re: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) ***W.H.O. DECLARES A GLOBAL PANDEMIC***

And I have never called it the common cold.

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But it can be the case with any URV. That doesn’t make this thing special.

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Ok

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You don't think nationwide vaccination is "aggressive"?

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Ours? Not at all.

Less than 40% of adults get the flu shot.

Sweden is apparently stopping testing for citizens and only will test health care workers. If your mildly sick they are telling people to stay home.

Wait. Isn’t that one of the places touted for its excellent single payer system???

im just seeing what we're freaking out about today. Are we keeping our kids from hopping on the school bus? Not stepping in our cars today? Trying to stay away from wasps or bees? All this shite is more likely to kill you than this virus yall are worked up over

Yeah....we will start doing aggressive measures to limit this and the “this is nothing” folks will return and say “see it was nothing.”

I can already tell you that.

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Don’t know where that’s from but people on here have already debunked the narrative that the U.S is “behind” Italy. We actually had a confirmed case before they did.

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"Debunked" is a strong word for anything that happens in this thread. The US had its first case of suspected community spread on Feb 26th, probably acquired a week or more earlier (obviously not actually the first community acquired case, but first confirmed by testing). The other 59 confirmed US cases on Feb 26th were people with travel history (mostly China and Diamond Princess) or known exposure to people with travel history. On Feb 26th, Italy had 470 confirmed cases, don't know how many were community acquired.

It's impossible to pin down exact start dates of community spread within any given country, but it seems to have started in Italy before the US, or for some unknown reason spread faster in Italy. Italy has also done a lot more testing than US according to numbers published so far, so that adds uncertainty to the data.

I was just on a call with Florida Dept. of Health regarding residential retirement communities for senior citizens and the Coronavirus.

Here's a recap:

• Covid-19, new virus that appeared in early January, spread around the world. Attacks the lungs, difficult to breathe. Fever, cough, shortness of breath. Appears like pneumonia. No vaccine. No medications. Transmitted like the Flu (coughs, sneezes, etc. – particles go about 3 feet – linger in air for period of time / can stay on surface for a few hours). Stay away from people who are sick. Handwashing important. Clean surfaces. Slightly more infectious that Flu, considerably more serious that the Flu. Flu 0.1 % mortality rate, 2 to 4 % mortality rate, about 20 to 40 % higher than Flu.

• Elderly population particularly vulnerable between ages of 70 – 80 % - mortality rate of 8 %. Above 80 years old, about 14 % mortality rate.

• Still have Flu in community, 20 million people alone this. Can have Covid-19 and Flu at same time. Flu shot only protects against Flu, not against Covid-19.

• Plan to inform public against Covid-19 and protecting themselves against this.

• Plan to get individuals in community are isolated so they can not spread to other individuals. At present time, individuals with Covid-19, linked to international travel.

• How to protect?

o Restriction of visitors. Screening pool out there for visitors? Fever? Sick? Have you been on cruise in past 14 days? International travel in last 14 days? If yes, should not be visiting at all.
o Employees – if sick, they are not coming to work. Don’t have to take temperature, just make sure they are being monitored. No evidence of community spread in Florida. If we see lung disease and physicians can’t figure it out, this would be a situation where we would test for Covid-19.

• Dynamic situation, changes daily around the world.

• Agency of Healthcare Administration – working under direction of Surgeon General and Governor – efforts to support regulated facilities with advice that Surgeon General just articulated. Can’t emphasize enough to enforce screening of visitors, staff and vendors who may be coming into communities. Be comprehensive, if sick, cruise, international travel, etc. … not visiting … all reasons why they should not be allowed to visit.

• If you are bringing any outside group into community for programming and tours, we should consider restricting that. Trying to eliminate public exposure for our residents. Should really important part of our focus and consideration.

• Supplies are becoming limited. If you have special needs, notify country emergency operations coordinator for assistance.

• Commercial testing now available through 2 laboratory. Quest and LabCorp. Different hospital laboratories can actually order a test kit for this, assuming they have capabilities. What is a test? What is a kit? A kit refers to collection of agents that we use to test hundred of sample. One kit allows us to 1000 tests. At the present time, we do not have limitations nationally in terms of testing.