R0 would be like a feature, or maybe a diagnostic metric. (You'd probably model the independent parameters, and assess your model performance on how well it predicts R0 and related factors)

Or R0 can feed downstream to a macro model of something else.

(I do some financial modeling, but no epidemiological work)

My mother- and father-in-law have a trip planned to Cabo. They are scheduled to leave on March 30. My father-in-law had a stroke 2 1/2 years ago and is mostly in a wheel chair. My mother-in-law had emergency gallbladder surgery eight days ago. They have no plans to cancel. My wife and I had a trip to Seattle planned for the same time; we have now canceled that. My mother-in-law wants us to come with them. When I ask her if she's concerned at all about traveling her response is, "We're not going to have too many more chances to do this. And Paul really likes it there."

I'm sure I'm not the only one that's run into this kind of thinking. Old people gonna do what they want.

yo i gots charmin. 10 bucks for 50 squares per ply

pm me

If you infected but asymptomatic, what are the odds of a false negative on a test, anyone know? Re: Trump maybe being infected, and also Trudeau denying the usefulness of a test on him.

/start baseless speculation

don't see either of these as anything more than "lie so people don't panic"

gun to my head and having to choose if trudeau really didn't take a test vs he did and would rather lie about not needing a test than lie about passing it and i choose he has corona - either that or he rarely interacts with his wife

same with donald, pence, ivanka, they've all been photographed standing right next to and interacting with multiple people who later tested positive, i doubt none of them have it

/end of baseless speculation

Canadian couple reportedly made CAD$100,000 (around $72,000) buying large quantities of Lysol disinfectant wipes and reselling them at inflated rates on Amazon amid panic over the ongoing COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.

Manny Ranga, 38, and his wife Violeta Perez, 37, have quickly cashed in on fears caused by the virus by buying up stocks of wipes from local Costco outlets in Vancouver, Canada and selling them for more than four times the amount online, according to a Thursday article in The Toronto Star.

"It's a big opportunity with all these products," Ranga told paper. "I've got to pay the bills. With a regular job, I won't be making this money... I know it won't last forever."

And they even did an interview?

but then there is this guy:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/he...?ocid=primentp

billionaires are orders of magnitude worse, and they do interviews all the time

It's not all disgusting profiteering... at least in Scotland, anyway.

https://www.thenational.scot/news/18...ves-kits-need/

Price gouging should be banned and раскулачино IMO (confiscate towards relief efforts, with punishment)

Like a form of fraud, punishment must deter future attempts in the short term.

I'm almost embarrassed to ask this because this sounds like such a panic mode post -- not really asking for myself but just speculating, also I know nothing about medicine or how the human body works, so this is a complete noob level question.

Anyway, based on what I've gathered, the main issue that's killing people when they get COVID19 seems to be lack of oxygen, I guess related to pneumonia or whatever. When you read reports from Italy etc, all of them say how doctors have to make decisions about who to give the oxygen tanks, and the ones left without die etc.

My question is basically this: Are there any products out there or some DIY stuff that could help a little bit there? Yes, I realize you can't use an asthma inhaler and have it work like an ICU oxygen tank. But is there something that could maybe have the tiniest of effects here? Like let's say patient x has serious issues breathing because of COVID19-related pneumonia or whatever but doesn't have access to ICU, is there an invention in the world that could help a bit?

Again I realize what a dumb question this must be, but to a complete noob it would seem like if a hospital ICU level assisted breathing machine's effect is 10/10, maybe there would be some lesser inventions where the effect would be say 2/10, which would still be better than 0/10?

***

And another question, I was following this fairly closely even when it was just in Wuhan, and back then they were saying they're using HIV meds to treat the worst cases with pretty good results. Obv not a vaccine, not a cure against COVID19, but to help the immune system or something which to a noob sounds kinda reasonable given that both COVID19 and the HIV do their best to murder your immunity system and thus it would seem like those meds at least can't hurt. Whatever happened to that? Was it ruled out that they aren't actually working at all?

Also related to above in the potentially dumb question camp: fasting was shown to mitigate effects of disease and things like chemo, autophagia reducing viral cell generation, etc.

Would fasting help mitigate effects of CV-19? (especially pre-infection)

Called the in-laws today(both 70+, one with comorbidity, one laid up with an injury) to ask if they were taking the coronavirus serious. "Not really...(grandma)'s sister is here visiting right now with her nieces and nephews..."

Alllllrightythen.


Also just heard a guy on the radio during a call-in say he just got back from Spain:

"...and so I get back and I am told to quarantine so that is what I am doing."

and then immediately follows that up with "I am walking my dog right now around the neighborhood. I am by myself though..." and the radio guy says "Well good luck to you, and thank you for doing the right thing."

and I really want to violently shake every person in both of those stories. Our country is ****ed if this is the thinking of even half the people, but it seems like way more than half atm. Lotta people gonna die.

My parents, both 65 have travel plans at the end of the month, no plans of cancelling. No plans to stop going to restaurants or the gym. Their general attitude is well, what am I supposed to do, stop living my life? And this seems to be the common sentiment of their boomer friends as well. And apparently their gym is still packed with old people.

Half of Vegas about to be out of work for the next 1-2+ months. What do I expect everyone to do? Stay at home and have friends/family over for visits or go visit friends/family in their homes. It's better than continuing normal daily life but it's not going to stop the virus if people keep accepting visitors and going out to visit friends/family.

Def fkd. My folks live in a golf community ... there's a big dinner at the clubhouse tonight with ~60 ppl expected (not including wait staff) ... my folks not even considering not attending.

If you lived in Manhattan with no real requirements for being there in the short term, would you GTFO ASAP if you had the opportunity to drive to Maine?

I'd say yes. My sister lives in Brooklyn and her family just left for my brother-in-law's parent's house in Martha's Vineyard.

A lockdown is a real possibility imo.

No idea, but I'd be pretty careful about any sorts of extreme diets / fasting etc right now simply because you probably don't want to put your body under any extra stress. Could very well be wrong but until proven otherwise - if anything, I'd make sure that my body has all the resources it needs to function. For the same reason I'd avoid super hardcore exercise as well. When it became obvious we'll be in lockdown mode for a few months my first thought was "okay, silver lining, I'm going to start my first diet ever and do some fasting and hardcore exercise to use this time productively to get in shape", but honestly it doesn't seem like the brightest idea. I mean yeah you should exercise obviously (at home, go running during quiet hours or whatever), but given how long it takes athletes to recover from hardcore exercise it's probably not a great idea to put yourself under anything too rough right now. If you get the virus and pneunomia, I'd say your body will thank you if at that point it's also not recovering from a half marathon or heavy fasting.

/pure noob speculation

Successfully talked my mom out of VisitingFamilyInBostonThenTakingAFlight (smh) and now considering going up there but worried about catching/carrying during the process

we permitted our kids to be home alone when the older daughter was 8 and the younger one six. that went just fine.

When I lived in Korea, young kids (<12 or younger) were often left home to care for their younger siblings. Was never an issue. They also took them to the bus stop, etc. Raise kids right, and it shouldn't be an issue.

For how long? How many days in a row?