Covid19

[sk_tle]

If we can build stadiums for Olympics and world cups i guess a couple hospitals are no big deal.

You read half my posts, it is not about the buildings themselves if you let patients die in an empty room without respiratory assistance equipment and healthcare workers.

[gt6267a]

In terms of behaviors and longtime traditional customs, one wonders if "shaking hands" will decrease as a method of casual greeting?

Yes please.

[colker]

You read half my posts, it is not about the buildings themselves if you let patients die in an empty room without respiratory assistance equipment and healthcare workers.

It´s a challenge. It´s a tough situation. Face it. Win. Bring more nurses. Syrians want to come to Europe, right? So who among them have experience at health care? Who else? Open up jobs. Find peopñe. Buy respiratory equipment. Build them... and buid them quick. Work around the clock.
Europe has been through horrible ordeals way worse than this.

[j44ke]

Good - and very helpful - information here largely, so let's keep this out of the realm of bar stool debate mkay? Tidy up and carry on with facts and knowledge. Thanks.

[Will Neide]

Westchester now has at least one case.

Coronavirus in N.Y.: Second Case May Force Quarantine of Hospital Staff - The New York Times

I assume it's already present in every major city. Just hasn't been detected yet. It'll present as flu like for most healthy people.

No putting the toothpaste back in the tube.

Sanitizer and hand washing will go a long way in helping slow the spread.

[Vandenberg]

It´s a challenge. It´s a tough situation. Face it. Win. Bring more nurses. Syrians want to come to Europe, right? So who among them have experience at health care? Who else? Open up jobs. Find peopñe. Buy respiratory equipment. Build them... and buid them quick. Work around the clock.
Europe has been through horrible ordeals way worse than this.

It's possible that the whole world will be dealing with this: there won't be any surplus skilled health workers to import, they'll presumable all be in demand where they are. And everyone will want the respiratory equipment, which means shortages until production can be ramped up, which might not happen straight away as supply lines are disrupted etc.
I get where you're coming from, face up to the challenge and all that. But sometimes buying in extra people and resources isn't an option.

As an aside, here in Australia everyone seems to be stockpiling toilet paper... Social media is full of pics of empty shelves. I don't get it.

[Too Tall]

Something sobering I heard on the radio about this idea yesterday is that the Spanish flu of 1918 actually claimed many more lives in 1919 after the summer season had diminished the virus somewhat for several months, only to return with a vengeance for the following winter season. Some say this could be similar.

I might need to get you very drunk.

Lou thanks for being here. I might have get you very drunk. Are you and Easley friends? Could save some time.

[SeanEasley]

I might need to get you very drunk.

Lou thanks for being here. I might have get you very drunk. Are you and Easley friends? Could save some time.

I'm already working on it

[Bobonli]

My employer, and another NYC area hospital, just instituted a travel ban for employees and we're ramping up hiring nurses and aides. I think the appearance of it in Westchester really got people's attention and hospitals have activated their emergency incident command structures in response.

I can't wait to see how they enforce the travel ban when people already have vacations booked and $$ tied up in plane tickets and hotels. Luckily the President said the warm weather will kill it, and it's projected to be above 50 for a few days this week. So we should be back to normal by Saturday!

[ldamelio]

Make mine Booker's, neat. Added bonus: kills Covid19 and can double as hand sanitizer.

[vertical_doug]

My employer, and another NYC area hospital, just instituted a travel ban for employees and we're ramping up hiring nurses and aides. I think the appearance of it in Westchester really got people's attention and hospitals have activated their emergency incident command structures in response.

I can't wait to see how they enforce the travel ban when people already have vacations booked and $$ tied up in plane tickets and hotels. Luckily the President said the warm weather will kill it, and it's projected to be above 50 for a few days this week. So we should be back to normal by Saturday!

It really comes down to how transmissible this virus is and the fact no one has immunity. The man in Westchester was not an obvious candidate since no known contacts. Now everyone from doctors and some nurses at the hospital to members of his synagogue are to quarantine. The Lawrence Hospital workers often go across the street to Park Place Bagel to get lunch. It's an extremely popular spot to grab a bagel and coffee before going into the city by the commuters from Bronxville and lunch for Bronxville school students.

From NY TIMES


The public health authorities descended on a hospital, telling some nurses and doctors they would need to be quarantined. They ordered a synagogue to halt all services, and told attendants at a recent bat mitzvah to stay at home for the rest of the week.

Disease detectives were monitoring lawyers at a small midtown law firm for signs of illness, and scrutinizing the risk of contagion at a university.

The discovery of a second case of the new coronavirus in New York on Tuesday — a man of about 50 who lives in Westchester County, just north of New York City — quickly touched off an intense search by health investigators across the region to determine whether he had infected others, and who might have infected him.

