As both a pathophysiologist and a prepper, I’ve been watching the progress of the coronavirus named COVID-19 with interest and some concern. It’s been roughly two months since the emergence of this virus was noted in Wuhan, China. Here’s how it’s progressed, and where it looks like it’s going.
A new twist in the COVID-19 story: Some infected persons never do show symptoms, even though they’ve been passing infection to those in contact.
COVID-19 isn’t really a pandemic disease, yet.
By definition, a pandemic is when a lot of places have a lot of cases. What’s true so far is that a few places (in China) have a lot of cases, and a large number of places (more than 30 countries) have a few. Specifically, China’s reported about 75,500 cases. Japan has the next most with 739 — which is a bit misleading, as 634 of them were from a cruise ship that docked in Japan.
The U.S. is reporting 35 cases. Two of those have been from transmission within the U.S.; the rest being people who picked up the infection while abroad.
But COVID-19 is now expected to become pandemic
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is now considering pandemic spread of COVID-19 within communities in the U.S. likely. This is not how the public health people wanted this story to go. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the virus a global emergency exactly to try and forestall such a thing. Other vigorous measures, such as quarantining entire cruise ships full of people, had the same goal.
Nevertheless, thirty-plus countries now have it, and many of them have had in-country transmission. Worse, some of those have been surprises. It showed up in Iran a few days ago, for example, and that country should have been far enough (in the route travelled) from the epicenter to stay isolated. Africa’s also had its first case. That one makes public health people sweat, because the health care infrastructures there are in no way up to the task of managing COVID-19.
Why has a pandemic become likely, despite precautions?
In a previous article, I made some early observations about how the virus was looking. Most of those early reads by the real physicians and virologists (I’m not either of those things) have held up pretty well, but COVID-19 is transmitting a little better than we’d hoped. There are three reasons:
- It transmits about like the flu. Airborne droplets from coughs and hand to face transfers from contaminated objects are probably responsible for most transmissions.
- It’s got a long incubation period; and people can transmit while still asymptomatic. Measuring temperatures at airports? PuhLeeze; that increases our security about as much as making someone in flip-flops take off their shoes during the security check.
- This just in … some people who never become ill transmit it. That’s actually quite common with some diseases (ever heard of Typhoid Mary?), but today China announced that a woman who never developed a single symptom gave the disease to five of her family. They only know she was infected at all because of a viral RNA test.
How’s the seriousness of COVID-19 looking, with more evidence in?
Seriousness has several dimensions. The first news is good: Compared to related viruses SARS and MERS, the fatality rate of 3% isn’t so bad. On the flip side, if a lot of people get this virus, that’s a lot of fatalities. The U.S. has lost 10,000 persons to the flu this year, and it’s fatality rate is only about 0.1%.
The worse news is that of the cases active yesterday (neither dead nor recovered), 22% were listed as “serious”. They didn’t define that, but it probably means requiring considerable medical support. From what I can find, the usual problem with COVID-19 is a secondary pneumonia. People who are aged or otherwise immunocompromised are at much higher risk.
I don’t even Want to do the math on this one. There is no way our health care system can deal with a giant spike in demand for ventilators. It’s even possible those stored antibiotics will come into play; as if this does go pandemic those may end up in short supply.
What to prep for with COVID-19?
So what are the most likely risks likely to visit the States soon? Here are some things on my mind:
- If we get community transmission, it’s going to be a terrible time to need a hospital bed and ventilator. And a worse time to need them and be without insurance, by the way. You think they won’t be filtering in part by ability to pay?
- I wouldn’t be counting on public gatherings, including schools, staying open. If you need to keep getting paid, can you arrange to work from home?
- Plenty of hand sanitizer options are going to be in my future if I do need to go out where COVID is. How’s your supply? It’s one thing we preppers often don’t stock in bulk that might go scarce early.
- Maybe your health care provider would go for giving you an extra month or three of prescription if you shared that you were wanting to stock up in case of pandemic. Pharmacies won’t be great places to be either. Hey, it’s even true! although I don’t need a pandemic to want to keep ahead on the necessary meds.
- Public travel gets shut down early in such crises. Private travel restrictions usually come later, but I wouldn’t count on it. If you do mean to bug out, don’t wait too long.
- The CDC’s idea of personal protections isn’t revolutionary, but it’s worth doing. You can find them by clicking here.
Well, I want to get this out while it’s timely, so it’s time for me to shut up and post. The parting thought? COVID-19 isn’t the worst possible scenario, but it may well cause some serious disruption.
Hi Spice
Sorry, but I think you may be under-informed. S.Korea has had their number of infections double every day for the last 5 days. Costa Mesa, CA, is suing the .gov to prevent the transfer of 35-50 confirmed infected to half-way housing in a populated neighborhood, when CDC claims only 34 infected in the entire country. Los Alamos has reported out that the R0 of the virus could be as high as 6.7, and that may be low compared to what they’re showing in S.Korea. Italy has 10 towns under ‘voluntary quarantine’, whatever that is.
There’s a good video with data and facts galore at https://www.peakprosperity.com/coronavirus-cases-doubling-overnight-in-many-countries/
I am absolutely under-informed. North Korea in particular is a problem; reporting nothing while cancelling major events. And history shows lots of governments under-report originally. How much is it happening now? I don’t know … and don’t think the other people that are publishing stuff really do either. I have (and will continue to) report the best numbers I can find, but wouldn’t expect them to be right. What they will show is trends.
