Corona thread. No politics please

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If anyone thinks illegal drug use is ok, have a chat with someone like me who lost a loved one due to illegal drug use – my only child, a 25 year old son, died from a drug overdose. I will NEVER forget the phone call from my ex-wife saying he had died – I did not believe it until I saw his dead body on the floor in her house, and it was not a pretty sight. I could write a book about the devastation caused by his drug use in the years that led up to his death. DRUGS DO KILL! :mad::(
 
Hey man, sometimes we just say some tongue in cheek and stupid stuff without thinking that some of us may have actually through something as horrible as you did.

I’m truly sorry for your loss and can’t imagine something like that as a father myself. No one was obviously condoning the use of illegal drugs; just shit talking about Ozzy, bats, old and leathery looking rockers, generally nonsense.
 
Casinostocks said:
Hey man, sometimes we just say some tongue in cheek and stupid stuff without thinking that some of us may have actually through something as horrible as you did.

I’m truly sorry for your loss and can’t imagine something like that as a father myself. No one was obviously condoning the use of illegal drugs; just shit talking about Ozzy, bats, old and leathery looking rockers, generally nonsense.
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Thank you. My son's addiction was the worst experience of my life by far. After he died, I cried every day for many days and weeks. My current wife and I were sitting in a restaurant not long after my son had died, when the Neil Young song "Needle and the Damage Done" started playing, and I cried then too. The damage from illegal drugs is truly horrible in so many ways.
 
Nathan the Machinist said:
They seriously need to stop eating weird shit like bats
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Yep.

For anyone who's studied epidemiology, the 2 regions we constantly keep an eye on for sources of the next potential pandemic are China/Asia and Africa, and that's one of the big reasons why: contact with, and consumption of weird wildlife. It just greatly increases the chances of novel human pathogens of zoonotic origin that never infected people before (and hence, that we have no built-up immunity to).

China's also really bad with their mega farms with thousands upon thousands of livestock in crap conditions, and pig and chicken mega farms in proximity, increasing the risk of recombinant viruses.

Not to mention the wet markets with cages of exotic animals literally stacked on each other. Hey, you wanna see if you can find an intermediary species so a zoonotic pathogen might now be able to infect humans? That's a good way to do it (and China isn't the only Asian country with these types of markets).
 
I was glad to see Boris Johnson outta ICU and outta hospital altogether. Although I never warmed up to him either as a person or a Tory politician, I think that his recovery is a major bonus for our allies in the U.K as I think that they are a weakened ally which ol' Boris may be able to give some stability to, specially after his win in a landslide election. TBH, I didn't give BoJo much chance to escape the deadly virus, being somewhat out of shape and a past smoker (?) but despite not liking him as in to want to have a beer with him, I'm still glad that he escaped death from COVID-19.

^ hope this is OK although a bit political but it's not "our" politics :)
 
benchrest308 said:
Always testing boundaries, eh Matty

B bluemax_1 are you in the health care industry? Your posts are so well written and on point. Really appreciate your write-ups.
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Not really, I wasn’t trying to push the P- word envelop.

About Johnson, I liked him as the mayor of London although I’m not a Londoner. Interesting thing about BoJo, he was actually born in NY but I digress. I was genuinely happy to see him on the TV today (I often watch the BBC) and his personal experience with COVID-19 made him sound very appreciative for their NHS and his new lease on life.

The Brits are one of our best allies and also your (Canucks) compadres so them being weak by losing a leader in any other way other than an election, wouldn’t be doing any of us any darn good in this World. Just my 2Cs.
 
Regarding COVID-19, here in CA we are looking at May15th as the date which the powers-that-be are eyeballing to ease back some of the restrictions. What are your individual states or nations (other nationalities) looking at so far? I had heard about the development of some 5 min blood test for antibodies result which got me all excited but don’t know if it’s bull or what!

ETA: I dug around some about the "5 minute test" and found a few links which you can all Google yourselves but they were almost like 2 weeks old articles. FWIW, this one is a later reported story by ABC News which still is a handful of days old:

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/sim...9-antibodies-reopen-economy/story?id=70024837
 
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Avoid exposure to the Coronavirus as much as possible. Now experts are thinking there might be lasting damage throughout the body from COVID-19: https://news.yahoo.com/coronavirus-infection-may-cause-lasting-220307511.html In addition to the lungs, apparently the effects of the virus can impact the heart, kidneys, liver and other areas of the body. Take care, and avoid unnecessary exposure to the virus.
 
