COVID-19/Coronavirus Information and Support Thread (see OP for useful links)

[TexRex]

I understand what you meant.
The part you quoted was just a bad joke to the tweet.

Okay. In the context of your post, I didn't read it that way.

 

[McLaren]

This is going to be a problem everywhere... but I reckon the US will be a particularly stark example. The UK is also facing the same dilemma - Scotland, Wales and England all have their own plans, but unless they all act in line with each other, then there could be a similar issue to what you are describing. Europe will also have a potentially big problem.

Both the US and the UK have seen a sustained drop in the rate of increase in new cases for the last couple of weeks, but that has now stalled at around 3-3.5% in each case - as such, both are continuing to see a stubbornly high number of new cases, with no clear drop in either case... in fact, the US has seen an increase in new cases for 4 days straight, which is worrying given that lockdown restrictions haven't even been lifted yet. This indicates (to my mind anyway) that it is still too soon, possibly by several weeks, to be lifting restrictions in the US or the UK for that matter. And, further to your original point, when restrictions are lifted, it would probably be best for states and counties to act in unison.

Do you have a graph or link that displays that information by chance? Always good to have reference material on this subject.

 

[UKMikey]

Okay. In the context of your post, I didn't read it that way.

I was gonna white knight him but figured it'd be easier for you to find out for yourself, given how many other people didn't get the joke judging by the number of likes to your post. Also, to characterise it as misunderstood sarcasm would've made me sound like a White House Press Secretary.

 

[Biggles]

The governor of Georgia is apparently going to allow hair and nail salons, barber shops, massage businesses and gyms to reopen. Does it strike anyone else that as these are all "close human contact" activities & not really "essential" in any way, that that's an odd place to start?

 

[TexRex]

I was gonna white knight him but figured it'd be easier for you to find out for yourself, given how many other people didn't get the joke judging by the number of likes to your post. Also, to characterise it as misunderstood sarcasm would've made me sound like a White House Press Secretary.

Yeah, I'm up to speed now. I've been varnishing a new gate and the fumes may be getting to me despite being in just about the best ventilated area possible...outside.

And my response could be seen as sarcastic on top of a sarcastic comment.

 

[UKMikey]

Yeah, I'm up to speed now. I've been varnishing a new gate and the fumes may be getting to me despite being in just about the best ventilated area possible...outside.

And my response could be seen as sarcastic on top of a sarcastic comment.

Yeah, right, Donald.

 

[Dotini]

The governor of Georgia is apparently going to allow hair and nail salons, barber shops, massage businesses and gyms to reopen. Does it strike anyone else that as these are all "close human contact" activities & not really "essential" in any way, that that's an odd place to start?

Don't know Georgia. But around here, hairdressers, massage therapists and the like are often single women, some mothers, who trade in cash and for whom going back to work is economically essential - not for society at large, but for them, personally.

 

[Joey D]

The governor of Georgia is apparently going to allow hair and nail salons, barber shops, massage businesses and gyms to reopen. Does it strike anyone else that as these are all "close human contact" activities & not really "essential" in any way, that that's an odd place to start?

My wife is a barber and they'll be reopening May 11th. However, the precautions they'll be taking lead me to believe the company she works for is doing everything in they can to minimize the risk. All customers will need to wear a mask, all stylists will wear PPE (mask, gloves, and aprons), every chair will be disinfected with Barbicide after every customer, and they will not be doing hair washing, using hot towels, or doing beard trims. Also, only 4 customers are allowed in the store at a time and there's no waiting room.

But from what I can gather from her is that most states think barbershops and hair salons can exercise a certain amount of control over their customers. Also, anyone who's licensed to cut hair has been certified and had to pass a state exam on disinfecting and hygiene. My wife even had to get another certification in some sort of cleaning process the other day and all employees working there need to do the same thing. A barbershop is probably one of the most sanitized places you walk into that isn't healthcare-related since everything is constantly being cleaned and wiped down/soaked in Barbicide. I would imagine a massage place is similar as are nail salons.

As for gyms? Eww. They are cesspits of bodily fluids and not cleaned very well in-between machine use.

