Week of Mar 30: COVID-19 info, facts & updates

[BlackCurtains]

Here are Florida's numbers:

March 1st - 2 cases
March 10th - 28 cases
March 20th - 563 cases
March 30th - 5,704 cases
April 3rd - 10,268 cases

That is some WILD exponential growth.

Well, that's scary.

Apparently, I missed one of DeSantis' conferences and he has ordered stay-at-home for the whole state. It must have come only a day or two after he said it was just for SE Florida. But you know, things have been so flimsy here that I doubt people are going to follow it very well.

[Minty_Magic]

Our governor gave into today and revised his stay at home order to exclude beauty salons, tattoo parlors, and massage parlors from his essential business list. Rumor has it he declared them an essential business because his wife owns a hair salon. I don’t know if that’s true, frankly the whole thing was super lax in a lot of places. Public swimming pools also had to be revised to say they’re non essential.

I just saw a commercial for a jewelry shop that said they were open and declared an essential business by our governor. Clearly we have some more revisions to go, right now our shelter in place order is a joke. I hope it’s enough to flatten the curve a little at least.

I also got some face masks for my family off Etsy. I got one a couple days ago and while I know it doesn’t filter out everything I do feel better having it. Especially knowing that if I’m a carrier and don’t know it I’m not spreading it as much when I have to go out. If nothing else it has helped IMMENSELY with my allergies! I might just be one of those people that wears a face mask all the time. 

[tailrustedtealeaf]

Our governor has urged us to wear cloth masks when leaving our homes to protect others. I haven't seen anyone else wear them but I do have some pony and other fun fabric that I could use to make some masks should my work requires it, but I don't interact with many people at work. If my mom sews us ones regardless, I'll wear it sooner rather than later.
I'm seeing people are definitely taking his measure seriously which is good.

If nothing else it has helped IMMENSELY with my allergies! I might just be one of those people that wears a face mask all the time. 

I was actually curious to see if mask wearing would become much more widespread once this is all over?

[Ponyfan]

I went to Walmart today to get food. They have a one way in, one way out line set up at the grocery entrance and exit. There are employees counting how many people come in and leave the store.  I was a little worried I might have to stand in line outside for a while but when I went the store wasn't at maximum capacity yet.

I wore a bandana over my mouth and nose. I saw a lot more people wearing masks/face coverings than I did last time. Eventually I noticed I was breathing heavier due to breathing through the bandana. I have asthma and had to use my inhaler after I took the bandana off.


Ponnyfan

[bright rabbit 1]

A five year old boy had died because of COVID-19 here in the U.K the youngest one yet.

U.K Death Total :  4313

[Taffeta]

I remember when I was in Japan, there was very high use of masks in the spring because of hay fever, because apparently it helped with allergies. I have allergies but for some reason they didn't kick off when I was in Japan...*shrug*. I have the remains of one pack of masks from Japan but we're still being told there isn't a lot of point in people who aren't culturally used to wearing masks wearing them since it can still get in the eyes, and people tend to reuse/fidget with masks if they are not used to them. Also reusing the same fabric mask without washing it can actually increase the spread because you're touching it and then touching a surface...

I do see the point if you are a carrier but then again if you are keeping yourself away from other people, you aren't at risk of spreading it to anyone.

UK numbers are going up but very slowly thus far this week. But they are worried if people disobey the stay at home this weekend it could extend everything for a longer period. We don't know yet whether the army of stupid people are trying to invade beaches or not this weekend like they did two weekends ago (which is what made Boris shut down the country more firmly and allow police to stop people) but I guess we'll see.

The experts did say that they would have expected the death toll and cases rate to be higher today than it's proven to be. A lot of talk still about testing though - because we are still trying to scale that up.

The hospital admission rate and death rate in London has dropped a little. Here in the Midlands though today it went up almost 50%. This wider region is now the hotspot although mostly not in THIS county but the NHS trusts in the regions over (Staffs, Black Country, Wolves and Birmingham in particular, Birmingham's QE hospital has had the most deaths inthe country from Covid so far).

...BUT on the positive.

The MOD base not far from me has a stockpile now of newly made ventilators based on an existing manufacturer which will go out to hospitals next week, more are due to be made. I guess they are here because one of the companies involved is based here.

We have new ventilators arrived from Germany, Switzerland and China.

One manufacturing alliance producing ventilators for the country is stepping up production next week and another factory in Scotland is also going to start work on a different type.

AND there are CPAP machines being produced thanks to UCL/Mercedes etc which are already medically passed which they hope will stop people getting to the stage of needing invasive ventilation.

