“they’re saying only 1% of people die of covid so why are you worried?” ok then. not looking at any sources, let’s go off that statistic for this post. note: we’ve lost over a million people and counting in the united states alone.

i’ve seen some estimates saying 10%-30% of people end up with continuing symptoms (fatigue, brain fog, etc) after the end of infection, which could mean tens of millions of people. however, if even only 2% had persisting symptoms and we go by that 1% death statistic, that could be 2 million people living with some form of long covid impacting their daily life.

don’t wanna listen about covid? ok, let’s compare it to another disease known for its lasting symptoms and its “long” form: polio.

polio could be asymptomatic, but symptoms presented as flu-like if there were any. all things considered, paralysis was rare in comparison to infection numbers. i’ve seen a lot of polio statistics, and some say only 1 in 1,000 (0.1%) polio cases resulted in paralysis, though this seems like a rough average between the three variants. still, there were tens of thousands of cases of poliomyelitis paralysis. 1952 alone had over 20,000 paralysis cases reported, and that’s one year of many polio outbreaks (the most well known u.s. outbreak was 1948/49-1952).

just because a percentage seems low does not mean the damage is minuscule. be knowledgeable about how information is being presented to you and what the actual impacts are. small numbers do not equal little harm.

(Hey! I'm from South America too! Yayyyy!) What if Jumin got stucked quarantined with MC on her parents house and she got a cold (no covid symptoms) and MC's parents were the overbearing nosy type (you know, latino parents 😂)? Would Jumin side with them and their home remedies? What to do when you can't make use of all your money instead😱? Lol! Thanks! 🤡

I’m a simple girl, I see a request for a latina MC and I write it down <3 So yaaaay! So nice to have you reading my blog~ I had SO MUCH FUN writing these headcanons! I tried to make MC’s parents feel as a couple of VERY latino parents without falling into stereotypes and I think I got it. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it <3

important note: even if this is set in the current pandemic, it’s very light and fun, so have no worries! <3 and there are no mentions of the virus, so nobody feels triggered ~

.❀。• *₊°。 ❀°。 .❀。• *₊°。 ❀°。 .❀。• *₊°。 ❀°。 .❀。• *₊°。

Listen, Jumin is a man of SCIENCE. He may not understand it completely but this man is a very preoccupied caretaker when it comes to MC getting sick. He has a personal doctor that will come at any hour to the penthouse and do a check up even if all she has is the stomach flu.

MC isn’t used to that, but he lets her husband take care of her. It feels nice to see how much Jumin cares about her well-being.

They were visiting her parents in South America, whom they hadn’t seen since the wedding. Jumin hadn’t really been to MC’s hometown before, so he was looking forward doing some sightseeing, tourism and trying new commoner foods he just had to try, as MC said. He didn’t know what the big deal was about this salchipapa, it was just fried sausage and french fries, but MC was really excited about taking him to a food truck and making him have a bite of everything.

But the pandemic started.

At first, MC was sad about they not being able to do any kind of tourism while on her country, as she was looking forward teaching Jumin about her culture. They planned to stay in a hotel, but MC’s parents insisted they both stayed with them to save money and also have their daughter close. Considering it would be a good idea to take care of her folks in that situation, they agreed.

Everyone had agreed to speak English in the house as he didn’t understand Spanish quite well yet and MC’s parents didn’t understand Korean at all.

Jumin didn’t understand latino parents.

And no, he didn’t mean in in a bad way. He knew how much MC loved her parents and it was obvious they loved her too, but the amount of boundaries they had broken and how unphased MC seemed was really confusing.

For starters, her mom would randomly knock their bedroom door and bring them both a warm drink made of oatmeal and apples. It’s sweet, warm and suddenly he’s not feeling cold anymore.

“What’s this called, my love?” “Quaker.” “Yeah, that’s the brand of the oatmeal but what’s the drink called.” “…Quaker” “That’s what you call it?” “…Apple quaker?”

Another day, he was reading on his Kindle in the living room, when MC’s mother approached him, asking him what he wished to have for dinner, as everyone had already had their favourite dish in the week. He was startled and didn’t feel comfortable saying he liked steak or any other dish he actually liked, considering he knew MC’s parents weren’t wealthy enough to eat what he did on a daily basis.

Thankfully, MC saved him and told her mom she should prepare bisteck a lo pobre, and that he would probably like that.

“Bisteck?” “Yeah, beef steak.” “…But you said bisteck.” “It’s steak with fried egg and fried bananas and rice. It’s actually really good, trust me on this.”

Jumin also found out they ate rice with every dish. And he meant it. Every. Single. Dish.

Bisteck a lo pobre was really good though.

After lunch, the four of them would always stay on the table and chat a little. MC’s parents would take that chance to ask him about their lives in Korea, how were you adapting to a married life, if you were planning to have children soon, what funny stories he could them them about C&R etc. (spoiler: he didn’t think there were funny stories happening in C&R) 

They also liked to tell him embarrassing stories about MC’s time in highschool, which made her blush deep red, even though he found those stories endearing.

He liked to see them taking care of you both, but couldn’t help but compare it to his relationship with his own father, who loved him as well but wasn’t as warm and… interested with his relationship as MC’s parents were. It was nice, but really new for him.

Three weeks into the confinement, MC came down with the flu.

Jumin asked MC’s father what was their number of their personal physician. He answered they didn’t have one, they just went to the hospital whenever someone was ill.

Jumin: ????

Since it was only the flu and nothing else to worry about (Jumin had ended up calling a private laboratory to test MC and she was negative), all they had to do was wait for her symptoms to go away. Jumin suggested they call a pharmacy and buy some pills, but MC’s mother called nonsense. There was no need for ingesting so many chemicals.

Jumin: ?????????????????

He was reading to MC in their bedroom, trying to get her to relax, when her mom knocked the door. After MC asked her to come in, she entered the room, smiling softly at the newlyweds. 

“Baby, it's time for your inhalaciones de eucalipto" “Yes mom, let me just grab a towel"

As MC stood up, Jumin looked at her confused.

“A towel? In... all-- what?"

"Oh, steam inhalations. My mom puts some eucalipto leaves on a bowl with boiling water. I sit on the floor and cover myself and the bowl with a towel and breathe deep” she explained, as she took a towel from the closet.

“Like a sauna?”

“Yes! Just like that. Eucalipto helps with breathing”

Jumin never thought he would see her wife grab a bowl of boiling water with leaves, sit on the floor and cover herself with a towel but there she was. Giggling at her confusion, she invited him under the towel, saying there was no harm in him being with you there. He obliged to her request.

Ten seconds later, Jumin stood up, coughing, as he felt ice on his lungs.

“What was that plant?!” he asked in between coughs

“Sorry! I forgot my mom also put Vick Vaporub in it”

“YOU’RE BREATHING VICK VAPORUB?”

“IT’S FOR THE LUNGS”

The same night, you spiked a low fever. As Jumin changed again the wet cloth on your forehead, he heard your mother knocking on the door again. She showed MC a white bottle with a red cap and immediately he saw his wife’s eyes widening in horror.

“No” “But it’ really good for--” “No, no way” “But MC…” “Mom, I can’t stand thymoline…”

MC explained to Jumin it was usual for people in your country to soak the cloth in thymoline, since it supposedly helped lower the fever, but you couldn’t stand the smell. Seeing you mother insisted it was better than just water, he decided to check if it really had such a bad odor as MC said.

No, it didn’t.

It was worse.

The next day, the fever was gone, but MC still had a runny nose. For breakfast, her mother replaced quaker with a suspiciously good smelling tea. And he was a sucker for new tea.

“What’s in there, dear?” he asked

“Hmmm, what was in it, mom?” MC asked, redirecting the question to her mother.

“Borraja, escorzonera, eucalipto, menta and muña” she explained.

“Ah, Eucalipto. The one you used for the sauna” he remembered.

“Yes, that one. Would you like a cup too? It could help you prevent from getting the flu too” MC’s mom offered.

Jumin looked at MC, doubtful

“It doesn’t have Vaporub, right?”

“It doesn’t” MC giggled. “This one tastes actually good”

“Yes, thank you.”

When MC was about to take a sip, her father cleared his throat, looking at her with a raised eyebrow.

“What do we say before taking medicine?” he asked

“En nombre de Dios” MC sighed, and took her first sip. She then looked at Jumin and explained to him. “En nombre de Dios. In the name of God. Dad and mom always told me I should say that so the medicine works”

“Weren’t you an atheist?” Jumin asked. He couldn’t barely finish his question before MC began coughing loudly, gaining her folks attention. Once she regained her breath, she shot him a warning glare.

“Don’t say that in front of them!” she whispered. “They hate it when I say that. They think you made me convert back to christianity so let’s keep it like that”.

The symptoms disappeared in the course of three days with MC’s mom’s herbal remedies. Even if he couldn’t understand how MC could breathe Vick, he really enjoyed the tea her mom made for them both.

Jumin felt at ease chatting with her father or trying out new teas her mother made for him. He found out he didn’t have so hard to get along with them, as they were also welcoming him into their family.

Even if it was still new for him to see parents as invested in their daughter’s life as hers, he could see where did MC learn to be warm and caring as she was with him. Someday, he decided, he would go back again with his wife to do the tourism they couldn’t do this time and bring back as many of her mother’s herbal teas as he could.

Heartbeat - Chapter Two

Warnings: COVID-19, Croatoan, Fluff, quarantine, Mentions of fever, coughing, (Each chapter will have additional warnings).

Summary: Sam, Dean, and Y/N are sheltering in place at the Bunker, researching this new virus that has created a world pandemic. But what happens when one of your own is immune compromised?

Pairing: Dean x Reader

Word Count: 1850

Beta’d by: @amanda-teaches​ because she’s the best

A/N: I’M BAAAAACCKKKK, well, mostly :) I know I’m not the only one struggling with life right now, and writing has been hard. Thank you all for sticking it out until I was able to get something together for you guys. This is only temporary and will pass. Keep your chin up and try on your jeans every few days.

Heartbeat Masterlist

Like Dean’s scent? Buy it here from @scentsfromthebunker!

Previously…

“Sam, I’m sure you both took the necessary precautions. Dean’s a germaphobe by nature so I’m sure he is out there now, sanitizing his Baby already. He wore a mask, didn’t he? And gloves?” 

“He sure did. Got some strange looks and things got a little dicey at the liquor store, and the drugstore. I don’t know why people are still hoarding toilet paper and feminine hygiene products,” Sam said, a look of disbelief on his face. 

“It’s actually a psychological response to minimize risk. It’s an emotional contagion as well, so when it starts happening in one part of the country, that news spreads and it drives people, either by fear, anxiety, or panic, into doing the same thing. I get the toilet paper, since that is a need everyone has, but tampons, really? I don’t know why I’m surprised by anything at this point,” Y/N chuckled a bit as she reached for one of the bags to help Sam. 

“No!” Sam pulled the bags back from her. “Sorry. It’s just, um, can you please go wait in the library until I get all of this unpacked and sanitized? Please?”

“Yes, I can. Thank you, Sam. I appreciate you and am thankful for your concern,” Y/N smiled as she rose to her feet and made her way down the hall. She loved Sam as more than just a brother and her best friend. He had become her physical therapist of sorts, designing different workouts for her to keep her body strong when the MS wanted to take it from her. Sam had also done extensive research on different dietary and nutrition plans that people with MS have had success with combating their symptoms. Dean was her emotional rock, while Sam became the physical one. She lowered herself into one of the recliners and picked up a book. She’d had enough research for the day and some Harry Potter was what she needed to take her mind off things.

Now…

“Hey, honey, wake up,” Dean whispered, his breath fanning across her face as she stirred. 

“Hi,” she smiled, stretching. “Did I fall asleep again? What time is it?” 

“Yeah, you did,” Dean affirmed. “It’s just before six and dinner is almost ready. You hungry?” 

“Starving!” Y/N said, getting to her feet and wrapping her husband in her arms. “You okay?” 

“Yeah, yeah. Just, it’s crazy out there and I’ve never seen anything like this before. Not even with the Croatoan virus back in oh six. That was small beans compared to the shit that is going on out there. We need to be even more careful than ever before. You can’t afford to get sick, honey. And I can’t afford to lose you,” Dean admitted. 

“You and Sam are taking all the necessary precautions to make sure that doesn’t happen. I trust you both with my life,” Y/N leaned up, sliding her lips gently over Dean’s. 

“I talked to your dad today. He is on his way to Rufus’ old cabin in Whitefish. He wanted to come home, but,” Dean paused, not sure how to tell his wife that her dad can’t be there right now. 

“I know, baby. And, he knows, too. I’ll call him later, let him know I’m okay,” Y/N nodded. “Let’s eat.” 

Over the next several days, the news reports were filled with more cases, more bodies. The National Guard was being mobilized in New York and Milwaukee, among other cities. Hotels, motels, and college dormitories were being converted into quarantine facilities as the virus continued to spread, despite the recommendations of federal and local government. Social distancing, shelter in place, and flatten the curve were terms used so many times in too many reports. 

“So get this. You know how Chuck’s been throwing this temper tantrum? Destroying all the other worlds he created? What if, and this is going to sound a little out there, even for us, but what if, this is Chuck’s plan for our world? He knows he’ll never get the ending he wants, Dean and I killing each other. So, he’s decided to spread this virus, create a pandemic and kill off humanity?” Sam proposed. He leaned back in his chair looking between Dean and Y/N. 

“Why wouldn’t he just snap his fingers and Earth go boom?” Dean asked. 

“Because it’s too easy and frankly, it lacks the drama he’s looking for. If he snaps his fingers, who is going to be here to care? If this is his plan, killing off humanity slowly, then it’s all over the news. People are fascinated by tragedy, driven by it, and he gets the audience he craves,” Sam shrugged. 

“So how do we stop him?” Dean pondered. 

Y/N shook her head, ridding it of the current conversation. She was going stir crazy. In the last week, Dean had cleaned every weapon in the armory and Baby. Sam had inventoried three storage rooms, even one he didn’t remember they had. She couldn’t look at another news report. 

“Dean, baby. I need to get out of the Bunker. Please,” Y/N begged him over coffee during the fourth week. “I’ve been cooped up here for weeks. I need to see the sunshine, feel the wind on my face.” 

“Y/N, honey, it’s not safe out there,” Dean shook his head. “I can’t let anything happen to you. You’re my world.” 

“Dean, I know. And I’m not asking you to take me to the store, or anything crazy. What if we just take a drive? I can see the sun, feel the wind. Just you, me, and the open road?” Y/N was practically purring in his ear. 

“No more than an hour, and I mean it, Missy,” Dean stood, pointing his finger in her direction. 

In less than ten minutes, they were in the car and headed down the dirt road leading from the Bunker. It was a beautiful, warm spring day and Y/N could already see the fields blooming with wild flowers as Dean sped past them. Placing her hand in his as he drove, she slid across the bench seat and smiled. This was exactly what she needed. Y/N was happy for the first time in weeks. 

If anything, Dean was a man of his word and just over an hour later, he pulled Baby back into the garage. As he helped her out of the car, handing over her cane, he pecked her on the lips. “Feel better?”

“My cup runneth over, my love. Now, it’s naptime,” she announced, climbing the small set of steps with some difficulty as tremors overtook her lower extremities, and she lost her footing. 

“Hey, hey, I got you, honey,” Dean said, scooping her up in his arms and carrying her down the hall to their room. He laid her gently on the bed before he sat beside her. “Are they getting worse?”

“Not worse, not better, just…there.” She closed her eyes, fatigued from the fresh air. “Would you get me some water please?” 

“Of course, you need to take your meds anyway. I’ll be right back, don’t run away on me now,” Dean joked as he rose. He rushed down to the kitchen for a bottle of water. By the time he returned to the bedroom, Y/N was asleep. He hated to wake her, but he knew how bad things could get if she missed a dose. With water and pills in hand, Dean roused her gently. “Honey, I need you to take these, ‘kay?”

“Right, okay. I fell asleep, didn’t I?” Y/N said sheepishly, pulling herself up enough to accept the water and pills from her husband. 

“Yeah, must’ve been all that fresh air,” Dean waited until she swallowed her meds, then put the cover back on the water, placing it on the nightstand for her. “Get some rest, I’ll start dinner.” He kissed her softly, pulling the blankets over her. 

Dean closed the door softly behind him, and headed for the kitchen, trying to decide what was on the menu. “What’s for dinner, Sammy?” He asked his brother seated at the table. 

“It’s a nice day, maybe we could grill up some chicken breasts. Chicken pesto linguine?” Sam suggested, raising his eyebrows. 

“Yeah, that sounds good,” Dean agreed, pulling out the ingredients for the pesto. “Y/N seem off to you?” 

“I think we’re all a little off right now, man. This thing, it has lower mortality rates than the seasonal flu, from all the reports that I’ve read, but it spreads like wildfire. The world hasn’t seen anything like this since the Spanish flu, in like 1919. But, exactly what do you mean, ‘a little off’?” Sam rambled. 

