Covid-19 in OKC (coronavirus)

[David]

UV light kills virus and bacteria. The sun produces UV light. This has been known for years that UV light is used as a sanitizer. My barber used a santizer station since the 1970s to put his razor in to sanitize. They are still sold today.

https://www.barberdepots.com/product...my-sterilizer/

UV light also causes skin cancer over time, but it doesn't happen instantly the moment you step out your door and get hit with sunlight.

[betts]

True but direct sunlight almost kills it instantly on surfaces. So unless your kissing or coughing on someone and keep at least a few feet from someone outside in direct sunlight your probably going to be ok. That being said some of these people were probably too close to one another but it's not the end of the world that these people were outside having a good time.

Demonstrations have shown that viral particles from a cough travel 6 feet very rapidly, and can easily travel up to 12 feet within less than a minute. Loud talking, singing and yelling transmit them farther than talking normally. Sunlight, over time, will kill the virus, but not instantaneously. So, being less than 12 feet from someone infected who coughs, yells or sings is almost as dangerous as being inside. Wearing a mask dramatically decreases the volume and distance viral particles spread, indoors or out.

[betts]

Since testing is behind, we don’t have universal testing, the virus has an incubation period of up to at least 14 days and symptoms can develop slowly over a period of days to weeks, it’s way too early to make any predictions about reopening effects on viral transmission. Hospitalizations and deaths over the next 4 to 6 weeks will be far more informative. I did see this article yesterday: https://kfor.com/health/coronavirus/...concerned/amp/

[Brad72]

UV light kills virus and bacteria. The sun produces UV light. This has been known for years that UV light is used as a sanitizer. My barber used a santizer station since the 1970s to put his razor in to sanitize. They are still sold today.

https://www.barberdepots.com/product...my-sterilizer/

Well, your comment needs some perspective.

Can You Kill Coronavirus with UV Light? [ BBC | 4/24/2020 ]

[betts]

https://science.sciencemag.org/conte...cience.abc6197

Masks remain the best way to be safe and keep others safe.

[d-usa]

Could you please cite a reference that states this is their methodology?

Recovered: currently not hospitalized or deceased and 14 days after onset/report

[emtefury]

Well, your comment needs some perspective.

Can You Kill Coronavirus with UV Light? [ BBC | 4/24/2020 ]

Yes. I well aware the sun can give a person a sun burn and eventually cause cancer for some people over long term exposure. This has been happening since the sun and man existed.

[Martin]

I did see this article yesterday: https://kfor.com/health/coronavirus/...concerned/amp/

that article is a week old. hospitalized patients who were either confirmed positive or were under investigation rose 25% between may 18 and 19. the four executive reports after that each indicated a negative growth rate between -4% and -10%. there was, however, a 16% increase between may 26 and 27 but this is due to an increase of 28 patients under investigation where confirmed positives decreased by 3 patients. comparing may 18 and the last report on may 27, there was an increase of 8%. i'm not trying to suggest that oklahoma is beyond any risk, but i think that the data since a week ago suggests the 25% increase on the 18th/19th is more of an anomaly rather than the beginning of a new trend.

Since testing is behind, we don’t have universal testing, the virus has an incubation period of up to at least 14 days and symptoms can develop slowly over a period of days to weeks, it’s way too early to make any predictions about reopening effects on viral transmission. Hospitalizations and deaths over the next 4 to 6 weeks will be far more informative.

correct me if i'm wrong, but i don't see how these claims fit with what major health organizations publish about the virus. according to what i've read (cdc, who), symptoms display (i.e. the 'incubation period') in as little as 2 days or as long as 14 days with a median of 5-6 days. oklahoma 'reopened' on may 1, 27 days ago meaning that we should have a decent picture of those infected from may 13 and before... that's nearly two weeks of data into the reopening. that probably isn't long enough to have a complete picture but ought to give decision makers enough data to identify any new trends. i could see the argument that we might want more data before opening up further, but i don't see a justification for saying that it's 'way' too early.

[Pete]

[kukblue1]

Glad to see cases not spiking. Hospitalization not sure but probably just cause nothing was reported for 2 days so the 21 was a 3 day total? Last Friday spike was cause of cases in OKC. The major tweeted about it

That one-day new case total from a highly isolated facility caused the OKC metro to report over 70 cases on Friday, our second-highest one-day total of the entire pandemic. Otherwise, we have been averaging between 10 and 30 new cases the entire month of May

[PoliSciGuy]

Remember that hospitalizations lag a bit - there might be a few days between when someone tests positive and when they need to be hospitalized, so the uptick in hospitalizations could be a continued impact from our high-ish caseload last week.

