I didn't realize predictions were so dire. I just told my uncle that my grandparents (including his parents) all survived the Spanish flu as children, so maybe we are made of hearty stock. Unfortunately he and my father are in a high risk group and probably wouldn't survive it.

I have been posting for weeks that I believe this virus will be a pandemic. Unlike Chisue, I do not think the storm will be so slow, as it moves throughout the world it will pick up speed and damage families and businesses as those who are infected die or are unable to work for extended periods and the collateral damage to world finance will manifest quickly.

https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/5853507/chinese-coronavirus#n=78

This is a previous conversation. There were a few comments making light of the virus when we did not know what we were facing (and we still do not know a lot about mortality rates) and they pissed the hell out of me.

At this point it is still entirely appropriate to say that we don't know everything yet. But those who make light of the situation, who don't even think to make some sort of plans because of the invalid comparison to the flu, my guess is that for this pandemic, thought, gathering information, and planning will make a difference and the airheads will end up being Darwin fodder.

There is a lot of good information about the virus on Reddit. The experts continue to be tentative about projections because they just don't know. Here is an interesting piece of information coming out of China:

Chinese scientists claim the #COVID19 virus has probably genetically mutated to two variants: S-cov & L-cov. They believe the L-cov is more dangerous, featuring higher transmittability and inflicting more harm on human respiratory system.

The Spanish Flu of 1918 spread rapidly because the world was at war and transmission by sick soldiers, refugees, and war related travelers spread the disease everywhere.

Covid-19 has the same opportunity to spread presently due to a mobile society. I do not have the latest numbers, but at one world-wide count, there were 80,000 cases and 3000 deaths. That kill rate is 3.75%, so it seems that not all are going to die, but the death rate is great enough to be feared, furthermore, we are in the very early stages of this game and are not certain of the kill rate. In fact, how it is spread is debatable and we are not certain when an infected person who apparently recovers stops infecting others. It is possible that we have "Typhoid Marys" among us.

Like "Spanish" flu (which may have been American) This new virus has more than one version. One is more virulent than the other and the most virulent form in China is abating. The 1918 flu started in 1917 with a lighter version and then the next flu season was a more deadly form and the final season was less virulent again. How any virus spreads-how easily caught, how long it lives on surfaces, who gets it and so on can change over time as it mutates. So far this virus doesn't affect children as much and they don't seem to suffer as many consequences. I have read that so far there have been no deaths in young children. Will it stay as catchable? We don't even know all the parameters yet. But the big issue with a pandemic is scope. More people getting something means more possibilities. Apparently most people might not even know they had it. We will see. Wash your hands.

I've seen where some of the scientists are saying the death rate is so much higher than they said before, but how do they know this when they have no idea how many people are infected? Hundreds of thousands could be infected in the U.S. and Iran, where testing has been minimal. If you looked at the infection rate and death rate in Iran you would be terrified because the death rate looks horrific but they haven't tested a lot of people. Even in China, how far had it spread before they started keeping records and began testing people?

It's normal to worry, especially if you are in the more at risk groups, which includes me. I have asthma and I sure wasn't happy when I walked into a waiting room full of coughing people who never covered their mouths when they coughed and didn't care if they made anyone else sick.

Echoing gardengal, here's one physician's take: https://slate.com/technology/2020/03/coronavirus-mortality-rate-lower-than-we-think.html

There are many compelling reasons to conclude that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is not nearly as deadly as is currently feared. But COVID-19 panic has set in nonetheless. You can’t find hand sanitizer in stores, and N95 face masks are being sold online for exorbitant prices, never mind that neither is the best way to protect against the virus (yes, just wash your hands). The public is behaving as if this epidemic is the next Spanish flu, which is frankly understandable given that initial reports have staked COVID-19 mortality at about 2–3 percent, quite similar to the 1918 pandemic that killed tens of millions of people.

