Few people want a coronavirus thread less than me, but it's Saturday evening, and there should be at least 3X more people playing

Is anyone scared of germs at your table and casino or even experiencing less randoms and recs at your game. Because I am seeing way less strangers during prime time

I personally am not canceling my trip to Reno next week. Dont know if it helps but it cant hurt that I've had my flu shot. I'm also chewing airborne from now up through my flight home. I also wash my hands regularly and that's pretty much all I can do. I cant stop living just because of a virus which by the way there is a new virus every year that is going to kill us but doesnt.

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Not worried at all.

AFAIK we have had one ‘native’ case in the US. Count me now worried yet.

Yet.

How many people have died from the flu this year? And how many from Corona? Which is and should be the real concern?

I agree. Corona virus will kill the same people that the flu would kill. The very old, the very young and those with weak immune systems. For myself I'm not so worried. For my mother who has a weak immune system and gets sick every time she flies on a plane I worry for her.

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Flu...about 18,000
Corona...about 2,800

Typical media driven panic over Corona

Yes, you should be concerned about seasonal flu. You always should
And no, COVID-19 has not yet reached levels yet to cause panic

But, by the time it does, it will be too late for us to do anything. COVID-19 is scary because it has a higher mortality rate than flu (estimated right now at 2%), the vaccine is 18 months away, it spreads before it is symptomatic, has a respectably high Ro value (estimated at between 2.5 and 4.5), and there is no herd immunity.

Keep in mind, H1N1 infect 60 million Americans. If that were to happen with COVID-19, you would likely see hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of American fatalities.

So yes, while COVID-19 is far from the 'shelter in place' and 'break out your Wateland wanderer Leather jacket' stage, we are far past the 'this is just some foreign thing that can't affect us' stage. With at least multiple states reporting community spread of the virus in the US, we are past containment.

Maybe not now, but I would bet that in about 4 weeks, a poker room is going to be a very bad place to be in. If you do play, you should wash hands very often, be very careful about touching your eyes and mouth. Hand sanitize religiously. Masks are not considered effective (though respirators like the 3M 8511 are).

My stance may be considered a little on the jumpy side, but I would rather err on the side of caution.

We need emergency legislation to bring back online poker to U.S.

Then we could all stay home in our PJs

great point. Other claiming that there is no need to panic need to read the bolded part a few times.

There is evidence to suggest that Corona's higher death rate (compared to the flu) is very much related to the fact that the majority of Corona cases are in areas of China where sanitary conditions are poor.

Lets find a comparison between the flu and Corona in places with substandard healthcare and conditions....like Africa, China, Haiti. Then we will have a fair comparison.

This is actually why everyone fears pandemics. The Hubei province, and the city of Wuhan, is pretty urban, not rural, from what i could tell. But the number of cases overwhelmed the local healthcare infrastructure. This is what was feared with H1N1, that a pandemic would overwhelm our healthcare system, and patients that should be treatable would be dying.

If the cases are caught early and treated, and as we get better at treating COVID-19, I have no doubt that the mortality rate will go down. But even at a reduced mortality rate, we are still looking at a lot of potential deaths.

And we don't really know a lot about the Ro and mortality rates yet, as no one 100% trusts the numbers we are getting from China.

Corona about 20 times more deadly by most stats. Still vast majority of fatalities in vulnerable groups. Hard Rock the other night had zero hand sanitizers in room. I tongue lashed them.

That... doesn't sound very sanitary.

Protecting one's hands with gloves all the time when in contact with anything public seems the best to me if there are many cases (nationalities). The gloves (possibly in the other hand) also carry viruses.

The sanitizers (ethanol) won't help against the viruses (need to wash the hands for 20 seconds carefully with soap and warm water) other than they find it harder to stick on (the PH that kills bacterias) but it also helps not to get a serious bacteria infection as if one gets weaker, one might get killed by Corona. Against these viruses (they survive only up to 24 hours outside of the body) the only time to use the sanitizer is before the contact.

Whatever comes out of the mouth of others that get in your mouth (and lungs), eyes, is the most dangerous, so avoid being around smoke and sick people and beware of people coughing, sneezing and do it yourself so it won't spread to others, using your sleeve.

Anyone with serious base weaknesses, including older people (over 60) is in serious danger if there is a realistic chance to get Corona. For others, the chance to die when getting Corona is small; much less need to worry about it other than one will carry the virus then and one feels sick only after days if one feels anything much to worry about even then.

Pucmo, where did you get your information? What I am reading is a bit different

Re: Alcohol based hand sanitizer

"Dr Bhadelia said that "from what we know about this coronavirus, it's similar to SARS and MERS, so it should not be that difficult of a microorganism to kill," therefore "soap and water, and alcohol-based hand sanitizers, can kill it."
"

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com...w/74463416.cms

Re: Corona Virus's remaining infectious on surfaces for longer than 24 hours

"An analysis of 22 earlier studies of similar coronaviruses, including Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) published online this month in the Journal of Hospital Infection, concluded that human coronaviruses can remain infectious on inanimate surfaces for up to nine days at room temperature. "

https://www.usnews.com/news/world/ar...ve-on-surfaces

And I have never heard that the corona virus could ride on smoke particles (always heard that they ride in water droplets from sneezes and coughs).

"Pucmo, where did you get your information?"

He isn't. Hand sanitizers won't kill ALL kinds of viruses but that doesn't mean they won't killl most or COVID-19 in particular. Heck, HS won't even kill all bacteria.

