I totally understand people across the world getting sick of at-home isolation. Mental health has not been well in 2020. But don't rationalize roaming hog wild as some path to "herd immunity", nor does it preclude reinfection in the near to long term... I feel awful for restaurant owners and indoor retail. theweek.com /articles/944215/cant-inside We can't go inside yet It sounds like the tagline for the world's lamest horror movie: Just when you thought it was safe to go back to your spin class... But last week, a single fitness studio in Hamilton, Ontario, was linked to more than 72 positive cases of COVID-19, with an additional 2,500 people potentially exposed. What's shocking is that the gym seemingly did almost everything right: six-foot distancing, 50 percent capacity, screening customers, a robust sanitizing regime. "This is not about how well the gym was run; this is about how COVID spreads," Colin Furness, an infection control epidemiologist at the University of Toronto, explained to The Spec. "If you let people hangout together, without masks, sharing air, in the same space for a prolonged period of time ... this was going to happen anyways." Just look at Europe, where the World Health Organization is reporting "exponential increases" in cases, and warns that the daily death toll could balloon to five times what it was during the peak in April. It appears that the spike there, too, is linked to increased indoor activity — like the Hamilton spin studio outbreak, but on a macro scale. For the moment, the United States has a brief respite from being the rest of the world's cautionary tale about what not to do during a pandemic, but the message we're receiving from overseas is abundantly clear: it isn't safe yet to go back indoors. After the initial explosion of cases in Europe in February and March, as the disease was still emerging globally, the continent appeared to get the crisis mostly under control by the late spring and early summer. Germany's Bundesliga soccer league even resumed in mid-May with only minor hiccups, making it the first professional sport to return after the pandemic shutdowns. As U.S. cases began to rise again over the summer, foreign correspondents' accounts of life across the Atlantic sounded like dispatches from the moon: "People are out everywhere," NPR's Paris correspondent, Eleanor Beardsley, said in July. "There's a very relaxed feeling that it's — if it's not completely behind us, it's almost behind us." Famous last words? This week, France recorded 120,000 new COVID-19 cases over the past seven days, "one of the highest rates in the world" according to The New York Times; officials warned that in Paris, hospital beds could reach 70 to 90 percent capacity by the end of October. "We are on the brink of disaster," immunologist Paweł Grzesiowski, of Poland, told The Guardian, despite the fact that the country had managed to stay relatively healthy up to this point. Italy, meanwhile, reported this week its largest one-day total of cases, "with more than 7,300 — easily surpassing the terrible heights the country reached in March," NPR reports. And the reason for the spike across the continent seems to be linked to the casual easing back indoors. Europe's strict restrictions in the spring took less than a month to visibly downturn the continent's daily confirmed COVID-19 cases, but ever since regional lockdowns began to lift around May 5, there has been a slow — but increasingly steep — rise again. "In several European countries," The New York Times explains, "lockdowns were lifted abruptly, sowing complacency among people who felt they could return to their normal lives." Indeed, as the government in the Netherlands succinctly put it, "In recent weeks coronavirus has had too many opportunities to spread again." Especially as the weather starts to get colder, an already-blasé population might not feel the need to be as diligent as they once were, bringing behaviors that might have been relatively safe outside, indoors. Take something as simple as mask wearing, the one major and proven precaution notably missing during the Hamilton spin studio outbreak as well. In the Netherlands, where cases have nearly doubled this week, officials had been de-emphasizing masks, fearing they might result in a false sense of security; and yet "the aversion to masks, experts say, could help explain why the Netherlands is suffering such a serious spike, despite being wealthy and well-organized, with one of the best health care systems in the world," The New York Times reports. We know also, from watching countries like South Korea, which never had lockdowns, that part of their success is due to their universal mask wearing and avoidance of crowds. In the U.S. and Europe, though, reopening indoor restaurants and bars, where masks can't be worn all the time, seems to be a contributing factor. New York City, for example, had mirrored Europe in getting its outbreak under control locally, only to have seen renewed spikes since indoor dining got the green light. Today, the United States sits at a crossroads. To be sure, things here definitely aren't good; they're just not as bad as in Europe at the moment. But cases are rising again, and no one wants us to be back in the position Europe is facing now, with renewed lockdowns and imposed curfews. Instead of letting it ever get to that point, we should prepare for the fact that people who were avoiding indoor activities throughout the summer, thanks to the warm-weather alternatives, could find themselves in the coming days and weeks lured into spaces with the potential to become super-spreading sites as it gets colder. As Bloomberg argues, extending prohibitions on certain activities — "indoor restaurant dining and drinking," for example — could keep us from snowballing past having any freedoms at all again. And if our government doesn't take measures to protect us, it falls on our own shoulders to weigh the risks that come with gathering inside. After all, just because you're allowed back in the ocean doesn't mean the man-eating great white shark that was in there is gone. When it comes to spreading COVID-19, no spin class is worth it.
