Conoravirus ...

[Tigger]

Elizabeth has three harp students at UBC--Skype lessons are now the rule. When it comes time for their recitals, she and one other faculty member may be the only ones in the audience.

[Panope]

Myself, my wife and daughter have all been at home on lockdown for the past 6 days. We all have had some mild cold/flu symptoms. Kiddo is pretty well over it, Laura is doing fine, and I am on high alert because I seem to get pneumonia easily and frequently. So far we are breathing fine.

The governor as shut down all schools for 6 weeks. My wife's job is 99% work from home so it is business as usual for her. When (if) I recover, I'll likely stay home until this whole thing runs its course.

Steve

[BeauV]

Here's an interesting scientific study on how long the coronavirus (CoV-19) lasts on various surfaces and my take on it.

The #coronavirus can last a long time after an infected person coughs or touches something. Here are some numbers:
4 hours on a copper surface
24 hours on cardboard
13 hours on Steel (half life)
16 hours on plastic(half life)
Days on some surfaces at certain temps and humidity

This means the only safe way to deal with it is to wash surfaces with something that will kill it: alcohol, peroxide, bleach. Also, if a sick person packs your groceries or delivers a package, the virus can live on the packaging and migrate to your hands. This means you need to wipe off or dispose of all packaging, especially groceries, once you get home or leave them for many days without touching them.

ARTICLE HERE

[BeauV]

For the first time, someone has created a synthetic antibody that might kill the coronavirus (CoV-19). This is BIG NEWS as up to now it wasn't obvious that this was possible. We still don't know how long naturally generated antibodies will last in a person. For example, natural antibodies to the types of coronavirus which cause the common cold fade away after a few months. That's the reason we catch a common cold every year. We don't retain immunity.

The scientific article is HERE. It is in peer review and is expected to be released in Nature once it passes. These folks have built synthetic antibodies for MERS and SARS1 (CoV-19 is also SARS2).

The article with background on the people and organization is HERE.

[Ajax]

Yeesh. Steve, stay isolated and beef up on your Centrum Silver.

Yes Beau, that's right. Ordering from Amazon or having your groceries delivered doesn't rule out the possibility of transmission. Also, the study indicated that the virus can survive in airborne droplets for 3 hours. Don't go traipsing through anyone's sneeze vapors...

I really worried that I had my tin foil hat screwed on too tight a couple weeks ago when I insisted that we stock up. I'll never doubt myself again. People are losing their shit over what is essentially a forced, 2-week vacation. Fighting in the stores, hoarding and other bad behavior. My final purchase was to exchange two 20lb bottles of propane at Home Despot yesterday. Lines snaked through the store as people cleaned out the cleaning supplies. Rationed to 2 items per customer.

I haven't even made a dent in my food supply. Lord knows that I have enough yard, house and vehicle work to keep me occupied for several weeks. I won't be going stir-crazy.
We also started our veg garden indoors a couple of weeks ago. We're just about ready to transplant this stuff into our raised beds outside. We're already growing fresh lettuce and spinach.

[Jamie]

Lots of people have made human anti-bodies - just maybe not these specific anti-bodies. The anti-bodies fade away when they reach exhaustion, but will ramp again when faced with high enough levels of receptor. There’s lots of complicated science around enough receptor levels to ramp vs kill and persistence and there are different pathways where you can impact the affinity, avidity and persistence (sensitivity, strength and longevity). These are living medicines, so a year later you can have - we have - patients that still have detectable levels of the anti-bodies in their blood that we built.

These are heavily genetically modified and humanized mice who have historically been cured of many diseases in many studies. Mouse data is a nice indicator, but positive results in these fancy mice is the easy part. Tox studies are what kill 99% of potential immuno therapies.

The comments around work on tumors - no one has done that outside of blood cancers yet - but coming soon. I think someone will have something in the next 5 years.

Anyway, I only understand the hand-puppets version. I’m just the finance guy.


We just moved, and I can’t believe how much food we have. Bags of rice, spam,kimchee ...etc.... TP might be the constraint.

[SemiSalt]

Here's an interesting scientific study on how long the coronavirus (CoV-19) lasts on various surfaces and my take on it.

