Wuhan virus (coronavirus) arrives in the USA

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the US has just given up on preventing it from coming here. You basically hear nothing about it. My kid who’s now riding the bus with kids who just returned from Vietnam goes to scouts, karate, and indoor soccer. It would spread like wildfire. I feel let down by our governments response.

That’s because you don’t actually know anything.

My office is in weekly calls with CDC and the state health department. There are weekly calls with all providers in county in most updated protocols. If you’re expecting large travel bans and discrimination from people who have traveled to Asian countries where the virus is not widespread, well yea you’re going to be let down because that is not backed by data.

Is it true that the CcDC has only tested about 7 people per day on average for this? Total tests fewer than 500?

Is it true the CDC isn’t testing for community spread?

If so how can they tell the US that at the moment there’s no community spread as it turns out they are finding in Italy?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the US has just given up on preventing it from coming here. You basically hear nothing about it. My kid who’s now riding the bus with kids who just returned from Vietnam goes to scouts, karate, and indoor soccer. It would spread like wildfire. I feel let down by our governments response.

That’s because you don’t actually know anything.

My office is in weekly calls with CDC and the state health department. There are weekly calls with all providers in county in most updated protocols. If you’re expecting large travel bans and discrimination from people who have traveled to Asian countries where the virus is not widespread, well yea you’re going to be let down because that is not backed by data.

Just stop. No one is asking for discrimination. If you have been to an affected country a self quarantine isn’t discrimination. I would do it so I wouldn’t spread it.

[Anonymous]

We have a society where saying a word, electing an unpopular president, an inflammatory news “event” causes riots. Our press/ media is flaring up over the least “injustice”. Tell those people that we are at risk from a real danger? Riots everywhere. We don’t have a police force to manage an outbreak so the government is keeping it quiet.

[Anonymous]

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/covid19-coronavirus-duke-nus-antibody-tests-12469184

[Anonymous]

Try to limit people crossing our borders? We’ve all seen what happens then. Try to violate someone’s rights by denying them entry? This country is unprepared to handle a pandemic but it’s not the government’s fault.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would like go know more about the health workers who have been infected outside China. So, for instance, the Iranian health minister. One would assume he is washing his hands, not sharing drinks, not greeting people outside his family with a kiss.

It’s a very easy virus to catch and no one has immunity to it. So everyone will get it unless they take Ebola level precautions.

That’s why whole provinces in China have basically shut down. Everyone staying at home as much as possible. No travel that’s not absolutely necessary.

For over a month.

It takes a while for us to adjust to this reality but the pictures and videos you have been seeing out of China weren’t fear mongering. And the Chinese aren’t that different from us here in the US. We keep trying to say, well those are Chinese people. It only affects elderly Chinese man who smoke. And so on. They have that pollution there. They have that healthcare there.

The body bag videos were definitely fearmongering or misinformation, at best.

How were body bags misinformation?

Videos weren't from reputable sources or verifiable.

Neither were the ‘official’ numbers.

And yet people still obsessively posted those #s.

[Anonymous]

I wish we had more info. Does anyone know how this affects children? I’m not super worried about myself, but my young kids have asthma. Respiratory viruses really knock them down and my youngest had pneumonia at 18 months from RSV. Trying not to panic over this. But there is so much unknown.

[Anonymous]

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-02-25/uae-bans-all-flights-with-iran-over-coronavirus-outbreak?_amp=true

The US have t banned all flights from China right?

[Anonymous]

Everyone in the US who has tested positive for coronavirus is being sent to a high-level isolation unit. There are 10 in the US and they were implemented in the wake of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa in 2014 (as a tangent, Trump at the time criticized Obama's handling of the Ebola outbreak and said if he were president he would cancel all flights to and from Africa).

Currently there are American patients at the facilities in Spokane WA and Omaha NE.



These facilities have air locks, pressurized air flow with 15 room air changes per hour through HEPA filtration, patient specific entrances and autoclave rooms for medical waste.



