to be worried about coronavirus part 3

[peridito]

starting this in case ivybush is busy

previous thread
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3819574-AIBU-to-ask-if-you-are-worried-about-the-new-coronavirus-continued

^^ This is part of the problem of trying to interpret any of this from a distance. So many layers are nothing to do with disease/science and purely to do with politics/human behaviour. It skews the information wildly

I think the same mittens and hugging and air kissing

We went to london this week and all of us came back sniffling and coughing. EEK!

Two residents of Qom and another in Arak and have been hospitalized, state-run Iranian Students News Agency reported, citing the country’s health ministry

Arak is in Western Iran. Completely different area of the country....

2 more passengers in quarantine on the diamond princess cruise ship have died of corona virus

I can’t see that being reported yet @janaus50s ?

We went to london this week and all of us came back sniffling and coughing. EEK!

It's easy to feel this way; because I'm in a weakened state these days, I'm constantly having those kinds of symptoms. But there are still the usual seasonal colds as well.

Can anyone tell me what they’d do in these circumstances?

Myself and an elderly family member that I live with are neutropenic, another person I live with has heart failure and COPD and other adults in my family that I see regularly are HCPs who come into contact with immuno compromised people everyday.

I am currently working on a huge community project that we are several weeks behind on due to other people suffering illness. It has a strict deadline and I am one of the key people involved. We work on it twice a week.

The person in charge, who owns the building we meet in and who is there each week in close contact, chatting, shaking hands, involved in food prep etc is a local Vicar.

He has been in Singapore for the last week, attending huge church events with hundreds of people in attendance, having pictures taken on social media in crowded places. He’s also been in several different locations spread across Singapore.

He frequently suffers from sinus infections and coughs and colds so my concern is he wouldn’t necessarily take any emerging symptoms all that seriously. He also believes that God will save him from any danger and is being quite naive about the risks (his wife wanted to cancel the trip).

He plans on coming back and getting straight back into things tomorrow. I’d be seeing him for the first time on Sunday. In all honesty I would rather stay away from the project for 14 days, seeing as he doesn’t see any need to self isolate. It would put us behind on our deadline though.

Am I just being really stupid and paranoid?

In terms of all the usual stuff that’s spouted - we have flu and pneumonia vaccine every year and yes we know that flu is also a killer, we are currently avoiding going out much and live in a very quiet village anyway, don’t take any public transport, we are cancelling travel plans and plans to go to major cities etc until we know more about the scale of the virus etc. I’m just really worried knowing that Singapore has been one of the most affected countries and that the Vicar has a much more blasé attitude than I do.

It's only one study, but this suggests that ACE-2 receptor prevalence is unrelated to gender, age or racial heritage.
The only important factor they found was smoking history.

www.preprints.org/manuscript/202002.0051/v1
"Tobacco-Use Disparity in Gene Expression of ACE2, the Receptor of 2019-nCov"

Of course, smoking rates in Japan and China are very, very high (especially for men) so ACE-2 prevalence will consequently also be high - but not because of race, merely coincidental to it.

If this is true, and if ACE-2 receptor prevalence is indeed a key risk factor, we can probably expect death rate by country to be determined by quality of healthcare and by smoking prevalence. Race would be irrelevant.

I would definitely give him a wide berth. Attitudes like his will spread the virus.

That's interesting MrsBethel - though in the comments below the abstract the author says (at response 4 to comment 1) "Asian and Caucasian current smokers may have different expression of ACE2, which may indicate an existence of gene-smoking interaction" - which appears to leave open the possibility that ethnicity plays a part.

@FakeFraudSquad wow that vicar is very selfish and ignorant. I'd be avoiding him for a couple of weeks.

Apparently over 100 cases in South Korea now, some of them they haven't been able to trace source of infection.

I wonder if anything less than people refusing to see the vicar would persuade him he should be a bit more cautious? If not, can you down tools for a couple of weeks?

It's all very well him saying it's all in God's hands or whatever - what happened to rowing away from the rocks?