“We went for a drive today, just an hour, to get her out of the house, but she was asleep by the time I got her pills, and it seems like the tremors in her legs are getting worse. When I asked her about them, she just brushed it off.” Dean shook his head. “We’ve got to be more careful, man. I can’t lose her, Sammy.” 

“And, you’re not going to, Dean. She’s strong, stronger than the MS, stronger than this virus, whatever it is. I’ll figure it out. It screams demons, just like Croatoan back in 2006,” Sam tried his best to reassure his brother. 

“Yeah, but no one is going batshit crazy this time, with the exception of the hoarding.” 

“I’m still looking into it. I’ve got several other hunters on it, too. We’ll figure it out. In the meantime, I’ll do the supply runs on my own. You don’t need to be exposing yourself or Y/N,” Sam decided. 

“Thanks, Sammy. We appreciate that,” Dean said, returning to the sauce. 

~*~

“Hey, honey. It’s time to wake up,” Dean whispered, peppering her face with soft kisses, making her squirm. “Dinner’s ready.” 

“Five more minutes,” she mumbled, snuggling deeper into her pillow, but the pillow was not as soft as she remembered. She lifted her head, opening one eye to discover she was sleeping on top of him. “You were not here when I fell asleep. Oh crap! How long have I been sleeping?” 

“Just a few hours, but dinner is ready, then I’ll fix you a bath, and tonight is your turn to pick the movie.” Dean slowly sat up, bringing her with him. “How does that sound?” 

“Relaxing,” she yawned. 

Dean helped Y/N to her feet, grabbing her cane for her, since she hated being carried as a general rule. “Let’s eat.” 

“I didn’t realize how hungry I was,” Y/N said as she sat down. Dean took his seat next to her as the three of them dished up their plates. “This smells amazing.” 

“Sammy’s idea, honey. I’m just the cook,” Dean chuckled, passing the pasta. 

They ate in comfortable silence for a few minutes, everyone enjoying their meal. “Dean, baby, this is phenomenal. It’s nice to know if we rid the world of all the monsters, you have a fall back career as a chef,” Y/N teased her husband, Sam laughing along with her. She started coughing and reached out for her water. 

“Hey, you okay?” Dean watched with concern. 

“Yes, just a little coughing fit, triggered by the giggles,” Y/N said. 

“Yeah, yeah, chuckle heads. Now eat up,” Dean groaned, but his worries didn’t fade. 

“Honey, you’re warm. You feeling okay?” Dean voiced his concern as they settled into bed a few hours later. 

“Yes, babe. I’m just tired,” Y/N yawned, almost as if to prove her point. 

“We’re taking your temperature,” Dean said, getting out of bed to get the thermometer. 

“Dean, I think you’re overreacting a bit. I’m probably just still warm from our bath,” Y/N reasoned, but he wasn’t having any of it. 

“It’s just a precaution, honey. I’m sure it’s nothing, but this virus is not like others. It moves quickly and it’s lethal.” He took a seat next to her and shoved the thermometer in her mouth before she could protest again. When the beep sounded, he removed it and checked the digital readout. “It’s 99.5, low grade. But I’m still keeping an eye on it, and you.” 

“I’d expect nothing less,” Y/N yawned once more and rolled over, her eyes closing instantly. “Love you.” 

“I love you, too, Y/N,” Dean echoed, crawling in beside her and pulling the blanket up to cover them both. He pulled her small frame into him, wanting, needing to keep her closer than usual. 

Sleep did not come easily for Dean that night; he was worried about Y/N. Since she returned to his life, his nightmares and insomnia were few and far between, but as he lay next to her, his mind played out a thousand different scenarios where he couldn’t save her. He was hyper aware every time she moved, coughed, or even breathed heavily. He finally fell under, out of pure exhaustion, just before five in the morning, only to be plagued with nightmares of the same. 

Did you like it? The nicest thing you can do for a writer is reblog their work and tell them, and others, how much you like it!

The Whole Enchilada: @iwantthedean​​ @dolphincliffs​​ @mrswhozeewhatsis​​ @meganwinchester1999​​ @cherrycokegirls1​​ @closetspngirl​​  @roxyspearing​​ @flamencodiva​​ @blacktithe7​​ @sis-tafics​​ @just-another-busyfangirl @evansrogerskitten​​ @amanda-teaches​​ @hannahindie​​ @wotinspntarnation​​ @winchesterprincessbride​​ @winecatsandpizza​​ @kickingitwithkirk​​  @wi-deangirl77​​ @hobby27​​ @mogaruke​​ @gh0stgurl​​ @alleiradayne​​ @idreamofplaid​​ @seenashwrite​​ @manawhaat​​ @crashdevlin​​ @thoughtslikeaminefield​​ @emoryhemsworth​​ 

The Dean’s List: @jerkbitchidjitassbutt​​ @dean-winchesters-bacon​​ @maddiepants​​  @adoptdontshoppets​​ @supernatural-jackles​​ @fandom-princess-forevermore​​ @akshi8278​​ @thing-you-do-with-that-thing​​

Heartbeat: @idksupernatural​ @imaginationisgrowth​ @gabrielslittleangel​

My Covid Story

Apologies for any spelling errors, I’m on a time crunch. I’m a few hours out from leaving for my first flight since July 2019 (and before that, March 2018). Heading out to Sydney, I’m a mix of anxiety and absolute excitement. In January of this year, our sublet was almost up in Eltham and Cam and I had plans to pack up the car and begin doing workaways around Australia to help rebuild communities devastated by the historic wild fires (doesn’t that feel FOREVER ago?). When our sublet became available for a full lease transfer, we changed our minds to stay in our space, so that was the first instance of travel being knocked out of the picture. Then we had Valentine’s weekend open to go visit some friends in Tasmania, so we booked tickets and upon waiting in the airport, our flights were cancelled due to inclement weather. DAMN.  Mid-march came around and it was Cam’s birthday, so we wanted to get out for a weekend of camping in our big bell tent, find a gorgeous spot in the woods out east near Warburton. When we arrived, every camping spot for an hour’s dive any direction was either full or completely not open at all. We picked a spot off a random road and spent one night there, but some rangers came by and said we couldn’t stay there due to the possible danger of logging trucks not seeing us. So that was a bust.

Then as you’re aware, this time frame leads up to the very tumultuous third week of March when Melbourne officially went into its first lockdown due to COVID. I documented this time in journal entries which I will add at the end, but ultimately the lockdown went until June, and the state reopened too quickly/had a fiasco with quarantined cases getting out of a hotel, thus sparking the second wave. We had flights booked to California for June to see my family and then planned to travel around Mexico for a few months, but that dream was quickly squashed when flights out of Melbourne ceased to exist at all. Months later, I had a flight booked in July to go to Sydney where I was to have my eggs extracted for donation. The day before I was to fly out, second lockdown went into effect and the flight was cancelled (thus forcing me to have the procedure done in Melbourne and cause a huge, historic controversy between Melbourne IVF’s CEO and the medical director of IVF Australia about how to transfer frozen eggs over a closed border!).

I’m struggling to comprehend just how important and meaningful my ability to travel today is. To think back to the first time in history, watching borders around the world close, flights become grounded, and witnessing a global pandemic unfold whilst in a foreign country—I remember thinking at the beginning how unfathomable the scale of it was. When people talk about things not seeming real or like it’s a dream you can’t wake up from, that’s exactly how it felt. I questioned whether I needed to go back to the U.S. in fear I might not see my family for years or be with them if they got fatally ill. Would I be able to even go back if that happened let alone would I be able to re-enter AU (the answer was no). And thank god I didn’t go back considering the absolute cluster fuck of a mess Trump made of the pandemic. But also, thank god my family has been healthy and safe. The level of fear for their safety was at an all-time high as civil tensions grew when the riots around the country kicked off in conjunction with the pandemic. I wrote to all of them to have a plan to escape to Mexico and get their passports if Trump won the re-election. This was a genuine fear I’ve never experienced before.

The level of frustration, depression, anxiety, hopelessness, self-hatred for lack of productivity during lockdown, and uncertainty about so many facets of life weighed down on me during this time. But I know how much worse our time could have been. I was immensely grateful for the fact that we had a home and incredibly gracious landlords who were human and understood the financial difficulties of this unprecedented time when so many became homeless as job loss skyrocketed. We were so fortunate that I was able to continue working even 2 days a week through the lockdown as a barista and Cam was able to get government support for six months as a NZ citizen who lived in AU over 10 years when so many other New Zealanders were forced to return to their country because of the time limit stipulation for support. We only had two family members contract Covid and were young and healthy enough to survive when so many families will be without a member at the holidays this year.

And I acknowledge my privilege in that my identity is so closely entwined with the ability to travel, that while it felt suffocating to not even have the choice to travel anywhere outside of a 5km (3mile) zone, I fully empathize with those in parts of the world where they could not walk more than 50 meters from their front door or people who didn’t have windows/balconies in apartment buildings who were going out of their mind. All of that does not diminish the struggles I faced with not being able to travel, but it does always keep my perspective in check. My trip today signifies how a city and a country came together during the most difficult period of our lifetime, followed strict government guidelines, and came out after 120+ days in full lockdown on the other side of a pandemic, now able to cross state borders without isolation or quarantine. To go to a live music show,  have drinks on rooftop bars, walk around outside without a mask on, and see people going about their daily lives again on public transport and see a city bustling with energy—the months of mental hardship and growth was all to get back to a post-Covid world. Even though a vaccine is not out yet and we need to be cautious, the level of hopelessness has diminished significantly, and I’m not terrified my trip might be cancelled in two hours. I’m actually going this time!

There is also a whole other facet to my time in lockdown and that of course is the personal development and mutual growth in my marriage! That’s a whole separate post though which I hope to get out soonish. But here’s a bit of something I started a few months ago. Enjoy.

 ********

I remember when it first started in the news; like a minor blip of a story flashing at the bottom of the screen: some mutant virus had infected a couple dozen people in some random city in China. I was working solo in a café serving the employees of a major shoe distribution company in the warehouse district of Collingwood, Melbourne. The TV was on in the cafe but muted the first few weeks of January as the main stories were about the most devastating wildfires in the history of the world, and we all just felt a communal helplessness. As the numbers grew in China and the story became a daily headline, the first case was announced in Queensland on January 25th. Everyone stuck around a few minutes longer each day after they were handed their coffee. I think back to the moment when Wuhan, the epicenter at the time, reported 1,500 cases and I thought surely there can’t be much more than that. This is just media sensationalizing something small. This whole story will blow over in another week or two.

If only.

It was summer in Australia, and my husband and I were planning what to do after our sublease was up in mid-March. I commuted daily from a suburb 50 minutes north called Eltham, a creative and eco-friendly heritage town. We lived in a triplex made of adobe mudbrick, surrounded by native forest, a communal garden, and enjoyed huge artisan windows that brought in natural filtered light through the towering trees. Our little studio was a quiet haven away from the chaos and constant flurry of people in Melbourne, especially during summer as it brought travelers from every corner of the globe. There was no way we could have possibly known that this little paradise would feel like a prison after six months in the world’s longest lockdown due to a global pandemic caused by that little virus in some random city in China now known worldwide as COVID-19.

As the weeks passed by in February, more and more countries began reporting cases. I did not understand how pandemics worked as the last one I was alive for and could remember was H1N1 in California, and I was about 17—far too consumed with college applications and boys to think about world affairs. The Spanish Flu was never something that was particularly emphasized in our history classes, so it didn’t even occur to me to compare what was happening now to that point in time. Then again, this was incomparable because in 1912, the world was a less globalized economy and there were no commercial flights transporting thousands of passengers across the globe daily. By the first week of March, my daily rush-hour commutes became the first real difference I noticed. The number of morning passengers on the train platforms dwindled from 50 to 25 to 5, and eventually, to just me. As the train stopped at over 30 stops from where I lived to the city, my carriage wasn’t even remotely full at 7 a.m.

There was less foot traffic in the city. Flinders Street Station, one of the two largest hubs that saw thousands of people daily, was eerily quiet and empty. We were two weeks out from leaving Melbourne to go travel, planning to go to New South Wales, AU to help rebuild communities that were ravaged by the bushfires. I was desperate to travel this year, and we were so close to leaving. I had picked up some other barista work in an advertising agency closer to the city. But day by day, office workers were being told to work from home if they were able to. Hand sanitizer became readily available in the café, bathrooms, and around the office. I remember staring out the window of this high rise building that overlooked the lush green stretch of Albert Park and thinking it looks so normal outside. Every day, I looked at the news in Australia, which I had never really done before. Industries were shutting down, and the panic was setting in for thousands of casual workers in the hospitality industry as it was only a matter of time before we would be shut down too.

Melbourne is a cultural hub filled with travelers who typically come here on a Work and Holiday Visa which gives them 1-2 years to work and live in AU. Most find work in hospitality as there are over 40,000 restaurants and cafes in this region. You couldn’t go a single day without meeting someone from another country which is why I fell in love with this city. I worked as a freelance barista through agencies that called for workers to be able to step in if someone called out sick or quit unexpectedly and they found themselves short. But my agencies had gone completely silent in the week leading up to the industry shutting down. There was no more work and travelers were finding themselves stranded. I journaled daily in the lead up to my final day of work in the city as I knew something big was happening, and I wanted to be able to recall when it all began. I also knew we would not be travelling anytime soon, around Australia or otherwise, when national and international borders began closing around the world.

 March 17th, 2020

All that’s being talked about is COVID-19. Entire countries are closing borders and going into complete lockdown. Italy has been inundated with patients in hospitals and now have to choose who lives and who dies. AU isn’t taking nearly as intense of measures, but the general atmosphere is not normal. All events with over 500 people have been cancelled. Those who have traveled anywhere must self-quarantine for 14 days or face a huge fine. Some people still don’t take it seriously, thinking/acting like it’s just a normal flu when in reality its ability to be passed on and even re-infect someone a second time is much higher than the rate of a simple flu. In the states, my family says all the restaurants and schools have closed, even the Hollywood entertainment industry has closed down. So many independent contractors, myself included, are without means to live because there’s no emergency government funding in place. It shows what’s truly flawed with the system. Luckily Cam has full time work still, but for those people who have kids and no daycare options? No partner or family? Those who are traveling and can’t get back home? This is devastating for all of us, but them in particular. Supposedly, there are rumors that the virus dies with the warm weather, but AU is headed into winter. It could be why the virus isn’t as big in places like South America and Africa (*note* countries from these two continents are now in the top 10 most infected places as of September 2020) Europe is completely shut down as is New Zealand. I have flights to California in June, so I’m hoping I can still go. For how weak my immune system is, I’m surprised I’m not more concerned because I’ve been continuously reassured the virus only attacks those with underlying conditions, mainly in the elderly population. Even in calm, tight-knitted communities like ours in Eltham, we’re seeing the best and worst of humanity come out with people hoarding resources, but also there are those offering rides for people to stores or grocery drop offs to their homes. I’m very interested to see how the next three months progress all around the world. Right about now, it’d be nice to hide away in a beachside house in Mexico. (*Mexico is also among the top 10 most infected countries now*)

March18th, 2020

The government should announce today whether hospitality industry will close, potentially putting Cam and I both out of jobs. Luckily our landlord is being highly accommodating. Trump is giving Americans $1,200 and has postponed tax season by 3 months. Only seems he does something decent when it’s to keep the economy from tanking and his money is protected.

Cam and I both have throat annoyances and headaches. We should try to stay home, but can’t afford it. Today, they’ve dropped gatherings of 500 down to only 100 people, yet shopping centers and public transport remain open, which I would think are the riskiest places for transferring infections. It’s been stated this is a once in a decade event that will change the course of history.

 March 19th, 2020

Amidst all the chaos from morning to night, people are finally taking time to nurture their interests and creativity. I’m taking two courses on sustainable fashion and fashion in design. I’ve also applied to be a mentor for women trying to gain work and leadership experience at an NGO called Fitted for Work. They have stylists that help women to prepare business outfits and tailor their resumes/do mock interviews. I’ve looked into an MA program I’m interested in at Warren Wilson College back in North Carolina. I think looking forward is the only way to keep the fear down about how long these shut downs may last possibly through June. The world economy is going to see some extremely confronting realities it hasn’t seen since the Great Depression. For the moment I’m looking into teaching English online which I’m already certified to do, just to try and earn some money. I’ll be interested to see all the art that comes out of this period and the photojournalism that captures this historic time.

 March 21st, 2020

We went over to Williamstown (Cam’s parent’s house) as Cam had two shifts out that way. Restrictions in cafes are now 1 person per 4 square meters, so in the 100 person limit already imposed, it’s now down to 25. I’m nervous for Cam to keep working and going on public transport. It’s high risk and unethical in terms of coming in contact with people we could transmit it to without knowing (asymptomatic) because it takes 14 days to even show symptoms. We made the choice to start self-isolation come Monday as we can see in the next week or two the same spike will be here in Melbourne as we’ve seen in Italy and most likely soon to see in the U.S. Reading other peoples’ accounts about how they continued life as normal as though nothing had changed in Italy is exactly where AU is projected to head towards.

