COVID impacts

[oggbashan]

Elderly shopping

Our eldest daughter recommended going to M&S Food during their elderly and NHS staff hour - 8 -9 am this morning.

We arrived at 8.40 to avoid the first rush. There was no queue. The store was reasonably populated but everyone could maintain their safe distance and we were able to buy everything we wanted, particularly fruit, vegetables, butter, milk and bread. The only empty shelves were pasta and rice. We would have liked to buy some microwavable rice but are not desperate for it.

We even saw people leaving with a single 12-pack of toilet rolls each.

We couldn't see anyone buying unreasonable quantities of anything - only a normal shop. All those present appeared to be elderly or obvious NHS staff in uniform. The only restriction appeared to be two bottles of milk per customer.

The whole experience was very civilised. Thank you to M&S and their staff.

 

[gordo12]

Our eldest daughter recommended going to M&S Food during their elderly and NHS staff hour - 8 -9 am this morning.

We arrived at 8.40 to avoid the first rush. There was no queue. The store was reasonably populated but everyone could maintain their safe distance and we were able to buy everything we wanted, particularly fruit, vegetables, butter, milk and bread. The only empty shelves were pasta and rice. We would have liked to buy some microwavable rice but are not desperate for it.

We even saw people leaving with a single 12-pack of toilet rolls each.

We couldn't see anyone buying unreasonable quantities of anything - only a normal shop. All those present appeared to be elderly or obvious NHS staff in uniform. The only restriction appeared to be two bottles of milk per customer.

The whole experience was very civilised. Thank you to M&S and their staff.

Went to pick up a few consumables last night. The store has reduced hours and some limits on beef, paper products etc. But the shelves, that were empty for the first time in my life, are now getting back to normal. It made me relax a bit seeing that.

Only fly in the ointment was the 17? year old male cashier. "How are you enjoying social isolation?" he asks. I had the urge to flatten him. After all his risks are about 0%. But he appeared to be sincere.

He kind of reminded me of myself at that age. I thought of all the things I could tell him about life. It made me realize the real casualty in all this is going to be the wealth of information and experience the older generations have that's going to die with them unexpectedly.

 

[KeithD]

Only fly in the ointment was the 17? year old male cashier. "How are you enjoying social isolation?" he asks. I had the urge to flatten him. After all his risks are about 0%. But he appeared to be sincere.

I don't think 17 is being considered as 0 risk anymore, and he is at much greater risk serving people in a checkout line that certainly I am in the 70s age group in splendid isolation since March 5th at home with just my wife about.

 

[gordo12]

I don't think 17 is being considered as 0 risk anymore, and he is at much greater risk serving people in a checkout line that certainly I am in the 70s age group in splendid isolation since March 5th at home with just my wife about.

I meant risk of mortality. At that age it's pretty close to zero. I had to go to another supermarket today and they've installed thick, acrylic partitions in front of the cashiers. Much better for them although not totally safe.

I assume many stores will soon follow this model.

 

[gordo12]

The SAFE way to get a haircut during quarantine.

 

[Handley_Page]

The WHO is getting its act together:
see here

 

[KeithD]

I meant risk of mortality. At that age it's pretty close to zero. I had to go to another supermarket today and they've installed thick, acrylic partitions in front of the cashiers. Much better for them although not totally safe.

I assume many stores will soon follow this model.

We'll see about the risk of mortality. We're just in the beginning of this in the States, at least.

 

[Vix_Giovanni]

I'll have to hunker down where I am. I have a place in Key West, but that seems likely to be a hotbed of transmission with a lot of people just ignoring the social distancing guidance, and I have a place in Cyprus too, but I couldn't get there by any means now and I understand it's closed after German tourists brought the virus in with them. Our last necessary close contact with the world where we are (assuming our doctors' appointments in April will be canceled) was tightened this afternoon when we successfully negotiated curb-side grocery pickup at the grocery store.

I've been under lockdown with shooting in the streets a couple of times, with the longest being for a year--me at the office and my family in an apartment, the needs of both being filled by armed convoys--and before the advent of the Internet--so this should be relatively easy. Not even needing that much contact with my wife, with her work areas being at one end of a long house and mine at the other. Our garden is just coming alive, and we can go out there. We have no debts, our bank accounts are stuffed, and the bulk of our income is in government annuities. Our children are in similar condition, although our daughter-in-law is a nurse at a major city hospital. I'd suggest my son build her a She Shed in the backyard for now, but I'm sure that's a touchy subject. Granddaughters tossed out of their university and taking classes from home.

I think isolation is easier for writers--I can roam the world in my imagination for long stretches of time in front of the computer. Just hope the power grid and food supply hang in there through this.