There have been issues with the testing kits. They were developed rapidly and it seems that a recent batch of testing kits had manufacturing problems with one of the reagents and had to be recalled. There just aren't enough kits to test everyone with flu-like symptoms, which would be the best strategy to monitor the situation.
Some countries, like Indonesia, aren't even testing patients.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is WHO resisting on calling COVID-19 a pandemic?

What’s the criteria?

The WHO announced yesterday or Sunday that it no longer uses the term pandemic.

Then they went ahead and used the term, saying prepare as if it were a pandemic, but we're not ready to call it that yet.

[Anonymous]

Damn, I curse myself for reading this thread! My coworker just got back from India and is sick but has no time off, so he is here. Now I am super paranoid!! I curse this thread!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the US has just given up on preventing it from coming here. You basically hear nothing about it. My kid who’s now riding the bus with kids who just returned from Vietnam goes to scouts, karate, and indoor soccer. It would spread like wildfire. I feel let down by our governments response.

That’s because you don’t actually know anything.

My office is in weekly calls with CDC and the state health department. There are weekly calls with all providers in county in most updated protocols. If you’re expecting large travel bans and discrimination from people who have traveled to Asian countries where the virus is not widespread, well yea you’re going to be let down because that is not backed by data.

Is it true that the CcDC has only tested about 7 people per day on average for this? Total tests fewer than 500?

Is it true the CDC isn’t testing for community spread?

If so how can they tell the US that at the moment there’s no community spread as it turns out they are finding in Italy?

Not PP but I posted about the high-isolation units. From what I understand the CDC has quarantined and monitored people who were evacuated from Wuhan, China (several hundred people) and people who were evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship. Three people from the Wuhan evacuation tested positive for coronavirus. I believe the others have finished their quarantine. Eighteen people who were evacuated from the Diamond Princess tested positive for coronavirus. They are staying at the Biocontainment Unit of the University of Nebraska Medical Center. The other passengers are staying at the quarantine center.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Damn, I curse myself for reading this thread! My coworker just got back from India and is sick but has no time off, so he is here. Now I am super paranoid!! I curse this thread!!

But there isn't any active coronavirus in India (which is a super big country) so why would you think that's what he has?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the US has just given up on preventing it from coming here. You basically hear nothing about it. My kid who’s now riding the bus with kids who just returned from Vietnam goes to scouts, karate, and indoor soccer. It would spread like wildfire. I feel let down by our governments response.

That’s because you don’t actually know anything.

My office is in weekly calls with CDC and the state health department. There are weekly calls with all providers in county in most updated protocols. If you’re expecting large travel bans and discrimination from people who have traveled to Asian countries where the virus is not widespread, well yea you’re going to be let down because that is not backed by data.

Is it true that the CcDC has only tested about 7 people per day on average for this? Total tests fewer than 500?

Is it true the CDC isn’t testing for community spread?

If so how can they tell the US that at the moment there’s no community spread as it turns out they are finding in Italy?

PP's questions are correct and the answer is yes.

Only three of the more than 100 public health labs across the country have verified the CDC test for use, according to the Association of Public Health Laboratories.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/20/cdc-coronavirus-116529

Originally, doctors in the U.S. were advised not to test people unless they had been to China or had contact with someone who had been diagnosed with the disease. Within the past two weeks, the CDC said it would start screening people in five U.S. cities, in an effort to give some idea of how many cases are actually out there. But tests are still not widely available. As of Friday, the Association of Public Health Laboratories said that only California, Nebraska, and Illinois had the capacity to test people for the virus.

With so little data, prognosis is difficult. But the concern that this virus is beyond containment—that it will be with us indefinitely—is nowhere more apparent than in the global race to find a vaccine, one of the clearest strategies for saving lives in the years to come.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/02/covid-vaccine/607000/

[Anonymous]

Switzerland and mainland Spain (Barcelona) report their first cases.