 March 25, 2020

As of Monday, AU took drastic measures to ensure safety and closed many non-essential businesses with a series of daily updates for more and more businesses to shut or only stay open for takeaway. Overnight, nearly 80,000 people in hospitality work were laid off or lost work, Cam and I included. A stimulus package of 66 billion dollars was announced and Cam qualified for government payments through Centrelink because he’s a kiwi who’s been here over 10 years. Other kiwis who haven’t been here that long are completely without any kind of support from the AU government, even though in NZ, Aussies are supported. A very backward, selfish system who told them to go home.

We went to Centrelink on Monday at 7:45am in Greensborough (suburb over from Eltham). By 8:30 am when the doors opened there were over 200 people in line. The government has been terribly confusing with their messages out to the public, highly unprepared. People are confused about what they can and can’t do, what businesses are remaining open, who is eligible… it’s a mess. Why are liquor stores and hair salons considered essential?? There have been spikes in young people getting this virus as young as 18, and they are dying. The virus coats your lungs like a jelly ultimately blocking oxygen. We did what is hopefully our last grocery shop because being in the store is just as contagious as a café. There’s no safety or hygiene measures in place. We had gloves on and people were dancing around each other in the aisles to maintain 1.5m social distance.

The U.S. is becoming the new epicenter with horrific rapid spreading, particularly in New York. Flight around the world, including as of today AU, are being stopped and we can no longer leave the country at all.

  To Be Continued…..

COVID-19 and the Epidemiology of Zoonotic Disease in Relationship to Modern Human Industry: Educated Guesses from an Amateur’s Brief Research

Wikipedia's basic description of the SARS-COV-2 says that while bats are the most likely natural reservoir, the genome of the virus as it exists in bats is just different enough from the human strain that there was probably an intermediate host between bats and humans. In other words, the virus probably did not come from people EATING bats, nor purchasing bats from the market, but perhaps it did come from going to the market to purchase bats for eating.

I find Wikipedia's explanation plausible because of an article I read on Chuangchn.org, which asserts that we get epidemics when an expansion of human activity into wild microbial reservoirs allows certain viruses to hit crowded populations with low immunity, be they livestock feedlots or slums full of severely stressed humans. Normally those reservoirs have buffers against infecting humans because of a great genetic variety among the wildlife, such that any one strain can only spread so far; as modern capitalism steadily reduces the size and genetic variety of wild populations, their attendant microbial parasites have fewer barriers against reaching humans.

So you get one virus running into, say, a vast pen of cattle, and as the cattle have no immunity, the virus faces very little selection pressure that would force a greater genetic variety. Instead the selection pressure is to spread as fast as possible, which means to grow as fast as possible, and the faster a virus grows, the more strain it places on the host, so within a short time the virus goes from benign to deadly.

And so you tend to get epidemics coming close on the heels of major capitalistic shifts in the concentration of living creatures. English outbreaks came in the era when they began to enclose their cattle in pens; the Spanish Flu started in the pigs of a Kansas stockyard shortly following the rise of American industrialized agriculture.

Admittedly these viral outbreaks can occur with direct human incursions into the wild, either by incorporating wild animals into modern markets or simply pushing industrialism into wild areas. Ebola seems to have appeared first in the 1970s with an English-owned cotton mill operation that planted itself in the central African jungle and occurred again every time that sort of industrialism increased its presence in the area. Likewise HIV is said to have come from humans eating "bushmeat", which is any manner of monkey meat, as if humans had not been doing such a thing before, so that they had no immunity to what they found within those animals -- maybe, then, they were going after bushmeat because their usual food sources were out of reach? Oh, wouldn't it be interesting if HIV and Ebola came from the same damn cotton mill!

This is not the case. According to the Chuangchn article, Ebola was first recorded in 1976 where the most common strain of HIV appears to come from early-20th-century Kinshasa, or should I say Leopoldville, the capital of the Belgian Congo and centerpoint for a great deal of environmental degradation and societal upheaval through modern capitalism. Bushmeat had been a common food source for a long time, with Simian Immunodefficiency Virus being endemic in wild primates. People used to catch SIV all the time. They resisted it well and fast enough that it could never spread from human to human. Then Leopoldville created a world where increased prostitution could spread syphilis more quickly, such that the ulcers which present the greatest danger of transferring SIV were all over the place, and SIV was now able to jump from one person to another fast enough to mutate into HIV.

Now as for Ebola and HIV, both of those diseases are more deadly than the diseases that seem to come from livestock concentration. One of them is a hundred percent fatal, the other fifty percent without treatment. Likewise the source of the Black Plague was Central or East Asian rodents moving into human agricultural areas due to climate change, and the disease itself appears to have an untreated mortality rate of thirty to sixty percent if bubonic, one hundred percent if pneumonic or Septicimic -- as if a wild microbe that hits human populations without an intermediary host is invariably more deadly than one that arises out of the intermediary host.

That's assuming the Plague hit humans directly through people eating gerbils in the manner of people eating Bushmeat to catch SIV, and that neither rats nor fleas were the intermediate host where the bacteria could go from benign to virulent. To compare the Black Plague to Ebola is also to conflate the behavior of viruses with bacteria. I do not know if they would react to certain selection pressure the same way.

All I know is that these microbes which become dangerous among crowded livestock seem to have a lower, or perhaps slower, mortality rate than the ones which develop from direct wild-to-human transfer. The zoonotic diseases that humans are supposed to have picked up from livestock at the beginning of human-animal domestication -- Tuberculosis, Smallpox, Cowpox, Glanders, Escheria Coli, and so forth -- generally have a much lower mortality rate than Ebola, with only Smallpox reaching the untreated mortality rate of the Black Plague --

In populations already exposed to the disease, at any rate. For virgin populations such as the entire Western Hemisphere circa 1492, the untreated mortality rate was something even Ebola could not match. It may simply be that the zoonotic diseases livestock herders are familiar with are less deadly because their most dangerous strains burned themselves out tens of thousands of years ago. In that sense, the only real difference between zoonotic diseases incubating in livestock and those hitting humans directly would be the novelty, where these wild diseases, being invariably new to us, have not yet burned through enough people to create a selection pressure towards less fatal strains.

One might argue that Rabies has been known for many thousands of years and remains as deadly as it ever was, and is a very good example of how dangerous a virus can be when it infects humans directly from the wild. But the fact that Rabies spreads though biting means that it's not viral in the same way as most other diseases. Despite the fact that the virus itself has an evolution rate similar to any other RNA virus, it doesn't have the transmission rate of most other RNA viruses, so I would expect that its effective rate of evolution is much too slow to force it into something less deadly.

In point of fact, of the seven major species in the Lyssavirus family, nearly all of them follow the same pattern as Rabies: bats as a wild reservoir, human transmission through biting, fatal if untreated, human transmission extremely rare. Only Mokola Virus is endemic in mammal populations like the Rabies we know, and then only in South Africa; as it has the possibility of being transferred by Mosquitoes, it may have a much shorter time scale for selection pressure than any other Lyssavirus and, as it happens, one of the two humans who contracted the disease recovered. Nor do the cats infected with Mokola Virus exhibit unprovoked aggression in the manner of Rabies. While all these strains appear to have evolved within the last 1500 years, only Mokola Virus appears to face enough selection pressure to evolve into a milder form. For the rest, they still run wild, and it will be a long, long time before they settle down.

Rabies remains deadly for being new in comparison to its evolutionary time scale, and HIV remains deadly for being new in relation to its own time scale, and Ebola remains deadly for being new in general, where livestock-zoonotic diseases have been facing more intense selection pressure for quite a while longer than these diseases direct from the wild. We're all virgin populations for Ebola, Rabies, and HIV like the Western Hemisphere was a virgin population for   Smallpox.  That's a more prosaic explanation for this discrepancy than some aspect of livestock that makes their epidemics less deadly...

Especially since James Gallagher at the BBC News says HIV is already adapting into a slightly less deadly form as it gets used to human immune systems.

And yet the initial outbreak of SARS in 2003 was entirely novel, it came from a wild vector and its case fatality rate was an average of nine percent. That looks like a case of a novel wild virus with direct transfer being much less than fatal. Palm Civets, there you go, there's the vector, right? Except that these palm civets were in the wild-animal MARKET, and the virus itself has a wild reservoir in bats, so if the civets were shoved in close together like any livestock then the disease would have developed within their population just the same as if they were all pigs. I can't say that SARS was a direct transfer from the wild.

As for this Novel Coronavirus...while Hubei does a lot of livestock operations but the pandemic has been traced to Wuhan's Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, which also sells lots and lots of wild animals, quite similar to the meat market in Guandong where the 2003 SARS came from. As I imagine it, the virus started from one bat, incubated among wild animals crowded together, and developed in just the same way as 2003 SARS.

The fact that the virus appears to have a low variability among known genomic sequences stands in marked contrast to HIV, which has a great deal of genetic variability in its many subtypes, and Ebola, which is an entire genus of viruses, as well as the aforementioned seven species of Lyssavirus, of which Rabies is but one part. It is as if this novel Coronavirus hit a crowded population just once and took off from there, facing, as I said, no selection pressure to force genetic variety, where viruses picked up directly from the wild have competed against their wild hosts a long time before ever reaching humans.

I imagine the scenario as follows:

1. A living landscape in its proper state has a great deal of genetic variety among its multicelled organisms.

2. This variety creates an evolutionary selection pressure in their attendant microbial populations, which means these microbial populations will have a degree of genetic diversity matching the macrobial popluation.

3. Humans pushing their industry into these areas for the first time reduce the genetic diversity of the area, thereby reducing the diversity of immune responses, and letting certain microbes spread farther.

4. At the same time, humans pushing industry into these areas are coming across populations of wild microbes that still have a high degree of genetic diversity.

5. Humans doing the grunt work in this industrial push have many opportunities for contact with this population of wild microbes through direct contact with wild animals.

6. Wild microbes enter the human population with multiple strains, be they subtypes or whole species, where a wild microbe hitting a stockyard first would be only one or a very few strains.

7. Having a high degree of genetic variety from the start, they have much more chance to compete against human immune systems than the intermediary-incubated epidemics, so they are invariably more damaging to their human host.

8. By the same token, they cannot be endemic among human populations like the diseases that grew out of microbes hitting livestock operations, because as they have survived within wild macrobial populations that resist them well, they are optimized for surviving within a host and against virulence. Their methods of human-to-human transfer, be it saliva, sexual intercourse, or skin contact, have a low rate of success compared to the livestock-incubated diseases.

See for example Leprosy, which appears to have a wild reservoir in Red Squirrels, does terrible things to its victims, and...is not very contagious between humans.

The existence of Cholera complicates this picture because it is an incredibly deadly disease like Ebola, and it seems to be endemic to human populations, in contrast to Ebola which disappears until industry expands into the jungle again. And it is extremely virulent, without having a stealthy effect on humans. How does Cholera win the epidemic jackpot? By having its wild microbial reservoir in water. Water contaminated with fecal matter causes zooplankton to pick up the bacteria; oysters then eat the zooplankton; humans eat the oysters, and get sick; suddenly they’re contaminating the water with their own fecal matter and the disease is living free in the local water for a while, and everyone else gets it.  Cholera is unusual for having a wild reservoir that is invariably close to human habitation, such that it remains endemic without becoming any less wild. Let us say, then, that Cholera is not endemic to humans, but is endemic to a source so close to them that it might as well be. It comes in waves, because it comes on the waves.

Perhaps not so unusual. There is a land-based wild reservoir that resembles that of Cholera. Once upon a time, there was once another extremely virulent and deadly disease in the manner of Cholera, called the English Sweating Sickness. It killed its victims in the space of hours, and had outbreaks from 1485 to 1551. The most likely source was a strain of Hantavirus with a wild reservoir in rodents. Like the schools of wild fish, its reservoir was constantly interacting with human populations, as rodents broke into human food stores. English Sweating Sickness has never been seen again, but Hantaviruses remain quite dangerous, enough so that a discovery of mouse droppings in a human space demands immediate and thorough cleanup.

I find it telling that the aforementioned article mentions this English Sweating Sickness coming in a time of agricultural and social upheaval. I also find it telling that Wikipedia attributes the first major recorded Cholera epidemic to increased commerce, pilgrimage and migration. Just like folks in China hitting the SARS viruses, eh? Wuhan’s meat market has a bunch of wild animals to sell because people are running into them more, as they push capitalist industry further into wild spaces. So those wild microbes hit populations that are tailor-made for turning a virus into an epidemic. These wild reservoirs are somewhat dangerous on their own, as Rabies and Lyme Disease will tell. You can walk in the forest without fear of breathing them in, as long as you avoid getting bit by anything. But to destroy their habitats, to reduce the genetic diversity of those places, so that there's less buffer between the viruses and us, just for the sake of making more money faster, well...that’s when these critters get into our lungs.

It’s the interface of an increase in Intensive Industrialism with Wilderness that does the trick.

As I live in the Northeast United States, in the foothills of the northern Appalachian Mountains, I and all my friends deal with this every damn summer when we have to worry about Deer Ticks. Those didn’t become a problem until people shoved their big suburban houses up against the woods just as they were coming back, and in the new forest with new deer populations there were no wolves, so there’s deer everywhere and there are deer ticks everywhere. Lyme Disease gets into a person and it never goes away on its own, but gums up your joints and wears you down over the years if left untreated. Call it the AIDS of New England. Human immune systems can’t handle AIDS nor Lyme Disease, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Lyme Disease is yet another virus direct from the woods.

Supposedly Poison Ivy comes from the same issue, for as people shove their houses up against the woods they create more of the edge-forest area where Poison Ivy thrives.

It’s that edge that does it. The edge between Industry and Wilderness, that’s where the world boils and roils and spits out hot stuff like someone put too much oil in the fry pan. Edge environments always have the most activity in the first place even if they’re All Natural. Continental shelves, forest edges, river banks, lake shores, swamps, salt marshes, whatever the biologists will call an Ecotone. That’s where the living world boils and roils, as the creatures of one biome meet another. If Intense Human Industry barges into the place and smashes it up without an ounce of caution -- well, the results are like someone smashing a fist into a frypan of simmering oil.

“That’s what you get for messing with the Wilderness!” cry the Eco-facists and all the folks who think humans are a disease upon the earth. “Mother Gaia takes her revenge! So there!”

And there I come to the one part of Chuangchn’s article that I really disagree with. The author thinks that we’re Losing The Wilderness. But I don’t think we’ve ever really had any. Not Wilderness with a capital W, at any rate. Humans have been significant shapers of the living landscape for tens of thousands of years. Our species has been fairly well integrated with the world and highly influential, a lot like beavers making ponds all across northeast North America. In the same time period as beavers, humans were setting enough small fires in the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico to be a bigger factor for forest fires than the climate was. Likewise the Amazon Rainforest that we think of being a Pristine Landscape Untouched By The Hand Of Man was actually shaped by centuries of human activity. Humans made all the terra preta that you can find throughout the rainforest. Hard to believe that they could make fertile soil without livestock! I will leave you to guess of where that manure came from.

Indeed, to speak of "wilderness" implies that we are separate from the world, and it is this mindset that leads us to set aside certain areas as Natural Pristine Beauty and then pave over everything around them. Both lands are thus diminished by the desire for Purity. If we were willing to incorporate the rest of living world, letting it live and grow with our influence but not our destruction, as once we used to, such that the genetic variety of the world was not reduced -- perhaps then we would not have these epidemics after all. It is not that we need to Preserve The Wilderness so much as we need to become part of the world again.

As it is, capitalism prefers that this does not happen, because it means a slower increase in personal wealth for the select people holding all the money. Capitalism does not live and let live. It cannot. The system wants more, more, more, faster and faster. To clarify: certain people holding all the money want more, more, more, faster and faster. There is no place they would let alone if they could make lots of money off it soon, nor any place they would let make money slowly when it could make money quickly. So you see people choosing to strip-mine a place instead of sell tickets for river rafting.

This was never necessary, except to serve the greed for personal wealth and power. And yet, was it even necessary for that? The Empire of the Incans functioned without money or markets, as did every civilization for thousands of years, until someone invented coinage around the 600s BCE. Plenty of wealth and power to be had without coins, surely! The real value of money is liquidity and speed, and some people want their fortune Now. Maybe it’s the Greed For Speed that makes the difference between the power-grabbing of an aristocrat and the power-grabbing of a merchant.

And so as we alter the landscape too fast it cannot adapt in time, and suffers greatly.

We see the results in one epidemic after another. It’s not Gaia’s Revenge; it’s just the fallout of us setting things up to make a virus’s happy accident our unhappy accident, time and again.

My dad was born in 1917. Somehow, he survived the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-1919, but an outbreak of whooping cough in 1923 claimed his baby sister, Clementina. One of my dad’s first memories was seeing his sister’s tiny white casket. Another sister was permanently marked by scarlet fever. In 1923, my dad was hit by a car and spent two weeks in a hospital with a fractured skull as well as a lacerated thumb. His immigrant parents had no medical insurance, but the driver of the car gave his father $50 toward the medical bills. The only lasting effect was the scar my father carried for the rest of his life on his right thumb.

