Oregon has first confirmed Covid-19 case
oregon.gov
oregon.gov
https://www.oregonlive.com/health/2020/02/2-new-coronavirus-...
Since kids are only developing a very mild illness from this, it seems most likely that this teacher caught it from one of the students.
Of course, we can still worry about children infecting high-risk groups, etc.
Will we get to a point where if we have cold like symptoms we are expected to consider the virus and act accordingly?
Around 2% mortality for COVID-19 vs. 0.2% mortality for influenza, with a chance that the COVID figure is underreported because many of the people who are not counted as having died are currently seriously ill.
2% mortality for COVID-19 would be 1 in 50 people. So if, hypothetically, everyone in the country got infected over the course of one year, and 2% of them died, the deaths from COVID-19 alone would happen more than twice as fast as we're used to seeing people go.
There are some assumptions and simplifications there, but it helps me get a feel for what a "2% mortality rate" might seem like, given everything else being normal.
Thinking about it this way has really made me appreciate life and the people I've been blessed to know during my time here.
Kind off topic, but my brain was wandering. If 1 in 115 people die per year, then you have a 1 in 115 chance of dying per year. Which means your average expected lifetime is 115 years... which is a bit high. But I guess that it's because there are more people being born than die per year and being young (and in a rich country in a modern era), their life expectancy is quite long. Still, I would have expected a higher mortality rate off hand.
But my point wasn't to accurately model mortality, it was to get a feel for what it might be like to lose 2% of people over the course of a year. What might it be like socially, psychologically, spiritually? Most people see "2%" and have no inclination to think "1 in 50". I think it's useful to do this.
That's why I set up the simplified scenario of "100% of of the US getting infected over one year".
- there might be more immunity against influenza in the population
- there is a vaccine with some success
- influenza often starts with a high fever so you're less likely to misinterpret it
But who knows, a few more covids and we might become very careful and hygiene conscious every winter and end up limiting influenza, too.
Of course, we need never reach the point if everyone would act with just a basic level of thought and consideration. Sadly and infuriatingly, hardly anyone does.
That suggests that Covid-19 is, actually, not as deadly as initial reports suggest. Most likely the number of infected people is heavily underreported.
If number of infected people is underreported 10x, and number of people who died from Covid-19 is reported accurately, then Covid-19 mortality is overeported by 10x.
It is possible that Covid-19 mortality is comparable with mortality of a regular influenza.
The only reason we haven’t found cases in the us is that we haven’t been testing. There’s probably 100 people for every person that they’ve tested positive at this point, maybe more.
I am seeing stories around the web of people having to pay 2-3.000 USD for a test and also facing major bills for hospital quarantine?
In addition to being expensive, medical costs in the USA vary wildly between different hospitals, cannot be predicted based on symptoms alone, and are essentially not discoverable during an emergency. Even if you have insurance, some parts of the medical attention you receive will be covered but others may not. For example, you may have a procedure that is covered by your insurance company, but the diagnostics needed to address an urgent complication of that procedure may not be covered.
More specifically to the present viral outbreak...imagine paying $3k for a test just to find out that the result is negative. That happened to this guy in Florida: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/health-care/article24047680...
You have the best medical services in the world; but if a significant part of the population is not going to use that because of the threat of financial ruin, then you are never going to get on top of an epidemic.
A doctor in the US can prescribe an expensive medication or a generic, but they are completely unable to inform you of the price difference. And their employer is contractually prevented from posting the prices that an insured patient would pay. American patients probably suffer as much from dealing with errors in hospital bills, debt collections, insurance companies denying claims, etc as they do from disease. And our health care system is entirely fee-for-service rather than optimized for outcomes. Doctors may be idealistic, but I don’t see how they can do more good than harm in our current parasitic industry.
That aside, I see a lot of health operation shopping to Leuven ( Belgium), but I have never met someone doing a surgery at the US because "they are the best", so I don't agree with your standpoint.
SXSW is scheduled to start in Austin in 2 weeks. There will be tens of thousands of people flying into Austin, many of whom will be coming from places where coronavirus is circulating in the community. They will hang out with tens of thousands of other people from around the world, often in packed-to-the-gills music venues where they are at various levels of intoxication. They will all fly home to their places of origin a week later.
Edit: This article suggests that ballots get mailed but that there are still physical polling places https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/sluggish-mail-ballot...
We also send everyone a book with the candidates, explanations of the ballot propositions, and some other info.
I got my ballot weeks ago.
