Covid 19 virus

[paulca]

Yes the bigger problem is the idiots panic buying. I have several weeks of food already. I will buy no more.

This is why I now refer to the whole thing as the zombie apocalypse.  Not because of the virus, but because of how people are reacting to it.  I can actually see it become quite dangerous to be out in public in the coming days.  The virus you can defend against with some sense and hygiene.  The idiots will be much harder to defend against if they go postal.

[Cerebus]

By the way, is it "coronavirus" or "corona virus"?

It's a "coronavirus", one of the family of coronaviruses which contains about 40 species. What we're loosely calling Covid-19 is strictly the name of the disease it causes and the virus causing it is SARS-CoV-2 a strain of the species  "Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus", subgenus Sarbecovirus, genus Betacoronavirus, family "Coronaviridae", order Nidovirales, relam Riboviria.

[TerminalJack505]

I think it would be interesting to try to project when we would run out of hospital beds based on this growth pattern.  A number of factors would come into play, such as number of beds, % in use, turnover of beds, location of beds vs. hotspots, etc.  Just eyeballing the numbers without careful calculations and by making broad assumptions, it looks to me like the US health system could be overwhelmed early next month.

Here's an article that "runs the numbers" both for (U.S.) hospital beds and face masks--the two resources that are most likely to be overwhelmed when/if things get worse.

If 20% of cases require hospitalization, we run out of beds by about May 4. If only 5% of cases require it, we can make it until about May 16, and a 2.5% rate gets us to May 22.

[Electro Detective]

One can sense at street level from listening in on hot wind powered chats, that another Idiot Apocalypse is slowly gaining some ground,
but so far many are still so-o-0 unsure, 
and fear the embarrassment of being fooled again    more than they do a few sniffles, headaches, skin rash, dunny runs.. or even death itself 

That's a good thing imho, and keeps the rabble under control till this blows over and the next one kicks off.. in 2022 ? 

[shakalnokturn]

Anecdotally, the virus appears to be rampant in France despite the statistics. I just found out a relative in France has got the corona virus. Also, my daughter lives in France (she does not have the virus) and said some client walked into her work and told the judge she has the virus and will spread it on purpose because she has contempt for the French court system. The woman was arrested and tested as positive. Seems like the virus can be used as a weapon.

By the way, is it "coronavirus" or "corona virus"? If seems both terms are used, with the former being more popular. It seems the bad spelling is spreading faster than the virus itself. Why would Anglophones join the two distinct words together when there is no reason to do so? Itseemsratheroddtome.

France is minimising the impact, economical reasons and upcoming elections this weekend.
People who lived in France through the Chernobyl event should have learnt how much they can't trust their government and media to protect and inform them.

[james_s]

The thing I'm most curious to see is when people get tired of hearing about it and give up and return to business as usual. I mean this stay at home thing is feasible for some people, I can work from home indefinitely and now my employer has mandated it but most people cannot, they can stay home for a week or two but the virus could easily be spreading for months so this is not sustainable.

I don't know when, but I would bet that at some point covid-19 is not new and shiny anymore, it will have infected or killed enough people that it will become another faceless statistic and everyone will be obsessing over something else.

I'm hopeful that a lasting result of this will be an increase in telecommuting as companies pushed into offering it due to the currently unusual circumstances will see that for many jobs it is a waste of resources to require everyone to come in and sit together in the same office. With the communication tools we have available now all I need is my laptop and a decent internet connection, my physical location is irrelevant. 

[Muttley Snickers]

I am sick to death of hearing about it.   

[tautech]

I am sick to death of hearing about it.   

Hopefully not literally Muttley. Keep safe mate.

[Electro Detective]

I am sick to death of hearing about it.   

Queue up mate 

Sicker to find no dunny paper anywhere because of too many idiots

and people that were normal ( ) a few weeks ago getting all so-o-o grim, serious and 'informed and updated' about it if some humor gets tossed in..

Image all these idiots in a real shtf situation,
they'll stay in a burning building about to collapse, breathing through improvised folded dunny paper 'filters',
because it's still a better punt than escaping and risk 'catching something deadly'   

[VK3DRB]

The Greek Orthodox church say that taking the communion wine from the same common spoon won't spread the virus... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51819117. Is this God's protection of the faithful, or the 13% ethanol content of the wine preventing spread of the virus?

