Merged 2019-nCoV / Corona virus

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Skeptic Ginger said:
If she's not well, it's probably something else. It's not in your area yet and flu is.
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She is an emergency oral maxillofacial surgeon.

Over the weekend much of the medical chatter has turned to the realization that this has possibly been here for a while. Tomorrow our local health authorities are supposed to be queried about it, we shall see
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Link's dead.
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No, you're wrong. The link is doing fine!

I'm not buying that without some decent studies.
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Here's another one - Covid-19 specific: Why the coronavirus seems to hit men harder than women (APhA, Feb. 21, 2020)
Why the Coronavirus Seems to Hit Men Harder Than Women (NYT, Feb. 20, 2020)
It mentions other gender-specific differences.

When it comes to mounting an immune response against infections, men are the weaker sex.
“This is a pattern we’ve seen with many viral infections of the respiratory tract — men can have worse outcomes,” said Dr Sabra Klein, a scientist who studies sex differences in viral infections and vaccination responses at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
“We’ve seen this with other viruses. Women fight them off better,” she added.
Women also produce stronger immune responses after vaccinations, and have enhanced memory immune responses, which protect adults from pathogens they were exposed to as children.
“There’s something about the immune system in females that is more exuberant,” said Dr Janine Clayton, director of the Office of Research on Women’s Health at the National Institutes of Health.
Covid-19 seems to hit men harder than women. Why? (Today, Feb. 21, 2020)
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Frank Newgent said:
It's funny, we were in China a few months ago and I'm very stuffy in the morning.
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A few months ago, Covid-19 wasn't invented! :)
I had five members of a Chinese band staying at my place a few months ago, and I had a cold last week. Correlation? No, not even that.
Nowadays, I might not be as accommodating ...
 
Well, I'm getting more concerned.

I've just watched a horrific documentary on the ABC here, which included a lot of footage from China.

Much of the footage was from inside hospitals, where patients are lying dead on the floors, and even more chilling, people being locked into apartment buildings. (One scene showed authorities welding the metal doors of an apartment building closed from the outside, but the neighbours filming did not know why it was being done.)

One scene included a woman screaming and crying from a balcony, "Please come and help me, my mother is sick, why won't anybody come?"

Given the massive levels of quarantine, and trust me, the footage shows that the Chinese government is being incredibly serious about quarantine, forcibly dragging people from their homes if they register a high temperature -- I don't believe that China has any idea how many people have died from the virus.

It will be some time before authorities work out how many people have died at home.
 
novaphile said:
This is the page for that documentary:

https://www.abc.net.au/4corners/coronavirus/11996398

The transcript is also on that page.
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Thanks. I think...

:o


a_unique_person said:
https://www.smh.com.au/national/exp...sport-cancellations-20200224-p543u0.html?btis
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“Things have changed over the past 48 hours quite remarkably,” said Professor Nigel McMillan, an infectious diseases expert at Menzies Health Institute in Queensland.

“We are now in a situation where I think everyone is coming to the conclusion the chances of a pandemic are very high.”
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Yes, surely the outbreaks in Iran and Italy put the virus in the spirit of the definition of pandemic.

That said, presumably efforts to slow the spread are worth continuing if there is a possibility that the virus weakens depending on the season (like a flu virus).
 
The current situation also gives me concern -- if it becomes a major outbreak in the U.S. I believe The PDJT will attempt to go far beyond the limits of his power to maintain control of the outbreak benefit himself in every way possible. But I'll save that discussion for the Presidency thread.

The Atheist said:
If you're looking at cultural greeting, Maori not just press noses together, they hold it to share a breath. Hongi, it's called and I've always considered it the dumbest and most dangerous form of greeting ever thought up.
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I know that Jason Momoa is very fond of this type of greeting. If Aquaman ends up buying the farm, all bets are off as to the world taking this calmly.
 
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angrysoba said:
Holy inevitable crap!

I'm hearing reports that a woman who was let off the Diamond Princess after the quarantine, has now been found to have the virus.

Unlike the other countries who repatriated those who left the ship, the Japanese passengers have been released back into the wild.

I think we can expect a surge in cases here. Something to look forward to...
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My wife was going back to her native Japan two weeks from now, in part to see a concert, but she has decided to cancel her trip.

I can't say I'm unhappy about that.
 
I suspect that the poor protection that supposedly masks offer, according to current data, is due to how difficult it is to wear a mask properly. But a well set up mask, that closes tightly around the face should be very effective at blocking airborne (droplet borne) viruses.

I´ve had some experience wearing masks in extremely dusty environments in a job I did, and after trying many kinds of masks and methods of wearing them, I realised how hard it is to wear them correctly. Unless the fit is perfect the air enters through the openings left between the ill-fitting mask and the face, instead of through the filtering material. In a dusty jobsite, that means having dusty snot after a days work, so one keeps learning new things, eventually what I learned was that one needs to apply some sort of glue or paste where the mask contacts the face, and that the mask needs a valve. Even then the filtering is often not perfect. The only near-perfect filtering was with proper rubber masks, like this kind:

mascara-mp300.jpeg


(but then you also need to protect the eyes, of course)
 
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Dr.Sid said:
Unless it would right out work against the new virus, it would be useless.
Also the article is behind paywall.
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Having successfully developed a vaccine for the SARS would probably be useful for the closely genetically related SARS-CoV-2 (SARS and the new SARS-CoV-2 share about 85 percent of their genetic code).

I was able to read the whole fortune.com article, just by registering (I didn't have to pay anything). I had to wait for a few minutes until their e-mail arrived (only then could I complete the registration by clicking on a link), but this was not necessary for reading the article.
 
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The Atheist said:
If you're looking at cultural greeting, Maori not just press noses together, they hold it to share a breath. Hongi, it's called and I've always considered it the dumbest and most dangerous form of greeting ever thought up.[/B]



We're rooting for you!
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Maybe it is generally good because it builds up resistances. Are the Maori sicker than other groups?
 
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