[Pete]

Daily increases for Friday:

Positive cases: 68
Hospitalizations: 7
Deaths: 3

[kukblue1]

Daily increases for Friday:

Positive cases: 68
Hospitalizations: 7
Deaths: 3

Great numbers if we are counting all labs and quick testing.

[Pete]

[kukblue1]

Really with all the protest and riots it's like everyone has forgotten all about the virus . Heck even look at the number of post on this board. Even those are way down. I hope people don't start letting their guard down. I'll be the first one to admit I have a bit. I'm not washing my hands at much at work. I have even gone into Dollar General and Walgreen last week. First time I have gone into business in over a month.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/29/us/oz...B7aNBSC7S7JKfU

[Bunty]

Really with all the protest and riots it's like everyone has forgotten all about the virus . Heck even look at the number of post on this board. Even those are way down. I hope people don't start letting their guard down. I'll be the first one to admit I have a bit. I'm not washing my hands at much at work. I have even gone into Dollar General and Walgreen last week. First time I have gone into business in over a month.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/29/us/oz...B7aNBSC7S7JKfU

People are seeing that it's not all that bad except that 80.5% of the COVID-19 deaths have happened to people over age 65. They still better be careful about getting out, if at all. That's in sharp contrast to people age 0 to 17. They compose 5.2% of positive cases with ZERO deaths. Age 18 to 35 only have 1.2% of the deaths. So I don't see why schools can't start in August, probably with some precautions, such as teachers getting tested. Probably universities can reopen, too. But I think the problem remains how and when can you safely resume concerts and sporting events? Surely closing them down largely explains why things didn't get a lot worse.

[dankrutka]

People are seeing that it's not all that bad except that 80.5% of the COVID-19 deaths have happened to people over age 65. They still better be careful about getting out, if at all. That's in sharp contrast to people age 0 to 17. They compose 5.2% of positive cases with ZERO deaths. Age 18 to 35 only have 1.2% of the deaths. So I don't see why schools can't start in August, probably with some precautions, such as teachers getting tested. Probably universities can reopen, too. But I think the problem remains how and when can you safely resume concerts and sporting events? Surely closing them down largely explains why things didn't get a lot worse.

If you're both willing to accept 100,000 deaths as "not all that bad" and reduce the pandemic down to death statistics only, this post might make sense. However, once you consider that young people caring less will kill more older people, that morbidity (people can have long-term health effects) without mortality, and that opening things up too much or in unsafe ways could result in closing things down again, it doesn't make much sense to me. The question is not whether schools should open or not, but if they do, how will they do it safely? Indoor concerts and sporting events likely should not resume at capacity until this is over... but outdoor concerts and sporting events that follow safety precautions can potentially find safe solutions. There's a lot of evidence that outdoors is way safer than indoors in general. In short, it's really about good planning.

This is a good article on how we proceed and they even offer a SAFE acronym that is helpful:

- Social distancing: This one you probably knew before you read this article. Keep a healthy distance between yourself and others—six feet is a good general rule—especially when you are near them for an extended period of time.

- Airflow awareness: Every noncontact activity—talking, eating, working out—becomes significantly safer when you take it outside. As the previously mentioned Japanese study and Hong Kong survey indicated, the odds of transmission in a closed, indoor space are several orders of magnitude higher than in open-air environments.

- Face masks: Wear them. They’re not just for you; they’re for everybody around you.

- Expectoration (sorry for using a fancy word for spit to make the acronym work): COVID-19 appears to spread both through large-droplet transmission, such as from sneezes, and through the airborne transmission of smaller, aerosolized droplets, such as those that spray out of the mouths of talkers. Beware especially of indoor environments and activities that naturally include lots of gabbing (such as a long office meeting), singing (such as a choir practice), shouting (such as a high-school gym), or heavy breathing (such as an intense indoor workout class).

[SoonerDave]

If you're both willing to accept 100,000 deaths as "not all that bad" and reduce the pandemic down to death statistics only, this post might make sense.

The 2009 Swine Flu pandemic claimed 289,000 lives. But there wasn't 1/100 or even 1/1000 the attention and action drawn to it that this has.

