Lewkat
Senior Member
- Location
- New Jersey, USA
If, indeed that is an accurate number.
Updated CDC guidance acknowledges coronavirus can spread through the air
- Thread starter Becky1951
- Start date
StarSong
Awkward is my Superpower
- Location
- Los Angeles Suburbs
It's probably quite a bit higher.
hellomimi
Namaste š
- Location
- City of Angels
Still is, and will be.
Those who have not lived/ experienced life in the third world do not realize how blessed they are to live in this country.
DaveA
Senior Member
- Location
- Coastal Massachusetts, USA
Medical and scientific sources should and will continue to make minor adjustments in their recommendations as more info is unearthed concerning this latest virus. It's been like this for many illnesses for years. Rarely, if ever, is any one of these situations solved overnight.
What has been outrageous and most likely causing far more deaths and illness than was necessary is the nitwits (most with no medical background) running around yelling "fake" and "hoax" and other such pronouncements, suggesting that we need to take no precautions and let life go on as usual.
In my lifetime, this is the first time I can recall, that some people are looking to political sources for their guidance in avoiding a "new" disease? Rather sad IMHO.
What has been outrageous and most likely causing far more deaths and illness than was necessary is the nitwits (most with no medical background) running around yelling "fake" and "hoax" and other such pronouncements, suggesting that we need to take no precautions and let life go on as usual.
In my lifetime, this is the first time I can recall, that some people are looking to political sources for their guidance in avoiding a "new" disease? Rather sad IMHO.
StarSong
Awkward is my Superpower
- Location
- Los Angeles Suburbs
People in any "first world" country (hate that term but will use it in this case) are blessed by the accident of their birth. Not just the US.
p.s. To reframe one's thinking about poverty and "third world" living, I highly, highly recommend Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the Worldāand Why Things Are Better Than You Think, by Hans Rosling.
Don M.
SF VIP
- Location
- central Missouri
It's pretty obvious that this virus can spread through the air....especially in an indoor setting where there are large numbers of people. I would like to see a Nationwide Mandate requiring people to wear a mask while out in public. Perhaps events in this mornings news will begin to change the minds of those who seem to deny the severity of this illness.
Irwin
Well-known Member
- Location
- Denver, Colorado, U.S.A.
Recent studies show you can get Coronavirus just by thinking about it.
Or through a website if you don't have anitvirus protection. Wear a mask!
There is a thread here for Covid humor and this ain't it.Recent studies show you can get Coronavirus just by thinking about it.
I see this morning's events as the path to a resignation, the pardoning of the century and a massive election mess. May God (or whoever is in charge of that) have mercy on us all.
StarSong
Awkward is my Superpower
- Location
- Los Angeles Suburbs
Only federal crimes can be pardoned by a president.
hellomimi
Namaste š
- Location
- City of Angels
OTOH, you may be on to something based on the saying,Recent studies show you can get Coronavirus just by thinking about it.
You find what you seek for. That's why we have to guard our thoughts. Don't allow covid19 free rent in your mind.
hellomimi
Namaste š
- Location
- City of Angels
I respect your opinion.
My belief on the bolded part is no one is blessed (or cursed) in situations they're born into. I believe in pre destiny, of which, we make our choices shepherded by our spirit guides. Since our memories of past lives are wiped out, we have no remembrance of what we agreed to, in our next incarnation. IOW, there are no accidents, events in our lives are meant to happen to teach us lessons. Just MY belief that we can agree to disagree.
StarSong
Awkward is my Superpower
- Location
- Los Angeles Suburbs
You're joking, right?
StarSong
Awkward is my Superpower
- Location
- Los Angeles Suburbs
I was responding to your words. You described people who live in this country as being "blessed." Your disagreement seems to be with your own previous post.
hellomimi
Namaste š
- Location
- City of Angels
It was a wrong choice of words, if I think of the appropriate term to use, will do. Saying blessed in my current incarnation is part of my experiences in life. I am not an American by birth, but I bless this land for fulfilling (even surpassing) my dreams. I have learned my lessons in lack and plenty, which I now understand, is destined for me.
