***NON-POLITICAL COVID-19 Discussion Thread***

[JakeF]

A couple of reminders...

Originally Posted by Bwana

Once again, don't come in this thread with some kind of political agenda, or you will be shown the door. If you want to go that route, there is a thread about this in DC.

Originally Posted by Dartgod

People, there is a lot of good information in this thread, let's try to keep the petty bickering to a minimum.

We all have varying opinions about the impact of this, the numbers, etc. We will all never agree with each other. But we can all keep it civil.

Thanks!

Click here for the original OP:

Spoiler!

Apparently the CoronaVirus can survive on a inanimate objects, such as door knobs, for 9 days.

California coronavirus case could be first spread within U.S. community, CDC says
By SOUMYA KARLAMANGLA, JACLYN COSGROVE
FEB. 26, 2020 8:04 PM

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating what could be the first case of novel coronavirus in the United States involving a patient in California who neither recently traveled out of the country nor was in contact with someone who did.

“At this time, the patient’s exposure is unknown. It’s possible this could be an instance of community spread of COVID-19, which would be the first time this has happened in the United States,” the CDC said in a statement. “Community spread means spread of an illness for which the source of infection is unknown. It’s also possible, however, that the patient may have been exposed to a returned traveler who was infected.”

The individual is a resident of Solano County and is receiving medical care in Sacramento County, according to the state Department of Public Health.

The CDC said the “case was detected through the U.S. public health system — picked up by astute clinicians.”

Officials at UC Davis Medical Center expanded on what the federal agency might have meant by that in an email sent Wednesday, as reported by the Davis Enterprise newspaper.

The patient arrived at UC Davis Medical Center from another hospital Feb. 19 and “had already been intubated, was on a ventilator, and given droplet protection orders because of an undiagnosed and suspected viral condition,” according to an email sent by UC Davis officials that was obtained by the Davis Enterprise.

The staff at UC Davis requested COVID-19 testing by the CDC, but because the patient didn’t fit the CDC’s existing criteria for the virus, a test wasn’t immediately administered, according to the email. The CDC then ordered the test Sunday, and results were announced Wednesday. Hospital administrators reportedly said in the email that despite these issues, there has been minimal exposure at the hospital because of safety protocols they have in place.

A UC Davis Health spokesperson declined Wednesday evening to share the email with The Times.

Since Feb. 2, more than 8,400 returning travelers from China have entered California, according to the state health department. They have been advised to self-quarantine for 14 days and limit interactions with others as much as possible, officials said.

“This is a new virus, and while we are still learning about it, there is a lot we already know,” Dr. Sonia Angell, director of the California Department of Public Health, said in a statement. “We have been anticipating the potential for such a case in the U.S., and given our close familial, social and business relationships with China, it is not unexpected that the first case in the U.S. would be in California.”

It is not clear how the person became infected, but public health workers could not identify any contacts with people who had traveled to China or other areas where the virus is widespread. That raises concern that the virus is spreading in the United States, creating a challenge for public health officials, experts say.

“It’s the first signal that we could be having silent transmission in the community,” said Lawrence Gostin, director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law. “It probably means there are many more cases out there, and it probably means this individual has infected others, and now it’s a race to try to find out who that person has infected.”

On Tuesday, the CDC offered its most serious warning to date that the United States should expect and prepare for the coronavirus to become a more widespread health issue.

“Ultimately, we expect we will see coronavirus spread in this country,” said Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases. “It’s not so much a question of if, but a question of when.”

According to the CDC’s latest count Wednesday morning, 59 U.S. residents have tested positive for the new strain of coronavirus — 42 of whom are repatriated citizens from a Diamond Princess cruise. That number has grown by two since Messonnier’s last count Tuesday, although the CDC was not immediately available to offer details on the additional cases.

More than 82,000 cases of coronavirus have been reported globally, and more than 2,700 people have died, with the majority in mainland China, the epicenter of the outbreak.

But public health leaders have repeatedly reminded residents that the health risk from the novel coronavirus to the general public remains low.

“While COVID-19 has a high transmission rate, it has a low mortality rate,” the state Department of Public Health said in a statement Wednesday. “From the international data we have, of those who have tested positive for COVID-19, approximately 80% do not exhibit symptoms that would require hospitalization. There have been no confirmed deaths related to COVID-19 in the United States to date.”

CDC officials have also warned that although the virus is likely to spread in U.S. communities, the flu still poses a greater risk.