"Any registered voter may vote using a vote-by-mail ballot instead of going to the polls on Election Day. To request a vote-by-mail ballot for a single election or to request a vote-by-mail ballot for all elections (permanent vote-by-mail voting), follow the simple process described below."
https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/voter-registration/vote-mai...
I think it's an option in California, not the default.
Source: I'm a registered voter in WA currently, having moved here from Cali about 2.5 years ago. They still had physical polling places when I was there. They don't here. It's all by mail.
Construction usually starts in the beginning of July. They'll have to get to a conclusion at one point in the near future.
My hunch would be they don't.
Wash your hands often, don't touch your face, and carry alcohol sanitizer.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/keyfacts.htm
> Why do I need a flu vaccine every year?
> A flu vaccine is needed every season for two reasons. First, a person’s immune protection from vaccination declines over time, so an annual vaccine is needed for optimal protection. Second, because flu viruses are constantly changing, flu vaccines may be updated from one season to the next to protect against the viruses that research suggests may be most common during the upcoming flu season. For the best protection, everyone 6 months and older should get vaccinated annually.
Your advice is good though - take preventative measures!
That being said, most cases are mild! The logistical concern is to minimize the number of severe cases that require hospitalization at any given time so that the health system isn't overwhelmed. It's important to slow the spread as much as possible so that those with severe symptoms can get the care they need.
There's a paper that estimates that if they were allowed to leave the ship right away (on Feb 3rd) 2% would have been infected, and if they were not taking special measures (isolation, etc) but on the ship for a similar amount of time (until Feb 19) that 80% of the passengers would have been infected:
https://academic.oup.com/jtm/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jtm...
But seriously, most cases are mild - and that's just the reported ones, which will almost inevitably skew to more serious symptoms.
Technical question: I'm not super familiar with this virus, for how long will you still test positive after you've recovered? And could that be impacting the statistics from the cruise ship?
Edit: I see the downvotes but that is actually a question, not a suggestion to not shut down them.
There are a few reasons as far as I understand it. Bear in mind how quickly our understanding of the virus (symptoms, transmission, infection rate & severity, etc) has evolved.
Initially, the only sensible thing to do was to attempt containment if at all possible. In my opinion, the US demonstrated a complete lack of preparedness and coordination here. Remember, we didn't know how bad it might (or might not) be. If it had turned out to be as deadly as SARS (it's not), things would be very bad right now. You have to assume the worst until you know for certain (within reason, of course).
There's also a preparedness aspect to things. Buying only a little more time can sometimes allow you to be much better equipped to handle the situation.
Then there's the logistical aspect. The tide may be inevitable, but how suddenly it arrives will make a huge difference in the quality of care (and thus outcomes) that is available to the few who exhibit severe symptoms. There are only so many hospital beds in the country, and we can only manufacture supplies so quickly. Imagine the difference between everyone in the country coming down with the flu on the same day, versus spread out over the course of a year.
There’s a massive difference between each hospital dealing with 3 dozen severe respiratory cases at a time and 3 thousand. Part of the game is to run out the clock before cold season ends so hopefully the rate of infection drops.
... and we have massive immunisation campaigns targetting the people at risk of most harm.
This is not true, new viruses do appear and the flu vaccine is updated with the common ones. See the edit to my comment above.
It's not inevitable that there will be "widespread transmission". Nobody can predict the future.
It is important to slow the spread by educating people with facts, not with doom-prophesizing fear. Maintaining mental health is also important.
And face masks have been out of stock for weeks.
And when you search for face masks on Amazon, all you get are face clay beauty masks for women.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!
If you're a hot news junkie Reddit has a dedicated sub
Then the same mods spun off r/covid19, which is heavily moderated to remove all the drama and focus on science only
Edit: I found this:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/2-new-coronavirus-cases-co...
For those (like me) not super familiar with Washington:
The two reported cases are in King County and Snohomish County. King County is where Seattle is. Snohomish is the county bordering it to the north.
So this is basically "in and around the Seattle area."
I'm around two hours or so by car from there. We get a lot of weekend vacationer traffic from that general region. This is not comforting news for me.
Edit: as of about twenty minutes ago, I have an email from Washington Department of Health saying in part:
Two people from Washington state treated for COVID-19 at Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane have been discharged and are now resting at home.
> most likely a health crew will come and visit you with tests
Pahahahahahahahaha
I'm sorry, but that's not how things work here. A man in Miami had to pay $3000 for being administered a Coronavirus test. At a hospital he'd driven himself to.
