RebKell's Junkie Boards

[Howee]

[elsie]

Hong Kong flu killed ONE MILLION people worldwide back in 68/69.....anybody remember that.....I was alive but young and all I remember is woodstock, the moon landing, and Chappaquiddick......


is isolation working?....no.....Nursing homes have been shutdown since late March and the death rate has been stunning....

we didn't save those people with isolation.....but we did manage to make their last days to be full of fear and loneliness....

I work on the front lines....nobody is afraid or worried....

of course take precautions....I'm high risk and I'm careful...

I don't think we should stop colleges and universities because of this virus when we didn't stop them for other health situations...hiv. hong kong flu, swine flu, etc....

we need to get back to normal routines.....we need college sports ...

ultimately the "cure" will destroy a lot of lives for yrs and yrs......I am sure everyone can see that....

[purduefanatic]

Didn't see this thread when I posted The Chronicle of Higher Education piece yesterday in a new thread. Thus, I have pasted it here so people that have been following along don't need to open multiple threads.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/Here-s-a-List-of-Colleges-/248626

That was updated through 5:00 pm yesterday and has added lots of new schools since yesterday.

My apologies for the extra thread.

[summertime blues]

Basically, I think we are all going to have Covid-19 in one form or another. Either we've had it, we're carriers, we had it and know/don't know for sure, or are going to get it, or are "silent cases". It's a matter of time. I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of the people testing "positive" with no symptoms may have already had mild cases and are "positive" because they have antibodies. I'm pretty sure Mr. STB and I had it back in December when we were both hideously sick with *all* the symptoms, but not sick enough for the ER. Being a nurse, I could manage us at home and I was sure it was viral.

The reasons people in nursing homes are dying are multiple. First of all, nursing homes are full of people at risk. Most of the people there have underlying health conditions. Secondly, they're packed in, generally two to a room, and there are communal dining and recreation spaces, a good way to pass things around. A third reason is understaffing. There are generally only one or two licensed persons per unit and the day to day care of the residents falls to unlicensed, poorly paid Who are stretched thin. They may not have the training to recognize symptoms in others or in themselves. They are so poorly paid that they have to work sick to make ends meet. I know these people; they are overwhelmingly women, many single parents who are just trying to get by. I met them when they accompanies patients to the hospital or visited them, and on the few occasions when I worked agency, also when my daughter was one for awhile. Some were my classmates in nursing school. Anyway, that's how disease spreads in nursing homes. All disease.

Some of you might be old enough to remember the *first* iteration of Asian flu in 1957-58. Had we had the media blitz that we have today, we might have had the measures being taken that are now being taken against Covid-19. It was a lulu, believe you me. It, too, started in China as a strain of Influenza A, and was the impetus for the development of today's flu vaccines. CDC estimates it killed at least 1.1 million people worldwide, and 70,000 to 116,000 right here in the US. I remember my mother being deathly ill in the bedroom right across the hall from mine, and the doctor making house calls every afternoon after his office hours (some still did that then). Hospitals were overflowing and doctors' offices were packed. But schools didn't close and we carried on as best we could. I remember my dad going to work as a professor at UW-Madison, but he didn't hold office hours while mom was sick, he hurried home to take care of her. I was 14 and took care of cooking chores and some laundry, but the house didn't get cleaned much. This flu virus underwent an antigenic shift and was responsible for the 1968 "Hong Kong flu" pandemic that elsie cites. Again, we didn't have the media blitz.

Flu viruses are a little different in that scientists now basically know how to make a vaccine against them. They worked on it in the first Asian flu pandemic and got the process down so unless one comes in under the radar the vaccine is generally pretty effective. Covid-19 is a coronavirus, which is the same family as the common cold, and is a different thing altogether as these virii are very tricky and mutate constantly, which is why we don't have a vaccine against the common cold. But I do think the media blitz is a huge reason for both the widespread freakout over Covid-19 *AND* the overabundance of conspiracy theories about it. I'm sure it would have been much the same had we had 24 hour cable and the internet in the winter of 1957-58.

Forgive the length of this post. Just a few things I had on my mind.

_________________
Don't take life so serious. It ain't nohows permanent.
It takes 3 years to build a team and 7 to build a program.--Conventional Wisdom

[tfan]

[summertime blues]

[tfan]

[summertime blues]

Family members have not been allowed to visit patients in nursing homes anywhere that I'm aware of pretty much since this outbreak started.

