• Welcome to OGBoards 10.0, keep in mind that we will be making LOTS of changes to smooth out the experience here and make it as close as possible functionally to the old software, but feel free to drop suggestions or requests in the Tech Support subforum!

Non-Political Coronavirus Thread

Until they release the paper that goes with that, it's worthless PR gibberish.

But after they do and it sizes up, then we can agree that it's good news. Sorry for being optimistic!

Of course, to get the cheap and apparently helpful drug, you need to be sick enough to be hospitalized...so your care is going to cost a lot.

Anything that reduces the chances of COVID-19 being a death sentence for the vulnerable is a start. The research to help recovery won't start with the "mild" cases.
 
I was responding to ITC’s suggestion that generic dexamethasone would suddenly become very, very expensive in the US.
 
Half my shopping nowadays is figuring out substitutes or different recipes on the fly when certain things are gone. Not to mention picking up things not on the list that happen to be on sale but I’ll need in two weeks.

Well said. This summarizes my experience, too. #FirstWorldProblems
 
Update on my daughter. She feels better this morning - still not good. Body aches, fever (we think - she can't find a thermometer - really?), a little cough.

Greenville is an absolute shitshow. We have been on the phone all last night and this morning trying to find somewhere she can get tested. It is ridiculous. The CVS makes you do your own swab and there is no way she can do that - she is very squeamish about stuff like that. The Urgent Care only does 35 tests a day - she got there at 7:45 this morning, they open at 8:00, and there were so many people in line in front of her they shut down testing before she got in.
The hospital that is on the dept. of health website as doing testing just referred her to the CVS or Urgent Care.
There were doing testing at the convention center but that has now shut down.

At this point she is going to have to wait until tomorrow morning and try the Urgent Care again. Unbelievable. Her roommates are understandably staying away from her, so she is on her own.

Update. She found a link to the right telehealth place that gave her an order so she could go to the Greenville hospital and get tested at their drive-up - my other daughter, the nurse practitioner, figured it out for us. I don't know why that option wasn't listed on the DEHC website, but whatever. She has now been tested and should know results in 48 hours. Still feels bad - tylenol helps a lot. Fever only a little over 100. Test was not fun, but she is really dramatic about that stuff.
 
I hope she’s okay scooter.

Does she know how she got it? Was she out and about in Atlanta/wearing a mask?

She has been out and about way more than we liked and we have been telling her to be more careful - her age group and her friends have just been way too blase about it all. So far all the friends she has been with and she has reached out to feel fine - no clue where she got it. Maybe this will wake some of them up? Doubt it. I'm sure she will be fine, I hope she hasn't spread it any further. She does have to wear a mask at work.

As an example of the attitudes around there, she was at work when she started feeling bad. She told them she was getting sick and thought she should go home. They acted like she was crazy for being concerned or wanting to go home? I don't get it. Around here if you say you have a sniffle they send you home and tell you to get tested. SC just seems out of touch?
 
at least she didn't go to WFU student health to learn that she has an STD
 
She has been out and about way more than we liked and we have been telling her to be more careful - her age group and her friends have just been way too blase about it all. So far all the friends she has been with and she has reached out to feel fine - no clue where she got it. Maybe this will wake some of them up? Doubt it. I'm sure she will be fine, I hope she hasn't spread it any further. She does have to wear a mask at work.

As an example of the attitudes around there, she was at work when she started feeling bad. She told them she was getting sick and thought she should go home. They acted like she was crazy for being concerned or wanting to go home? I don't get it. Around here if you say you have a sniffle they send you home and tell you to get tested. SC just seems out of touch?

This is all pretty wild but sadly indicative of why the virus will keep spreading. I mean if she's been out and about at restaurants and bars without a mask on there's no telling where she got it - could be anywhere since the virus is still wildly infectious.

Every state that has reopened restaurants and aren't requiring masks in open places of business are out of touch and off the rails. I don't know why people believe going back to the same conditions that were present in March when the virus spread rampantly before social distancing and shutdowns would make everything magically okay. The virus didn't disappear, we just took appropriate steps to slow the spread.

I can't imagine wanting to go out without a mask on even if it wasn't required. I don't even remember the last time I saw someone in a public business without a mask on up here. It's been at least two months. It's also why virus spread is declining and being contained in Massachusetts.
 
This is all pretty wild but sadly indicative of why the virus will keep spreading. I mean if she's been out and about at restaurants and bars without a mask on there's no telling where she got it - could be anywhere since the virus is still wildly infectious.

Every state that has reopened restaurants and aren't requiring masks in open places of business are out of touch and off the rails. I don't know why people believe going back to the same conditions that were present in March when the virus spread rampantly before social distancing and shutdowns would make everything magically okay. The virus didn't disappear, we just took appropriate steps to slow the spread.

I can't imagine wanting to go out without a mask on even if it wasn't required. I don't even remember the last time I saw someone in a public business without a mask on up here. It's been at least two months. It's also why virus spread is declining and being contained in Massachusetts.

It sounds like your Republican governor has made good decisions. Thanks, Democrat Roy Cooper. Non-politically, of course.
 