This raises another question: Would having a nip of grappa or whisky (both very high in ethanol content) be a good backup as well as washing hands with hand sanitiser after eating take-away food or restaurant food prepared by someone with corona virus? It is known ethanol kills this virus in its tracks. Could a glass of wine after each meal sanitise the mouth, the gullet and maybe even the stomach contents?

[donotdespisethesnake]

By May the virus should be weaker, as shown in studies regarding the SARS virus,

So "should be weaker" according to studies of a different virus. You can play semantics all you like, doesn't change anything.

Sorry, but the meme that "the virus will reduce by itself in time" is just bullshit, people are just using it to justify not doing anything. The only reduction effects will be herd immunity, when sufficient people have been infected.

[SilverSolder]

The Greek Orthodox church say that taking the communion wine from the same common spoon won't spread the virus... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51819117. Is this God's protection of the faithful, or the 13% ethanol content of the wine preventing spread of the virus?

This raises another question: Would having a nip of grappa or whisky (both very high in ethanol content) be a good backup as well as washing hands with hand sanitiser after eating take-away food or restaurant food prepared by someone with corona virus? It is known ethanol kills this virus in its tracks. Could a glass of wine after each meal sanitise the mouth, the gullet and maybe even the stomach contents?

Do we really need an excuse for a glass of wine etc. ??   

[Cerebus]

The Greek Orthodox church say that taking the communion wine from the same common spoon won't spread the virus... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-51819117. Is this God's protection of the faithful, or the 13% ethanol content of the wine preventing spread of the virus?

This raises another question: Would having a nip of grappa or whisky (both very high in ethanol content) be a good backup as well as washing hands with hand sanitiser after eating take-away food or restaurant food prepared by someone with corona virus? It is known ethanol kills this virus in its tracks. Could a glass of wine after each meal sanitise the mouth, the gullet and maybe even the stomach contents?

No. The infection route for this is mucosal, so if you wanted to sterilise food as you ate it you'd need to be swilling overproof rum with every mouthful. The accumulated hangovers would be worse than the disease symptoms for most people. Food's pretty sanitary for the most part. Anything that is over 70ºC for a few minutes is going to kill most bacteria and viruses, those that don't get killed by cooking tend not to survive the 1.5 - 3.5 pH HCl in your stomach. It's hard to get an infection of any kind from food. Most food poisoning is that, poisoning by excreted toxins from bacteria when previously cooked food isn't re-heated for hot enough and long enough to denature the toxins (which tend to be proteinaceous in nature).

The kind of alcohol concentration needed to be an effective biocide is over 50% by volume, ideally 70%. Wine most certainly won't cut it, nor fortified wines, and most spirits at 40% by volume are going to be at best partially effective.

So, as far as partakers in communion wine and wafers being in the clear from cross-infection, to quote Robert Heinlein, think of it as evolution in action.

[Simon]

This raises another question: Would having a nip of grappa or whisky (both very high in ethanol content) be a good backup as well as washing hands with hand sanitiser after eating take-away food or restaurant food prepared by someone with corona virus? It is known ethanol kills this virus in its tracks. Could a glass of wine after each meal sanitise the mouth, the gullet and maybe even the stomach contents?

Err, no. It does not work like that. If the virus enters a mucus part of your body it's in your body, not your gut. Your gut is also one of the harshest chemical environments known to man.

[thinkfat]

[...] by May it the virus should be much weaker.

Recent studies suggest otherwise. In fact experts over here expect the climax in infections by June/July, in high summer. Hence all effort right now concentrates on slowing down the spread to a rate that can be handled by our medical system.

The consensus seems to be that the case fatality will be quite low if we manage to not overflow the intensive care capabilities. If you look at China, the high fatality numbers are dominated by Hubei province, where especially in Wuhan the intensive care capacities were overwhelmed. In the rest of China, the case fatality rate was much lower.

In Germany right now we have over 3000 reported cases and 7 deaths (0.2%) but that's overly optimistic right now, IMHO. Let's see how the numbers develop in the coming two weeks, we know that fatality trails reported by about two weeks.

[SilverSolder]

This raises another question: Would having a nip of grappa or whisky (both very high in ethanol content) be a good backup as well as washing hands with hand sanitiser after eating take-away food or restaurant food prepared by someone with corona virus? It is known ethanol kills this virus in its tracks. Could a glass of wine after each meal sanitise the mouth, the gullet and maybe even the stomach contents?

Err, no. It does not work like that. If the virus enters a mucus part of your body it's in your body, not your gut. Your gut is also one of the harshest chemical environments known to man.

