Please be true.

So we've topped 200K deaths now. So freaking sad.

j/c:

CDC stunning new survival rates for Covid…

https://www.citizenfreepress.com/column-...sm-goes-silent/

Throwing politics out of this since this is NOT the political forum, this report is actually great news! Glad to hear it.

SHHHH covid is not dangerous. It's all made up, it's not serious. Only 1 percent of the population dies.

Let me get this straight. You're OK with 70 million around the world dying, 3.5 million in the U.S. And you're saying it's not serious? Alrighty...

He was being sarcastic.

I have a agenda and I freely admit that.

3.5 million u.s. citizens have died?

Are you saying that the the media, some members of the public, and even posters on this board knew what the percentages of the survival/death rates were for each age group for a long time?

If that is true, why in God's name would they keep that information from us? My two kids tested positive. I know jfan's son tested positive. Other folks on here have had loved one test positive. I know my wife and I were worried sick and people kept these numbers from us? Do I have that right?

And before anyone goes off...........I KNOW that Covid is real. I practice all the safe habits. I can prove that I have been a proponent of the restrictions all along. I think we should continue to practice being safe.

I just don't like being misled. And this is probably a political discussion, but I'm really irritated right now. The more I learn, the more I think that the deaths are to people who are people who were in groups that die from all kinds of things, such as pneumonia, dementia, diabetes, complications from obesity, internal concerns, cancer patients, broken hips, etc.

And once again..........I am NOT saying this is a hoax or we should not practice safe habits. We should do all we can to keep those people safer. However, I think the fact that the media has kept this information from us is some BS! I sure as hell wish my wife and I would have had this information when both of our children tested positive!

I'm furious w/the media!

I don't know either. But one thing I notice about such things. When you have someone in power claiming children are immune and how it doesn't effect children, you will have those who know better coming out strongly to show that it isn't true, when it isn't.

I tend to leave that up to healthcare professionals.

Very useful graphic I saw today:

.


Edit: Larger, easier to read version, but messes up formatting here:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EjToVjMXgAIjfsL?format=jpg&name=4096x4096

jc

Spam calls hindering efforts for contact tracing.

Am I reading this right? Just 5 people out of "tens of thousands" of participants (half of whom received a placebo) experienced these side effects. Unless the trials are complete, can we even be sure all of these 5 received the actual vaccine? It just says they were participants, meaning they could have been in the control group? Hopefully this isn't just a scare article.

jc

Spam calls hindering efforts for contact tracing.

mRNA vaccines holds a ton of promise.

Jester or Portland, have either of you read up on mRNA tech? I thought I read somewhere that this type of a vaccine could open up pathways to cures and treatments for other conditions besides viral infections.

If it's important, they'll leave a message.

At least 30 states report daily increase in COVID-19 cases

Muh mechanic is going to do my brain surgery right after he finishes this brake job...

FYI - I'm sorry if I missed this already being discussed, but I heard that Sokolowski's closed because of the pandemic. That's a real shame.

Is Halloween going to be cancelled?

Is Halloween going to be cancelled?

Isn't there speculation that the cells have a working memory to make antibodies when they're needed?

Isn't there speculation that the cells have a working memory to make antibodies when they're needed?

Study finds 12% of Orange County residents had coronavirus by summer
Findings suggest virus more widespread but less deadly

A carefully designed study of blood samples from Orange County residents found that 12% had coronavirus antibodies — meaning their immune systems had fought the virus at some point — an infection rate more than seven times higher than official case counts suggest.

That means at least 371,000 people in Orange County have had COVID-19, researchers found.

Rates were highest among Latino residents and low-income adults, and lowest among non-Latino White and Black residents and those earning more than $100,000 a year.

The results also suggest that the virus is extraordinarily contagious and far more widespread than case data indicate, but also that the fatality rate is much lower. Still, it remains higher than the seasonal flu.

What was most surprising among the researchers was how high the seroprevalence of COVID was,” said Tim Bruckner, a study principal and associate professor of public health at UC Irvine. “We had a suspicion there would be more cases if we looked in the overall community rather than just at those asking for testing, but we didn’t understand how widespread it was already.”

