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Daily coronavirus-related chat, questions, and minor updates - April 7
This thread is posted daily, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!
Now that a considerable amount of the infection numbers has recovered in many places, it gets harder and harder to judge just how well quarantine measures are working - the duplication time metric loses value because the older cases aren't as infectious. This is worsened by flatter curves having a higher proportion of their weight in the older tail. Which is a long-winded way of saying I'm not too sure we're chasing the right metric here. Now that news agencies are reporting it all over, it's kinda useless. Maybe something like (new cases today)/(new cases last week) is more useful?
I think we've hit a plateau in the US, but not for the right reasons. We seem to be hanging around ~30k new confirmed cases per day, but as far as I can find, we're still only able to process about 100k tests per day. If we're still seeing roughly 30% of tested individuals as positive, I fear we have many more cases out there still, and probably growing faster than our current testing is able to accurately detect.
This has lead me to also consider people will incorrectly assume this is the plateau or the top of the virus and will lead to a reduction in social distancing and stay-at-home orders, with many governments eager to try to get people back to work. If it is premature, it will only invite a second wave.
If the US is hitting peak testing and this stays true for some period of time, I might expect the graphs to start representing a clipping wave form (square) rather than something that looks more like a sine wave. That said, I understand your concern and don't disagree that might happen. If the peak testing is an issue then I might expect the clipping in the charts to present for an extended period of time and hopefully that is communicated so that people do not see this as we are in the clear yet.
30% positive is too much if you want to use testing to contain it. My understanding is that it should be <10%. And yes, knowing that I share your concern.
Jalandhar wakes up to a view of Himalayas, first time in years
We recently had our first day (in New Zealand) where the number of active cases dropped. Yesterday we had 54 new cases, but 65 recoveries, decreasing the active case count by 11[1]. Today we had a new low (percentage increase) of 50 cases. Flattening the curve is working. 1210 total cases, 928 active cases.
[1]: It goes without saying however that I'm personally of the opinion that our definition of a recovered case, 48 hours without symptoms, can be self-determined, is a bit weak. I would at least expect to actively be testing recovery claims.
My dad managed to buy some 3M N95 respirators. Can someone explain to me how to properly use them? Or point me towards an infographic or video?
This video from an Academic Medical Centre in Singapore kinda blew up on YouTube recently, probably due to so many people having the same question: N95 3M mask: How to Wear & Remove
That was a very informative video, but I do have one question: for long can you actually reuse the mask? It says to discard at the end of the day, but can someone give me a more approximate time in hours?
You can bake it in the oven to get an effect similar to an autoclave, however, this might degrade the filter material, depending on what it's made out of. Otherwise exactly how long it survives depends on the surface and new information that we keep getting from testing (general rule of thumb is currently 72 hours). If you let it sit around for about a week, any surviving virus would likely be dead by then. If you're just letting it sit around, try and be sure to expose it to sunlight as that will often degrade viral material faster.
This page has some information on re-use techniques currently being employed. More information can be found on a Stanford page devoted to COVID-19 related evidence.
Thank you so much for the links!
If you want to stay ahead... There will soon be releases on studies regarding Remdesivir, an anti-viral medication that could work for SARS2. However because in the current phase of the trial you can only administer it very late in the disease, when you normally get best results when used early on. So this will be a mixed bag.
https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/06/gilead-remdesivir-data-coming-soon/?fbclid=IwAR1IM7FfyIuF8s0PxUBCS-DOT7naaK_GTeXfZT3PBK5-OB5N1y_9_ubXoTQ
This was an interesting article I posted the other day about how difficult it seems to be to make remdesivir: https://www.acsh.org/news/2020/03/26/problem-remdesivir-making-it-14665