Shocking news last night that UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been moved to Intensive Care as he fights the Coronavirus.
Boris is such an energetic, ebullient man, with a baby on the way. Here's wishing him a speedy recovery.
Let's continue the conversation.
Boris is such an energetic, ebullient man, with a baby on the way. Here's wishing him a speedy recovery.
Let's continue the conversation.
Comments
We now know definitively that the virus lives on hard plastic for 72 hours. Our phones and tabs are hard plastic. We are now leaving our phones at home and only using them at certain areas in our home. We disinfect them twice daily. We also use one door and go straight to the sink to wash up before touching anything. This has helped conserve disinfectant. Everyone probably knows this but just thought I would put it out just in case.
I've ended up with dry, scaly hands from washing and disinfecting them so much.
Dishwashing soap is another culprit, since we are doing so much more cooking and baking that we had been.
It's horrible, apparently tigers at the New York zoo have it too. The Bronx zoo if I recall correctly. 😢😿😿😿😿
I'm wandering around the house singing the Lili von Schtupp song from "Blazing Saddles" with innumerable variations on what I'm so tired of. Washing my hands is up near the top.
Yesterday I made chicken noodle soup, stromboli (pizza baked in bread) and decorated sugar cookies for 3 of our single friends, both old and young who will be spending Easter alone. It was something to do since I’m not working. We have been social distancing and I do walk once a day, but we did go drop them off. I don’t have millions to give but I can do a small thing to brighten someone’s day. And I don’t think anyone will attack me, but just in case: my feeling was, I likely have better hand hygiene than the people from which you are ordering takeout.
Swampwoman, we do see plenty of people wearing masks here in Miami Dade County. I haven’t been wearing one on my walks (although I do have an N95 given to me by a family member who had a few from a construction project) because I give each person such a wide berth.
I do hope each country and state can keep their leadership safe and intact until all this is over. If you don’t like them, I hope you are able to vote them out once this is all over, but I don’t wish anymore chaos on anyone at this time.
hydroxychloroquine may be contraindicated for people with the G6PD deficiency. And by contraindicated, I mean very dangerous.
https://covid19.healthdata.org/
Now Florida’s peak is projected to be April 21’st, moved up from May.
I need to print that out except I didn't replace my printer. I want to compare the projected with the actual. I shall delegate you to be the archivist on account of I'm incompetent (grin). Just kidding! (Well, not on the incompetent part.)
I saw the site updated too. Our state is coming up fast and furious. sigh. Some of the fabric I ordered for making masks will arrive after the peak but if this is something we will always be worried about, I guess they will needed sooner or later...
Dry skin: suggestion of Neutrogena Hydro Boost with hyaluronic acid (which holds onto water).
They make a hand lotion version. The face version is good too (better than my expensive Cl*n*q** and much cheaper.
They do seem to update this frequently so I should take screenshots just to see predicted versus actual. The whole idea of flattening the curve is to give us time, correct? They know that eventually we will nearly all be exposed, they’re just trying to spread it out over time with these measures so that as new cases are getting more severe, the past cases are recovering and opening up hospital beds, etc.
Sorry you did state earlier about the point in spreading out the deaths and use of equipment. What do you mean that our actions moved everything forward? Are you saying our actions moved our peak up from May to April? Or that our actions pushed our overall death rate forward into the future?
That is my point of confusion.
That's what I thought! It doesn't seem to be working out that way per their model.
I will note that young gang members are having shootouts in daylight here. Two groups completely missed each other yesterday and shot a 5-year-old girl in the head while she was in a car seat while her Momma was driving. They also wounded the 4-year-old sister. I weep for the death of that small child.
I wish that was the case in our house lol my 20-something daughter hasn't left the house (has hardly even left her bedroom) in three weeks and I swear I'm washing more of her clothes than I do normally! At least the weather is finally decent enough to get it out on the line to dry which is a bonus.
Swampwoman,
Sorry you did state earlier about the point in spreading out the deaths and use of equipment. What do you mean that our actions moved everything forward? Are you saying our actions moved our peak up from May to April? Or that our actions pushed our overall death rate forward into the future?
MiamiVice, I just made my coffee, so I may be more incoherent than usual. I *thought* that the social distancing would flatten the curve and move it out in time. According to the latest projection, it doesn't seem to be working that way.
I don't think that most of the people on the left coast or in the news media realized that the state has effectively been closed since (our) spring break. The announcement made no difference except closing some businesses that had previously been able to operate.