The majority of people studied who tested positive had no symptoms, Bruckner said. Focus may fall on so-called “superspreader” events, but the virus really is spreading regularly, quietly, unseen.

While more than 10% of Orange County residents tested over the summer had COVID-19 antibodies, that’s still a long way from “herd immunity,” when so many people have antibodies that the virus runs out of new hosts. Scientists say some 60% to 70% of the population must be immune before infections will fizzle out.

“We are nowhere near herd immunity,” Bruckner said. “The argument that we’re very close and will turn the corner soon isn’t borne out by the data.”

A city-size case load
The prospect that more people have caught coronavirus in Orange County than live in Anaheim, its largest city, didn’t surprise Dr. Matt Zahn, medical director of the county Health Care Agency’s Communicable Disease Control Division.

“That number is simultaneously a very large and very small number,” Zahn said during a news conference Wednesday, Oct. 28.

It’s research-backed evidence of how easily COVID-19 spreads, he said. At the same time, it shows that the virus still has lots of room to proliferate.

For Bernadette Boden-Albala, dean of UC Irvine’s public health program, an expert in social epidemiology and study principal, it also speaks to the fact that there’s huge variability in how people show symptoms, if at all.

“Obviously, we hear about the most severe cases, the hospitalized cases, the deaths, but we have this whole range of asymptomatic and mild symptoms that didn’t get picked up because people didn’t think they were sick and were transmitting the disease,” she said.

“This is really important data to help us think about planning for the future.”

More evidence of health inequity
While data from active infections already show that lower-income and Latino communities are hard hit by infection, the study underscored that in a powerful way.

Latino residents had a prevalence of 17%, and low-income residents were at 15%. That could be due to relatively dense housing conditions and work in settings that don’t allow for physical distancing, the study said.

That tracks with high-volume swab testing in lower-income Latino neighborhoods in Anaheim and Santa Ana.

“In a city like Santa Ana, we were as high as close to 30% positivity,” Boden-Albala said.

The disproportionately high rates of tests returning positive in the county’s hot spots have been tamped down by the Orange County Health Care Agency in partnership with nonprofit groups like Latino Health Access, Boden-Albala said. Such campaigns have brought more testing and resources to neighborhoods where many residents can’t work from home and have little access to health care.

Public health officials on Oct. 6 installed coronavirus disparities tracking into the state’s four-tier pandemic monitoring system, which looks at metrics such as case rates and testing positivity in the state’s 58 counties and determines what can reopen when.

More prevalent, less deadly
Case data — drawn from sick people who wind up at diagnostic testing sites, clinics and hospitals — peg the COVID death rate at about 10% for those 65 and older in Orange County.

“That’s another part of the story that’s very interesting,” Bruckner said. “Clearly, COVID is a killer and I would never want to make light of that. That said, as you count more cases that are asymptomatic and lightly symptomatic, the case fatality rate is going to go down.

“The take-home point is that, depending on the different ways you’d calculate COVID deaths, we’re overestimating deaths in OC between four- to 10-fold.”

Put more simply, the study estimates about one death per thousand infected people for those younger than 65, and about 10 deaths per thousand for those 65 and older.

“Based on our estimates, that means about 1 in 100 adults over 65 who gets COVID dies of it,” Bruckner said. “That’s pretty serious. But it’s not 10 in 100, which is the estimate based on who presents at the clinic.”

Recommendations
The widespread prevalence of COVID in Orange County warrants continued public health measures, the study said: physical distancing, proper and consistent use of face masks, ventilation and hand hygiene.

And, in addition to contact tracing, county health authorities “may want to consider active surveillance of novel infections.” That would involve some 800 to 1,000 tests per week in a representative sample of residents, as well as a targeted component for higher-risk groups or places such as nursing home residents, laborers in high-density settings and highly impacted neighborhoods.

“Such surveillance, unlike clinic- or hospital-based strategies, would provide a less biased estimate of the rate of new SARS-CoV-2 infections,” the study said.

Finally, as fatality rate estimates are several-fold lower, “This updated estimate should inform the broader policy debate in the U.S. regarding the relative benefits and limitations of various SARS-CoV-2 mitigation strategies.”

