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Thread: The Corona Virus
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2020-03-26, 02:45 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Corona Virus
Last edited by Lord Torath; 2020-03-26 at 02:46 PM. Reason: End/top of page
Warhammer 40,000 Campaign Skirmish Game: Warpstrike
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2020-03-26, 02:56 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2014
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Re: The Corona Virus
Last edited by Kaptin Keen; 2020-03-26 at 02:57 PM.
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2020-03-26, 03:49 PM (ISO 8601)
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2020-03-27, 02:17 AM (ISO 8601)
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2020-03-27, 02:37 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2013
Re: The Corona Virus
You often can't breath very well through the nose with a cold but when you clear it you can still smell something at least in my experience. And I think dry cough is more common for corona than clogged sinuses. + Apparently that symptom can occur without other symptoms https://time.com/5809037/coronavirus...f-smell-taste/
The symptom, Kumar says, is also appearing in otherwise healthy people, indicating that a loss of sense of smell could be a vital indicator of whether somebody is carrying the virus unknowingly
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2020-03-27, 03:21 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2014
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- Denmark
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Re: The Corona Virus
Hey, polite disagreement is why people go to discussion forums.
It's interesting that I've been coughing very little. Like, I may have had something like 20 small fits of coughing spread out over something like a week and a day. And I'm asthmatic - I should be in a 'risk group'. Another thing I've observed is that it's a weirdly 'dry' disease. Dry cough, dry skin, dry sinuses. A sort of 'dry' fever.
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2020-03-27, 07:29 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2007
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- Manchester, UK
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Re: The Corona Virus
Are you sure you actually have it? Have you been tested? You might have regular 'flu.
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2020-03-27, 07:43 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2014
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- Denmark
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Re: The Corona Virus
Am I sure? Yes. Do I know for a fact? No.
This is a unique experience. I maintain it's just a flu - but it doesn't feel like any other flu I ever had. But we've spoken with the hospital, and our own doctors, and no one questions that this is what we have. Denmark just ..... doesn't test. Up until yesterday, the policy was to only test those who were being hospitalised. But we seem to have gotten more test kits, and now the ambition is to test .. more.
Regardless: This is covid-19. I have not a shred of doubt. Despite having essentially the same symptoms (except the addition of chest pain), it feels different in every way.
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2020-03-27, 12:46 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2017
Re: The Corona Virus
What are some good sources if you want to ask questions about the disease/virus that aren't covered in the news? I'm following all the news but I have some questions (specifically about virus lifespan beyond the "can live up to three days on plastic or metal" figure that everybody repeats) and I don't know where to find reputable sources that are open to random public questions.
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2020-03-27, 01:09 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2009
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- Canadia
Re: The Corona Virus
While it is not open to random questions, the source for the coronavirus lifespan on various surfaces is the National Institute of Health / CDC:
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news...hours-surfaces
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2020-03-27, 02:56 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2011
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- Sharangar's Revenge
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Re: The Corona Virus
Looks like the NY Times story on this had some issues.
Long story short, the NYTimes piece cited a 30% figure of infected people losing their sense of smell, but the current data from South Korea is more like 15%Warhammer 40,000 Campaign Skirmish Game: Warpstrike
My Spelljammer stuff (including an orbit tracker), 2E AD&D spreadsheet, and Vault of the Drow maps are available in my Dropbox. Feel free to use or not use it as you see fit!
Thri-Kreen Ranger/Psionicist by me, based off of Rich's A Monster for Every Season
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2020-03-27, 03:21 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2010
Re: The Corona Virus
There's millions of people wondering about the same questions, and public services are all but collapsed in most countries, so a one-on-one official service answering your inquiries is unlikely to happen. I think the publicly given information about the virus behavior and how to take precautions are extensive and very clear, at least here in Spain.
Anyways, as far as I know, the experiments regarding the virus lifespan outside the human body are still very preliminary and inconclusive; right now there's a study suggesting around 72h, and then there's the Diamond Princess cruise ship; apparently virus RNA was found 17 days after a cabin was vacant. Other Coronavirus like MERS and SARS could still be present after 9 days on polished surfaces.
