I don't care who comes up with a working vaccine first that works, is safe to use, and the country is willing to share the formula with the rest of the world. If it's the Brits, the Chinese, the Russians, the Canadians or the Americans or the Swiss... I don't care who gets the credit. I'll just thank them gratefully. Let's just find one as quickly as possible.
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Coronavirus
- Thread starter Jaybifla
- Start date
mikeyank
Long time forumite
I was out and about this morning in my neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights and I would say that 95% of the people I encountered had masks on. It took a while for everyone to get it, that we need to follow the guidelines but until there is a cure, we must take every precaution possible, as uncomfortable and inconvenient as many of them may be. Unfortunately I would guess we have a long road ahead of us until things return to any semblance of what life was like before.....
joninliverton
BSB Addict
Absolutely Tampa. There should be no point scoring where this is concerned. A joint effort would be better but don't involve the Chinese.
Foxyman1961
Well-known Member
I am absolutely fuming at the moment with the Mayor for London who on Friday has hiked up the congestion charge from £11.50 to £15.00, a rise of 30% from 22 June. This has also been extended from 7am to 10pm seven days week. How are low income families who do jobs like like couriers going to afford to work They are going to have to find if they do say an average 6 day week (most do 7) £90 before they even start to make money to feed their families. Not only that we also have an ultra low emissions zones in London which those that fall foul of this also have to pay £11.50 a day. While I am all for helping the environment this is simply maddness when the likelihood is many people will end up claiming Universal credit because they cannot pay their bills or afford to work. The real irony here is that dear old Boris wants people to return to work if they are unable to work at home but doesn't want then to use public transport because of social distancing , but wants them to walk, cycle or drive their cars!!! Transport for London has wasted billions of taxpayers money on infrastructure projects that just keep having the completion moved. What a bloody mess!!!! Sorry if this was a rant guys just needed to vent my frustration.
mikeyank
Long time forumite
Thanks for sharing Foxyman. Things are just as fucked up in the U.S. where now even wearing masks outside has political implications. What a strange world this is in the spring of 2020.
We feel your pain and frustration Foxyman. Over here there are also tons of examples where societal unfairness to lower income and/or typically disadvantaged people has been further exaggerated and laid bare for all to see during this pandemic. Whether it's an unequal access to healthcare here where an NHS style system is not a right of citizenship, or it's the poor or elderly who rely on buses and public transport to get to doctors, pharmacies and stores, or the very important low paying cleaning jobs in hospitals and the other service industries... It just goes on and on. Just about everything we are logically doing here in the states in response to the pandemic is just screwing over even more the segments of society that were already at extreme disadvantage beforehand. They can't win for losing.
The African-American population in general terms is paying a much higher price right now ranging anywhere between much greater inconveniences even up to death itself. (And every level in between.) They are more likely to have been trying to get by with food scarcity and hunger before this started. Sometimes poorer black children were relying on free breakfast and/or lunch at school as their major source of food for the whole day. And they went to bed with little or no food for dinner. Now school is out and they're home 24/7. There's no daycare or much babysitting available right now. So the parent(s) can't leave the kids at home alone to go to a job to bring in much needed money, even if they still have a job to go back to. Which many don't anyway.
The Corona mortality rate for African-Americans is sky high compared to that of whites. Some hospitals (here) report that fatalities among black patients make up 80% of their covid deaths. Why is that gap so great? Because blacks are more prone to not take good care of their bodies in the best of times. Not out of ignorance or laziness. But because they can't afford to see the doctors as often or they can't afford all the medications prescribed to them that would keep them healthier. They are more likely to have uncontrolled diabetes. More likely to be obese. Because junk foods and an unhealthy diet are cheaper and more accessible to them than healthier foods and a better diet. They are more likely to have high blood pressure. Both because of some of these other underlying health conditions in biological terms, and also from the environmental and psychological stresses of living in their shoes. They are usually operating under more stress due to living in extreme poverty and also the racism that surrounds them on an hourly basis every day as they try to go about their daily lives. So their stress level and blood pressure is higher. Then surprise! They have more heart disease. Their kidneys are more often often not functioning as well as they should for a healthy person. There is a higher percentage of blacks on dialysis in the best of times.
