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This is holding true for New Mexico, I don't know about the rest of the country, but women are getting sick more than men! Usually women have more robust immune systems than men, so I find this interesting. It isn't huge, like less than a 55/45 split.
My county still has only three cases, but they're not putting a lot of effort into testing. It's quite possible there's a lack of testing kits. Nationally, they're reporting four cases, the extra case is from White Sands Missile Range, an Army base next to Las Cruces in Doña Ana County. The base straddles Otero County, all the housing is in Doña Ana.
I'm finding it just too depressing to write the COVID news that's been happening. Doctors have been fired and nurses suspended for talking about the shortage of PPEs. If that's not stupid, I don't know what is. A train engineer tried to crash a train into the hospital ship off the Port of Los Angeles. No one was injured, especially the ship: apparently he didn't think about the 25 yards of water the train needed to get across. Apparently the ship "was up to something, he didn't know what." Did I mention that the FBI got into a gun fight with a suspect they were trying to arrest near St. Louis who was going to plant an explosive device in a hospital treating COVID cases? The suspect was wounded and taken to a hospital, but did not survive. And back to the hospital ship, I think this was the NY one, at least one crew has tested positive for COVID. And on the subject of ships, a member of the aircraft carrier Teddy Roosevelt has died, and the other carrier, in the Atlantic, the Ronald Reagan, they're also quite infected.
Lots of experimental ventilators, an interesting one in South America developed by a guy who built one out of 3D printed parts, parts obtained from an auto supply store, and controlled by a Raspberry Pi controller! He programmed it with input from medical experts. It's being evaluated in Peru? Somewhere down there. They're very excited. And General Motors has ventilators rolling off its production line! I'm quite surprised by that, I didn't think they could make them this fast, but they did.
Let's talk Japan. The island of Hokkaido was very early going into isolation/shutdown, doing it in February. And they came out of it early. Good for them. Except it didn't work, and cases came back and they had to shut down again! This is going to be a problem if people come out of shutdown/isolation too soon, especially without mass testing! And we haven't seen mass testing in the USA yet. I don't know if manufacturers are ramping up making testing kits yet, but I have heard of shortages of testing swabs, and we're also going to need amazing lab capacity to evaluate all those kits! Also, I've heard of incompatibilities between university labs and hospital IT networks such that health care networks can't take the results from university labs easily. Sort of a chain of custody issue. I'm not sure if it's a HIPPA thing or what.
It's going to be very easy for there to be multiple waves of this, and we do not yet know what immunity is going to be like, nor for how long it will last if you have it once. Looking at it from a serology standpoint (bloodwork), from what I've read, if you have a mild case of COVID or you have it and are asymptomatic, there's like a 25% chance that you'll build NO antibodies!
The most disturbing news that I've come across recently is in two parts. The first is that the State of New York, if you ignore the USA temporarily and count it as a country, is the most infected/deadly country in the world. So we're number one once again. But there's also a bit of hope: they may be peaking, not that there's any time for complacency or slacking off on stay at home. They've still got a long row to hoe. And on the other coast, California looks like they may not exhaust their hospital system. So some good news there.
The other disturbing news is FEMA literally stealing supplies from states! So first the Feds say "The national stockpile is ours, you have to get your own." So the states order things. Then FEMA comes in and literally seizes shipments of supplies! They're also being totally illogical about redistribution of supplies, but what do you expect when career bureaucrats who know what they're doing are turfed in favor of toadies and dilitants who like to play at being competent at a task.
Another disturbing news piece: NIH is beginning clinical trials on hydrochloroquine, the drug that our Idiot In Charge has been trumpeting, I guess to shut him up. His spewing about how effective this drug is has caused shortages, the problem is that this drug is critical for people with lupus. This is literally a life-saving drug for these people, and now they're having problems getting it! And for people who don't have lupus, it can literally be a life-threatening drug! There is zero clinical evidence, aside from anecdotal, that it is effective against the coronavirus-class of infections, and now we're wasting resources and causing a run on it to prove what has heretofore been a negative? Who knows, maybe there's a chance it will prove effective, but with really nasty and sometimes fatal side effects? When the treatment is worse than the disease....
One good bit of news is that several vaccines are in early testing, at least one is based on SARS/MERS research that was suspended when those diseases subsided. We're still over a year from those coming to market, but in another interesting piece of good news, the Bill Gates Foundation if putting up something on the order of $7billion to fast-track building multiple vaccine production factories IN ADVANCE so when any of these vaccines are approved, production is pretty much ready to go.
Now THAT is a philanthropist! Pity a certain owner of Amazon isn't a philanthropist.
*****
Here, we're fine. I cut the crap out of my thumb last Friday making a wonderful Chinese shredded pork, fortunately after I'd finished getting all the meat off of the aitch bone - it was cutting the ginger into large pieces that got me. In normal times I probably would have gotten a stitch or two, but I didn't and it's closed up just fine and capillary refill in the tip is great as is nerve function. Dave got the desk furniture that he ordered and he's happy, Russet's sleep cycle is inverted, which would be fine if she's working, but she isn't. She had a phone con with her team and was bemoaning going through an entire lunar cycle and not knowing what phase the moon was in: normally she'd be blasting it with a laser. Stimulus checks went into my savings account Wednesday night where they will sit for some time.
So we're doing well. Eating good stuff and we've all lost weight since we're not eating in restaurants. And we started watching the first season of the Jodi Whitaker Dr. Who!
