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Coronavirus

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We’re getting off-topic. We should get back to the the topic of FULL PANIC.

I did 23 long years. I’m now pushing 50. Thinking about it more, it’s inappropriate to talk about my defined benefit but Blitty is pretty sharp with this stuff.

Hammer your ROTH’s, boys.
 
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I have the coronavirus. And it hasn't been that bad.

I am in my late 60s, and the sickest I've ever been was when I had bronchitis several years ago. That laid me out on my back for a few days. This has been much easier: no chills, no body aches. I breathe easily, and I don't have a stuffy nose. My chest feels tight, and I have coughing spells. If I were at home with similar symptoms, I probably would have gone to work as usual.

I caught the virus on the Diamond Princess, the cruise ship that was quarantined outside Yokohama for 14 days, at the end of a 16-day cruise I took with my wife, Jeri. When I left the ship a couple of weeks ago, I felt fine. We checked our temperatures throughout our quarantine. Jeri and I got a swab test for the virus. Our temperatures were normal; they'd get the swab results back in 48 hours. Our test results had not arrived before we boarded buses for the airport, where two U.S. government planes waited for us.

As we took off from Tokyo, I had a bit of a cough, but I chalked it up to the dry air in the cabin. I felt pretty tired - but who wouldn't, in our situation? I dozed off.

When I woke up, I had a fever. I made my way to the back of the cargo plane, where the Air Force had set up a quarantine area cordoned off with sheets of plastic. They took my temperature. It was over 103 degrees. So I took a seat in the quarantine area and fell back asleep until we touched down in California, at Travis Air Force Base.

Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention came onto the plane and said that three of us who had been cordoned off would fly to Omaha (with our spouses, if they wanted to come along). The CDC had a quarantine location at the University of Nebraska's hospital. We arrived on Feb. 17, greeted by a fleet of ambulances and police cars. Officials put me on a stretcher and wheeled me into a van, which made for a very dramatic scene. I easily could have walked despite my exhaustion.

On the hospital campus, they put me in a biocontainment unit. The space was sealed off, with two double-paned windows that looked out on the hallway, and a large, heavy, insulated door. Two cameras watched me at all times; a set of computer monitors were equipped with microphones, so that the medical staff and I could communicate with CDC officials at central command down the hall. The room had last been used for the Ebola outbreak in 2013.

A doctor and nurses reviewed my case with me and took a bunch of lab tests. They wore heavy-duty hazmat suits sealed with duct tape and equipped with motors that helped with air circulation. It looked like something out of "The Andromeda Strain." When the test came back a few hours later, I wasn't surprised to learn that I had the coronavirus. Later, the Tokyo swab confirmed the result - I had caught the virus even before I left the ship.

It didn't scare me too badly. I knew my number was up. The way I saw it, I was going to get stuck in at least 14 more days of quarantine, even if I didn't get the virus. So many fellow passengers had come down with the illness, including one of my friends, that I'd gotten somewhat used to the idea that I might catch it, too. My wife, however, tested negative and headed to quarantine at a separate facility a few blocks away. After those days being cooped up on the ship together, I think we both relished the alone time; we still could communicate through our phones.
 
Just don't test. Problem solved.

NYT reader comment:

There are no clear protocols in place for hospitals to follow when presented with a possible coronavirus case. My husband flew from Venice to Boston on Monday 2/24, just as coronavirus cases were rising in northern Italy. On Thursday he started having cold symptoms. On Friday he had deep chest congestion and coughing. His doctor told him they would not see people coming from Italy in their office, and to go to the ER. At a hospital ER in southeastern MA, they had no idea what to do with him. ER staff told my husband that they had no protocols for dealing with people coming from Italy. They said he did not meet the criteria for a coronavirus test, even though the media has been reporting that the CDC updated the criteria to include symptomatic persons coming from Italy, South Korea and Iran. The ER personnel knew nothing about this. They tested him for the flu, saying that if he was positive for a known flu, they could rule out coronavirus. The flu test came back negative. A chest x-ray did not show cause for concern. They sent him home without a diagnosis and did not even tell him to self-quarantine! I understand that the chances of his having coronavirus are small. My concern is that medical staff are not trained. This country is NOT prepared for a pandemic.
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i'm not too worried about the virus itself but about the media produced potential mass hysteria

supply chains for regular daily prescription meds for millions of Americans will likely be fucked up in the next couple months
 
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