_________________
Don't take life so serious. It ain't nohows permanent.
It takes 3 years to build a team and 7 to build a program.--Conventional Wisdom

[elsie]

I am a nurse for a long time.....when a Nursing home pt gets admitted in normal times and is positive flu, the home WILL NOT TAKE them back until they've had their run of tamiflu....

so it would be against what they ususally do to take back positive covid pts....

otoh, they will take Mrsa and they will take cdiff pts back....

the whole big point of this discussion is that not even people isolated are protected completely....even without visitors you have staff going in and out...you have supplies coming in....other workmen.....

so lets move on....

I think we can safely and WISELY start living life again....that includes college sports....

and this particular virus will be around.....along with the usual viruses....

some will get sick , a very few might die.....but there really is no way to prevent this....no matter our good intentions....

thankfully, there are lots of great people actually working the problems of treatment and prevention......politicos are just mouth pieces....but REAL people will solve this...

OPEN UP!

[calbearman76]

[Howee]

[summertime blues]

[ClayK]

Three issues:

1) We don't know how many people have had COVID-19.

2) We don't know how many people have died from it.

3) We don't know how much immunity, if any, is developed by those who have had it.

It's pretty hard to make decisions confidently without at least answers to those three questions, but it's unlikely we will know about 1) and 3) any time soon. We can get an estimate of the number of COVID deaths simply by comparing total deaths this year to last (with adjustments for increasing population, etc.) but that's still far from accurate.

So far, erring on the side of caution has been the primary response, and who can blame anyone in power for doing so? If you're open too early, you may kill thousands with your decision, and most people don't want to carry that kind of burden.

_________________
Oṃ Tāre Tuttāre Ture Svāhā

[cthskzfn]

I had a tele-visit last week with my doctor, here in CT, and it's her opinion that COVID-19 has been here since November.

Of course, she has nothing but her personal observations and discussions w/ colleagues to reach that conclusion.

I was sick in mid-Jan w/ the infamous "flu-like symptoms" for about 10 days. Who really knows?

_________________
Silly, stupid white people might be waking up.

[Howee]

All valid points, Clay.
Re:

[summertime blues]

Because of the way our government has handled the pandemic, we will probably never know for sure how many people have had it or how many people have died from it. I have a sneaky hunch that because it's a coronavirus
(same family as the common cold), it will continue to mutate and there will be more and less virulent forms of the stuff around forever....as there have been. It will continue to erupt cyclically (think SARS and MERS, which were also members of the same family) in various degrees of severity more or less forever and we'll have to deal with it. But a public health strategy will have to be developed and it absolutely *cannot* be politicized. That's where things have gone totally off the rails here. WHO is the best agency to handle these types of things but wasn't allowed to.

*getting off my soapbox for now*

_________________
Don't take life so serious. It ain't nohows permanent.
It takes 3 years to build a team and 7 to build a program.--Conventional Wisdom

[snzuluz]

Beloit College in Beloit, WI has made the decision to have students enroll in 2 - 7 week courses at a time...that way if they have to move students off campus again, they are only taking two classes online and not 4-5 courses...my guess is they are going to rewrite their credit hours for this to be successful

Right now I teach: a 1 credit- 7 week course and a 3 credit- 14 week course at my college. I also taught a 2 credit - 7 week class that was held face-to-face for 5 out of the 7 weeks before students had to leave campus and my last two weeks were online with them...my classroom as I mentioned before had 18 desks and I had 14 kids enrolled. There was NO way to social distance.

My guess if our WI college adopts Beloit's idea, my 3 credit class would go to a 4 credit class (2 credits for each 7 weeks)...my college used to have 4 credit, 2 credit and 1 credit courses.

Biggest complaint I get from my college students and Beloit also got from their students is 4-5 classes is too much online...they would prefer to break them down into 7 week cycles. Beloit said if this system works, they may make it permanent for their college.

Right now my college plans to open on time and have kids on campus..I do not see that happening to be honest...we have NO way to social distance in many of our classrooms, dining halls, dorms, common areas etc. We are a Division III school, so we do not have large lecture halls or large lecture classes.