So along comes Covid and attacks the body of someone who has all of these underlying health disadvantages from the very start. Whether it's poorer black people or poor or "low income" white people...all these disadvantages combine to make them more susceptible to extreme complications and even higher risk of death from the virus. And as I say, those who were already struggling with the inequities in our society seem to be the ones getting screwed over the worst right now in caparison to the rest of the population.
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Foxyman1961
Well-known Member
You make some very good points here Tampa and they are replicated here in the UK as more ethnic people die from the Corona virus than the white population. Also more men die here in the UK than women which also seems to be baffling the Doctors over here, not sure if that is the same in the US. The sooner there is vaccine for all of us the better.
Yes. From what I'm hearing over here more men are dying from Covid than women. No simple explanation for it is forthcoming.
They don't have any idea why older patients, especially men are more prone to hospitalizations and death. Remember the is a "novel" virus NEW. As such we won't really know what were doing or if what we are doing is correct or harmful for years. A good example is I that i had the opportunity of reading a medical text from the 1800's and laughed when I read what they considered the "standard of care" to be in 1800. Then I realized that in 100 years physicians will read what we in today's world do to treat our patients and shake their heads in astonishment.
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juanjo
BSB Addict
It is important to recall that Pasteur is the one who proposed the modern "germ theory" of disease in the late 1850s and it took another 40 years or so before it became accepted as established fact in the medical community. Viruses were discovered in the 1890s and there was quite a battle over them. The various vectors of diseases were not well understood at all. My mother tells me how when she was a nurse cadet in the 1940 time frame, one of her duties at night was to go through the wards in the evening, shut all the windows which were open and remove all the flowers for the night. The belief at the time was night air was bad for people recovering from injury or illness and that cut flowers and plants would use up oxygen needed by patients while they slept.
Also, at the time of the HIV epidemic, the knowledge of how the immune system worked was much poorly understood which is why doctors at the time were trying anything and everything just looking for things that would work. The one good thing medically that came out of the horrible plague is that our knowledge of how the immune system works increased by many-fold.
Very true. It is actually amazing home much we have learned about this virus in such a short time. The many ways it is manifesting itself I think that it will replace syphilis as the great masquerader. The real problem is that there is so much to learn and so many bright minds working on it and with how it changes from literally day to day we don't know what to believe other than hand washing and social distancing MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE!!!!
I'm sure by now that most of you have seen the picture that has gone viral of the crowded hallway in a Georgia high school. That picture was taken at a Paulding County high school, and Paulding County borders my county. The total bullshit mentality that I shouldn't be concerned and should mind my own business really pisses me off. Yes, I have actual friends who have said this to me. I am living with my mother and helping her. She is 74 years old, a cancer survivor with a compromised immune system. I stay at home 95% of the time and only leave my home to go grocery shopping or to get food through a drive thru. I wear a mask at all times and I have done this for nearly 5 months. Please explain to me how it isn't any of my business knowing that these students are going out in public and touching things with germs that are brought into my county. How do they think we got the virus in the first place?
I feel your frustration Jay. It's not just the high school kids. (Though I don't let them off the hook entirely even if they are minors.) It's their parents. It's their school superintendents. It's their failing and corrupt state government that will not make wearing a mask mandatory.
You know what they say... You can't fix stupid.
Also unfortunately you can't fix ignorant either.
You know what they say... You can't fix stupid.
Also unfortunately you can't fix ignorant either.