 

[DesertPenguin]

As for gyms? Eww. They are cesspits of bodily fluids and not cleaned very well in-between machine use.

Can't they learn like barber shops and salons? Limit the amount of people, wipe down equipment after each use? That kind of thing?

 

[Northstar]

Can't they learn like barber shops and salons? Limit the amount of people, wipe down equipment after each use? That kind of thing?

It’s more of a employee:customer issue. With those other fields it’s pretty easy to have the ratio be 1:1 by simply making it appointment only. It’s harder to do that with gyms since they usually operate with skeleton crews and people don’t use one piece of equipment the whole time.

 

[TexRex]

Heh.

 

[DesertPenguin]

Heh.

I really hope most of America is sick of his **** and his days in office are numbered. Can only hope he makes it worse and worse for himself as this goes on

 

[Biggles]

My wife is a barber and they'll be reopening May 11th. However, the precautions they'll be taking lead me to believe the company she works for is doing everything in they can to minimize the risk. All customers will need to wear a mask, all stylists will wear PPE (mask, gloves, and aprons), every chair will be disinfected with Barbicide after every customer, and they will not be doing hair washing, using hot towels, or doing beard trims. Also, only 4 customers are allowed in the store at a time and there's no waiting room.

But from what I can gather from her is that most states think barbershops and hair salons can exercise a certain amount of control over their customers. Also, anyone who's licensed to cut hair has been certified and had to pass a state exam on disinfecting and hygiene. My wife even had to get another certification in some sort of cleaning process the other day and all employees working there need to do the same thing. A barbershop is probably one of the most sanitized places you walk into that isn't healthcare-related since everything is constantly being cleaned and wiped down/soaked in Barbicide. I would imagine a massage place is similar as are nail salons.

As for gyms? Eww. They are cesspits of bodily fluids and not cleaned very well in-between machine use.

Are these the only industries being considered for "re-opening" at this point? I don't doubt that the workers in hair salons/barbers, massage etc. desperately need the income, but so do many others & I'm sure many different kinds of business could re-open if they take careful precautions. In fact, I think this is going to be the "new normal" for the foreseeable future, until a vaccine is readily available. I don't think there's any hope of completely eradicating the virus, rather it need to be monitored & controlled by a variety of different strategies to reduce the spread. That includes as much social distancing as possible, face masks, sanitizing, hand-washing & a lot of testing, while at the same time isolating & protecting the most vulnerable. This is still going to have a big negative impact on the economy, but not nearly as severe as a complete lockdown.

 

[Touring Mars]

Do you have a graph or link that displays that information by chance? Always good to have reference material on this subject.

The relevant links are all in the first post in this thread... the wiki pages (particularly the 'Timeline' sections) show the number of cases each day and the percentage rise each day. That figure (the rate of new cases) is one to watch.

The Worldometer link here: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ is useful for plotted data.

A key metric is the number of Daily New Cases and they are plotted there for each country. The UK and the US both show a similar trend (which is similiar to most countries) a rapid increase in cases until a peak, followed by a levelling off of new cases... some countries have seen a notable drop in daily new cases, which shows that they are well past the first peak, but the UK and US are not seeing a large drop off, and indeed the US is struggling to keep it from rising again.

To note: without lockdown restrictions, the number of daily new cases would have been astronomically higher than they are... the restrictions are working in the US very well, but perhaps not as well as they could be by now. Italy and Spain are examples of what kind of a drop we could expect, but Italy is still seeing around 2,000 new cases per day, and that is over a month after the peak, which is around 6 weeks after lockdown began.

 

[strela]

To note: without lockdown restrictions, the number of daily new cases would have been astronomically higher than they are... the restrictions are working in the US very well, but perhaps not as well as they could be by now. Italy and Spain are examples of what kind of a drop we could expect, but Italy is still seeing around 2,000 new cases per day, and that is over a month after the peak, which is around 6 weeks after lockdown began.

