[Health] The Infectious Diseases Thread

[Alefroth]

I drink maybe one soda every 2-3 years, but I go thru 6 liters of seltzer every week. Plain, thank you.

Same here. Have we already discussed Sodastreams? The refills are unavailable everywhere we go, and we are close to out on the last one. Thanks Trump!

[Isgrimnur]

It's got what plants crave.

[gilraen]

I like my SodaStream for cream soda. Haven't had to look for a CO2 refill since last year, though, since I don't drink that much of it.

[hitbyambulance]

made one of these, works well:

https://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2012 ... on-system/

[Daehawk]

I have no idea how to check my usage. Ive not had a cap since that time I had to use AOL while I looked for a new ISP.

[stessier]

I have no idea how to check my usage. Ive not had a cap since that time I had to use AOL while I looked for a new ISP.

Charter doesn't report it. I use my router to tell me.

Come 2023 (or sooner if their lobbying works), Charter will be happy to tell (and charge) us.

[Alefroth]

made one of these, works well:

https://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2012 ... on-system/

I should probably look into that since I've already got a CO2 setup for a kegerator.

What I'd really like to do is get an adapter so I can fill the Sodastream canisters myself.

[Daehawk]

A troubling pandemic thought: Are THESE the good old days?

[gameoverman]

The reason I take that possibility seriously is that we Americans are optimistic, sure. But part of that optimism stems in part from a history of what we call 'great leaders'. People like George Washington, Lincoln, and others. It's why Reagan was so highly regarded by some, he seemed like a throwback to that kind of leader. It's easy to be optimistic about your team's chances when you think your team has star players.

These days? I'm not seeing it. Who has stepped up to say "Here's where we are, here's what we need to do, and here's where we're going"? There does not seem to be a central game plan for the country as a unified whole. What happened to the idea that the leaders of this country have contingency plans for everything, even sci-fi stuff like an alien invasion or a giant asteroid hitting Earth? When a relatively mundane emergency like a pandemic shows up our leaders act like it's a total surprise.

So yeah, I can see it getting worse. That would also start a death spiral. We have a lot of infighting now, imagine how much worse it'll get if the economy continues to limp along and the spread of the virus remains difficult to slow. Now imagine how much worse the infighting will be if the economy were to collapse further and/or more infection rate surges happen! People talk about a civil war, but a civil war implies an attempt to keep the country together. What happens if parts of the country start to break away and other parts shrug and don't care? The whole thing could fracture.

[Moat_Man]

The British Columbia Centre for Disease Control published guidelines for sex during the pandemic.

Warning - NSFW sexual content in spoiler, no pictures just words

Spoiler:

In the "Steps to protect yourself during sex" section they acutally wrote the following:
Use barriers, like walls (e.g., glory holes), that allow for sexual contact but prevent close face-to-face contact.

Link to the article:
http://www.bccdc.ca/health-info/disease ... 19-and-sex

I find it hilarious that my government is recommending using glory holes for sex.

[Blackhawk]

The British Columbia Centre for Disease Control published guidelines for sex during the pandemic.

Warning - NSFW sexual content in spoiler, no pictures just words

Spoiler:

In the "Steps to protect yourself during sex" section they acutally wrote the following:
Use barriers, like walls (e.g., glory holes), that allow for sexual contact but prevent close face-to-face contact.

Link to the article:
http://www.bccdc.ca/health-info/disease ... 19-and-sex

I find it hilarious that my government is recommending using glory holes for sex.

That bundling board will finally come in handy!

[Daehawk]

The wonderful USA

Fauci says "serious threats" have been made against him and his wife and daughters

"I've seen a side of society that I guess is understandable, but it's a little bit disturbing," Fauci said. "You know, back in the days of HIV when I was being criticized with some hate mail, it was more, you know, people calling me a gay-lover and 'What the hell are you wasting a lot of time on that?'"

"It's tough," he said. "Serious threats against me, against my wife, against my daughters. I mean, really? Is this the United States of America?" Fauci said.