The #coronavirus can last a long time after an infected person coughs or touches something. Here are some numbers:
4 hours on a copper surface
24 hours on cardboard
13 hours on Steel (half life)
16 hours on plastic(half life)
Days on some surfaces at certain temps and humidity

This means the only safe way to deal with it is to wash surfaces with something that will kill it: alcohol, peroxide, bleach. Also, if a sick person packs your groceries or delivers a package, the virus can live on the packaging and migrate to your hands. This means you need to wipe off or dispose of all packaging, especially groceries, once you get home or leave them for many days without touching them.

ARTICLE HERE

My wife wears nitrile gloves to the grocery store. She tells me that some of the checkout staff has been wearing gloves since before Carona.

[BeauV]

Here's an interesting scientific study on how long the coronavirus (CoV-19) lasts on various surfaces and my take on it.

The #coronavirus can last a long time after an infected person coughs or touches something. Here are some numbers:
4 hours on a copper surface
24 hours on cardboard
13 hours on Steel (half life)
16 hours on plastic(half life)
Days on some surfaces at certain temps and humidity

This means the only safe way to deal with it is to wash surfaces with something that will kill it: alcohol, peroxide, bleach. Also, if a sick person packs your groceries or delivers a package, the virus can live on the packaging and migrate to your hands. This means you need to wipe off or dispose of all packaging, especially groceries, once you get home or leave them for many days without touching them.

ARTICLE HERE

My wife wears nitrile gloves to the grocery store. She tells me that some of the checkout staff has been wearing gloves since before Carona.

Yes, a lot of the folks around here wear gloves in the store check-out line. I asked a young lady we know why she did it: "I kept getting colds and the flu until I started doing this. Now, I don't ever have any desire to touch my face and I don't get sick." That was before COVID-19.

[Ajax]

It's because people pick at disgusting parts of their body, then touch the touch screens and point of sale devices.

A UK study of McDonald's self serve kiosks reported that 100% of them tested positive for fecal coliform bacteria.

[BeauV]

Jamie, got it. Yes, I should be more clear: these are the first of probably many folks who have made and will make anti-bodies for this version of the coronavirus that I've found any reference to in the literature.

I get it, that anti-bodies get used up by attaching themselves to the virus. What isn't clear is why we humans don't appear to be able to make anti-bodies to the common cold coronavirus when it appears each year in the fall and winter. It seems that our internal system responds too slowly in manufacturing them, when they bump into them again. Maybe these synthetic anti-bodies can kick start things.

[BeauV]

There is a fascinating graph of all the cases in Singapore HERE

[Olaf Hart]

Contact tracing like that graph is the traditional public health response to an outbreak, it’s informative but unlikely to be useful here.

The reason this thing was always going to run once we knew about person to person infection is simple, it’s a”cold” virus, so it’s very contagious.

That and a long prodromal period make it impossible to control by contact tracing.

It’s likely the true case numbers are several orders of magnitude greater than the dots on the graph...

[Ajax]

One of my close co-workers reported having a fever today.
That means he was incubating and spreading his filth at least Thursday and Friday.

Now, I have to sanitize the network lab when I go in tomorrow. I will kick him solidly in the balls when this is over.

[Jamie]

Ugh.... lucky you. That sucks. Sorry to hear that.

Best stay home next week

[LarryHoward]

Contact tracing like that graph is the traditional public health response to an outbreak, it’s informative but unlikely to be useful here.

The reason this thing was always going to run once we knew about person to person infection is simple, it’s a”cold” virus, so it’s very contagious.

That and a long prodromal period make it impossible to control by contact tracing.

It’s likely the true case numbers are several orders of magnitude greater than the dots on the graph...

Which would also argue that the case fatality rate is much lower than the percentages being waved around by the “we are all gonna die” crowd. Getting tired of seeing “the US will see 6% of the population die from this.”

Don’t get me wrong. This is serious and more than a few people will die and 2020 could well stack up to another 1918. We are preparing to go to telecommuting and looking at what we can do with our blue collar folks who can’t telecommute. Hopefully, we’ll get some implementing guidance on how the extended SL and FMLA will flow down.

[Jamie]

I'd say we don't know what the death rate really is.

China data is bad and still disproportionate in the data set. I'm told the data from before the change in officials in WuHan is underreported by up to to 3x; some of it malfeasance, some of it just chaos. The data from the other cities also looks funny. I'd look to countries like Italy for a better idea of Corona. But it looks like overall we may have dodged a bullet in that the lethality of Corona is not so bad overall. That said, it's no fun to be a statistic.