Me, I'm doing well. My sinus infection is pretty much gone. Got another five days of antibiotics, still like afternoon naps, but I'm also a bum. :-)
My county still has only three cases, but they're not putting a lot of effort into testing. It's quite possible there's a lack of testing kits. Nationally, they're reporting four cases, the extra case is from White Sands Missile Range, an Army base next to Las Cruces in Doña Ana County. The base straddles Otero County, all the housing is in Doña Ana.
I'm finding it just too depressing to write the COVID news that's been happening. Doctors have been fired and nurses suspended for talking about the shortage of PPEs. If that's not stupid, I don't know what is. A train engineer tried to crash a train into the hospital ship off the Port of Los Angeles. No one was injured, especially the ship: apparently he didn't think about the 25 yards of water the train needed to get across. Apparently the ship "was up to something, he didn't know what." Did I mention that the FBI got into a gun fight with a suspect they were trying to arrest near St. Louis who was going to plant an explosive device in a hospital treating COVID cases? The suspect was wounded and taken to a hospital, but did not survive. And back to the hospital ship, I think this was the NY one, at least one crew has tested positive for COVID. And on the subject of ships, a member of the aircraft carrier Teddy Roosevelt has died, and the other carrier, in the Atlantic, the Ronald Reagan, they're also quite infected.
Lots of experimental ventilators, an interesting one in South America developed by a guy who built one out of 3D printed parts, parts obtained from an auto supply store, and controlled by a Raspberry Pi controller! He programmed it with input from medical experts. It's being evaluated in Peru? Somewhere down there. They're very excited. And General Motors has ventilators rolling off its production line! I'm quite surprised by that, I didn't think they could make them this fast, but they did.
Let's talk Japan. The island of Hokkaido was very early going into isolation/shutdown, doing it in February. And they came out of it early. Good for them. Except it didn't work, and cases came back and they had to shut down again! This is going to be a problem if people come out of shutdown/isolation too soon, especially without mass testing! And we haven't seen mass testing in the USA yet. I don't know if manufacturers are ramping up making testing kits yet, but I have heard of shortages of testing swabs, and we're also going to need amazing lab capacity to evaluate all those kits! Also, I've heard of incompatibilities between university labs and hospital IT networks such that health care networks can't take the results from university labs easily. Sort of a chain of custody issue. I'm not sure if it's a HIPPA thing or what.
It's going to be very easy for there to be multiple waves of this, and we do not yet know what immunity is going to be like, nor for how long it will last if you have it once. Looking at it from a serology standpoint (bloodwork), from what I've read, if you have a mild case of COVID or you have it and are asymptomatic, there's like a 25% chance that you'll build NO antibodies!
The most disturbing news that I've come across recently is in two parts. The first is that the State of New York, if you ignore the USA temporarily and count it as a country, is the most infected/deadly country in the world. So we're number one once again. But there's also a bit of hope: they may be peaking, not that there's any time for complacency or slacking off on stay at home. They've still got a long row to hoe. And on the other coast, California looks like they may not exhaust their hospital system. So some good news there.
The other disturbing news is FEMA literally stealing supplies from states! So first the Feds say "The national stockpile is ours, you have to get your own." So the states order things. Then FEMA comes in and literally seizes shipments of supplies! They're also being totally illogical about redistribution of supplies, but what do you expect when career bureaucrats who know what they're doing are turfed in favor of toadies and dilitants who like to play at being competent at a task.
Another disturbing news piece: NIH is beginning clinical trials on hydrochloroquine, the drug that our Idiot In Charge has been trumpeting, I guess to shut him up. His spewing about how effective this drug is has caused shortages, the problem is that this drug is critical for people with lupus. This is literally a life-saving drug for these people, and now they're having problems getting it! And for people who don't have lupus, it can literally be a life-threatening drug! There is zero clinical evidence, aside from anecdotal, that it is effective against the coronavirus-class of infections, and now we're wasting resources and causing a run on it to prove what has heretofore been a negative? Who knows, maybe there's a chance it will prove effective, but with really nasty and sometimes fatal side effects? When the treatment is worse than the disease....
One good bit of news is that several vaccines are in early testing, at least one is based on SARS/MERS research that was suspended when those diseases subsided. We're still over a year from those coming to market, but in another interesting piece of good news, the Bill Gates Foundation if putting up something on the order of $7billion to fast-track building multiple vaccine production factories IN ADVANCE so when any of these vaccines are approved, production is pretty much ready to go.
Now THAT is a philanthropist! Pity a certain owner of Amazon isn't a philanthropist.
*****
Here, we're fine. I cut the crap out of my thumb last Friday making a wonderful Chinese shredded pork, fortunately after I'd finished getting all the meat off of the aitch bone - it was cutting the ginger into large pieces that got me. In normal times I probably would have gotten a stitch or two, but I didn't and it's closed up just fine and capillary refill in the tip is great as is nerve function. Dave got the desk furniture that he ordered and he's happy, Russet's sleep cycle is inverted, which would be fine if she's working, but she isn't. She had a phone con with her team and was bemoaning going through an entire lunar cycle and not knowing what phase the moon was in: normally she'd be blasting it with a laser. Stimulus checks went into my savings account Wednesday night where they will sit for some time.
So we're doing well. Eating good stuff and we've all lost weight since we're not eating in restaurants. And we started watching the first season of the Jodi Whitaker Dr. Who!
Me, I'm doing well. My sinus infection is pretty much gone. Got another five days of antibiotics, still like afternoon naps, but I'm also a bum. :-)