How it was done
UCI researchers led the project in partnership with the OC Health Care Agency, which provided funding, testing sites and input on the study’s survey methods.

It was designed to be more comprehensive and rigorous than its predecessors, including many more people than were tested in L.A. or Santa Clara counties. Researchers went to the homes of people who couldn’t make it to drive-through sites, with a special eye toward reaching under-served communities, and didn’t initially indicate they’d be offering blood, or serology, tests, to avoid pre-selecting for people who might want them.

Fingers were pricked and blood collected from 2,979 adults from July 10 to Aug. 16, later in the pandemic than similar studies done in Los Angeles and Santa Clara counties in the spring. Researchers at UCI are planning more work on racial and ethnic disparities, geographic hot spots, and tracking people who’ve tested positive over time to see how long immunity lasts.

Neeraj Sood, professor of public policy at the USC Price School for Public Policy and principal investigator for the groundbreaking serology study done by USC and the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health in the spring, said that’s one of the outstanding questions.

“The level of antibodies you have, and how fast they decline, might correlate with how severe your disease was,” said Sood, who’s also planning to study people who’ve tested positive over time in L.A. County. “There’s more and more evidence which suggests seroprevalence declines over time. So even serological testing might be underestimating the true prevalence — we might only be catching infections over the last few months, rather than since the pandemic began.”

A big takeaway from O.C.’s work is that many people had COVID and didn’t know it, supporting the notion that the virus is a silent spreader, said UCI’s Bruckner. “Ongoing public health strategies that relate to the whole population — and not just those who think they’re sick — are warranted,” he said.

Just wondering, are all these states with increasing covid, states which never had a second wave?

Because it looks like Europe never had a second wave.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/29/europe/europe-coronavirus-local-national-lockdown-intl/index.html

Georgia had a second wave months ago.

I'm not sure what you mean by "don't blah blah blah". I said that, yes, but it was not to make light of the situation. Instead it was an attempt for me to not go into anymore detail.

Take the time.
Use the extra words.
Tell the complete story.

Haven't you figured it out, yet?
THIS is exactly the time and place to truly make a connection with your community.

How else are we to know what you truly mean, if we don't have context?

Sorry to hear that, will.

I had it, too. Lasted about 3.5 weeks. Symptoms were similar to yours but I did not lose sense of smell. The diarrhea and constant nausea was the worst part.

J/C

My test came back positive yesterday.

My I got it from my father and mother, who I am worried about. They are doing ok, sick as dogs - but Dad heart issues so we are keeping an eye on him, and Mom beat colon cancer just two years ago and is diabetic, so worried as well.

I started out with a small cough on Tuesday night (I was with them Saturday and Sunday), that went into one of the worst headaches I ever had. Sore muscles accompanied the headach, with a light cough, dizziness.

All those lasted all day Wednesday, in which I never got up other than to go to the restroom. Couldnt eat, couldnt open my eyes my head hurt so bad. Thursday the headache continued throughout the morning, and into the night. The dizziness picked up as well.

Friday morning the headache started to subside, but the dizziness picked up. Neck is really sore (not sure from covid, or just because i have been laying so much). Friday night i lost all smell and most of my taste and have not got it back. Headache is almost gone, but the dizziness is extremely bad. I feel like I am going to pass out everytime I stand up.

Its not fun.

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/study-pi...-173213085.html

Summarizing the article:

On average, the researchers determined that the following locations “produced the largest predicted increases in infections when reopened”:

Full-service restaurants

Gyms

Hotels

Cafés

Religious organizations

Limited-service restaurants

In fact, the study linked more than 80 percent of infections to these locations.

Not true with our church, NOT ONE person has contracted COVID 19, yes we have taken precautions but still no cases ...

Not true with our church, NOT ONE person has contracted COVID 19, yes we have taken precautions but still no cases ...

Sweden dealing with massive Covid-19 surge.

Hi Prp. Want to walk back those herd immunity claims, yet?

I mean he thinks there’s no lasting effects of covid despite the research by scientists and doctors, and he also buys into nonsense that it escaped from a lab in Wuhan.

Doubt he’ll ever come to reality.

For fun. Not that any part of this is fun.

OMG

RIGHT?