The inquiry stretched from a hospital in Bronxville, N.Y., to a synagogue in nearby New Rochelle, to a law firm and a college campus in Manhattan and to Florida, where the man had visited weeks ago.

These precautions provided one of the first glimpses in New York of the kind of comprehensive efforts that have been mounted to stem the spread of the coronavirus around the world — epidemiological detective work that was first conducted in China, where the disease seemed to arise.

Now, it is the reality officials across the United States will face as the epidemic spreads, including in Washington State, where the virus has killed several residents of a nursing home.

What these disease detectives find could well be unnerving, as the scope of the illness’s spread becomes clear.

“I think we have to assume this contagion will grow,” George Latimer, the Westchester County executive, said at a news conference on Tuesday.

COMMUTING SAFELYWorried about coronavirus on public transit? Here’s what we know.
On Sunday, the authorities announced the first confirmed case of the new coronavirus in New York: a health care worker who had been infected in Iran, where the illness is raging, and began exhibiting symptoms after returning home. But the health care worker had kept herself largely isolated, and the authorities expressed confidence they had the situation under control.

But the case announced on Tuesday was far more worrisome.

The authorities have little inkling of how the man, a lawyer who lives in New Rochelle but works in Manhattan, had been infected. He had traveled to Miami in February and regularly visited Israel, but had not been to any areas with widespread transmission.

Public health authorities were only beginning to tally the number of people he might have exposed to the illness.

The man became ill on Feb. 22 and was admitted to a hospital in Westchester on Feb. 27., according to Dr. Demetre C. Daskalakis, the deputy commissioner for disease control at New York City’s Department of Health.

The original diagnosis was pneumonia, according to a person who knows the patient well and who spoke on the condition of anonymity. After testing negative for the flu, he was removed from isolation, the person said. Several people visited him.

But his health deteriorated, and after several days he was transferred to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan. “At that point, it was a bit of a medical mystery,” the person said.

He was tested for the new coronavirus on Monday and health authorities announced the result Tuesday morning. Officials did not specify why the man had not been tested for the virus earlier. He was in “severe condition” as of Tuesday afternoon, according to the Health Department.

Officials acknowledged that doctors, nurses and others at the first hospital the man checked into, NewYork-Presbyterian Lawrence Hospital in Bronxville, might have been exposed to the illness.

“We believe that a couple of the medical professionals have been quarantined,” Mr. Latimer, the county executive, said.

Westchester County health officials were scrambling to trace his movements in the days before his hospital admission. The Westchester health commissioner ordered the synagogue, Young Israel of New Rochelle, to halt all services, and ordered the congregants who attended a bat mitzvah and a funeral there to self-quarantine.

In New York City, investigators with the health department interviewed colleagues at the man’s law firm on East 42nd Street, and identified seven people there worthy of some level of monitoring to see if symptoms develop.

The man has four children, two of whom flew back from Israel in recent days. But the younger two have links to New York City. One child, a daughter, attends a Jewish high school in the Riverdale neighborhood in the Bronx, and the school, SAR, which stands for Salanter Akiba Riverdale and describes itself as a Modern Orthodox Jewish day school, closed on Tuesday as a precaution.

The other, a college student, attends Yeshiva University but had not been on campus since Feb. 27, according to a statement released by the school. City officials said the man’s son, the Yeshiva University student, exhibited light symptoms that could be the coronavirus, or perhaps nothing at all.

Additionally, the school’s statement said, a law school student was in self-quarantine after having contact with the law firm where the Westchester man works.

The man’s family is currently in quarantine in New Rochelle, the authorities said.

The man, now hospitalized, had been planning to attend this week’s annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington, D.C., which is typically attended by thousands of people, including members of Congress, according to the person who knows him well.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said news of the second New York patient should not cause alarm, and steeled New Yorkers for the prospect that the virus would spread.

“Yes, people are going to get infected,” the governor said in an interview on Long Island News Radio, adding that most cases involved only mild symptoms. More severe symptoms include pneumonia and respiratory failure. Early estimates put the death rate at 2 percent, although that may drop.

Epidemiologists say it is unsurprising that the illness appears to have spread with little detection given how few people have been tested for the virus. In New York City, fewer than 20 people have been tested; across the state, only a few dozen people have.

Testing on a larger scale has been hampered by regulatory hurdles and limitations that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has imposed, although those obstacles are easing.

The city’s public health laboratory discovered that the man had the new coronavirus on the very first day the laboratory began testing, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office said.

More than 100 people in the United States have been confirmed through laboratory testing to have the new coronavirus.

The new virus is believed to have originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year before spreading to some 70 other countries. More than 92,000 people have been infected, and more than 3,100 have died. New hubs of transmission have emerged in Italy, South Korea and Iran.

The details known about the man’s time at the Bronxville hospital underscore an alarming threat — one undiagnosed patient with the new coronavirus can expose a large number of staff, leading to quarantines.

