Two of our scientists from Tulane University are studying coronavirus. We have a primate center north of New Orleans that will do this.
Tulane University in new Orleans has a primate center north of New Orleans in Covington, Louisiana.
They are going to inject and infect the primates with the virus to study it. These two doctors (scientists) were asked to do this study and they agreed to study how this virus will spread among the primates. They will also work on treatments for the virus.
These viruses are so worrisome. My husband’s company has been effected by the situation because manufacturing is in China. Thank God my husband traveled to China before the virus outbreak and all the protesters as well.
A long time ago some of the primates escaped from Tulane. Some were recovered in people’s backyards. Some were never recovered.
I have always been very OCD about hand washing. I think that came from my mom, grandma, aunts and the nuns at my school. It’s just how I am.
I can’t imagine people not washing their hands. Gross! I am a bit of a germ freak.
I remember years ago a restaurant in our area closing because a kitchen worker had hepatitis and cut themselves and did not wash their hands and bandage it properly. A customer died from the blood that contaminated the food. So sad.
How OCD are you with hand washing?
This is how you upgrade your hand washing techniques:
Happy Birthday, to you
Happy Birthday, to you
Happy Birthday, CWillie!
Happy Birthday, to you!
20 Seconds
Lol.
They clean before the inspections and that’s about the only time deep cleaning is done.
Good for you!
Yes, I wash my hands constantly. I don’t touch door handles or toilet handles. I suppose I can be a little OCD at times.
People can be very stupid. But that's not news, is it?!
It's like a stampede. More people get hurt in the stampede than could possibly have been harmed by whatever triggered the stampede in the first place. All you can do is try not to join in :)
This virus is constantly compared to the flu but I don’t know if that is a fair comparison. This is a newer virus so not as much is known about it.
Yeah, I am wondering how far this situation will go.
Tom Hanks and wife have it in Australia.
That’s true. Those are indeed the facts.
You’re right. You make excellent points. I guess we want to be optimistic and feel that we are in a very clean and sterile atmosphere.
I wonder what new technology will be developed in the future to help with making the situation better. Some genius will think of something. Not in my lifetime though!
Look at inventions of things used in our homes nowadays. Steam mops that supposedly disinfect. Vacuum cleaners that filter out allergens and so forth.
Isn’t vinegar a natural cleaning agent? Lemons too? People don’t like using lots of harmful, toxic chemicals.
Operating theatres and isolation suites do better. There are lamina flow rooms, too, where even the air going in is ultra-filtered. But the human workers, not to mention the patient, although they go through various cleaning and sterilisation routines (more reasons to read The Checklist Manifesto!) are not wearing sealed suits; and they breathe and they sweat.
My ex's colleague threw aside a learned paper on some marvellous new pre-colonoscopy technique with a snort of contempt, and declared: "the only way to sterilise the 'uman gut is to tekk it out an' BOIL it!" People are teeming with microorganisms, they're supposed to be.
The special difficulty of 'health care related infections' (hospitals felt the term 'hospital acquired infection' was accusatory and unfair!) arises from proximity and concentration. If you took twenty sick people and shut them in an ordinary house with no infection control measures at all, just imagine! So it isn't that hospitals are doing a bad job, it's that the aim of zero cross-infection is extremely difficult to accomplish.
Thanks, those statistics are fascinating to me. Yeah, I can see how planes are a risk. I guess cruise ships and trains are too. Also, anywhere with large congregations of people.
Our church has asked us not to shake hands or exchange hugs during times that the flu has been going around. I think about prisons and of course hospitals.
Why do we hear about infections happening in the hospitals? Aren’t they supposed to be a sterile environment?
Here's a perfect example. Our training includes Food Safety, from which we learn that we NEVER use the same sink for hand washing and food prep. Right? Of course right! Every single person on our team is taught that if they didn't know it anyway. The very same team daily assists people who can't use their bathrooms (for various reasons) to wash at their kitchen sinks. Does every household have separate plastic basins, at least? No of course they don't - they've just got back from hospital, they have bigger things to worry about.
Of course planes are loaded with germs. It's a contained environment. Anything anybody breathes out in the course of several hours is going to be breathed in by everyone else at some point. The estimated range of the diameter of a bacterium is between 1 and 10 micrometers. With viruses, 20 to 400 nanometers. There is no air filter that can capture those.