The year 1929 brought the Great Depression and lean times. My father’s father had left the family, so my dad, then 12, had to pitch in. He got a newspaper route, which he kept for four years, quitting high school after tenth grade so he could earn money for the family. In 1935, like millions of other young men of that era, he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a creation of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal that offered work on environmental projects of many kinds. He battled forest fires in Oregon for two years before returning to his family and factory work. In 1942, he was drafted into the Army, going back to a factory job when World War II ended. Times grew a little less lean in 1951 when he became a firefighter, after which he felt he could afford to buy a house and start a family.

I’m offering all this personal history as the context for a prediction of my dad’s that, for obvious reasons, came to my mind again recently. When I was a teenager, he liked to tell me: “I had it tough in the beginning and easy in the end. You, Willy, have had it easy in the beginning, but will likely have it tough in the end.” His prophecy stayed with me, perhaps because even then, somewhere deep down, I already suspected that my dad was right.

The COVID-19 pandemic is now grabbing the headlines, all of them, and a global recession, if not a depression, seems like a near-certainty. The stock market has been tanking and people’s lives are being disrupted in fundamental and scary ways. My dad knew the experience of losing a loved one to disease, of working hard to make ends meet during times of great scarcity, of sacrificing for the good of one’s family. Compared to him, it’s true that, so far, I’ve had an easier life as an officer in the Air Force and then a college teacher and historian. But at age 57, am I finally ready for the hard times to come? Are any of us?

And keep in mind that this is just the beginning. Climate change (recall Australia’s recent and massive wildfires) promises yet more upheavals, more chaos, more diseases. America’s wanton militarism and lying politicians promise more wars. What’s to be done to avert or at least attenuate the tough times to come, assuming my dad’s prediction is indeed now coming true? What can we do?

It’s Time to Reimagine America

Here’s the one thing about major disruptions to normalcy: they can create opportunities for dramatic change. (Disaster capitalists know this, too, unfortunately.) President Franklin Roosevelt recognized this in the 1930s and orchestrated his New Deal to revive the economy and put Americans like my dad back to work.

In 2001, the administration of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney capitalized on the shock-and-awe disruption of the 9/11 attacks to inflict on the world their vision of a Pax Americana, effectively a militarized imperium justified (falsely) as enabling greater freedom for all. The inherent contradiction in such a dreamscape was so absurd as to make future calamity inevitable. Recall what an aide to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld scribbled down, only hours after the attack on the Pentagon and the collapse of the Twin Towers, as his boss’s instructions (especially when it came to looking for evidence of Iraqi involvement): “Go massive — sweep it all up, things related and not.” And indeed they would do just that, with an emphasis on the “not,” including, of course, the calamitous invasion of Iraq in 2003.

To progressive-minded people thinking about this moment of crisis, what kind of opportunities might open to us when (or rather if) Donald Trump is gone from the White House? Perhaps this coronaviral moment is the perfect time to consider what it would mean for us to go truly big, but without the usual hubris or those disastrous invasions of foreign countries. To respond to COVID-19, climate change, and the staggering wealth inequities in this country that, when combined, will cause unbelievable levels of needless suffering, what’s needed is a drastic reordering of our national priorities.

Remember, the Fed’s first move was to inject $1.5 trillion into the stock market. (That would have been enough to forgive all current student debt.) The Trump administration has also promised to help airlines, hotels, and above all oil companies and the fracking industry, a perfect storm when it comes to trying to sustain and enrich those upholding a kleptocratic and amoral status quo.

This should be a time for a genuinely new approach, one fit for a world of rising disruption and disaster, one that would define a new, more democratic, less bellicose America. To that end, here are seven suggestions, focusing — since I’m a retired military officer — mainly on the U.S. military, a subject that continues to preoccupy me, especially since, at present, that military and the rest of the national security state swallow up roughly 60% of federal discretionary spending:

1. If ever there was a time to reduce our massive and wasteful military spending, this is it. There was never, for example, any sense in investing up to $1.7 trillion over the next 30 years to “modernize” America’s nuclear arsenal. (Why are new weapons needed to exterminate humanity when the “old” ones still work just fine?) Hundreds of stealth fighters and bombers — it’s estimated that Lockheed Martin’s disappointing F-35 jet fighter alone will cost $1.5 trillion over its life span — do nothing to secure us from pandemics, the devastating effects of climate change, or other all-too-pressing threats. Such weaponry only emboldens a militaristic and chauvinistic foreign policy that will facilitate yet more wars and blowback problems of every sort. And speaking of wars, isn’t it finally time to end U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan? More than $6 trillion has already been wasted on those wars and, in this time of global peril, even more is being wasted on this country’s forever conflicts across the Greater Middle East and Africa. (Roughly $4 billion a month continues to be spent on Afghanistan alone, despite all the talk about “peace” there.)

2. Along with ending profligate weapons programs and quagmire wars, isn’t it time for the U.S. to begin dramatically reducing its military “footprint” on this planet? Roughly 800 U.S. military bases circle the globe in a historically unprecedented fashion at a yearly cost somewhere north of $100 billion. Cutting such numbers in half over the next decade would be a more than achievable goal. Permanently cutting provocative “war games” in South Korea, Europe, and elsewhere would be no less sensible. Are North Korea and Russia truly deterred by such dramatic displays of destructive military might?

3. Come to think of it, why does the U.S. need the immediate military capacity to fight two major foreign wars simultaneously, as the Pentagon continues to insist we do and plan for, in the name of “defending” our country? Here’s a radical proposal: if you add 70,000 Special Operations forces to 186,000 Marine Corps personnel, the U.S. already possesses a potent quick-strike force of roughly 250,000 troops. Now, add in the Army’s 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions and the 10th Mountain Division. What you have is more than enough military power to provide for America’s actual national security. All other Army divisions could be reduced to cadres, expandable only if our borders are directly threatened by war. Similarly, restructure the Air Force and Navy to de-emphasize the present “global strike” vision of those services, while getting rid of Donald Trump’s newest service, the Space Force, and the absurdist idea of taking war into low earth orbit. Doesn’t America already have enough war here on this small planet of ours?

4. Bring back the draft, just not for military purposes. Make it part of a national service program for improving America. It’s time for a new Civilian Conservation Corps focused on fostering a Green New Deal. It’s time for a new Works Progress Administration to rebuild America’s infrastructure and reinvigorate our culture, as that organization did in the Great Depression years. It’s time to engage young people in service to this country. Tackling COVID-19 or future pandemics would be far easier if there were quickly trained medical aides who could help free doctors and nurses to focus on the more difficult cases. Tackling climate change will likely require more young men and women fighting forest fires on the west coast, as my dad did while in the CCC — and in a climate-changing world there will be no shortage of other necessary projects to save our planet. Isn’t it time America’s youth answered a call to service? Better yet, isn’t it time we offered them the opportunity to truly put America, rather than themselves, first?

5. And speaking of “America First,” that eternal Trumpian catch-phrase, isn’t it time for all Americans to recognize that global pandemics and climate change make a mockery of walls and go-it-alone nationalism, not to speak of politics that divide, distract, and keep so many down? President Dwight D. Eisenhower once said that only Americans can truly hurt America, but there’s a corollary to that: only Americans can truly save America — by uniting, focusing on our common problems, and uplifting one another. To do so, it’s vitally necessary to put an end to fear-mongering (and warmongering). As President Roosevelt famously said in his first inaugural address in the depths of the Great Depression, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Fear inhibits our ability to think clearly, to cooperate fully, to change things radically as a community.

6. To cite Yoda, the Jedi master, we must unlearn what we have learned. For example, America’s real heroes shouldn’t be “warriors” who kill or sports stars who throw footballs and dunk basketballs. We’re witnessing our true heroes in action right now: our doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel, together with our first responders, and those workers who stay in grocery stores, pharmacies, and the like and continue to serve us all despite the danger of contracting the coronavirus from customers. They are all selflessly resisting a threat too many of us either didn’t foresee or refused to treat seriously, most notably, of course, President Donald Trump: a pandemic that transcends borders and boundaries. But can Americans transcend the increasingly harsh and divisive borders and boundaries of our own minds? Can we come to work selflessly to save and improve the lives of others? Can we become, in a sense, lovers of humanity?

7. Finally, we must extend our love to encompass nature, our planet. For if we keep treating our lands, our waters, and our skies like a set of trash cans and garbage bins, our children and their children will inherit far harder times than the present moment, hard as it may be.

What these seven suggestions really amount to is rejecting a militarized mindset of aggression and a corporate mindset of exploitation for one that sees humanity and this planet more holistically. Isn’t it time to regain that vision of the earth we shared collectively during the Apollo moon missions: a fragile blue sanctuary floating in the velvety darkness of space, an irreplaceable home to be cared for and respected since there’s no other place for us to go? Otherwise, I fear that my father’s prediction will come true not just for me, but for generations to come and in ways that even he couldn’t have imagined.

Felicia

I Intro I read a lot. I research. I pay attention to the news. I do a lot of fact checking. I have 10 to 15 news sources and the news I pay attention to is domestic and international. I spend hours fact checking because people lie. I also make mistakes. If you can prove to me, logically, that I’m wrong, I’ll admit it, apologize and write a retraction. Keep all of this in mind as you continue. II History I’m a student of history. My favorite periods are Ancient and Medieval, however, I’ll read about any period. I spent a few years digging into WWII because my Grandfathers served then. For the last few months I’ve been focused on WWI and the Spanish Flu. The H1N1 virus got it’s nickname not because of where it originated. Spain was neutral and wasn’t under media censorship like the countries fighting the war. Anything detracting from the war effort was not allowed so the news you saw then was not impartial. Spain, however, reported on a disease that was killing people. While H1N1 impacted us in 1918 and 1919, there were reports of it back in 1915. Yes, our government knew about it and restricted the information because of the war effort. The H1N1 virus hit America in three waves, the second wave being the worst. A deadlier strain of H1N1 surfaced and was spread by the massive troop movements of the war. It’s been said that the dropping of the quarantine restrictions are what caused the second wave and that’s incorrect. While it was a small factor, the troop movements are what spread the new strain. The cramped conditions and the malnutrition among the soldiers hastened the spread. It’s estimated that 500 million people died from H1N1. While that doesn’t sound devastating today, in 1918 that was about one third of the world population. The transmission vectors for H1N1 and Covid-19 are similar and a century of time doesn’t tend to change that. While we lack the troop movements and the conditions of WWII, we more than make up for that with our transportation technology. If that technology had been present in 1918, the death toll would have been much higher. We’ve been extremely lucky so far, yet stupidity is attempting to alter that. III Rampant Stupidity Why do we refuse to learn from the mistakes of the past? We have people protesting, with loaded guns, because they want a hair cut. Instead of throwing these morons in jail, they are allowed to continue in their stupidity. I have a few questions for these paragons of questionable intelligence. Where did you get your medical degrees? What? You don’t have medical degrees? OK. Then your Google Fu must be strong. What? You didn’t use Google? Where are you getting your information then? Ahh, I see. It all becomes clear to me now. This is not about politics and it never has been. These shining examples of American arrogance are simply angry because they’re being told what to do. They think they know more than the experts and they rage against any kind of restriction. Instead of doing what they need to do to protect their families and themselves, they prove their stupidity by endangering everyone around them. If people are still wondering why I view humanity as a failed experiment, this is a perfect example. IV The CDC I'm not a doctor and I don't play one on TV. They have advanced degrees that qualify them to advise us on disease, contrary to what some might choose to believe. Science is fact. Disbelief of science does not invalidate it. In the middle of a pandemic, these are the people I'm going to listen to. Our politicians have no more training in this than I do and out President is less than worthless. To the idiots protesting: No. Your Google Fu is not strong. You're not a scientist or a doctor of anything. If you won't protect others by doing what you're told then stay away from me an mine. I'm 54 years old with a stressed immune system. I follow what's been laid down because I refuse to put you at risk. I could be asymptomatic, meaning I could have the virus and have no symptoms. Having no symptoms does not entitle me to disregard the advice of the experts. Your Pastor or Priest is no more an expert than you are. Some churches ignored the restrictions and what happened to them? Many got sick and others died that may not have if they had done what they were told. V Trumpus Defectus To be clear, our president is neither insane or damaged. He simply doesn't care about you. As long as you vote for him, you could die immediately after casting that vote. He's a billionaire and you're not therefore you're beneath his notice. You don't care about the feelings of a bug when you step on it and that's all you are to him. He's been trained that way since birth. Most of the other billionaires are just like him, he's simply in the public spotlight. Most of the older politicians are no better than he is. They've been bought and paid for decades ago. The sooner we realize that we're nothing more than voting numbers to them, the sooner we can actually make our votes mean something. VI The Economy Money is nothing but ones and zeros in a computer. The dollar is worth what those computers say it is. The economy should have been shut down completely, No money, no revenue, no bills yet everything continues. We could have stayed home, ordered what we needed until this virus burns itself out. Afterwards we could have restarted things, there would have been no penalties and everyone would have been fine. If we had done that it would have restructured the economy, which is exactly why it wasn't done. Another option would have been to turn all of the billionaires into millionaires. Take everything that the filthy rich have, above $500 million, and use it to pay the American people to stay home. We don't need billionaires or the class distinctions they create. It's obvious why this wasn't done. VII Mental Restructuring Since I can't give our country the mental ass kicking it so desperately needs I have to focus inwards. While I'd like to say that this is by choice, it was forced by recent events. Few things are more painful than discovering, or feeling, that you're insignificant in the scheme of things. During a pandemic, our focus should, understandably, on our families and ourselves. Survival is paramount. Understanding that, with the exception of two people, I've done all of the reaching out to make sure that people are OK. These are the same two people that poke ate me if I've been quiet for too long so I wasn't surprised that they reached out first. I'm not a needy, whiny bastard. I'm fairly self-sufficient, I can order what I need and I'm a fairly good cook. Pumpkin, Onyx and I are fine alone, especially since I'm not a big fan of humanity in general. I love certain people but humanity, as a whole, is a lost cause. I didn't reach out for personal connection. I did it see how my friends were doing mentally. The Covid-19 situation has been tough on everyone, especially those of us with mental illnesses. I'm 54 years old with ADHD, Anxiety, Depression and three hernias requiring surgery, which explains the stressed immune system. If it wasn't for the fact that my meds had been increased a month or two before this happened, this situation would have broken me. Two people checking up on me would not have been enough to stop me from imploding. I would have been reduced to a gibbering mess because of the stress or I'd be dead. I'm fine because I noticed a couple of things about five months ago and I consulted my doctor about it. Most people in this situation aren't as lucky as I am, which is why I reach out. Having only two people that bothered to make sure I was OK was eye opening. I'm forced to reevaluate why certain people are in my life and who remains. VIII Bye, Felicia This has honestly been coming for a long time. There are people that only contact me when they want something, usually money. There are others that don't do anything. It's past time to do some pruning. I don't like giving up on people which is why I've avoided this for so long. There are some that are immune to this. My three adoptive sisters in my local area and the ones I love who are out of state. CA, WA, CO, UT, WI, WY, LA, TN, TX, GA, NJ, NY, NH and MD. Wow. Apparently I love more people than I thought I did. They know who they are. If not then they aren't paying attention. If I contact you or interact with you, in any fashion other than work, then I probably love you. Toxic people are leaving as I can't afford to keep them around. Stupidity is also making an exit. Stupidity is Willful Ignorance so why would I want them around to begin with? I have a perfect example of both. There's a post circulating on Facecrack. This one states that the plight of the jews in the Nazi concentration camps is comparable to the Covid-19 quarantine. An old friend shared that on my timeline. If he had been anyone else, I would have deleted and blocked him without hesitation. The only reason he remains is that I've known him for 38 years. I'm waiting to see what he does next. Student of history, remember? I studied WWII in depth so that means that I know more about the concentration camps than most people. The jews were herded there a variety of ways, primarily by train. They were tortured, experimented on, starved, brutalized, a huge number of them were gassed to death and those are actually the high points. It was much worse than I'll ever be able to properly describe and in no way is it even remotely similar to our quarantine. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequence. We're all free to say anything that we want to. We just need to be prepared for the repercussions that arise. If anyone else is stupid enough to share something like that on my timeline, or share it any other place that I can see, they are gone. No questions asked. All anyone needs to do to understand the difference between the two situations is to read a US history book that covers WWII. Posting crap like means that you're choosing to ignore basic evidence. I have no room for anyone like that so Bye, Felicia. IX Best vs Worst This situation can bring out the best or worst in people. You can rise to the occasion or you can sink into depravity. There are plenty of example of both around us. I'm working from home. My bills remain paid. My cats and I are fed and safe. I choose to help where I can. While it's true that I have little faith in humanity, that doesn't mean that I have to circle the drain with the rest of them. I will always try to help those around me. I've been extremely fortunate during this and that should be shared with those that are struggling. This is going to get worse before it gets better. I hope I'm wrong yet there are reports of increases in the infection rate where businesses are being reopened. The last thing we need is a second wave but I'm afraid it may happen. X Dystopia I look around and I have to wonder if we're ever going to grow up as a species. We keep making the same mistakes decade after decade. It's a wonder that we haven't blown ourselves off of the planet. The truth is that this is already a Dystopian society. It's not as bad as the examples we see in movies and on TV yet we are moving towards that. Compared to 20 years ago, we have less privileges now than we did then. We gave them away in exchange for the illusion of safety. We have privileges, not rights. Rights don't exist and are simply an invention to make us feel superior. If it can be taken away, it's a privilege. XI Conclusion While that last part was a little darker than I intended, it is true. I write, primarily, to relieve stress and to clear out my head. It gets pretty cramped in there otherwise. While this won't win me any friends, I may actually post this. My life needs some simplifying anyway. Namaste

"Hospitals in drastic, drastic need of innovation" says Reinier de Graaf

Dutch architecture studio OMA has produced a film exploring hospital design as part of its research into its first hospital buildings. Partner at the studio Reinier de Graaf tells Dezeen how he envisions the hospital of the future.

