Coronavirus COVID-19 Pandemic

So, turns out Italy's been cooking the books on kung flu death numbers. They have been, amongst other things, counting every death suffered by someone with the virus as due to it, even when it's caused by other stuff (such as car accidents).

 

EDIT: Nope - TA

I am also going to post this. To misquote the article's title slightly, I will take evidence over idiotic hysteria any day.

 

Huh, that's neat.

Still going to avoid it like the plague because it's highly likely I would be fucked royally if I ever got the virus due to my health history. Or because of my health history of constantly fighting lung virus's, severe bronchitis, pneumonia, the flu and the dreaded common cold I may be immune. I doubt that but that's just a humorous thought I had a bit after I heard this virus had confirmed cases in my county.

 

It's a member of the Corona-virus family, even if it's a much nastier version than has been seen before. I'm not calling it The Wuhan Flu to minimize it at all, I'm doing so because it's an accurate descriptor.

It's the same reason we call the Spanish Flu by its name. It was nastier than the normal, but still part of the same family.

 

You wouldn't've, though.

 

Except it isn't a flu, so accuracy isn't a defense. The Spanish Flu was a flu -- it was caused by a strain of H1N1 influenza. Caronaviruses aren't, as I noted, even in the same phylum. They're around as related to influenza as elephants and sea cucumbers are.

There's little symptom overlap, either, except in very mild cases.

And as for Angry Puffball's link and commentary... I'm just going to facepalm.

 

Well, on a tangental note to the doom, anyone else going slowly mad from excessive family togetherness?

I'm stuck in here with two toddlers and the aforementioned sick wife, who, checking off most of the criteria for suddenly dieing from this thing has decided to spend her time engineering more complicated garden solutions to be fit into our little yard, and she's insisting on taking all the space between toddler storms getting my input in detail or discussing alternative school options for my tiny chaotic friends.

Well, that or politics.

All three of them require some degree of affability and presence from me, or they really start to freak out, so hiding out or going through the home repair backlog is somehow also impossible.

Oh! And its allergy season, so I can either sneeze constantly and convince her that I've caught the plague, or take Benadryl and convince her that I've caught the plague!

 

I'll admit that I'm not an expert regarding the Corona virus but if I recall correctly sniffling and sneezing are not symptoms of the disease.

 

Tell my wife for me please, because somehow she forgets every 20 minutes.

 

Well if that's the case you might as well mention the cases of fever and diarrhea associated with it.

 

so is there any legoble information and research into what corona virus is susceptible to? 'cause I don't beleive that bullshit about hot climates and gurgling hot water in your mouth...

 

What do you mean by "susceptible to?"- because it's susceptible to a lot of things, up to and including good ol' soap and water. It's not a particularly resilient disease, even by the fragile standard of the virus... it dies to all sorts of things when out of the body. Including extreme heat, extreme cold, salt, ph imbalance, dehydration (re: dry climates) and even oxygen if you give it time. Nine days is the upper extreme of this family's surface survival in perfect conditions, though I'd give it a full two weeks to be on the safe side.

https://www.medicaldaily.com/new-study-reveals-how-long-coronavirus-can-survive-surfaces-449484

But in the case of this particular virus, the overwhelming majority of infections are human to human air transmission. The viral particles are carried out of the lungs while breathing, float around a bit (no more than a minute- this is not an aerosol virus- but every breath of air from an infected person resets the clock) and either settle on the skin, eyes, or in the lungs of the next victim. It can probably also spread via tainted blood transfusion (unlikely it ever has, but it probably can), but that and surface vectors are exceedingly minor vectors of this family.

Once in the body... well, then you're pretty much fucked. And it is ever-so-good at finding ways into the body. Eyes, lungs, any scrape, cut, or sore on the skin, all make you vulnerable. Which basically means you need the full hazmat kit to be completely safe... though standard clothes will probably be enough, if they're full body coverage.

Hot climates *do* appear to slow it down, as they slow other variants of the same family (like the common cold). So far, the spread pattern follows models built for diseases that favor cool weather (which again lines up with its common cold cousin). Not that it has much impact on a disease with this long an asymptomatic infectious period.

Gurgling hot water won't do shit, however.

See... there's very little reason to believe you can catch Wuhan flu or, really, the vast majority of viruses by swallowing them- the stomach is literally a churning toxin pump that destroys the vast majority of living tissue that enters it. There are things built to survive the experience, but most of them are bacteria, fungi, or macro-parasites. Viruses don't tend to do that... they have no reason to.

As mentioned before, viruses usually get in through the lungs, the eyes, and various possible abrasions of the skin. Which are much easier targets than through the mouth, since most people constantly use their skin, eyes, and lungs... but only literal mouth-breathers have their mouths open all the time.

If you have cuts in your mouth (or diseased gums), it could get in that way, but simply gargling with hot water won't help that much, if at all. That said, gargling hot water does help with the whole 'dental hygiene' thing, so it has other benefits.

Overall, however... the only guaranteed defense is to never breathe the same air as an infected person. Thus the whole 'social distancing' thing.

 

Thank you so much man!! This helps a lot!!

 

Colds are generally rhinoviruses. They are, at least, more closely related than influenza is, being in the same phylum, but they aren't in the same order. To continue the analogy I used above about the flu, rhinoviruses are about as closely related to coronaviruses as elephants are to lancelets.

Again. Not. A. Flu. This is coming only a couple of posts below Biigoh issuing a reminder about that rule, too.

 

Pretty sure that's just for stuff like kung flu" & "chinese flu" and so on.

Biigoh are we allowed to refer to the the Coronavirus as just the "flu"?

 

It is a flu. What it is not, is influenza.

This was covered earlier, and has been explained to you more than once... apparently you weren't paying attention.

 

Fuck, it's like I stepped back into SV's word-policing and political agendas.

Which one of the site's rules does calling Tom Riddle "The Dark Lord" instead of Voldemort break again?
Especially in Rants, where those rules are relaxed?

Everyone knows who you mean when you say "The Dark Lord" or when you say "Voldemort."
It's trying to police what people call him that's off-topic, basically a way to be uncivil, violating Rule 1, for what is likely a political purpose, violating Rule 8.
This after the promises made in the introduction of the site rules that this wouldn't be a site where that shit is pulled.
The subject under discussion was not made unclear by the use of a common vernacular instead of the official medical terminology.
The only people doing a derail are those trying to say otherwise instead of just going on talking about the damn virus and its pandemic.

_{This is my "bruh" voice, for when a mod action makes me say, "Bruh."}

 

No; you just ignored my -- rather unsubtle -- answers:

Emphasis added. Or, well, this:

In other words, no, I have been paying attention. My position on this matter is both clear and unsubtle.

 

For a second I thought I was in the SV rants with a situation in a HP thread that got really wacky mod attention, but I got it halfway through.

 

Same shit, different toilet.

 

You are right.

Let's use the-virus-that-must-not-be-named.

 

Thank you for your effort. I want you to know I appreciate all the work you've done, data you've collected, research you've hunted down, and laying it all out.

 

How about full-body plastic bags.

 

... Huh... Not what I'd call a first pick, but it'd probably work. Bonus: most trash bags are coated in antibiotic chemicals. They don't work on viruses *in* the body, but they work *outside*. Every remotely harmful chemical works on viruses outside the body.

 

The Voldemort Virus has a nice alliterative ring to it.

 

No, we need to save that one for an exciting new source of leprosy.

 

So long it affects the nose with more often than statistically normal for other leprosies...