Coronavirus Updates

[Beebo Brink]

I've spent the last hour updating our company intranet with COVID-19 policies. The executive team has suspended all non-essential travel, regardless of location, and any other travel requests must be approved by a managing director in conjunction with HR. There are also an expanding number of policies concerning office protocols, such as banning large meetings and encouraging people to use video/chat technology whenever possible instead of face-to-face meeting. Another whole set of policies is developing around sick-leave, self-quarantine, work-from-home and how to screen outside visitors.

Corporate-America has a better handle on this than Trump-America.

 

[Stora]

A Teacher Did an Experiment to Show the Power of Handwashing, and You Can’t Stay Unimpressed

Sometimes a prime example is better than words — especially when it comes to explaining something to children. That’s exactly what Jaralee Metcalf, a teacher from Idaho, decided to do to show her pupils the importance of washing their hands properly. And now the whole world is following her example!

link

 

[Stora]

It never occurred to me before on how you would make funeral arrangements for loved ones if you are self-isolating.

The family of a UK man who died with coronavirus have paid tribute to a "wonderful husband, dad, grandad and great-grandad".
The 83-year-old, the second person to die in the UK after contracting the virus, died shortly after testing positive in hospital on Thursday.
His family said they had lost a "truly loving person" and were unable to arrange a funeral for him because they were self-isolating.

Coronavirus: Tribute paid to 'loving' grandad

 

[Kara Spengler]

Gloves aren't useful -- you're still picking up germs. So if you touch your face, same result.

Well, take the gloves off first.

While still cleaning my hands I wear winter gloves any time I am out as a secondary thing but just do not touch my face while wearing them.

 

[Ailsa Muliaina]

Gloves aren't useful -- you're still picking up germs. So if you touch your face, same result.

The gloves are a really good extra layer of protection, but only if you're able to avoid touching your face while you wear them If you need help to avoid face touching, you could always try spraying something dodgy smelling on the gloves so that stops you from bringing them closer. Otherwise you'd need to pull them off after each dodgy contact and replace them. I find when I see the gloves on my hands it reminds me that I can't touch my face. I can sometimes forget with bare hands, but the visual thing helps me.

The handy thing with latex gloves is that you can easily take them off while turning them inside out and dispose of them, then wash your hands too. I find that hellish useful if I'm coming back to the car covered in something icky, because I can take the gloves off before I touch the car or anything inside it. With bare hands I'm potentially getting it on the car, and then on my handwashing stuff. I also just prefer a physical barrier + washing afterwards over relying 100% on handwashing to do it all. Especially if you're not able to get to a sink and thoroughly wash your hands all the time.

 

[Pamela]

I have not been able to get anything sanitizing whatsoever, not even alcohol. Going to try again with this list.

https://www.americanchemistry.com/Novel-Coronavirus-Fighting-Products-List.pdf

The gloves are a really good extra layer of protection, but only if you're able to avoid touching your face while you wear them If you need help to avoid face touching, you could always try spraying something dodgy smelling on the gloves so that stops you from bringing them closer. Otherwise you'd need to pull them off after each dodgy contact and replace them. I find when I see the gloves on my hands it reminds me that I can't touch my face. I can sometimes forget with bare hands, but the visual thing helps me.

The handy thing with latex gloves is that you can easily take them off while turning them inside out and dispose of them, then wash your hands too. I find that hellish useful if I'm coming back to the car covered in something icky, because I can take the gloves off before I touch the car or anything inside it. With bare hands I'm potentially getting it on the car, and then on my handwashing stuff. I also just prefer a physical barrier + washing afterwards over relying 100% on handwashing to do it all. Especially if you're not able to get to a sink and thoroughly wash your hands all the time.

If I ever get my hands on any kind of sanitizing ingredient, I am thinking wear gloves and spray them. The hard part will be getting my highly vulnerable husband to do it. From long experience he knows he doesn’t have to actually do something, but just tell me he did.

 

[danielravennest]

I can put 91% alcohol in a hand-sized spray bottle I guess. Rough on the hands but can't be much worse than Minnesota windchill. Maybe I can add some Aloe vera gel so long as I make sure it keeps the alcohol concentration at 60%, which means I'll be adding as little as possible to keep on the safe side of that number.

That's exactly the recipe for homemade hand sanitizer. Two parts high percentage alcohol (isopropyl, which is non-drinkable and cheap) to one part aloe vera gel to preserve your skin. Household bleach is good for disinfecting surfaces. It destroys the virus' outer coating (and pretty much anything else that's organic)

 

[Pamela]

That's exactly the recipe for homemade hand sanitizer. Two parts high percentage alcohol (isopropyl, which is non-drinkable and cheap) to one part aloe vera gel to preserve your skin.

If you can find these two ingredients in stock, which I have not. I decided to make my own when I couldn’t find any sanitizer in stock.

 

[Pamela]

Thank God for city, county, and state gov. Otherwise we would be on our own.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

It never occurred to me before on how you would make funeral arrangements for loved ones if you are self-isolating.