Allow me to be the bearer of good news. These frightening numbers are unlikely to hold. The true case fatality rate, known as CFR, of this virus is likely to be far lower than current reports suggest. Even some lower estimates, such as the 1 percent death rate recently mentioned by the directors of the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, likely substantially overstate the case....

Yes, this disease is real. And, yes, there truly do appear to be vulnerable patients among us, those far more likely to develop critical illness from it. And that relatively small subset, if infected in high numbers, could add up to a tragically high number of fatalities if we fail to adequately protect them.

The good news is that we have huge advantages to leverage: We already know all of this and have learned it remarkably quickly. We know how this virus spreads. We know how long people are contagious. We know who the most vulnerable patients are likely to be, and where they are.

Healthy people who are hoarding food, masks, and hand sanitizer may feel like they are doing the right thing. But, all good intentions aside, these actions probably represent misdirected anxieties. When such efforts are not directly in service of protecting the right people, not only do they miss the point of everything we have learned so far, they may actually unwittingly be squandering what have suddenly become precious and limited resources.

I am a home-body. I venture out early morns for the grocery. Otherwise, my trips away from home are medical visits (darn this getting old crap!). Washing my hands at home when no one else is here is not a biggie for me.

Yeah, this will affect lots of parts of the world economy. It won't take long for that to show up in stores where many items are manufactured in the Orient.

Living in Florida (into the 80s today), the heat has a tendency to stifle many virus transmissions. I am not too worried for this summer. However, I have a cruise booked for July/August into Iceland, Norway, Greenland, etc. I gotta do some thinking about this.

That is a ridiculous article, it contains few facts/credentials. " The true case fatality rate, known as CFR, of this virus is likely to be far lower than current reports suggest. " Just a bare sentence, no substantiation whatsoever. We should not panic, but this fake comfort stuff is not helpful either.

Jeremy Samuel Faust is an emergency medicine physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, faculty in its division of health policy and public health, and an instructor at Harvard Medical School.

Be all cheerful about this but I am a target. My immune system is compromised and I have asthma. I would really appreciate people taking this seriously. I don't mean panic, I mean don't spread it. If you are taking precautions then you are less likely to spread it around if you get it and don't realize you have it. WASH YOUR HANDS. Keep them to yourselves. Respect people's personal zones. It is prudent not crazy. some one else's life may depend on it.

patriciae, no one is being 'cheerful' about the virus, and all the things you list are of course prudent things to do. But the panic buying of masks, hand sanitizer, etc. is not.

My husband and I went to our local shopping center today and spoke to a few merchants, who say their business is down 30-40% in the past few weeks. And this is in a location, a major east coast metropolitan area, where there has yet to be one case of COVID-19.

I'm sure it will be here eventually, and in the meantime I'm trying to train myself not to touch my face (easier said than done!) But I'm also not panic buying things I don't need.

patriciae, it is not that folks are not taking it seriously.....I believe most who are even the slightest bit aware are. But it is all the alarmist and/or fake news reports, the over-reacting, the panicking or food hoarding and the wild speculation on what is essentially a relatively undetermined threat that is causing all the hoo-ha. My daughter is a type 1 diabetic and also has a compromised immune system so I am naturally very concerned and have been gathering as much accurate - I hope - information as I can.

And even under the best of conditions I dislike a lot of personal contact or cramping/crowding of my personal space. I give everyone as wide a berth as best I can :-)

Did I say I don't mean panic? Yes I did. You are literate interested people here or you wouldn't be posting here but the general public seems to either go nuts or ignore and we need people to take the possibility of a pandemic of a disease no one has immunity to seriously. Pandemic doesn't mean everyone dies. It means lots and lots of people get sick and some of them die. If it makes people feel better to buy extra food who cares so long as they wash their hands.

Just saw a news conference. The average age of death in Italy was 81 with the covid. Deaths also in China and Korea were mostly the elderly. Reported that those who died usually also were suffering from other illnesses that made them so susceptible to Covid. The advice was vigorous hand washing with soap and water is best. No need to go out and buy hand sanitizers. Just soap and water.