I note that our RV parks are FULL. This is when the snowbirds fly north for the summer, but they ain't budgin'. I don't mind them; they've been here all winter so are not spreading new infections.
I saw that your chimera comment was related to the virus, but then I started looking into the whole concept of chimera (where one person can possess the DNA of someone else) and now I’m thinking I should write a mystery/thriller novel about a twin who absorbed her/his fraternal twin in the womb or perhaps someone who got a bone marrow transplant and now carries the DNA of a another person. Wonder if I could hammer it out while we are all locked in a state of isolation?
/Well, I'd buy it.
Lol! I’m dying. Perhaps we should write it as a team effort.
Nitric oxide, a colorless gas that can improve the delivery of oxygen to injured tissues saved many newborn babies with heart defects and was even named “molecule of the year” in 1992 in the journal Science.
“It’s a pretty remarkable drug,” said Dr. Lorenzo Berra, the critical-care specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital who is leading the new trial. “It has a risk profile that is minimal.”
The international study taking place in Massachusetts, Alabama, Louisiana, Sweden and Austria tests inhaled nitric oxide in patients with mild to moderate cases of the coronavirus and is delivered through a CPAP breathing machine for 20-30 minutes twice a day for two weeks.
“We have tremendous confidence this therapy will alter the devastating effects of COVID-19 but we must test it. If results show promise, and since this gas is already FDA approved, widespread use could begin immediately,” said Dr. Keith Scott, principal investigator of the trial taking place at Louisiana State University Health in Shreveport, La.
The trial will also test if the treatment could cut down on the number of patients who need a ventilator to breathe, as they are currently in short supply across the nation.
“Nitric oxide is one of possibly many therapeutic agents that may show it will help mitigate COVID-19 severe lung injury. It is not a silver bullet but it’s our hope it would have a positive affect on the on reducing the progression of a disease that devastates the lungs,” said Scott.
A proposed second trial that is being reviewed would enroll health care workers who are routinely exposed to coronavirus patients. Under that potential study, staff would inhale a high dose of the drug for 10 to 15 minutes at the start and end of every shift.
Other coronavirus treatments continue to advance as the number of cases in the United States tops 330,000.
A combination of hydroxychloroquine and zinc is showing promise at a California Hospital, Mend Urgent Care CEO Dr. Anthony Cardillo said in an interview with ABC7 Los Angeles.
“Every patient I have prescribed it to has been very, very ill and within eight to 12 hours, they were basically symptom-free,” said Cardillo.
Remdesivir, another experimental drug that has worked against other coronaviruses has patients rushing to join studies in hospitals that opened in the last few weeks.
The drug is given intravenously and could prevent infection and reduce the severity of symptoms when given early enough in the course of illness.
https://www.bostonherald.com/2020/04/06/massachusetts-general-hospital-among-first-to-test-nitric-oxide-on-pandemic-patients/
Note: The hydroxychloroquine is *very* low cost and should be prescribed BEFORE hours from death on the ventilator when there is permanent lung and heart damage from the virus.
I took a look at the site provided by Miamivice.
I can see that the projections for France are not good, we are not at the peak yet, and the site considers it was april, 1st.
So you should take it with a huge grain of salt.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8192533/NHS-doctor-shares-breathing-technique-coronavirus-patients.html
...The Open PPE Project is trying to ensure availability of N95 respirators, which are in short supply as the coronavirus besets the United States, by creating an American supply chain that would ensure the country can manufacture them in a global crisis, now or in the future.
The group's efforts have run up against serious regulatory barriers, however, as a federal bureaucracy struggling amid the epidemic lacks the resources to bring such a project online. One of the project's leads, Matt Parlmer, told the Washington Free Beacon that his project cannot even begin, as federal inspectors remain under-resourced and stuck at home under a federal ban on nonessential travel.
The barriers faced by the Open PPE Project and other nontraditional manufacturers looking to combat the pandemic offer a prime example of regulation standing in the way of a swift response to COVID-19. They also represent an opportunity for the White House, which has demonstrated a willingness to cut red tape aggressively.
Parlmer and the rest of the Open PPE team have been working since early March. They aim to domestically manufacture a variety of personal protective equipment, but will start with N95 respirators, which filter out very small particles and are widely used in hospitals throughout the country. The United States currently has just 10 percent of the masks the Department of Health and Human Services projects it will need. In New York state, currently the center of the coronavirus outbreak, medical professionals are going without these life-saving masks, leading to dangerous, even deadly, infections.
