My daughter is a nurse in the UK and she now has Covid

A communicable disease is a collective responsibility, not a YOU vs ME. The virus doesn't care what we know, believe, or believe we know. It only cares how we act.

We wear masks and distance ourselves because we don't always know when we're sick, or even just carrying virus around with us. In doing so, we accept a nonzero risk of getting infected anyway, despite ticking all the boxes, because not everyone will tick the boxes, AND not every recommended measure totally eliminates viral spread.

This is why many ethicists and public health experts use the "swiss cheese" model to explain how multipronged approaches done well can prevent more illness or adverse events than one monolithic layer of defence that is not taken seriously.

--Masks reduce, but don't totally eliminate, airborne transmission rates of viral particles.
--Social distancing reduces all routes of transmission in proportion to the actual distance. 6 feet is probably not enough to ensure no transmission ever takes place. That's why masks are ALSO part of the recommendations.
--Handwashing before and after contact reduces cross contamination.
--Testing and contact tracing and temperature checks rely on voluntary compliance with procedures and responsible handling of results but help keep outbreaks from going incognito in the community.
--Quarantine for 14 days reduces but does not eliminate asymptomatic or presymptomatic superspreaders. A month might not even totally eliminate them. A week isn't long enough.

Taken together, in a big-picture strategy and attitude of prevention and extinction, they are potent strategies. Any one of these barriers may not stop all the bugs, but if all of them are at full strength, they can eradicate COVID from circulation in a month.

Each one has holes, and sometimes the holes line up. Even with perfect compliance, 5 different layers of mitigation each at 90% effectiveness will still allow 1 out of every 100,000 citizens to become sick.

However, if the holes are larger because the compliance is spotty or altogether lacking - people basically blowing off recommendations to wear masks in public, or evading quarantine because they are expected to return to work immediately and do not want to be fired, or most baffling of all wearing masks only at the grocery store but not at a 50-guest wedding drawing from 3 different states' health regions and 3 or 4 different generations...

now stack up the barriers and you have 50% here, 70% here, 80% here, 0% there...and what you see is very like what you see right now in many parts of the world: 1 out of every 10 or 20 people infected, many headed for permanent and profound disability due to cardiovascular and neurologic effects.

So if you're going to pick and choose which you will follow, and which are for other people to follow, remember that depending where you live, you have a 1 in 10 chance of already carrying the virus, shedding it, harbouring it in your nasopharynx, because to someone else, you were that "other people" that they were counting on to comply with the measures they chose not to.

TL;DR: as one ICU doctor put it: "It's all of you, not us, who are the front lines. We're the brigade of last resort." Not singular YOU. ALL of us.

well im not surprised on your view of the situation. thats okay. hope it doesn't manifest in justifiable evils across the board of population

Oh, Janie, I was gutted to read this. We know the UK strain is savage, but just knowing it doesn't help when you read about its effects on 'someone you know'. When I see certain folks touting military service as the pinnacle of one's existence, I am baffled; but a nurse? In this day and age? Jesus. She's a fucking hero and I'm sure you know it.

Please stay safe down there, and let me say 'sorry' on behalf of all the goobers up here doing their best to invalidate what you guys did last year.

You still owe me that beer, and I intend to collect someday.

__

mustard: no one cares, man. This isn't your thread. It isn't about you. What you did was tantamount to just spouting banal facts about cancer at someone's funeral. Just...maybe don't? I dunno, you're probably not like this in real life but you just came across as incredibly insensitive right now.

I must admit to being slightly baffled by xMustard.

That aside, I thank all of you for your kind words and thoughts.

@crunkatog Well said, sir.

@Foreverhappychan That beer will be waiting :)

We're crossing our fingers, toes, eyes, and streams (not those! ) in hopes she'll beat this shit into the ground and resume being the huge pair of iron balls we all wish we had.

I recently posted on ***book that I am quietly hating on all my ***friends around the world likely to get the vaccine before me -- including the second person in the world ever to receive the Moderna one way back. But I'm also a world champ at self-isolating despite being immunocompromised, so honestly, those who need it because they can't avoid exposure should get it first.

But if someone offered it to me today I sure as shit wouldn't hesitate. I miss ignoring people in public.

Gotta be careful. Vaccine scams are very real.

"

Johny_Snow wrote:

Gotta be careful. Vaccine scams are very real.

I have a dedicated GI, CR surgeon and a GP who's known me for 13 years; I do not fear any sort of vaccine scam. And while that might sound like some serious first class privilege, it's just because I live in Australia and have had a chronic disease for the past 8 years demanding a whole bunch of surgical procedures. Pretty much all of it was covered by public healthcare.