I think if you got a direct hotline with the chief of the CDC he wouldn't be able to tell you much more... because no more is known.
My own precautions: I assume the virus lives forever on plastic and steel, just in case. What I can't throw away, I wash with soap.Last edited by DavidBV; 2020-03-27 at 03:49 PM.
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2020-03-27, 03:58 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Jul 2017
Re: The Corona Virus
People still use public forums, like we're using this one right now. I'd have posed my question more directly here, but that would get uncomfortably close to board rules against providing medical advice.
And I'm very on top of washing everything and sheltering. Again, I've read all the same information everybody else has and am sticking pretty close to it. But many food items cannot be reasonably washed and aren't meant to be cooked. Thus the wondering if there's any official word on how long they need to sit in the fridge/freezer before they can be considered safe, or if I just have to remove them from my diet until the pandemic runs down.
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2020-03-27, 10:52 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2014
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- Denmark
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Re: The Corona Virus
In case anyone is interested, the 'dark figure' people here in Denmark are now working with universities - so make the dark figure research official, rather than a well-meant amateur effort.
No results offered yet, but I just sent in an official questionaire.
Oh ... there's another very important distinction in the research that the press doesn't care to point out: There are now 51 people who have died in Denmark while having covid-19. That's the truth. But if you look in the press, they'll say that 51 people died from covid-19, which is not the same thing.
I don't have an accurate figure for how many actually died from covid-19. I suspect no one really does, currently.
It's my impression that some people lose their sense of taste and smell from very nearly all respiratory diseases?!
Your doctor? That's what I'd do, anyways, but maybe other countries don't have online access like we do? I can always just send a message via web form, and expect a response in a day or so. And while everyone is entitled to their opinion, if you want actual medical advice - your doctor (or a doctor) is where you should be getting it.Last edited by Kaptin Keen; 2020-03-27 at 11:17 PM.
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2020-03-28, 03:13 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Corona Virus
A similar thing exists for AIDS - it doesn't actually kill you, the secondary infections that occur because of your now compromised immune system do.
For the layman and most news agencies, this is mostly semantics, but as you've pointed out, is very important for scientists trying to develop a treatment.
That said, HIV and SARS-CoV-2 have very different resulting disease states; AIDS has no direct way of killing you, while the fluid and mucus build up in the lungs in COVID-19 can and has killed (even if the exact numbers are undetermined).
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2020-03-28, 04:50 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2014
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- Denmark
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Re: The Corona Virus
Well - don't get me wrong. I'm basically recovered, but it's always been a thing for me that since I'm asthmatic, when a respiratory disease (mostly the flu) ends, I spend maybe another week coughing up phlegm. That's just how my lungs work. But this time around, thinking about it too much gives me a literal cold sweat, and my mind tries to betray me with thoughts like 'maybe this could still kill you!' And because of how ironic that would be, it's even more chilling to me. I kinda expect the universe to punish my arrogance - 'here, little man, let me show you what happens to clever little tw*ts who think they're smarter than everyone else!'
So ... yea, I'm acutely aware that this disease does kill. I just contest that it kills more than any other flu. We should not fear covid-19 (my own fears non-withstanding), but obviously we should respect it.
The good thing is that from this day forward, we will all health sectors much better prepared for this sort of crisis. From what I know, Denmark had ... like, 7 ICU's pr. 100.000 people. If the numbers I'm hearing are right, we'll at the very least quadruple that number.
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2020-03-28, 07:37 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2010
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2020-03-28, 07:59 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Sep 2014
Re: The Corona Virus
You keep asserting this but I haven't seen any actual evidence to back it up. Not to mention.
1. We're at the start of this outbreak. Not the middle. Not the end. The start. It's got a ways to go before we're even at the peak of this particular problem so to fold your arms and go "it's not even bad as most flu" is absurd at best.
