Emergence of a Deadly Coronavirus

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Our church ladies are stitching together face masks to distribute to the poor people in the local neighborhood.  Mrs. Fnord and I have asked relatives (who live in wealthier neighborhoods) for donations of cloth and sewing supplies.  Everyone seems to have an excuse as to why they cannot donate, but nearly every one of them is now asking for free masks, with some getting specific about how they want them made.

These are people who have old clothes they haven't worn in years, and whose clothes are stashed away in attics, basements, garages, and storage facilities.  Those people could also also easily afford to buy KN95 and N95 masks from Amazon, Grainger, or whatever.

DIFFERENT TYPES OF N95 MASKS

There are different types of N95 mask. Some have valves and some don't. This is a valve type:



The primary purpose why I wear an N95 mask is to prevent myself [an at-risk 71 year old] from becoming infected. N95s do that quite effectively. Some other Aspies have complained that they feel claustrophobic when they wear mask. I wear a valve type N95 and it is very comfortable. I don't feel like I am suffocating. When I put one on, it is almost like the mask isn't even there. The valve in the mask allows nonrestricted exhaling but restricts the inhaling. The mask does not even fog up my glasses. So it means that if I were infected, I might spread the virus. But I am an adult and if I were infected or showing signs of infection I would shelter at home and not be up and about. I wear a mask when I am out to protect myself.

So there was an article this morning that advised everyone to not wear valve type mask.

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With some states requiring residents to wear face masks in public to help stop the spread of the novel coronavirus, at least one mask could actually do more harm than good: An N95 respirator, but only if it has a small valve on the front.

The San Francisco Department of Public Health took to Twitter on Monday to remind residents that if they are choosing to wear an N95 (which should ideally be reserved for medical workers on the frontline, officials have stressed), they should ensure it doesn’t have the front valve.

“Still seeing a lot of these masks out there, it's confusing, because they are called N95 — but the ones with the **valves** or openings on the front are NOT safe, and may actually propel your germs further!” the tweet reads.

Essentially, if the wearer were to sneeze or cough, infectious droplets could travel through the one-way valve, possibly putting someone near them at risk for contracting COVID-19 or another respiratory illness.

A proper medical N95 mask — which “reduces the wearer’s exposure to airborne particles, from small particle aerosols to large droplets,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — do not have valves. Those with valves are said to make breathing easier, according to a 2008 study on the masks which noted that the “N95 filtering facepiece respirators may not achieve the expected protection level against bacteria and viruses.”

In a follow-up tweet, a local San Francisco fire department showed that the vented masks can still be of use if they are worn with a surgical mask or other cloth covering over them. City health officials, meanwhile, suggested covering the valve with tape.



Source: How this N95 mask could put others at risk for illness

The World Health Organization is being accused of ignoring its own guidelines put in place after the SARS outbreak in the early 2000s, which call for the organization to investigate reports of a potential "public health emergency" -- like SARS, a kind of coronavirus -- from the start to prevent any chance of a pandemic.

Reports suggest that Chinese health officials knew the novel coronavirus rapidly spreading through Wuhan was caused by a virus that was 87 percent similar to the 2003 SARS coronavirus by Dec. 27. By Dec. 30, reports suggest that labs in Wuhan reported multiple patients had tested positive for an unknown SARS coronavirus.

“Even more troubling, the organization meant to implement these rules, the WHO, blindly followed the CCP in delaying necessary action to protect people around the globe.”

By Jan. 2, the Wuhan Institute of Virology completed a mapping of the genetic sequence of the SARS-like coronavirus responsible for the outbreak in Wuhan. The sequence was not reported to the WHO for 10 days, allegedly in violation of both Articles 6 and 7 of the IHR.

Meanwhile, the WHO at the time allegedly received warnings from Taiwan—which is not a member state of the organization and has not had “observer status” since 2017—suggesting individuals in China were becoming ill via human-to-human transmission of a virus.

Under International Health Regulations’ Articles 9 and 10, the WHO is supposed to investigate reports -- which sources say would include unofficial reports from sources, member states, nonmember states, or media reports -- that would suggest evidence of a public health risk.

But despite the warning from Taiwan, the WHO did not investigate the potential human-to-human transmission of the novel virus at the time, instead relying on China's team.

Six days after the warning from Taiwan, the WHO released a statement claiming that “based on the preliminary information from the Chinese investigative team, no evidence of significant human-to-human transmission and no health care worker infections have been reported.”

Taiwanese officials reportedly received an email from the WHO, instead, saying that their inquiry “would not be posted on the organization’s international website for the benefit of member countries.”

Taiwan’s vice president also accused the WHO of ignoring their warning, saying: “While the WHO’s IHR internal website provides a platform for all countries to share information on epidemics and their response, none of the information shared by our country’s CDC was put up there.”

“When you look at what our committee has discovered so far, it seems pretty clear that the WHO under Tedros’ leadership ignored its own legally binding regulations by ignoring warnings from Taiwan and from their own collaborating center,” Foreign Affairs GOP committee spokesperson Leslie Shedd told Fox News. “But if the WHO has information that they did comply with their mandate, then we welcome that and ask them to share it with the world.”

She added: “Unfortunately, their silence on this is deafening.”

Source: WHO accused of ignoring its own post-SARS guidelines in early days of coronavirus

ANOTHER POTENTIAL CURE - TOCILIZUMAB

A California pulmonary disease specialist has voiced promise in tocilizumab drug treatment for critically ill coronavirus patients.

Dr. Imran Sharief recalled a patient in their 30s, exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms such as shortness of breath and fever when conditions started suddenly deteriorating. The patient was depending on maximum support from a ventilator upon treatment with tocilizumab.

“We were already cautious and we were worried because this patient was extremely young so we started the medication right away,” Sharief told Fox News.