Hydrochloric acid...   If you ever tried working with that stuff, you get impressed with how the body manages to keep it contained without burning holes in your body!

[Cerebus]

By May the virus should be weaker, as shown in studies regarding the SARS virus,

So "should be weaker" according to studies of a different virus. You can play semantics all you like, doesn't change anything.

I hate to bring fact rather than rhetoric into things, but you do realise that SARS and Covid-19 are caused by the same species of virus, don't you. A different strain, but the same species. In the ~30,000 base pairs of their genome over 99% is identical (which is much more significant than 99% similarity in a animal where there are billions of base pairs). So drawing parallels from what is know about the long term behaviour of SARS is quite valid. It's about the same as making predictions on the biology of Dobermann Pinschers based on the biology of German Shepherds, both different but closely related strains of the same species.

Between 28th Feb and today 350 separately produced genome sequences have been published for variants of the SARS virus SARS-CoV-2 (aka Covid-19). It seems to be acquiring about 1-2 observed mutations a month. Some of these mutations will make it more virulent and pathogenic, some will make it less, some will not change it's virulence or pathogenicity. More pathogenic variants kill their hosts faster, so are less successful in evolutionary terms and as a consequence die out faster. The pattern of viruses mutating and less pathogenic, more likely to spread variants arising and gradually dominating the infection spread is well known.

[DrG]

This raises another question: Would having a nip of grappa or whisky (both very high in ethanol content) be a good backup as well as washing hands with hand sanitiser after eating take-away food or restaurant food prepared by someone with corona virus? It is known ethanol kills this virus in its tracks. Could a glass of wine after each meal sanitise the mouth, the gullet and maybe even the stomach contents?

Err, no. It does not work like that. If the virus enters a mucus part of your body it's in your body, not your gut. Your gut is also one of the harshest chemical environments known to man.

Hydrochloric acid...   If you ever tried working with that stuff, you get impressed with how the body manages to keep it contained without burning holes in your body!

Yep and one can also be impressed when something like H. pylori comes around, destroys that containment lining and *poof* an ulcer...not because you worried about the mortgage but because the marvelous engineering can, on occasion, be defeated by other marvelous engineering.

[whalphen]

A few days ago I brought a couple of large toilet roll packs and could have easily been labelled a hoarder, how dare I buy two right?

Ignore the noise.  Just prepare.  If you have to be isolated for weeks, you won't need to go out to buy toilet paper.  If you stay home and out of the chain of transmission, you'll be helping save lives.  Those calling others hoarders are just people who didn't have the foresight to plan and prepare as well as you .

[vodka]

Ode to toilet paper (spanish version)

Pa, pa, pa, pa, paper, paper,
paper, paper, paper, paper, paper, paper
paper, paper, paper, paper, paper, paper
paper, paper, sweet satin,
you'll give us pleasure
paper, paper, without end.
 
Paper, paper
Of color gray, loud red white and blue, lemon green
is your essential purpose to caress with softness.
You always alert serving the people
without distinguising analphabet or intellectual,
Private or general, proletariat or capital.
just at time of evacuating the classes to fight
just at time of evacuating the classes to fight
to... fight...
 
Is your cruel destiny, is your disgraceful fate
when they used you to violate your punishment
of sending you to the sewer by flushing.
And is your wise rebelliosness to block the pipe
as a final revenge.
Humble, delicated, and selfless paper,
you have always been despised and mistreated mercilessly.
Loved paper, fellow of the toilet
you must be defended and presented in society.
And recieve the award of some... decoration.
 
Paper, paper, faithful friend.
Because with your exemplary help
we don't have to splash the fingers,
and as proof of good faith
I swear I'll never use
the rough leaves of the ABC.
Only you, Only you, Only you, Solo tú!
And may my yell reach heaven
because you are and you'll be our best friend,
loyal immortal toilet paper
paper, per, per, per...
Glory to the paper.
Glory to the paper, paper,
per, per, per...

https://lyricstranslate.com
https://youtu.be/UNh9RPwUJGg

[Karel]

[Cerebus]

Deserving of wider circulation:

[maginnovision]

Here is another based on earlier Chinese data.

[iMo]

With covid19 there is heavy underreporting, imho.
All statistics I've seen are based on "positive tested" vs. mortality.
The number of "tested" is only a small fraction of all infected.
You have to know the number of "infected" vs. fatalities.

[maginnovision]

Well since we can't really test everyone, logistically, it means we look at data we know is valid and extrapolate like usual.