Use this weekend wisely

originally posted by: FredT

originally posted by: DontTreadOnMe
Are masks really going to help...unless you are the one who is sick and wearing it...in which case stay the hell at home.
abcnews.go.com...

N95's do with some caveats and I was willing to bet on them when we had the ebola scare and they trained us for transport purposes. The cheap crap is mainly to make you feel good

Ebola isn't airborn communicable though (Thank God!) While this coronavirus is.

originally posted by: loam
a reply to: FredT

Curious because I don't have a reasonable answer for this, but at what moment would you hunker down and not leave your home should it be clear a very real risk of exposure exists?

What tells would you look for?

Its a hard one to know for sure.

For me I'd look for any sort of national guard call up within the state.
Id also look at shortages of perishable materials like say milk which would point to supply disruption etc

Aside from that it would be a "feel" thing which is impossible to quantify

originally posted by: SailorJerry
Another key thing to think about.

They are building in a frenzy multiple thousand bed medical units, and quarantied 65 million people over 26 deaths?

D

I have to be honest, Its not that far fetched.

As I said in another thread about Operation Dark Winter which was a biowarfare simulation hospitals lack surge capacity

For example: In Northern California there is at most 200 pediatric Intensive care unit beds available. The use rate hovers between 80-85 percent (that just with routine stuff that kids get sick, injured etc) that means at any given time there is at most 40 bed available. That is beds not staff who may or may not elect to come in to help. Assume we have the staff, a pandemic etc would easily overwhelm the number of free beds. Nor is there an ability short of using a C-17 to move patients to other unaffected areas assuming those states even allow it.

I doubt that even in a communist setup the hospitals have alot of spare capacity. As part of our pandemic training, we practice setting up a MASH esq hospital outside of our hospital. You use it as a triage area and a place to put the walking wounded or the hypochondriacs that inevitably show up during these times. You want to asses these people BEFORE you put them into the hospital and quarantine them. It is a standard for mass casualty incidents

Yes whoever is doing the triage will be making life or death calls with each person they see.

originally posted by: burdman30ott6

originally posted by: FredT

originally posted by: DontTreadOnMe
Are masks really going to help...unless you are the one who is sick and wearing it...in which case stay the hell at home.
abcnews.go.com...

N95's do with some caveats and I was willing to bet on them when we had the ebola scare and they trained us for transport purposes. The cheap crap is mainly to make you feel good

Ebola isn't airborn communicable though (Thank God!) While this coronavirus is.

Totally until it mutates. We would be in serious trouble

a reply to: FredT

Yeah. Impossible question to answer really.

The pleas for food are overwhelming on Twitter now. Unrest already starting.

twitter.com...

It seems to me, waiting for the national guard as the sign might be way too late. But I'm not sure what better tell there might be.

originally posted by: FredT

originally posted by: DontTreadOnMe
Are masks really going to help...unless you are the one who is sick and wearing it...in which case stay the hell at home.
abcnews.go.com...

N95's do with some caveats and I was willing to bet on them when we had the ebola scare and they trained us for transport purposes. The cheap crap is mainly to make you feel good

Seems to me, those who are sick would benefit more from the N95 mask.....if you could find one.

My question is....when do you consider that the cold you come down with is not a regular cold?????

originally posted by: DontTreadOnMe

originally posted by: FredT

originally posted by: DontTreadOnMe
Are masks really going to help...unless you are the one who is sick and wearing it...in which case stay the hell at home.
abcnews.go.com...

N95's do with some caveats and I was willing to bet on them when we had the ebola scare and they trained us for transport purposes. The cheap crap is mainly to make you feel good

Seems to me, those who are sick would benefit more from the N95 mask.....if you could find one.

My question is....when do you consider that the cold you come down with is not a regular cold?????

I know you don't play the new fangled vidya games ( ) but there is a game called Plague, Inc. which has actually been praised as a fairly tight simulation of exactly how superbugs spread. The game allows you to specifically mutate the virus in a number of different ways including hosts, intermediate hosts, symptoms, and resistances. You "win" when you've infected 100% of the globe and killed 100% of the globe. The only trick to the game, if there is one, is keeping symptoms as minimal as possible early in the infections cycle while keeping communicability as high as possible throughout. IF, and at this point I am only saying IF because I am not sold on the idea that this was an intentional bioweapon, but IF I was China and intended to use this as a weapon, it's playing out in real life pretty close to how I'd do it in that game.