2. You're not a doctor. You're not a member of the medical profession whatsoever. You've not only stated that clearly, you've stated that people should listen to medical professionals. Then you go around and "contest" things that are just your opinion as if it has some actual merit. I'm happy you seem to have had less symptoms and less aggressive symptoms and are mostly recovered but that doesn't mean your opinion counts for more than just opinion. I am, and I'll sadly never really know 100% because testing in the U.S is absurd, fairly certain I also had COVID. I had all the major symptoms save respitory issues and...I don't think I had a fever but I rarely get sick as it is, I honestly don't know what one feels like anymore. If I had it, and I'm fairly confident I did since other people I work with had it and had it confirmed they had it, I got lucky too. Plenty of people my age aren't getting lucky and people much older than me are getting it worse.
3. Medical professionals are saying this is worse than the regular flu. You can disagree with it all you want, you can even disagree with them all you want, but the fact remains that they're saying it's not just a normal flu and we need to do what we're doing.
4. You want to go to brute rationalism over fear and hysteria. Me too. It's rational to lock down with a highly contagious disease, especially when near half the people who get it never show symptoms. Otherwise you're just risking massive spread and a lot of dead. We've seen distancing and aggressive testing puts this thing dead in its tracks. We've seen it in other countries. Not taking these steps is the irrational thing to do. Not listening to the professionals is irrational.
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2020-03-28, 08:16 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2009
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Re: The Corona Virus
About the flu... in Italy, on average, the flu kills 450 people every year (directly), plus an estimated 8,000 people due to complications. The total number of deaths is estimated at 12,000 in the worst years.
Currently, there have been over 9,100 deaths from COVID-19.Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1955
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2020-03-28, 08:30 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2010
Re: The Corona Virus
The ventilators require maintenance and personnel. The only guarantee to truly be safe in future crisis like this is to have production lines within your own country, ready to supply your hospitals and all critical staff. Because now we know what we can expect from other countries: nothing.
Plus, I am afraid this crisis was extremely mild compared to what could happen in the future. MERS and SARS Coronavirus had a mortality rate ranging from 20 to 30% and affect younger people, if in the future we suffer from a virus with such lethality, but with the transmission rate of covid19, then... prepare for food and power shortages.
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2020-03-28, 09:26 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Feb 2014
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- Denmark
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2020-03-28, 10:35 AM (ISO 8601)
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- Jan 2010
Re: The Corona Virus
The problem with the flu comparison in terms of deaths is, you can't compare apples to oranges; it's true the death toll is relatively low right now, but the whole planet has been locked down and put in a frenzy to expand ICUs, and many other medical treatments have been suspended, so you don't know what would happen if covid19 was left to run loose and pretty much ignored, like the flu is. It wouldn't be pretty.
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2020-03-28, 11:08 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Corona Virus
I'd chalk that up to differences in Denmark's population density/distribution/demographics and social customs compared to Italy.
For example in Japan, they've only just started introducing a limited lockdown for SARS-CoV-2, despite having their first confirmed COVID-19 case about a month before Europe did. One working hypothesis is the cultural differences, such as the substantially less direct person to person contact (e.g. bowing instead of hand shakes) and the greater social acceptance of people wearing face masks at the first hint of the sniffles, help slow the transmission of the disease.
Whether they actually have similar number of cases as other countries, is hard to tell since they're only performing limited testing.
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2020-03-28, 11:22 AM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Corona Virus
There is for me a personal upside to the whole thing. I'm in the process of graduating in the medical research field (though not really anywhere near viruses or vaccins), this opens up potential future job options in a for now hypothetical badass corps of worldwide pandemic responders. Like a (red) cross between the WHO and an army,
Wouldn't make for a half bad tabletop campaign either. ;)
The bad news is most of the other sides are still downsides. The whole situation still sucks. Africa in particular is now set up to see how the European scenario plays out if your hospitals have two beds each, disinformation is more rampant and there's still a locust plague eating a big chunk out of the Eastern side of your continent. Either this is gonna be bad, or I'm going to advocate learning everything we can from African experience with epidemics.The Hindsight Awards, results: See the best movies of 1999!
