Emergence of a Deadly Coronavirus

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Nurse showed me pics and videos from yesterday. Her client after our home cancelled last minute so she was free for most of the day.. So her husband said, Lets go drive to NiagaraFalls..
She said it was eerie how empty it was. She said it was like a ghost town. Occasionally you saw ppl but mainly empty with police officers here and there.
The police officers told them no bathrooms or eating areas were open. And they realized there was nothing to do in terms of attractions like the haunted house..

so they ended up feeding a squirrel
I wondered when the last time was that the Niagara falls area was this empty...

I had the oxygen meter test before I saw the doctor in March. The nurse practitioner checked me out before I could see the doctor.

On the advice and research of Jimmy, I bought a pulse ox about a month ago. Just today I took it out of the box and tested it out. It was around $20. I'm very glad I have this item now. I'm also glad to know my oxygen level is 98%. I was thinking it was going to be lower than that based on prior smoking history. I tested the rest of my household and the highest oxygen level was 99% and the lowest was 96%.

It is my belief that in the next few days, my State of Indiana will begin to lift the quarantine orders. I am ready. I thought I would discuss my approach once the order is lifted.

My wife is an extreme extrovert and this pandemic has been very taxing on her. So one or two times per week I would take her hand in hand and we would escape quarantine. It helps to keep her sane. But I would insist on taking some precautions.

Around ten years ago, I bought a box of 10 N95 mask and put them on a shelf to store away for a rainy day. The masks since they had been sitting in the garage for 10 years became very mildew. My wife refuse to wear them. So I sanitized them. They were stored in a plastic bag. So I dropped a few drops of Tea Tree Oil in the bag and sealed if for a few days. Then I took the mask out and let them air out. We had one good sunny day, so I took them outside and hung them for a day in the sunlight. At this point the mildew was gone. So every time we went into the outside world, we wore these mask. Generally these mask are designed to be worn one day and then disposed of. But if the use is intermittent, they can be reused provided they don't become wet. So every time we wore the mask, I would hang them out in the sun to recondition them. It has been two months now and we are still wearing the same mask. These mask are normally inexpensive items. I think I paid around a dollar each ten years ago when I bought them. These mask will protect me from breathing in coronavirus particles. If my hands touch a surface that contains the virus and I accidentally touch my face, the mask stops the transmission. If fine aerosols of the virus are releases, the mask stops those too. If the virus particles dry out in low humidity environments, become very lightweight and become airborne and travel long distances. They stop those particle also. They are the perfect mask.

So when these masks become available again and the prices return back to the normal range, I recommend that everyone have a few. I am 71 years old and my wife is a couple years younger and that puts us in the at-risk group of individuals that should we contract the disease, our lives are on the line.

Now the second item that I considered important was a means of sanitizing the mask, a way of removing all the virus particles from the mask. There is a solution for that. It is called a sanitizer box. It has far ultraviolet light (UVC) that quickly destroys the ability of viruses to infect a person. It essentially kills viruses and bacteria. They have been around for several years now. They commonly sanitize cell phones, wallets, baby pacifiers, money, keys, baby bottles, toys, beauty tools, toothbrushes, jewelry, etc. But they can also be used to sterilize the N95 mask between uses. They run around the $100 range. So I ordered one through Amazon. Like many other things nowadays, they are manufactured in China and it took over a month to receive it. This is what the sanitizer box looks like.



So when the quarantine is lifted, and we are up and about, we will protect ourselves by wearing the N95s and sterilizing them when we get home. We will also carry a small bottle of hand sanitizer gel, which we use whenever we leave a store or shop.

The COVID-19 has been shown to be a seasonal virus similar to the influenza virus. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has a Science and Technology Branch that performed research with COVID-19 virus in a research lab and determined that as temperature and humidity levels increase, the virus dies off quickly. Therefore as we move from winter to summer, the threat will dramatically reduce. Some restaurants have outdoor areas exposed to the fresh air and sunshine. We will probably target those restaurants in the beginning because they are not indoors and pose a minimal threat.

It's not a particularly strong association, but it does seem that blood type A is a bit more susceptible to the virus, and type O is less susceptible.

Testing the association between blood type and COVID-19 infection, intubation, and death

...We found a higher proportion of blood group A and a lower proportion of blood group O among COV+ patients compared to COV-, though in both cases the result is significant only in Rh positive blood types. We show that the effect of blood type is not explained by risk factors we considered (age, sex, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, overweight status, and chronic cardiovascular and lung disorders). In a meta-analysis of NYP data with previously-reported data from China, we find enrichment for A and B and depletion of O blood groups among COVID-19 patients compared to the general population.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 20058073v1

COVID-19 research is an emerging field, that's the only consensus we have....

Sunlight kills the novel coronavirus, while warmer temperatures and humid weather significantly damage the virus, measured in terms of the virus' half life or the time it takes to cut its potency in half, according to the latest breakthrough research from the US Department of Homeland Security's most advanced bio containment lab, released at the White House here on Thursday.

The coronavirus outbreak in the US has killed nearly 50,000 Americans and infected more than 8,60,000 till date. Research around the effect of temperature and humidity has been gaining traction for weeks, as these are the most downloaded papers on research websites. However, this is the first time the US government has put an official stamp on initial results of temperature tests on COVID-19.

"Our most striking observation to date is the powerful effect that solar light appears to have on killing the virus, both on surfaces and in the air. We've seen a similar effect with both temperature and humidity as well. Increasing the temperature and humidity, or both, is generally less favourable to the virus," Bill Bryan, chief of the science and technology directorate at the US Department of Homeland Security, said.

In a room at 70-75ºF (21-23ºC) temperature with 20 percent humidity, the half life of the virus is about an hour, according to Bryan. "But you get outside and it cuts down to a minute and a half, very significant difference when it when it gets hit with UV rays," he said.

According to the same research, the virus' half life on surfaces reduces dramatically with a combination increase of temperature and humidity. When the temperate is kept constant at 70-75ºF (21-23ºC) and only the humidity is cranked up from 20 percent to 80 percent, the virus' half life is shown to crash from 18 hours to 6 hours. If the temperature is increased to 95ºF (35ºC), the half life sinks to barely 60 minutes.



Bryan said this testing was done at DHS' advanced bio containment lab in Maryland, just outside the national capital. Pointing to charts with data from experiments on the coronavirus, Bryan said the virus' half life plunges "drastically" with exposure to higher temperatures and even minimal exposure to humidity.

Bryan said the DHS bio containment lab is the only one in America that has the capability to do the kind of testing that has led to the research on the virus' UV and temperature tolerance.

Bryan explained the mechanics of the COVID-19 temperature tolerance experiment in simple terms. "We're able to take a particle of a virus and suspend it in the air inside of this drum and hit it with various temperatures, various humidity levels, multiple different kinds of environmental conditions to include sunlight. And we're able to measure the decay of that virus while it's suspended in the air. This is how we do our aerosol testing,"he said.

Source: Sunlight, Humidity Damages Novel Coronavirus, Says the White House