As an Italian I am fully aware that we can't be considered as a perfect example. At least discipline and self awareness wise. But still it will show if we are able to contain the numbers somehow without strict lockdowns. If there is one thing we learned(at least) is the importance of prophylaxis. I can see way more people wearing masks nowadays and they are mostly respecting social distances. Now we are taking caution steps. What will happen when we lift the lockdowns is yet to be seen. I am not much confident tough and I am seriously worried it won't work before the vaccine arrival.

Edit: Apologize totally forgot to mention. There are two major reasons why the numbers are still high. We loosen some restrictions and more people are getting tested.

 

[Touring Mars]

As an Italian I am fully aware that we can't be considered as an perfect example. At least discipline and self awareness wise. But still it will show if we are able to contain the numbers somehow without strict lockdowns. If there is one thing we learned(at least) is the importance of prophylaxis. I can see way more people wearing masks nowadays and they are mostly respecting social distances. Now we are taking caution steps. What will happen when we lift the lockdowns is yet to be seen. I am not much confident tough and I am seriously worried it won't work before the vaccine arrival.

Italy is in a special position - and it will be very instructive to see how the steps Italy takes now work out.

A friend in Northern Ireland has said that the lockdown has all but broken down there already. I honestly don't think that enough people are understanding the true nature of the threat of this pandemic.

Unfortunately, past experience and theory can only tell us so much about a novel virus - and as such it would be wise to assume that this virus may not behave in expected ways. The troubling thing is that even those 'expected ways' are not good - and it will almost certainly require a concerted effort from everyone in order to keep society functioning... hence those who are not doing their bit are making it more likely that there will be worse outcomes across the board.

 

[RacingGrandpa]

I like this.

Sweden will not pay financial help to companies that at the same time pays bonuses to shareholders or CEO's

 

[Dave A]

Sweden will not pay financial help to companies that at the same time pays bonuses to shareholders or CEO's

I like the principals behind these decisions but on a practical level it's likely to be the employees lower down the ladder and low level investors that end up suffering the most. Stopping shareholders and boardmembers receiving bonuses doesn't really do anything as they can still take dividends which is standard for most shareholders anyway (unless they are stopping those too, I haven't read about this in any detail).

If they are stopping dividends as well as bonuses then they are really punishing the wrong people, as a lot of shareholders are regular people like me who have just made low level investments, and legal investments shouldn't be punished arbitrarily just because a government thinks a handful of people at the top might be being greedy.

Really the tax treatment of companies located in tax havens should have been legislated properly and sorted lin all of these countries long before now but fear of upsetting the large internationals has prevented this. And stopping bonuses doesn't stop dividends but stopping dividends would be a terrible idea.

 

[Dotini]

This has bas probably been posted before, but it is worth a reminder since it may affect strategy going forward.

"The WHO warned on Saturday that there is still no evidence that people who test positive for the new coronavirus and recover are immunised and protected against reinfection."

The obvious caveats are that this is not peer-reviewed, it is coming from the compromised WHO organization, and it fails to note what percentage of victims who recover and have antibodies do have immunity. It also does not distinguish between reinfection and relapse.

The question is, should we assume this is true and behave accordingly, or assume it is unfounded and behave accordingly?

https://www.france24.com/en/2020042...-from-covid-19-gives-people-immunity-who-says

 

[Outspacer]

Good collection of UK graphs from yesterday here. (Daily Mail being useful for once, who'd have thought!)

This is the one I pay most attention to since it doesn't depend on how many tests are carried out on people not in hospital like total cases does:

Assuming the lockdown was relatively successful it seems to show that the average time from infection to arriving at hospital is about 2-3 weeks. In which case, it should be a good proxy measure of the total number of cases about 2-3 weeks prior, at least in terms of the shape of the graph.

I'm still puzzled by the faster decline in London compared to elsewhere, as there's no reason to believe they are better at doing lockdown than the rest of England. If (and it's a big 'if') it's hinting that the unrestrained trajectory would also have been slowing then that could be good news (but still not good enough that lockdown wasn't needed to avoid an unmanagable peak). Also could be bad news for rest of UK since a second peak would be higher there.

