BBC: China pneumonia outbreak: COVID-19 Global Pandemic

[PeterMP]

1 hour ago, ClaytoAli said:

Dr. Marc Siegel said on Tuesday that he prefers constant hand sanitization and washing over wearing gloves for safety purposes during the coronavirus outbreak. 
 

"Gloves accumulate germs, gloves accumulate viruses," Siegel told "Fox & Friends," responding to a viewer's question about whether wearing gloves at the grocery store is necessary.

 

"You're going to not even realize when you touch something then you have it on the gloves, then you transfer it to your face, then you can get infected," he explained.

Siegel said that gloves are not necessarily the right answer.

"You can't change them enough to make a difference so I vote 'no' on that one. Yes, on the continued hand-washing."

 

https://www.foxnews.com/media/siegel-wearing-gloves-grocery-store-coronavirus

 

I saw a lady touching her  face with glove on in the grocery store yesterday.

 

I teach undergrad labs where people have to wear gloves, and it happens all the time even though they've gone through it for years as undergrad science based majors.

 

And if it isn't their face, it is their computer keyboard, cell phone, or goggles, which aren't really any better.

 

The default color of the glove we use are blue.  People will have gloves that have clearly started to turn another color, and they'll still be typing away on their computer key board.  You tell them, hey your gloves are turning brown (or green or yellow) and they should change their gloves and clean their keyboard.  Then 2 weeks later, it is the same thing.

 

**EDIT**

@No Excuses

And I should be clear, I'm not saying for sure that masks won't help, especially for this particular virus.  I'm saying the use of masks isn't a slam dunk, and it while it is easy to imagine scenarios where they do help, if you have any real experience with trying to get people to wear PPE, it isn't hard to imagine where they could actually be a negative.

 

Maybe overall they'd be beneficial.  But they might not be too.

Edited March 31, 2020 by PeterMP

[CousinsCowgirl84]

57 minutes ago, bcl05 said:

 

The bottom line is that we suck at this.  Some difference may be from testing differences (though testing in both Spain and Italy appears far more consistent and aggressive than here) and from reporting differences (I don't trust China's data at all), but mainly the fact that the US is full of idiots.  And led by a moron.

 

you should redo that graph as cases per million people. Completely different result.

 

Italy and spain have deaths/million of 200 and 170, while in the US it is just 10.   America has 330 million people while the entire EU has 400 million people. Seems illogical to say because there are more cases America is handling it poorly.

 

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

 

 

The ten number is rising though, and we are not sure where we are on the curve, but Italy and the US both had their first case around the same time.

 

my main point is the numbers aren’t as bad compared to row as that chart makes them out to be.

 

Of course, governor’s leadership is responsible if our numbers end up better, not trump.

 

Edited March 31, 2020 by CousinsCowgirl84

[TheGoodBits]

Gotta take my two year old daughter to the pediatrician this afternoon, she’s running a high fever (measured as high as 105 with an oral thermometer). Doesn’t seem highly responsive to Tylenol. She’s had a raspy croup-like cough for a couple days.
 

I mentioned a few weeks ago that my son had very similar symptoms one evening. A high fever and raspy cough. He’s also had a persistent off and on low grade fever since then, with the same cough. 
 

We've been literally nowhere in the past two weeks. She has nowhere she would have gotten a bug from other than my son, which again was two weeks ago. Anything else (flu?) have a two week incubation period? 
 

We apparently meet enough of the covid symptoms and risk factors to justify sticking us in the pediatrician’s covid tent outside their building. Which I mean, makes sense. But damn it I don’t want to take her to get exposed to that if she’s got something minor. 

Edited March 31, 2020 by skinsfan_1215

[Larry]

@skinsfan_1215 you got any drive-through testing places where you are?  

 

That sounds like the perfect use of those places.  The "I need to know if I've got it, but don't want to risk catching it if I don't" profile.

 

As to time periods, do not take me as any kind of authority, but the fuzzy impression I've got is that it looks like:

 

Day 0:  Infection

7-10 days later:  First symptoms.  

         (The person is contagious before then, but they don;t know how much before them)

10-14 days after symptoms:  No longer contagious.  

Edited March 31, 2020 by Larry

[TheGoodBits]

Just now, Larry said:

@skinsfan_1215 you got any drive-through testing places where you are?  

 

That sounds like the perfect use of those places.  The "I need to know if I've got it, but don't want to risk catching it if I don't" profile.

Virginia is still operating under strict guidelines for who gets a test. We aren’t eligible unless we develop enough respiratory distress to be admitted to the hospital. 

[FanboyOf91]

 

[spjunkies]

 

[FanboyOf91]

 

Anti-vaxers are gonna cause a third wave.

[FrFan]

1 hour ago, skinsfan_1215 said:

We apparently meet enough of the covid symptoms and risk factors to justify sticking us in the pediatrician’s covid tent outside their building. Which I mean, makes sense. But damn it I don’t want to take her to get exposed to that if she’s got something minor. 

I really hope they have a minor flu. Wishing them nothing but the very best.

Edited March 31, 2020 by FrFan

[CousinsCowgirl84]

4 minutes ago, FrFan said:

I really hope they have a minor flu. Wishing them nothing but the very best.

 
 

Probably not Covid but a high fever that has been going on for a while should bet checked anyway.

