MEDICAL MATTERS

[Stanley]

Margaret Mick and Katie were coming over in May from Perth to see Kahara. They have decided not to travel. Seems like a a sensible decision to me, 12 hours in a cabin with hundreds of people?
I repeat what I said earlier, good news that Maz's son is clear but as I understand it he can still catch it, it doesn't mean he is immune. I hope he keeps up his personal precautions.

[Marilyn]

We haven’t heard yet if he is now free to travel home, which is some distance from where he landed. He is a bit of a hermit anyway, so isolation won’t bother him so long as he can watch his sport...
I have read that both Tom Hanks and his wife have the virus. They are here in OZ as Tom is filming. They are in self isolation.
( bet they have more opulent accommodation than my step-son!)

[Cathy]

And they have been in contact with dozens, probably hundreds of people doing the movie and public appearances. Doesn’t bode well.

[Stanley]

A virus is no respecter of persons.....

[Marilyn]

Exactly...and if you get sick, you can’t blame someone trying to protect their job or family and struggling to work with the sniffles that you may have the misfortune to have some contact with.
Sexually transmitted diseases are sooooo much easier to avoid
( I am 100% sure I can avoid those!)

[Cathy]

We have to stay positive, do all the right precautions, they say 80% of people who contract Coronavirus will recover.
But I keep thinking about touching the eftpos devise when I go shopping tomorrow. Might ask ‘When was this last wiped clean?’

[plaques]

Coronavirus. I've been saying for some time there is no stopping it. Once its out in the public domain it will spread no matter what you do. People expect their governments to do something where in fact that all they can do is appear to be in charge. We will hear if we do this, that and t'other we may be able to slow it down to a manageable rate of increase. This is pigs can fly territory its no more than a smoke screen and brownie point collecting. Every action they take will only aggravate what the populous has privately decided they are going to do adding one scare on top of another.
Should we be frightened ..NO. Should we be taking precautions ..Yes. The rest is down to probability. To paraphrase the old adage, Lies, damned Lies and Trump.

Sexually transmitted diseases are sooooo much easier to avoid
( I am 100% sure I can avoid those!)

Toilet seats???

[Marilyn]

I only use my own toilet seat. Little danger there!
And despite what Stanley says, I do not believe you can get sexually transmitted diseases from toilet seats or door handles. Nor can you get pregnant...

[Tizer]

Let's put covid-19 into perspective. In the UK about 400 people have tested positive for the virus and six have died. But as we know, many more die from influenza every year. This is from an Oxford university advisory report...
`Influenza (flu) is a very common, highly infectious disease caused by a virus. It can be very dangerous, causing serious complications and death, especially for people in risk groups. In rare cases flu can kill people who are otherwise healthy. In the UK it is estimated that an average of 600 people a year die from complications of flu. In some years it is estimated that this can rise to over 10,000 deaths (for example.... over 13,000 deaths resulting from flu in 2008-09). Flu leads to hundreds of thousands of GP visits and tens of thousands of hospital stays a year.' Oxford Uni

As I wrote this post it brought back memories. In 1969 I was working on my first research project at a vaccine manufacturing company in Liverpool (Evans Medical). It involved helping develop a better method for separating live influenza virus particles from the egg fluid in which they were grown for making into vaccine. The virus was the Hong Kong strain now known as H3N2, a type A influenza which is the worst category and was a strain that had caused the 1968 pandemic and major outbreaks in several following years, and estimated to have killed a million people in the first 2 years. It's still out there, killing people and causing misery but at a much lower level now that we have the vaccine for it.

[Tripps]

I am now very concerned about this. The care home has gone into a sort of isolation today, and with a desire to protect vulnerable residents, have banned visitors. They have also been told that if any resident gets this virus they are not to be sent to hospital.

An 'expert' (described as the man who discovered ebola), on Sky news has just said - "this is far worse than Ebola - it is far more infectious. There is so much virus in the throat - you can catch it by just talking to someone".

[Stanley]

'Experts' like that one should self-isolate immediately! As I pointed out to my GP yesterday (by email!) 80% 0f people in my age group survive, stop talking about the 20% who don't.
I can remember the government trying to stop the common cold. I had Asian Flu, full strength, in the late 1950s and thought I was dying.
Personally I hope I get a mild dose, recover and have the benefit of the antibodies. That's the way we will eventually get protection. Just like the immunotherapy for cancer, a period of discomfort gives a huge benefit!

[Marilyn]

...except that the Virus has already mutated...

[Stanley]

Even so there will be a benefit.
I have added another element to my morning bleach routine on the sink, pot etc. When I have done I wipe my hands with the scotch pad soaked in weak bleach solution and allow them to air dry leaving a thin deposit of bleach on my hands.....

[Marilyn]

[Stanley]

Just realised after a news report that in the US under their version of 'health care' citizens have to pay for their own Covid19 test. What will that do for reported cases? Quote from the report; "Staggering numbers of Americans have no health insurance at all" Add to that the numbers of illegals who daren't report anything.
If they had an NHS this wouldn't be a problem. I wonder whether this will alter attitudes to what they see as a Socialist service, in US terms that equates to Communist.