Containment and quarantine will slow transmission and are worth doing in proportion. But Covid-19 is out of the bag and we'd better be practical about it. Today's headline over here is that some poor chap in Haslemere went to his GP not feeling very well, was tested, and is now in an isolation unit in London. He hadn't travelled abroad and didn't know anyone who had, so the public health people are understandably alarmed about him. They are trying to trace his contacts now.
Haslemere is a typical commuter-belt town about twenty? miles from London. My bet is that this man's daily commute joins up with train routes from Heathrow Airport into London, and he was standing next to someone who'd got off a plane where he'd sat next to someone who had a connecting flight from somewhere etc etc etc.
Well, this man and probably thirty others that morning alone. So what are they going to do? - quarantine London? Close Heathrow? They could - but flights from Heathrow in the last two weeks have already gone where..?
Oh great - ten a.m. news: the GP the Haslemere man saw is "showing symptoms."
The statistics for this virus show (so far) an unusual pattern of deaths. Normally it would be U-shaped: very young and very old at highest risk, less so in the middle. With this one, risk increases with age: babies appear to be almost invulnerable, risk increases steadily with age and is highest among the over 80s.
Here we are: fatality rates among confirmed cases in China as at Feb 11 2020 -
Age in years
0-9 0%
10-19 0.2%
20-29 0.2%
30-39 0.2%
40-49 0.4%
50-59 1.3%
60-69 3.6%
70-79 8%
>80 14.8%
What about planes? Do you think they are loaded with germs? Also, who do you think is most vulnerable to germs, the elderly or young children?
What about pacifiers with children? I see kids drop them and moms give them back to kids without washing them first!
Ear buds are very popular. I don’t use them but have thought about it.
Talking about filthy things. Phones are dirty too. I remember hearing a doctor saying that people bring their phones into the bathroom and they are super contaminated. Ewwww...gross, huh?
Remote controls too.
Shoes are filthy! Thanks for bringing that up! Hahaha 😂
Look at other countries that remove their shoes in their homes. You’re so smart. 😊.
Atul Gawande recounts this in his book 'The Checklist Manifesto' - aid workers supplied villagers with antiseptic soap hoping to reduce the rate of fecal-oral transmission. The results were beyond their most optimistic estimates, and they were delighted. But what they found was that it wasn't their special soap that made the big difference; it was the message about washing hands in general. The villagers were mostly using their own soap (probably grotty old bars of it, with murky grey cracks and squashed ends, if one or two of my clients are anything to go by) and that worked just fine!
We get training (VERY basic) in infection control and we're supplied with gloves, aprons, shoe covers and masks. The shoe covers are useless - they're slippery, which is a serious drawback when you're supporting frail people with poor mobility. I carry indoor shoes with me, and I've recently taken to cleaning them between visits with disinfectant wipes (sorry, Greta Thunberg). The masks are intended for the rare occasions when there's a serious risk such as active TB to consider (and anyway I've seen the masks, and they're about as much use as a chocolate teapot; and anyway we don't - yet - get training in putting them on properly, for which routine we anyway don't have time; thank goodness there's been only one TB case and that wasn't active).
The gloves help prevent us tracking infection from one household to another; but as for individuals' care - hmmmm. You wear your gloves, like a good little worker. Your client can't reach to take her slippers off, and her legs aren't strong enough to kick them off, so you use 'minimal physical support' and whip them off for her. What price your lovely sterile gloves now, then, eh? Have you SEEN this lady's bathroom floor?
I suppose every little helps and I wouldn't dream of breaking our rules, but if this is supposed to be a serious Infection Control strategy... well.
I don't know what will happen when Covid-19 arrives. The choice for our clients isn't between a definitely healthy worker and a possibly infected worker. It's often between us and nobody. I will of course follow instructions.
Never mind political aspects: consider the quality of most journalists' and reporters' grasp of basic scientific concepts. Hopeless! Plus, they have to write interesting headlines.
There is no conspiracy: we are all human animals, equally targets for the virus, and nobody wants anybody to be deceived into catching a potentially lethal infection. But there is an awful lot of uninformed noise out there, so take sensible advice from people who know what they're talking about.