Thanks for the responses. I seem to be the only one in the local community who is worrying, so it’s good to see that I’m not being insane!

I hate letting people down but at the same time I don’t want to put myself or my family at risk and my family are not happy about me being in contact with him, so much so that they have suggested that I tell him I think he is being irresponsible.

The thing is, even if I avoid him, he’s going to have contact with a lot of people in the local community anyway and it’s going to be impossible to avoid everyone. He works with the homeless, with children, with the sick etc etc. I just wish he would change his mind and self isolate instead of putting people in this position.

I don’t actually go to his church so I don’t know if they do communion wine, hand shaking etc. I have friends in the church and they seem to be very huggy and touchy feely.

Ugh. I’m getting so stressed about this.

It's only one study, but this suggests that ACE-2 receptor prevalence is unrelated to gender, age or racial heritage.

I don't know if it's the same study I saw, but there is one doing the rounds saying that ACE-2 expression in the lungs wasn't much different by race, but it caveted it by saying that this might be different for other organs.

Lots of rumours coming from Iran today.

Iran International English @iranint_eng
^According to information received, on Thursday, by @IranIntl_En, the number of people who have died, from the #coronavirus, in the Kamkar Arabnia hospital in Qom in #Iran, has risen to eight.
Iran's Health Ministry previously announced that this number was two.^

According to information received, on Thursday, by @IranIntl_En, a 35-year-old woman has died from the #coronavirus in the Imam Reza hospital in Qom in #Iran. This brings the total of death, in Iran, from the virus, to nine.

There are other rumours of even more deaths, but this is the most reputable source I could find.

There are officially three cities with cases or suspected cases. Qom, the site of the two deaths, is a religious centre and it looks like religious activities will be stopped. Arak is in Western Iran. Babol is in Northern Iran.

Iraq has completely closed the border today due to COVID-19.

Iran sent a large number of surgical masks to China, and there are now reports of shortages in Iran.

By all accounts infection control has been 'poor' in Iran, to put it mildly.

It doesn't really matter what happens in China, if coronavirus is rampant in Iran. It will reach the UK eventually.

Good point Lark, the follow up paper ( www.preprints.org/manuscript/202002.0051/v2 ) suggests exactly that - an interaction of race and smoking history.

It doesn't look like they have enough data to be sure - 224 samples were analyzed, so not a huge sample to drill down into.

@FakeFraudSquad
Could you just tactfully tell him? I would! We shouldn’t be shy about these things, it will only lead to trouble!

FakeFraudSquad The hospital I work in are advising staff who have been in the affected countries mentioned by PHE to self quarantine at home for 14 days. We have a doctor off as he travelled through an affected country recently. I think anyone who has been to the affected countries should do the same and then obviously call 111 if they develop symptoms in those 2 weeks

The citizen journalists in China are also doing a brilliant job.

I thought they had all disappeared. Do you have names?

The vicar mingling with a tonne of Singaporeans for a week and then planning big events here directly afterwards sounds like an absolute liability.

I'm following @ischinar and Soares Chen.

The worrying thing about the vicar and his attitude of leaving it to god, is he wont be the only one with that view so how many others will be behaving so irresponsibly and putting vulnerable people at risk

Regarding your thoughtless vicar, I might be inclined to follow step 2 here:

www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2017-10/makingcomplainta4.pdf

I suspect a quiet word in his ear might happen, and the situation might resolve.

Some shocking data in a Swiss magazine (Neue Zürcher Zeitung): More than 15 percent of those diagnosed between January 1 and January 10 are dead now. Only circa one or two percent of those diagnosed after February 1st seemed to have died (see the last table: Sterberate nach Diagnosezeitpunkt). www.nzz.ch/panorama/wer-stirbt-am-ehesten-am-neuartigen-coronavirus-je-aelter-der-mann-desto-gefaehrdeter-ld.1541686 The article unfortunately is in German. I cannot find an English version.
They say that is because the treatment has gotten better. Really, has it? Or are they just not dead yet?