I'm 'forecasting' less of a hurricane or tornado result -- more of a flood that builds and saturates for a longer time, hitting 'upstream' and progressing downstream, i.e., spreading and building.

I see more deaths due simply to the aged population and the fact that so many are living in institutions. (See: Kirkland nursing home.)

Sheila, I think all the more reason to protect our elderly and fragile then. We are hand washing. Repetitively hand washing. I was in a public rest area along the highway yesterday and the woman next to me noted my hand washing, said 'good job'. I said You Too, and she said she had worked in aerospace industry where accurate hand washing necessary and already had the habit. When I got to my mothers care facility and signed in, I used their desk top hand sanitizer. DH shopped for her, when he came back he did the same. Maybe I'm optimistic, but I think I'd be one of those with a mild case if I were to catch the virus. But if I exposed someone else and they became very sick or died, how would I accept that. There are a few hundred lovely, valuable, fragile people in that facility and I'm there every week. I think I have no choice but to take precautions. We are changing activities and staying away from crowds, being careful of hands and carrying bacterial wipes and hand sanitizers in our vehicles. If we've been out and come in, we wash. Small price to pay for someone's health.

I'm not hoarding or buying masks, but I did refresh rubbing alcohol and hand sanitizer. I had both here, and saw they'd expired - which I hadn't realized those products did, but I couldn't assume they were effective rather long past the expiration dates.

We have a family dinner to go to on Saturday. We have a 10 day old great nephew and DH called them, asked them not to come and bring him into a group of more than 20 - which we will be.

I'm seeing a slow-moving and severe storm approaching. You?

I'm not sure what I see yet, but it seems that the fears from SARS was overblown, and I hope that will be the case this time as well. I think that the "unknown" factor right now is very much in play.

Coincidentally, my brother and I got our wills updated last week, and so there is some comfort in that. We had started this process a couple of months ago.

Does anyone remember a flu, SARS, or such that disrupted the economy of a major economic power in the last 50 years?

SARS was contained. It was deadly but not as catchable as this virus seems to be. We think a danger is over blown when it doesn't affect us. As in contained before it spread. The system works so we think there was nothing to fear. Pish. This present threat is not as bad as SARS. It is not as deadly hopefully. I do hope that this will not go on to be a pandemic. Still I am uneasy because I know that eventually it will happen because it has happened in the past and I don't feel immune to reality. If this disease gets stopped it will be another overblown disease.

"Jeremy Samuel Faust is an emergency medicine physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, faculty in its division of health policy and public health, and an instructor at Harvard Medical School."

Sure, but nurses, who undergo 2 years of training in programs that are not competitive or difficult to get into and not particularly difficult to complete, too frequently think they know as much as or more than physicians do. If you don't believe me, have a conversation with a nurse.

mammagoose, my father was in the Army and contracted Spanish Flu in Europe during WW1. He almost died but survived, with a damaged heart and was sent home. Thousands died.

My father was left with a bad heart which eventually killed him. He was only 21 and died at 52.

Yes, he survived but his life was changed by what the Flu did to his heart.

Jane

I don't know enough to do anything more than listen to the physicians and public health experts and, not surprisingly, their opinions don't yet seem to be at a consensus.

One thing that's been clear is that many were quick to criticize the handling of the initial outbreaks by some Asian countries. I'm not giving China a complete pass, it seems to have lied and tried to cover up what was going on. As it often does.

What's been particularly disappointing is how completely inept the US has been too. I guess when the president says publicly that it's a hoax and a stunt to embarrass him, that sets the stage for low expectations and ham-fisted handling by the American agencies too. Just like those in inferior countries with inferior people (to his way of thinking).

Nursing is one of the most impacted majors in all colleges/universities. Students wait years to get a spot in a very competitive atmosphere, and must have excellent grades, pass a national test, interview, and submit resumes. Physician assistants go through much the same process. I don't blow off either nurses' or PAs' advice. As with advice given by ANY medical professional (including MDs), I also do my own research.