Gostin said the news of potential silent transmission does not eliminate the possibility of containing the virus in the U.S. and preventing an outbreak.

“There are few enough cases that we should at least try,” he said. “Most of us are not optimistic that that will be successful, but we’re still in the position to try.”

[stumppy]

Originally Posted by Dartgod

[Dartgod]

Originally Posted by stumppy

It's not funny.

[stumppy]

Originally Posted by Dartgod

It's not funny.

Oh yes it is. irritatingly so!

[PAChiefsGuy]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

{sigh}



I'd use my post above from several weeks ago to attempt to explain the difference between outright disagreement vs. attempting to approach a conversation from a different perspective that hasn't been discussed yet, but it kinda gets back to this:



You don't pay any attention to what anyone who doesn't agree with you in total lockstep says anyway. And even then, you have no thoughts of your own to actually offer. You've checked any willingness you ever had to analyse information at the door....and frankly you almost certainly never had any ability to do so anyway so it's probably for the best.

Okay great so please stop acting like you know more than Fauci because you come across like you do in your posts. You probably don't even realize it but you do.

To me, you seem like an egomaniac who likes to post page long posts to show CP how smart he is. It's a bit ridiculous at times.

I never once said 'arrest anyone that leaves their home' so don't quote that. I indirectly advocated martial law but it wasn't like I wanted to see something like that happen. I just didn't want the virus to spread like crazy kill God knows how many of my fellow Americans. I never said 'hey lets get martial law going and arrest everyone that goes outside' and you know that.

Even if I did who gives a shit? I'm posting here for fun not to submit a college thesis paper on the subject.

Have a good day man.

[PAChiefsGuy]

Bill Gates: This is how long it may take before Americans ‘can be completely safe’ from COVID-19

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/08/bill...ronavirus.html

[Titty Meat]

JUST IN: The number dead after a coronavirus outbreak at a Kansas City, Kansas, rehabilitation facility has grown to six with another 50 patients and staff testing positive.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

Originally Posted by AustinChief

So, your belief in one model over the other (even though either can fit the data) is based on what we have seen happen on cruise ships. That is as good a basis as any but it could still be a bad assumption. What were the demographic breakdowns? Pretty sure cruise ship passengers skew MUCH higher in age than the general population.

My point is, while there are certainly good reasons to favor one model over others, we should refrain from dismissing the others entirely when we are still so much in the dark.

I'm not favoring one over the other, just unpacking the potential issues with the British model much as you did with the other.

[Mr. Plow]

Originally Posted by PAChiefsGuy

Okay great so please stop acting like you know more than Fauci because you come across like you do in your posts. You probably don't even realize it but you do.

To me, you seem like an egomaniac who likes to post page long posts to show CP how smart he is. It's a bit ridiculous at times.

I never once said 'arrest anyone that leaves their home' so don't quote that. I indirectly advocated martial law but it wasn't like I wanted to see something like that happen. I just didn't want the virus to spread like crazy kill God knows how many of my fellow Americans. I never said 'hey lets get martial law going and arrest everyone that goes outside' and you know that.

Even if I did who gives a shit? I'm posting here for fun not to submit a college thesis paper on the subject.

Have a good day man.

The easy solution to this problem is the same one I gave you for Pete earlier in the thread - put him on ignore and move on.

[kgrund]

Originally Posted by PAChiefsGuy

Bill Gates: This is how long it may take before Americans ‘can be completely safe’ from COVID-19

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/08/bill...ronavirus.html

I struggle with the whole "until we get a vaccine" notion of things going back to normal. If your benchmark is near 0% fear, this might be true. However, if you have therapeutics available that can deeply limit getting the virus or the severity of the virus, a huge number of people are going to OK with assuming that level of risk with little concern. We assume risk every day whenever we go about our business. People will be comfortable when they perceive it is both a known and controllable risk IMO.

[displacedinMN]

CV19 causing large supplies of bacon

Coronavirus has pulled the rug out from under demand for pork belly and ribs, driving hog prices to their lowest level in nearly two decades.

Amid simmering concerns the nation's meatpacking capacity could tighten as workers get sick and plants close, hog farmers now also face major losses on every pig they raise and sell.

About two-thirds of pork belly, from which bacon is derived, is purchased by the food service industry, and the shutdown of restaurants, colleges and schools has hit hard.