Thank you for your time in responding to my post. It makes me ponder on it on a deeper level.
hellomimi
Namaste š
- Location
- City of Angels
OneEyedDiva
SF VIP
- Location
- New Jersey
For those who are still in denial, who believe in spirit guides, etc., here's another narrative by a person who did not think he was in any particular danger from this virus:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/10/10/coronavirus-denier-sick-spreader/?arc404=true
Voices from the Pandemic
āWhat are we so afraid of?ā
Tony Green, on dismissing, denying, contracting and spreading the coronavirus
By Eli Saslow
October 10, 2020
I used to call it the āscamdemic.ā I thought it was an overblown media hoax. I made fun of people for wearing masks. I went all the way down the rabbit hole and fell hard on my own sword, so if you want to hate me or blame me, thatās fine. Iām doing plenty of that myself.
The party was my idea. Thatās what I canāt get over. Well, I mean, it wasnāt even a party ā more like a get-together. There were just six of us, okay? My parents, my partner, and my partnerās parents. Weād been locked down for months at that point in Texas, and the governor had just come out and said small gatherings were probably okay. Weāre a close family, and we hadnāt been together in forever. It was finally summer. I thought the worst was behind us. I was like: āHell, letās get on with our lives. What are we so afraid of?ā
Some people in my family didnāt necessarily share all of my views, but I pushed it. Iāve always been out front with my opinions. Iām gay and Iām conservative, so either way Iām used to going against the grain. I stopped trusting the media for my information when it went hard against Trump in 2016. I got rid of my cable. Itās all opinion anyway, so Iād rather come up with my own. I find a little bit of truth here and a little there, and I pile it together to see what it makes. I have about 4,000 people in my personal network, and not one of them had gotten sick. Not one. You start to hear jokes about, you know, a skydiver jumps out of a plane without a parachute and dies of covid-19. You start to think: āSomethingās really fishy here.ā You start dismissing and denying.
I told my family: āCome on. Enough already. Letās get together and enjoy life for once.ā
They all came for the weekend. We agreed not to do any of the distancing or worry much about it. I mean, I havenāt seen my mother in months, and Iām not supposed to go up and hug her? Come on. We have a two-story house, so there was room for us to all stay here together. We all came on our own free will. It felt like something we needed. It had been months of doing nothing, feeling nothing, seeing no one, worrying about finances with this whole shutdown. My partner had been sent home from his work. Iād been at the finish line of raising $3.5 million for a new project, and that all evaporated overnight. Iād been feeling depressed and angry, and then it was like: āOkay! I can breathe.ā We cooked nice meals. We watched a few movies. I played a few songs on my baby grand piano. We drove to a lake about 60 miles outside of Dallas and talked and talked. It was nothing all that special. It was great. It was normal.
I woke up Sunday morning feeling a little iffy. I have a lot of issues with sleeping, and I thought thatās probably what it was. I let everyone know: āI donāt feel right, but Iām guessing it might be exhaustion.ā I was kind of achy. There was a weird vibration inside. I had a bug-eye feeling.
A few hours later, my partner was feeling a little bad, too. Then my parents. Then my father-in-law got sick the next day, after heād already left and gone to Austin to witness the birth of his first grandchild. I have no idea which one of us brought the virus into the house, but all six of us left with it. It kept spreading from there.
Green and the five others who were at the get-together he hosted tested positive for the virus shortly thereafter. The 43-year-old says he feels extremely guilty about what happened. (Allison V. Smith for The Washington Post)
I told myself it wouldnāt be that bad. āItās the flu. Itās basically just the flu.ā I didnāt have the horrible cough you keep hearing about. My breathing never got too terrible. My fever peaked for like one day at 100.5, which is nothing ā barely worth mentioning. āAll right. I got this. See? It was nothing.ā But then some of the other symptoms started to get wild. I was sweating profusely. I would wake up in a pool of sweat. I had this tingling feeling all over my body, this radiating kind of pain. Do you remember those old space heaters that youād plug in, and the red lines would light up and glow? I felt like that was happening inside my bones. I was burning from the inside out. I was buzzing. I was dizzy. I couldnāt even turn my head around to look at the TV. I felt like my eyeballs were in a fishbowl, just bopping around. I rubbed Icy Hot all over my head. It was nonstop headaches and sweating for probably about a week ā and then it just went away. I got some of my energy back. I had a few really good days. I started working on projects around the house. I was thinking: āOkay. Thatās it. Pretty bad, but not so terrible. I beat it. I managed it. Nothing worth shutting down the entire world over.ā Then one day I was walking up the stairs, and all of the sudden, I couldnāt breathe. I screamed and fell flat on my face. I blacked out. I woke up a while later in the ER, and 10 doctors were standing around me in a circle. I was lying on the table after going through a CT scan. The doctors told me the virus had attacked my nervous system. Theyād given me some medications that stopped me from having a massive stroke. They said I was minutes away.