Just because someone has an MD doesn’t mean they’re always right or even that they are expert in epidemiology.

I want people to have a level of concern and even fear if it gets them to wash their hands and cover their cough and stay home if they’re sick and be aware of the problem so they get checked if ill and help keep everyone safer.

It may be precisely because of the “panic” that the past scares turned out to be minimal.

jane__NY, I'm very sorry for your father's health problems, and for how it must have affected your life, but I'm not sure how that relates to my post.

As far as info that is being released, last evening I was talking to my two brothers-in-law about the covid-19 virus and both were of the opinion that the current strain of flu is much worse, pointing out a report they'd heard that at least 10,000 US citizens have died from it (I think that info was as of early Feb). I pointed out the actual mortality rate compared to the number of cases reported, which was about 20,000,000 at that time. As of the last report I read this morning, covid-19's mortality rate is about 7%; 11 deaths out of the 157 cases reported. I realize that is a small sampling, and 6 of those deaths have been in an elderly care facility, so it's not across the general population. But they were reacting to one piece of info and hadn't considered the greater picture.

Part of the greater picture is that infections take time to spread and the flu has been active since early last fall. covid-19 is just getting started so number of deaths is not a valid stat. It’s deaths per infected people that counts.

I'm old enough that I've lived through multiple cycles of "this disease is the end of the world" thinking. The news is all about being as sensationalist as possible, scaremongering is a good term for it.

Use common sense precautions that you would during any flu season and remember that worry is a form of stress that can impair the function of your immune system.

There have been some very good articles written that put what we know into a good perspective. I hope the more positive assessments prove to be correct. My DH is currently in a high risk group, having undergone major surgery a month ago and having lungs that are not up to par at the moment. I am not real worried for me or DD in the long term, but am worried about our bringing it, or the flu, into the household. As a result, I've stepped up the use of antibacterial products and put a bottle of rubbing alcohol in the car this morning- I don't care for hand sanitizer and feel that before and after visiting a store is when I most need to use some kind of agent.

What is most interesting to me about covid-19 is that it has not seemed to affect children to a large degree. When you think of these types of viruses you worry about children, the elderly, and those with compromised immune systems. Why are children not as high risk for this? I take comfort in that at least.

My husband's family was almost wiped out by the Spanish flu, his mother was the only survivor of a family of two parents and seven children. I don't, for a moment, think we will ever reach that level of deaths due to the progress in the medical fields. Scientists are working like crazy on it. Time will tell. In the meantime, I will take every precaution and hope for the best.

Here is a very good article.

https://medium.com/@amwren/forget-about-the-death-rate-this-is-why-you-should-be-worried-about-the-coronavirus-890fbf9c4de6

"Just because someone has an MD doesn’t mean they’re always right or even that they are expert in epidemiology."

Sure. So if you have a question about medicine or health (whether individual or public), other than someone in public health or an area that a PhD medical science researcher works in, who besides physicians do find to be authoritative sources?

In their practices, most docs are uber specialized these days. They know it themselves, they're trained and practice to know a lot about a little and very little about a ot. And these are usually the first to say when asked a question about something they don't do "I don't know, that's outside my area". The primary care ones of course are generalists and pay attention to developments that could affect their patients.

Medical school provides preliminary exposure to all medical areas before specialization.

My comment was about nurses, not doctors. Nurses are trained to provide patient care. In and out of hospitals. Their study of the science of "medicine" in general and disease in particular is limited to what they need to know for patient care and what the short duration of their training allows.

And, nurses in my experience will answer a question in the same way, Elmer. They are trained as to area of specialization in either the hospital or clinic area. If they are asked a question outside of that area, the ones I know answer that such information is outside their area of specialty. Your experience may vary.

This appears to be only a mild disease...unless you are over 60, where the mortality rate goes to 18% (for over-80's). Or...if you are not in good general health to begin with.

Maybe we should focus on protecting the people most likely to suffer the most? HOW though? I have no idea!

