MarlinChaser11 said:

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How much zinc do recommend to take daily. Does the amount depend of your sick or not.

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I think that is still up in the air. I take a 50mg per day but just have some extra zinc on board. If you get seriously ill and they to give you plaquenil than you will have plenty of zinc to rush into the cells. Remember everything is technically experimental at this point but it is not likely to harm you.

Big Al 1992 said:

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Thanks again for all of the updates and work on the front lines. I'm asking to predict the future but based on what we know, where we are, and what you've seen - what would have to happen for 100,000 people to be allowed to congregate at Kyle Field on Sept 5? It's a long way off but that would be absolute best case scenario and a lot of things would have to go our way. (Hot temperatures, therapeutic options, etc)

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I really don't want to predict what I think. I think right now lets just all work together so we can get this thing under control enough by Sept so we can stop talking about viruses and get back to football.

cle96 said:

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Thanks for the update on FB! I have Cold-ease zinc drops, kind of like cough drops. It it ok to give my kids (8 and 10) one every other day or so? The box doesn't say for under 12.

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The usual oral intake of zinc is approximately 4 to 14 mg/day; the recommended dietary allowance (RDA) is 8 mg/day for children ages 9 to 11 years; the RDA for adolescent males and females is 11 and 9 mg/day, respectively.

VaultingChemist said:

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How effective is quinine relative to chloroquine in allowing zinc into cells?
How much quinine would you need to ingest daily to be effective, if any?

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Need a biochemist to help on this one but I think quinine is an ion channel blocker so it would block the entrance of Zinc into the cells if I am right. But I don't know the answer for sure.

BiochemAg97 said:

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erudite said:

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Thanks for the (lack) of info. Just curious.

Another thing.

I am getting told there are claims in China that the original "patient" zero is not in China but of unknown origin. They are also claiming that the Italy epidemic does not have the same DNA enough that it cannot be considered identical. Any news on that? Lots of false info floating around.

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The virus mutates one base pair about every 2nd transmission. Given we are about 4 months out, and 5-7 days per transmission, there has been some mutation, so it isn't "identical" but it isn't a different virus.

There was a genetic analysis done on the early Wuhan cases. Many of the early Wuhan cases were close enough (identical) that it was clear they were from a single animal to human incident. Hard to imagine that it started someone other than Wuhan.

China has been working very hard to try to deflect blame and criticism over their handling of the initial infection. The initial transmission appears to have occurred around mid Nov, China didn't tell the world until Dec 31, after tracking down a doctor who shared info about the disease with his colleagues on social media and making him retract his statements. Mid Jan, WHO tweeted that China said there was no person to person transmission. China has a big credibility issue in this one.

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Excellent summary! In addition China has since publicly apologized to the deceased doctors family.

hillcountryag86 said:

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Reveille said:

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3rd Generation Ag said:

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Question on protection.

I know ordinary face masks from Walgreen are not the ones the nurses need. However I found a box of 20 from the last time I had the flu and had to get out. I am guessing there are still 15 or so in the box.

Would these help any doctor or nurse at all? If so, how do I donate them or is it too few to be worth that.

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Yes many offices are in desperate need of those. Keep a few for family incase anyone gets sick you need to have the suck person wearing it so they do not exhale virus into the air.

We are getting extremely nervous about running out of supplies! Masks are back ordered until we don't know when. It really is scary. We signed up to put our lives on the line to protect others. I just never thought we might have to do it with no personal protective gear or santizer!

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I own a lumberyard / hardware store. A friend of mine is a nurse practitioner at our local clinic. He called me Thursday asking for every Tyvek suit and N95 mask I had. I gathered about 30 of each and got them to him.

It was very sobering and surreal to think our system can't support our medical community that they have to go to a hardware store to operate.

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It's a real crisis. I had to get some N95 masks from a patient with a paint center.

While she is not in the highest risk category she is higher risk than the general population. You are doing the right thing with isolation. Just practice good hygiene and social distancing and she took be fine.

AW Aggie said:

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Drs. in regards to high risk I wanted to ask a question about my wife. She is 33 and in relatively good health but when she was in college her lung collapsed (pneumothorax) 3x within 10 months. Drs. cut out an upper portion of her left lung and roughed up the lining due to the blebs. Does this put her in the high risk category should she get this?

Its worrisome, if she has to go on a ventilator for this and not sure if her lung would be able to support the pressure. Were taking our precautions and have been isolated for 10 days now, good hygiene, and haven't left the house except bike rides and walks with the kids. Confident we don't have it but who knows what will happen in the future.

