gbear

Anyone tried to shop today? We are tryung to figure out if lines as crazy as Friday. We are also weighing the risk of going out now versus needing stuff in a week when stores maybe even harder to access, and their inventory may be depleted.

Wish I thought we were at the spike. I dont think we are near the top yet. I think we are experiencing exponential growth in the problem. A lot of people still dont see it as that big a deal, because nobody in their imediate circle has suffered for it yet.

Sister in law in Washington said they ran out of masks on Mon. On Tues, through Thurs, they used the ones they could get from vets and dentists. She saw a patient Monday that had the worst cough she has seen. By Thursday, 4 people in her office were out sick. She closed her office on Friday. Her descriptions of the conditions are terrifying, and she says they arent getting tests or ways to treat patients with what they think is coronavirus. She is hearing from patients whom she can't help or see with other conditions. She says they are already rationing care, making decisions on who can be treated based on things like age and pre existing conditions. She has been making phone calls at every free moment to try and convince others outside her Washington area they need to treat this as the most serious community health situation she has ever seen. She realized how serious she thinks it is when she realized treating this will end her current medical practice she spent 18 years cultivating and then realized that meant little to her in light of what she is seeing.

I took out/downloaded the Swiss family Robinson audio book from our library for my teens to listen. I am hoping they like it enough to buy me a few hours free of complaints.

From Washington state Dr., closed practice to all but wellness visits, has intubated patients she can't get tested, has many other patients w other life threatening conditions she can't see, and she is so worried she might bring it to her family that she is no longer going home. She told my wife and I to pull our kids from all activities for a few months. We trust her, and will probably follow her advice. She says it is everywhere in the U.S. now, and the refusal to test any not connected to known cases is just a way to keep from testing. She says worse than anything she has seen reported from Italy. She says doctors dont want to go to hospitals. She says we will look back in a few years and think this was pretty bad, but a lot of us wont be here to think it. She also says tests aren't coming soon because there isn't enough of at least one of the reagents needed. I think she said there wasnt enough liquid nitrogen, but I might have misheard which component is scarce. She says what she sees in the news drastically understates what they are experiencing. It was a sobering conversation.

We have liquor too. We have to with a 14, 13, 9 and 4 year old special needs kids. Some days are just like that. I just hope none of us gets sick for a few months because I am not thinking the doctor's office or hospital is anywhere we will want to go.

I see your two toddlers and raise you 2 teens. I hear about the toilet paper shortages, and think that is just today's story. Wait till parents start running out of alcohol.

It doesn't help Ovi catch Gretzky...

I was wondering in trepidation what would happen if it got bad enough in the US, could we have a medical draft of nurses and doctors or anyone who has ever been certified to man improvised sick buildings? I would hate it as the thought of my wife being drafted and leaving me with 4 kids is terrifying. Seriously, how bad would it have to get here before we started entertaining such out of tbe box approaches? Is tbe reason tbis seems so far fetched because we can intuitively understand the need to band together to fight a human threat but not a biological one?

Looking at the worldometer link from a few pages back, it mentioned doubling of patients every 7.4 days. That was before interventions to try and minimize spread like Israel, South Korea and China have done. Note, the U.S. is still not doing those things either. Also, I note the post a couple up pointing out we doubled faster than that from March 7 - 13 ignores the increase, even if pitiful, in number of tests performed. One thing that keeps striking me about numbers quoted on mortality rates is the denominator used. So often, the denominator used is the total of infected patients. We know this is a bad number, especially here in the U.S. where we aren't testing much at all. However, what gets me about the number is many of these patients haven't recovered, so they may still die. Yet if we really want to panic, we can look at only the resolved cases. In the U.S., we have had 31 deaths and 15 recovered out of 1015 cases. I am not saying a 2/3 mortality rate is a more accurate number because I don't think it is. I just also think the 3.1% rate may be a best case for us right now.

Pcs,that puts the number of tests we are doing to know the scope of the problem in stark contrast to,the rest of the world. Sure, we have it under control, right...?

I love my four kids, but a two week stay-cation for schooling could be miserable. What's more, we might be able to get 4 of them hooked up to different electronics for schooling, but maintaining the spacing they will need and our sanity for weeks...

A friend of mine asked what I thought was a good question, "Are the mortality rates linked to percentage of the population that smokes, either currently or for a long time in the past?" Given the known risk factors, it seems a plausible explanation for why some countries have higher mortality rates. I would think smoking would cause one's lungs to be at risk for further respiratory problems,

Larry, you were asking how effective the counter measures in Wuhan were. The paper bcl05 linked answered: "The effective reproductive number dropped from 3.86 (95% credible interval 3.74 to 3.97) before interventions to 0.32 (0.28 to 0.37) post interventions. The interventions were estimated to prevent 94.5% (93.7 to 95.2%) infections till February 18" So it looks like the efforts really could have made it so they would see 90% less than we are likely to see here. Granted, that also assumes nothing we do moves the needle on transmission. To be fair, I can only imagine the outrage if we went as far as China went. Also, the disease is no longer isolated in the U.S. now with it being in 30 states and D.C. I think the window for us to be able to contain the virus like was done in Wuhan has passed. I do think other areas are managing the situation as aggressively as China is. From a friend in Israel, I hear they have quarantined areas and are tracking every case. It is to the point where she will not travel from Israel to the U.S. for a conference because she doesn't think she could get back into Israel after coming here.

