SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Coronavirus: Six heartening stories you may have missed:
It's been just over two weeks since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the coronavirus outbreak, which first appeared in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late December, a global pandemic.
[...] Infections, the rates of which have accelerated since the outbreak began, have touched nearly every corner of the world and prompted unprecedented and widespread travel restrictions and business closures that threaten a global recession. At least three billion people, including India's 1.3 billion population, have been ordered to stay home.
Even as new cases in China have dropped dramatically, leading to the easing of many restrictions, places such as Italy, Spain, Iran, and the United States have become new hot spots for the virus, for which there is no vaccine or proven treatment.
[...] WHO launches global trial of possible treatments
The WHO launched a global trial to quickly assess the most promising treatments for the virus and the disease it causes. The organisation is currently looking at four drugs or drug combinations that were developed for other illnesses and are already approved for human use and could be made widely available.
[...] UK call for volunteers exceeds expectations
United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Tuesday night called for 250,000 volunteers to help deliver groceries and medicine to the most vulnerable citizens who have been ordered to self-isolate.
Within 24 hours, more than 400,000 people had signed up. That number soon rose to more than half a million, according to the BBC - larger than Britain's armed forces, which currently stand at just over 192,000.
[...] Air pollution drops
A silver lining of countries locking down across the planet, grinding transport and most industry to halt, has been a marked decline in air pollution.
Satellite imagery has shown pollution in China plummeting as large swaths of the country shut down at the height of the outbreak there.
The European Environment Agency (EEA) on Wednesday confirmed that the concentration of pollutants, in particular nitrogen dioxide, which is largely caused by road transport, recently massively declined in Europe "especially in major cities under lockdown measures".
[...] Italy coronavirus outbreak 'peak' may soon be reached
Italy has so far recorded more than 8,000 deaths and over 80,000 infections.
On Saturday, Italy recorded its highest daily death toll of 793 new fatalities from COVID-19.
However, since then the daily toll, while remaining high, has not surpassed that number. Daily new cases have also leveled off.
[...] US hospitals prepare to use blood plasma as treatment
[...] The US Food and Drug Administration said it is expediting approving the use of recovered patients' plasma to treat the newly infected.
When a person gets infected by a particular virus, the body starts making specially designed proteins called antibodies to fight the infection. After the person recovers, those antibodies float in survivors' blood - specifically in the plasma, the liquid part of blood - for months, even years.
Injecting the plasma into another infected patient could boost the body's ability to fight the infection, lessening the severity of the disease and freeing up hospital resources.
[...] Cuban doctors sent to help overwhelmed Italian health system
Cuba has dispatched a brigade of doctors and nurses to Italy to aid in the fight against coronavirus, following a request from the worst-affected Lombardy region.
[...] Cuba has sent its "armies of white robes" to disaster sites around the world since its 1959 revolution. However, the 52-strong brigade of medical personnel represents the first time Cuba has sent an emergency contingent to Italy, which has been brought to its knees by the pandemic, despite being one of the world's richest countries.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Saturday March 28 2020, @01:21PM (3 children)
"The numbers" are fuzzy at best. Even now, a crazy small percentage of the population is tested. Those who are tested are from a self-selecting group who are eligible and present for testing. Panic causes a different subset to present for testing. IMO, a large proportion (more than 50%) of the infected stay away from healthcare information collectors until they are either in dire straits, or dead. Governments skew results in both directions: for reasons both of national pride in having controlled the situation, and to scare the population into compliance with control measures. The effects are reported to be so wide ranging: from a mild fever through death, that nobody can really be sure if they do or do not, have or have not been infected.
It's bad, Hong Kong flu was bad, Norovirus was bad - I thought I might need hospitalization from Norovirus once, and another case of it years later struck so fast and hard that I barely made the 20 minute drive home from work, was weak and woozy enough I was doubting my ability to keep the car out of the oncoming lane... none of my family's Norovirus infections ever made it into CDC statistics.
We're staying as isolated as we can, but people have to eat.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday March 28 2020, @03:51PM (2 children)
Yes, having to eat, it is getting weird going out and a note from my usual grocery store says that ordering food now takes 4 days for the order instead of the previous couple of hours and they're discouraging the healthy from doing it. Have to go shopping today.
The only good thing is the curve does seem to be flattening here and the 2 months of prep work by the Province's health department is paying off in having empty hospitals instead of the usual 103.5% full hospitals.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday March 28 2020, @08:15PM (1 child)
One has to ask: if the hospitals are usually 103.5% full, how much of that filling is elective and how much is necessary healthcare?
If necessary healthcare is being kicked from the hospitals, how much negative impact is that having - both in the short and long term. I'm overdue for a colonoscopy, but skeptical of the risk/benefit of the camera on a stick approach, particularly with respect to perforation incidents... anyway... I'd like to schedule a pill-cam procedure, but I'm putting it off due to the current craziness. If this continues for months, some percentage of people like me are going to be dying of preventable cancers that weren't detected... not to mention all manner of other negative impacts.
The projected numbers are scary, but all population numbers are scary: 700,000 deaths by suicide every year - unimaginable, but that's what happens when you look at big populations.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by dry on Sunday March 29 2020, @04:06AM
I'd guess that a lot of it is healthcare that can be put off. Things like knee/hip replacements, hernia operations, and procedures like yours may be put off depending on the opinion of your Doctor. There also moving stuff out of the hospital if possible. My sister needs to spend a day in hospital every week for a blood change, that will now be done else where as it isn't that complex. At that I understand quite a bit is being moved elsewhere including patients that can be moved and some hospitals are being emptied and others filled with regular patients. One advantage that the Province owns all the hospitals.
We'll see, currently we're out testing S. Korea (by population) and infections are dropping in number but this is going to go on for quite a while and be such an economic mess. The Premier was joking about the budget which a month ago was balanced, no more.
The good thing here is the politicians are mostly working together rather then the shit show the States seem to be experiencing and the health officers are mostly in charge with the politicians handling the economic issues.