Taiwan, Singapore and HKG haven't completely forgotten the lessons from SARS. I can still remember sitting at a stop light while convoys of city busses with police escort moved the patients between hospitals. There was a big push to improve infection control in the hospitals and improve the capabilities of the local clinics.

What is interesting is that after the biggest market drop in like 30 years, there was also the biggest gain ever on Friday. If this gets into the 100k plus cases, as it seems likely to do, since we in the US are much less...eh....compliant, that might be a proverbial dead cat(pangolin?) bounce when we get an idea of how big this is going to be.

[IrieMon]

Here's some info on potential vaccine.... still about a year away (my nephew is a virologist - PhD in "Infectious Diseases".... quite the fun guy at parties He also agrees with the one-year timeframe)

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/20 ... red-monda/

He also doesn't believe the warm weather will cause a wholesale slowdown in the spread, but the jury is still out:

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/coronavirus-w ... 23936.html

[SemiSalt]

A lower mortality rate due to adding "silent" cases to the denominator is small comfort. If your cohort has a mortality rate of 5% of known cases, then your risk once your case becomes known is...

[Tim Ford]

Our experience thus far has been surreal...Ibsen could not write this sh*t. Details to emerge once we get a little farther along.

Real question is: where is our own public health honcho, Mr. Moe Alpha/Benno V.H.?

[Ajax]

Benno is traveling. He'll be back soon.

[LarryHoward]

Benno is traveling. He'll be back soon.

Once they finish the body cavity search and nasal swab, that is.

[kimbottles]

Benno is traveling. He'll be back soon.

Once they finish the body cavity search and nasal swab, that is.

Lucky Benno.....hope he gets a gentle examiner.....

Good friends brought me a jigsaw puzzle to occupy my time....

56BC596A-B0D8-492E-BAFD-77D1C9D06E76.jpeg

6A9780CC-99EA-44BC-A131-DD42BC75FC66.jpeg

3A8CD1CC-5B9E-466B-BDB1-0E943C7E6C9B.jpeg

[Tim Ford]

Interesting page here:

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus

espec. with regard to the doubling rates. Looks like China and S. Korea have figured something out.

this is interesting and not that far from home with regard to our fun times

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/ ... son-130739

[Slick470]

Ok, Tim... you've got me on the edge of my seat with the hints. I hope all is well.

[BeauV]

OK, Kim, now do the puzzle with all the pieces upside down. That'll keep you busy for a while.

[Ajax]

Basically what I'm hearing now, is that we're 10-14 days behind Italy and that we will see an large, abrupt spike in cases and hospitals will be overwhelmed. Like, people-dying-in-the-corridors overwhelmed. I really, really hope this isn't the case.

I really have to give our governor props. His updates are articulate, thorough, calmly delivered. He is not blowing sunshine up anyone's skirt, nor is he advising panic. The governor has issued orders preventing evictions, utility shut offs and all sorts of protective measures for people. He has directed our health services to investigate re-opening shuttered hospitals which will provide 6,000 more beds. He has activated our reserve medical corps (which I had no idea even existed). If you are a licensed practitioner out of state, you will be allowed to serve in the corps. If you are a retired practitioner with an expired Maryland license, you will be allowed to serve in the corps. Nat. Guard has been called up to deliver food and supplies to isolated, vulnerable populations and the medical personnel will help with testing and in the hospitals.

I keep telling myself "work just one more day before calling out from work, just one more day." Anything to preserve that precious leave balance. I think it's time to pull the ejection handle.

[Tigger]

Things one learns ... the word quarantine comes from the Italian 'quaranta', or ... 40 ... as that was the number of days ships were required to stay at anchor in Venice to prevent the spread of the Black Plague.

More interesting history here:

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/histor ... 8By2L0fcKI

[JoeP]

All Peace Corps people are being recalled back to the US, my nephew who is a hydrologist in Panama among them.

[Jamie]

Meanwhile in Floriduh...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/photos-fro ... 1584352801

[H B]

It's because people pick at disgusting parts of their body, then touch the touch screens and point of sale devices.

A UK study of McDonald's self serve kiosks reported that 100% of them tested positive for fecal coliform bacteria.

Which is exactly why when I do visit these places for the occasional need for a double cheeseburger, I go to the counter and order it.