BrokeStraightBoys
BSB Owner
Things are really out of control with this virus. Going to be a long winter.
mikeyank
Long time forumite
Absolutely Mark. More cases, more hospitalizations which will lead to more fatalities too. The scientists and the doctors were correct all along. Until we have an approved vaccine that is widely administered, we are not out of the woods by a long shot. And no we are not "rounding the turn" by a long shot despite what we are being told by our lying loud mouth president!
juanjo
BSB Addict
Total agreement with that. I am not a scientist nor a medical doctor who works in epidemiology. That said, I worked for 30 years representing several companies who were sued on occasion for toxic exposure issues. I learned a lot about epidemiology and the basics of how things spread and how they affect a population. I read a lot of scientific papers on the subject. What is clear to me is that there are people who do not know the science or know a tiny amount and are more than willing to use their lack of expertise to support a political agenda. This virus, like any virus, has no political agenda nor does it care about the political agenda of any faction in this country nor anywhere else. It is only interested in spreading itself around in copies to other hosts, infecting them and spreading itself even further.
Far too many people are reading statistical data and not understanding it, are making incorrect extrapolations from it. The 99.99% number being tossed around is a great example of that sort of thing. It is a number based on estimates of populations [infected and non-infected] and averaged across that estimate as well as estimates of specific sections of the population. So yeah, is it more than likely that a person under the age of 18 will not die from this disease? Yes, it is. The same is true of measles. But still, 1 in 1000 kids who come down with measles die from it. And like measles, those kids who have been infected often have long term side-effects that can be with them the remainder of their life.
The fact is that the current Case Fatality Rate for this disease in the USA is 2.6%. That means that if you are infected, the likelihood of you dying is 2.6%. However, that is a general average and it varies based on other factors in different parts of the population and also shifts daily depending on the data. In the late spring and early summer, it was as high as 6%. We will not know the final numbers for the fatality rate until this epidemic is over because as long as it continues the numbers are going to vary. For example, the final Case Fatality Rate for the Spanish Flu was 2.5%. COVID is not going to be as bad but it is going to be worse than anything we have seen since the Spanish Flu epidemic and certainly will be higher than the average fatality rate for the common flu which runs around 0.1%. The other simple fact is that while expressed as a statistic, 2.6% seems low, consider what that means in actual lives lost in the country if the disease is allowed to run its course.
Certain people keep arguing that we have to keep the economy up and running no matter what, i.e., accept the casualty rate as a necessity. That argument ignores reality in a very dangerous manner. The people most dramatically affected in the economy are the ones we need to keep things running - the farmworkers, the people working in the food transportation industry, the people involved in the transportation of food and other necessities, the people manufacturing the necessities. And the people working in a large number of other jobs that ensure you receive the necessities of life, have proper water and sanitation, etc.
Those people work in jobs where they cannot work from home and where social distancing is close to, if not impossible. They tend to work in lower-paying jobs where they either have no medical benefits or the benefits they do have are not as extensive as those in medical plans that people with higher paying employment tend to have. As a result, they often have ongoing medical issues that are not controlled or not as well managed as someone whose medical coverage is more extensive. Thus they are exposed in higher numbers, infected in higher numbers, and die in higher numbers.
There is NO national plan to deal with this epidemic. The states have been on their own. In addition, the president and a substantial portion of the Republican politicians in this country have acted contrary to good science. The Wisconsin legislature sued to reopen the economy there far too soon and is fighting to keep it wide open as the infection rate in Wisconsin has risen to over 30%. The Texas AG and Governor, not exactly a brain trust, are suing El Paso which is struggling with skyrocketing numbers and hospitals filled to capacity. They do not want El Paso to shut down. The president is going around telling people not to fear the virus because if he could overcome it, anyone can. Well, Don, not everyone has the platinum medical coverage the President of the United States does, where their doctors will fly in experimental medications that cost over a million dollars a dose to treat them.
With luck, we will soon have an effective, safe vaccine [by soon I mean in the next 12 months] and we start to move beyond this disease. Until we do, we have to take proper precautions. That means a lot of people who seem adverse to washing their hands, wearing masks, maintaining social distancing, and behaving like mature adults are going to be upset that their "rights" are being violated.
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