Coronavirus thread

[Florestan]

Well, if antibiotics cured you, it wasn't Covid-19, that's for sure. If you were cured regardless of having taken antibiotics, then perhaps it was...

I'm sure it wasn't Covid-19. But what if I had those symptoms miid- or late- April? Would not I have been recorded as a Covid-19 case?

[Florestan]

And good evening to you, good Sir!

To you as well!

[Pohjolas Daughter]

This article left me in shocked, sad, jaw-dropped.....without words:  https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52471208

[vandermolen]

Interesting Jeffrey.  Do you know when they came back from Italy (was it at the end of a school vacation break?)....and also when you started to feel ill?  And is there any test that you could take that would indicate at this point in time as to whether or not you had had the virus?

Best,

PD

Thanks PD (and André, Andrei, Baron S, Music Turner) for the interesting follow up comments. Actually the government yesterday announced that anyone over 65 with symptoms could get a test. However, I'm not yet 65 (not quite anyway) and I no longer have symptoms but I would be really interested to know. I wonder if thousands if not millions of people have already had the virus without realising it. At the time I was ill I'd never heard of Coronovirus and it is only retrospectively that I wonder if I and maybe many others here have already had it.

[Karl Henning]

As of late January 2020 I had the following symptoms:

--- 38/39 C fever, for 4 days in a row;

--- sore throat (as in, a razor was glued on my throat; each and every swallowing was a torture --- for two days in a row);

--- loss of appetite (for a week I barely ate);

--- extreme physical weakness;

--- I was cured of all this mess with 7-day treatment of antibiotics.

Was it Covid-19?

Glad you've mended!

[SimonNZ]

Swedish city to dump tonne of chicken manure in park to deter visitors
Lund council hoping 'stink' keeps people away on Walpurgis Night

"The university town of Lund in Sweden is to dump a tonne of chicken manure in its central park in a bid to deter up to 30,000 residents from gathering there for traditional celebrations to mark Walpurgis Night on Thursday.

"Lund could very well become an epicentre for the spread of the coronavirus on the last night in April, [so] I think it was a good initiative," the chairman of the local council's environment committee, Gustav Lundblad, told the Sydsvenskan newspaper.

"We get the opportunity to fertilise the lawns, and at the same time it will stink and so it may not be so nice to sit and drink beer in the park," Lundblad said, adding that the only potential drawback was that the smell may not be confined to the park.

"I am not a fertiliser expert, but as I understand it, it is clear that it might smell a bit outside the park as well," Lundblad admitted. "These are chicken droppings, after all. I cannot guarantee that the rest of the city will be odourless. But the point is to keep people out of the city park."[...]

[SimonNZ]

They are starving': women in India's sex industry struggle for survival
Exclusion from government Covid-19 relief has left many reliant on private food donations, as fears raised over protection from transmission after lockdown

"Rasheeda Bibi has five rupees to her name. A worker in India's sex industry, she lives in the narrow lanes of Kolkata's Kalighat red light area with her three children in a room she rents for 620 rupees (£6) a month.

As a thunderstorm rages through the city, Bibi worries about the leaky roof of her small room.

It is now a month since India went into total lockdown on 26 March to contain the spread of Covid-19. With no clients, Bibi's savings have dwindled. She has no money left for food, or sanitary towels for herself and her daughters, let alone for fixing the roof.

As non-essential economic activity has ground to a halt, the lockdown has hit millions of people working in the informal sector. The government has announced relief schemes for the poor, but women working in the sex industry are outside their ambit. In India sex work is not illegal, but several supporting activities are; maintaining brothels and soliciting customers are criminal offences.

According to a survey by UNAids, in 2016 India had 657,800 sex workers, though the true number is likely to be much higher. Most of their clients earn daily wages and, as millions of people have become unemployed, this clientele has disappeared overnight.

Urmi Basu, the founder of New Light in Kolkata, which works with children of sex workers, worries about the long-term situation. "Even when the lockdown lifts, if they start taking clients, there is no way of knowing who's carrying the virus. Unlike HIV/Aids, a condom can't protect them. How does one negotiate safety in this situation?"

As part of the government's relief scheme for the poor, India's prime minister Narendra Modi has announced a financial package that will deposit 500 rupees (£5.30) monthly into the bank accounts of 200 million people. But those working in or trafficked into the sex industry – many of whom lack government-approved documentation to access public distribution systems and relief schemes – are not included.

