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Day 54: COVID-19 Pandemic
149 countries and counting. Europe is now the epicenter of the virus, replacing China.
News updates at Worldometer.com.
Let’s take a look at some good news:
Here are South Korea’s charts —
Our hope (and expectation) is that the US charts will eventually look like this. The only question is where the peaks will be. If you look at the last column on the main chart for South Korea the cases/million is ~160 when the flattening out is occurring. The US is currently at 7.5 case/million. If our path follows S. Korea then we can expect to have over 50,000 confirmed cases before we get flattening. If S. Korea is flattening then I am calculating their death rate is 1.7% of confirmed cases (current deaths (72) plus daily rate of 5 deaths for next 14 (70) days divided by current reported cases (8,086)). If we can flatten at the 50,000 case point with a 1.7% death rate we will suffer ~850 deaths before the number of cases and daily deaths begin to recede. I don’t know whether any public health official will adopt this line because there are too many variables between what S. Korea and the US can or will do. But S. Korea has the drive thru testing that the President announced yesterday, so we are getting ready to mobilize a response more in line with S. Korea and hopefully will get a similar epidemic pattern (scaled for population) and restore confidence that this is nationally survivable although personal tragedies will occur.
[Note: Links to all my COVID-19 posts can be found here.]
Published in General
Good thought.
Home Depot and similar outfits also sell gloves. They aren’t sterile, but the manufacturing process has to be entirely automated, so they are untouched by humans. Also better than nothing?
Yes, I bought some nitrile gloves from Home Depot.
You can also get them in large amounts from Uline.com online.The function of these gloves is to be a barrier between you and a specific surface(s) for a period of time. I saw a recommendation for using them at the gas pump given the large volume of users for any given pump. Makes sense. But when you remove the gloves the next step is hand sanitizer if you want to be more safe from picking up a “hitchhiker” from any surface of the glove. And, of course, don’t touch your face with the glove.Gloves don’t need to be sterile.
But most gloves at places like Home Depot and Lowes are long gone.