"Demand for the belly really dropped," said Lori Stevermer, a hog farmer near Easton. "That type of pressure just continues to bring prices down."

Since March 25, the price per pound for lean hog has dropped about 20 cents. A typical hog yields about 210 pounds of lean meat, so that's a drop of $42 per animal, reflecting the lowest hog futures since 2002.

"Taking feed costs into account, it's projected we'd lose about $25 per head the next year," said Dave Preisler, director of the Minnesota Pork Producers Association.

It's not just bacon causing the decline. Closed restaurants aren't purchasing pork chops or ribs either.

Packing plants are putting more meat in storage, but they're also trying to send more bacon and other types of meat to the grocery store, where demand has been strong.

"You're trying to pivot," Stevermer said. "Instead of going to food service and restaurants, can you take that into the grocery stores? That would involve cutting the carcass a different way, and packaging it differently."

Food service companies buy bacon by the 15- or 20-pound box. Shifting the supply chain to wrap that bacon in a 12-ounce package for the grocery store takes time.

"You can't just do it overnight, and in the meantime, that product goes into freezers. That's another thing that's weighing on the market, is all that meat in storage," said Preisler.

"I just don't know that we could have invented something to make a bigger mess than this," Preisler said of the pandemic.

Another profound concern is whether packing plants — which already complained of a labor shortage — can accept all the pigs that farmers are raising for slaughter. In some states, workers tested positive for COVID-19 and plants closed as a result.

"That weighs heavily on farmers' minds, I would say," Stevermer said.

A Tyson Foods pork plant in southeast Iowa shuttered temporarily after more than two dozen workers tested positive for COVID-19, and a smattering of beef and poultry plants have closed in other parts of the country.

Unions are tracking the spread of the virus, and monitoring poultry processors in the southeastern U.S.

No meatpacking plant that Minnesota farmers primarily send hogs to has shuttered, but Preisler said capacity is declining around the country, and some farmers are feeding their pigs a little less protein so they don't grow as quickly, on the chance they won't be able to find a market for them as readily as before.

"A number of farms are doing that," Preisler said.

Sleepy Eye, Minn.-based Christensen Farms produces 3 million hogs for slaughter each year in five states.

One of its key packers, Seaboard Foods, a company based in Kansas City with a plant in Sioux City, Iowa, said it is open and operating at full capacity, while screening visitors, making "sanitization and temperature-taking stations available to our employees before and after work," cutting nonessential travel and providing masks to employees.

"The U.S. Government has identified the food supply as critical to the nation's infrastructure and has communicated the food industry has a special responsibility to continue to produce food to help feed our nation," a spokesman said a statement. "Seaboard Foods embraces and accepts this great responsibility."

[Mecca]

I'll take the bacon pass it over, blts forever.

[DaFace]

Originally Posted by kgrund

I struggle with the whole "until we get a vaccine" notion of things going back to normal. If your benchmark is near 0% fear, this might be true. However, if you have therapeutics available that can deeply limit getting the virus or the severity of the virus, a huge number of people are going to OK with assuming that level of risk with little concern. We assume risk every day whenever we go about our business. People will be comfortable when they perceive it is both a known and controllable risk IMO.

Yeah, I think there's a lot of room for interpretation of "completely safe" in his assessment. My 87-year-old grandfather is likely not going to be going to a Chiefs game until a vaccine is out, sure.

But for a vast majority of the population, I have to believe that we'll be able to go about life relatively normally by the fall with the exception of the areas where we truly have people crammed in like sardines (concerts, sporting events, etc.).

Masks? Sure. Temperature scans? Sure. But life has to get moving again at some point.

[BleedingRed]

Originally Posted by Mecca

I'll take the bacon pass it over, blts forever.

So Bacon is cheap now...... Uh silver lining anyone?

[Titty Meat]

Terrible news from Singapore: second wave is picking up steam. 142 new cases today and reimposition of full lockdown--cannot even have one friend over for coffee in your home without risking big fine.
https://t.co/2Cs5rkM7az h/t @Worldometers https://t.co/Y2fr0UgPyX

[limested]

Originally Posted by Titty Meat

Terrible news from Singapore: second wave is picking up steam. 142 new cases today and reimposition of full lockdown--cannot even have one friend over for coffee in your home without risking big fine.
https://t.co/2Cs5rkM7az h/t @Worldometers https://t.co/Y2fr0UgPyX

Exactly what will happen here if we rush to get back to 'normal'.