Coronavirus: Tribute paid to 'loving' grandad

The firm of solicitors who drew it up for me are joint executors of my will, and one of their standard questions, when they were taking my instructions, was whether I had any particular preferences about funeral arrangements.

Covid-19 or not, I really would recommend this idea to everyone. I am certainly very glad my mother's family solicitors were joint executors (along with me) of her very simple will, so they could take over from me the not inconsiderable burden of all the necessary paperwork involved in winding up even a very straightforward estate.

 

[Caliandris]

The firm of solicitors who drew it up for me are joint executors of my will, and one of their standard questions, when they were taking my instructions, was whether I had any particular preferences about funeral arrangements.

Covid-19 or not, I really would recommend this idea to everyone. I am certainly very glad my mother's family solicitors were joint executors (along with me) of her very simple will, so they could take over from me the not inconsiderable burden of all the necessary paperwork involved in winding up even a very straightforward estate.

I'd highly recommend this to everyone. I had a friend who "recovered" from breast cancer, only to find that she had secondary cancers everywhere. She really did not understand how serious her situation was until she was in the last week of her life. She had never made any decisions about her funeral. Her poor husband had to talk to her, when she was seriously ill and dying, about her preferences for service and music etc. It was awful for him and terrible for her, facing death, to think about these things.

Far better to decide in advance and make a list of things. Make a will, make a plan for your funeral, and keep them together. And for those of you who say variations on "I don't care what they do..." that's a cop out. Deciding on service and music, and making some decisions makes life so much easier for those who actually have to arrange the things after your death. Decide! Cremation or burial, religious service or not, where you want your remains to be kept, and what sort of music and party you'd like. It removes a burden from your next of kin. And it doesn't kill you. My friend died 20 years ago, and I've had such plans ever since, and I'm not dead yet.

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

Allergies and last years hep outbreak in San Diego have me very much in the habit of using one hand for doors/cross-walk buttons/cash&coin .. dirty stuff. And the other hand for phone/face/tissue. Seems reasonably effective so far.

Also.. just because I tweet so rarely and it always seems to be rage-venting at the orange buffoon when I do...

 

[Cristiano]

 

[Cristiano]

CPAC attendee tested positive for coronavirus

The American Conservative Union announced on Saturday that one of the attendees at last week's Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, has tested positive for coronavirus.

www.cnn.com

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

 

[Beebo Brink]

This would explain so much about the botched rollout of tests in the U.S.

 

[Clara D.]

Gloves aren't useful -- you're still picking up germs. So if you touch your face, same result.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

CPAC attendee tested positive for coronavirus

The American Conservative Union announced on Saturday that one of the attendees at last week's Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, has tested positive for coronavirus.

www.cnn.com

Please God let it not have been a reporter for the Washington Post, NYT or CNN, or we'll never hear the end of it.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

This would explain so much about the botched rollout of tests in the U.S.

Holy smoke, yes. That's why so few kits were available. The Trump admin refused the ready supply of WHO kits so that a company he owns stock in could get a government contract for providing them instead, and this company didn't have a supply to start with.

 

[Ailsa Muliaina]

I have not been able to get anything sanitizing whatsoever, not even alcohol. Going to try again with this list.

https://www.americanchemistry.com/Novel-Coronavirus-Fighting-Products-List.pdf

If I ever get my hands on any kind of sanitizing ingredient, I am thinking wear gloves and spray them. The hard part will be getting my highly vulnerable husband to do it. From long experience he knows he doesn’t have to actually do something, but just tell me he did.

I would think that gloves plus really good handwashing would give pretty good protection if you can't get sanitiser, but obviously having something stronger is always a good thing. We always have a supply of stuff like that for the animals, if it wasn't for them we'd have been stuck too. People are going crazy panic buying far more than they'll actually need and leaving everyone else without, which is horrible for vulnerable people that really need it. The only thing I can think to try is some really tiny out-of-the-way shops that might not be fully cleared out like the supermarkets. At a push maybe vet supply or farm supply places, there are some shops that have big bottles of stuff like that for farmers and it's a less obvious shop for the panic buyers to target.

I totally sympathise with your frustration keeping your husband safe though. My dad is in the high risk category age and health wise and he's already chancing his luck. He apparently went to Costco yesterday.... Literally the one person in the family who shouldn't be shopping was shopping and I don't think he did anything to protect himself. But he won't be told, can't be made to do what he's supposed to. He's just a cantankerous, absent-minded, stubborn senior delinquent with a driving license. Poor Mr Muliaina if I get like dad when I'm old he'll have to hide my car keys. Dad's also inclined to say he's done something when he hasn't, so I feel your frustration and worry. We're regularly checking up on dad because he habitually claims to have done something if he knows "no I didn't" gets him in trouble! I guess if your husband says he used gloves and doesn't, you won't be able to find any used gloves and you'll know. But when they have that habit of saying they did something they have't it's a total nightmare with stuff like this.