It’s gonna be ridiculous, entertaining, and frustrating AF.

Wife was at 3 stores Sunday, no TP in any of them. WTH is wrong with people.

Oh sure a bidet? Watch my water bill triple

Oh sure a bidet? Watch my water bill triple

Oh sure a bidet? Watch my water bill triple

Well in all fairness, if you are using that much water you are not practicing hygiene, you are pleasuring yourself.

Well in all fairness, if you are using that much water you are not practicing hygiene, you are pleasuring yourself.

Got my own answers.... 90% is LOW, especially for someone on a mask.

These are details that weren't relayed to us.

In Japan, more people died from suicide last month than from Covid in all of 2020. And women have been impacted most
By Selina [censored], Rebecca Wright and Yoko Wakatsuki, CNN

Updated 6:46 AM ET, Sun November 29, 2020

Tokyo (CNN)Eriko Kobayashi has tried to kill herself four times.

The first time, she was just 22 years old with a full-time job in publishing that didn't pay enough to cover her rent and grocery bills in Tokyo. "I was really poor," said Kobayashi, who spent three days unconscious in hospital after the incident.
Now 43, Kobayashi has written books on her mental health struggles and has a steady job at an NGO. But the coronavirus is bringing back the stress she used to feel.
"My salary was cut, and I cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel," she said. "I constantly feel a sense of crisis that I might fall back into poverty."
Experts have warned that the pandemic could lead to a mental health crisis. Mass unemployment, social isolation, and anxiety are taking their toll on people globally.
In Japan, government statistics show suicide claimed more lives in October than Covid-19 has over the entire year to date. The monthly number of Japanese suicides rose to 2,153 in October, according to Japan's National Police Agency. As of Friday, Japan's total Covid-19 toll was 2,087, the health ministry said.

Japan is one of the few major economies to disclose timely suicide data -- the most recent national data for the US, for example, is from 2018. The Japanese data could give other countries insights into the impact of pandemic measures on mental health, and which groups are the most vulnerable.

"We didn't even have a lockdown, and the impact of Covid is very minimal compared to other countries ... but still we see this big increase in the number of suicides," said Michiko Ueda, an associate professor at Waseda University in Tokyo, and an expert on suicides.

"That suggests other countries might see a similar or even bigger increase in the number of suicides in the future."

Covid's toll on women
Japan has long struggled with one of the highest suicide rates in the world, according to the World Health Organization. In 2016, Japan had a suicide mortality rate of 18.5 per 100,000 people, second only to South Korea in the Western Pacific region and almost triple the annual global average of 10.6 per 100,000 people.


While the reasons for Japan's high suicide rate are complex, long working hours, school pressure, social isolation and a cultural stigma around mental health issues have all been cited as contributing factors.
But for the 10 years leading up to 2019, the number of suicides had been decreasing in Japan, falling to about 20,000 last year, according to the health ministry -- the lowest number since the country's health authorities started keeping records in 1978.

The pandemic appears to have reversed that trend, and the rise in suicides has disproportionately affected women. Although they represent a smaller proportion of total suicides than men, the number of women taking their own lives is increasing. In October, suicides among women in Japan increased almost 83% compared to the same month the previous year. For comparison, male suicides rose almost 22% over the same time period.
There are several potential reasons for this. Women make up a larger percentage of part-time workers in the hotel, food service and retail industries -- where layoffs have been deep. Kobayashi said many of her friends have been laid off. "Japan has been ignoring women," she said. "This is a society where the weakest people are cut off first when something bad happens."

In a global study of more than 10,000 people, conducted by non-profit international aid organization CARE, 27% of women reported increased challenges with mental health during the pandemic, compared to 10% of men.

Compounding those worries about income, women have been dealing with skyrocketing unpaid care burdens, according to the study. For those who keep their jobs, when children are sent home from school or childcare centers, it often falls to mothers to take on those responsibilities, as well as their normal work duties.

Increased anxiety about the health and well-being of children has also put an extra burden on mothers during the pandemic.
Akari, a 35-year-old who did not want to use her real name, said she sought professional help this year when her premature son was hospitalized for six weeks. "I was pretty much worried 24 hours," Akari said. "I didn't have any mental illness history before, but I could see myself really, really anxious all the time."
Her feelings got worse as the pandemic intensified, and she worried her son would get Covid-19.
"I felt there was no hope, I felt like I always thought about the worst-case scenario," she said.