Other than a complete change in attitudes and behaviors observing SD’ing and donning masks/gloves when in public and much more rigorous personal hygiene if and when things get back to some form of normalcy, I don’t see as to how we can avoid unnecessary exposure to this virus because it seems to be all over the place, it is novel meaning we don’t know much about it yet and it will most likely stick around.

Even here in CA where the state government acted more quickly than some others with the mitigation and suppression mandates, resulting in much lower known infections and verified deaths per capita, some people who I personally know of are already wailing that this is all BS, unnecessary, yada, yada and these are not your typical highly partisan , i.e, only Blue or Red team type of folks!
 
Studies in Asian counties have shown that because some or most Asians for a very long time, even before this COVID-19 shit show, were used to wearing masks when in public, they have actually faired better during the pandemic even though some of their reported number, for instance from China, could very well be fudged and under reported.
 
Hard Knocks said:
As of this minute, our stay-at-home order (Idaho) ends 4/15/2020. I expect that to be amended and extended, but that is just my guess as we are rapidly approaching that date.
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Mask up and wear gloves Dave. I know that you live in a small community which I hope has been pretty immune so far but you will still probably have to deal with venturing out into the larger and more populated cities?
 
gk4ever2 said:
Avoid exposure to the Coronavirus as much as possible. Now experts are thinking there might be lasting damage throughout the body from COVID-19: https://news.yahoo.com/coronavirus-infection-may-cause-lasting-220307511.html In addition to the lungs, apparently the effects of the virus can impact the heart, kidneys, liver and other areas of the body. Take care, and avoid unnecessary exposure to the virus.
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Yes. That's very good advice. I thought I'd posted it in the Random Thoughts thread some time ago, but may have forgotten to do so.

SARS-CoV-2, like SARS before it, targets the ACE2 receptors (Angiotensin Converting Enzyme-2. A glycoprotein on those cells, that the spikes on SARS-CoV-2 attach to) to use for cellular replication. Those cells are part of the angiotensin-renin regulatory system in the body, and are found in the lower lungs (which is why so many patients develop pneumonia, as opposed to URIs like most other respiratory illnesses), kidneys, heart... and a disturbing one for men, the testicles.

There was some evidence of original SARS leaving male survivors sterile. There's a possibility SARS-CoV-2 might do that too, but we won't know for sure until much later, when studies are conducted on a much wider range of recovered individuals.

People with heart disease and/or on ARBs (Angiotensin Receptor Blockers) or ACE blockers are also at higher risk of developing severe cases, as those medications result in higher ACE2 expression.

These are some of the reasons that I discussed with folks back in February, against the idea of "getting it early, to hopefully gain immunity while medical care was still available, and before the healthcare system was overwhelmed".

The factors against that are:

1) although it tends to be deadliest amongst the elderly and folks with comorbidities and health issues, it HAS been putting people in their 20s and 30s in the ICU, and killing some of them.

It's just that most healthier, younger people are strong enough to survive the battle, but it's not a given (friends working in facilities in Wayne county MI, where it's hit MI really hard, personally know nurses in their early 30s with no prior health issues who've already died from it) :(.

2) the reports of survivors, recovering, but with serious/permanent health damage began surfacing back in February.

3) I posted this in the Random thread, but I'll repeat it here. Serology/antibody tests have shown that a percentage of the Covid-19 positive patients who've recovered, have tested for very low antibody titers, which means those folks do NOT have immunity to reinfection.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.30.20047365v1

4) even amongst the recovered, showing high antibody titers, as yet, we don't know just how long immunity lasts. SARS-CoV-2 is the 7th of the hCoVs that can infect humans. Survivors of SARS have retained antibodies, showing that those with higher antibody counts could retain some immunity as long as 3 years, but there is also evidence that some people on retain immunity to OC43, 229E, HKU1 and NL63 for anywhere from a few months to 2-3 years.

Taking all of it into account, at this time, it's a risky gamble to assume catching/surviving SARS-CoV-2 is safe.
 
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