[Tizer]

It's useful to hear from someone who has experienced the virus...
`Coronavirus: 'The worst bit is the uncontrollable coughing'' Covid patient

"Staggering numbers of Americans have no health insurance at all"

If you listen to that Americast radio episode that I linked in the Politics thread yesterday it's supposed to be about Joe Biden but inevitably has a lot about Covid. You'll hear Jon Sopel relating just how bad the US health system is - e.g. someone visiting the pharmacy for an inhaler and being told it's $375, then leaving because they can't afford it. Also there's no central control like in our NHS of course because it's all run by individual health companies in the US so its' not able to cope with an epidemic as bad as this. They've already bodged it due to Trump's intransigence and don't have enough medics' masks, gels testing kits etc. This could be the downfall of Trump.

Stanley, any residual bleach remaining on your hands will disappear in minutes due to the chlorine either reacting with your skin tissue or being released as gas. It will kill the bugs on your hands when you apply it but it won't confer protection.

An 'expert' (described as the man who discovered ebola), on Sky news has just said - "this is far worse than Ebola - it is far more infectious. There is so much virus in the throat - you can catch it by just talking to someone".

This must be Peter Piot Wikipedia who also did the early work on HIV/AIDS. His comment `far worse than Ebola' is true in terms of infectivity but he would probably qualify that by pointing out that Ebola has a fatality rate of near 90% compared with the covid-19 rate so far of about 4%.

We are fortunate with respiratory viruses - the infectivity and mortality rates are usually in an inverse ratio. By nature they are usually very infective. Piot fears the day when we encounter a respiratory virus that has both high infectivity and high mortality rate. The death rate for the SARS coronavirus was 10% and that for the MERS coronavirus 34%, but they were less infective. The swine flu (influenza type A, H1N1) virus caused a global pandemic in 2009 but the death rate was `only' 0.02%.

[Cathy]

Because of the Coronavirus, everyone at my daughters workplace have been told to work from home , until ‘at least’ the end of March.
She often works from home anyway, and is like me - the less people about, the better, so she is OK with it.

[Big Kev]

I'm just packing up my kit ready to work from home. Officially this starts this afternoon but I will be putting the kettle on and not much else

[Whyperion]

I am not sure If I had the Covid-19 or similar in Mid January. Having had the (anti) flu jab in October I got mild fluish thingy in December , but in Jan a day and half of coughing (but I am told I have asthma), overlapping some previous sore throat all followed by sneezing (which I think was an overlapping cold), but I dont know if the coughing event (which I think had been picked up by the grandchildren early dec passed to children early Jan and me by mid Jan was a flu that was not in the October cocktail combination or a Covid type one. it certainly knocked me out for some days overall.

[Marilyn]

Went to two supermarkets today because our regular one had run out of my husbands favourite Soup-in-a-Cup ( which he has every day for lunch or the sky will fall in).
No toilet paper in either supermarket ( which doesn’t bother us as we don’t need any).
There was no paper towel either.
What on earth is everyone doing with loo paper, paper towels and tissues?

[Cathy]

Oooh! Would love to say who I think is doing the most of the panic buying, but these days we aren’t allowed to.

[Stanley]

Go on Cathy...... be a devil! (It can't be me because the Janet Graham Memorial toilet roll storage box is full.....)
Tiz, yes I knew that but at least my hands are sterile as well as the sink and my pot. Not many can say that!
I've been working from home for the last twenty years!

[Marilyn]

Let me guess...it would be the same folk who would clear the shelves of bottled water if we had natural disaster.
It’s the same folk who are way to important to wait in a queue, like at road works. They come screaming down the outside lane, past ordinary folk who have been patiently waiting, then push their way in ahead of you, threatening to dent your car if you don’t comply. Rude, obnoxious and full of self importance.

[Stanley]

Tiz, mail from Uncle Bob about the state of US health care. Here's part of what he said, an aspect of their system that doesn't get reported on.
"The “system” we have landed ourselves with generates huge wastage in terms of manpower and money because of the arcane complexities of the payment mechanisms and sources. There are actually specialists (usually lawyers or accountants) that do good business helping elderly patients work it all out. My mother had to use one, and he was pretty reasonably priced (as I recall, $25 monthly) because she had three insurance sources (Medicare, my father’s policy, and her own policy). Years ago the Atlantic Magazine attempted to tote up the paperwork costs of the “system” and, as I recall it, came up with something like $100 billion."

Later this morning, under pressure. Trump has announced that testing will be free for all.

[Sue]

Tiz, we must have been given bum information by the docs at the hospital then. They thought we were bad enough to take us there, bit more than light-headed!
I am getting fed up of hearing that if you are 84 and have cancer or diabetes you are going to die! THANKS FOR THAT!!
I have started a mild form of self isolation now, being very careful about being near people and watching hand hygiene. All I have to do is survive until they produce a vaccine!

I too am tired of reading that over 70 s should keep away from groups and asthmatics are at risk of pneumonia complications! I think we are safer here in France, semi isolated and lots of fresh air. My normal cough is already getting better.