OMA has been commissioned to build hospitals in France and Qatar, despite having no experience in designing medical buildings. This demonstrates that hospital design needs to be rethought, according to De Graaf.

"We were selected precisely because we had never done a hospital," De Graaf told Dezeen. "Therefore, we were unburdened by a lot of baggage."

"They're apparently willing to take the risk to take on a firm that is inexperienced in the sector, I think this is an indication of how much the sector itself feels that it's stuck," he continued.

"The thinking about hospitals is in drastic, drastic need of innovation."

Coronavirus "hasn't changed healthcare"

As part of its design process for the hospital projects, both of which are currently strictly confidential, OMA created a short film on the Hospital of the Future to outline its thinking on hospital design.

Although OMA began designing the projects before the current pandemic, De Graaf believes that the coronavirus has exposed issues with current healthcare provision and architecture.

Top: an image from OMA's Hospital of the Future film. Above: Reinier de Graaf

"In many ways, the whole Covid crisis has accelerated a number of notions that we had about the hospital from the get-go, in a way and it's made them more pertinent," he said.

"Clearly Covid has changed a lot of things, but it hasn't changed healthcare, ironically. I think what it has done is expose a number of flaws, which were latent in healthcare and simply bought into the forefront."

Hospitals obsolete as soon as they are complete

One of the main findings from the studio's research into health facilities is that hospital buildings are lasting less and less time before they become obsolete. According to OMA, this means that hospitals have to be designed to be constantly evolving.

"The more recently a hospital is constructed, the quicker it gets demolished," said De Graaf.

"So one of the things we thought about early on was taking the trend to the extreme. And say the most extreme consequence of this trend is that essentially they are obsolete when they're finished."

"The moment the building is complete, at that very moment, it's obsolete, so it can only ever be obsolete, it's practically obsolete while you're drawing it," he continued.

"This means that we probably need to think about the hospital, not in terms of a finite product, but in terms of a process. And not of a building, but in terms of an organism."

In the future "hospitals will be everywhere"

According to the architect, developments in technology may eventually result in the hospital ceasing to exist as a building, with healthcare being integrated into the city instead.

"Many ideal city concepts are based on disease and based on hygiene to the point that you can see a lot of the utopian urban concepts as giant hospitals, you know, where the hospital is, everywhere," De Graaf explained.

"I think we are encountering a situation, particularly in cities, where the hospital will be everywhere, once again."

Speaking about its current project in Qatar, however, De Graaf explained that its upcoming hospital will still exist in a physical form.

"All I can say is that the appearance will be an extremely interesting mix between tradition and future, between the primordial and the futuristic," he said.

"It almost aims to be a fully autonomous complex. It will look like it could be built on Mars. Nevertheless, it will look remarkably familiar in Islamic culture."

De Graaf also points to 3D printing and mass robotisation as two areas that the studio is looking to incorporate into its hospital designs.

"I think what the healthcare crisis will do is make what until recently was long term future-gazing become a lot more pertinent and imminent," he said.

Read the full interview with De Graaf on the Hospital of the Future below:

Tom Ravenscroft: How did the film come about?

Reinier de Graaf: It is a product of a long interest in healthcare as an architectural subject. In spring 2019 we were asked to develop a number of hospitals – one in France and we got involved in a very large healthcare project in Qatar.

We asked our clients why us, as we've never done a hospital. And we know that hospitals in particular, like prisons, are the domain of architects who specialise in them.

But apparently, we got the reply that we were selected precisely because we had never done a hospital. And that therefore, we were unburdened by a lot of baggage. Apparently, the hospital concept as it was routinely being done was running into certain problems.

We, particularly in the context of Qatar, got a very long research phase before we actually had to enter a design phase. And what we did, I think, in the summer of 2020, we made an initial video, which we put on our website, where we mainly asked questions about the hospital of the future.

That was a very, very short video. We thought more, I started to think about the subject, we have a team of people in the office who work across the different projects that we have on the topic. I wrote a number of articles.

So we've been very active, the project was continuing, then Matadero, the arts Spanish organisation asked us to participate in an exhibition about the hospital of the future, which basically got a lot of traction.

We are working on hospitals as we speak, they're confidential projects, but mainly our thinking about it. And whatever we broadcast about, it gets a lot of traction, a lot of people ask us about it. And that organisation asked us about it, the Venice Biennale asked us to do something on the subject, but clearly, for Covid reasons to be postponed, postponed and postponed.

Then with Matadero, we had the first idea that we would do something virtual. And we would make a film, which is very much of this time, you know, you can go anywhere, you don't need to breathe and other people's faces, you don't need to inhale you, you just make a video. So that's, that's what we did.

Tom Ravenscroft: How have recent events impacted your thinking?

Reinier de Graaf: I think in many ways, the whole Covid crisis has accelerated a number of notions that we had about the hospital from the get-go, in a way and it's made them more pertinent.

In our view, it's not that Covid has changed everything. Well, clearly, it has changed a lot of things, but it hasn't changed healthcare. Ironically, I think what it has done, it has exposed a number of flaws, which were latent in healthcare and simply bought into the forefront.

Tom Ravenscroft: Like what?

Reinier de Graaf: One of the things we found in our research is that the more recently a hospital is constructed, the quicker it gets demolished.

So the evolution of the technology and the evolution of medical science seems to result in an ever-quicker expiry date of the topology and of the design. Up to the point that you have some recent hospitals, which, you know, didn't even live for a quarter of a century. And were then demolished.

Tom Ravenscroft: Did you compare that timeline to other building topologies? Isn't this broadly true for all buildings?

Reinier de Graaf: It's part of a general trend. I mean, it's also part of clearly of a housing trend, but it is a more radical example of the trend. It's almost an extreme example, you have, essentially of hospitals and you have airports.

Airports are too big to demolish, so they're in a permanent state of conversion. And in a permanent state of expansion.

So one of the things we thought about early on was taking the trend to the extreme. And say the most extreme consequence of this trend is that essentially they are obsolete when they're finished.

The moment the completion date of the building at that very moment, it's obsolete, so it can only ever be obsolete, it's practically obsolete while you're drawing it, which means that we probably need to think about the hospital, not in terms of a finite product, but in terms of a process. And not of a building, but in terms of an organism.

So we began to look at that we began in Qatar, we're really very advanced in looking at 3D printing prefabrication and 3D printing. As you may know, also in surgery, 3D printing is a very prominent thing. Organs are 3D printed. So there's an interesting overlap between medical technology and construction technology there.

So we're taking that very far to the point that you would have factories on site. You have industrial, complex enough to produce offspring, you practically eliminate the contractor from the equation.

I mean, that is an interesting thing. And, of course, another thing you see that in the course of the 20th century, we saw the trend that generally acute diseases became chronic diseases, we got to live a lot longer, not necessarily healthier, but acute diseases became chronic diseases.

And with that, you essentially have the whole evolution of the healthcare sector go privatised, it entered a kind of comfort zone where there was ever fewer staff, ever greater efficiency possible, etc.

Because I mean, it's been 100 years since the Spanish flu. And Covid, of course, what it does, is that it makes a lot of chronic diseases, all of a sudden, acute again.

Many people are basically alright, with Covid, but as soon as there's already something wrong with you, it can become acute, in an instance when you contract that virus.

And that means that we are in a way thrown back in time, with a certain amount of urgency. Hospitals sort of pop up in an instant, we saw the Chinese hospital that got there in 10 days. We see stadiums be converted, we see ships converted into hospitals.

It also highlights a problem in architecture anyway, that as a discipline with an ethos of permanence, it is facing a condition of life, which is ever less pertinent.

So the friction between architectural ambitions and that of your ability plays out in the extreme in healthcare. So that's also why we were so enthusiastic to dive into it, because healthcare is a sector where we're certain crisis of architecture becomes very manifest.

Tom Ravenscroft: So as you say in your video healthcare as we know it is dead?

Reinier de Graaf: Of course, that is an attention-grabbing statement in the video. But I guess we mean it of sorts. I mean, at least the way we have thought about the hospital so far is running into a dead end.

I mean, the thinking about hospitals is in drastic, drastic need of innovation. I guess it's the sentence in the film as a short way of saying that.

Tom Ravenscroft: So back to first principles, kind of redefining what the hospital is and how it operates within a current?

Reinier de Graaf: Another thing that's very prominent in the video is that of course, you can rewrite the history of architecture and urbanism completely along medical terms.

I mean, many ideal city concepts are also based on disease. And based on hygiene to the point that you can see a lot of the utopian urban concepts as giant hospitals, you know, where the hospital is, everywhere.

I think we are encountering a situation that particularly in cities where the hospital will be everywhere, once again.

What is modern technology? And that's the latter part of the film that tries to speculate on how that could happen in a number of ways.

Tom Ravenscroft: So the buildings disappear, as the technology enables it to be basically everywhere?

Reinier de Graaf: Yeah, in the most extreme form. But of course, like with any prediction it will never fully come through. So I'm sure there will always be hospitals. But they'll be different.

Tom Ravenscroft: So how does this long-term future-gazing impact on your actual designs?

Reinier de Graaf: I'm not sure if it's long term, future-gazing. I think 3D printing, for instance, has been on the cards for a while. And architects have flirted with it, but always in quite a tentative way. It's been applied in small-scale buildings.

I think what the healthcare crisis will do is that what until recently was long term future-gazing may become a lot more pertinent and imminent.

I mean, if our plans work out we would be building such a thing in the near future.

I think the other thing that you also see happening is mass robotisation. In the course of the hospital. It's also an interesting flight forward, we're incredibly scared of mechanical labour, we are incredibly scared of robotisation.

Nevertheless, it's long been a fact of life in many sectors. And it will also be a fact of life in the healthcare sector. And maybe the benefit of that is that there's more people suffering and burnout in the medical field than almost any other field. And maybe the mass robotisation of certain tasks will allow the hospital staff, again to focus on the things that matter.

I think there you will see another acceleration, clearly, robots cannot become sick.

Tom Ravenscroft: That being said, when you build your hospital in Qatar will it broadly look like a hospital?

Reinier de Graaf: I can't say too much of it, but all I can say is that the appearance will be an extremely interesting mix between tradition and future, between the primordial and the futuristic. It almost aims to be a fully autonomous complex, that also reduces the dependency of the whole hospital system on the supply chains, on external factors, etc.

It will look like it could be built on Mars. Nevertheless, it will look remarkably familiar in the Islamic culture.

Tom Ravenscroft: But this is more than just a mental exercise?

Reinier de Graaf: Something like the video emerges in tandem with us being confronted with all of those things. I mean, it's not like we withdraw in a room and then we come up with a kind of visionary strategy; in a way the video is a form of communicating insights that we gain when we're actually doing this and progressive insights where we're actually doing this.

Tom Ravenscroft: Do you think that hospitals in particular, and healthcare has been stuck in a bit of a kind of rut of continuing down the same path?

Reinier de Graaf: I think the fact that people ask us because of our ignorance is very much a symptom of that.

I mean, they're apparently willing to take the risk to take on a firm that is inexperienced in the sector, I think is an indication of how much the sector itself feels that it's stuck.

Tom Ravenscroft: It's kind of amazing that OMA is being asked to design hospitals because it is such a complex building.

Reinier de Graaf: It really puts architecture to the test because the stakes are so high, you know, people die. And in that sense, any architectural frivolity or any kind of frivolous argument very quickly runs into a very hard test.

The nice thing is when you design a hospital as an architect, you have to be incredibly hard on yourself and also have to really scrutinise your own preoccupations and your own idiosyncrasies in a way because things need to happen a certain way. It's really a functional machine.

Tom Ravenscroft: You've got to take the arrogance of the architect out of it?

Reinier de Graaf: Yes. Which is very good therapy for us.

The post "Hospitals in drastic, drastic need of innovation" says Reinier de Graaf appeared first on Dezeen.

The strong scientific basis for wearing a mask – #COVID19

Todd Neff, for UCHealth

The science of masks: how wearing them can reduce the spread of the highly infectious new coronavirus. Photo: Getty Images.

Wear a mask.

Those three words, the simplest of commands, mask a staggering degree of scientific complexity.

Make no mistake: amid this pandemic, you should wear a mask when in close contact with others outside your immediate circle, when in enclosed spaces with others outside the family bubble, and when in crowds outside or inside. But the science behind mask-wearing – like so much of the science related to the COVID-19 pandemic – remains a work in progress.

The State of Colorado mandates – and many Colorado counties require – masks. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends wearing masks; the World Health Organization does too; UCHealth requires masks in hospitals, clinics and administrative areas. One model created by Colorado scientists assumes that masks reduce a wearer’s contagiousness by as much as 50%.

“If you’re not social distancing, I think you should be wearing a mask,” says Dr. Michelle Barron, UCHealth’s top infectious disease expert. Photo by Cyrus McCrimmon for UCHealth.

“If you’re not social distancing, I think you should be wearing a mask,” said Dr. Michelle Barron, medical director for infection control and prevention at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital on the Anschutz Medical Campus and a professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. “It’s really to prevent others from being exposed to your droplets and spittle without even knowing it.”

The scientific questions surrounding masks – homemade or store-bought cloth masks and surgical-style masks, not the still-scarce N95s that health care workers need more than we do – are more nuanced. The mask-skeptical arguments rest on a couple of pillars. One is that there’s little in the way of convincing, peer-reviewed proof that regular folks wearing cloth masks are protecting themselves or anyone else from COVID-19. Another is that many such masks aren’t great in the first place, and even good ones often aren’t being worn properly (that open-air nose defeats the purpose). Yet another is that masks may lull the wearer into a false sense of security in the crowded places and tight spaces where transmission risk is highest.

No less an authority than University of Minnesota epidemiologist Michael Osterholm said in June: “The messaging that dominates our COVID-19 discussions right now makes it seem that, if we are wearing cloth masks, you’re not going to infect me and I’m not going to infect you. I worry that many people highly vulnerable to life-threatening COVID-19 will hear this message and make decisions that they otherwise wouldn’t have made about distancing because of an unproven sense of cloth-mask security. Distancing remains the most important risk reduction action we can take.”

Then why wear a mask?

The science that supports wearing masks

One reason is that the science of masks is evolving, and all indications are that it’s evolving toward the theory that masks are an effective way to slow the pandemic’s spread. There are indeed few peer-reviewed studies on the effectiveness of masks on slowing the spread of the coronavirus. That’s because the human disease the SARS-CoV-2 virus causes is still just months old. COVID-19 studies take time; so does peer review. More research, rest assured, is coming.

Until then, we must largely rely on work that predates COVID-19 and mathematical models of the disease based on best estimates of how well masks and other coronavirus countermeasures work.

A 2015 study done in Vietnam compared cloth masks to surgical masks among 1,607 hospital health care workers and found that those wearing cloth masks ended up catching influenza more often (there was no mask-free control group). The same research group recently revisited the topic amid the COVID-19 epidemic. They concluded that, while health care workers need N95-class protection, “The general public can use cloth masks to protect against infection spread in the community,” particularly in light of the many mild and asymptomatic coronaviruses cases.

A 2013 British study concluded that “a homemade mask should only be considered as a last resort to prevent droplet transmission from infected individuals, but it would be better than no protection.” A 2008 Dutch study considered N95-style respirators, surgical masks, and cloth masks and found that they all would reduce exposure to airborne influenza virus in that order. An April 2020 reviewconsidering N95-class respirators, surgical masks, and homemade cloth masks came to much the same conclusion, as did a June 2020 review in The Lancet. That study reviewed 172 observational studies and concluded that wearing masks reduce the risk of coronavirus infection – albeit with “low certainty.”