The CDC now states that, under their "most likely scenario," the CFR (case fatality rate) is 0.004%. This is 1/850 what the WHO was predicting at the outset based on their original models and information. Would they have made the same advice had they known what the real rates were ahead of time?

I'm not saying we shouldn't be careful, shouldn't exercise precautions, but when this started there were grim predictions of *millions* of US deaths alone. Of *course* 100,000 deaths are awful, but it isn't the millions that were predicted by models that were demonstrably flawed virtually the moment they were released.

Its not just about planning, its about planning based on credible information. Yes, use science, but the science needs to establish its own consistency. Some sanity has to be brought to bear on this, and some sort of confidence restored to what is presented by health experts, or a "next time" for a pandemic - whether a year, five years, twenty years, or ??? years down the road, the credibility assigned to what they suggest will be severely damaged. And I think that's been a huge factor in the reticence some have shown about wearing masks, social distancing, etc, because the *reality* of the virus, while *obviously* potentially deadly and very serious, has *not* matched the magnitude of the grim predictions that marked its arrival.

Hope that makes some kind of sense.

[Pete]

The 2009 Swine Flu pandemic claimed 289,000 lives. But there wasn't 1/100 or even 1/1000 the attention and action drawn to it that this has.

There were just over 12,000 deaths in the U.S.; we are nearly 10x that in just a few months even after a comprehensive lockdown and we are still losing over 1,000 a day. The two are not remotely comparable.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-res...-pandemic.html

[d-usa]

The 2009 Swine Flu pandemic claimed 289,000 lives. But there wasn't 1/100 or even 1/1000 the attention and action drawn to it that this has.

US Comparison:

COVID-19: 100,000 and growing in 3 months.
Swine Flu: 12,469 in 19 months.

Worldwide Comparison:

COVID-19: 369,000 + deaths on 6 months.
Swine Flu: 289,000 deaths in 19 months.

[RustytheBailiff]

The 2009 Swine Flu pandemic claimed 289,000 lives. But there wasn't 1/100 or even 1/1000 the attention and action drawn to it that this has.

The CDC now states that, under their "most likely scenario," the CFR (case fatality rate) is 0.004%. This is 1/850 what the WHO was predicting at the outset based on their original models and information. Would they have made the same advice had they known what the real rates were ahead of time?

I'm not saying we shouldn't be careful, shouldn't exercise precautions, but when this started there were grim predictions of *millions* of US deaths alone. Of *course* 100,000 deaths are awful, but it isn't the millions that were predicted by models that were demonstrably flawed virtually the moment they were released.

Its not just about planning, its about planning based on credible information. Yes, use science, but the science needs to establish its own consistency. Some sanity has to be brought to bear on this, and some sort of confidence restored to what is presented by health experts, or a "next time" for a pandemic - whether a year, five years, twenty years, or ??? years down the road, the credibility assigned to what they suggest will be severely damaged. And I think that's been a huge factor in the reticence some have shown about wearing masks, social distancing, etc, because the *reality* of the virus, while *obviously* potentially deadly and very serious, has *not* matched the magnitude of the grim predictions that marked its arrival.

Hope that makes some kind of sense.

Makes no sense, in 2009 they has a Swine Flu Vaccine,which ameliorated much of the damage, there is no vaccine for Covid-19.

[Martin]

The 2009 Swine Flu pandemic claimed 289,000 lives. But there wasn't 1/100 or even 1/1000 the attention and action drawn to it that this has.

i'm with pete on this… you have to compare the 289k total swine flu pandemic deaths with the current global count of covid-19 at 370k... and it hasn't run its course yet.

[dankrutka]

I'm not saying we shouldn't be careful, shouldn't exercise precautions, but...

I'll just point out that you actually agreed with my post. All I stated is that we need to be careful and smart about how we proceed in re-opening schools, businesses, etc. There is no such thing as returning to normal until there's a vaccine that is widely distributed. With thoughtfulness and planning, we can find a forward without unnecessarily risking lives.

The rest of your post about the swine flu (and modeling) aren't really pertinent to my post and others have addressed that comparison.

[SoonerDave]

i'm with pete on this… you have to compare the 289k total swine flu pandemic deaths with the current global count of covid-19 at 370k... and it hasn't run its course yet.

That's a fair criticism. Improper comparison on my part.

[catcherinthewry]

That's a fair criticism. Improper comparison on my part.

Thanks, Dave. There are some on this board that couldn't admit that. I appreciate it.