"A Place for You"
In March, Koki Ozora, a 21-year-old university student, started a 24-hour mental health hotline called Anata no Ibasho (A Place for You). He said the hotline, a nonprofit funded by private donations, receives an average of over 200 calls a day, and that the vast majority of callers are women.
"They lost their jobs, and they need to raise their kids, but they didn't have any money," Ozora said. "So, they attempted suicide."
Most of the calls come through the night -- from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. The nonprofit's 600 volunteers live around the world in different timezones and are awake to answer them. But there aren't enough volunteers to keep up with the volume of messages, Ozora said.

They prioritize the texts that are most urgent -- looking for keywords such as suicide or sexual abuse. He said they respond to 60% of texts within five minutes, and volunteers spend an average of 40 minutes with each person.

Anonymously, over online messaging, people share their deepest struggles. Unlike most mental health hotlines in Japan, which take requests over the phone, Ozora says many people -- especially the younger generation -- are more comfortable asking for help via text.

n April, he said the most common messages were from mothers who were feeling stressed about raising their kids, with some confessing to thoughts of killing their own children. These days, he says messages from women about job losses and financial difficulties are common -- as well as domestic violence.
"I've been accepting messages, like 'I'm being raped by my father' or 'My husband tried to kill me,'" Ozora said. "Women send these kinds of texts almost every day. And it's increasing." He added that the spike in messages is because of the pandemic. Before, there were more places to "escape," like schools, offices or friend's homes.
Pressure on children
Japan is the only G-7 country where suicide is the leading manner of death for young people aged 15 to 39. And suicides among those under 20 had been increasing even before the pandemic, according to health ministry.
As pandemic restrictions take children out of school and social situations, they're dealing with abuse, stressful home lives, and pressures from falling behind on homework, Ozora said. Some children as young as five years old had messaged the hotline, he added.
School closures during the pandemic in the spring have contributed to homework piling up; kids also have less freedom to see friends, which is also contributing to stress, according to Naho Morisaki, of the National Center for Child Health and Development. The center recently conducted an internet survey of more than 8,700 parents and children and found that 75% of Japanese schoolchildren showed signs of stress due to the pandemic.
Morisaki says he thinks there's a big correlation between the anxiety of children and their parents. "The children who are self-injuring themselves have the stress, and then they can't speak out to their family because probably they see that their moms or dads are not able to listen to them."

Stigma of solving the problem
In Japan, there is still a stigma against admitting loneliness and struggle. Ozora said it's common for women and parents to start the conversation with his service with the phrase: "I know it's bad to ask for help, but can I talk?"
Ueda says the "shame" of talking about depression often holds people back.
"It's not something that you talk about in public, you don't talk about it with friends or anything," she said. "(It) could lead to a delay in seeking help, so that's one potential cultural factor that we have in here."

Akari, the mother of the premature baby, agrees. She had previously lived in the US, where she says it seems easier to seek help. "When I lived in America, I knew people who went through therapy, and it's a more common thing to do, but in Japan it's very difficult," she said.
Following the financial crisis in the 1990s, Japan's suicide rate surged to a record high in 2003, when roughly 34,000 people took their own lives. Experts say the shame and anxiety from layoffs, of mostly men at the time, contributed to depression and increased suicide rates. In the early 2000s, the Japanese government accelerated investment and efforts around suicide prevention and survivor support, including passing the Basic Act for Suicide Prevention in 2006 to provide support to those affected by the issue.
But both Ozora and Kobayashi say it has not been nearly enough: reducing the suicide rate requires Japanese society to change.
"It's shameful for others to know your weakness, so you hide everything, hold it in yourself, and endure," Kobayashi said. "We need to create the culture where it's OK to show your weakness and misery."