Were I a normal person health-wise, I am absolutely sure I wouldn't be that concerned. I know this because I know what sort of person I am. Until it 'happens to me or someone I know', I'm shit at caring about the plights of others beyond some vague 'middle class' desire to donate here and there. I was astounded to learn about the world of the ostomy, which until my illness manifested was just something of a bad joke and a thing that only affected old people and very, very sick ones. I'm vulnerable to Covid as a result, and so I am far more...attuned to it here than a lot of other people. I wouldn't be foolish enough to say 'it's just a cold' or even 'just the flu', but I definitely wouldn't be changing my life all that much because of it. Not with how small our outbreaks have been here. We continue to be ridiculously lucky despite the general public's blithe behaviour. Yay Australia.

Were I in the USA with this condition of mine, I would absolutely be wary of scams. I won't go into detail why -- it's nothing no one here doesn't already know about what's going over there or why a disease that has left most countries scarred but not crippled has had such an effect there. So it's not an unfair warning, from a certain perspective. Just one that has never really occurred me to personally. Privileged after all...

Yepp, UK basically has exited and is gone.
Best health wishes and a fast recovery from us outsiders,
don´t shy away from requesting humanitarian aid.

"

xjjanie wrote:

Meticulous use of PPE did not stop her getting infected.

Sorry to hear she is ill. One of the confounding factors of this illness is that it can hit people so differently. Some get very sick, and some have lesser symptoms that require rest at home and minimal medical support. If your daughter is recovering at home and can continue to do so, that's a good sign.

"

xMustard wrote:

first off, you said it yourself...all the PPE won't stop you getting "infected".

PPE helps, depending on the type used it can help tremendously. Just like seat belts, air bags and driving cautiously don't guarantee you won't be seriously injured in a car accident, PPE is not 100% fool proof.

How much does good PPE help? Picture yourself in a room for long periods of time (sometimes hours) with very sick Covid positive patients who are coughing constantly. You are in their room while you intubate them. You are in their room doing CPR. You are in their room while BiPAP is used. All of the mentioned things are AGPs (Aerosol Generating Procedures)which dramatically increase the amount of virus in the air.

Now picture similar scenarios that you are in for almost an entire year. You and the vast majority of the people (4 out of approximately 300) in that situation do not catch Covid. How is this possible?

PPE

How is it possible that with good PPE, people still catch it? From family or friends away from the working conditions. From the brief periods of potential exposure when people have masks off and are sipping water/coffee etc. From only wearing lower filtration surgical masks (which are still 70-80%+ effective)when dealing with patients that seem low risk, but are Covid positive. In the past month I've had: Toothaches, Knee Pain, Hyperglycemia (High Blood Sugar), MVC (Car accident)patients no cough, fever or other apparent symptoms that turned out to be Covid positive. Why did we test those patients? In some cases, there was the potential to be admitted to the hospital, depending on the extent of their illness or injury. One Covid negative patient (came in for a relatively minor injury that many people would have ignored) needed to be shipped to the operating room to prevent bleeding out. The operating room could accept that patient immediately because we had the negative Covid result before the CT scan was back.

A properly conducted PCR test from a good lab is reliable. A place that lets you self-swab is almost worthless. Yes, they are uncomfortable. It will feel like someone is probing you for a nasally inserted lobotomy. The swab needs to sit in the nasopharynx for a few seconds to absorb enough material to get an accurate test. The pen in the image below is pointing to the approximate are the swab needs to reach.


Depending on how "gentle" the person swabbing you was, for a few seconds to several minutes after the swab, it can feel like someone dropped a burning DOT deep in your nose.

RIP Larry

"

xMustard wrote:

you think a mask will filter out a 1 millionth of an inch virus? give me a break

You do have the size of the virus approximately right (1.25 microns). That size is in the range that is the most difficult to filter. Fortunately, filtration isn't just a matter of filter size, but airflow and static capture as well.

Your best N95's have 92-93% filtering at the size of the Coronavirus. 3M has since updated their technical data sheet, but this is from their prior PDF they had up from years of testing:



Your average cloth mask has roughly 40%-60% efficiency of filtering out test bacteria. N95s work well to filter Covid out. KN95s are NOT N95s and don't go through a similar certification process. The KN95s we have tested at our hospitals have not passed any of the fit tests.

There are a few companies making some good non-N95 masks. Look for a qualified independent testing lab certification (and check on the history of the lab itself)