Remdesivir and chloroquine effectively inhibit the recently emerged novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in vitro”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41422-020-0282-0

 

Somewhere on one of these threads someone posted a link to a list of the percentages of suffersr having different syptms

eg (made up figs for example)
dry cough 80%
runny nose 10%
etc etc etc

I cant find it & am tryin to proint out to someone that runny nose & lack of breathing difficltise doesn't prove it ISNT corona. Am just too ill now, (too much readin/postin( to scan search for it. Wondered if anyone had a link to it bookmarked?

 

Could it be this one? I’ve seen this in a few places. It also seems to be in the Sun newspaper.

 

The coronavirus advisor to the UK is apparently a psychologist that also heads the Behavioural Insights team.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1237694665824047111


Maybe that explains the incompetence in the UK's response.