I went into self-isolation right after seeing the first Trump committee dog and pony show.

Glad to know you all are well; it sounds like things are the best they can be on your end. I hope that your DIL is doing well; obviously, Chloe and Lori and Will have the immediate commiseration and forefront understanding there. My girls’ group of besties are all doctors and interns and everyday have new stories of utter chaos. I wish they’d closed universities earlier; my sister’s school closed but her drama group was still holding rehearsals smh.

We ventured to New Jersey yesterday to do curbside liquor pickup. It was the last day of “BuyRite Liquor” (local megastore) store’s open hours. The place was an absolute madhouse but we loaded the back of our SUV, so if we ration ourselves we have enough to last a few months, or else, enough to take ourselves out quickly if needed.

Every time I think I’ve heard the most interesting “KeithD” story, there’s another behind it. I look forward to reading more about those lockdown times that make this all seem like a breeze.

 

[KeithD]

Every time I think I’ve heard the most interesting “KeithD” story, there’s another behind it. I look forward to reading more about those lockdown times that make this all seem like a breeze.

The longest lockdown for me was the October 6th 1976 Thai Coup, where the military was mowing down university students in the streets until the king opened the palace gates and gave the students shelter. We were under martial law, the military with the order to shot anything that moved on the street that wasn't waving a designated flag, for exactly a year. Since my job was covering the news of the coup, I lived at the office, an American Embassy annex--which, luckily had bedrooms and a kitchen-- and my family was holed up in our apartment a couple of miles away. The apartment was in the diplomatic residential area of town, so the military protected it and allowed in provisioning convoys from the embassies. The family's bathtub during an initial period of a month was our complex swimming pool, as the water was turned off. We never drank the local water there anyway--bottled water or beer.

The upside of this in a later, shorter lockdown in Bangkok in 1982 during yet another blood coup (and a later tour of duty there), my son used the internment to learn out to take apart and put a computer back together (a Texas Instrument TI-4) and how to drive it like a pro. He eventually got a doctorate in Virtual Reality and is a senior scientist in VR applications to defense needs.

Before that, I had lockdowns in Saigon and Phnom Penh. Since then I've had shorter lockdowns when Egypt's as-Sadat was assassinated and as Beirut was going to hell. In all cases, I was covering the news there on site and therefore wasn't going anyplace during the crisis. All of those came with the threat of being shot if I put my head out of the embassy.

So, as long as the virus doesn't find a way to creep into my home, this one will be a peace of cake for me--as long as the food chain and the power grid hold. With Trump in charge, I can see both of those collapsing, though.

 

[gordo12]

We'll see about the risk of mortality. We're just in the beginning of this in the States, at least.

Plenty of data already on mortality. But the rates may increase. In my humble opinion the States medical/political system is the worst possible scenario for a situation like this. I'll leave it at that. I don't want to get into political arguments.

 

[KeithD]

Plenty of data already on mortality.

No, I think not. And this is a significant point. There is NOT a enough data on the effect of the virus in the United States yet. The Trump administration is doing everything it can to prevent there being enough data.

 

[KeithD]

In addition, I don't know what it's being so difficult to get across that this is just beginning in the United States. We are on the cusp of a deluge in the spread and effect of this medically. No statistics at this early stage can provide meaningful conclusions on anything. The United States already has registered more that 10 percent of worldwide cases and the spiraling curve on this has just begun here, with the continents to the east of us further along on the curve.

I'm not aware of another national government being as counterproductive to fighting the spread of this or as screwed up in responding to it. The likelihood is that the statistics are going to skyrocket in the States as compared to anywhere else--they are already running ahead of the global statistics and we haven't really gotten into the nitty-gritty of it yet.

It's much too early to reach conclusions on who it's going to hit hardest in the United States. The experience here is likely to be unique in the world mainly because of the purposeful lack of preparation and response to it at the national level.

 

[Bramblethorn]

If it's in clinical trials - and if those trials confirm its usefulness - then presumably it will be allowed in the USA.

As I understand it, one of those drugs is chloroquine. What I've seen has been promising but not conclusive (small samples, etc.) and chloroquine can have some serious side-effects (and apparently hasn't been tested for safety on the elderly) hence why we're not just spamming everybody with it right now. If it does perform as well as the early reports are suggesting, that'll be great news, but when it comes to disease cures it's generally wise not to count chickens.

All the more reason why delaying measures are important - the slower it spreads, the more time we have to figure out what works and to step up production.

Speaking of those "serious side-effects": Man dies and wife hospitalised after dosing themselves with chloroquine.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Speaking of those "serious side-effects": Man dies and wife hospitalised after dosing themselves with chloroquine.