What I won’t do is believe every set of “facts” that someone decides to print. Again historically, there’s misinformation in both directions in such cases. Los Alamos may report that the R0 is as high as 6.7; but somebody else reports that it’s as low as 0.7. Who gets the press? Is either more likely to be correct than the middling numbers most people are reporting? Just because governments under-report doesn’t mean every bigger claim is true.
It’s a “fog of war” type of situation. I accept under-reporting is happening; and also accept others are going to make inflated claims. I draw my meaning from the trends, as they are harder to hide and more important anyway. For example, the U.S. may be hiding hundreds of cases, but they couldn’t hide hundreds of thousands.
Natural News.com is reporting all the info it can get on COVID-19. Even though purportedly many people do not like Natural News founder, Mike Adams, publishing his opinions, he is a Ph.D., has sophisticated lab equipment to test toxic chemicals in foods at his facility. He has lived abroad (and I believe in or next to China. He speaks Mandarin…the common “old” Chinese language). He also has spectrology (sorry for mis-spelling) equipment to analyze chemicals such as glyphosphate in foods. He may be opinionated, but he certainly has backed up his opinions with education and highly sophisticated detection equipment. And he is also researching reported info on this matter.
Yesterday (2-22-2020) I read an article on his site reporting that the Pentegon has issued a warning to NORTHCOM navy and marines to prepare for a Pandemic. Natural News cites this information sourced from Military Times.
Mike Adams also interviewed Dr. Francis Boyle (Lawyer, and Drafter of the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorist Act of 1989) who reports that the COVID-19 is NOVEL because it is not a mutation from a natural coronavirus. Instead it is reported to have been enhanced for spreading among the human population (as well as mammals affecting meat supply). It was reported that it came from a Bio Lab in USA, was sold to the level 4 Bio Lab (China) that is outside of Wuhan…where apparently the leak began.
An article on his site also reported that COVID-19 may not “blow over”, so to speak, with the end of the flu season pattern that happens in America, but that it may linger around for a much longer time period, up to a year or more. Whether that may be so may depend upon experience, or the nature of the enhancement to the virus that has not been presented yet to the public that I know of.
It was also reported on the site that about 63 infected people were transported to a location or facility in Nebraska USA (and if I am not mistaken they came from a cruise ship).
It was also reported in an article on the site that re-infections are occurring in China, where people had the virus, got better over the 10 day quarantine, were released, then got re-infected (however that may have happened…maybe they just remained infected, but improved, then got worse again).
It appears to me that people who don’t want to get infected will need to consider self-quarantine by having lots of stores of food, water supply, meds, etc. on hand that enables them to avoid going out into the public WHEN AND IF a pandemic hits their area.
And I am reminded that cough and sneeze “stuff” can rest on bags of potato chips at the store, as well as upon canned goods, door knobs, gas station pumps, etc. It might be a good idea to wear thin-cloth gloves and boil them in a pot in the backyard, when you come home to kill any virus on the gloves, so they can be re-worn; and wearing face masks may become a norm for awhile. In the Army we wore/practiced MOP-4 when we were at risk of potential ricin gas (body clothing cover wraps [over boots, clothing, and head, while wearing something like a gas mask]…it was definitely restraining. Ricin would be sort of an equivalent to COVID-19, since it was a droplet, just like a virus in cough fluid would be a droplet).
Being a PhD with lab equipment is pretty thick on the ground in my neck of the woods, so ‘scuse me if that doesn’t impress me. I’ve found Natural News to be a very *poor* source of quality information.
As to the infected persons from the cruise ship and the warnings to prepare for pandemic; both true. The CDC was saying the same thing. Not that I trust they’d tell us anything; but if they tell us they think a pandemic will show up, I believe that.
The ‘not a natural virus’ part I consider pure conspiracy theory, and a bad one at that. Several labs have worked out the genome of the virus. (And you can’t do that with spectroscopy equipment. It takes gene sequencers, which are not that rare anymore.) That genome bears none of the markers that genetic meddling leaves behind. It not only looks like a natural mutation from an animal host virus, but we’ve known for decades that such jumps are both likely and a likely source of pandemics. Why do you think public health people have dedicated teams to track new infections in animals?
Also true that it’s not expected to go away when normal flu season does. Pandemics don’t follow that pattern. It will be around for awhile. That’s why the public health folks aren’t believing they can stop it; they’re talking about slowing its entry so we’re better prepared. Also, many epi/pandemic diseases evolve to less dangerous forms as they get passed along, because milder versions spread better. Corpses don’t breath on other people. So I expect this will take awhile to play out.
Being able to tuck in and avoid contact is a great idea. Being this is a prepper site, I was emphasizing the meds because most of the readers know about food and water. But it’s worth saying so I’m glad you brought it up.
Here is another preparation thought, which is to buy your groceries and other items by credit card, debit card, pre-paid cards, and gift card RATHER THAN CASH (and getting change back) because we don’t know (or I don’t) know how long COVID-19 virus can live on paper dollars and coins. Mail can be another similar issue, and potentially monthly bllls can be received online instead of by snail mail, and paid by credit.
We don’t know what kind of testing or work was done by China on material received by USA. But, maybe the USA Level-4 bio-labs can provide some info (maybe Trump will demand it for the sake of the public precaution) about how long and on what types of materials COVID-19 can persist. But until that time every precaution that seems easy to implement seems valuable to me to consider.
Will the jelly alcohol work on the corona virus. It does not work with nora virus.
Specific testing for the gel I couldn’t find. The active ingredient (alcohol) and concentration are both in the highly effective range for coronaviruses. So I’m betting yes until I can find more definitive testing.