Women like Bibi earn around 200-300 rupees (£2) per client and see three or four clients a day. From their earnings, they pay rent, utility bills, and buy food and medicines, as well as pay for education and care for dependents. Then there is the commission for brothel keepers and pimps.

"They have no food, they are starving. They live in tiny, windowless rooms with no fresh air. Many don't have access to running water; sometimes, the choice is between paying water bills or topping up phones," says Ruchira Gupta, founder of Apne Aap Women Worldwide, which works for the eradication of sex trafficking in India.

In cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata, brothels are located in jam-packed red light areas where social distancing is impossible. Delhi's GB Road has more than 3,000 sex workers housed in 80 small brothels. Kolkata's Sonagachi, which is referred to as Asia's largest red-light area, has between 8,000–10,000 sex workers.

Hygiene is a challenge, with limited access to running water and as many as 20 people sharing one bathroom. Brothels rarely have kitchens and women buy food from vendors. For these women, the lockdown has meant the loss of their entire ecosystem – rickshaw drivers, corner stores, and street carts.

Social workers say financial distress has increased instances of domestic violence and conflict. Priti Patkar, founder of Prerana, an anti-trafficking charity in Mumbai, believes this puts children at risk. "When adults are in strife, they pass it on to children," she says.

As the uncertainty – and fear of the pandemic – grows, social workers anticipate a sharp spike in depression, anxiety, and perhaps, suicide.

With no government support, the onus to help the marginalised has fallen on the voluntary sector. Women working in the sex industry are now dependent on charities for their basic needs, including food and access to medication during the lockdown, especially antiretroviral therapy medications for treating HIV/Aids.

Gupta recalls a call from a 12-year-old child, the daughter of a sex worker, who said the family hadn't eaten for 10 days. This kind of distress call is common and similar calls are coming from all areas of the country, she says. The problem is the same: women have no money, they haven't eaten for days and the police are forcing them to stay inside."[...]

[Herman]

Funny how it turns out pretty much everybody didn't feel too great in December.

Generally, from what I have heard, the symptoms of passing Corona are quite serious, in that it's a fever that lingers for two weeks and usually people mention back aches, too, and of course throat aches.

But perhaps there's all kinds. And apparently the younger one is, the shorter the spell can be. Not always, though... There are horror stories of quite young people who get hit with extreme auto-immune reactions and there are the embolic blood clots.

The central thing to keep in mind, though is, even if you already have been visited by Corona, this is no guarantee you're home free for the rest of 2020. Apparently there is no lasting immunity.

A friend of mine had test confirmed Corona. She is 62 years old and in reasonably good shape generally, as is her husband, who is 65 years old. They both had it, felt utterly crap for about four weeks, they stayed home, and they're getting back in shape now.

So the good news is, Corona doesn't need to be a death sentence, even if you're getting on in years. It does help if you live a somewhat healthy life (no smoking, taking serious walks, don't spend your entire day listening to Wagner, or sitting behind the laptop talking about it) and you also need to be lucky in that your lungs and heart are pretty much okay. Corona diminishes lung capacity, so it takes a toll on one's heart, which needs to work harder to circulate the oxygen. Also, if you have a high fever for a long time this can release all kinds of bacterial crap in your bloodstream  -  this is where the antibiotics come in.

I'm saying this as a layman, as old as that damn Paul McCartney song with "Vera, Chuck and Dave", having basically the same information as you guys.

The thing is, we keep reading about the death toll, which is why (I am no exception) we kind of get obsessed with Corona being the End, and in some cases it is, but you can work on it and escape in two ways. Self-isolate (pref with a loved one) and stay in good shape.

And no Wagner!

[vandermolen]

Good points I think. My older brother included the lyrics of that Beatle song in his last birthday card to me!
I'm trying to keep active and last weekend did an 8 and a half mile walk over the South Downs, on the basis that we are now allowed to drive to a walk as long as the walk is longer than the drive. It was great to get out in lovely scenery.

[Mandryka]

Lockdown motet, Renaissance style

https://www.youtube.com/v/UFqgAwH20_I

This is very good, very much worth a listen.

[André]

Lockdown motet, Renaissance style

https://www.youtube.com/v/UFqgAwH20_I

This is very good, very much worth a listen.

