Like the old saying goes, "Talk is cheap". Cuomo can get up there and say something needs to be done, this is awful, etc., but hasn't mandated actually DOING anything yet.

One infected person riding around all day is going to expose a LOT of people! What needs to be done? Kick people out who are "loitering" in the stations. If someone is riding around, ask them what station they are getting off at and escort them OUT of the station when they get there, and if they refuse to answer or don't answer, escort them off at the NEXT station. Put real police at the turnstiles to make sure no one gets in.

It's actually an easy thing to solve this problem. The trouble is the politicians don't have the WILL to do anything about it.

 

I just wanted to point out that effectively every seasonal virus is a NOVEL virus, that's how they are able to infect people. For example, we have a flu virus every year, and need a new flu vaccine every year. Why is that? They are all new viruses (you could also read this as viruses that have mutated sufficiently from prior years to where the same vaccine doesn't work) with new antigens. Covid, while "novel", is still a coronavirus, and still generally acts like a coronavirus. And on people getting sick and wondering where they picked it up, that sounds like every cold someone's gotten, ever.

Viruses that are NOT novel viruses are like the herpes viruses that cause chickenpox. You can get a vaccine that provides you with immunity for a *long* time, because it's effectively the same virus circulating around.

 

I saw the press conference where Cuomo brought that up and it appears as if they're going to try and do something about it. The problem is that once someone gets into the subway system they can just keep riding it up and down the line all day. Unless a person is outwardly breaking the law, the police don't want to get near anyone these days anymore than the rest of us do. It's a serious problem for any city that is dependent on public transportation.

 

Yep, there are plenty of reasons to do nothing. Public Health is the reason to do something. The people in positions of power have the responsibility to do something, that's what they're paid for.

 

It looks like Cuomo got scammed out of 69 million for ventilators that never arrived. Hopefully, NY will get most of its money back and the criminal will end up in jail.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/healthcare/new-york-coronavirus-ventilators-trump-twitter

 

Yep. A couple of crazies ingested household chemicals to ward off the coronavirus. On the plus side, the article didn't say that either was *infected* with the coronavirus, so maybe.....

yeah, that was a joke, btw, drinking bleach will kill you, not prevent the Wuhan virus.

"A man in his 50s living in southwest Atlanta was hospitalized Saturday after drinking at least 16 ounces of bleach, Lopez told the newspaper. The second man, in his 30s, living in Atlanta was hospitalized Sunday after ingesting a cocktail of Pine-Sol, mouthwash, beer, and pain medications.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/georgia-men-hospitalized-ingest-bleach-cleaners-coronavirus

 

I understand what you’re saying. Viruses can be buggers. If I understand this correctly though, the viruses that cause yearly influenza are not corona viruses, of which the common cold is one.

I’m not sure I understand corona viruses all that well but we’ve never been able to come up with a yearly vaccine against the common cold. I don’t know if that’s because it mutates so quickly or what, but this from John Hopkins Medicine comparing CV to influenza:

The COVID-19 situation is changing rapidly. Since this disease is caused by a new virus, people do not have immunity to it, and a vaccine may be many months away. Doctors and scientists are working on estimating the mortality rate of COVID-19, but at present, it is thought to be higher than that of most strains of the flu.

From Livevirus.com

What's more, unlike the flu, for which there is a vaccine, everyone in the population is theoretically susceptible to COVID-19. So while the flu affects 8% of the U.S. population every year, according to the CDC, between 50% and 80% of the population could be infected with COVID-19, according to a study published March 30 in the journal The Lancet. In the U.S., that would translate to 1 million deaths from COVID-19 if half the population becomes infected and there are no social distancing measures or therapeutics, the Post reported.

I been reading that resdesivir holds some promise as an anti viral until we can get an effective vaccine. I’m crossing my fingers it makes a difference.

As for developing anti bodies through either natural anti body formation from exposure/infection or a future vaccine I’m not sure the experts have been able to determine how long people will be protected. Most likely it will become an annual ritual along with getting your flu shot.

Isn’t that why wide spread testing is so essential? The experts need to get a handle on the extent of the population who have had it along with those who may have antibodies without having had symptoms or a very mild case that flew under the radar so they can determine whether herd immunity is being reached? Are we at that threshold yet?

I feel for people who don’t have the luxury of just sitting this out until the vaccine is developed.

*concerning your example of Varicella zoster, yeah, it’s one of the herpes viruses that they were finally able to develop a vaccine for but for other herpesviridae, they haven’t been so successful. No vaccine yet for herpes simplex 1 or 2 or Epstein-Barr that I’m aware of. Tricky, even though those have also been around for awhile.

 

@Morgotha and @Stealth

I don’t know if you caught Cuomo’s press briefing today but it’s mostly about this whole subway/homeless situation. I’ll post it. Fast forward through the contact tracing part with Mike Bloomberg and they get right into it.

 

My niece tested yesterday to see if she had good enough antibodies, and her results showed that they weren’t up to par. But she did donate anyways.


The truth is out there

 

I wasn't trying to equate the covid virus with the flu, but to use the flu as an example to point out that every seasonal virus is effectively "new" to our immune systems.

I really think we will get some effective treatment for this if it remains a persistent problem. We have developed treatments for HIV that make it like a chronic disease instead of a death sentence, and if we can do that, we can probably come up with a regimen of similar efficacy for this. Why haven't we done so previously? There was no need (and no return on their investment for the drug companies) to do so previously for the common cold. With people *dying*, otoh, the stakes have changed and resources will be dumped on this like crazy. As time goes by our treatment will be better and better.

On the HSV and EBV viruses, I agree they are toughies. Both have vaccines in trials, and they are proceeding along at a standard rate. I wouldn't expect anything Earth-shattering in the next few years.

 

It's nice they want to clean the trains more, but that IMO is putting effort at the wrong problem. Most people seem to be spread infection through aerosol droplets, not contact with an infected surface. That means to really cut down transmission of disease they need to get infected people out of the subways and, as much as possible, to exchange the air in the subways.

The place to start is to get the homeless OUT of the system. Having anyone just riding around all day or hanging out in the subway stations is just a bad idea. It's a given that at least a few people are infected in that group (which generally shies away from the health care system, testing, etc.) and so it's also reasonable to assume that some homeless ARE infected and ARE spreading disease. Cuomo didn't really address this at all. It's too bad.

 

Now I gotta find a new siggy gif. Dammit.

 

alright back to this for a while.

 

Well ****. I've gone officially insane. Lemme fix.

 

test

 

whatever