They took chloroquine phosphate, which is rather different. Misleading article. Nothing to do with what Cuomo has ordered by the hundreds of thousands of doses for New York. Which is what our President Trump was talking about. Seems to be working where it’s used. Chloroquine phosphate is not recommended as an alternative. It’s a fish tank cleaner. The MSM and their fake news at it again. Betcha they never correct themselves either.

 

[KeithD]

Yeah, someone needs to check where they get their "news" from.

 

[Bramblethorn]

They took chloroquine phosphate, which is rather different.

https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/resources/pdf/fsp/drugs/Chloroquine.pdf

Chloroquine (also known as chloroquine phosphate) is an antimalarial medicine.

https://www.drugs.com/pro/chloroquine.html

Chloroquine

Generic Name: Chloroquine phosphate

Chloroquine phosphate tablets are an antimalarial and amebicidal drug.

If you search the National Library of Medicine for "chloroquine", you get seven hits, all of which refer to chloroquine phosphate: https://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/dailymed/search.cfm?labeltype=all&query=Chloroquine

If we want to be really pedantic, there's a distinction: chloroquine proper is C18H26ClN3; chloroquine phosphate is two units of that and one of phosphate (H3PO4). But in practice, chloroquine phosphate is simply a way to deliver chloroquine, so it's simply referred to as "chloroquine" most of the time - in the same way that we talk about intake of "sodium" when people are actually eating sodium chloride, or medicating somebody with "lithium" when we're actually giving lithium carbonate.

If you buy a packet of "chloroquine" at the pharmacist's, you will almost certainly get chloroquine phosphate.

Misleading article. Nothing to do with what Cuomo has ordered by the hundreds of thousands of doses for New York. Which is what our President Trump was talking about. Seems to be working where it’s used. Chloroquine phosphate is not recommended as an alternative. It’s a fish tank cleaner.

It is also a fish tank cleaner, yes. It's good at killing malaria and amoebae and algae and gullible old folk who watch too much Fox News. Many pharmaceuticals do more than one thing.

In this case, it looks like they ended up taking several times the normal medical dosage, of a drug that doesn't allow for a huge margin of error. That very likely contributed to the outcome, and the aquarium formulation they took may also have had other ingredients that weren't intended for human consumption. But the chloroquine phosphate in it is the same compound that's used for anti-malarial and being touted for anti-covid.

The MSM and their fake news at it again. Betcha they never correct themselves either.

Uh huh.

I have some thoughts about a person who represents themselves as a medical professional giving misleading information about medicines, but I'll keep those to myself.

 

[Rustyoznail]

Well, according to Scotty from marketing, I’m an essential worker. Quote from his speech...

“Now if you ask me who is an essential worker? Someone who has a job. Everyone who has a job in this economy is an essential worker. Every single job that is being done in our economy with these severe restrictions that are taking place is essential," he said.”

Unless you’re a beautician. If you’re a hairdresser, that’s ok.

Ol’ Scott may write good advertising copy, but he can’t deliver it.

 

[ChloeTzang]

https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/resources/pdf/fsp/drugs/Chloroquine.pdf

Chloroquine (also known as chloroquine phosphate) is an antimalarial medicine.

https://www.drugs.com/pro/chloroquine.html

Chloroquine

Generic Name: Chloroquine phosphate

Chloroquine phosphate tablets are an antimalarial and amebicidal drug.

If you search the National Library of Medicine for "chloroquine", you get seven hits, all of which refer to chloroquine phosphate: https://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/dailymed/search.cfm?labeltype=all&query=Chloroquine

If we want to be really pedantic, there's a distinction: chloroquine proper is C18H26ClN3; chloroquine phosphate is two units of that and one of phosphate (H3PO4). But in practice, chloroquine phosphate is simply a way to deliver chloroquine, so it's simply referred to as "chloroquine" most of the time - in the same way that we talk about intake of "sodium" when people are actually eating sodium chloride, or medicating somebody with "lithium" when we're actually giving lithium carbonate.

If you buy a packet of "chloroquine" at the pharmacist's, you will almost certainly get chloroquine phosphate.



It is also a fish tank cleaner, yes. It's good at killing malaria and amoebae and algae and gullible old folk who watch too much Fox News. Many pharmaceuticals do more than one thing, as I'm sure you know.



Uh huh.

I have some thoughts about a person who represents themselves as a medical professional giving misleading information about medicines, but I'll keep those to myself.

