It’s still real to me!
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There’s a big difference between recognizing danger and panicking. If you are young and healthy you shouldn’t be going to the game, you should be washing your hands, and you shouldn’t be shaking the hands of every random asshole you meet. Not because you are likely to get seriously sick, but because we all have a responsibility to try to minimize the rate that this is spreading so grandma doesn’t die from it.
Schools should be closed, again not because the little ones are likely to be seriously hurt by this, but because schools are germ factories and kids are the perfect vectors for transmission. Grandma isn’t going to deny her baby a hug because the kid has the sniffles.
I’m reasonably confident I’m going to catch this in the near future. I’ve seen too many sick patients and I’m always right up in their face. Just part of my job. I am monitoring my temp and will stay away from work if I have symptoms, but hospital staff can’t self quarantine just because they came in contact with someone who is sick. We would run out of caregivers. What I won’t do is go see my parents while this is going on, and they understand why I have to stay away.
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The problem here is, where do they go? How many of them are going to be hanging out at public libraries or staying with their grandparents? Expecting parents to come up with daycare solutions for the next few months is absurd.
Self employed with private insurance through Independence Blue Cross in PA. They sent a note saying no charge for testing if ordered by a Dr.
Of course If the tests are available. Presumably treatment is covered (after your deductibles).
Great post, and a very reasonable decision as well as one which you had every right to make.
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Sorry - travel day to Stanford.
Low WBC count (leukopenia) is common in respiratory illness types, like the flu or (I’d asume) Corona/MERS/SARS. Extremely rarely the patient goes into pancytopenia, where their bone marrow shuts down - as you would expect, that’s bad, although some patients survive - fortunately, we almost never see it. The actual presence of a low WBC doesn’t mean much acutely. Interstital lung disease is just a description - in a cartoon sense, your lung tissue is the alveoli (air sacs) and pretty much everything else. The everything else in viral type pneumonias are usually viral, but can occur in things like lupus, COPD etc. That’s why a dry cough is generally present - airspace pneumonia is the stuff the people cough up that looks like lung butter.
Keeping on, sprinted into the radiation treatment area after getting lunch at about 2p - we were the only people in the place by design. Back at our donated house, watching tv tonight, then get zapped at 9a and going for a hike. If you saw “Bridge of Spies” I’m taking the strategy from Rudolph Able who several times was asked by Tom Hanks’s character things along the lines of " Aren’t you afraid they’re going to hang you? - he was a Russian spy in the 1960’s. His repeated answer was “would it help?”
Post again tomorrow if I’m still here - we’re also going to take our lives by stopping at Safeway for a couple of things - so we’re going to time it around 2p I guess.
MM MD
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Mom and Dad aren’t going into the office.
Sorry Trolly but I see no reason why we aren’t following Italy right down the drain. You seem to be choosing an odd hill to die on.
We could be so lucky to act too early and be overprepared and then having the thing fizzle out on its own.
The breadth of spread and the rate of spread with what seems to be minimal contact is just to severe.
But stay upstairs with the tornando sighted 5 miles away heading in your direction. 98% of the time you saved yourself the hassle of going to the basement. The other 2% you’re dead.
What is the appropriate degree of panic to serious danger to loved ones?
If your dad was in a moderately crowded McDonald’s and a crazy person was about to unload a 6 shooter into the crowd, what would your degree of concern be?
Because that’s about where we are statistically.
Sure. No one is arguing on the actions. We all agree to taken procautions based on the best evidence, and to think things through.
Man, Italy and Iran have been barely-functioning states at even the best of times.
Shoot the messenger(s)
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Don’t know honestly. What is the appropriate degree of panic for something you have zero control over? My parents are either going to get sick or they won’t. Fortunately they are reasonable people who aren’t going on a fucking cruise ship, but regardless they are at substantial risk living in one of the hardest hit areas of the country. For me the answer is don’t panic at all. I can do approximately nothing to keep them from getting sick aside from staying away from them while I am a high risk for getting infected.
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So, um, is anyone planning on cutting back on…intimate behavior with a person you don’t live with until this blows over? Let’s say you had someone whose job requires them to interact with people at a level you think puts them at greater risk for being infected.
Cut contact now? One last assignation that you treat as if it won’t be for a while? Willing to do stuff until the news worsens?
I don’t think a lot of people understand when the hospitals buckle; the people who are suffering major trauma from other things are going to end up untreated and many of them dying. It is not just going to be people dying from the virus but people dying from the collapse of the medical care system.
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The government should be paying a parent to stay home if the kids are too young to take care of themselves for the day. Sending the kid to daycare, which is just an alternate germ factory, isn’t helping anything. This would require the government to take meaningful action though so it won’t happen. Schools are going to close though. It’s already happening where there are confirmed or suspected cases (which is probably too late), and of course parents are screwed when it happens with no notice and no plan in place.
Insane. Even Barr has to be like wtf dude. At least for a second, anyway.
Meh, what does that even mean in regards to Italy?
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No, I’ve been looking for that as well. I’ve just been assuming that the difference in mortality rate across ages probably correlates and making a guess based off that. So if overall it’s 2% and 14%, I’m guessing it’s roughly the same ratio. Thus someone in an age group with a .1% chance of death would have a .7% chance of hospitalization. Then of course there are also the comorbidity risk factors which I also have not seen sorted by age.
Yes, I cut off more than intimate behavior - not even seeing her in person until this blows over or we get a better idea of the level of spread in Philly. But I have asthma. If not for that, we’d still be… intimate.
The plan was to see each other but stay a few feet apart and just hang out, but this new info from China that it can spread through the air just from breathing makes that a no-go for me.
Wear a mask
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Man, look at what’s going on in South Korea. I don’t know why people think Italy is a model for what will happen in the US, that country has been barely holding it together for decades. SK has already passed an inflection point in new cases after two weeks, it is the only country where we have broad, meaningful testing data on a lot of people and the lethality rate there is like 0.7%. Society has not broken down, people still have toilet paper.
I don’t know what the numbers from Japan are right now, but I’d take a good look at them as well.
What makes you think the current United States is more like South Korea than Italy?
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