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she is not necessarily higher risk of covid complications simply due to her history of spontaneous pneumothorax, however if she happened to decompensate (very rare in her case), she would be higher risk for complications if have to be intubated....once again, I do not think a history of spontaneous pneumothorax is a risk factor for increased morbidity of covid, but if had to be ventilated, she would due to increased positive pressure of the vent.

AW Aggie said:

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Drs. in regards to high risk I wanted to ask a question about my wife. She is 33 and in relatively good health but when she was in college her lung collapsed (pneumothorax) 3x within 10 months. Drs. cut out an upper portion of her left lung and roughed up the lining due to the blebs. Does this put her in the high risk category should she get this?

Its worrisome, if she has to go on a ventilator for this and not sure if her lung would be able to support the pressure. Were taking our precautions and have been isolated for 10 days now, good hygiene, and haven't left the house except bike rides and walks with the kids. Confident we don't have it but who knows what will happen in the future.

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Honestly, that's a tough one. I have not seen where spontaneous pnuemothoracies increase risk of contraction or death from Covid-19, but if she has an underlying condition that led to the multiple pneumothoracies she may have increased risk from the disease.

She would definitely have more difficulty with intubation and ventilation than the average patient and she has less pulmonary reserve, but I don't think she would technically qualify high risk in relation to Covid-19 if she has no other underlying conditions. In saying that what I mean is I don't think she would be considered higher risk of developing respiratory failure from the virus than anyone else her age. Still, I would take every opportunity to isolate myself if I was her.

Big Al 1992 said:

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Thanks again for all of the updates and work on the front lines. I'm asking to predict the future but based on what we know, where we are, and what you've seen - what would have to happen for 100,000 people to be allowed to congregate at Kyle Field on Sept 5? It's a long way off but that would be absolute best case scenario and a lot of things would have to go our way. (Hot temperatures, therapeutic options, etc)

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a vaccine for which everyone receives by 08/22/2020

Reveille said:

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Today's update

https://www.facebook.com/1998386763777604/posts/2645116129104661/?sfnsn=mo

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Adding the following link as the one above appears to be for your 3/20 update...

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2646983792251228&id=1998386763777604&__tn__=K-R

Thanks for all your hard work and info, Reveille!

FreeLunch said:

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Rev - any thoughts on this article?

https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56

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One thing I keep seeing is treating the entire US the same. Yet we treat Europe as a bunch of different countries.

We should be looking at this more regionally in the US, since we have very different situations in different parts of the country.

It might be good for the CDC to outline an approach that each region can take gathering best practices, but we should probably leave the actions up to the more local authorities.

If we restrict travel between regions, we can deal with each region based on where it is currently and not where the worst part is. This would reduce the economic impact by allowing much of the country to get back to work.

NYC is on the verge of becoming Italy, but Washington/Seattle appears to have a lid on exponent growth.

Oddly, people are capable of looking at Wuhan separate from the whole of China.

The other part of this is the US population of 330mil is significantly higher than the population of Italy or Wuhan (both around 60 mil) yet we compare raw numbers of cases. Having the same number of cases as Italy doesn't mean we are in the same place. We have more critical care beds than Italy, mostly because we have 5.5 times more people. Notice hospital beds and critical care beds are compared in numbers per thousand or 100 thousand. But treating the country as one homogeneous situation doesn't help there either, because beds in Montana aren't going to help patients in NYC.

We need to block travel out of NYC.

Doug Ross said:

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Big Al 1992 said:

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Thanks again for all of the updates and work on the front lines. I'm asking to predict the future but based on what we know, where we are, and what you've seen - what would have to happen for 100,000 people to be allowed to congregate at Kyle Field on Sept 5? It's a long way off but that would be absolute best case scenario and a lot of things would have to go our way. (Hot temperatures, therapeutic options, etc)

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a vaccine for which everyone receives by 08/22/2020

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Wonder if Pres Young could swing priority for initial vaccines from the center for innovation in advanced development and manufacturing for students and season ticket holders. Lol

ccaggie05 said:

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Caleb12 said:

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Maybe not even everyone. Remember the 100,000 is not a representative sample of the United States, it's generally just Texas. Maybe we get herd immunity in our area by vaccine and infection by that point.

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No way a vaccine is ready by then. At best we are looking at Fall 2021 for a vaccine.

Ideally any break we get from these lockdowns and a possible summer reprieve gives us time to get ready for mass/quick testing and aggressive quarantining for positive cases and close contacts ala SK/Singapore/Taiwan. Unfortunately I don't have a lot of faith that will happen, or if it does, be effective in preventing another outbreak.

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I think that assumes we do vaccines like we have always done vaccines. I think we do it faster. How much faster? I don't know.