Sorry B, I should have been more specific instead of shooting off on the fly. Doing this from my mobile on my way to work so I didn’t bother getting the details. What they took was rather clearly labelled as fish tank cleaner, rather sadly. The big picture of a goldfish on the bottle should have been a clue....) Trump is talking about Hydroxychloroquine, brand name Plaquenil, altho there’s others, and yes, you are of course right about ingredients.

Lesson here is don’t self prescribe yourself aquarium cleaner. It’s generally only available by prescription here. (Hydroxychloroquine, not the fish tank cleaner). So the big lesson is, don’t self medicate. And now apparently there’s hoarding of it going on.

Trump and Cuomo have the right idea. This is no time to be playing by the rule book for normal processes. If It seems to work, try it. It’s like ventilator splitting between multiple patients. No way in hell you’d do that in normal times but when you have no other choice......

Ah well, I just read the absolutely most shamelessly inaccurate bullcrap I’ve ever read on this in the UKs Daily Mail. When the media is putting out outright idiocy, it’s hard to argue. Hydroxychloroquine is now being authorized by numerous countries to treat covid-19. It’s not a cure, either. And it can have side effects.

Ah well, it happens, but the media blaming Trump for this is over the top ridiculous. Pardon my apoplectic reaction. I’ll go drink my coffee with some extra sugar and get ready to face a new day..... lol.

 

[Vix_Giovanni]

The longest lockdown for me was the October 6th 1976 Thai Coup, where the military was mowing down university students in the streets until the king opened the palace gates and gave the students shelter. We were under martial law, the military with the order to shot anything that moved on the street that wasn't waving a designated flag, for exactly a year. Since my job was covering the news of the coup, I lived at the office, an American Embassy annex--which, luckily had bedrooms and a kitchen-- and my family was holed up in our apartment a couple of miles away. The apartment was in the diplomatic residential area of town, so the military protected it and allowed in provisioning convoys from the embassies. The family's bathtub during an initial period of a month was our complex swimming pool, as the water was turned off. We never drank the local water there anyway--bottled water or beer.

The upside of this in a later, shorter lockdown in Bangkok in 1982 during yet another blood coup (and a later tour of duty there), my son used the internment to learn out to take apart and put a computer back together (a Texas Instrument TI-4) and how to drive it like a pro. He eventually got a doctorate in Virtual Reality and is a senior scientist in VR applications to defense needs.

Before that, I had lockdowns in Saigon and Phnom Penh. Since then I've had shorter lockdowns when Egypt's as-Sadat was assassinated and as Beirut was going to hell. In all cases, I was covering the news there on site and therefore wasn't going anyplace during the crisis. All of those came with the threat of being shot if I put my head out of the embassy.

So, as long as the virus doesn't find a way to creep into my home, this one will be a peace of cake for me--as long as the food chain and the power grid hold. With Trump in charge, I can see both of those collapsing, though.

There’s few things that scare me, but Trump is one of them. My understanding was that we’re all going to interact with, if not catch, COV19 but I defer to those with better understanding.

Social memory is effing short; despite news media, television, radio, social media etc, people just collectively forget things that happened not very long ago. I’d imagine social, infrastructural and commercial differences must blow your mind when you now go back to Bangkok and Vietnam, and especially to Cambodia. My parents took me to Bangkok in the early double aughts; two years ago, my husband took me across Thailand for my birthday, and as foreign tourists, we were basically pushed to hop from luxury hotel to luxury hotel with interspersed shopping and Michelin dining. Everything was so plasticized and geared towards tourist propaganda. I felt like I was back in China, except without the palpable sense of being followed/spied on everywhere we went.

 

[SimonDoom]

No, I think not. And this is a significant point. There is NOT a enough data on the effect of the virus in the United States yet. The Trump administration is doing everything it can to prevent there being enough data.

I agree this is so fast-moving and we're at such an early stage of things that it's still difficult to assess, but the news has worsened considerably the last few days. I tend to be a chronic optimist and a skeptic about predictions of gloom but the last few days have me much more alarmed about the virus than before.

There are people in the Trump administration, especially the health officials, who seem to know what they're doing and are getting information out there. Trump himself is unhelpful because everything he says seems geared toward reelection prospects rather than public welfare. He also has a stubborn inability to absorb or accept information that is politically inconvenient to him. We've never had a President before who so steadfastly undermines the ability of people he's hired to do their jobs.

On a positive note, there's some evidence that in the state of Washington, where social distancing measures were adopted earlier than in the rest of the US, the growth of new COVID cases has slowed. So, we may see a slowing soon in other places where such measures have been adopted.