Very good  . I suppose Emanuelis stands for Macron?

[Herman]

We try to keep this thread free of political conspiracy theories.

[drogulus]

     Why is it necessary for Trump to pressure intelligence agencies to come up with evidence that the virus came from the lab? I'm old fashioned in wanting intelligence to flow up from gatherers to decision makers. I don't trust decision makers telling the agencies what they should find. If they are supposed to find what they want to be there, why not hire theologians to replace the spooks?

[Ratliff]

     Why is it necessary for Trump to pressure intelligence agencies to come up with evidence that the virus came from the lab? I'm old fashioned in wanting intelligence to flow up from gatherers to decision makers. I don't trust decision makers telling the agencies what they should find. If they are supposed to find what they want to be there, why not hire theologians to replace the spooks?

Isn't that what Trump is doing, more or less? Until he is disconcerted to find that some of his appointees have some residue of integrity, and he has to swap them out again.

[Herman]

Trump dittoheads have been spreading conspiracy theories about "the Chinese virus" on social media for quite a while now.

[Mandryka]

Pour le professeur Raoult : "l'Afrique sub-saharienne est relativement protégée"

https://www.parismatch.com/Actu/International/Pour-le-professeur-Raoult-l-Afrique-est-relativement-protegee-1681460

Pour Didier Raoult, il est "possible que d'ici un mois, il n'y ait plus de cas dans les pays tempérés

https://www.parismatch.com/Actu/Sante/Pour-Didier-Raoult-il-est-possible-que-d-ici-qu-il-n-y-ait-plus-de-cas-dans-les-pays-temperes-1682862

Dans une interview accordée à la presse sénégalaise, le professeur Didier Raoult déclare que l'Afrique sub-saharienne pourrait avoir une réaction différente à la propagation du Covid19 grâce à son "écosystème".

The protection in Africa, according to Raoult, maybe due to the widespread use of antimalarials. Unfortunately I don't subscribe to Paris Match so I can't see the whole interview.

Il poursuit : «Je ne prédis pas l'avenir, mais si les choses continuent comme ça, on a bien l'impression que ce qui était l'une des possibilités de cette maladie, c'est-à-dire une maladie saisonnière, est en train de se réaliser. Il est possible que d'ici un mois, il n'y ait plus de cas du tout dans la plupart des pays tempérés»

[André]

« Une maladie saisonnière »

The word « saisonnier » (saisonnière for feminine nouns) means 'for one season', but the implication is that it recurs every year ('une culture saisonnière'). Maybe he meant that it will be for one season only, with no recurrence?

[drogulus]

     Comparing COVID-19 Deaths to Flu Deaths Is like Comparing Apples to Oranges

     Since doctors rarely see people die of the flu, where do these estimates of thousands of flu deaths come from? Why are hospitals never overcome with flu cases like they are with Covid 19? Something is not right, a big bad something.

If we compare, for instance, the number of people who died in the United States from COVID-19 in the second full week of April to the number of people who died from influenza during the worst week of the past seven flu seasons (as reported to the CDC), we find that the novel coronavirus killed between 9.5 and 44 times more people than seasonal flu. In other words, the coronavirus is not anything like the flu: It is much, much worse.

From this perspective, the data on coronavirus and flu actually match—rather than flying in the face of—our lived reality in the coronavirus pandemic: hospitals in hot spots stretched to their limits and, in New York City in particular, so many dead that the bodies are stacked in refrigerator trucks. We have never seen such conditions.


     Welcome to Earth!

[drogulus]

     One reason to be skeptical of the lab release narrative is that they may have never possessed the virus in the first place.

The Wuhan team leader, renowned virologist Shi Zhengli, contends that the institute never possessed the SARS-cov-2 virus that triggered the outbreak that has infected more than 3 million people worldwide. In a social media posting, Shi said she would "bet my life" that the outbreak had "nothing to do with the lab."

     If we can't even refute the claim that the lab never had the virus, how can we believe the claim that they mishandled it?

     

     

[arpeggio]

We either keep the quarantines in place and potentially damage the economy or we open the economy and risk the lives hundreds of thousands of Americans.  We may put at risk the lives of peoples in other countries.  One third of the recorded cased are in the United States.

I do not know the answer and I am skeptical of anyone who thinks he does.