If a virus has a fast burn and is symptomatic early and after a short incubation period, then people know they're sick and it limits the spread. If a virus has severe symptoms, everyone knows the carrier is sick and it limits the spread. If the virus kills the host quickly, it limits the spread. See where I am going here? If you were creating a virus in a lab to use as a weapon, you want something that take a week or two to get through it's incubation cycle but which the carrier sheds through the whole incubation period (Check that box for Wuhan), you want something which initially produces "non-critical" symptoms for the first few days after incubation which extends the shedding because the carrier assumes it's a minor illness and goes about their normal routine (another box checked for Wuhan), and you want something that ultimately ends up killing the patient via a tertiary ailment (pneumonia, for example) from devestating their immune system because it is far more difficult to develop a treatment for a disease when the disease itself isn't what ultimately is the killer (HIV/AIDS would be another good example of that... look how long that's been known about and how long it took them to even begin to develop a functional treatment program.)

So add yet another concern to the ridiculously long list of horrible coincidences surrounding this supposedly happenchance natural virus.

a reply to: burdman30ott6

Yeah, that is the scary part.
And if people aren't dying for the initial disease....that also allows the host country...in this case China....to fidge the death statistics....which Zero Hedge is claiming is happening....
www.zerohedge.com...

a reply to: DontTreadOnMe

On average 125,000 people die in China from pneumonia per year. That's 345 a day. I'm using my phone, or I'd source that number, but I read it yesterday on a .gov site that broke down pneumonia deaths by country. MOST of those deaths are children under 5.

My only point is that it is likely there are people in China dying from pneumonia totally unrelated to the Wuhan virus. That said, everything tells me Zerohedge is right and China is underreporting. I think their to capacity hospital situation is also letting them underreport infections simply by sending sick people away undiagnosed as well.

a reply to: burdman30ott6

Haha I have that game on my phone!

a reply to: DontTreadOnMe

burdman30ott6 and DTOM

I agree they are lying. This has been going on for a while and the numbers are much much higher or they know what escaped from their lab and are acting accordingly

Also as I have said in other threads, most hospitals operate at about 80-90% capacity, there is no surge capacity to deal with more than say 20% above normal (thats beds and NOT staff mind you which is a whole nother ball of wax). People will continue to get sick from other diseases, have babies, get into a car accident etc. keeping that 80% level pretty constant

a reply to: burdman30ott6

What you see in the hospital is the absolute worst of it. The very sickest go there because they're desperate. You won't see a lot of the rest. Those too afraid to go who end up dying at home, and those who survive because they never get sick enough to need to go.

That it's infecting enough, fast enough to create a super sick population that need intensive care that overwhelms the hospitals is the part that's scary, especially if the projected lethality is true at under 5%. That means most cases aren't even at the hospital and won't need to be there, so the true scope of the issue is much, much higher.

a reply to: ketsuko

So years ago we had a resident that eventually was an MD for USAMRIID and we had long talks about biowarfare etc.

He explained that The grim and I do mean grim reality of a mass incident or pandemic was that until the Doctors and nurses are either dead or have fled the hospital the epidemic keeps going.

Why? The hospitals will be the last mass congregations points. Lacking that people will devolve into their own family units and live or die as their genetics and exposure dictates. Only then will it burn out

Kimchi time anyone ? and Garlic time+++++


Kimchi


www.youtube.com...


www.koreaherald.com...

www.prnewswire.com... html

Was also looking if NAC (N-acetyl-L-cysteine ) might be benefial....it seems to block viral replication on some viruses, but i dont know has it any effect to coronaviruses...

www.facebook.com...



vimeo.com...

This is getting spooky and I hope to God their are factors at work that allow us to keep it contained. But I have no idea what they are.

a reply to: FredT

Completely logical.

Meanwhile, I found this guy's account interesting.

The subtext of his description is that there are far more deaths then currently being reported.


twitter.com...

originally posted by: DontTreadOnMe
Seems to me, those who are sick would benefit more from the N95 mask.....if you could find one.

My question is....when do you consider that the cold you come down with is not a regular cold?????

I would go with severity of symptoms. Or if its not getting better after a period

Yes, patients on these precautions wear a mask when out of their room

originally posted by: FredT
a reply to: burdman30ott6

Haha I have that game on my phone!

Me too and Burdman is correct with his strategy. At the end of the day, if it hits Madagascar then we're all screwed.

Use this weekend wisely... OK, I plan to. The WWE Royal Rumble airs tonight, and I'm gonna watch it.