The biggest worry here is really staffing and whether the staffing can keep up with the demand. Thus far the NHS has lost 7 medical staff to Covid.

[tailrustedtealeaf]

PA has surpassed 10,000 cases. This is about 1/7th of the cases tested. Apparently we still have capacity for patients but we're still fearing a surge.

I do see the point if you are a carrier but then again if you are keeping yourself away from other people, you aren't at risk of spreading it to anyone.

Yeah, this is the reasoning behind why we're being urged to wear them. The thought is that asymptomatic carriers might be too lenient with going out and being around others, and the masks will prevent saliva spread through talking and stuff.
My mom made me a pony fabric one.

[Taffeta]

On the recovery rate  -UK just isn't recording them at all or at least not releasing figures so the JH stats for the UK are entirely irrelevant.

We get some local news about it but nothing concrete. It's a case of mathematically calculating how many people are in hospital vs how many people apparently have tested positive since now 99% of tests are carried out on those needing hospital care here at the moment.

Some reports of Covidiots breaching the stay at home to go hang out on Brighton beach.

People are royally unimpressed by such people. As someone's said, if a £60 fine makes you obey something that 600+ people dying won't make you obey, you have a problem as a human being.

As for kids and the disease, a 5 year old was in our death numbers today (but had underlying health issues). More notable over here is the 13 year old lad who had no underlying medical concerns, died a few days ago (alone) and had to be buried alone also as his family members are also sick and in isolation.

Personally I feel like the fact that story isn't enough to keep selfish people at home because they 'want to go sunbathe' is an indictment on the whole human race. Every person with an actual heart or any kind of empathy should be feeling from the depths of it for that family (and for the two lots of kids who lost their NHS nurse mothers yesterday) and should be STAYING AT HOME.

They are genuinely killing people by going out, and I don't really understand how much more strongly you can say that. I mean, the govt's latest ad literally says PEOPLE WILL DIE.

And all this despite the fact our figures are relatively stable and that people breaking the order right now just because it happens to be sunny will mean a much longer lockdown and much more trouble.

It's also making our news that the US are confiscating masks made by their companies but preordered by other countries (Not sure the UK is involved, but Germany is). Hope that's a misunderstanding because the last thing the world need now is a supplies trade war :/

[Artemesia's Garden]

Thanks for the UK updates Taffeta. I'd much rather read this than listen to the news right now. I hope you're not glued to it constantly though and keeping wellX

[Taffeta]

Thanks for the UK updates Taffeta. I'd much rather read this than listen to the news right now. I hope you're not glued to it constantly though and keeping wellX

No, I watch the press conferences (Gove today, ugh...) to keep up to date but today I've mostly been outside in the garden xD. There's only so much data you can take in anyway.

So far we're doing fine, though Mum is panicking about running out of porridge and onions. And I found that one box of her belvita things was out of date by a week. And we managed to finally get wipes so that makes me a bit happier we can wipe down delivery food and other stuff.

I tend to listen to the US reports too because so many people here are in the US and I wanna know what's going on over there, that everyone there is being looked after as well.

we can get through this.

[lonewolf]

Welp. Just heard a medical call on the scanner for a house about 1 1/2 blocks from mine. I heard them say they thought the person was "charlie positive", which is their new code word for the virus. I hope it isn't the one I'm thinking of. If it is, 1 of them works where I do.
And Kansas is up to 698 and 21.

[tikibirds]

They banned ALL foreigners from entry in to the country due to people bringing the disease back to China. However 90% of the imported cases are Chinese nationals returning from overseas yet whenever they have imported cases they use the term "foreign worker" which has led to a lot of xenophobia against foreigners living here. Now signs are popping up that say "NO FOREIGN FRIENDS ALLOWED" in shops, cafes, malls, gyms, ect. I have also read that citizens are being told to stay away from foreigners as they are "dirty trash".  People here have always acted shocked around me anyways so I haven't really noticed any difference  I'm not in any of the megacities and there is no reason for foreigners to travel here, nothing to see or do. Plus it's kinda rural by China's standards.

I also heard rumors about the US stealing supplies from Canada? 

[Taffeta]

I also heard rumors about the US stealing supplies from Canada? 

The news story doing the rounds here is masks meant for Germany...

Edit: Looks like it's considerably global, Canada is mentioned as well.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-52161995

[Koudoawaia]

We're up to 917 cases and 40 deaths now in KY...

[Loa]

New Zealand now has over 1000 cases, one death.
Theya re saying that if we were not in lockdown, we would have 4 times that number.