1 hour ago, MartinRex007 said:

Well, don't they have worse health problems because of their age?

Even healthy older people generally have weaker immune systems. That's why they get a stronger influenza vaccine. They are also recommended to get the pneumonia vaccine.

Yes, in my 30 years in Public Health there are very few chronic or infectious diseases that don't increase with age! My wife and I get all relevant vaccines once we turned 60. Hope they get one soon for this bug!

 

Cheers

Stay safe everyone!

On ‎3‎/‎18‎/‎2020 at 3:52 PM, birdguy said:

80,000 Chinese out of a population of 1.5 billion and 7,000 Italians out of a population of 60 million doesn't sound that great to me.  Less than 0.001%.  More people get the flu every winter than that.  Granted coronavirus may be more dangerous than the flue, but all this panic and hype I think is over the top.  Not worth destroying national economies over.

Noel

 

Good luck to you Noel! If the apparent lack of concern your town is showing is wide spread, I admit I'm glad the Canada US border is closing though.

26 minutes ago, odourboy said:

And if I do get it I have a 90% chance or better of surviving it.  

Looking at the demographics of all the current deaths (n=112) in the United States older adults were twice as likely to have serious illness from the novel coronavirus and the fatal cases in the US appear to reflect that. The majority of people who have died were in their 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. The youngest were in their early or mid-50s. So given these numbers I think 90% is a little optimistic, lets hope you don't have to find out!

 

Cheers

Martin

Here's a great visual.
Explains exponential rates (i.e. why the situation superficially looks ok in most western countries right now) and why undertaking social distancing is important:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/corona-simulator/

 

Also, here's another visual as to why the UK government has appeared to be slow to act in bringing in restrictions of movement and why 'flattening the curve' is important:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nl6tTwxzCi8
 

(Apologies if either of these is a re-post)
 

I took a look at "FlightRadar a few moments ago and it seems that the skies are still full of humans travelling all over the world. No doubt the sea is still full of cruise ships doing the same. 

For those who are expert in these matters, or indeed still travelling around the world taking selfies, how can this reconcile with the worldwide border closures, banning of gatherings of more than a few together and travel bans? 

Edited March 19, 20206 yr by Reader

42 minutes ago, Reader said:

I took a look at "FlightRadar a few moments ago and it seems that the skies are still full of humans travelling all over the world. No doubt the sea is still full of cruise ships doing the same. 

For those who are expert in these matters, or indeed still travelling around the world taking selfies, how can this reconcile with the worldwide border closures, banning of gatherings of more than a few together and travel bans? 

I suppose that there are many explanations 

First one is inertia, for the ships in particular. 

Then not all the borders are  closed and the quarantines are not absolute. In France, we only need to credibly justify the need to get out of our home and then travel. Some important countries have not yet enforced a national quarantine/total closure of borders like Great Britain or the US for instance.

Zoom in at Frankfurt or Paris CDG for instance the traffic is very light and mostly domestic.

 

Edited March 19, 20206 yr by domkle

40 minutes ago, Reader said:

I took a look at "FlightRadar a few moments ago and it seems that the skies are still full of humans travelling all over the world. No doubt the sea is still full of cruise ships doing the same. 

For those who are expert in these matters, or indeed still travelling around the world taking selfies, how can this reconcile with the worldwide border closures, banning of gatherings of more than a few together and travel bans? 

I think most of this flights/ships are Cargo, the rest are citizens being flown home from all over the world.

5 hours ago, Reader said:

I took a look at "FlightRadar a few moments ago and it seems that the skies are still full of humans travelling all over the world. No doubt the sea is still full of cruise ships doing the same. 

For those who are expert in these matters, or indeed still travelling around the world taking selfies, how can this reconcile with the worldwide border closures, banning of gatherings of more than a few together and travel bans? 

In the US, the airlines are cancelling a percentage, not their entire schedules. The flights you see are mostly 1-50% full. The 20-70% cuts announced by airlines like delta, united, jetblue, etc., are for april and may. The cancellations now are day by day. The trans-ocean flights are mostly gone. In the US, few people are wearing masks, though most events like concerts, are cancelled. Nobody shakes hands anymore. Businesses with walk in customers like fast food, dentists, insurance agents, etc. are closed to people walking in. 

OK, folks, I've removed some posts that were political and/or related to misinformation about remedies.  Information about potential vaccines, therapies etc should be left to official sources--on other media I've seen discussions of ridiculous "cures" like gargling with salt water, essential (snake) oils etc...we don't want that sort of misinformation breeding here.  So let's leave those topics to official sites and the usual internet gossip food fight mills.

 

I'm "self isolating" my bad back! It went out on Saturday and I've not felt mobile enough to get back to work since! 

Working in an Hospital I've no chance for a "self-isolation". For now things are pretty calm around here in my hospital... don't know about tomorrow, let's hope for the best. Stay safe, guys.

I'm not saying it's something to be ignored, but certainly the hype and panic are uncalled for.  Stop.  Take a deep breath.  Look a the numbers and analyze them viz-a-viz the entire populations.  Do the math.  The raw numbers seem scary.  The percentages put things in proper perspective.

I'm 86 years old.  We have about 24 cases in New Mexico. That leaves 1,999,976 who are suspects.  In my city we are over 200 miles from the closest case.  Yet we are acting like everyone we see when we are out and about is infected and should be avoided. I'm not staying at home.  I went to the supermarket.  I talked to the people in the checkout line.  Few of us are wearing masks.  Some of us might come down with it.  But not many overall.  Your chances of getting hit by a drunk or texting driver are greater than contracting the virus.

If I am one of the rare ones who does contract the virus I have a 95% or better chance of recovery.

Living inside your personal bubble inside your neighborhood bubble, inside your city bubble, inside your state or province bubble, inside your national bubble takes away a lot of your liberty.   That's not for me.  I'll hold on to my liberty as long as the law allows.

Noel

Listening to you, and seeing how few people are wearing masks, convinces me that the usa will be hit hard by this virus and the economy will be tanked for an extended period.

When I go back to work I'll find out what the company's standpoint is regarding if we have to close and how much we might get paid for how long if closure comes about.

One quite dangerous idea IMHO at least, that has been mentioned over here in the UK is extending the working hours of truck drivers - presumably so that more deliveries can get through to supermarkets etc thanks to panic buying..  NO! truckers work long enough hours as it is - the work breaks are tachograph enforced for a reason, and we don't want them falling asleep at the wheel of a 40 ton articulated truck (semi in the USA). What should happen is more drivers to be made available to make any deliveries within the current working practice. 

A surgical or dust mask isn't the golden ticket to avoiding a virus... 

https://www.livescience.com/face-mask-new-coronavirus.html