I stayed in the hospital for three days, trying to get my mind around it. It was guilt, embarrassment, shame. I thought: āOkay. Maybe now Iāve paid for my mistake.ā But it kept getting worse.
Six infections turned into nine. Nine went up to 14. It spread from one family member to the next, and it was like each person caught a different strain. My mother-in-law got it and never had any real symptoms. My father is 78, and he went to get checked out at the hospital, but for whatever reasons, he seemed to recover really fast. My father-in-law nearly died in his living room and then ended up in the same hospital as me on the exact same day. His mother was in the room right next to him because she was having trouble breathing. They were lying there on both sides of the wall, fighting the same virus, and neither of them ever knew the other one was there. She died after a few weeks. On the day of her funeral, five more family members tested positive.
My father-in-lawās probably my best friend. Itās an unconventional relationship. Heās 52, only nine years older than me, and we hit it off right away. He runs a construction company, and I would tag along on his jobs and ride with him around Dallas. Iāve been through a lot in my life ā from food stamps to Ferraris and then back again ā so I could tell a good story and make him laugh. He builds these 20,000-square-foot custom homes, but heād been renting his whole life. We decided to go in together on 10 acres outside Dallas, and he was finally getting ready to build his own house. Weād already done the plumbing and gotten streets built on the property. Weād planted 50 pecans and oaks to give the property some shade. He had his blueprints all drawn up. It was all he wanted to talk about.
He was on supplemental oxygen, but the doctors kept reducing the amount he was getting. They thought he was getting better. He was still making jokes, so I wasnāt all that worried. He told me: āTheyāve got you upstairs in the Cadillac rooms because youāre White, but all of us Mexicans are still down here in the ER.ā I got sent home, and I had a lot of guilt about leaving him there. I called him at the hospital, and I was like: āIām going to come bust you out Mission Impossible style.ā He said he preferred El Chapo style. We were laughing so hard. I hung up, and a few hours later I got a call from my mother-in-law. She was hysterical. She could barely speak. She said one of his lungs had collapsed and the other was filling with fluid. They put him on a ventilator, and he lay there on life support for six or seven weeks. There was never any goodbye. He was just gone. Itās like the world swallowed him up. We could only have 10 people at the funeral, and I didnāt make that list.
I break down sometimes, but mostly Iām empty. Am I glad to be alive? I donāt know. I donāt know how to answer that.
Thereās no relief. This virus, I canāt escape it. Itās torn up our family. Itās all over my Facebook. Itās the election. Itās Trump. Itās what I keep thinking about. How many people would have gotten sick if Iād never hosted that weekend? One? Maybe two? The grief comes in waves, but that guilt just sits.
eli.saslow@washpost.com
Read more Voices from the Pandemic
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/10/10/coronavirus-denier-sick-spreader/?arc404=true
Voices from the Pandemic
āWhat are we so afraid of?ā
Tony Green, on dismissing, denying, contracting and spreading the coronavirus
By Eli Saslow
October 10, 2020
I used to call it the āscamdemic.ā I thought it was an overblown media hoax. I made fun of people for wearing masks. I went all the way down the rabbit hole and fell hard on my own sword, so if you want to hate me or blame me, thatās fine. Iām doing plenty of that myself.