When Axelrod asked if he took on security measures, Fauci said yes, he's been given security. The Department of Justice confirmed in April that federal officials were ramping up security for Fauci after threats were made against him. The increase in security came at the request of the Health and Human Services Inspector General, the officials said.

[$iljanus]

The British Columbia Centre for Disease Control published guidelines for sex during the pandemic.

Warning - NSFW sexual content in spoiler, no pictures just words

Spoiler:

In the "Steps to protect yourself during sex" section they acutally wrote the following:
Use barriers, like walls (e.g., glory holes), that allow for sexual contact but prevent close face-to-face contact.

Link to the article:
http://www.bccdc.ca/health-info/disease ... 19-and-sex

I find it hilarious that my government is recommending using glory holes for sex.

Hmmm, never played that variant of cornhole before...

[em2nought]

The British Columbia Centre for Disease Control published guidelines for sex during the pandemic.

Warning - NSFW sexual content in spoiler, no pictures just words

Spoiler:

In the "Steps to protect yourself during sex" section they acutally wrote the following:
Use barriers, like walls (e.g., glory holes), that allow for sexual contact but prevent close face-to-face contact.

Link to the article:
http://www.bccdc.ca/health-info/disease ... 19-and-sex

I find it hilarious that my government is recommending using glory holes for sex.

Hmmm, never played that variant of cornhole before...

I've recently seen an ad where the escort had constructed her own little glory hole wall on her bed to entice customers during corona.

[gameoverman]

The British Columbia Centre for Disease Control published guidelines for sex during the pandemic.

Warning - NSFW sexual content in spoiler, no pictures just words

Spoiler:

In the "Steps to protect yourself during sex" section they acutally wrote the following:
Use barriers, like walls (e.g., glory holes), that allow for sexual contact but prevent close face-to-face contact.

Link to the article:
http://www.bccdc.ca/health-info/disease ... 19-and-sex

I find it hilarious that my government is recommending using glory holes for sex.

I don't know why but this story made me think of the Piña Colada song for some reason.

[AWS260]

Baltimore critical care doctor dies of COVID-19.

Costa, the chief of the critical care division at Mercy Medical Center was a scientist who “lived through his brain” and loved his job more than anything in the world, said David Hart, his husband of 28 years. As he lay dying, about 20 colleagues held a vigil and placed their blue-gloved hands on him.

“Those who cared for Joe were his best friends,” Hart said. “A housekeeper who knelt by his bed and shook with grief said, ‘I’m now losing my best friend.’”

Hart said he placed his cheek next to Costa’s and held his husband in his arms until he died around 4:45 a.m.

[Daehawk]

Those still fighting masks and wanting to party and a certain guy in DC wanting schools to be forced open. A little voice whispers to me "I wonder what those people will think if some day theres not enough qualified people to fly their planes or drive their buss. Maybe no one to teach kids or build cars. Scary to think that if the right people die then nuclear power plants would have to shut down with no one qualified to operate them." No power would wake people up when its too late.

I start thinking about that old Luke Perry show I liked in the 90s called Jeremiah where a bug wipes out everyone over puberty and the kids are left to grow up in a world without adults or anyone to run anything or know stuff.

[em2nought]

https://www.newsweek.com/key-defeating- ... on-1519535

[gilraen]

Ah yes, an author of an op-ed, where he's referencing an article that he wrote, that wasn't peer-reviewed, that he published in a journal of which he sits on the editorial board.

[Daehawk]

Think it was just today Trump Jr got his Twitter suspended for hocking that drug.

[gbasden]

https://www.newsweek.com/key-defeating- ... on-1519535

If it works, I'm all for it regardless of who is shilling it. This seems to be contradicted by the results from the use at the VA, though.

A retrospective review of the use of hydroxychloroquine on VA patients with COVID-19 showed that 28% of veterans who received the drug died; 22% of those who received hydroxychloroquine, along with the antibiotic azithromycin, also died, while just 11% of patients in the study who received standard care died.