I don't know how useful it is to look back at Spanish Flu a century ago since we are now so much more mobile, and so many more of us. There will be parallels, but blurred I suppose. Comparison of US cities' second peaks:

Birmingham and Omaha catch my eye as having no second distancing phase while having similar second peaks to places which did, like Kansas.

 

[strela]

I was never into Tweeter but lately I've been reading it a lot. Some comments are just hilarious. A few hours ago I saw a comment about ozone theraphy. Ozone is a gas that can be used to disinfect medical supplies. Mixing the blood with the gas can treat some medical conditions like infections caused by a virus.....

 

[Danoff]

My wife is a barber and they'll be reopening May 11th. However, the precautions they'll be taking lead me to believe the company she works for is doing everything in they can to minimize the risk. All customers will need to wear a mask, all stylists will wear PPE (mask, gloves, and aprons), every chair will be disinfected with Barbicide after every customer, and they will not be doing hair washing, using hot towels, or doing beard trims. Also, only 4 customers are allowed in the store at a time and there's no waiting room.

But from what I can gather from her is that most states think barbershops and hair salons can exercise a certain amount of control over their customers. Also, anyone who's licensed to cut hair has been certified and had to pass a state exam on disinfecting and hygiene. My wife even had to get another certification in some sort of cleaning process the other day and all employees working there need to do the same thing. A barbershop is probably one of the most sanitized places you walk into that isn't healthcare-related since everything is constantly being cleaned and wiped down/soaked in Barbicide. I would imagine a massage place is similar as are nail salons.

As for gyms? Eww. They are cesspits of bodily fluids and not cleaned very well in-between machine use.

Are these the only industries being considered for "re-opening" at this point? I don't doubt that the workers in hair salons/barbers, massage etc. desperately need the income, but so do many others & I'm sure many different kinds of business could re-open if they take careful precautions. In fact, I think this is going to be the "new normal" for the foreseeable future, until a vaccine is readily available. I don't think there's any hope of completely eradicating the virus, rather it need to be monitored & controlled by a variety of different strategies to reduce the spread. That includes as much social distancing as possible, face masks, sanitizing, hand-washing & a lot of testing, while at the same time isolating & protecting the most vulnerable. This is still going to have a big negative impact on the economy, but not nearly as severe as a complete lockdown.

I would agree that barber shops should be more easily controlled than a gym. In fact, if I were trying to list out businesses where a virus was most likely to spread, I might include gyms, movie theaters, churches, and restaurants at the absolute highest likelihood for spreading (hmmm... maybe like a comedy club serving food... get everyone laughing over food). For me, the issue with gyms isn't necessarily even the bodily fluids, it's the breathing. You're huffing moist air into the room and so is everyone else and that moisture is going to hang in the air for the next person to take a big deep breath while they work out. Even with a mask on, some of that heavy breathing is going to leak... and who wants to wear a mask when they hit the treadmill?

Gyms are a terrible idea right now.

 

[Outspacer]

Can't help but feel that our Gov is painting itself into a corner by making "there will be no risk of a second peak" a requirement for relaxing the lockdown. It's an unrealistic goal. If they qualify it with "... that would risk overwhelming hospitals and resuming strict lockdown" it would be more realistic. I'm thinking that (outside of perhaps London and the Midlands) there will be either a large second peak (if relaxed measures) or an extremely long tail (with lockdown - but for far longer than we can afford to be locked down without sacrificing, basically, other lives). In fact, I think it would be more honest to prefix all five criteria with "Ideally...".

Northerm Ireland isn't on this chart today, it's back to just being 'Great Britain' (although the 'New Cases' and 'Critical Care' graphs were 'UK', and NI had an uptick in the latter)...

 

[TexRex]

Well, this is progress. Maybe?

Donald Trump’s suggestion that injecting disinfectant could be used as a treatment for Covid-19 were so outlandish that they’re easy to dismiss as the ramblings of a leader unable to handle the demands of a pandemic.

