Coronavirus Special Coverage

A collection of news posted throughout the week for those that want signal, not noise.

  • Previous coverage - all of our posts in this ongoing series.
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COVID-19: key developments for Monday, May 11, 2020

The quotes in this article are absolutely wild. I can’t get over that people put this stuff up under their real names on Facebook! There is a lot of anger out there, and everyone should factor that into their preparedness strategy. Gov. Whitmer becomes target of dozens of threats on private Facebook groups ahead of armed rally in Lansing.

New York is really improving, and is responsible for the national declining case numbers. If you factor them out, a different picture emerges.

Texas has seen cases going up since the reopening, but Georgia is mostly flat.

I infer from the chart above that GA is not doing what this town in Colorado is doing:

Everything We Know About the White House Coronavirus Outbreak

You just do not want to get this, even if your odds of death are very low. Doctors keep discovering new ways the coronavirus attacks the body. “Damage to the kidneys, heart, brain — even ‘covid toes’ — prompts reassessment of the disease and how to treat it.”

South Korea is on the edge and holding its breath right now. Seoul city orders clubs, bars to close following group infection in Itaewon and Infection cases linked to Itaewon clubs rise to 94.

Carnival Cruise Bookings Surge 600% After Announcing August Relaunch

Very, very mild: Covid-19 symptoms and illness classification. “Shute’s phrase ‘very, very mild symptoms’ has, since, I first read it, been rolling around my head. It is a head still frequently fuzzy in the seventh week since the start of suspected Covid-19. I have found myself chafing as a patient against the descriptor mild. The adjective can end up both revealing and hiding various logics at a moment in which thousands continue to die every day, world-wide, of a new and brutal disease.”

America’s meat shortage is more serious than your missing hamburgers. The meat supply chain is breaking down, but that’s only part of the story.

Gov. Cuomo admits he was wrong to order nursing homes to accept coronavirus patients

Great stuff on assessing and mitigating your COVID-19 risks that’s making the rounds: The Risks – Know Them – Avoid Them.

Russia reports surge in new coronavirus cases, bringing total to third highest in the world

Doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense, but then what does these days? Coronavirus survivors ‘permanently disqualified’ from joining U.S. military, recruitment memo suggests

A Heartburn Drug for Coronavirus: All About an Unusual Study

New virus outbreaks hamper efforts to reopen global economy. “Europe’s cautious steps tempered by fresh infections in South Korea, Germany and China.”

New York City Medical Examiner Doing Limited Coronavirus Testing on Dead. “Citing ‘unprecedented circumstances,’ office uses interviews to determine whether virus has caused home deaths.”


  • 7 Comments

    • Vaylon

      That article from Dr. Erin Bromage is pretty informative; he stresses that one factor of infection risk is the time in which you are exposed. Similarly, an earlier article from The Prepared on grocery shopping advised not to linger in the grocery store: be prepared beforehand with a list (and substitutions), go directly to what you need, and get out as quickly as possible.

      I personally have been thinking about exposure to the coronavirus as being roughly analogous to radioactive fallout. With radioactive fallout, you’d want to put as much distance between yourself and it as possible, to avoid breathing it in, to undress and shower if you’ve been exposed, and, if you absolutely must go out in it, to limit the amount of time you spend exposed to it.

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      • Girard Bent Vaylon

        Excellent analogy to exposure to radiation. In theory, a single gamma ray photon could disrupt a cell’s DNA and turn it cancerous which then kills you. In much the same way, a single virus could infect you and lead to a full-blown case. Pragmatically though, that’s not how we live. Holding your exposure below a certain level is a realistic goal that usually leads to good outcomes — but never with a 100% certainty. Life is like that.

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      • Vaylon Girard Bent

        Survival is about managing risk. In order to do that, we need accurate assessments. Information like the kind Dr. Bromage provides helps us do that better.

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    • squidvicious

      I know you/we/us should strive to stay non-political — I truly do appreciate that sentiment on this site.  However, I think saying the comments about a STATE GOVERNOR are “wild” under-represents the true danger of them.  They are wild, and outrageous, and nuts.  But they are also reckless and incredibly dangerous.  Being angry or frustrated or scared seems normal.  Those comments are not.

      Edit — my point: stoking anger won’t end well.  Ask a poor security guard trying to enforce social distancing at a retail establishment or workers at a fast food joint.

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      • John AdamaStaff squidvicious

        Don’t know if you made this comment before this news came out, but your reference about retail workers enforcing policy was prescient https://www.cbsnews.com/news/2-men-accused-assaulting-target-security-guard-face-mask/

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      • squidvicious John Adama

        No, that’s news to me.   Sad.   A brief coda on my above comment, I get that I am [mostly] anonymous here, but I think it’s important to call the threats what they are.  That said, from a preparedness point of view, “Civil Unrest” seems to be climbing the list of things to be on alert for… which, I think was your primary point.

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