Concerns about the coronavirus/Covid-19 pandemic

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GotGarlic

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I don't either. During Hurricane Sandy, everyone stocked up on water. Not TP.
I don't think anyone's expecting a possible water outage due to a disease epidemic. I don't understand TP in particular, either (the tissue replacement is interesting - hadn't thought of that), but this is going to get much worse before it gets better. It's smart to have at least a few weeks worth of supplies in the house.
 
I think it's because people are stocking up on necessities so they can stay out of the stores. Keeps them far from the madding crowd when the outbreak hits their neighborhood!
 
I just don't understand toilet paper hoarding!!!

Well... I mean... if your state/city/etc. requires a mandatory quarantine period, for at 14 days, no one would want to deal with running out of toilet paper :LOL:

Here in Ohio, our governor set a fire under everyone's feet yesterday by announcing all schools are closed for at least the next 3 weeks. That literally sent everyone into a panic and grocery stores, for lack of a better word, were pandemonium. Like they just announced a zombie apocalypse. In all of my years on this earth, I've never seen anything like that. It was worse than Walmart on Black Friday. People were scrambling around like ants in a fire, grabbing things off the shelves and pushing each other out of the way so no one else could take the products they felt they were entitled to, etc etc etc.

And it got me thinking of how much we really know about each other and ourselves. It's almost like we live in this fake little world being our fake little selves. But once you throw us all into a crisis, our true selves come to the surface. And I gotta ya, it's damn scary.

I don't think I'll ever look at people in the same way again.
 
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As some here know, I am a prepper and have been ready for this type of thing for some time. All I have purchased was 4 cases of water that the animals like and does not clog up my coffee maker with minerals. I also refilled my medications today for 3 months (something I do every three months anyway). I'm ready to sit back and watch the crazies...well, go crazy. I was laughing as I passed the empty paper product shelves.

FYI...one cap of bleach in a gallon of water is a great disinfectant.

Be well, be safe and wash your hands.
 
As some here know, I am a prepper and have been ready for this type of thing for some time. All I have purchased was 4 cases of water that the animals like and does not clog up my coffee maker with minerals. I also refilled my medications today for 3 months (something I do every three months anyway). I'm ready to sit back and watch the crazies...well, go crazy. I was laughing as I passed the empty paper product shelves.

FYI...one cap of bleach in a gallon of water is a great disinfectant.

Be well, be safe and wash your hands.

The empty shelves are definitely amusing. I just shook my head. I stocked up on necessities a month ago because I foresaw this happening when the virus leaked out of China. But all of these people that waited until the last minute were literally fighting each other over the craziest things.

:(
 
Sort of funny story. DH went out today to get some brown basmati rice at Singh Farm Grocery. I asked him to get two 10 lb bags, if there were plenty and that wasn't being greedy. We are pretty stocked up other than that. Got our prescriptions filled for two months yesterday. Anyhoo, he got to the store and looked at the big "wall of rice" and there was only a single bag left. It was a 50 lb bag of some kind of white rice. Then he turned around and the shelving on the other side was full, with smaller bags of rice. He got the two bags I wanted. I guess the run on rice had been families who use a lot more rice than us, since it was only the 50 lb bags that had been emptied off the shelves.

That, and, in times of crisis, I think people overestimate how much they're going to need. People who don't normally buy 50 lb bags of rice would probably think it's better to get one now.

And you know what I'm thinking... I think this virus has been here for a long time already. We just didn't know it until they started testing people for this particular strain. Thousands upon thousands of people die every year from the flu. How do we know it wasn't coronoavirus, considering coronaviruses are actually quite common? I mean, just this morning I read a news article that a nursing home discovered 50 of its employees were infected. Fifty. Granted it's in Washington State where most of the virus is located, but either this thing spreads faster than any bug I've ever seen in my lifetime or it's been here the whole time.
 
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And you know what I'm thinking... I think this virus has been here for a long time already. We just didn't know it until they started testing people for this particular strain. Thousands upon thousands of people die every year from the flu. How do we know it wasn't coronoavirus, considering coronaviruses are actually quite common? I mean, just this morning I read a news article that a nursing home discovered 50 of its employees were infected. Fifty. Granted it's in Washington State where most of the virus is located, but either this thing spreads faster than any bug I've ever seen in my lifetime or it's been here the whole time.

We discussed this yesterday at work. Several of us, me included, have had respiratory problems for several weeks. We tested negative for influenza A & B, no temps, just general feeling crappy with bad headaches and coughs. We are all under 70 years old and in mostly good health. However, we had several of our residents get sick with pneumonia and die. Did we make them sick? Did they have CoronaVirus that turned into pneumonia in their weakened state? We don't know.

The facility is now closed to visitors, vendors and volunteers. Only those employees on schedule are allowed in. We are all being screened for cough and temperature before we start a shift. Office staff are not allowed in care areas or the dining rooms. I have a separate entrance to my office, but if I need to go to medical records, I have to walk outside the building. (Naturally we had a blizzard yesterday.)

Anyway, I'm at risk because of my recent surgery and my boss is trying to get me access so I can do as much work at home as possible. Still have to do observations and assessments, fully gowned, gloved and masked, if I need to interview residents.
 
We discussed this yesterday at work. Several of us, me included, have had respiratory problems for several weeks. We tested negative for influenza A & B, no temps, just general feeling crappy with bad headaches and coughs. We are all under 70 years old and in mostly good health. However, we had several of our residents get sick with pneumonia and die. Did we make them sick? Did they have CoronaVirus that turned into pneumonia in their weakened state? We don't know.