Yes washing your hands is better than relying on hand sanitizer alone. Again that doesn't mean HS won't help alone.

The COVID-19 virus is one of the types that alcohol (active ingredient for most, and most effective, HS) does kill. Particularly if the HS is at least 60%alcohol, ethanol or proponal.

BTW, I am getting my information from the CDC.

One downside of Corona is a big hospital bill if you are isolated. Or is the federal government picking up the tab LOL?

I bought some disposable gloves to wear while playing. It is probably the only way I can stay married. My wife has auto-immune issues (MS etc.) so she would be at extreme risk if she caught Coronavirus and is not happy about me going to FW this weekend. Ironically she almost never gets sick...

Why to wear gloves is to prevent the virus from getting on your hands. But yes, anything you touch with the gloves if they are contaminated will also get contaminated.

Because Coronavirus, a respiratory based disease, is passed specifically only through the mouth and nose, wearing gloves should help me to not touch my face with my hands (which is recommended).

I expect to wear a new pair after every tournament break...

The other thing my wife has asked me to do is to put Neosporin (antibiotic ointment) on the tissue around my nostrils. Again I think this will help prolong my marriage.

Also about coughing the coronavirus onto your sleeve. While it is better than just coughing or sneezing into the air, it still has the downside of harboring the virus for up to a week or more (or until you wash and dry the garment I hope). And if somebody touches your arm where you sneezed, then they can catch what you have. The recommended way to handle sneezing/coughing is to do it into a tissue and then throw the tissue away, and then clean your hands. So much for my handkerchiefs...

I just bought a big thing of Kleenex boxes at Costco and I will be bringing them too. I plan on having two boxes, one for each side of the table.

My wife also bought some disinfectant wipes which I will use to wipe down the padding at the table when I sit down. But of course this doesn't help with contaminated cards or chips. I imagine that the casino might have some wipes too, but I spoke with a FW Floor last night and she said that besides having a lot more Hand Sanitizers around, nothing is really different.

So I recommended that FW microwave all of their card decks every day before tournies start. I have no idea if that would help or not. But it sounds good...

You cannot treat a virus like the flu or C-19. The only thing that a hospital can do for someone that has it, is to help keep them alive by using a ventilator to breathe for them if they are unable to breathe on their own. The machine will keep them alive long enough for their immune system to fight the virus. For someone that is not old and otherwise healthy, they just have to let it run its course. You can't just take a pill or antibiotics and have a virus go away. From what I hear, C-19 is approx. 14 days before you are safe from being infectious to others. I get my info from my wife who is an RN with the county public health dept. where they have a daily meeting to talk about C-19 developments.

That isn't 100% accurate. Antibiotics do not address the primary viral infection, but they can reduce the risk of secondary infection like bacterial pneumonia. And there are antivirals that have proven effective at reducing the length of illness and severity of illnesses (tamiflu being the one used for influenza). At current, I do not believe they have found a combination of antivirals that is effective, but they are still trying different combinations. And when I say treat, I am also talking about getting a better understanding of the symptoms and treating them. What drugs are most effective for keeping the lungs clear? Being a new disease, we have no existing standards of care, though there are other similar illnesses that can be used as a baseline for that. What is the minimum level of care needed to achieve the maximum number of positive outcomes should we get to a pandemic situation.

The 14 day waiting period is the supposed maximum incubation period(although there have been some cases where there have been reports of incubation longer than 14 days). If you are symptom free and test negative for 14 days, you are considered unexposed and safe. If you develop symptoms or a positive test, you can be infectious for longer than 14 days, and they will quarantine you (though that won't last for long, once cases start numbering in the 100's or thousands, there will be no ability to isolate that many patients, and normal droplet protection protocol will have to be enough)

I'm certainly no medical expert but this will be a worldwide epidemic. Its not a matter of if, but when it gets to where you live. Nothing will stop it and all we can do is hope they can come up with something like the flu shot to help avoid getting sick in the future. Until then there will be a COVID-19 season just like there is a flu season I'm sure. If you own stock in life insurance companies now is a good time to dump it. Is that a thing? Can you buy stock in insurance companies?

I actually had a similar conversation with my sisters just yesterday. She was concerned about getting the family together, as one of my siblings had been exposed to someone who was at the mall in San Antonio when the infected person was there. Basically, I said that this is the new normal for the next 18 months. Every major city will have between 500 to 1000 active cases, and every one of us will have at least 2nd degree exposure, if not direct exposure, on a weekly if not daily basis. This won't stop until the vaccine is developed, tested, produced, and deployed.

And you would actually want to short life insurance companies right now, as they will be paying out more than usual. There are some interesting funds that basically provide the living with an income against the eventual payoff of their life insurance based on current actuarial models (so something that reduced lifespans would increase the value of the fund), but the one I know is not currently investors.

The vast majority of people dying from Corona are non Americans. Sure, it will spread here more widely soon, but the death rate in developed areas will access to good health care and good sanitary conditions is not much higher than the flu.

Combine that with the fact that only 59% of Americans have life insurance and the fact that almost all of the people who die from viruses like this are elderly and people with compromised immune systems who are fairly close to dying anyway.

Considering all of this, how many Americans, who have life insureance with American insurance companies do you think are going to die, who weren't going to die in the next few years anyway? The number is so low compared to the number of Americans who have life insurance that it will have virtually no affect on the profits or stock values of these insurance companies.