Love of flying in the Time of Coronavirus

[N201MKTurbo]

So, there is a lot of "you must believe this" or "you must believe that" What do you propose we as individuals do to protect ourselves and others? 

I think acquiring a ventilator and learning how to use it would be more valuable than buying toilet paper. 

I'm not sure what the politicians on either side wants the other side to do other than say something they like?

I doubt there is anything the president could do that the majority in congress would approve of. And all they are doing is trying to fill their pork barrels.

So, if I agree with you that this is a horrible pandemic, will all be right with the world? 

What should I do to make the world safer from the virus? I have a Tyvek bunny suit at home, should I start wearing that everywhere? Should I hunker down at home with my toilet paper?

I think I will just spend more time at the hangar! All is safe there. There are enough toxic chemicals spilled there to kill the worst viruses! 

BTW, I would like to know the situation on the ground in Italy. Are the carts going down the streets asking people to bring out their dead? Are the hospitals overrun and the government doesn't know what to do? are all the stores empty, Are the people rioting in the streets?

[N201MKTurbo]

I just want to know when the market bottoms so I can spend my dividend money on cheap stock...

[steingar]

I really do have to be Mr. Arrogant stomp on a few folks here.  Yes, there are lots of people dying of lots of things in America.  No one gets out alive.  But if this virus is half as nasty as I think it is we're going to loose a crapload more when it gets out.  That's it gentlemen, I said when.  I agree with the quoted MD, no stopping it now, all we can do is slow it down. The idea is to not overwhelm our medical resources.  My only real hopes for avoiding that is the bug doesn't like sunshine and they've got a vaccine by fall.  Number one I don't know about, and Number two ain't happening no matter what our moron POTUS says.

And even if the bug doesn't like sunshine, it'll come back with a vengeance in the fall.  If we manage to slow it now there'll be a huge immunologically naive population.  And by then everyone is going to be sick to death of "social distancing".  Life has to go on, and it will.  Expect to get slammed in the fall if we don't now.

[aviatoreb]

27 minutes ago, flyboy0681 said:

When it comes to prediction of future events and outcomes, I'm reminded of the old Little Timmy thread about nine years ago. In it, the original poster insisted that Social Security would be a thing of the past by the year, ahem, 2020.

Number 1.  2020 isn't over yet.  Yah never know!

Number 2. Timmy thread - oh brudda!  I hope this doesn't devolve into a Timmy thread part 2.

[flyboy0681]

8 minutes ago, steingar said:

  Number one I don't know about, and Number two ain't happening no matter what our moron POTUS says.

Oh crap, now you've done it.

[Shadrach]

5 hours ago, N201MKTurbo said:

Will everybody on this forum who knows somebody with Covid-19 raise there hands?

Lets see,    0

When it actually gets here and everybody starts getting a bad cold, I might do something....

It's likely that we all know someone that has been infected.  It's also likely that that person may not know that they were infected.  People with mild symptoms that take off from work for a few days don't make for interesting news...

[flyboy0681]

5 hours ago, N201MKTurbo said:

Will everybody on this forum who knows somebody with Covid-19 raise there hands?

Lets see,    0

When it actually gets here and everybody starts getting a bad cold, I might do something....

Hand up.

One of my clients, whose office is in San Mateo, California, has two employees who tested positive. As I understand it, they attended a trade show two weeks ago in San Francisco.

Ask the same question in four months and let's see what the response is.

 

[N201MKTurbo]

They have been trying to make an effective vaccine for COVID-229E for a long time. They haven't been successful yet.

[bonal]

Until now this important discussion has been informative and even though there have been some political undertones it's been very civil. If you take it to an attack on either side of the political spectrum all that will result is insult and administrative shut down of this thread.