Look, there's nothing one can do in a weekend to combat this virus. Life don't work that way. I will tell y'all what I have done over the last 50 years to combat it:

• I've wallowed in things that would kill anyone else. I had all those shots when I was a kid, but none since. I haven't needed them. Instead of running to a doctor and throwing all my money at him over a sniffle, I just kept going through sheer spite of it. The result is, my immunity is so damn strong it would probably cure anyone near me. I've had flu bugs that put others around me down for a week in bed, sent some to the hospital... me? I grumbled about not feeling good that day. Colds? Heck, I just got back from the doctor for a check-up... found out I had a cold. Didn't realize it. I don't even have allergies any more. I've rolled in poison oak and poison ivy so much that I can eat the stuff now. I never had the luxury of fancy get-ups to protect myself, and it needed to be cleared.
  
  Never had a flu shot in my life and have no plans to get one.
  
  I was one of those babies who was sent home to die... screw you, doc, I never had another seizure when I got home. I survived a 108 degree fever when I was young... barely, but I did. I recently went 90 minutes with half of my heart not working... still here. Some day I'll die of something, but it's gonna have to be one seriously mean something to put this old redneck down for the count.
  
  
• I got me two perfectly healthy lungs, despite a half-century of heavy smoking. Not a damn thing wrong with them. Doc is still talking about wanting to know how I did it. I regularly work with strong chemicals... never wore a face mask around them. If the smell gets too strong, I step outside for a couple quick breaths of air. If i ever had a case of pneumonia, I didn't know it.
  
  
• I live out in the sticks, and have for almost all my life. Not many people around here to spread disease, and most of them are about as strong immunologically as I am. If I need food, there's food; it grows here. If I want meat, it's walking around the yard. And if, by some stroke of extreme misfortune a pandemic or disaster does hit, I have neighbors I can count on, just as they can count on me. When people get serious about banding together, it doesn't take many to make a difference.

But the most important reason I'm not worried is because I refuse to be. It was back in 2001 when I was scheduled to head to Florida to train for being a trucker. Everything was set. I had my bus tickets, a brand new (cheap as I could get) cell phone to stay in touch, and what few bucks we could spare in my pocket. Then there's this anthrax scare in Miami and I got a call from a family member begging me, pleading with me, don't go to Florida!

I finally assured them that I promised not to breath while I was there. I don't think they believed me because they got mad and hung up on me. I wasn't serious anyway.

Point being, I was not, I am not now, nor do I plan in the future, to live my life afraid of something I cannot control. Just not gonna do it. Maybe something'll take me out by the end of the day, but I'd rather have those few hours of happiness and peace of mind than 10 years of cowering in fear. To each his own on that, but it's just how I feel.

All of my life, there's been something to terrify the faint of heart. If it wasn't some epidemic disease, it was a global economic crash that would turn us into roaming bands of cannibals. If we weren't going to be roaming bands of cannibals, we were going to have a few seconds to see the asteroid as it plowed into the planet. If it wasn't a rogue asteroid, it was nuclear bombs raining down from WWIII. If it wasn't nuclear bombs vaporizing us in our tracks, it was the sun going supervova without notice. If it wasn't a supernova, it was everyone freezing in a fiery flood of carbon dioxide. My God in Heaven above, there's so much to be afraid of here on this planet!

But I refuse to give in to it. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Coronavirus be damned; it wants me, it better eat it's Wheaties first and pack a damn lunch.

TheRedneck

a reply to: loam

Everybody realizes the importance of health insurance and car insurance, but very few people are prepared for something like this. I live in hurricane country, so I just started doing some moderate prepping a couple years ago, I have about 4-6 months of emergency food and odds and ends for survival. A good starting point is to build up a survival library. Lots of good books out there, I started with the Crisis preparedness handbook, by Jack A. Spigarelli. The SAS handbook and Wildwood wisdom are also good. The sad truth is, in most locations we are about a week away from anarchy if for some reason the food supply is disrupted. Most food delivery systems for grocery chains are completely computer based now, so if their network goes down they cant deliver food. If we ever had a major pandemic all bets are off for any kind of infrastructure, if you are not ready to be on your own you are toast. The downside about prepping books is they assume you have the financial means for optimal preparation, most people don't. If you don't have a lot of money, canned food and dry beans and rice are your best bet. Have plenty of stored water on hand, you can buy good collapsible water storage containers on amazon. A large bag of rice is not overly expensive, beans the same, and it will keep you alive. Buy 5 gallon plastic buckets with lids at Home Depot to store it in. Have fishing gear if you live near water. A good solar charger is useful, as well as a good survival radio. Its just a start, but if you use your head, you can come up with a lot of lower cost options. There are tons of good vids on YouTube for this. I agree with the OP, the time to start thinking about it is NOW. Plan for 6 months of self reliance. The sad truth is in a worse case scenario, after that time 90 percent of the people will be dead from starvation, and you pretty much have things to yourself and whoever else managed to survive.