Coronavirus thread

[Florestan]

Maybe some Ravel, Debussy or Chopin?

PD

Chopin, early Scriabin, Satie, Mompou.

And, of course, Hildegard von Bingen.

[Madiel]

Take two nocturnes and call me in the morning.

[Karl Henning]

(* chortle *)

[Pohjolas Daughter]

Take two nocturnes and call me in the morning.

  Good one!

Thanks all for the good wishes, I appreciate it.

She is not doing very well but appears to be stable - as far as something with wildly fluctuating symptoms can be stable - and I'm monitoring things like temperature and O2 saturation, which are all around the edge of normal.

Meanwhile the house is unnaturally quiet - I was planning a 5-way Rozhdestvensky/Shostakovich 4th shootout, but suspect that wouldn't be appreciated...

How is she feeling today?

And how are you holding out?

PD

[Spotted Horses]

Thanks all for the good wishes, I appreciate it.

She is not doing very well but appears to be stable - as far as something with wildly fluctuating symptoms can be stable - and I'm monitoring things like temperature and O2 saturation, which are all around the edge of normal.

Meanwhile the house is unnaturally quiet - I was planning a 5-way Rozhdestvensky/Shostakovich 4th shootout, but suspect that wouldn't be appreciated...

Sorry to hear it has hit her hard. I hope to hear of a fast recovery.

I can't help but be curious about how you monitor O2 saturation at home.

[Todd]

A Pfizer exec - Janine Small - coined a cool phrase when testifying before the EU Parliament on Monday, when she said that the company had to move at the "speed of science" in getting its vaccine to market. 

[greg]

That's sounds like a cool phrase, but then I think... how long did it take humans to realize the earth revolves around the sun?   

Maybe something like "the speed of modern technology" would have been better.

[Madiel]

Scientists had been researching coronaviruses for decades before this particular coronavirus came along.

Similarly, the mRNA vaccine idea was being worked on for around 10 years.

The main thing that accelerated vaccine development once the pandemic hit was simply an injection of money. Most scientists have a great big list of things they would do if only they had the resources to do it.

[Karl Henning]

Scientists had been researching coronaviruses for decades before this particular coronavirus came along.

Similarly, the mRNA vaccine idea was being worked on for around 10 years.

The main thing that accelerated vaccine development once the pandemic hit was simply an injection of money. Most scientists have a great big list of things they would do if only they had the resources to do it.

Thanks for spelling out the obvious.

[Madiel]

Thanks for spelling out the obvious.

I suspect that inquiries by politicians frequently deal with precisely that task.

[Karl Henning]

I suspect that inquiries by politicians frequently deal with precisely that task.

No kidding!

[Pohjolas Daughter]

Thanks all for the good wishes, I appreciate it.

She is not doing very well but appears to be stable - as far as something with wildly fluctuating symptoms can be stable - and I'm monitoring things like temperature and O2 saturation, which are all around the edge of normal.

Meanwhile the house is unnaturally quiet - I was planning a 5-way Rozhdestvensky/Shostakovich 4th shootout, but suspect that wouldn't be appreciated...

And how is madam feeling these days?  Much better, I hope?

PD

[Pohjolas Daughter]

Better.  Still not well though.

Last weekend I came down with a similar-but-different infection that put me in bed for a couple of days.  Tested negative for Covid so came to the conclusion it was probably a bad case of flu.  And there really is only one person I can have caught that off.  My theory now is that she may have managed to pick up both Covid and flu at the same time, the Covid has now worn off (testing negative) but the flu symptoms linger.  Lot of coughing and sneezing going on around here at the moment.

Glad that there's been some improvement for her but am sorry that she's still not feeling well.  And the flu too?!  Has she had the most recent boosters for the latest Covid and flu variants (also on my to-do list)?

And you, augh!  Very sorry to hear about your own struggles.  Did you per chance get the yearly flu shot?  I've heard that it's started early (at least here in the States) and is nasty.  I need still to get my shot.

Have you had any friends/relatives helping you out lately?  If not, please consider it.

All the best,

PD

[aligreto]

Pulse Oximeter:



As available e.g. from Amazon.  Basically the same device they fit on your finger at the hospital when taking your obs, but as a self-contained unit.  Normal level should be high 90s.

During the first Covid wave there was an issue here with people arriving at hospital already having breathing difficulties, and there not being enough ventilators or even bottled O2 to keep them all going.  So the advice was to get one of these, and if your saturation level drops below 90% then go to hospital immediately, don't wait for it to fall to the point where your breathing is affected.

At one point my wife's O2 did drop into the 80s, but this was after she'd been lying flat on her back for some time, and after getting her to sit upright on the edge of the bed and take some deep breaths her level went back into the mid-90s, so panic over.

Good to know. Thank you for the information.
Some smart watches will also give this readout for you.

[greg]

Pulse Oximeter:

This is a sweet little device.

~1 year into the pandemic, bought this since I got some sort of other sickness (still don't know what it was), wanted to check to make sure this oxygen issue wouldn't happen.

It never did, but at the time, I was doing a lot of walking, and base heart rate was quite low (it also tracks heart rate), so all it ended up telling me was I was in pretty good health  (athletes often have even lower heart rates than what I had, though some days it was so low, I was like "this is just from walking, right? no bradycardia?" lol).

[Karl Henning]

Meanwhile, oh bother:
XBB, BQ.1.1, BA.2.75.2 — a variant swarm could fuel a winter surge

[Madiel]

Or it could just fuel a swarm of journalists with a need to fill space.

[Karl Henning]

Or it could just fuel a swarm of journalists with a need to fill space.

We can hope. Two friends of mine here have now had the bad luck to "win" the COVID lottery.

[Karl Henning]

We can hope. Two friends of mine here have now had the bad luck to "win" the COVID lottery.

Make that four friends now.

[Karl Henning]

A new immunity-evading virus variant looms. Here's how to fight it.

What is not yet known is whether or how well an immunity wall, built both by natural infection and vaccines, might protect against a new wave. One reason to worry is that BQ.1.1 evades immune systems on a greater scale than other variants and subvariants. Already, the new variant has the potential to make obsolete Evusheld, a key antibody used to protect immunocompromised individuals. Cases appear to be taking off in New York and could spread across the country in the months ahead. Another subvariant, known as XBB, can also easily evade immune systems.. So far, it has spread far in Singapore but little in the United States.