 

[trysail]

[Personal attacks and trolling prohibited per our Forum Rules]

 

[Bramblethorn]

Sorry B, I should have been more specific instead of shooting off on the fly. Doing this from my mobile on my way to work so I didn’t bother getting the details. What they took was rather clearly labelled as fish tank cleaner, rather sadly. The big picture of a goldfish on the bottle should have been a clue....) Trump is talking about Hydroxychloroquine, brand name Plaquenil, altho there’s others, and yes, you are of course right about ingredients.

This still isn't right. He has been promoting both hydroxychloroquine (a newer modification of the drug) and chloroquine [i.e. chloroquine phosphate], the old version. Here, have a White House transcript.

Now, a drug called chloroquine — and some people would add to it “hydroxy-.” Hydroxychloroquine. So chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine.

...

But it is known as a malaria drug, and it’s been around for a long time and it’s very powerful. But the nice part is, it’s been around for a long time, so we know that if it — if things don’t go as planned, it’s not going to kill anybody.

...

So you have remdesivir and you have chloroquine and hydro- — hydroxychloroquine.

...

We are very excited about — we are very excited about — you know, specifically, what we talked about with the chloroquine. I think the — I think it could be something really incredible.

...

And the beauty is — I think I can say this, Steve — the beauty is that these drugs have been out there. So the really danger part of the drugs — especially chloroquine — it’s been out there for years. So we know it’s something that can be taken safely.

He told people, repeatedly, that chloroquine could be taken safely. That it wasn't going to kill anybody. Despite decades of evidence that this is a drug that can have serious and sometimes lethal side effects. These folk took him at his word.

Lesson here is don’t self prescribe yourself aquarium cleaner. It’s generally only available by prescription here. (Hydroxychloroquine, not the fish tank cleaner). So the big lesson is, don’t self medicate. And now apparently there’s hoarding of it going on.

Americans self-medicating with fish medicine is, sad to say, not a new thing, and not without good reason.

edit: I'm all in favour of testing these drugs, and procuring supplies in case they are confirmed to work. I hope they do work! But making it the mainstay of a response "strategy" before confirmation is reckless in the extreme. Anybody who takes an interest in medical research knows that plenty of things that show initial promise fail to live up to expectations.

Recipe for false hope:
- get a big scary disease
- in desperation, doctors around the world try hundreds, maybe thousands of different experimental treatments
- most of those treatments do nothing, or worse than nothing; a handful produce good results simply by statistical fluke
- report only the ones that produce good results, before testing whether those results are reproducible

Trialling hydroxy/chloroquine as part of a broader strategy, and preparing to expand its use if it proves effective? That would be smart. Staking everything on something that hasn't yet been confirmed to work, while undermining the things that do work? No thanks.

Meanwhile, I see the same folks who were warning us all about "death panels" a few years back are now onto "seniors should be honoured to die for the Dow Jones".

 

[KeithD]

Ah well, it happens, but the media blaming Trump for this is over the top ridiculous. Pardon my apoplectic reaction. I’ll go drink my coffee with some extra sugar and get ready to face a new day..... lol.

I think you should just stop while you're behind. Especially on the AH.

 

[KeithD]

I agree this is so fast-moving and we're at such an early stage of things that it's still difficult to assess, but the news has worsened considerably the last few days. I tend to be a chronic optimist and a skeptic about predictions of gloom but the last few days have me much more alarmed about the virus than before.

It's not like anyone with either historical or medically memory didn't see back in January and February where this inevitably, especially in light of how the U.S. federal government was responding, was going--and has yet to go--for a good long time.

My wife and I went into isolation on March 5th and have no expectations on when we can come off that. We can afford it and are situated to be able to do that as long as services hold. I ache for those who can't do this.

My understanding of what can happen goes all the way back to the Spanish flu in 1918. My paternal family was riding high. Quite wealthy, my grandfather, at 39, had just won the state treasurer position and owned the biggest insurance company in the northern part of his state. My grandmother was the county clerk in a newly built courthouse. They had four children and a big house in town and a big house at a nearby lake. The Spanish flu hit. My grandfather was dead in matter of days. My grandmother was given the option of going to his funeral or being at home when two of her children died (they didn't). The insurance company was wiped out by the payouts from the Spanish flu deaths. The courthouse burned down and the county government just shut down, closing out my grandmother's job. All in a matter of a couple of weeks.

 

[oggbashan]

Today I had to go to our city hospital for my penultimate radiotherapy treatment. The final one is tomorrow.

The roads were unusually quiet. At one city roundabout, usually clogged with traffic in all directions there were no other cars at all. We had never been able to drive straight around it before, even in the early hours of the morning.

All the city centre car parks, usually full in the afternoon, were three-quarters empty. All the shops, eateries and tourist attractions have shut.