Celebrity suicides
A succession of Japanese celebrities have taken their lives in recent months. While the Japanese media rarely details the specifics of such deaths -- deliberately not dwelling on method or motive -- the mere reporting on these cases often causes an increase in suicide in the general public, according to experts such as Ueda.
Hana Kimura, a 22-year-old professional wrestler and star of the reality show "Terrace House," died by suicide over the summer, after social media users bombarded her with hateful messages. Hana's mother, Kyoko Kimura, says she was conscious that media reports on her daughter's death may have affected others who were feeling suicidal.

"When Hana died, I asked the police repeatedly not to disclose any concrete situation of her death, but still, I see the reporting of information only the police knew," Kimura said. "It's a chain reaction of grief."

Kimura said the pandemic led her daughter to spend more time reading toxic social media messages, as she was unable to wrestle because of coronavirus restrictions. Kimura is now setting up an NGO called "Remember Hana" to raise awareness about cyberbullying.

"She found her reason to live by fighting as a professional wrestler. It was a big part of her. She was in a really tough situation as she could not wrestle," Kimura said. "The coronavirus pandemic made society more suffocating."

The third wave
In recent weeks, Japan has reported record-high daily Covid-19 cases, as doctors warn of a third wave that could intensify in the winter months. Experts worry that the high suicide rate will get worse as the economic fallout continues.
"We haven't even experienced the full economic consequences of the pandemic," Ueda said. "The pandemic itself can get worse, then maybe there's a semi-lockdown again; if that happens, then the impact can be huge."
Compared with some other nations, Japan's coronavirus restrictions have been relatively relaxed. The country declared a state of emergency but has never imposed a strict lockdown, for example, and its quarantine restrictions for international arrivals have not been as unbending as those in China.

But as cases rise, some worry harsher restrictions will be needed -- and are concerned about how that could affect mental health.
"We didn't even have a lockdown, and the impact of Covid is very minimal compared to other countries ... but still we see this big increase in the number of suicides," Ueda said. "That suggests other countries might see a similar or even bigger increase in the number of suicides in the future."
Despite having to deal with a salary cut and constant financial insecurity, Kobayashi says she is now much better at managing her anxiety. She hopes that by speaking publicly about her fears, more people will do the same and realize they are not alone, before it's too late.
"I come out to the public and say that I have been mentally ill and suffered from depression in the hope that others might be encouraged to speak out," Kobayashi said. "I am 43 now and life starts to get more fun in the middle of my life. So, I feel it's good that I am still alive."

Counting my blessings and hoping my test comes back positive.

Brother and sister-in-law tested positive and that was my contact. They were able to get a rapid test, I could not. Got tested yesterday and will wait up to five days.

My symptoms started the day after Thanksgiving. By that evening I felt like I got hit by a TRUCK. As I kept telling my wife - it was like my bones actually hurt. Ringing in my ears, massive headaches. Spent three days laying around and taking multiple naps. Never had anything other than a mild fever. I've lost ALL taste and smell. Spent two days having a hard time breathing - that was pretty scary. Did breathing exercises all day yesterday. It's day five and I can actually move around and have a little energy. "Viral load" must not have been very high. Wouldn't wish this on anyone and my case was pretty mild in comparison.

I'm not anti-mask, I'm not anti-vaxx.. I am though, as a rule, anti-government mandate.

For those that do pray, say a prayer for him... and wear your masks.

I would like to add one thing to that.

and while wearing a mask, wear it correctly. We shouldn't all see your nose hair and boogers when you have a mask on.

I'd like to see the death toll so far caused by the government shutdowns and isolation combined with mental illness. I've yet to see those statistics and its not something that's talked about very often. We need more communication around it everyday.

I'd like to see the death toll so far caused by the government shutdowns and isolation combined with mental illness. I've yet to see those statistics and its not something that's talked about very often. We need more communication around it everyday.

It does show up in the excess mortality numbers -- as will the lives that are saved by the Covid-19 response (e.g., fatal car accidents are down this year).

I think there are about 350,000 excess deaths so far this year - compared to about 250,000 confirmed Covid-19 deaths. So it's a big difference.

Some of the other excess deaths are almost certainly undiagnosed Covid (especially in March/April when testing was bad).

A scarily high number of excess deaths are people who didn't seek medical care because of Covid (Bob felt a bit tight in the chest, but didn't want to go to the doctor because of the pandemic, then had a heart attack the next day).