Elsewhere, hospitals have already been a source of transmission for the new coronavirus. In Wuhan, more than 1,500 medical workers contracted the virus, according to statistics the Chinese government released in mid February. An earlier outbreak of a different coronavirus, the far more deadly SARS, was also fueled by transmissions that occurred in health care settings.


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The virus’s impending arrival has caused New Yorkers to grow concerned in the past week. After reports of price gouging on supplies including face masks and hand sanitizers, State Senator Brad Hoylman, a Democrat, introduced a bill on Tuesday to penalize businesses that raised prices on medical supplies by more than 10 percent during a public health emergency.

Concern is sure to grow as health detectives begin to investigate cases around the city. On Tuesday, police officers showed up at the building in Midtown where the Westchester man worked, reportedly after someone in the building called 911 saying they had contact with the man.

Jonathan Crespy had come downstairs to meet his wife for coffee when he learned that a man who worked in the same building as him was the second coronavirus patient. Mr. Crespy had worked from home on Monday out of caution, he said, after learning about the city’s first coronavirus case.

“I came back today,” he said. Asked by a reporter if he would consider working from home again tomorrow, he said, “I think I’ll go home now.”

Joseph Goldstein reported from New York, and Jesse McKinley from Albany, N.Y. Reporting was contributed by Luis Ferré-Sadurní, Michael Gold, Jeffery C. Mays, Annie Correal and Corey Kilgannon.

[vertical_doug]

Another irony is the class divide when it comes to cancelling events. The Louvre is closed to the huddled masses. But last night, the Louvre was open to LVMH so they could hold their event with the international movers and shakers... funny

Chinese buyers, japanese buyers, italian buyers, models etc etc

Louis Vuitton'''s Clash of Styles Wraps Up Paris Fashion Week - The New York Times

[bironi]

Please change my moniker to, "Count me dead".
I have read the recommendations about hand washing and not touching your face in the T-zone.
At nearly 7 decades I don't think I'm a good candidate to change that habit overnight.
We're all creatures of habit.

Trump says if we just get out and ride in spring and get takeout at Mc Donald's, there is nothing to worry about.
Don't sweat it.
Oh, but I do sweat a bit when the temps rise.
By

[happycampyer]

My employer, and another NYC area hospital, just instituted a travel ban for employees and we're ramping up hiring nurses and aides. I think the appearance of it in Westchester really got people's attention and hospitals have activated their emergency incident command structures in response.

I can't wait to see how they enforce the travel ban when people already have vacations booked and $$ tied up in plane tickets and hotels. Luckily the President said the warm weather will kill it, and it's projected to be above 50 for a few days this week. So we should be back to normal by Saturday!

I realize that you’re being tongue-in-cheek, but I’ve heard this said in all seriousness and it’s up there with the virus being caused by a brand of beer. It’s summer in Australia and elsewhere in the southern hemisphere, with temps around 100° on some days (and sometimes over), and there are plenty of confirmed cases there.

[Bobonli]

I realize that you’re being tongue-in-cheek, but I’ve heard this said in all seriousness and it’s up there with the virus being caused by a brand of beer......

Yes. What starts as a mis-statement or joke quickly becomes 'fact' nowadays. I had visitors from Mexico at my work just as this was starting in China. One of them pulled out a phone and said, "We have Corona virus in mexico" and showed me a picture of (the person's team) holding bottles of a certain brand of beer....

And I think if you have to shove a piece of lime into a beer bottle it's not really beer!

[EDS]

Hmm, just got word that my daughter's school (a private school in NYC) is closed for the rest of the week for some deep cleaning. They have indicated they are being proactive and that there are no confirmed cases of coronavirus or community members on quarantine.

[guido]

[guido]

U.S. health system is showing why it’s not ready for a coronavirus pandemic - Washington Post

[Too Tall]

Too soon for a small chuckle? Hope so.
My yoga studio says no more hands on assist, byo props, blankets etc.

[al415]

My wife arrived home from Paris last night, landing at JFK and saw no evidence of any sort of screening for corona virus whatsoever. Nothing different than any other trip back home from Europe.

I assume flights from countries that are officially on quarantine lists may experience a different reception, but I have no way of knowing either way.

At the height of the Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease crisis (Mad Cow) I landed in JFK after a visit to England. I signed a form declaring that I HAD traveled through farm country on my trip, fully expecting some extra screening when I landed. I ended up walking past a very large decontamination station on my way out of the airport. It was unmanned and not in operation.

Fast forward to later that evening and the local NY news was interviewing a high ranking Customs / Border Agent in front of the same machine I had walked by; only this time it was being operated by half a dozen busy looking federal workers and there was a long line of travelers waiting to be screened and cleaned.

Much in the same way that in the days after 9/11 2001, the National Guard soldiers patrolling Penn Station only had one round of ammunition each: Most of the measures we'll see will be window dressing to manage perception rather than the crisis itself.