However, on Sunday Maryland’s Republican governor, Larry Hogan, told CBS’s Face the Nation that his state’s Covid-19 hotline had received “hundreds of calls” following Trump’s comments. “[It’s] hard to imagine that people thought that [Trump’s comment] was serious,” Hogan said. “”But what people actually were thinking about this was this something you could do to protect yourself?”

The president has since said that he was being “sarcastic”, although TV footage does not bear that out. The president has repeatedly given false or misleading information about the coronavirus during his press briefings, and has often found himself at odds with advice given by his own medical experts.

Hogan said that he had raised concerns about “mixed messaging” coming from the White House during the pandemic, and said that the president needed to stick to facts during his briefings.

“It’s critical that the president of the United States, when people are really scared and in the middle of this worldwide pandemic, in these press conferences that we really get the facts out there, and unfortunately some of the messaging has not been great, the mixed messaging,” said Hogan.

Hogan is far from the only person with concerns about Trump’s handling of the pandemic. His own advisers are reported to be worried that his press briefings were harming his presidential campaign. He made only a short appearance at Friday’s briefing and did not take any any questions from reporters. On Saturday, there was no briefing at all and Trump instead wrote on Twitter that they are “not worth the time & effort”.

Man, Hogan is so obviously a never-Trumper.

And I can't believe I actually felt sorry for Birx, but it's apparent that she's far too concerned with retaining her role at the White House to muster any semblance of integrity.

Dr Birx declined to criticize the president for dangerous comments he made earlier in the week floating the idea of using sunlight and the injection of disinfectant to the human body to treat Covid-19. Asked if she was bothered by the need to keep ruling out the use of disinfectant, which can be fatal if ingested, Birx said: “It bothers me that this is still in the news cycle. I worry that we don’t get the information to the American people that they need when we continue to bring up something that was from Thursday night.”

Earlier in the interview Birx made clear she had told the President that such treatments were not medically viable, but described Trump’s remarks made during a globally televised press conference, as “a dialogue” between the president and scientists at the department of homeland security about a new study.

 

[Biggles]

Gyms are a terrible idea right now.

Yeah - sure gyms are a terrible idea, but why are they even being considered is my question? I'm still not clear: what other businesses is Georgia allowing to re-open? There would seem to a whole slew of business that would make more sense to re-open than gyms.

 

[Blitz24]

Yeah - sure gyms are a terrible idea, but why are they even been considered is my question? I'm still not clear: what other businesses is Georgia allowing to re-open? There would seem to a whole slew of business that would make more sense to re-open than gyms.

Nail salons, movie theaters, restaurants, barbershops. Some of them can, with some effort, be made to observe social distancing. However, some of the people going to these places are clearly misguided in what is essential and what isn't. A 37 year old woman was quoted in Saturday's WSJ that her nail salon is essential, like food is. I should add that this individual was recently laid off from her job, so out of most of her priorities, I think the ground is the sky for her.

 

[DesertPenguin]

Movie theatres is really easy when you simply enforce people must leave at least two seats between them. The concession stand is another thing, but I never buy anything so that's no worry for me.

 

[ROAD_DOGG33J]

Man, Hogan is so obviously a never-Trumper.

And I can't believe I actually felt sorry for Birx, but it's apparent that she's far too concerned with retaining her role at the White House to muster any semblance of integrity.

Get rid of the never Trumpers and this is what's left...

I feel sorry for the people that can't voice their opinion or facts, because his greatness would be offended.

 

[Dennisch]

Today was the first day, since this whole situation started, that actually sucked big time. I came across my best friend from elementary and junior high, someone I had not spoken to in 20 years and as much as I wanted to give him a handshake and a hug, I just couldn't, with my dad being sick and the missus having severe asthma attacks currently.

Swapped phone numbers and gave him a rain check on the handshake and hug, but still. It is ass.

 

[TexRex]

Get rid of the never Trumpers and this is what's left...

I feel sorry for the people that can't voice their opinion or facts, because his greatness would be offended.

That's the difference between freedom of speech and freedom from the consequences of speech. She can actually say something, but failure to toe the party line will assuredly result in her ouster from the position she presently occupies. Like that other guy. You know...the guy that...[*trails off*]