1913

Different kind of fear is still fear even if it is not fear of the virus.

1914

This thread has gone down the crapper.

1915

Yup - aware that kids still may carry it and have to think and plan for it. But my immediate fear was/is how bad kids might be affected, remembering that my child was brought to the brink in the past (admittedly, for an enterovirus that was identified as being super bad for kids with certain risk factors that my child aligned with). I know there are still mountains of study and data needed to figure this one out, but that children don’t yet seem to be in bad shape is helpful for me as a parent. I still remember reading about enterovirus going around in 2014, that kids with asthma were highly at risk, thinking “fuck, that would be bad if my child was exposed to it”, and three days later going to the ICU. And that was a tiny “outbreak” compared to this.

1916

Thank you.

To hopefully bring the blood pressure of people with hypertension down a little, it looks like it’s currently just an observation and hasn’t been studied. Given the link between smoking and hypertension it may be that smokers are more likely to die and also more likely to have hypertension rather than an actual causal link where hypertension alone makes one more likely to die.

Patients with hypertension appear to be at a higher risk of dying from the coronavirus, said a top Chinese intensive care doctor who’s been treating critically ill patients since mid-January.

While there’s been no published research yet explaining why, Chinese doctors working in Wuhan, the central Chinese city where the virus first emerged, have noticed that infected patients with that underlying illness are more likely to slip into severe distress and die.

Of a group of 170 patients who died in January in Wuhan – the first wave of casualties caused by a pathogen that’s now raced around the world – nearly half had hypertension.

1917

Yeah, gotta hope there are other underlying factors that go along with the hypertension that are the actual root cause of this. There’s too much we don’t know yet.

1918

#CUNY (City University of New York) is trending because all the private schools are canceling classes. The poor kids have to take the subway and can’t afford healthcare. People are not happy.

My sister’s school doesn’t even have paper towels in the bathroom.

1919

I’d like more data. In particular, hypertension is correlated with age, and coronavirus death rate is correlated with age. So hypertension might be a marker of age, or it might have a much greater impact than age, or it might have an additive impact with age.

There’s no cited paper, no data, so hard to say. I’d put this in the bucket of “even if it’s true, you can’t do anything, so best not to worry about it” and wait for more information. I hate that bucket, but it’s really hard to say more with the cited sample size and effect size, which in itself sounds incredibly rounded and suspect.

From a quick browse of pubmed there are links between hypertension and pneumonia, so it’s not surprising as a risk factor. To be honest, that’s the extent of what i can say without trying to look like an authority when I’m not - I’m not a doctor or infectious disease researcher. I can look at the statistics and data analysis of a particular paper and have an opinion on the methodology, but that’s it.

Slight addendum after more pubmed and bioarchive:
The Ace2 gene has been preliminarily reported as being the receptor for covid-19. This same gene is correlated to hypertension [regulates blood pressure]. So, there may be some correlation in susceptibility / uptake of the virus if individuals are expressing more ACE2. [the receptor is the target for antihypertensive therapies.] I’m currently dangerously close to talking out of my ass with 10 minutes of research.

1920

My god, how can anybody be surprised at this point?

1921

This. Several of my Conservative friends are posting on social media copying “CDC” and other sources that say stuff like “Coronavirus is simply an upper respiratory virus with symptoms no more debilitating than a severe cold or the flu. More people die of flu every year than will die of COVID-19. There is no reason to worry if you are a healthy person between the ages of 10 and 60.” and other such garbage.

Even my brother-in-law, whose wife is a doctor and whose mother (my mother-in-law) is currently in a retirement community recovering from major surgery is posting this crap. Hell, his doctor wife even “liked” the post, thereby giving it an official medical seal of approval in the eyes of everyone who knows them. I want to shout at them that "Yes, YOU will likely be fine should YOU end up with the virus, but YOU will be the one who kills your mom when you visit her thinking “everything is fine” and two weeks later you’re recovering and she is not.

But of course, in true Conservative fashion, the response to Coronavirus is all about “I’ll be fine” and not a thought or care for anyone else. If those stories coming out of Italy are even half true, the United States is fucked. We will lose tens of thousands of people over the age of 60 and/or who have existing respiratory or other underlying health conditions, all because we can’t be bothered to take precautions. While some may joke that losing a bunch of older Trump voters is probably a good thing, both of my parents are at risk, and neither of them likes Trump (my mom hates him with the fire of 1000 suns). My mother-in-law is super high risk right now, and while she’s not the most politically savvy person, she is the sweetest lady who has done more than I could ever begin to describe for my children, and I love her like another mom.

Fuck these idiots and their cavalier attitude when all the evidence of a pandemic is staring them right in the face. America really has become a nation of morons.

1922

Science disagrees.

" Psychologists have found that conservatives are fundamentally more anxious than liberals, which may be why they typically desire stability, structure and clear answers even to complicated questions."

"In summary, among political conservatives, the cognitive and physiological studies demonstrate greater negativity bias, sense of threat, and emphasis on formal group membership, compared with political liberals exposed to the same stimuli. "

1923

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A one-mile containment area has been set up in New Rochelle, New York, due to the cluster of coronavirus infections that have taken place in the city, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Tuesday.

The National Guard will deliver food and clean schools in the zone during the containment period, which will last two weeks, Cuomo said.

All schools in the area will close, and large gatherings have been canceled.

People can go in and out of the containment zone, and small businesses can remain open, Cuomo said.

1924

LOL not much of a “containment zone,” then.

1925

Yeah…that seems kinda pointless.

Fun fact: my house is just off the map to the upper right! I hope viruses can’t cross the interstate! Whee!

1926

I’m a subscriber to The athletic(great site for sports btw), and i couldn’t believe some of the comments posted after the sharks article on the local ban on groupings of more than 1000 people.

or

or

it makes me sad…

1927

So the only effect is to close a couple of schools in the area and ban large gatherings? Why do they need to deliver food? Weird.

1928

Because they are happy the way things are, and don’t want any change to disrupt it. But this is drifting away from Coronavirus 2019, so I’ll stop here.

1929

I want to be optimistic here and I hope Germany tracked down all of the infected here, that’s what they have been reporting. And each case could be traced back to Italy, Tyrol, China and so on. However, some say that Italy is 2 weeks ahead of us, and that we will see Italian numbers here in 2 weeks.

But maybe it helped what we did here so far?
But I know for sure, that if we did nothing, then the virus could have spread freely.

On the other hand, it is hard to believe that every infection got caught. And like in Seattle, it needs just a few infected people flying under the radar and bam, you are in trouble.

1930

I was near total mental breakdown today. I had to stop and hug my mother.

Things are getting on my nerves. My own brain is a mystery to me… no idea why. Probably should limit my exposition to bad news from the coronavirus, but I can’t physically do that.

It make me very sad where are we going.

1931

It’s okay to step away for a bit. It really is.

1932

Fuck, just as I wrote last post, I read the local news, and they closed the school (gymnasium) in Stuttgart where my daughter went … 3 confirmed infected cases discovered there. And 7 new confirmed cases in Stuttgart