On the other hand, even in the USA, it is in the interest of the state, and not least your many companies, to defend against this epidemic. Without workers, or much less customers, then I'm afraid a lot of companies are going to go bankrupt. Moreover, supply chains may break down, and you might see shortages. The implications are pretty serious, and so testing shouldn't be a matter of who can afford it. With such a disease, it's everyone's business.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/02/china-virus-funeral-o...
But the CDC isn’t testing it.
> Right now, influenza is still circulating in Oregon. It is a much more likely cause of cough and fever than coronavirus. The symptoms of novel coronavirus are similar to flu and other respiratory viral illnesses. Symptoms can include fever, cough and shortness of breath. Illness can range from mild to severe. The only way to tell what specific germ is causing illness is through laboratory testing. We recommend people with fever and cough be tested for respiratory germs. If a person meets criteria for novel coronavirus testing, providers should call their local health department.
Panicking will not help, so don't bother.
Don't fall into the trap of thinking "it couldn't happen to me". It can happen to you, so pay attention, and figure out what your best course of action is while you are able.
Flu generally should be pretty cleared up by day 10.
At this moment, even if we assume that there are 100 times more unreported cases than reported cases, the odds are so low that there is simply no reason to be worried, even if attending an international conference. It's true that people do get sick, and die, and it can happen to anyone. But people also get into all types of unlikely accidents, and we don't let this affect our daily life. Besides, symptoms are mild for most people. We're not talking about Ebola here.
I'm blaming the media. They make a "good" job at reporting each new individual case, making you feel that "this could be you" but IMHO this is noise. What I want to know is, how are countries prepared, what steps will be followed if this gets out of control, what is currently the probability of catching the virus, what do we know about the virus, how could the situation evolve in one week, one month and so on....
There are effective ways to mitigate the virus propagation other than canceling all events and stopping our economy, with all the adverse consequences we can imagine. For instance, starting by following the recommendations from health organisations. Such as stay home when showing symptoms, washing hands and so on. This is not followed by most people in Europe (and I suspect the US too). I see people coughing all the time in public transportation (compared with Asia where people wear masks).
EDIT: I'm not saying that we shouldn't be concerned or prepared, but I wouldn't go beyond the recommendations from the CDC, and I think that catching the virus now is extremely unlikely.
Media aside, the CDC isn't prime to exaggeration, and China isn't prone to completely shutting down the economy of entire provinces of millions of people without dire need.
And there's every reason to believe we will have a similar experience to China's.
The cruise ship had a strict room-based quarantine, so that would not infect the R0 of a general community-based outbreak, unless we institute similar measures (confining people to their houses, which is likely not feasible).
If you're referring to case fatality rate, I'm really interested in that data. Do you have a link? The case fatality rate from the cruise ship is a very small sample, and a very specific population, so it's susceptible to all kinds of bias. It's unlikely to be an accurate reflection of case fatality rate in the general population. Still, I'm interested in those numbers. I've not been able to find them online. Did they test all the people on the cruise ship?
With a bit of luck you may have an experience more like Singapore, the UK or Vietnam (30 active cases, 72 recovered, 15 active, 8 recovered, and 0 active, 16 recovered respectively)
China got off to a bad start due to the thing starting there and being unexpected.
In the US, we are far far worse off with cases popping up everywhere of unknown origin and almost zero testing.
The suspicion was that Spanish Flu set off cytokine storms in young people with robust immune systems.
This doesn't seem to be happening with Covid-19.
The first wave was very similar to the standard flu. Fairly mild, primarily killed the elderly and sick. It first appeared around January.
The 2nd wave is what killed young people. It didn't show up until August.
Some interesting read: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcimb.2018.0034...
COVID-19 seems to be almost completely manufactured hysteria based on fuzzy math which includes using very low estimates of the number of infected to artificially increase the fatality rate.
It already is a dud. Relatively speaking, very few people die from this. 80%+ of confirmed cases are so mild you have to wonder why they were even tested. It seems to not spread as fast as the flu. No children have died.
Basically, it’s been three month and 2,000 people over 70 have died globally.
More people died from the flu LAST WEEK IN THE US ALONE.
If COVID-19 spreads exponentially, it will result in basically everyone getting it. Yes, it will take a little while (and maybe spring/summer will do enough to put on the brakes to let us have more treatment options). The fatality percentage, means if everyone gets it, it will be like several years of flu concentrated over a year or two.
