Menu Sign In Contact FAQ
Banner
Welcome to our forums

Corona / Covid-19 Virus - General Discussion (politics go to the Off Topic / Politics thread)

News that all over 70 were to be restricted to their house led me to email my UK M.P and my Scottish MP this morning, as I don’t know which has responsibility. I can walk for miles without close contact with anyone, and even one month indoors will wreck my fitness and health, to no public advantage. I might as well walk, illegally.

Maoraigh
EGPE, United Kingdom

Canadian citizens are being encouraged home, not sure if unofficially, source a canuck airline pilot.

Oxford (EGTK), United Kingdom

The whole thing is comical, there is probably one person (or none) within fifty miles of here with undiagnosed Coronavirus

If you’re still in Las Vegas, there are 16 known cases in Clark County. 6 are hospitalised: a 50-something year old, a 6X year old and a 7X year old in serious condition, a 5X and 4X year old who is ‘stable’ and a 4X year old who is doing well.

The proportion of hospitalised patients to unhospitalised patients is much higher than in other places, which tells you that they’re only aware of the barn-door obvious cases. Allowing for the lag between infection and symptoms, it is likely that the numbers infected unknowingly will be much higher, probably by a few orders of magnitude.

My worry is that in China they may have been concentrating on treating the younger folk, so the low percentages of younger people who are dying look falsely reassuring. My question is what the age/mortality profile will look like when the hospitals are saturated. I haven’t seen an answer to that one, even though it’s an obvious question for which we should have enough data to attempt an educated guess. The pattern in China and Italy suggests that they suddenly have some realisation which galvanises them into action and I suspect it is this.

I agree, a nice day to do something relatively solitary like flying. I see little comical about it, and no reason any of us should feel ‘safe.’

Last Edited by kwlf at 15 Mar 21:32

I’m nowhere near Vegas, but wouldn’t be the slightest concerned if I was. I went for a motorcycle ride today, a bit cloudy this weekend for my flying although yesterday there was lots of activity at the airport – mostly European and Chinese students who don’t stop flying because of a few clouds. They’ll presumably go home when there’re finished: It must be an interesting situation for a young kid far from home.

What’s comical is (as I said above) people stocking up on toilet paper etc when there is almost zero chance of them being unsafe in buying it now or later. My wife is getting some pretty funny videos along those lines from Germany, and you can see some evidence of it here too – I noticed the local supermarket parking lot was over half full on a Sunday afternoon. The supermarkets must be making a killing and although people here tend to have multiple freezers to store a lot of food, I’d bet that a lot of it will end up in the trash eventually.

Last Edited by Silvaire at 15 Mar 22:31

Just been debating the “cafe” angle here…

It appears “safe” to eat at an outdoor cafe, if you have a distance of a few m from others. AFAICT it is safe to eat this virus, so even if you get contaminated cutlery, cups, etc (and you must assume you will) that is ok provided you wash your hands afterwards with soap afterwards (or wipe them with an alcohol tissue) before touching anything else, getting into a car, etc.

Indoors is much more challenging if/when this thing gets going, because of the aerosol risk.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Off_Field wrote:

A state of emergency gives let’s people really clamp down. Whether all of them will be lifted after I think will be interesting to see.

Very good point, let’s see what gets permanently taken away through this scaremongering…

LFHN - Bellegarde - Vouvray France

I grant you the toilet roll meme is pretty funny.

The current statistics of new deaths is a bit “spooky”

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

There is a point of view that masks reduce disease transmission not just by catching the bugs that you breathe in, but also by stopping you from touching your face. However, they don’t stop you rubbing your eyes, and most people get fed up of wearing them sooner or later.

An alternative way of stopping people from touching their faces, is to restrict bending at the elbow. You can do almost anything except touch your mouth with less than 107 degrees of flexion; you need 121 degrees to eat the last crumb of a biscuit If you wore a brace that prevented you from flexing past 107 degrees, it would stop you touching your face whilst allowing you to do most other ‘activities of daily living’ unhindered.

There are any number of sophisticated orthopaedic braces that can set a permissible range of movement, but what we want is something simple and comfortable. Many approaches might reasonably work, but the simplest I could think of was a piece of closed cell packing foam:

Here’s a slightly thicker bit with a wedge cut out, and the edges bevelled off. The back has some double-sided sticky tape on it:

Next step is to mount it on some spare stockinette:

Then mount it on your arm:

And hey presto:

A very cheap elbow range-of-movement restrictor. It’s not actually rigid enough to stop you touching your face, but it’s rigid enough to remind you that you are doing so. It provides no resistance until about 80 degrees, then progressively makes it harder to flex your elbow and moderately uncomfortable by the time your hand reaches your mouth, nose or eyes. Pronation and supination are unrestricted. I can still drink tea though I rely on a bit of extra wrist flexion.

You don’t actually want anything too rigid as you might end up getting interesting fractures if you fell.

I have since found that it is a little more comfortable with the foam inside the stockinette. The current bit of foam is 15mm x 120mm. I think it might work better if it were a little thicker and if the edges were softened more, but this is what I had to hand. I have also experimented with two more acute cutouts, slightly separated (=w=) which gives a larger radius of curvature to the bend and is more comfortable in the AC fossa (inside of the elbow).

Next step will be to try some larger thicker foam, and something softer between the skin and the foam, unless someone tells me this has all been done before and is a solved problem.

Obviously not suitable for hospitals as it breaks the bare-below-the-elbow rule, though it does leave 2/3 of the forearm uncovered. Not a substitute for wearing a mask (and I would be mortified if anyone thought of it that way!) but it’s not easy to stop yourself from touching your face and I figured that every little bit of help is welcome.

I think there’s still room for improvement so if anybody wants to experiment on the same theme please be my guest. Just keep it within the public domain.

Last Edited by kwlf at 16 Mar 02:46

Well now that the People’s Democratic Republic of California has announced house arrest for everyone over 65, I guess my travel is certainly affected… anywhere past the front door. Talk about panic over-reaction.

LFMD, France
Sign in to add your message

Back to Top