Muh Muh Muh My Corona (virus)

Twitter says that it's mostly due to a prison outbreak.

 

In addition to daily temperature checks, companies (and, really, all of us) should get inexpensive oximeters and check our oxygen levels every day.

Not sure if this story has been posted already, but COVID has another nasty trick:

We are just beginning to recognize that Covid pneumonia initially causes a form of oxygen deprivation we call “silent hypoxia” — “silent” because of its insidious, hard-to-detect nature.

Pneumonia is an infection of the lungs in which the air sacs fill with fluid or pus. Normally, patients develop chest discomfort, pain with breathing and other breathing problems. But when Covid pneumonia first strikes, patients don’t feel short of breath, even as their oxygen levels fall. And by the time they do, they have alarmingly low oxygen levels and moderate-to-severe pneumonia (as seen on chest X-rays). Normal oxygen saturation for most persons at sea level is 94 percent to 100 percent; Covid pneumonia patients I saw had oxygen saturations as low as 50 percent.

To my amazement, most patients I saw said they had been sick for a week or so with fever, cough, upset stomach and fatigue, but they only became short of breath the day they came to the hospital. Their pneumonia had clearly been going on for days, but by the time they felt they had to go to the hospital, they were often already in critical condition.

Opinion | The Infection That’s Silently Killing Coronavirus Patients

So get an oximeter and check yourself daily. Of course, they're already selling out online and in stores, but it's worth the effort to keep looking.

There is a way we could identify more patients who have Covid pneumonia sooner and treat them more effectively — and it would not require waiting for a coronavirus test at a hospital or doctor’s office. It requires detecting silent hypoxia early through a common medical device that can be purchased without a prescription at most pharmacies: a pulse oximeter.

Pulse oximetry is no more complicated than using a thermometer. These small devices turn on with one button and are placed on a fingertip. In a few seconds, two numbers are displayed: oxygen saturation and pulse rate. Pulse oximeters are extremely reliable in detecting oxygenation problems and elevated heart rates.

 

Ever been at the beach or a park and you smell cigarette fumes and you look around and find the smoker upwind 50 or 100 feet away?

There's your coronavirus floaters, too. Riding downwind to you.
So, yeah, people outside scare me right back to the house, too.

 

"WHERE'S THE TESTING?"

 

Was sitting at a red light Monday and vented my sunroof.
Slob two lanes over with his window down sneezed without covering his mouth.
I closed the sunroof.

 

Corrupt
President
Accelerates
Corruption

 

I suppose this was inevitable. Just saw a TV ad for a CopperFit mask. Amazingly, it did not feature Brett Favre.

 

I guess I'll have to make a note to avoid the Neuse Correctional Institution while I'm out shopping for groceries. Tell the NYT's intrepid reporter Ms. Sanger-Katz thanks for the heads-up, although my hometown newspaper reported on this days ago.

 

You'll also need to avoid any prison employees and their immediate families. But since they're wearing a signs stating who they are, I guess you'll be OK.

 

All have been offered testing. Positive cases I assume will take appropriate isolation steps.

(and it's 215 miles from my house)

 

Oh, dear, this isn’t gonna fit the narrative.

A person who died at home in Santa Clara County on Feb. 6 was infected with the coronavirus at the time of death, a stunning discovery that makes that individual the first recorded COVID-19 fatality in the United States, according to autopsy results released by public health officials late Tuesday.

That death — three weeks before the first fatality was reported in the U.S., in Washington state on Feb. 28 — adds to increasing evidence that the virus was in the country far earlier than once thought.

Santa Clara County on Tuesday announced three previously unidentified deaths from the coronavirus: the Feb. 6 case; one on Feb. 17, which also predates the death that was earlier believed to be the first; and one on March 6. Initially, the first death in the county had been reported March 9. …

People typically die of COVID-19 about a month after they are infected with the coronavirus, suggesting that the person who died Feb. 6 likely was infected in early January. At that time, the virus had been reported only in China — the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had not yet issued any advisories to Americans about the potential threat.

​

First known U.S. coronavirus death was weeks earlier than previously thought — San Francisco Chronicle

 

Because capitalism is rigged? Ponder this. If you live in a flood zone, you have to have additional flood insurance. That sort of makes sense. You're in a known, or mapped, hazard area, so you need extra coverage. But, if you don't live in a flood zone and you're flooded, your regular insurance doesn't cover it. Why? You don't have an elevated risk of flood, so your standard policy should not legally be able to make an exception to what will be a devastating situation. And yet, it does. No regular policy covers flood insurance. But why should you have to pay, annually, for an extra policy when any flood in your area will be a freak occurrence?