I hope that is either 2,500 kits to be used as templates for more kits to be created or a data slide (as in it is really 2,500,000).

I am a serious late-comer to the show, but 5 episodes in, I am really digging "Breaking Bad."

Dog, I am torn btw the laughing reaction and the sad one. So I just went with a heart. Lol Don't worry. What goes down will rise again...someday. I keep debating moving more of my money out of stocks, but then I remember how well efforts at market timing usually work. Still I bet you wish you had the advice I have my dad when he inherited from his mom, invest equal amounts over atleast a 4 month period to cushion against any outlier/short term bad timing.

I going to go out on a limb without looking it up and bet DHS Secretary Chad Wolf is not a medical doctor...

To be really grossed out about our local unpreparedness, went to our daughter's elementary school and noticed there was no soap in bathroom. When I questioned it, I was told they cant keep it stocked in any of the bathrooms because kids just waste it. No wonder our kids have been sicker this year. Now put this in perspective of an impending coronavirus. Soap and water are critical to preventing the spread of viruses, and here we arent even allowing our snotty nosed kids to wash their hands well. I leave out countless other occasions we would want our kids washing their hands throughout the day. I just look at the spread through our community as a given when it gets here. I am just grossed out and put it in this thread because I doubt our elementary school is the only one making this dumb choice.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/coronavirus-china-live-updates/2020/02/07/0a31cae6-4933-11ea-9164-d3154ad8a5cd_story.html ● Chinese health officials say they confirmed more than 31,000 cases of the coronavirus, more than 4,800 of them considered severe. The death toll surpassed 630, with fatalities almost entirely confined to China. ● An additional 41 people on board the Diamond Princess cruise liner, which has been quarantined in Japan, have tested positive for coronavirus, bringing the total to 61. ● Another cruise ship, the Westerdam, is at sea, and its crew is unsure where to go next, after being denied entry to the Philippines, Japan and South Korea. Passengers blame an ill-advised port stop in Hong Kong, where the boat took on many new passengers. ● Two charter flights carrying about 300 Americans out of the virus-hit city of Wuhan are expected to arrive in the United States on Friday. A flight carrying mainly Canadian evacuees landed in Ontario on Friday morning. From further down in the posting, it talks about India. I noticed that while there are only 3 patients testing positive right now, they are in 3 different geographical locations. I can't think that is good from a containment perspective. This whole thing feels like watching a global car crash in slow motion. I can't make myself look away...

I would accept 1 first rounder for him. He is gone next year, and we aren't going anywhere tis year. Build for the future. I wish our front office good luck getting multiple firsts. Granted, the teams that are interested are playoff teams, so their picks will be low...

While we toss out the unemployment numbers as sign number 1 and stock prices as sign number 2 of how great our economy is doing, I worry they are masking a real weakness, From the jobs report article, "Diane Swonk, chief economist at the accounting firm Grant Thornton, noted that manufacturing contracted for the fifth straight month in December, according to the closely watched Institute for Supply Management survey. That marks the index’s lowest level since June 2009. Retail, meanwhile, is still up against razor-thin margins and bricks-and-mortar store closures. Pier 1 Imports announced it planned to close up to 450 stores after a 13 percent drop in quarterly sales. Macy’s will close 29 stores in the next few weeks." I combine that with the high numbers of bankruptcies in the American farming sector, and I do not get the happy picture being portrayed in the media. Are these not concerning for most Americans? I left off the slow wage growth and difficulties hiring due to a lack of people taking the jobs currently vacant. I may sound like Chicken Little saying the sky is falling, but I worry we may be in for an economic shock of a correction.

There is also the potential pointed out in the Sci Fi book series, The Three Body Problem. In it, the author points out the dark forest possibility. In the series, there is an alien populace with space traveling tech. However, they do not broadcast anything out of fear that doing so will announce their presence to other more powerful aliens. Announcing their presence is akin to announcing a potential threat, either now or down the road. Thus a logical thing for the other aliens to do is destroy the potential threat. In his series, a world with just enough tech to start exploring space is akin to a baby walking through a dark forest. Just because we see and hear nothing does not mean there is nothing to be seen or heard. It may mean they do not wish to be exposed. We make many assumptions about who may hear our broadcasts into space and what their reactions will be.

Beautiful views from the back porch of the cabin we stayed at for Christmas.

The team on the floor at the end of the game looked like they had no legs. Beal and Rui's shots fell short. To me that screams tired legs no longer getting the lift the rest of the body is used to when shooting. Still, the game was exciting. The team is not hopelessly terrible. They just always seem to be missing the extra gear to push across the finish.