Just saying 

[gsxrpilot]

With all fear and trepidation, I'll suggest this specific podcast episode. The host is an extremely polarizing figure, but in this episode of the podcast, he interviews Amesh Adalja, MD. Dr Adalja is an infectious disease specialist at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security. His work is focused on emerging infectious disease, pandemic preparedness, and biosecurity. Amesh has served on US government panels tasked with developing guidelines for the treatment of plague, botulism, and anthrax. He is an Associate Editor of the journal Health Security, co-editor of the volume Global Catastrophic Biological Risks, and a contributing author for the Handbook of Bioterrorism and Disaster Medicine. Amesh actively practices infectious disease, critical care, and emergency medicine in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area.

Dr Adalja is arguably one of the foremost experts in the US on this subject. He has spent his career researching this very type of pandemic. And I found this interview to be surprisingly balanced and VERY detailed. I would encourage setting aside any biases towards the host and listen to what Dr Adalja has to say about this pandemic. 

https://samharris.org/podcasts/191-early-thoughts-pandemic/

[aviatoreb]

And here in nowhere'sville Potsdam, NY population 16,000 7.5 hours north of NYC in rural adirondacks, 15 mi from the Canadian border.  I just learned that a bus of local musicians competing in NC got home (yesterday?) and on their way home they stopped in New Rochelle, NY to eat at the AppleBees, hours before they closed off New Rochelle.  These things spread around.

[flyboy0681]

1 minute ago, gsxrpilot said:

I would encourage setting aside any biases towards the host and listen to what Dr Adalja has to say about this pandemic. 

https://samharris.org/podcasts/191-early-thoughts-pandemic/

I'm afraid to. I scare easily.

[gsxrpilot]

Just now, flyboy0681 said:

I'm afraid to. I scare easily.

It actually made me feel better about the whole situation... 

[N9201A]

I just put on my ruby slippers and click my heels together and close my eyes and say there's no place like home and scary stories just go away.  It works every time.

Do those ruby slippers work for CNN evil liberal conspiracy stories AND FoxNews red state hysterical propaganda? Or do I need different colored slippers? Maybe one for each foot?

I thought this was an aviation forum...

[N9201A]

Agreed.
This graphic may have made people chuckle about a month ago but now it's pretty irrelevant.  Last I checked, all of those diseases were hyped but none had proven community spread anywhere near what we are seeing here. 

It also omits Legionnaire’s Disease...if there is a conspiracy, let’s make a REALLY BIG one!

[N9201A]

Agreed.
This graphic may have made people chuckle about a month ago but now it's pretty irrelevant.  Last I checked, all of those diseases were hyped but none had proven community spread anywhere near what we are seeing here.  So yes, the media has a natural incentive to create hype for eyeballs, but this graphic is starting to look a lot "the world is flat" propaganda. 

Agreed.
This graphic may have made people chuckle about a month ago but now it's pretty irrelevant.  Last I checked, all of those diseases were hyped but none had proven community spread anywhere near what we are seeing here. 

It also omits Legionnaire’s Disease, typhus and polio—if there is a conspiracy, let’s make a REALLY BIG one!

[flyboy0681]

3 minutes ago, N9201A said:

It also omits Legionnaire’s Disease, typhus and polio—if there is a conspiracy, let’s make a REALLY BIG one!

Anyone for smallpox?

[N9201A]

I will go with Angel Merckel's report of what her public health epidemiology advisors are telling her.  She reported that she expects 60-70% of German's to be infected.  She is a PhD biochemist and she knows how to use scientific information, and how to defer to the specialists in a given topic and how to interpret their advice.
https://www.pnas.org/content/104/18/7582

Angela Merkel was on FoxNews?! How’d we miss that?

[N9201A]

Those vulnerable people should take precautions. You can't control people other than your selves. Unless we turn the world into a total police state. Might as will be dead...

Yes, if they don’t know better than to steer clear of us, that’s THEIR problem! How dare they gather in public, use mass transit, or expect their fellow citizens to extend a modicum of common civility and basic prophylactic health measures recommended by scientists who’ve spent their careers studying for such an eventuality...

When is that next rally? I’m feeling a little phlegmy, but what the heck...

[N9201A]

Will everybody on this forum who knows somebody with Covid-19 raise there hands?