[The Meal]

Our daughter has lupus (no, really), and can't get adequate amounts of hydroxychloriquine because of rec users dabbling with it. She's in agonizing pain because of what life without the hydroxy is doing to her joints.

Please don't turn to hydroxy as your first step if you come down with the virus. At the very least, express your 2AM rights and play a bit of good old fashioned russian roulette before you go out and deprive folks who have a daily Rx to the drug.

[Lorini]

I am so sorry to hear that your daughter is in pain. I hope that this idiocy is over soon so she can get the relief she needs.

[LawBeefaroni]

Doctors need to stop prescribing for this frivolous usage.

Yes, people need to stop seeking it but it would be much harder to get without a prescription.

[The Meal]

I am so sorry to hear that your daughter is in pain. I hope that this idiocy is over soon so she can get the relief she needs.

Thank you. She's amazing. She's seeking her third degree (Master's in Health Science, likely either for women's health issues or for epidemiology). If she were so inclined she could instead be seeking disability, but she wants to be productive to society while she feels like she can. Still, she's running into a physical inability to perform once or twice a week in her current job as a barista.

Doctors need to stop prescribing for this frivolous usage.

Yes, people need to stop seeking it but it would be much harder to get without a prescription.

Both true. I'm in my late 40's and am flabbergasted to just now be finding out just how much latitude doctors have to pursue health care options which seem contrary to the public good.

[Paingod]

I'm in my late 40's and am flabbergasted to just now be finding out just how much latitude doctors have to pursue health care options which seem contrary to the public good.

Lucrative to the pharmaceutical representatives and kickbacks for the doctors, though.

There's a lot that can be done with proper diet and generally healthy living, but they rarely prescribe it. There's no percentage in it.

[Alefroth]

Our daughter has lupus (no, really), and can't get adequate amounts of hydroxychloriquine because of rec users dabbling with it. She's in agonizing pain because of what life without the hydroxy is doing to her joints.

That's horrible. So sorry about that. I thought I couldn't get angrier at a certain segment of the population.

[LordMortis]

Thank you. She's amazing. She's seeking her third degree (Master's in Health Science, likely either for women's health issues or for epidemiology). If she were so inclined she could instead be seeking disability, but she wants to be productive to society while she feels like she can. Still, she's running into a physical inability to perform once or twice a week in her current job as a barista.

I hope every day for her precious. My only experience with Lupus has been tragic.

[Isgrimnur]

Ah, the simpler days:

ON MAY 31, 2017, 58-year-old Tamela Wilson checked into Barnes-Jewish Hospital, in St. Louis, with a fever, fatigue, and a strange red rash. She’d been undergoing chemotherapy to treat a relapsing lymphoma, but this exhaustion wasn’t just the cancer or the drugs. She told the doctors she worked at nearby Meramec State Park, tending to its miles of trails through forested river bluffs. And that while there, a week before her symptoms started, she found two ticks burrowed into her body.

Wilson’s doctors tested her blood for Missouri’s common tick diseases. On day three, when the results came back negative, they sent a vial to Fort Collins, Colorado, to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Vector-Borne Diseases, for a more extensive analysis. On day 10, they got their answer: Bourbon virus. Thirteen days later she was dead.
...
Scientists know almost nothing about how Bourbon virus behaves or how it got here or where it will show up next. But they have learned enough to know they haven’t seen the last of it.

What they fear most is that the virus could be silently spreading through human populations, getting noticed only when it causes severe symptoms in an unlucky few. That’s what’s started to happen with another new tick-borne virus in Missouri. If Bourbon virus were to establish itself there in humans too, the chances go up that more cases, like Wilson’s, will turn deadly. And until someone conducts the necessary studies, there’s no telling how far the virus has spread or how many people might potentially be in danger.
...
Bourbon virus seems to spend at least some of its time in ticks. The patient the virus was first isolated from—a 68-year-old man named John Seested in Bourbon County, Kansas—had a history of tick bites. The summer after its discovery there, CDC researchers found the virus in the bodies of several ticks collected elsewhere in Bourbon County. The species they found carrying the virus was the Lone Star tick, whose bite is more notorious for making people allergic to red meat. It’s also been shown to replicate inside tick cell lines in the lab.