The science of masks: cloth masks helped during the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic

Consider, though, that a century ago, there were only cloth masks, and they indeed lowered infection rates for health care workers and others during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, the Manchurian plague epidemic of 1920-1921, and, in the 1930s and 1940s, tuberculosis. A study of U.S. mask mandates found that mask wearing may have averted 230,000 to 450,000 coronavirus cases by late May. Another modeling study that estimated that, if 95% of the U.S. population wore masks, 18% fewer would die from the virus by Oct. 1 (including 125 fewer people in Colorado).

The Colorado COVID-19 Modeling Group’s interactive model assumes masks reduce the wearer’s contagiousness by 50%, though they add “there remains considerable uncertainty about this assumption.” Among other sources, the Colorado group cites a preprint review article by Jeremy Howard and colleagues that in turn discusses other modeling groups’ work predicting that cloth masks to have enormous impact when widely worn. That article concludes that near-universal mask wearing could itself turn the pandemic’s tide, with a positive economic impact of thousands of dollars per person per mask. (Goldman Sachs, the investment bank, estimated that masks could prevent the need for further lockdowns that could wipe out 5% of GDP.)

The Colorado COVID-19 model shows masks to have an enormous impact: if everyone wore masks, statewide intensive care unit bed occupancy wouldn’t exceed 71. With half of us wearing masks, a peak of 460 ICU beds would be filled with coronavirus patients by April 2020. If none wore a mask, 1,116 ICU beds would be filled by next January.

Finally, masks – or something like masks – were shown to reduce COVID-19 transmission among Syrian hamsters by about two-thirds. That study was among several that have led scientists to believe that not only droplets that quickly fall to the ground, but also tiny virus-carrying particles that can float about for hours – aerosols – are important COVID-19 transmission routes.

The physics behind mask-wearing

University of Colorado Boulder Prof. Jose-Luis Jimenez, an expert on aerosols, atmospheric chemistry and air quality, turned his attention from air pollution to viral infection with the rise of COVID-19. His team’s coronavirus model – one intended to help colleges understand the risk of in-person classes – assumes that cloth masks reduce coronavirus contagiousness by 50% if the wearer is the potential spreader and by 30% if the healthy wearer is exposed to someone with COVID-19. A mask’s effectiveness is ultimately driven by physics, Jimenez explains. It’s complicated – “one could write a PhD dissertation on the computations of the fluid dynamics here,” he said – but the basics are comprehensible to those of us less versed in Brownian motion and van der Walls force.

The science of masks is complex, says. Jose-Luis Jimenez, a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. But, he says you should wear one and thicker is better than thin. Photo: University of Colorado Boulder.

Cloth masks are more effective in protecting others from the wearer than the other way around because, assuming a good fit, we exhale in respiratory jets, Jimenez says: “Velocity gives inertia, and inertia makes the particles impact into the mask material.”

When inhaling, the velocity of incoming particles is somewhat lower, and that means fewer collisions of droplets and aerosols with the mask material.

He says that besides proper fit, a mask’s material (thick being typically better than thin) and the number of layers matter: two layers have a better chance of snagging particles than one, for example. N95 masks, he adds, are more effective in part because they include electrically-charged fibers that attract airborne virus-carrying particles. And beware of those masks with exhalation valves, Jimenez says, as they don’t protect others at all. Finally, he says, talking emits far more respiratory particles than breathing, and singing or shouting emits more particles than talking.

“Removing the mask to talk – as we see some public officials do – removes a lot of the benefit of wearing masks,” Jimenez said.

Though scientists continue to study the effectiveness of cloth masks in slowing the spread of COVID-19, there’s more than enough evidence to support their widespread use, Barron says.

“At the end of the day, I don’t want anybody else sick,” she said. “Even if masks were only 10% effective, that would still be better than nothing. This can spread like wildfire. Even if you’re young and healthy, others are vulnerable. It’s not just your risk.”

  Due to the unprecedented crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, BRIO has dedicated 100% of their operations to importing critically needed respirator masks. Featuring a 3D comfort design, these KN95 masks provide filtration against particulate pollution, gases, as well as bacteria, viruses, and most odors. It’s made with comfortable stretch fabric and has convenient earloops for a tight fit. These masks are perfect for everyday wear. Order your 5-Pack now!

3D Comfort mask design

Convenient earloop design

Comfortable stretch fabric for tight fit

Easy to put on & remove

Note: These masks are not FDA approved nor are they N95. These masks are tested to meet the standards for Chinese KN-95. Tests confirmed almost 90% of particulate pollution, bacteria and viruses were successfully filtered when the mask was used. 20x more effective than cloth masks.

Specs

Color: white

Materials: 3-layer melt-blown non-woven PPE

Product dimensions: 1″H x 8″L x 5″W

3D Comfort design

KN95 PRC Standard (Similar to NIOSH N95)

CE 0194

FFP2 – EN149 Filtration Level

  Read More

The strong scientific basis for wearing a mask – #COVID19

Todd Neff, for UCHealth

The science of masks: how wearing them can reduce the spread of the highly infectious new coronavirus. Photo: Getty Images.

Wear a mask.

Those three words, the simplest of commands, mask a staggering degree of scientific complexity.

Make no mistake: amid this pandemic, you should wear a mask when in close contact with others outside your immediate circle, when in enclosed spaces with others outside the family bubble, and when in crowds outside or inside. But the science behind mask-wearing – like so much of the science related to the COVID-19 pandemic – remains a work in progress.

The State of Colorado mandates – and many Colorado counties require – masks. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends wearing masks; the World Health Organization does too; UCHealth requires masks in hospitals, clinics and administrative areas. One model created by Colorado scientists assumes that masks reduce a wearer’s contagiousness by as much as 50%.

“If you’re not social distancing, I think you should be wearing a mask,” says Dr. Michelle Barron, UCHealth’s top infectious disease expert. Photo by Cyrus McCrimmon for UCHealth.

“If you’re not social distancing, I think you should be wearing a mask,” said Dr. Michelle Barron, medical director for infection control and prevention at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital on the Anschutz Medical Campus and a professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. “It’s really to prevent others from being exposed to your droplets and spittle without even knowing it.”

The scientific questions surrounding masks – homemade or store-bought cloth masks and surgical-style masks, not the still-scarce N95s that health care workers need more than we do – are more nuanced. The mask-skeptical arguments rest on a couple of pillars. One is that there’s little in the way of convincing, peer-reviewed proof that regular folks wearing cloth masks are protecting themselves or anyone else from COVID-19. Another is that many such masks aren’t great in the first place, and even good ones often aren’t being worn properly (that open-air nose defeats the purpose). Yet another is that masks may lull the wearer into a false sense of security in the crowded places and tight spaces where transmission risk is highest.

No less an authority than University of Minnesota epidemiologist Michael Osterholm said in June: “The messaging that dominates our COVID-19 discussions right now makes it seem that, if we are wearing cloth masks, you’re not going to infect me and I’m not going to infect you. I worry that many people highly vulnerable to life-threatening COVID-19 will hear this message and make decisions that they otherwise wouldn’t have made about distancing because of an unproven sense of cloth-mask security. Distancing remains the most important risk reduction action we can take.”

Then why wear a mask?

The science that supports wearing masks

One reason is that the science of masks is evolving, and all indications are that it’s evolving toward the theory that masks are an effective way to slow the pandemic’s spread. There are indeed few peer-reviewed studies on the effectiveness of masks on slowing the spread of the coronavirus. That’s because the human disease the SARS-CoV-2 virus causes is still just months old. COVID-19 studies take time; so does peer review. More research, rest assured, is coming.

Until then, we must largely rely on work that predates COVID-19 and mathematical models of the disease based on best estimates of how well masks and other coronavirus countermeasures work.

A 2015 study done in Vietnam compared cloth masks to surgical masks among 1,607 hospital health care workers and found that those wearing cloth masks ended up catching influenza more often (there was no mask-free control group). The same research group recently revisited the topic amid the COVID-19 epidemic. They concluded that, while health care workers need N95-class protection, “The general public can use cloth masks to protect against infection spread in the community,” particularly in light of the many mild and asymptomatic coronaviruses cases.

A 2013 British study concluded that “a homemade mask should only be considered as a last resort to prevent droplet transmission from infected individuals, but it would be better than no protection.” A 2008 Dutch study considered N95-style respirators, surgical masks, and cloth masks and found that they all would reduce exposure to airborne influenza virus in that order. An April 2020 reviewconsidering N95-class respirators, surgical masks, and homemade cloth masks came to much the same conclusion, as did a June 2020 review in The Lancet. That study reviewed 172 observational studies and concluded that wearing masks reduce the risk of coronavirus infection – albeit with “low certainty.”

The science of masks: cloth masks helped during the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic

Consider, though, that a century ago, there were only cloth masks, and they indeed lowered infection rates for health care workers and others during the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, the Manchurian plague epidemic of 1920-1921, and, in the 1930s and 1940s, tuberculosis. A study of U.S. mask mandates found that mask wearing may have averted 230,000 to 450,000 coronavirus cases by late May. Another modeling study that estimated that, if 95% of the U.S. population wore masks, 18% fewer would die from the virus by Oct. 1 (including 125 fewer people in Colorado).

The Colorado COVID-19 Modeling Group’s interactive model assumes masks reduce the wearer’s contagiousness by 50%, though they add “there remains considerable uncertainty about this assumption.” Among other sources, the Colorado group cites a preprint review article by Jeremy Howard and colleagues that in turn discusses other modeling groups’ work predicting that cloth masks to have enormous impact when widely worn. That article concludes that near-universal mask wearing could itself turn the pandemic’s tide, with a positive economic impact of thousands of dollars per person per mask. (Goldman Sachs, the investment bank, estimated that masks could prevent the need for further lockdowns that could wipe out 5% of GDP.)

The Colorado COVID-19 model shows masks to have an enormous impact: if everyone wore masks, statewide intensive care unit bed occupancy wouldn’t exceed 71. With half of us wearing masks, a peak of 460 ICU beds would be filled with coronavirus patients by April 2020. If none wore a mask, 1,116 ICU beds would be filled by next January.

Finally, masks – or something like masks – were shown to reduce COVID-19 transmission among Syrian hamsters by about two-thirds. That study was among several that have led scientists to believe that not only droplets that quickly fall to the ground, but also tiny virus-carrying particles that can float about for hours – aerosols – are important COVID-19 transmission routes.

The physics behind mask-wearing

University of Colorado Boulder Prof. Jose-Luis Jimenez, an expert on aerosols, atmospheric chemistry and air quality, turned his attention from air pollution to viral infection with the rise of COVID-19. His team’s coronavirus model – one intended to help colleges understand the risk of in-person classes – assumes that cloth masks reduce coronavirus contagiousness by 50% if the wearer is the potential spreader and by 30% if the healthy wearer is exposed to someone with COVID-19. A mask’s effectiveness is ultimately driven by physics, Jimenez explains. It’s complicated – “one could write a PhD dissertation on the computations of the fluid dynamics here,” he said – but the basics are comprehensible to those of us less versed in Brownian motion and van der Walls force.

The science of masks is complex, says. Jose-Luis Jimenez, a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. But, he says you should wear one and thicker is better than thin. Photo: University of Colorado Boulder.

Cloth masks are more effective in protecting others from the wearer than the other way around because, assuming a good fit, we exhale in respiratory jets, Jimenez says: “Velocity gives inertia, and inertia makes the particles impact into the mask material.”

When inhaling, the velocity of incoming particles is somewhat lower, and that means fewer collisions of droplets and aerosols with the mask material.

He says that besides proper fit, a mask’s material (thick being typically better than thin) and the number of layers matter: two layers have a better chance of snagging particles than one, for example. N95 masks, he adds, are more effective in part because they include electrically-charged fibers that attract airborne virus-carrying particles. And beware of those masks with exhalation valves, Jimenez says, as they don’t protect others at all. Finally, he says, talking emits far more respiratory particles than breathing, and singing or shouting emits more particles than talking.

“Removing the mask to talk – as we see some public officials do – removes a lot of the benefit of wearing masks,” Jimenez said.

Though scientists continue to study the effectiveness of cloth masks in slowing the spread of COVID-19, there’s more than enough evidence to support their widespread use, Barron says.

“At the end of the day, I don’t want anybody else sick,” she said. “Even if masks were only 10% effective, that would still be better than nothing. This can spread like wildfire. Even if you’re young and healthy, others are vulnerable. It’s not just your risk.”

  Due to the unprecedented crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, BRIO has dedicated 100% of their operations to importing critically needed respirator masks. Featuring a 3D comfort design, these KN95 masks provide filtration against particulate pollution, gases, as well as bacteria, viruses, and most odors. It’s made with comfortable stretch fabric and has convenient earloops for a tight fit. These masks are perfect for everyday wear. Order your 5-Pack now!

3D Comfort mask design

Convenient earloop design

Comfortable stretch fabric for tight fit

Easy to put on & remove

Note: These masks are not FDA approved nor are they N95. These masks are tested to meet the standards for Chinese KN-95. Tests confirmed almost 90% of particulate pollution, bacteria and viruses were successfully filtered when the mask was used. 20x more effective than cloth masks.

Specs

Color: white

Materials: 3-layer melt-blown non-woven PPE

Product dimensions: 1″H x 8″L x 5″W

3D Comfort design

KN95 PRC Standard (Similar to NIOSH N95)

CE 0194

FFP2 – EN149 Filtration Level

Racial Status And The Pandemic: A Combustible Mixture

In early March, Madalynn Rucker, then 69, agonized over whether to close her Sacramento consultancy office. On the 16th, she finally succumbed to a barrage of texts and calls from her daughter about the heightened risk of the coronavirus, and told her employees to begin working from home. That was three days before California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s statewide stay-at-home order.

Her daughter was right in more ways than one. While Rucker’s age alone raised her potential danger of being hospitalized or dying of COVID-19, she and many of her employees share another risk factor: They are black. Rucker wonders if more public health messages targeting African Americans could have helped millions like her better prepare for the disease’s onslaught.

Officials and commentators said little about race early in the pandemic, recalled Rucker, now 70 and the executive director of OnTrack, a diversity consulting firm. “Could this have made a difference in some way? Not just in educating ourselves, but in how the pandemic was controlled and managed?”

Email Sign-Up

Subscribe to KHN’s free Morning Briefing.

Sign Up

Please confirm your email address below:

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By late February, doctors in China had published that, in addition to older patients, those with chronic health conditions, particularly hypertension and diabetes, were more likely to have severe cases of COVID-19 that ended in ICU admission, mechanical ventilation or death.

It wouldn’t have been difficult, some community leaders say, for officials to make an explicit connection between the coronavirus risk factors and African Americans and Latinos, who are more likely to have chronic diseases, and at younger ages ― and then craft tailored, respectful messages for them.

“The messaging I got from the news was, is that if you’re young, you’re good, and if you’re old, you’ve got to stay home,” said Eddie Anderson, the 30-year-old pastor of McCarty Memorial Christian Church, an African American congregation in South Los Angeles.

When Anderson became ill with what turned out to be another viral infection in early March, he was alarmed by the lack of information about how to get tested for COVID-19. The experience motivated him to bring a physician friend to church the next week to explain the disease to his flock.

“I think targeted messaging to the African American community would have been helpful,” he said.

But public health and infectious disease experts say the novelty of the virus, whose targets and mode of attack continue to confound scientists, meant that specific racial disparities weren’t a foregone conclusion.

“I don’t know that it’s fair to say that it would have been something that could be 100% predicted,” said California Surgeon General Nadine Burke Harris. She called the novel coronavirus “a little bit of a head-scratcher.” For example, it doesn’t appear to affect children under age 2 or pregnant women the same way similar viruses would, she noted.

“Sometimes when you predict too strongly, it can have the effect of assuming that’s going to be the outcome, and it can come across pejoratively,” Burke Harris said.

But the disease has disproportionately hurt blacks. In California, 10% of COVID-19 deaths occurred among African Americans, who make up 6% of the state population. A national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey showed that 33% of hospitalized COVID patients were non-Hispanic blacks, though that group represented only 18% of residents in the surveyed communities.

Officials are finding it’s still difficult to talk about race and COVID-19. Fear of stigmatization remains high, said Burke Harris, who said she walks a fine line by letting certain groups know about the heightened risks without casting blame on them.

“One of the things I’ve been dealing with a lot in having conversations with black media and black health researchers, right, is this notion of, well, wait a minute, as this data is coming out, how are we not blaming black and brown communities?” said Burke Harris, who is black. “It’s like, ‘Oh, are you saying we’re sicker?’”

Preexisting conditions aren’t the only reason black people are dying at disproportionate rates of COVID-19, said Dr. Sonia Angell, director of the California Department of Public Health.

Despite states’ orders to stay at home, entire sectors of “essential” jobs have disproportionately high rates of minority employees, which increases their exposure risk. These workers don’t benefit as much from social distancing, Angell said.

“They’re the ones that are keeping our care delivery system functioning so that when any of us get sick, we have a place to go,” she said. “They’re the ones that are keeping our grocery stores running and stocked.”

The absence of coordinated, official public messaging in February and early March about the potential racial disparity of COVID-19’s impact created a vacuum into which conspiracy theories rushed.