The party was my idea. Thatās what I canāt get over. Well, I mean, it wasnāt even a party ā more like a get-together. There were just six of us, okay? My parents, my partner, and my partnerās parents. Weād been locked down for months at that point in Texas, and the governor had just come out and said small gatherings were probably okay. Weāre a close family, and we hadnāt been together in forever. It was finally summer. I thought the worst was behind us. I was like: āHell, letās get on with our lives. What are we so afraid of?ā
Some people in my family didnāt necessarily share all of my views, but I pushed it. Iāve always been out front with my opinions. Iām gay and Iām conservative, so either way Iām used to going against the grain. I stopped trusting the media for my information when it went hard against Trump in 2016. I got rid of my cable. Itās all opinion anyway, so Iād rather come up with my own. I find a little bit of truth here and a little there, and I pile it together to see what it makes. I have about 4,000 people in my personal network, and not one of them had gotten sick. Not one. You start to hear jokes about, you know, a skydiver jumps out of a plane without a parachute and dies of covid-19. You start to think: āSomethingās really fishy here.ā You start dismissing and denying.
I told my family: āCome on. Enough already. Letās get together and enjoy life for once.ā
They all came for the weekend. We agreed not to do any of the distancing or worry much about it. I mean, I havenāt seen my mother in months, and Iām not supposed to go up and hug her? Come on. We have a two-story house, so there was room for us to all stay here together. We all came on our own free will. It felt like something we needed. It had been months of doing nothing, feeling nothing, seeing no one, worrying about finances with this whole shutdown. My partner had been sent home from his work. Iād been at the finish line of raising $3.5 million for a new project, and that all evaporated overnight. Iād been feeling depressed and angry, and then it was like: āOkay! I can breathe.ā We cooked nice meals. We watched a few movies. I played a few songs on my baby grand piano. We drove to a lake about 60 miles outside of Dallas and talked and talked. It was nothing all that special. It was great. It was normal.
I woke up Sunday morning feeling a little iffy. I have a lot of issues with sleeping, and I thought thatās probably what it was. I let everyone know: āI donāt feel right, but Iām guessing it might be exhaustion.ā I was kind of achy. There was a weird vibration inside. I had a bug-eye feeling.
A few hours later, my partner was feeling a little bad, too. Then my parents. Then my father-in-law got sick the next day, after heād already left and gone to Austin to witness the birth of his first grandchild. I have no idea which one of us brought the virus into the house, but all six of us left with it. It kept spreading from there.
I told myself it wouldnāt be that bad. āItās the flu. Itās basically just the flu.ā I didnāt have the horrible cough you keep hearing about. My breathing never got too terrible. My fever peaked for like one day at 100.5, which is nothing ā barely worth mentioning. āAll right. I got this. See? It was nothing.ā But then some of the other symptoms started to get wild. I was sweating profusely. I would wake up in a pool of sweat. I had this tingling feeling all over my body, this radiating kind of pain. Do you remember those old space heaters that youād plug in, and the red lines would light up and glow? I felt like that was happening inside my bones. I was burning from the inside out. I was buzzing. I was dizzy. I couldnāt even turn my head around to look at the TV. I felt like my eyeballs were in a fishbowl, just bopping around. I rubbed Icy Hot all over my head. It was nonstop headaches and sweating for probably about a week ā and then it just went away. I got some of my energy back. I had a few really good days. I started working on projects around the house. I was thinking: āOkay. Thatās it. Pretty bad, but not so terrible. I beat it. I managed it. Nothing worth shutting down the entire world over.ā Then one day I was walking up the stairs, and all of the sudden, I couldnāt breathe. I screamed and fell flat on my face. I blacked out. I woke up a while later in the ER, and 10 doctors were standing around me in a circle. I was lying on the table after going through a CT scan. The doctors told me the virus had attacked my nervous system. Theyād given me some medications that stopped me from having a massive stroke. They said I was minutes away.
I stayed in the hospital for three days, trying to get my mind around it. It was guilt, embarrassment, shame. I thought: āOkay. Maybe now Iāve paid for my mistake.ā But it kept getting worse.