Flu season is starting and in preparation of another wave, the wife sent me to the store to stock up on toiletries lol. Basically double what we normally buy. We're good through the winter season.
People can probably insulate their whole attics with the armies of toilet paper they piled up during Corona, craftsmen will lose a lot of work.
There'll probably be a run on Listerine now ... Human coronaviruses ‘inactivated’ by mouthwash, oral rinses: study The study's results were published in the Journal of Medical Virology https://www.foxnews.com/health/human-coronaviruses-inactivated-mouthwash-oral-rinses-study But, note the following : https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/mou...4.html?soc_src=social-sh&soc_trk=tw&tsrc=twtr To find out whether mouthwashes and nasal rinses would be effective against the coronavirus, the researchers tested a common human coronavirus known as 229e — one of several strains that typically only cause mild infections like the common cold, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — not SARS‐CoV‐2, which is the virus associated with COVID‐19. But, as the lead author of the study, Craig Meyers, Ph.D., tells Yahoo Life, all coronaviruses have something in common: “They have a membrane,” says Meyers, a distinguished professor of microbiology and immunology at Penn State. “With membrane viruses, all you have to do is break that membrane and they’re inactivated,” Meyers explains. “It’s very difficult to work with the actual COVID-19 virus. But the membranes [in coronaviruses in general] are pretty much the same.”
Sheep, sheep everywhere. "14 days to flatten the curve!" "Next 2 weeks are most important!" ... Rinse and repeat the last 8 months. "Dark summer is coming!" "Dark fall is coming!" "Dark winter is coming!" ... Everyone is gonna die!
i remember at the start of the year when the news was showing people in wuhan straight up passing out all over the place mid-walk. it was like insta death. looking back, it seems like an exaggeration now because as the virus went global, that kinda insta death hasn't been reported anywhere else. maybe i'm wrong, but just seems fishy.
nm. image hosting not working for me this morning. But just go to JHU. The total death count, globally continues to steadily rise. So ****ing sad.
No. Data from the CDC, and I feel these numbers are inflated, but regardless there is a downward trend.
They had to go on foot because of the total curfew for many kilometres in the freezing cold to reach a hospital where they had to wait for hours if not days with at most some oxygen supply. Most of them had high fever and pneumonia. Now it doesnt happen much in developed countries because they can call an ambulance and receive some help. Nonetheless there are some cases where people have had pneumonia and die in their homes. Like the professor in Argentina who died in the middle of her zoom lecture.
Anyway most of Europe is in dire situation and it is only a matter of time before total lockdowns are enforced again even as last resort. The UK, France, Czechia Spain and Belgium in particular. Soft lockdowns with mask mandates and night curfews dont seem to be working well enough to stop their spread after it has reached this point. The deaths are beginning catching up from 100 to 250 and at this rate by the middle of november it will be like March. Over here we are doing better and we are accepting pandemic refugees again.