He reported seeing a response within 72 hours and after five days, transitioned the patient off the ventilator and into a regular ward.

Coronavirus invades the body through receptors in the nasal passages and airway, Sharief explained. Inflammatory mediators, such as Interleukin 6 (IL-6), then promote an inflammatory response which causes organ damage.

If doctors treat critically ill patients, who meet a required set of criteria, with tocilizumab early, Sharief said “this drug is going to be very effective in preventing organ damage.”

The drug reportedly treats coronavirus by blocking the receptors and preventing the release of inflammatory mediators.

“I would suggest to my colleagues that once you see a deteriorating patient, a rapid deterioration in clinical status with high oxygen requirement or on the ventilator, try to start the medication as quickly as possible within first 12-24 hours," Sharief said.

Delays in treatment will likely lessen the drug’s impact and worsen patients’ outcomes, he said.

Tocilizumab is a known drug typically used to treat various forms of arthritis. It is an experimental treatment method for coronavirus patients.

Most of Sharief’s patients who receive the drug are on ventilators due to required drug usage criteria calling for patients in critical care. Additional criteria, among others, maintain that Tocilizumab cannot be administered to pregnant patients and eligible patients have acute respiratory distress syndrome, ARDS, or "impending respiratory compromise."

Source: Tocilizumab drug shows coronavirus treatment promise, doctor says

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For many of these cures to be effective, the treatment must begin as early as possible. By the time one is put on a ventilator it is almost too late.

So I love this approach. Take sick patient put them on a ventilator. Then you can administer cure early. He is a man after my own heart. Definitely an out of box thinker.

The Chinese Communist Party has launched a campaign to silence coronavirus survivors and families who have lost loved ones during the pandemic as part of its ongoing effort to control the narrative surrounding the outbreak in Wuhan and under-report the real case numbers, Fox News has learned.

The crackdown on coronavirus survivors and bereaved families is especially severe inside Wuhan, where government officials have used online censorship, police interrogations, shuttered support groups, and have even threatened lawyers representing coronavirus victims.

Officials in Wuhan, the epicenter of the virus outbreak last December, are coercing silence by paying families about $420 for each relative lost to the pandemic. This is in addition to offering discounts for cremation and burial services as Fox News has previously reported.

Propaganda run in Chinese state-run media highlights the authoritarian system’s later efforts to control the public health crisis in the country. Meanwhile, government censors have removed online articles scrutinizing officials’ efforts to contain the virus in the early stages of the outbreak. Last month, three volunteers on Terminus204, an online project to archive censored news articles about the outbreak, disappeared in Beijing.

Those who died from the coronavirus in China are pegged as martyrs, instead of victims, in Chinese media reports, and domestic critics who call attention to early government efforts to cover up the severity of the outbreak in Wuhan are cast as puppets used by foreign forces to undermine the Communist Party, the Times reported.

The Communist Party has been silencing mourners for years in an effort to stifle criticism.

Source: China silencing Wuhan coronavirus survivors, bereaved families through hush money, police interrogation

To pay it forward nearly 200 years later, the Irish are largely behind a massive donation to a Native American tribe that has been hit hard by the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in the U.S.

In 1847, in the midst of Irish potato famine, the Choctaw Nation — who originally lived across what is now Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and Florida — raised an estimated $170 of relief aid, or more than $5,000 today, for the Irish.

Now some 173 years later, the Irish are returning the same kindness that was shown to them.

A GoFundMe created to help the Navajo nation has gone viral, with much of the more than $2.6 million raised to date being donated by Irish people, organizers said. The funds, which will be used for water, food, health supplies, fabric for masks, and more, will also be used to help the Hopi Reservation.

Source: Irish send funds to coronavirus-hit Native American community, returning nearly 200-year-old favor

In 2017, the so-called “Kindred Spirits” sculpture was erected in a park in Cork, Ireland, honoring the donation from the Choctaw Nation to the Irish during the potato famine, according to The Irish Post.

Tocilizumab is not really a "covid19 medicine", it's an immunosupressant to treat cytokine storm.
That means, giving it to most of covid19 patients would make their situation worse but there are cases - strong, healthy individuals with immune systems overreacting to the virus - where it can save lives.

At work we have an all new fancy cleaning product specifically tested to kill COVID-19 (it literally says COVID-19 on the bottle). So if a new cleaning product to kill the virus on surfaces has been thought up so quickly then surely a cure (like medication or a vaccine) can be thought up quickly too.
Yes I know finding suitable fluids to treat infected living beings is more complicated than finding fluids to treat infected inanimate objects, BUT with all the medical knowledge, research and technology we have today you'd think that a cure for a virus would only take about 5 or 6 months.
Yes I know it's a new virus but COVID-19 is just a new coronavirus, so being so medical research already knows about coronaviruses I'd thought they'll be able to find a vaccine for this within a few months.

I just think that the Chinese government know something we don't, and that there is a cure for this but they're not letting it on.

How to win friends.

Exclusive: Lord & Taylor to liquidate its stores as soon as they reopen - sources

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Venerable U.S. retailer Lord & Taylor plans to liquidate inventory in its 38 department stores once restrictions to curb the spread of coronavirus are lifted as it braces for a bankruptcy process from which it does not expect to emerge, people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday.

Lord & Taylor’s preparations to liquidate its inventory as soon as its stores reopen offer a window into the grim future of a high-profile retailer - a storied department store chain founded in 1826 and billed as the oldest in the United States - that does not expect to survive the pandemic’s economic fallout.

On Monday, retailer J.Crew Group Inc filed for bankruptcy protection with a plan to avoid liquidation and reorganize its debts thanks to an agreement with its creditors.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lord ... SKBN22H2SJ