Nurses are trained to provide patient care.

I don't know that the expectation for nurses was to restrict their practice to hands on care was ever true because nurses have always done so much more, but these days, with nurse practitioners, anesthetists, midwives, and community nurses, the nurse's role is often to provide knowledge.

It is a well known practice to pair newly minted MDs with experienced nurses, and more than a few lives have been saved by doing this. In addition, nurses are legally required to have knowledge of both conditions and medications, to the point where they are required to refuse a doctor's order if they realize a discrepancy or an incorrect dosage; they can also have liability if they follow a doctor's order to transfer a patient, for instance, when they realize this cannot be done safely.

I think Elmer doesn't know what he is talking about sometimes, once he consider a profession part of the 'little people' it seems he can go his entire life without another look; and without the realization that there have never been 'little people'. He just has a need to be a big people so he can put others down.

My mother was an RN, I have family members who are MDs, and I slept at Holiday Inn Express last night. Well, the first two are true.

It's amazing how much you suggest nurses can learn in a two year course (much of which is in-hospital practical experience), when it takes most docs 8-10 very intensive years. Yes, nurses need to pay attention to medication orders in a hospital setting, but the double check on what the doctor specifies is the pharmacist, no?

Nurses don't train or supervise "newly minted" MDs. I'm told (one family member still in training now) that medicine remains highly hierarchical. The attendings, the residents in order of years of progress, the med students below all. In fact, he complained to me two weeks ago about the nursing staff in one particular ward he was rotating through who were particularly cranky and inept. Nurses are not in the physician or trainee hierarchy.

You don’t know what you don’t know. And you have anecdotal information. I, too, have plenty of MDs and RNs in my family. But, carry on with your (mis) information.

Not the misinformation part because i know and understand what I've been told, but I agree in part with the other thoughts.

Speaking of nurses ---

"Everyone needs to watch this. A nurse under quarantine who treated a coronavirus patient asked CDC to test her. You will be SHOCKED by CDC’s response." --J.W. Verret

Video:https://twitter.com/NNUBonnie/status/1235663306246860800

Elmer, you are ignorant, and obviously happy being so. Very few RN programs are two years, most are 4 and can be more. And we have discussed this before, you seem to think that knowledge equates to the number of years in school, whereas the reality is that people can be quite knowledgeable without years of schooling and a degree.

Yes, the nurse is legally required to know dosage and medications, and to refuse to give them if there is an issue. Even if a pharmacist has OKed the prescription.

Yes, new doctors are often assigned to work with experienced nurses.

But go ahead and cling to your ignorance, Elmer. Really, considering your overbearing, demeaning personality, it's all you have.

Chipotle, thank you for posting, it is indeed shocking.

Lucille, he is right. Working on a med-surg unit I have NEVER suggested something to any residents or doctors, EVER-lol. Like the time a surgeon WASN'T cutting on a patient's foot a the bedside and I went to see if they had anything ordered for pain. Doctor told me he can't feel it, I did NOT tell him to look at his patient's face and he did not stop and go order some morphine.

Have not seen an OB put a mother and baby at risk after another nurse told him he should not break the mother's water, baby's heart rate did not plummet and mom was definitely not rushed to OR for emergency C-section because the doctor almost killed the baby. Never happened.

I've never had to call doctors constantly to fix a med error on a patient's chart, that, by-the-way, was processed by a pharmacist. This did not include a deadly 100 unit insulin order that happened quite frequently because the doctor didn't know how to put the order in right and well, pharmacy...

Nursing school is also so easy that half our class every semester didn't fail out. Never happened and nursing school was a breeze.

I could go on but I won't. You're wrong Lucille, just face it. He's right, as usual.

I don't know if it's a slow storm or not. I;m 67 and in excellent health so I'm not worried about myself. I am worried about the seniors care facilities as my mom and mil are both in one. Last year my moms facility was closed to visitors three times because of the flu and that seems to be more easily managed than this.

I;m trying to listen to the medical experts and not to the politicians.