Initially came rumors that black people were somehow resistant to the coronavirus. At the same time, black media outlets like The Philadelphia Tribune (Feb. 4), Essence (March 2), the St. Louis American (March 11) and The Undefeated (March 13) made the connection between the virus and America’s preexisting health inequalities, publishing forward-thinking pieces about the virus’ potential threat to black Americans because of chronic medical conditions, working and commuting conditions, and a historical lack of access to health care and insurance due to institutionalized racism.

Their predictions soon proved true. Local officials began noting higher death rates for black COVID-19 patients in Milwaukee on March 23. In the first week of April, city officials in Chicago, Los Angeles and New Orleans made similar announcements. The CDC published its first national data on racial disparities on April 8. A recent CDC study, published April 29, found that black people made up 83% of COVID-19 hospitalizations in Georgia, a disproportionate level compared with overall hospitalizations.

Public health messages targeting specific populations should be voiced by trusted community leaders, or at least someone of the same race, on media platforms where they’re most likely to be seen or heard, said Dr. Oliver Brooks, president of the National Medical Association, which represents black physicians.

A week after announcing the statewide shelter order, Newsom tweeted a public service announcement from Snoop Dogg, who said, “The longer you stay outside, the longer we’re going to be inside.”

Other targeted messages include Spanish-language public service announcements featuring Burke Harris and LA Galaxy soccer player Javier “Chicharito” Hernández. Those have run on Univision; Radio Bilingüe, a Spanish-language public radio network; and other Spanish-language stations, as well as Instagram and Facebook. In Hernández’s clip, he encourages listeners in Spanish to seek medical attention if they have COVID-19 symptoms, no matter what their immigration status is.

Targeted messaging can sometimes offend or insult, even with the best of intentions, said Daniel Schober, assistant professor of public health and behavioral psychology at DePaul University in Chicago.

The city of Chicago offended some with a 2015 flu shot campaign that featured a black baby on a billboard next to the words, “I am an outbreak.” It inspired graffiti artists to weigh in with their own message: “I am beautiful.”

But the city’s COVID-19 campaign, featuring Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who is black, has charmed residents, said Schober. The campaign played off social media memes depicting a no-nonsense Lightfoot shutting down iconic Chicago landmarks under shelter-in-place directives. The city’s official video showed the mayor baking, learning the guitar and sipping tea while exhorting people to “stay home, save lives.”

“That’s a great example of a message that isn’t necessarily tailored toward specific racial or ethnic groups, but is really meant to be universal in its reach,” Schober said.

Racial Status And The Pandemic: A Combustible Mixture published first on https://smartdrinkingweb.weebly.com/

Racial Status And The Pandemic: A Combustible Mixture

In early March, Madalynn Rucker, then 69, agonized over whether to close her Sacramento consultancy office. On the 16th, she finally succumbed to a barrage of texts and calls from her daughter about the heightened risk of the coronavirus, and told her employees to begin working from home. That was three days before California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s statewide stay-at-home order.

Her daughter was right in more ways than one. While Rucker’s age alone raised her potential danger of being hospitalized or dying of COVID-19, she and many of her employees share another risk factor: They are black. Rucker wonders if more public health messages targeting African Americans could have helped millions like her better prepare for the disease’s onslaught.

Officials and commentators said little about race early in the pandemic, recalled Rucker, now 70 and the executive director of OnTrack, a diversity consulting firm. “Could this have made a difference in some way? Not just in educating ourselves, but in how the pandemic was controlled and managed?”

Email Sign-Up

Subscribe to KHN’s free Morning Briefing.

Sign Up

Please confirm your email address below:

Sign Up

By late February, doctors in China had published that, in addition to older patients, those with chronic health conditions, particularly hypertension and diabetes, were more likely to have severe cases of COVID-19 that ended in ICU admission, mechanical ventilation or death.

It wouldn’t have been difficult, some community leaders say, for officials to make an explicit connection between the coronavirus risk factors and African Americans and Latinos, who are more likely to have chronic diseases, and at younger ages ― and then craft tailored, respectful messages for them.

“The messaging I got from the news was, is that if you’re young, you’re good, and if you’re old, you’ve got to stay home,” said Eddie Anderson, the 30-year-old pastor of McCarty Memorial Christian Church, an African American congregation in South Los Angeles.

When Anderson became ill with what turned out to be another viral infection in early March, he was alarmed by the lack of information about how to get tested for COVID-19. The experience motivated him to bring a physician friend to church the next week to explain the disease to his flock.

“I think targeted messaging to the African American community would have been helpful,” he said.

But public health and infectious disease experts say the novelty of the virus, whose targets and mode of attack continue to confound scientists, meant that specific racial disparities weren’t a foregone conclusion.

“I don’t know that it’s fair to say that it would have been something that could be 100% predicted,” said California Surgeon General Nadine Burke Harris. She called the novel coronavirus “a little bit of a head-scratcher.” For example, it doesn’t appear to affect children under age 2 or pregnant women the same way similar viruses would, she noted.

“Sometimes when you predict too strongly, it can have the effect of assuming that’s going to be the outcome, and it can come across pejoratively,” Burke Harris said.

But the disease has disproportionately hurt blacks. In California, 10% of COVID-19 deaths occurred among African Americans, who make up 6% of the state population. A national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey showed that 33% of hospitalized COVID patients were non-Hispanic blacks, though that group represented only 18% of residents in the surveyed communities.

Officials are finding it’s still difficult to talk about race and COVID-19. Fear of stigmatization remains high, said Burke Harris, who said she walks a fine line by letting certain groups know about the heightened risks without casting blame on them.

“One of the things I’ve been dealing with a lot in having conversations with black media and black health researchers, right, is this notion of, well, wait a minute, as this data is coming out, how are we not blaming black and brown communities?” said Burke Harris, who is black. “It’s like, ‘Oh, are you saying we’re sicker?’”

Preexisting conditions aren’t the only reason black people are dying at disproportionate rates of COVID-19, said Dr. Sonia Angell, director of the California Department of Public Health.

Despite states’ orders to stay at home, entire sectors of “essential” jobs have disproportionately high rates of minority employees, which increases their exposure risk. These workers don’t benefit as much from social distancing, Angell said.

“They’re the ones that are keeping our care delivery system functioning so that when any of us get sick, we have a place to go,” she said. “They’re the ones that are keeping our grocery stores running and stocked.”

The absence of coordinated, official public messaging in February and early March about the potential racial disparity of COVID-19’s impact created a vacuum into which conspiracy theories rushed.

Initially came rumors that black people were somehow resistant to the coronavirus. At the same time, black media outlets like The Philadelphia Tribune (Feb. 4), Essence (March 2), the St. Louis American (March 11) and The Undefeated (March 13) made the connection between the virus and America’s preexisting health inequalities, publishing forward-thinking pieces about the virus’ potential threat to black Americans because of chronic medical conditions, working and commuting conditions, and a historical lack of access to health care and insurance due to institutionalized racism.

Their predictions soon proved true. Local officials began noting higher death rates for black COVID-19 patients in Milwaukee on March 23. In the first week of April, city officials in Chicago, Los Angeles and New Orleans made similar announcements. The CDC published its first national data on racial disparities on April 8. A recent CDC study, published April 29, found that black people made up 83% of COVID-19 hospitalizations in Georgia, a disproportionate level compared with overall hospitalizations.

Public health messages targeting specific populations should be voiced by trusted community leaders, or at least someone of the same race, on media platforms where they’re most likely to be seen or heard, said Dr. Oliver Brooks, president of the National Medical Association, which represents black physicians.

A week after announcing the statewide shelter order, Newsom tweeted a public service announcement from Snoop Dogg, who said, “The longer you stay outside, the longer we’re going to be inside.”

Other targeted messages include Spanish-language public service announcements featuring Burke Harris and LA Galaxy soccer player Javier “Chicharito” Hernández. Those have run on Univision; Radio Bilingüe, a Spanish-language public radio network; and other Spanish-language stations, as well as Instagram and Facebook. In Hernández’s clip, he encourages listeners in Spanish to seek medical attention if they have COVID-19 symptoms, no matter what their immigration status is.

Targeted messaging can sometimes offend or insult, even with the best of intentions, said Daniel Schober, assistant professor of public health and behavioral psychology at DePaul University in Chicago.

The city of Chicago offended some with a 2015 flu shot campaign that featured a black baby on a billboard next to the words, “I am an outbreak.” It inspired graffiti artists to weigh in with their own message: “I am beautiful.”

But the city’s COVID-19 campaign, featuring Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who is black, has charmed residents, said Schober. The campaign played off social media memes depicting a no-nonsense Lightfoot shutting down iconic Chicago landmarks under shelter-in-place directives. The city’s official video showed the mayor baking, learning the guitar and sipping tea while exhorting people to “stay home, save lives.”

“That’s a great example of a message that isn’t necessarily tailored toward specific racial or ethnic groups, but is really meant to be universal in its reach,” Schober said.

from Updates By Dina https://khn.org/news/racial-status-and-the-pandemic-a-combustible-mixture/

Racial Status And The Pandemic: A Combustible Mixture

In early March, Madalynn Rucker, then 69, agonized over whether to close her Sacramento consultancy office. On the 16th, she finally succumbed to a barrage of texts and calls from her daughter about the heightened risk of the coronavirus, and told her employees to begin working from home. That was three days before California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s statewide stay-at-home order.

Her daughter was right in more ways than one. While Rucker’s age alone raised her potential danger of being hospitalized or dying of COVID-19, she and many of her employees share another risk factor: They are black. Rucker wonders if more public health messages targeting African Americans could have helped millions like her better prepare for the disease’s onslaught.

Officials and commentators said little about race early in the pandemic, recalled Rucker, now 70 and the executive director of OnTrack, a diversity consulting firm. “Could this have made a difference in some way? Not just in educating ourselves, but in how the pandemic was controlled and managed?”

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By late February, doctors in China had published that, in addition to older patients, those with chronic health conditions, particularly hypertension and diabetes, were more likely to have severe cases of COVID-19 that ended in ICU admission, mechanical ventilation or death.

It wouldn’t have been difficult, some community leaders say, for officials to make an explicit connection between the coronavirus risk factors and African Americans and Latinos, who are more likely to have chronic diseases, and at younger ages ― and then craft tailored, respectful messages for them.

“The messaging I got from the news was, is that if you’re young, you’re good, and if you’re old, you’ve got to stay home,” said Eddie Anderson, the 30-year-old pastor of McCarty Memorial Christian Church, an African American congregation in South Los Angeles.

When Anderson became ill with what turned out to be another viral infection in early March, he was alarmed by the lack of information about how to get tested for COVID-19. The experience motivated him to bring a physician friend to church the next week to explain the disease to his flock.

“I think targeted messaging to the African American community would have been helpful,” he said.

But public health and infectious disease experts say the novelty of the virus, whose targets and mode of attack continue to confound scientists, meant that specific racial disparities weren’t a foregone conclusion.

“I don’t know that it’s fair to say that it would have been something that could be 100% predicted,” said California Surgeon General Nadine Burke Harris. She called the novel coronavirus “a little bit of a head-scratcher.” For example, it doesn’t appear to affect children under age 2 or pregnant women the same way similar viruses would, she noted.

“Sometimes when you predict too strongly, it can have the effect of assuming that’s going to be the outcome, and it can come across pejoratively,” Burke Harris said.

But the disease has disproportionately hurt blacks. In California, 10% of COVID-19 deaths occurred among African Americans, who make up 6% of the state population. A national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey showed that 33% of hospitalized COVID patients were non-Hispanic blacks, though that group represented only 18% of residents in the surveyed communities.

Officials are finding it’s still difficult to talk about race and COVID-19. Fear of stigmatization remains high, said Burke Harris, who said she walks a fine line by letting certain groups know about the heightened risks without casting blame on them.

“One of the things I’ve been dealing with a lot in having conversations with black media and black health researchers, right, is this notion of, well, wait a minute, as this data is coming out, how are we not blaming black and brown communities?” said Burke Harris, who is black. “It’s like, ‘Oh, are you saying we’re sicker?’”

Preexisting conditions aren’t the only reason black people are dying at disproportionate rates of COVID-19, said Dr. Sonia Angell, director of the California Department of Public Health.

Despite states’ orders to stay at home, entire sectors of “essential” jobs have disproportionately high rates of minority employees, which increases their exposure risk. These workers don’t benefit as much from social distancing, Angell said.

“They’re the ones that are keeping our care delivery system functioning so that when any of us get sick, we have a place to go,” she said. “They’re the ones that are keeping our grocery stores running and stocked.”

The absence of coordinated, official public messaging in February and early March about the potential racial disparity of COVID-19’s impact created a vacuum into which conspiracy theories rushed.

Initially came rumors that black people were somehow resistant to the coronavirus. At the same time, black media outlets like The Philadelphia Tribune (Feb. 4), Essence (March 2), the St. Louis American (March 11) and The Undefeated (March 13) made the connection between the virus and America’s preexisting health inequalities, publishing forward-thinking pieces about the virus’ potential threat to black Americans because of chronic medical conditions, working and commuting conditions, and a historical lack of access to health care and insurance due to institutionalized racism.

Their predictions soon proved true. Local officials began noting higher death rates for black COVID-19 patients in Milwaukee on March 23. In the first week of April, city officials in Chicago, Los Angeles and New Orleans made similar announcements. The CDC published its first national data on racial disparities on April 8. A recent CDC study, published April 29, found that black people made up 83% of COVID-19 hospitalizations in Georgia, a disproportionate level compared with overall hospitalizations.

Public health messages targeting specific populations should be voiced by trusted community leaders, or at least someone of the same race, on media platforms where they’re most likely to be seen or heard, said Dr. Oliver Brooks, president of the National Medical Association, which represents black physicians.

A week after announcing the statewide shelter order, Newsom tweeted a public service announcement from Snoop Dogg, who said, “The longer you stay outside, the longer we’re going to be inside.”

Other targeted messages include Spanish-language public service announcements featuring Burke Harris and LA Galaxy soccer player Javier “Chicharito” Hernández. Those have run on Univision; Radio Bilingüe, a Spanish-language public radio network; and other Spanish-language stations, as well as Instagram and Facebook. In Hernández’s clip, he encourages listeners in Spanish to seek medical attention if they have COVID-19 symptoms, no matter what their immigration status is.

Targeted messaging can sometimes offend or insult, even with the best of intentions, said Daniel Schober, assistant professor of public health and behavioral psychology at DePaul University in Chicago.

The city of Chicago offended some with a 2015 flu shot campaign that featured a black baby on a billboard next to the words, “I am an outbreak.” It inspired graffiti artists to weigh in with their own message: “I am beautiful.”

But the city’s COVID-19 campaign, featuring Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who is black, has charmed residents, said Schober. The campaign played off social media memes depicting a no-nonsense Lightfoot shutting down iconic Chicago landmarks under shelter-in-place directives. The city’s official video showed the mayor baking, learning the guitar and sipping tea while exhorting people to “stay home, save lives.”

“That’s a great example of a message that isn’t necessarily tailored toward specific racial or ethnic groups, but is really meant to be universal in its reach,” Schober said.

Racial Status And The Pandemic: A Combustible Mixture published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

‘We will not have a vaccine by next winter.’ CDC says second wave of coronavirus could be worse. Why the second wave of 1918 Spanish flu was so devastating

America is staring down a widespread COVID-19 testing shortage with no vaccine in sight. So what happens when coronavirus makes its unceremonious return?

“There’s a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through,” Robert Redfield, director of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, told The Washington Post.

“And when I’ve said this to others, they kind of put their head back, they don’t understand what I mean,” Redfield told the paper late Tuesday. “We’re going to have the flu epidemic and the coronavirus epidemic at the same time.”

“ ‘There’s a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through.’ ”

— Robert Redfield, director of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention.

Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, also said the novel coronavirus “might keep coming back” year after year. “The ultimate game changer in this will be a vaccine,” he said. But that, Fauci estimated, could take 12 to 18 months.

“If we’re not expecting a second wave or a mutation of this virus, then we have learned nothing,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, told CMCSA, +0.05% earlier this month, calling it a “new normal” for public health in the U.S. “That is why it is such an important period for government.”

First, the bad news: “The four seasonal coronaviruses do not seem to induce long-term immunity,” said Gregory Poland, who studies the immunogenetics of vaccine response in adults and children at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and expert with the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

“We will not have a vaccine by next winter,” Poland added. “The Southern Hemisphere is just starting their fall and winter. They will have a severe course of this disease due to less preparedness, less medical infrastructure and less public infrastructure.”

Coronavirus immunity differs from other diseases. Immunizations against smallpox, measles or Hepatitis B should last a lifetime, Poland said. Coronaviruses, first discovered in the 1960s, interact with our immune system in unique and different ways, he added.

Dispatches from a pandemic:‘When I hear an ambulance, I wonder if there’s a coronavirus patient inside. Are there more 911 calls, or do I notice every distant siren?’