Some of those are more directly caused by the pandemic (e.g., ER doctors who have been working overtime shifts for months miss the symptoms of an internal bleed and send a bicycle accident victim home).

Sadly, we won't even know about all of these for some time (the cancers that would have been detected in routine checkups in August - but those checkups were pushed back and the cancers will be detected too late).

And some are probably suicides, food insecurity, etc.

A family friend died from Covid complications this morning. Not elderly and in good shape before he contracted the virus. Young children and a wife left behind. The hospital I’m working with right now is starting to get overwhelmed.

I’m becoming less and less tolerant of people downplaying this virus or dismissing it altogether. Reasonable people do not behave this way in the midst of something like this pandemic.

My symptoms started the day after Thanksgiving. By that evening I felt like I got hit by a TRUCK. As I kept telling my wife - it was like my bones actually hurt. Ringing in my ears, massive headaches. Spent three days laying around and taking multiple naps. Never had anything other than a mild fever. I've lost ALL taste and smell. Spent two days having a hard time breathing - that was pretty scary. Did breathing exercises all day yesterday. It's day five and I can actually move around and have a little energy. "Viral load" must not have been very high. Wouldn't wish this on anyone and my case was pretty mild in comparison.

Last week, the sister-in-law from the "sentient boogyman" side of the fence was telling us how we might lose our hair and teeth from the virus.

My friend just died this afternoon.

I saw a statistic on the news that said 73% of people who get covid get it from household gatherings and only 1.43% get it from bars/restaurants. In NY.

Because fewer people are going to bars?

Not the bars I go to.

I saw a statistic on the news that said 73% of people who get covid get it from household gatherings and only 1.43% get it from bars/restaurants. In NY.

These are very bad statistics - and you shouldn't go to restaurants because of them.

The biggest group of people out there are people who "Don't Know" where they got Covid from -- but this statistic leaves that group out of the percentages entirely.

If you get Covid at a household gathering, then you got it from somebody you know, and then you are very likely to know that you got it from them.

If you get Covid at a restaurant, you usually do not know the person you got it from, and then you don't know where you got it.

Indoor dining in restaurants is a major source of transmission.

People can only tell you where they got it from if they know where they got it from. Your survey only takes into account the people who know where they got it from.

And you're saying that if you don't know where you got it, it for sure must come from a bar or restaurant? Despite most people knowing they get it from family?

What if you just go out to dinner, the groceries and the hardware store? Which place did you get it?

You do realize that most Americans don't just go and spend, "hours at the bar", right?

I've been wondering for months why there hasn't been a major push for the in-duct UV systems. UV lights that destroy the virus are fairly inexpensive.

What MERV level do you need to filter a virus?

What I'm seeing is that the virus is 60 to 140 nanometers in size - or 0.060 to 0.140 micron, and a MERV 16 filter will only be good to 0.3 micron. The virus is going right through your average HEPA filter.

I have to disagree with both of you. If I spend hours hanging out at a bar and catch covid I can pretty much know that's where I got it from.

If most people catch it from random places, grocery stores, gas stations, etc, we would have statistics about that. In fact we would have far more cases than we have now.

j/c:

They recommend we stay at home and then....

Household spread of Covid-19 is common and quick, a new CDC study finds

https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/30/health/household-spread-covid-19-wellness/index.html

________________________________

This is good:

Ultraviolet LED lights kill 99.9 per cent of coronavirus pathogens in just 30 seconds and could sterilize rooms cheaply via air conditioning systems

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/...s.html#comments

P.S. My condolences to everyone that posted above that lost a friend or loved one recently due to Covid. I really thought it was gonna burn out in the summer/run its course.... nope.

Who even goes to bars anymore? I don't drink, so it's an honest question. And I know you do , but you are a special case because that is a major part of your socializing.

Alcohol is da devil. And she done got her hooks into you! jk, but I had the waterboy's mama in my mind telling me to do it.

Who even goes to bars anymore? I don't drink, so it's an honest question. And I know you do , but you are a special case because that is a major part of your socializing.

Alcohol is da devil. And she done got her hooks into you! jk, but I had the waterboy's mama in my mind telling me to do it.