The facility is now closed to visitors, vendors and volunteers. Only those employees on schedule are allowed in. We are all being screened for cough and temperature before we start a shift. Office staff are not allowed in care areas or the dining rooms. I have a separate entrance to my office, but if I need to go to medical records, I have to walk outside the building. (Naturally we had a blizzard yesterday.)

Anyway, I'm at risk because of my recent surgery and my boss is trying to get me access so I can do as much work at home as possible. Still have to do observations and assessments, fully gowned, gloved and masked, if I need to interview residents.

Yes, same thing here, the nursing homes/assisted living facilities are closed to the public. I suppose that could help in containing the virus. But if the employees have it, it's not going to matter.

Since after the announcement came from China, it was almost instant that this virus was being picked up on in other countries. That's why I think it's already been all over the world, even before this particular strain was discovered, but nobody knew it because no one was being tested for this specific virus.

Then there's the theory that the reason it was found so quickly in other countries is because China kept it under wraps for too long and didn't 'blow the whistle' soon enough and by the time they blew that whistle, it was already out.

And, as far as I know, we still don't know the source. Bats? Some other weird animal they eat? I don't think any one person knows exactly where it came from. They may just be making stuff up. I mean, yeah, they had to come up with a quick excuse once they knew the virus was being discovered outside their region. And then Dr. Li, the Chinese "whistleblower", who was only 34, mysteriously dies, supposedly from the virus, after he let the cat out of the bag?

Taken from an article...

"Li is one of several whistleblowers in the medical profession who tried to sound the alarm but were apparently shut down by authorities in the crucial first weeks of the outbreak."


This might be a stretch, but there are people who believe this virus was man-made for biomedical warfare. I'm on the fence about the whole thing personally, because I don't know what to believe.
 
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That, and, in times of crisis, I think people overestimate how much they're going to need. People who don't normally buy 50 lb bags of rice would probably think it's better to get one now.

And you know what I'm thinking... I think this virus has been here for a long time already. We just didn't know it until they started testing people for this particular strain. Thousands upon thousands of people die every year from the flu. How do we know it wasn't coronoavirus, considering coronaviruses are actually quite common? I mean, just this morning I read a news article that a nursing home discovered 50 of its employees were infected. Fifty. Granted it's in Washington State where most of the virus is located, but either this thing spreads faster than any bug I've ever seen in my lifetime or it's been here the whole time.

When you write "a long time", do you mean for many weeks? Or do you mean since before the outbreak started in China?
 
When you write "a long time", do you mean for many weeks? Or do you mean since before the outbreak started in China?

Since before the outbreak started. That's just a guess, however.

Do we have, or should we have a thread with corona-virus concerns, etc.?

I think it might be a good idea. This thing is far from over and people are scared, worried, concerned, etc. Might be a good way for all of us to help each other get through this. Sometimes it helps to talk about it and there aren't any coronavirus-specific threads here, that I know of.
 
I really doubt that the corona virus was anywhere but in some Chinese animals before the first patient in China got it and they told the world about it. They released the genome of the virus and I think scientists somewhere would have noticed if it was a virus that had been running around in people before the Chinese told the world about it.
 
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I really doubt that the corona virus was anywhere but in some Chinese animals before the first patient in China got it and they told the world about it. They released the genome of the virus and I think scientists somewhere would have noticed if it was a virus that had been running around in people before the Chinese told the world about it.

You would think so. I've thought about that as well.

It's no surprise they get all these crazy illnesses. I watch Bizarre Foods and have seen many different parts of Asia and it's unbelievable the things they eat. A lot of it started from necessity and ballooned into delicacies.
 
Let's be careful about how we talk about the food choices of other cultures. There are people in North America who eat wild game and some of the wild ungulates (hoofed animals like deer, bison, cows, etc.) carry tuberculosis.
 
Create your thread and I will work on getting things shifted. Trying to work from home, so the more you can do, it all helps.
 
When you write "a long time", do you mean for many weeks? Or do you mean since before the outbreak started in China?

Since before the outbreak started. That's just a guess, however.
That's just not true and I think it's not a great idea to make guesses about something this serious. Scientists can learn a great deal about a virus from examining its genome. The reason this particular one is so contagious is because it can be spread for at least two weeks by people who are infected but don't have symptoms. So they don't even know they have it.

Scientists have recently learned that this virus can live for a few days on some surfaces, and it stays airborne for hours, so it shouldn't be surprising that it spread rapidly in a nursing home filled with of elderly patients with compromised immune systems and serious underlying health problems. Staff in nursing homes deal with patients' most intimate needs.

I also think we should all have compassion for people who are suddenly feeling desperate. We don't know what their stories are.
 
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Based on the discussion in the Petty Vents thread, it looks like a number of us would like to discuss the outbreak. This thread is for that purpose. Princess Fiona will be moving posts from that thread here.
 
I'm wondering what precautions should be taken with deliveries. Should we disinfect the outsides of any containers that we receive, like canned vegis or packages of pasta?

Does anyone know a food safe way to make sure that our produce doesn't have active corona virus on its surface? What about leafy produce? How important is it to try to do something about that?
 
That's just not true and I think it's not a great idea to make guesses about something this serious. Scientists can learn a great deal about a virus from examining its genome. The reason this particular one is so contagious is because it can be spread for at least two weeks by people who are infected but don't have symptoms. So they don't even know they have it.

Scientists have recently learned that this virus can live for a few days on some surfaces, and it stays airborne for hours, so it shouldn't be surprising that it spread rapidly in a nursing home filled with of elderly patients with compromised immune systems and serious underlying health problems. Staff in nursing homes deal with patients' most intimate needs.

I also think we should all have compassion for people who are suddenly feeling desperate. We don't know what their stories are.

You make good points and you're probably right. I'm not trying to make 'educated' guesses, however. They're just thoughts, nothing more.
 
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