Besides that, it's likely to overwhelm public health systems and have societal/economic consequences from the amount of sickness and attempts to contain the virus.
Think about what exponents are and what an exponential curve looks like.
It is no longer growing exponentially in China because they have quarantined millions of people. It was growing exponentially prior to the quarantine.
It is growing exponentially in other countries with recent outbreaks. Look at the growth charts for South Korea, Italy, and Iran.
While it is good news that the growth can be contained via quarantine, it is incredibly misleading to claim "this is just like the flu". The flu doesn't require the government to force people to stay locked up in their homes in order to prevent outbreaks.
Even within China, Outside of Hubei the fatality rate is just 0.4%.
This 10x nonsense is so utterly bogus. People literally can not think for themselves anymore. Just read and regurgitate FUD.
China's growth in case count has slowed down. Whether that's because of massive control efforts (literally welding people in homes, etc), or because of inaccurate reporting / missed cases, or both-- is unknown.
A pandemic from a novel virus is a black swan event that is not well represented by looking at recent statistics. The risk is not the recent past, but the possible future where this infects a significant percentage of the world's population, overwhelms our healthcare system, and kills millions if not more.
If we have a similar experience to that of China it seems like it won’t be a big deal.
In 2018-2019 80,000 people died from the flu in the United States. 80,000. No one really cared.
The death rate for the current coronavirus seems to be about 2%, but it’s likely even lower than that since so many cases are going unreported since the symptoms are so mild in most people.
I see this whole thing as some kind of bizarre media externality. The disease here is a social one. It’s like the media has evolved in such a way that FUD has manifested into something that is almost tangible.
It’s not the coronavirus you need be worried about, but the meta-coronavirus. It’s making people crazy.
The United States has about 2.7 hospital beds per thousand people. Hospitalization and attentive care is the biggest contributor to survival rates for COVID-19 patients.
This is why medical professionals are concerned that is spreads effectively without presenting symptoms. One day you are going to wake up and every primary care facility will be overwhelmed.
The US has shit medical care for most people. People will get sick and die before thinking about going to the hospital. I wouldn’t worry about them being overwhelmed.
Flu's already horrible. You'll take it seriously only when it's proven that it's going to be much, much worse than flu?
I'm glad that most people take measures before calamity.
> she's got 25+ years of experience working on the front lines specializing in responding to disease outbreaks like this. She literally writes the policies and training material for professionals in this area.
This isn't the right set of qualifications when it comes to understanding the total impact. Aside from the front line staff often not having a high-level understanding of epidemiology, I also don't think she understands the economic costs of containment.
Early on, there was a huge amount of complacency because we've been successful in the past and nothing like this ever came to pass. Expertise in some narrow field can only go so far - unless they are familiar with this particular case, how different it is from other pathogens they have experience and sufficiently mathematically inclined to be able to extrapolate beyond the existing data. We have a once-in-a-life type of pathogen IMO and 25-years of experience may not matter much if they are merely looking back in their experience to find similar situations.
> She's absolutely livid at the way the media and politicians are dealing with this. The CDC and WHO are being forced to respond the way they are because of the political and social pressure. They're trying to keep people from panicking but they just get accused of trying to cover up 'the truth' if they try to downplay the media driven frenzy.
How people tend to respond to events like this is part of the reality of the situation. You can't simply hand-wave away the social, political and economic consequences of the expected responses and how that affects the disease-fighting efforts.
This reminds me of the financial crisis - if you did a top-down analysis, it pointed to an unprecedented situation and it was easy to see how the market actors would response in a way that would compound the crisis but but most experts had never seen something like this, didn't have a comprehensive understanding of how things work, had never seen true panic and had some flawed models telling them that in some perfect world, things are fine and some of the earlier market movements were irrational overreactions.
I have to confess that im not following the entire situation but your statement brings me some hope so I'm asking- can one get affected and still not get sick at all?
I'm also hearing that people can get and ARE getting reinfected.
But if you have heart disease or diabetes or other health issues, or are over 70, you’ve got a 1 in ten chance of dying or worse.
Because of the death rate.
We're basing what we know on China, but can we really trust their numbers? We'll soon have more reliable figures from Japan, Korea, and Italy.
Iran has reported a death rate of up to 17%.
Healthy people are dying too. Young people.
And if the medical system gets overwhelmed, those that develop pneumonia will be fucked.
(I'll chase down citations and edit my post to include them.)