Almost from the beginning, however, Open PPE has run up against regulatory barriers. The National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH)—the subdivision of the CDC responsible for ensuring quality standards for N95 respirators—told the Open PPE Project that approval could take one-and-a-half to three months, a lifetime in pandemic terms.
In order to get production off the ground, Parlmer explained, NIOSH would need to certify that the masks his group produced are able to form a tight seal on the wearer's face and adequately filter particles. An examination by the National Personal Protective Technology Laboratory (NPPTL)—the sub-branch of NIOSH responsible for conducting such tests—would take time and energy the pandemic-slammed agency simply does not have.
This situation is complicated by the travel restrictions imposed on federal employees in mid-March limiting all but "mission-critical" travel. Running an N95 manufacturing facility would require an NPPTL official to conduct site inspection, which is impossible if he or she cannot travel. The CDC did not respond to a request for comment as to whether NIOSH employees have been exempted from the restrictions, but Parlmer was doubtful.
"If site examinations are a part of this process, and people can't leave the town that they live and work in, we're sort of at a standstill with this thing," Parlmer said.
Critical care and emergency medicine faculty at the LSU Health Shreveport Department of Medicine join the Department of Anesthesia at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the Division of Cardiology in the Department of Medicine at University of Alabama-Birmingham (UAB) as being among the first centers in the United States to enroll patients in an international study testing using inhaled nitric oxide to improve outcomes for COVID-19 patients with severely damaged lungs; using gas to effectively “kill” coronavirus in the lungs and improve delivery of oxygen to injured tissues.
“Inhaled nitric oxide had previously been suggested to decrease original SARS-CoV infectivity over a decade ago but its effect on SARS-CoV2 remains unknown. Moreover, research from LSU Health Shreveport has shown that nitric oxide is a strong protector against tissue hypoxia, which occurs during severe Covid-1 infection”, said Dr. Chris Kevil, vice chancellor for research at LSU Health Shreveport.
“This is a wonderful collaboration with two highly regarded institutions in the U.S. as well as the sites in Europe. We have tremendous confidence this therapy will alter the devastating effects of CoVID-19 but we must test it. If results show promise, and since this gas is already FDA approved, wide spread use could begin immediately,” shared Keith Scott, MD, MSc, FCCM, principal investigator for the nitric oxide clinical trial. “I am fortunate to have my esteemed colleague Steven Conrad, MD, PhD, MS, ME, MBA, MSST, MSC, working alongside me on this trial as he brings immense research experience and knowledge in working with critically ill patients.”
Nitric oxide has already been a miracle drug for newborns starved of oxygen by a heart defect due to the gas’s ability to relax blood vessels, which ultimately led to the resolution of erectile dysfunction as targeted by the drug Viagra. In 1992, the journal Science named nitric oxide "molecule of the year." In addition, in 1998, UCLA pharmacologist Louis J. Ignarro shared a Nobel Prize in medicine for uncovering nitric oxide's role as a "signaling molecule in the cardiovascular system.”
Unlike nitrous oxide (known as laughing gas), nitric oxide has an even brighter future as the colorless, odorless gas, inhaled through a mask or potentially through a small "flute," is now being tested as an experimental treatment for COVID-19. It may also prove helpful in protecting healthcare workers on the front line of the pandemic from getting sick.
Two items seen/heard on BBC in the small hours yesterday:
Radio 4:
In SW England, the hotspot is now in Gloucestershire, mainly because the big Spring race meeting at Cheltenham went ahead, before anyone realised that the virus can be airborne - all those yelling crowds, oh dear.
Many Irish racegoers come over specially and doubtless took the virus home.
Also, there are many holiday homes in the Cotswolds that have been occupied by those trying to get away from the crowds.
Perhaps not so easy to restrict access as it is to Devon & Cornwall.
BBC TV News 24:
Problems in Jerusalem - attempts to confine the Ultra Orthodox Jews are proving very difficult. Apparently, they resist the secular authorities at the best of times; now the police and army are being accused of being Nazis, when they attempt to enforce the law.
Previously, the daily toll of deaths in hospital led to misleading interpretations because of delays inherent in reporting. For instance a death happening late on a Friday evening can't be registered until the Register Office opens on Monday, so Mon's. figures could be inflated by all the weekend deaths. That's assuming, of course that the deaths were reported at the earliest opportunity, which they may not have been.