Six infections turned into nine. Nine went up to 14. It spread from one family member to the next, and it was like each person caught a different strain. My mother-in-law got it and never had any real symptoms. My father is 78, and he went to get checked out at the hospital, but for whatever reasons, he seemed to recover really fast. My father-in-law nearly died in his living room and then ended up in the same hospital as me on the exact same day. His mother was in the room right next to him because she was having trouble breathing. They were lying there on both sides of the wall, fighting the same virus, and neither of them ever knew the other one was there. She died after a few weeks. On the day of her funeral, five more family members tested positive.
My father-in-lawās probably my best friend. Itās an unconventional relationship. Heās 52, only nine years older than me, and we hit it off right away. He runs a construction company, and I would tag along on his jobs and ride with him around Dallas. Iāve been through a lot in my life ā from food stamps to Ferraris and then back again ā so I could tell a good story and make him laugh. He builds these 20,000-square-foot custom homes, but heād been renting his whole life. We decided to go in together on 10 acres outside Dallas, and he was finally getting ready to build his own house. Weād already done the plumbing and gotten streets built on the property. Weād planted 50 pecans and oaks to give the property some shade. He had his blueprints all drawn up. It was all he wanted to talk about.
He was on supplemental oxygen, but the doctors kept reducing the amount he was getting. They thought he was getting better. He was still making jokes, so I wasnāt all that worried. He told me: āTheyāve got you upstairs in the Cadillac rooms because youāre White, but all of us Mexicans are still down here in the ER.ā I got sent home, and I had a lot of guilt about leaving him there. I called him at the hospital, and I was like: āIām going to come bust you out Mission Impossible style.ā He said he preferred El Chapo style. We were laughing so hard. I hung up, and a few hours later I got a call from my mother-in-law. She was hysterical. She could barely speak. She said one of his lungs had collapsed and the other was filling with fluid. They put him on a ventilator, and he lay there on life support for six or seven weeks. There was never any goodbye. He was just gone. Itās like the world swallowed him up. We could only have 10 people at the funeral, and I didnāt make that list.
I break down sometimes, but mostly Iām empty. Am I glad to be alive? I donāt know. I donāt know how to answer that.
Thereās no relief. This virus, I canāt escape it. Itās torn up our family. Itās all over my Facebook. Itās the election. Itās Trump. Itās what I keep thinking about. How many people would have gotten sick if Iād never hosted that weekend? One? Maybe two? The grief comes in waves, but that guilt just sits.
eli.saslow@washpost.com
Read more Voices from the Pandemic
Last edited by a moderator:
IrisSenior
Senior Member
- Location
- Ontario, Canada
This virus is here to stay forever...it will always mutate and crop up again and again.
Ellen Marie
Member
I haven't read all the posts, but I want to add something I learned about the airborne aspect of covid.
Early in the year, I purchased an air purifier and it runs at my house 24/7. "Supposedly" it will take care of 99.97% of the matter in the air, though the filter tests show 99.99% effective.
Anyway. For those who cannot afford an air purifying system, I read that since the CDC states that small spaces will become troublesome, and the potential for increased infections in closed area. They recommend opening the windows to get air circulating. Yeah, right, what world do you live in?
Further reading, I found something interesting and I wanted to share. If you have a box fan, you can purchase a 20x20x1 HEPA filter for that fan, and it will take care of most of the particles in your air. A filter.... about $10.
Early in the year, I purchased an air purifier and it runs at my house 24/7. "Supposedly" it will take care of 99.97% of the matter in the air, though the filter tests show 99.99% effective.
Anyway. For those who cannot afford an air purifying system, I read that since the CDC states that small spaces will become troublesome, and the potential for increased infections in closed area. They recommend opening the windows to get air circulating. Yeah, right, what world do you live in?
Further reading, I found something interesting and I wanted to share. If you have a box fan, you can purchase a 20x20x1 HEPA filter for that fan, and it will take care of most of the particles in your air. A filter.... about $10.
StarSong
Awkward is my Superpower
- Location
- Los Angeles Suburbs
I agree. I was crying by the end of his story.
OneEyedDiva
SF VIP
- Location
- New Jersey
Everyone who has mocked the seriousness of this virus and using protective measures should read his story. My sister didn't understand why I didn't want to go to her house for the usual holiday dinner...I think it was Easter. I didn't cave...I stayed home. He'll always feel responsible and I'm sure the guilt is eating him up.