[Isgrimnur]

Fortune

In a study of children under five who show mild to moderate symptoms of COVID-19, those kids were found to contain higher concentrations of the virus compared to older children, teens and adults, according to researchers at a Chicago pediatric hospital and Northwestern University.
...
The study, which was released Thursday in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, did not test the transmission rate of children—but does raise the prospect that children could be just as, or even more, prone to COVID infection and transmission than adults, although symptoms in the vast majority of children are comparably milder, the researchers found.
...
The study used clinical data collected during the treatment of 145 COVID-19 patients in Chicago with mild to moderate symptoms, who had begun to display those symptoms over the previous week. The sample was roughly divided into three equal groups: children under five, children between five and 18, and adults from 18 to 65. The sample excluded patients who were seriously ill, asymptomatic patients, and patients whose symptoms had been present for more than a week, or whose symptoms couldn't be tracked.

Nasal swabs taken from those patients indicated that the viral load in children under five was "statistically significant" compared to older children and adults, the paper found.

[Daehawk]

I think this going back to school is going to cause a big mess. Hope the deaths are low is about all I can think.

[Daehawk]

Humans are just smart enough to be stupid. Im starting to think the 'meek' in "The meek shall inherit the Earth" refers to animals and we'll be gone.

Germany: Police halt Berlin protests against coronavirus curbs

Some 20,000 protesters have rallied, with many ignoring social distancing rules and labeling the pandemic a "false alarm." A surge in cases has prompted calls for tougher measures against COVID-19 rule breakers.

Despite infections soaring once again in Germany and fears of a potential second wave, tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Berlin on Saturday to demonstrate against coronavirus restrictions.

With few masks in sight, many in the crowd whistled and cheered as they marched from Brandenburg Gate to the German capital's Tiergarten park.

Demonstrators held up home-made placards with slogans emblazoned with the phrases: "Corona, false alarm," "We are being forced to wear a muzzle," "Natural defense instead of vaccination" and "End the corona panic – bring fundamental rights back."

[gameoverman]

Humans are just smart enough to be stupid. Im starting to think the 'meek' in "The meek shall inherit the Earth" refers to animals and we'll be gone.

I think some of what we are seeing could be attributed to people being contrary just for the sake of being contrary. I think it's good to question authority and make up your own mind but hopefully the questions are based in reality. The attitude of "you can't tell me what to do" is harmless in most cases, but during a pandemic is not one of those cases.

[YellowKing]

One of the biggest failings of humans is the ability to deny facts that we find uncomfortable or concerning. It's a defense mechanism run amok.

[Isgrimnur]

Perhaps we should be teaching our children about introspection and how to re-evaluate one's beliefs rather than the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.

[Kraken]

Perhaps we should be teaching our children about introspection and how to re-evaluate one's beliefs rather than the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.

That's all well and good until you need to power a cell and you ate all the tender, delicious mitochondria.

[Lorini]

Herd immunity to this virus would be very very deadly. Those who protest without masks and distancing are likely to be at the forefront of the coming death wave.

[Daehawk]

[Isgrimnur]

NPR

At least 36 crew members from a Norwegian cruise ship have tested positive for COVID-19, according to Hurtigruten, the company that owns the ship. Several passengers have also tested positive in what the cruise line describes as an "outbreak" onboard the MS Roald Amundsen.

Four patients were admitted to a hospital in the northern Norwegian city of Tromso where the ship is now docked.

More than 9,000 people in the country have tested positive for the coronavirus, according to Johns Hopkins University. Hurtigruten had previously canceled dozens of other expeditions because of the pandemic, and has now suspended all cruises aboard the Amundsen and two other vessels.
...
"We have made mistakes," Hurtigruten CEO Daniel Skjeldam said in a statement. "A preliminary evaluation shows that there has been a failure in several of our internal procedures."
...
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has barred all cruises in U.S. waters through the end of September.

[Daehawk]

You'd think cruise ships would just go away.