But it doesn't have to be a 17% CFR rate to be a disaster. The Spanish Flu of 1918 just had around a 2-3% CFR, but it was easier to transmit than the common flu, so it spread quickly and lots of people died. Covid-19 appears to share the relatively high r0 of Spanish Flu. So there's ample reason to be concerned.
Apparently Iran also had a high death rate for spanish flu.
From wikipedia:
> In Iran, the mortality was very high: according to an estimate, between 902,400 and 2,431,000, or 8% to 22% of the total population died.[67]
If the same things happens in the US, that's 800 people dead in the US.
Almost 3,000 Americans die each month in traffic accidents.
Keep things in perspective.
1. You have no guarantee that it's not going to get worse.
2. And this was after a draconian quarantine, and nation-wide mobilization to prevent the spread.
So we have a lower bound of somewhere around 1% and an upper bound of somewhere around 7% ( https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ ) at the moment. Not very reassuring.
> what is currently the probability of catching the virus
Yes, that is the sudden cause for concern: we don't know. The incubation period is as long as 2 weeks before showing any symptoms, and there are now cases that have lost any connection to known vectors. To suggest that there isn't at least cause for worry is a bit ridiculous. We don't know how those people got it, we don't know how many other people got it, and we won't know for some time.
Some spread is thought to be possible before any symptoms manifest, which paired with a long incubation period with no symptoms, and the exponential way in which people interact is potential cause for concern...
From the CDC:
> The virus that causes COVID-19 seems to be spreading easily and sustainably in the community (“community spread”) in some affected geographic areas. Community spread means people have been infected with the virus in an area, including some who are not sure how or where they became infected.
For the sake of example, suppose I live in a country with 100 millions inhabitants, with 100 reported cases. Suppose that there are currently 100 times more cases. What do you think is the probability to get close enough to one of these cases to get infected? how does it compare with something like having a car accident, or getting complications for the common seasonal flu?
This virus is going to be a concern. A rough estimation tells us that number of cases increases tenfold every 10 to 15 days, depending on containment measures. It could peak at 10-20% of the population. We also expect the mortality rate to be something between 0.5% and 1%. So yes, there will be causalities, and we'll need to be especially vigilant in the near future, especially April and May. But right now, the probability to be infected if virtually zero. There is also not much we can do besides following CDC recommendations. The virus is going to spread no matter what.
The chances of being infected right now are kind of irrelevant to this discussion; I don't see very many people panicking that they're necessarily concerned about this very moment, so I think you're arguing against a strawman. People are simply extrapolating a bit, and the trajectory is giving some cause for concern.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2003762
The short answer is the combination of a high transmission rate and the ability to transmit the virus while asymptomatic means the number of infected people will grow exponentially. The Spanish flu had a transmission rate lower than Covid-19 and ultimately ended up infecting a third of the world's population, and that was before mass air travel was a thing. If Covid-19 reaches anywhere near that level there will be millions of deaths.
It is true that if you are young and healthy the mortality rate is low, but a 15% mortality rate in 80+ year olds and 8% in 70-80 year olds is pretty serious.
The virus has overwhelmed the healthcare system in multiple places (Hubei, Iran). Hospitals operate at or near capacity (empty beds don't make money), and do not have the resources to handle a 4-5x uptick in flu patients.
The mortality rate is strikingly different with and without quality medical care. You can see there is a stark difference in the mortality rate within Hubei (previously 4-5%) vs rest of China (0.4%). The mortality rate in Hubei has gone down in recent weeks (to 2.9%) as China has moved thousands of doctors/medical staff to the area and built tens of thousands of patient beds.
> Besides, symptoms are mild for most people.
This is an extremely deceptive talking point the media has been promoting. The WHO reports 80+% of cases have been mild or asymptomatic, but 14% have been serious and 5% severe [1]. As the virus is projected to infect billions of people this year, that would lead to tens of millions of serious cases, of which many would die due to lack of medical resources.
I would strongly recommend reading this article by an Australian professor explaining why the Australian medical system will be overwhelmed in the coming pandemic. It applies to most other western countries as well. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/28/australian-doc...
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/world/asia/coronavirus-tr...
Some people even report a total of 3.4 percent lethality. To put that in perspective; that's one in about thirty people(!). No, it's not "Ebola," but it's still contageous and deadly. In that regard, the media is actually helping. If it's perhaps making some people more anxious than they really need to be, then it's a price worth paying.
As for how serious people take hygiene, IDK, man. I'm taking it very seriously myself, and so should you. If you see people caughing or sneezing without covering themselves, I'd politely ask them if they can please use the bent elbow in instead.