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2020-03-28, 12:47 PM (ISO 8601)
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Re: The Corona Virus
I saw something from a nurse who was self-isolating because they thought they had the wuhan but was being denied a test because their symptoms were not serious enough. I suspect that lots of people will be very interested in knowing the true spread of SARS-CoV-2. Hopefully as global supply chains react more testing will come online.
I saw something (I don't remember where) that in Italy about half of people who die with SARS-CoV-2 have at least 3 complicating factors, 75% have at least 2, and something like 90% have at least 1. Whether (and how much) Covid-19 contributed to their deaths is not easily extracted from the data. Ultimately this means that comparing mortality rates between countries is non-trivial.
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2020-03-28, 01:27 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2013
Re: The Corona Virus
https://www.epicentro.iss.it/coronav..._marzo_eng.pdf This lists the comorbidity percentages.
Though be aware it doesn't compare with the normal prevalence of the conditions, e.g. the highest is hypertension (high blood pressure) with 73.9%, in general around 30% of italians have hypertension apparently (from memory might be a bit wrong) but it likely also increases with age like in other countries : https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db289.htm
During 2015–2016, the prevalence of hypertension was 29.0% and increased with age: age group 18–39, 7.5%; 40–59, 33.2%; and 60 and over, 63.1%.
(Second highest diabetes with 33.9% (https://www.epicentro.iss.it/igea/en/DiabetesFactSheet), third schemic heart disease with 30.1%)Last edited by Ibrinar; 2020-03-28 at 01:35 PM.
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2020-03-28, 04:28 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Aug 2018
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Re: The Corona Virus
My wife got tested after she started showing three of the common symptoms (muscle pain, shortness of breath, dry cough) and was someone at-risk. They did a quick test for the flu and strep throat to rule them out, and then moved on to the Q-tip.
It's about 6 inches long and they stick most of it through your nose to rub something about a centimeter under your brain. The sound that came out of my wife was something horrifying. She almost grabbed the nurse's arm, until the nurse reminded her there was a stick less than an inch under her brain, and grabbing her wasn't going to make it much better. Then the nurse had to twist the Q-tip for 5 seconds.
A friend of ours, a former marine, also took the test due to having several heart attacks and also being at-risk. He succinctly described it as being the most painful experience of his life.
We're still waiting on the results. Whatever she has is definitely in my system now, too. If it is Coronavirus, the muscle pain is friggin' annoying, almost as bad as the cough. Feels like I've been lifting weights for a day or two, despite spending most of my time sitting or sleeping.
So stay safe, kids!Last edited by Man_Over_Game; 2020-03-28 at 07:01 PM.
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2020-03-28, 05:00 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2016
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Re: The Corona Virus
Here in Italy it's quite a mess. Nobody can move from home without a specific reason. It's a bit as being under house arrest.
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2020-03-28, 07:55 PM (ISO 8601)
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- May 2009
Re: The Corona Virus
I doubt it's possible even in principle to state an exact number. If four things have to join forces to kill you, which one gets the XP?
If you've been living with an ulcer and an inflamed pancreas for years, and the addition of covid-19 to your system finally allows them to get you, it doesn't seem unreasonable to say it was the virus that did it, even if the medical "cause of death" was diabetic shock. Because chronic conditions like that can be managed, but the addition of something that disrupts the management can tip the scale against you."None of us likes to be hated, none of us likes to be shunned. A natural result of these conditions is, that we consciously or unconsciously pay more attention to tuning our opinions to our neighbor’s pitch and preserving his approval than we do to examining the opinions searchingly and seeing to it that they are right and sound." - Mark Twain
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2020-03-28, 08:50 PM (ISO 8601)
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- Nov 2009
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Re: The Corona Virus
Maybe it's too specialized and it requires a lot of searching on your own, but a bibliography is being assembled here: https://www.worldcat.org/search?q=co...switch&lang=en
About the difference between Italy and Denmark when it comes to flu deaths, I think climate probably also matters. But it's true what has been said, that a comparison between flu and COVID-19 is unbalanced by the countermeasures that have been taken against the latter.Last edited by Vinyadan; 2020-03-28 at 09:08 PM.
Originally Posted by J.R.R. Tolkien, 1955