Edited March 31, 2020 by CousinsCowgirl84

[spjunkies]

 

[Cooked Crack]

 

[StillUnknown]

 

[Riggo-toni]

Right-wing evangelist Jonathan Shuttlesworth, a close friend of Rodney Howard-Browne, says he intends to hold a large Woodstock-like Christian gathering in defiance of stay-at-home orders.

 

Thinning the herd....

[Cooked Crack]

 

 

****, Trump.

[TheGoodBits]

2 hours ago, skinsfan_1215 said:

Gotta take my two year old daughter to the pediatrician this afternoon, she’s running a high fever (measured as high as 105 with an oral thermometer). Doesn’t seem highly responsive to Tylenol. She’s had a raspy croup-like cough for a couple days.
 

I mentioned a few weeks ago that my son had very similar symptoms one evening. A high fever and raspy cough. He’s also had a persistent off and on low grade fever since then, with the same cough. 
 

We've been literally nowhere in the past two weeks. She has nowhere she would have gotten a bug from other than my son, which again was two weeks ago. Anything else (flu?) have a two week incubation period? 
 

We apparently meet enough of the covid symptoms and risk factors to justify sticking us in the pediatrician’s covid tent outside their building. Which I mean, makes sense. But damn it I don’t want to take her to get exposed to that if she’s got something minor. 

update: doctor didn’t feel we needed a covid test. Her fever is responding a bit better to Tylenol now. Flu test was negative. Sent home and told to keep an eye on her. 

[mistertim]

11 minutes ago, skinsfan_1215 said:

update: doctor didn’t feel we needed a covid test. Her fever is responding a bit better to Tylenol now. Flu test was negative. Sent home and told to keep an eye on her. 

 

Good news that her fever is responding to Tylenol. Hope she gets better quickly. 

[Barry.Randolphe]

I hope the voters remember this in November.  I remember a senator talking directly about this issue during the hearings....and here we are. Those in the senate are gutless idiots to have let him off the hook.

[BleedBNG]

3 hours ago, skinsfan_1215 said:

Virginia is still operating under strict guidelines for who gets a test. We aren’t eligible unless we develop enough respiratory distress to be admitted to the hospital. 

 

BetterMed urgent care is offering tests by online appointments
https://www.bettermedcare.com/

[China]

An experimental peptide could block COVID-19

 

In hopes of developing a possible treatment for COVID-19, a team of MIT chemists has designed a drug candidate that they believe may block coronaviruses' ability to enter human cells. The potential drug is a short protein fragment, or peptide, that mimics a protein found on the surface of human cells.

 

The researchers have shown that their new peptide can bind to the viral protein that coronaviruses use to enter human cells, potentially disarming it.

 

"We have a lead compound that we really want to explore, because it does, in fact, interact with a viral protein in the way that we predicted it to interact, so it has a chance of inhibiting viral entry into a host cell," says Brad Pentelute, an MIT associate professor of chemistry, who is leading the research team.

 

Pentelute's lab began working on this project in early March, after the Cryo-EM structure of the coronavirus spike protein, along with the human cell receptor that it binds to, was published by a research group in China. 

 

In hopes of developing drugs that could block viral entry, Genwei Zhang, a postdoc in Pentelute's lab, performed computational simulations of the interactions between the ACE2 receptor and the receptor binding domain of the coronavirus spike protein. These simulations revealed the location where the receptor binding domain attaches to the ACE2 receptor—a stretch of the ACE2 protein that forms a structure called an alpha helix.

 

The MIT team then used peptide synthesis technology that Pentelute's lab has previously developed, to rapidly generate a 23-amino acid peptide with the same sequence as the alpha helix of the ACE2 receptor. 

 

Although MIT has been scaling back on-campus research since mid-March, Pentelute's lab was granted special permission allowing a small group of researchers to continue to work on this project. They are now developing about 100 different variants of the peptide in hopes of increasing its binding strength and making it more stable in the body.

 

One drawback of peptide drugs is that they typically can't be taken orally, so they would have to be either administered intravenously or injected under the skin. They would also need to be modified so that they can stay in the bloodstream long enough to be effective, which Pentelute's lab is also working on.

 

"It's hard to project how long it will take to have something we can test in patients, but my aim is to have something within a matter of weeks. If it turns out to be more challenging, it may take months," he says.

 

In the meantime, the researchers have already sent their original 23-amino acid peptide to a research lab at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai for testing in human cells and potentially in animal models of COVID-19 infection.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[FanboyOf91]

 

[China]

3 minutes ago, FanboyOf91 said:

This is not going to get it done, folks. We're back in the danger zone as far as testing is concerned.

 

 

 

[skinsmarydu]

11 minutes ago, Barry.Randolphe said:

I hope the voters remember this in November.  I remember a senator talking directly about this issue during the hearings....and here we are. Those in the senate are gutless idiots to have let him off the hook.

Talked to my mom today. Told her I'd sit on her if it would keep her from voting for that orange fool again. She outweighs me, but knows better than to fight me. It took a while, but she agreed to leave POTUS blank. 

I fought about a half dozen battles today, that one was easy. Hope all stays well. 

[FanboyOf91]

 

[bcl05]

I would do anything for any reporter to ask them "what would the number be if we instituted social distancing in every state a month (or two weeks) earlier?"

 

The lie is that this is full mitigation.  It isn't.  We started late.  Its a patchwork of mitigation.  Not every state is taking this seriously, and we didn't all start at the same time.  

Edited March 31, 2020 by bcl05