Must be much easier to just see black and white rather than shades of gray for 2&2. Probably a big proponent of “democrats are the party of slavery why would you be a democrat in 2020?”

I’d wager Cooper and Baker are fairly similar in ideological views regardless of party affiliation. And yes I’ve been quite critical of Cooper, along with the 7 Republican governors who have widely opened other states with the current highest rate increases in the country.
 
But after they do and it sizes up, then we can agree that it's good news. Sorry for being optimistic!

The problem is that every time we've had one of these advance stories about some great treatment, the study gets released as a preprint soon thereafter and there are major problems with the study design. I wish scientists would stop hiring publicists and instead rush to peer review.
 
Even if it’s a perfect study (lol) it won’t be the final word.


Medical research is pretty complicated, and press releases have for decades sown misleading impressions that ultimately leave many folks jaded or overly cynical.


Alas, we do progress anyhow...


In a case like the current pandemic, it’s not surprising or even inappropriate to release information that may be helpful as quickly as possible. Again, I’m sure the dexamethasone data will be published. And we’ll see. As I said, I’m speculating it’s more likely to hold up as a treatment for some subset of COVID-19 patients than when I first heard about using hydroxychloroquine. Even more so azithromycin.

It’s going to be a herky-jerky experience learning about how to treat this for a while, most likely. And inevitably involving lots of press releases.
 
Must be much easier to just see black and white rather than shades of gray for 2&2. Probably a big proponent of “democrats are the party of slavery why would you be a democrat in 2020?”

I’d wager Cooper and Baker are fairly similar in ideological views regardless of party affiliation. And yes I’ve been quite critical of Cooper, along with the 7 Republican governors who have widely opened other states with the current highest rate increases in the country.

I've actually been a fan of Cooper's attempts to follow the data and open things gradually. But, everyone seems to sees things only as either clamped down completely or wide open. So people haven't been able to handle the 'open businesses but still behave carefully' model.
 
The problem across the board is that people are stubborn and don't really care about others that much.

Once you "reopen" you are pretty much guaranteeing that you will never "shut down" again because people will never accept that. It's why initially proposing a longer lockdown time to begin with was probably a good idea. There is almost a 0% chance McMaster does anything except continue to "reopen" (I continue to put "reopen" in quotes because we never really shut down to begin with). He went ahead with reopening businesses like bowling alleys last Friday. A ton of Charleston area restaurants have already had to shut down again because of positive cases, so it will likely just keep going that way - open for a week, shut down for two because somebody on the staff/customer tests positive, rinse, repeat.

SC has been on a pretty damn quick uptick in cases/positive percent and we are reopening anyway. Nothing has really changed since March. I mean people are claiming it's a second wave, but for NC and SC it's pretty clear that it never really even dipped. This is still the first wave. People just call it whatever they want, and are content to go out and do whatever the hell they want to anyway (see 2and2's story about his friends who tested positive in SC, then went out again a few days later). Because of people like that we will be dealing with this for much longer than if they had just listened and heeded advice in the first place.
 
I've actually been a fan of Cooper's attempts to follow the data and open things gradually. But, everyone seems to sees things only as either clamped down completely or wide open. So people haven't been able to handle the 'open businesses but still behave carefully' model.

Right people miss nuance and perhaps that is part of it: that in some areas people are just going to be more inclined to do whatever the fuck they want to do once the public condemnation decreases to a certain level.

I'd argue that this means you need to err more heavily on the side of "slower to reopen" knowing that people are complete idiots (and as Junebug points out: also assholes).
 
Update. She found a link to the right telehealth place that gave her an order so she could go to the Greenville hospital and get tested at their drive-up - my other daughter, the nurse practitioner, figured it out for us. I don't know why that option wasn't listed on the DEHC website, but whatever. She has now been tested and should know results in 48 hours. Still feels bad - tylenol helps a lot. Fever only a little over 100. Test was not fun, but she is really dramatic about that stuff.

Just for other's future reference, being tested or not tested really shouldn't change your behavior if you think you have Covid. Stay isolated, let your close contacts know, and treat yourself with fever reducers and by keeping hydrated until you feel better. If you have trouble breathing, go to the hospital.
 
I’m starting to come more to the conclusion that we should kill the “lockdown” idea and try and go all in on distancing, masks, sanitizing, etc. I know America is way too stupid and entitled for it to work but it’s becoming more clear IMO that being too late to shut down really fucked us permanently and we are past the point of really being able to get this under control.
 
I’m starting to come more to the conclusion that we should kill the “lockdown” idea and try and go all in on distancing, masks, sanitizing, etc. I know America is way too stupid and entitled for it to work but it’s becoming more clear IMO that being too late to shut down really fucked us permanently and we are past the point of really being able to get this under control.

Going into a "lockdown" was the only thing that even partially worked though. The distancing, masks, and sanitizing aren't working at all (see states where they've reopened but say "keep distancing, using masks, and sanitizing"). Look at these states from a graphic put out Sunday:

8d9debda8c0f23ccac59cc8373f456a0.jpg
 
Back
Top