Everybody knows Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson...and all Canadians know someone now too...don’t worry, we will all know someone soon enough.

[N9201A]

I’ve never seen such limp wristed, cowering, hysteria in my life.  

Naw, not even close. Limp-wrested hysteria is paying a doctor to say you have heel spurs to avoid military service when your country is at war and your peers are volunteering or getting drafted. THAT is hysteria!

[Shadrach]

Looks like this is going well...

[Stephen]

On 3/12/2020 at 2:10 PM, steingar said:

I don't trust many of the numbers I've seen.  I have the feeling they're undercounting a lot of folks who had a benign reaction to the virus. And I trust exactly nothing that comes from mainland China.  Because of this nonsense I'm teaching remotely on-line, and I don't like it one bit. I bet this lasts the rest of the semester, I can't see things getting any better in a couple weeks.  Maybe this is worse than the fly, maybe not.  One thing it is; infective.  This stuff make it's way here from China fast!

My wife and one of my best friends are FM and infectious disease docs respectively. Discussing this with them, they think maybe  a better case for understanding mortality could be the South Korean numbers (70/7979) because they have done (if memory serves) over 200K tests at the current rate of 10K tests/day vs the US's current high estimate of 11K tests all in. They felt that the S. Korean number are likely much closer to the actual N of cases vs mortality and puts it at an average of .8%. 

They suggested that the Diamond Princess may be even better mortality numbers. On Diamond Princess, everyone was tested. About 1/2  (328/697) of the people who were tested as positive for COV-19 showed no symptoms of all. Most that experienced symptoms experienced it as a normal cold or less.  7/697 (1%) died (15 are currently critical and 30 once critical and now improved). Important to keep in mind the average age of the ship was 58 and 1/3rd of the PAX were over 70. All the current deaths were over 70. 

That may be a bit better than what you are seeing on the news and what you are inferring from the WHO.... for whatever it is worth. 

[Hank]

48 minutes ago, Stephen said:

My wife and one of my best friends are FP and infectious disease docs respectively. Discussing this with them, they think may be a better case for understanding mortality is the South Korean numbers (70/7979) because they have done (if memory serves) over 200K tests at the current rate of 10K tests/day vs the US's current high estimate of 11K tests all in. They felt that the S. Korean number are likely much closer to the actual N of cases vs mortality and puts it at an average of .8%. 

They suggested that the Diamond Princess may be even better mortality. On Diamond Princess, everyone was tested. Over 1/2  (328/697) of the people who were tested showed no symptoms of all. Most that experienced symptoms experienced it as a normal cold or less.  7/697 (1%) died (15 critical and 30 once critical and now improved). Important to keep in mind the average age of the ship was 58 and 1/3rd of the PAX were over 70. All the current deaths were over 70. 

That may be a bit better than what you are seeing on the news and what you are inferring from the WHO.... for whatever it is worth. 

Those numbers won't get publicized much. Our media is into scaremongering for clicks . . . .

Listened to an MD on the radio driving home, not a local but someone with a national following. He said he's all for NYC cleaning the subway, lots of handwashing, people getting flus shots and clorox wipes and all, but that our media is inciting needless panic and should pay a price for their irresponsible coverage. He also mentioned the S. Korea testing, infections and low mortality rate.

So why do we hear about elderly Italians being turned away from crowded hospitals but not about S. Koreans low mortality and high recovery rates? Because blood sells papers and attracts clicks, "nothing to see here" does not do either. 

Edited March 14, 2020 by Hank

[BKlott]

I’ve been thinking about the shutdowns, closures and folks staying home in an attempt to avoid exposure. Isn’t this just a delaying action? When you come out of your isolation, the virus will still be out there, won’t it? Unless you isolate yourself until a vaccine is created and made available, won’t we still eventually be exposed to the virus? You’ll either survive it or you won’t. I don’t believe a vaccine is likely for more than a year, if then.

I understand delaying exposure so as to not overwhelm the Health Care system. I wonder if these closures are going to accomplish much more than that?