Novel Coronavirus COVID-19

[sothereiwas]

36 minutes ago, NerdGoneWild said:

I guess it is just natural selection: If it is too deadly, it kills all the carriers and can't spread as easily. So less deadly forms take hold as the long-term survivor. In this case, I don't know why it would weaken with each transmission but that is good news! 

That's generally the case but not always, for a counterpoint have a gander at the lifecycle of anthrax. 

[carhill]

Surprisingly little activity reported so far in Mexico. China has manufacturing and investment interests there, Mexico imports from China and the state of the Mexican health care system isn't nearly as robust as in the US. IDK, extant but unreported?

[Woggle]

I just read the back of a bottle of lysol we have had for a few months and it says it is effective against human coronavirus so it seems this isn't a new thing. What is going on here?

Edited March 3, 2020 by Woggle

[sothereiwas]

1 minute ago, Woggle said:

I just read the back of a bottle of lysol we have had for a few months and it says it is effective against human coronavirus so it seems this isn't a new thing. What is going on here?

SARS and a few others are also Coronavirii.

[gaius]

There are many different coronaviruses and Lysol has been proven to kill one of them. From what I understand there is no evidence if it kills this strain or not.

With it's authoritarian tactics China has ground the virus spread almost to a halt while it seems the west, and the US especially, is unwilling to replicate it's tactics. It will be ironic if in a few months they ban US and Europeans from traveling there so we don't reinfect them.

[pepperbird]

12 hours ago, RecentChange said:

People are stocking up. Didn't notice anything a miss at Safeway (our standard grocery chain), but over at H Mart, the Korean grocery store - entire shelves of products cleaned out. People are stocking up and "prepping".

Tried to buy some rubbing alcohol for a project - Walmart's shelves were cleared out of all varieties. 

People are here, but were are also experiencing rail/port blockades, so some products are getting low anyway in some places.

[pepperbird]

12 hours ago, NerdGoneWild said:

That seems to be a pattern with many of these outbreaks. It starts out being relatively dangerous but then mutates into a form that is more akin to the flu. In fact this is expected to be another seasonal illness in the years to come, much like the flu. 

I guess it is just natural selection: If it is too deadly, it kills all the carriers and can't spread as easily. So less deadly forms take hold as the long-term survivor. In this case, I don't know why it would weaken with each transmission but that is good news! 

You really should stop taking everything you see online about this virus as the truth.

[pepperbird]

11 hours ago, sothereiwas said:

That's generally the case but not always, for a counterpoint have a gander at the lifecycle of anthrax. 

anthrax is a bacteria- not even in the same ballpark.

[pepperbird]

8 hours ago, Woggle said:

I just read the back of a bottle of lysol we have had for a few months and it says it is effective against human coronavirus so it seems this isn't a new thing. What is going on here?

I could be wrong, but it's the same family of viruses as the common cold. lysol "kills" (are viruses even "lief"?) cold viruses.

[elaine567]

8 hours ago, Woggle said:

I just read the back of a bottle of lysol we have had for a few months and it says it is effective against human coronavirus so it seems this isn't a new thing. What is going on here?

 

Quote

Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that usually cause mild to moderate upper-respiratory tract illnesses, like the common cold, in people. However, three times in the 21st century coronavirus outbreaks have emerged from animal reservoirs to cause severe disease and global transmission concerns.

There are hundreds of coronaviruses, most of which circulate among animals including pigs, camels, bats and cats. Sometimes those viruses jump to humans—called a spillover event—and can cause disease. Seven coronaviruses are known to cause human disease, four of which are mild: viruses 229E, OC43, NL63 and HKU1. Three of the coronaviruses can have more serious outcomes in people, and those diseases are SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) which emerged in late 2002 and disappeared by 2004; MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome), which emerged in 2012 and remains in circulation in camels; and COVID-19, which emerged in December 2019 from China and a global effort is under way to contain its spread. 

[sothereiwas]

3 hours ago, pepperbird said:

anthrax is a bacteria- not even in the same ballpark.

It depends on a host to pass itself along, as an infectious disease I'd say the details of the infectious agent are not that critical. The life cycle in this case DEPENDS on the victim dying, is the point. 

[NerdGoneWild]

4 hours ago, pepperbird said:

You really should stop taking everything you see online about this virus as the truth.

I was talking about science, not "something I saw online". 

Thanks for proving my point about trumpers.  

[carhill]

Amazon apparently pulled over a million third party items from their portal due to price gouging or fraudulent claims related to the corona virus outbreak.

[gaius]

Pepperbird is Canadian and I don't think a fan of Trump.

I don't understand how the CDC was unable come up with a reliable test kit, or why we don't have teams setting up free testing and isolation centers out in Washington state where people can go if they don't feel well. Apparently the virus might have been circulating for weeks there and we've done next to nothing about it.

It's a problem that transcends simple politics. It's like our experts are no experts at all. Over 11 billion spent on the CDC every year and they can't even get the testing process right given weeks of time to prepare......