How do other coronaviruses compare to SARS-CoV-2? People infected by SARS-CoV, an outbreak that centered in southern China and Hong Kong from 2002 to 2004, had immunity for roughly two years; studies suggest the antibodies disappear six years after the infection.

For MERS-CoV, a coronavirus that has caused hundreds of cases in the Middle East, people retain immunity for approximately 18 months — although the long-term response to being exposed to the virus again may depend on the severity of the original infection.

The world, Poland said, should brace itself for round two: “We will start moving into our summer when they’re moving into their winter,” he said. “If, as is likely, we don’t restrict all travel, cases will start coming back into the Northern Hemisphere and we’ll have another outbreak this fall.”

It’s too early for ‘herd immunity’ to be effective

Without a vaccine, “herd immunity” is another option. That theory was briefly considered in the U.K. as an alternative to closing businesses and practicing social distancing, but was deemed too risky. Ultimately, enough people would need to be immune to shield the most vulnerable.

“There’s no chance that immunity is going to be high enough to reach herd immunity,” Poland said. “With influenza, you need herd immunity of 60% to 70%. With measles, you need about 95%. With COVID-19, it’s somewhere in the middle.”

In the absence of a vaccine, Poland said several conditions are necessary for herd immunity to work: a very high level of population immunity, for that immunity to be durable, and for the virus to not mutate. “None of those seem to be operational at present,” he said.

“ With influenza, you need herd immunity of 60% to 70%. With measles, you need about 95%. With COVID-19, it’s somewhere in the middle. ”

— Gregory Poland, who studies the immunogenetics of vaccines at the Mayo Clinic.

In addition to the level of herd immunity (or lack thereof) to protect those who are most vulnerable, people will have to be cognizant of the disease spreading through asymptomatic carriers — that is, people who are infected but show no signs that they’re ill.

For example, a New England Journal of Medicine study published this month found that 29 (or 14%) of 210 pregnant women arriving at New York–Presbyterian Allen Hospital and Columbia University Irving Medical Center tested positive for COVID-19, yet displayed no symptoms.

“Our use of universal SARS-CoV-2 testing in all pregnant patients presenting for delivery revealed that at this point in the pandemic in New York City, most of the patients who were positive for SARS-CoV-2 at delivery were asymptomatic,” the study concluded.

“It underscores the risk of Covid-19 among asymptomatic obstetrical patients,” added the study, which was published earlier this month. “Moreover, the true prevalence of infection may be underreported because of false negative results of tests to detect SARS-CoV-2.”

Lessons in immunity from the Spanish flu of 1918

So what will happen if or when SARS-CoV-2, which causes the respiratory disease COVID-19, returns? “We’re just 14 weeks into this, so no one knows,” Poland said. If it has a slight mutation, he added, the response of our antibodies will be “moderately irrelevant.”

We can’t expect to have the same “herd immunity” or “original antigenic sin” — the ability of our immune systems to remember a virus that is similar, but not the same, as a previous version — as influenza. Influenza, after all, has been around for 500, if not 1,000 years.

“During the great influenza pandemic of 1918, the age group that disproportionately died were young people, not older adults,” Poland said. “Older adults had seen previews of this virus in earlier years, probably in the late 1800s, so they had immunological memory.”

“ ‘The 1918 Spanish flu’s second wave was even more devastating than the first wave. COVID-19’s sweet spot could be October to May.’ ”

— Ravina Kullar, adjunct faculty member at the University of California, Los Angeles.

There are similarities between influenza and SARS-CoV-2, and they have almost identical symptoms — fever, coughing, night sweats, aching bones, tiredness, and nausea and diarrhea in the most severe cases. Like all viruses, neither are treatable with antibiotics.

They can both be spread through respiratory droplets from coughing and sneezing, but they come from two different virus families — and ongoing research to develop a universal vaccine for influenza shows how tricky both influenza viruses and coronaviruses can be.

“The 1918 Spanish flu’s second wave was even more devastating than the first wave,” Ravina Kullar, an infectious-disease expert with the Infectious Diseases Society of America and adjunct faculty member at the University of California, Los Angeles, told MarketWatch.

Historians believe that a more virulent influenza strain hit during a hard three months in 1918 and was spread by troops moving through Europe during the First World War. A mutated strain would be a worst-case scenario for a second wave of SARS-CoV-2 this fall or winter.

The 1918 pandemic is forever associated with Spain, but this strain of H1-N1 was discovered earlier in Germany, France, the U.K. and the U.S., but similar to the Communist Party’s response to first cases of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, First World War censors buried or underplayed those reports.

”It is essential to consider the deep connections between the Great War and the influenza pandemic not simply as concurrent or consecutive crises, but more deeply intertwined,” historian James Harris wrote in an essay on the pandemic.

“ A more virulent, mutated strain of the novel coronavirus would be a worst-case scenario for a second wave of SARS-CoV-2 this fall or winter. ”

The British military medicine took a leading role in studying the public-health response, he added. “Domestic public-health leaders did almost nothing to stem the spread of the pandemic due to the impact measures such as quarantine would have had on the war effort.

Doctors and members of the public, as of now, were spooked by how otherwise strong, healthy people fell victim to the 1918 influenza. Doctors today attribute that to the “cytokine storm,” a process where the immune system in healthy people reacts so strongly as to hurt the body.

A surge of immune cells and their activating compounds (cytokines) effectively turned the body against itself, led to an inflammation of the lungs, severe respiratory distress, leaving the body vulnerable to secondary bacterial pneumonia.

And the second wave of SARS-CoV-2? “It will likely hit harder in areas not severely impacted the first time in the interior of the U.S., where there’s a lot more susceptible people,” Kullar said. “COVID-19’s sweet spot could be October to May, with it peaking, likely, in October and November.”

Kullar said scientists are learning something new every day from modeling studies. “If it follows the same pattern as influenza, it will likely level off during the summertime,” she said. “If immunity is in existence, then likely the virus will come back looking for new victims.”

What’s more, Redfield told the Washington Post that he’s been in talks with state officials about the potential for using U.S. Census Bureau, Peace Corps and AmeriCorps volunteers to create what he called “an alternative workforce” to help with contact tracing for those who test positive.

Testing will determine the rate of asymptomatic carriers

There is reason to be optimistic. “We still have a lot to learn about the flu, even though we’ve had flu vaccines since the mid-1940s,” Poland said. “It’s amazing what the world has done in 14 weeks on COVID-19, but what’s more amazing is how much more there is to learn.”

In those 14 weeks, scientists around the world have learned a lot about SARS-CoV-2, including the virus’s genetic structure; how it infects human cells; what kind of disease manifestation it causes; and how it impacts the liver, kidney and brain.

“ ‘We really need to have wide-scale testing available, and contact tracing to find everyone who has been exposed.’ ”

— Ravina Kullar, an expert with the Infectious Diseases Society of America.

What else, aside from social distancing to “flatten the curve” of new infections, can be done between now and then? While scientists work to crack the code of the novel coronavirus, the government and members of the public can work together.

“It all comes down to testing,” Kullar said. “We really need to have wide-scale testing available, and contact tracing to find everyone who has been exposed and get them to self-isolate for 14 days. We don’t have a system like that in the U.S. at present.”

Just over 4.1 million people have been tested in the U.S. for SARS-CoV-2, there are 842,319 confirmed cases, and nearly 46,400 deaths. Testing has been delayed by shortages of reliable tests nationwide. A recent Reuters poll suggested 2.3% were diagnosed with COVID-19.

On Monday, more than 50 days after the first coronavirus case was reported in New York, the state began random antibody testing on consenting grocery-store patrons in different regions across the state. There is no guarantee as yet that the presence of antibodies confers immunity.

Dispatches from a pandemic: New York’s empty streets remind me of my childhood in a Wild West ghost town — how America can revive itself post-pandemic

The procedure, also known as serology testing, uses a finger-stick blood sample. It will analyze 3,000 people across New York, which has a population of 19.5 million, over the next week, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said on Sunday. But questions remain about the tests’ effectiveness.

Cuomo met with President Trump on Tuesday at the White House and said that the president had offered federal assistance to help New York State carry out up to 40,000 coroanvirus tests a day, which the governor said he hopes will happen within several weeks.

Assuming testing is up to speed by the end of summer, Kullar says Americans should be on a sound footing for round two of SARS-CoV-2 with, ideally, enough hospital supplies and testing in place to ensure we all make fewer mistakes next time around.

But a lot will come down to the American people. “How we behave will really determine how big this virus is going to get,” she said. “Maintain social distancing and wear masks in public until we see infection rates go down, and keep doing it until we get enough testing.”

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And so here I am, asking bluntly – is the closedown of the country the right answer to the coronavirus? I’ll be accused of undermining the NHS and threatening public health and all kinds of other conformist rubbish. But I ask you to join me, because if we have this wrong we have a great deal to lose. I don’t just address this plea to my readers. I think my fellow journalists should ask the same questions. I think MPs of all parties should ask them when they are urged tomorrow to pass into law a frightening series of restrictions on ancient liberties and vast increases in police and state powers. Did you know that the Government and Opposition had originally agreed that there would not even be a vote on these measures? Even Vladimir Putin might hesitate before doing anything so blatant. If there is no serious rebellion against this plan in the Commons, then I think we can commemorate tomorrow, March 23, 2020, as the day Parliament died. Yet, as far as I can see, the population cares more about running out of lavatory paper. Praise must go to David Davis and Chris Bryant, two MPs who have bravely challenged this measure. It may also be the day our economy perished. The incessant coverage of health scares and supermarket panics has obscured the dire news coming each hour from the stock markets and the money exchanges. The wealth that should pay our pensions is shrivelling as share values fade and fall. The pound sterling has lost a huge part of its value. Governments all over the world are resorting to risky, frantic measures which make Jeremy Corbyn’s magic money tree look like sober, sound finance. Much of this has been made far worse by the general shutdown of the planet on the pretext of the coronavirus scare. However bad this virus is (and I will come to that), the feverish panic on the world’s trading floors is at least as bad. And then there is the Johnson Government’s stumbling retreat from reason into fear. At first, Mr Johnson was true to himself and resisted wild demands to close down the country. But bit by bit he gave in. The schools were to stay open. Now they are shutting, with miserable consequences for this year’s A-level cohort. Cafes and pubs were to be allowed to stay open, but now that is over. On this logic, shops and supermarkets must be next, with everyone forced to rely on overstrained delivery vans. And that will presumably be followed by hairdressers, dry cleaners and shoe repairers. How long before we need passes to go out in the streets, as in any other banana republic? As for the grotesque, bullying powers to be created on Monday, I can only tell you that you will hate them like poison by the time they are imposed on you. ll the crudest weapons of despotism, the curfew, the presumption of guilt and the power of arbitrary arrest, are taking shape in the midst of what used to be a free country. And we, who like to boast of how calm we are in a crisis, seem to despise our ancient hard-bought freedom and actually want to rush into the warm, firm arms of Big Brother. Imagine, police officers forcing you to be screened for a disease, and locking you up for 48 hours if you object. Is this China or Britain? Think how this power could be used against, literally, anybody. The Bill also gives Ministers the authority to ban mass gatherings. It will enable police and public health workers to place restrictions on a person’s ‘movements and travel’, ‘activities’ and ‘contact with others’. Many court cases will now take place via video-link, and if a coroner suspects someone has died of coronavirus there will be no inquest. They say this is temporary. They always do. Well, is it justified? There is a document from a team at Imperial College in London which is being used to justify it. It warns of vast numbers of deaths if the country is not subjected to a medieval curfew. But this is all speculation. It claims, in my view quite wrongly, that the coronavirus has ‘comparable lethality’ to the Spanish flu of 1918, which killed at least 17 million people and mainly attacked the young. What can one say to this? In a pungent letter to The Times last week, a leading vet, Dick Sibley, cast doubt on the brilliance of the Imperial College scientists, saying that his heart sank when he learned they were advising the Government. Calling them a ‘team of doom-mongers’, he said their advice on the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak ‘led to what I believe to be the unnecessary slaughter of millions of healthy cattle and sheep’ until they were overruled by the then Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir David King. He added: ‘I hope that Boris Johnson, Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance show similar wisdom. They must ensure that measures are proportionate, balanced and practical.’ Avoidable deaths are tragic, but each year there are already many deaths, especially among the old, from complications of flu leading to pneumonia. The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) tells me that the number of flu cases and deaths due to flu-related complications in England alone averages 17,000 a year. This varies greatly each winter, ranging from 1,692 deaths last season (2018/19) to 28,330 deaths in 2014/15. The DHSC notes that many of those who die from these diseases have underlying health conditions, as do almost all the victims of coronavirus so far, here and elsewhere. As the experienced and knowledgeable doctor who writes under the pseudonym ‘MD’ in the Left-wing magazine Private Eye wrote at the start of the panic: ‘In the winter of 2017-18, more than 50,000 excess deaths occurred in England and Wales, largely unnoticed.’ Nor is it just respiratory diseases that carry people off too soon. In the Government’s table of ‘deaths considered avoidable’, it lists 31,307 deaths from cardiovascular diseases in England and Wales for 2013, the last year for which they could give me figures. This, largely the toll of unhealthy lifestyles, was out of a total of 114,740 ‘avoidable’ deaths in that year. To put all these figures in perspective, please note that every human being in the United Kingdom suffers from a fatal condition – being alive. About 1,600 people die every day in the UK for one reason or another. A similar figure applies in Italy and a much larger one in China. The coronavirus deaths, while distressing and shocking, are not so numerous as to require the civilised world to shut down transport and commerce, nor to surrender centuries-old liberties in an afternoon. We are warned of supposedly devastating death rates. But at least one expert, John Ioannidis, is not so sure. He is Professor of Medicine, of epidemiology and population health, of biomedical data science, and of statistics at Stanford University in California. He says the data are utterly unreliable because so many cases are going unrecorded. He warns: ‘This evidence fiasco creates tremendous uncertainty about the risk of dying from Covid-19. Reported case fatality rates, like the official 3.4 per cent rate from the World Health Organisation, cause horror and are meaningless.’ In only one place – aboard the cruise ship Diamond Princess – has an entire closed community been available for study. And the death rate there – just one per cent – is distorted because so many of those aboard were elderly. The real rate, adjusted for a wide age range, could be as low as 0.05 per cent and as high as one per cent. As Prof Ioannidis says: ‘That huge range markedly affects how severe the pandemic is and what should be done. A population-wide case fatality rate of 0.05 per cent is lower than seasonal influenza. If that is the true rate, locking down the world with potentially tremendous social and financial consequences may be totally irrational. It’s like an elephant being attacked by a house cat. Frustrated and trying to avoid the cat, the elephant accidentally jumps off a cliff and dies.’ Epidemic disasters have been predicted many times before and have not been anything like as bad as feared. The former editor of The Times, Sir Simon Jenkins, recently listed these unfulfilled scares: bird flu did not kill the predicted millions in 1997. In 1999 it was Mad Cow Disease and its human variant, vCJD, which was predicted to kill half a million. Fewer than 200 in fact died from it in the UK. The first Sars outbreak of 2003 was reported as having ‘a 25 per cent chance of killing tens of millions’ and being ‘worse than Aids’. In 2006, another bout of bird flu was declared ‘the first pandemic of the 21st Century’. There were similar warnings in 2009, that swine flu could kill 65,000. It did not. The Council of Europe described the hyping of the 2009 pandemic as ‘one of the great medical scandals of the century’. Well, we shall no doubt see. But while I see very little evidence of a pandemic, and much more of a PanicDemic, I can witness on my daily round the slow strangulation of dozens of small businesses near where I live and work, and the catastrophic collapse of a flourishing society, all these things brought on by a Government policy made out of fear and speculation rather than thought. Much that is closing may never open again. The time lost to schoolchildren and university students – in debt for courses which have simply ceased to be taught – is irrecoverable, just as the jobs which are being wiped out will not reappear when the panic at last subsides. We are told that we must emulate Italy or China, but there is no evidence that the flailing, despotic measures taken in these countries reduced the incidence of coronavirus. The most basic error in science is to assume that because B happens after A, that B was caused by A. There may, just, be time to reconsider. I know that many of you long for some sort of coherent opposition to be voiced. The people who are paid to be the Opposition do not seem to wish to earn their rations, so it is up to the rest of us. I despair that so many in the commentariat and politics obediently accept what they are being told. I have lived long enough, and travelled far enough, to know that authority is often wrong and cannot always be trusted. I also know that dissent at this time will bring me abuse and perhaps worse. But I am not saying this for fun, or to be ‘contrarian’ –that stupid word which suggests that you are picking an argument for fun. This is not fun. This is our future, and if I did not lift my voice to speak up for it now, even if I do it quite alone, I should consider that I was not worthy to call myself English or British, or a journalist, and that my parents’ generation had wasted their time saving the freedom and prosperity which they handed on to me after a long and cruel struggle whose privations and griefs we can barely imagine. - Peter Hitchens https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8138675/PETER-HITCHENS-shutting-Britain-REALLY-right-answer.html 

#resistthelockdown #whatsreallygoingon