About 80% of the deaths happen in hospital, previously we had no idea what proportion took place at home or in care homes.
One of the counties in my state that has 80-something positive cases is talking about *requiring* people to shelter in place for another six to eight weeks. Nope. Not going to happen. They don't have enough police to enforce any such order.
I listened to the mayoral press briefing this morning from the nearest big city. On the whole, I thought "How is it even possible that the people at the presidential press briefings ask such stupid questions, while the press here makes at least a little bit of sense?" Then one of the television news stations started pressing the mayor to put a curfew into place because of the little girl being shot dead by thugs fighting. If they watched their own news station, they would know that that happened at @4:00 p.m., and nobody is going to put a curfew in place at 4 p.m. The mayor told him that there are over a million people in the area and we don't have enough jails or police to enforce it. That always seems to amaze people that you can wave that magic governmental order, but that doesn't mean anybody will abide by it.
In sheer numbers, the Hispanic population has the highest numbers of those testing positive (which includes black Hispanics, white Hispanics, and unknown race Hispanics at 6,032. In second place is unknown race at 5,990. Non-Hispanic whites and unknown other ethnicity whites are third at 3,056. Total (non-Hispanic) black cases are at 1,528. Again, over half of the cases are in three counties in south Florida.
In number of deaths in Florida, the white race came in number one. I suppose that this means the state is absolved of medical racism until it gets bad in some other Florida counties.
On March 1, the hospital census was 88% in Miami/Dade and Broward, now it's under 50% and they have to worry about laying off medical personnel. Since each area will peak and surge at a different time, they are not going to open up for nonessential operations at this time.
Since there are still some problems with online and over the phone unemployment applications, FedEx offices will print the applications on site, there will be a person passing them out to vehicles in the parking lot if necessary, the person will fill them out in their vehicle, they will pass them back to a collector who will put them in a box with all the others that were filled out during the day and ship them to Tallahassee.
The state is planning on doing neighborhood testing, symptomatic or not, so that they can get an idea of how much asymptomatic spread may be occurring.
They have the rapid testing machines and test installed at many large hospitals but their goal is for all of them to have this capability so that as few people will be exposed as possible.
If I've missed or am wrong on any point, MiamiVice, please feel free to correct me; SwampMan was trying to talk to me while I was writing it as the governor was speaking.
Not much I can add. Except that ,earlier in this post @Swampwoman had some credible comments.
Lockdown has brought out some weird rules in my home. Never ever thought that I would end up putting a sign up , on my refrigerator. After so much opening and shutting , I could see leftovers going off. Therefore the sign. Ask before you open ,if anyone else needs something from inside.
A friend recommended an online fruit and veg grocer, I never even knew she bought stuff that way. We are accustomed to buying from fresh markets. So, looks like I may have to use online stores. Not my cup of tea. But will try.
I have been paying extra attention to my back porch plants. A source of solace. Years ago I tried rocket and lettuce from seed, the rocket sprung, and the young lettuce got eaten by slugs. Now with all that's going on, all my seeds are going in the ground.
They should grow, I was too busy before, now I have packets of time.
Thank you so much for your kind words. We are so worried. Please be safe as well!
https://www.fox35orlando.com/news/florida-women-wearing-medical-scrubs-say-they-were-confronted-in-grocery-store
Two women who went grocery shopping in scrubs (they work at a hearing aid center) were threatened by another woman who claimed they were ‘spreading the virus.’ She even called the police on them.
Sigh. As if anyone in healthcare doesn’t already have it hard enough.
I feel bad that I'm not out supporting our local business like I used to, but I'm sittin' on my butt like everybody else and no prospects for work for at least 30 days. Maybe longer if the rumors are true.
So, do I spend $10 on tomatoes, or save it for something really important like tiny dark chocolate Easter bunnies with a salted caramel filling?
Until further notice, the days of the week are now called:
Thisday
Thatday
Otherday
Someday
Yesterday
Today
Nextday
Without the calendar function on my laptop, I would not know what day of the week it was as they all seem to blur together. I do remember the day that the lockdown started ...
Ontario has followed in the footsteps of NZ and issued an order that the Easter Bunny is permitted to deliver Easter eggs, chocolates and all other treats ... but may not do so in any parks or other public places!