[NerdGoneWild]

32 minutes ago, gaius said:

I don't understand how the CDC was unable come up with a reliable test kit, or why we don't have teams setting up free testing and isolation centers out in Washington state where people can go if they don't feel well. Apparently the virus might have been circulating for weeks there and we've done next to nothing about it.

 

How long does it take to develop a test kit? How much time have they had? When did they first have access to the virus so they could develop a test kit? 

[serial muse]

Science magazine has an excellent primer on the whole test kit situation, and why it was an issue in the U.S.

In a nutshell, the kits were shipped with a faulty reagent, and commercial and state labs have to seek FDA approval before doing their own tests. FDA has been slow to approve.

[serial muse]

Here's the link: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/united-states-badly-bungled-coronavirus-testing-things-may-soon-improve

 

[sothereiwas]

15 minutes ago, NerdGoneWild said:

How long does it take to develop a test kit? How much time have they had? When did they first have access to the virus so they could develop a test kit? 

Personally, I blame Trump. He should do what all previous POTUS have and rolled up his shirtsleeves and got to work in Atlanta. 

 

 

/s

Edited March 3, 2020 by sothereiwas

[pepperbird]

1 hour ago, NerdGoneWild said:

I was talking about science, not "something I saw online". 

Thanks for proving my point about trumpers.  

assume much?🤣

Okay, I am going to be nice, not that I want to be.

first off- I know this may blow your mind, but not everyone is American. There's a whole wide world out thereof non-americans, and from time to time, we do like to comment online. We are allowed to do so, american or not 🥰 Trump is a blowhard and a fool, but when I see a democratic supporter blasting on and on about the virus and his comments on it, while not, the same time, pushing for the party to postpone any large meetings/rallies, it pretty much nullifies their concern.

second- A trump supporter? If anything, I am so socialist even bernie would run a mile.

 

[pepperbird]

1 hour ago, carhill said:

Amazon apparently pulled over a million third party items from their portal due to price gouging or fraudulent claims related to the corona virus outbreak.

as socialist as I am at heart, this is what will catch it up every time.

Human greed.

[NerdGoneWild]

2 minutes ago, pepperbird said:

assume much?🤣

It is a natural assumption when I see an irrational response. 

[pepperbird]

1 hour ago, gaius said:

Pepperbird is Canadian and I don't think a fan of Trump.

I don't understand how the CDC was unable come up with a reliable test kit, or why we don't have teams setting up free testing and isolation centers out in Washington state where people can go if they don't feel well. Apparently the virus might have been circulating for weeks there and we've done next to nothing about it.

It's a problem that transcends simple politics. It's like our experts are no experts at all. Over 11 billion spent on the CDC every year and they can't even get the testing process right given weeks of time to prepare......

Making the tests accessible makes so much sense, but I wonder if, to help prevent crowd from spreading the disease, would it make more sense to test people in their own homes? at least, while the number being tested are low enough to keep it feasible.

Something I'm expecting to see is cases that look like the virus but are something else. Until these tests can be done, it's going to be hard to really tell the extent of the virus's spread.

[Piddy]

We now have two confirmed cases here in Florida.  One is a 20 year old woman and the other is a man in his 60's.  The 20 year old woman is isolated and receiving treatment at home.  The man is in the hospital and has symptoms of pneumonia.

Edited March 3, 2020 by Piddy

[pepperbird]

6 minutes ago, Piddy said:

We now have two confirmed cases here in Florida.  One is a 20 year old woman and the other is a 60 year old man.  The 20 year old woman is isolated and receiving treatment t home.  The 60 year old man is in the hospital and has symptoms of pneumonia.

That happened up here in Toronto back at the end of January. A man and his wife can back from a visit home to china infected. The wife stayed at home and recovered, the husband was sent to Sunnybrook Hospital but was also sent home after he recovered.

To be honest, I really surprised there wasn't a wider outbreak in that city that a few isolated cases. As anyone who has spent any time in the subway/PATH system knows how crowded it can get, and in the cold weather, everyone is indoors, crowded together. It's also home to two international airports, seaports, rail and other points of entry as well as a sizable population of people from Asia and Iran where the disease is believed to be especially prevalent right now.

My  brother is still stuck- he can't go back to Singapore yet, so he working out of Thailand right now. Poor guy! Stuck like that in a tropical place...(no, I'm not jealous at all🤣)

Edited March 3, 2020 by pepperbird

[Piddy]

7 minutes ago, pepperbird said:

That happened up here in Toronto back at the end of January. A man and his wife can back from a visit home to china infected. The wife stayed at home and recovered, the husband was sent to Sunnybrook Hospital but was also sent home after he recovered.

The woman had recently returned from northern Italy.  The article said that both the coronavirus and influenza have about the same level of infection, with influenza being more deadly.  But the coronavirus has a more severe effect on older people.

Edited March 3, 2020 by Piddy