That is downright obnoxious. Consider the following facts:
1. As another poster pointed out, millions of people in the US don't have health insurance. If they get a mild flu-like illness there is no chance they are getting tested. They'll pass it on to others in their community.
2. Millions in the US also have no paid sick leave, which is why I just roll my eyes when I hear the "stay at home when showing symptoms" advice you give. It's the ultimate oblivious "just let them eat cake" response to the dishwasher who won't be able to make their rent payment if they don't come in to work.
3. The death rate of those over 70 is in the high single to low double digits range. My parents are in their 70s, and otherwise in great health. I would be devastated if they were killed by coronavirus. Equating the significant possibility of them dying if they contracted the disease, something thousands of times higher than them dying in a random accident, to me shows that your line of thought is "Well, I'm in my 20s, 30s or 40s, so I'll be fine."
People are rightfully concerned because they are able to see the future impact the disease will have on others besides themselves.
There is no real need for me to go to a conference. I can wait until next year. If we avoid unnecessary interactions in large numbers then it will make a difference. Some people need to meet, but I certainly don't need to get together with a whole bunch of strangers in a remote location to talk about Ruby, so I'm not going to.
So why aren't you worried? My worry is that I'm hearing we're weighing the economic loss versus the health of people. The disease is spreading MAINLY because of air travel, and I don't see countries really doing thorough checks, or at least discouraging air travel for now, or keeping a list of people who returned from those countries.
Spreading fear in the media at least has the cheap virtue of encouraging people to wash their hands, avoid going to those countries, without the government spending money. The drawback is that people view this as fear-mongering.
Control the things you can, wash your hands and keep a healthy mental state.
Nobody can predict the future. As of right now, the risk to Americans remains low.
The main reason I’m anxious, however, is that I have asthma and one of my biggest fears is suffocating to death. I remember going to the ER as a kid and blacking out because I basically stopped breathing. I still have nightmares about it.
This is not a great time for someone with anxiety. If you’re like me, please remember to take deep breaths, get enough sleep, and remember that in the vast majority of cases things will be okay.
But also please, please, please wash your hands.
Same here. (Also a fellow portlander)
76 under monitoring (people who may have been exposed)
2 under investigation (similar symptoms but unconfirmed)
https://www.oregon.gov/oha/PH/DISEASESCONDITIONS/DISEASESAZ/...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/02/28/coronavirus-...
In related news, apparently I don't have enough shotguns
What the government should be doing is drastically increase testing. Test anyone whose been to any country with a current case. And anyone they’ve been in contact with. And anyone whose been in an international airport in the last two weeks.
And then pay for all those tests.
Testing everyone, including asymptomatic people is not feasible, there aren't nearly enough testing supplies (right now, California has 200 test kits for the entire state). And even if they had the supplies, finding the staff to do the tests is nearly impossible.
And a competent government would already have the staff in place or on reserve.
Masks will really help because this virus mostly is spread thru touch of soiled surface. And people tend to touch everything and then touch their face, nose, lips etc. Mask will limit that.
And that’s exactly why masks don’t work. People touch the outside of the mask to remove it and then their eyes or nose or they eat.
People don’t understand you have to wash your hands after removing the mask.
I agree that testing is the way to go, but there are only so many tests you can do (physically, depending on supplies), so you really have to prioritize those who have actual symptoms.
On the surface it makes sense that masks wouldn't help. The more I think about it I come to a different conclusion.
Masks do cut down water vapor being absorbed through the nose/mouth. It's not 100% but this isn't anthrax where a tiny droplet could kill everyone. Many people would use it improperly but simple public service announment instruction could solve that issue. Instead they use valuable public serivce announment time to tell everyone not to use a mask. I believe they do this to get people to not buy masks because they are afraid of supply issues. If we had a huge supply of masks people would be encouraged because it would cut down on spreading.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/0...
I can't find numbers for the US, but most people seem to assume that production is lower than in China. Whether that could be quickly ramped up, I also don't know.
[1] https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3050717/c...
So to cover the USA for 10 days, that's 3 billion masks. There aren't that many masks available.
I work at a medical center in Korea and we are under the following instructions:
1. Place masks for reuse in a specific place to avoid cross contamination. 2. Treat the outside of the mask as contaminated. Don't touch. 3. Wash hands after wearing a reused mask. 4. Throw out masks if they get wet, damaged, or (N95 only) folded.