This is the best piece I’ve seen on why we all need to take this threat seriously. Not panic, not be frenzied about it, but we all have to do what we can.
Excerpt:
There’s an old brain teaser that goes like this: You have a pond of a certain size, and upon that pond, a single lilypad. This particular species of lily pad reproduces once a day, so that on day two, you have two lily pads. On day three, you have four, and so on.
Now the teaser. “If it takes the lily pads 48 days to cover the pond completely, how long will it take for the pond to be covered halfway?”
The answer is 47 days. Moreover, at day 40, you’ll barely know the lily pads are there.
When a danger is growing exponentially, everything looks fine until it doesn’t
Call me a sucker if you want, but I’m a believer in zinc and it is part of a regimen that I’ve been using for years, and haven’t been really sick in as long as I can remember. I interact with somewhere between 20 and 70 different people on a daily basis from a workforce of around 200. Knock on wood, but since I’ve been here, just about everybody here has been out sick at least for a day or two. Often I have people who are symptomatic in my office, and I get on their case for coming to work sick. But I don’t get sick.
Not that you care, but here is my regimen. Every morning I take a packet of Emergency-C along with a glass of Metamucil and some vitamins (folic acid, vitamin D, & multivitamin). Every night I have 2 to 3 cocktails, either whiskey or tequila on the rocks. And if I ever get a hint of illness, like runny nose or tickle in the throat, I start hammering Zicam, probably couple gummies and nasal swabs, for a day or two. These days I also run regularly, but if I start to feel anything that seems like symptoms, I make sure to get my run in so that I ‘sweat it out’.
Placebo? maybe but I don’t get sick and I like it that way.
We’ve noticed a marked decrease in the number and severity of illness since we’ve started using those minerals before travel or when one of us starts showing symptoms. I did some research and found supporting studies for both zinc and selenium.
On a related, but not quite COVID caused, note: I work IT for a company that has a sales office in Milan. We’ve been working this week to setup users for full teleworker capacity since the quarantine was announced.
Today, beginning around 2am MST one of the largest ISP in Italy, TIM (Telecom Italia), had a massive outage that took down external sites/services(anything located outside of the EU region) for most of Italy, but primarily Central and Northern Italy. The outage lasted all day. The single employee that was in the office had no connectivity to AWS, Adobe, among other sites/services including our central office in the states. The Milan teleworkers also had no connectivity outside of EU, including connectivity to our main site in the states.
#TIMdown was the second most trending topic on Twitter, behind the Coronavirus. I’m afraid with the quarantine and consequently the increased stress on local ISP in the region, this might expose deficiencies in the national infrastructure.
Some of the comments on the #TIMdown feed (Italian) are hilarious. Many people lamenting how the government had quarantined them, but they were unable to watch Netflix or play Xbox live games.
Something to consider if anything like their quarantine were to happen in the US.
My Primary Care Physician told me that zinc has been shown to somehow interrupt or disrupt the replication process of a virus thereby giving your body’s natural immune system a head start. That’s what he told me, not claiming I have any independent confirmation other than my own anecdotal experience.
Below is a basic list for zinc in drinks for the top 20 drinks. A more comprehensive list for the top items can be found at the bottom of the page along with different servings.
1. Chocolate syrup 0.73mg (5%RDA) 2. Shake, fast food, vanilla 0.57mg (4%RDA)
3. Ready-to-drink reduced fat milk beverage, flavored and sweetened, with added calcium, vitamin A and vitamin D 0.45mg (3%RDA) 4. Chocolate syrup, prepared with whole milk 0.43mg (3%RDA) 5. Shake, fast food, chocolate 0.41mg (3%RDA) 6. Shake, fast food, strawberry 0.36mg (2%RDA)
7. Water with added vitamins and minerals, bottles, sweetened, assorted fruit flavors 0.32mg (2%RDA)
8. Water, with corn syrup and/or sugar and low calorie sweetener, fruit flavored 0.32mg (2%RDA) 9. Alcoholic beverage, liqueur, coffee with cream, 34 proof 0.16mg (1%RDA) 10. Carbonated beverage, chocolate-flavored soda 0.16mg (1%RDA) 11. Chocolate-flavored drink, whey and milk based 0.16mg (1%RDA) 12. Alcoholic beverage, wine, table, red 0.14mg (1%RDA) 13. Alcoholic Beverage, wine, table, red, Merlot 0.14mg (1%RDA) 14. Alcoholic beverage, pina colada, prepared-from-recipe 0.13mg (1%RDA) 15. Alcoholic beverage, wine, table, all 0.13mg (1%RDA)
16. Rice drink, unsweetened, with added calcium, vitamins A and D 0.13mg (1%RDA) 17. Alcoholic beverage, wine, table, white 0.12mg (1%RDA) 18. Alcoholic beverage, wine, table, white, Chardonnay 0.12mg (1%RDA)
19. Hibiscus tea 0.12mg (1%RDA) 20. Carbonated beverage, club soda 0.1mg (1%RDA)
In bold are the drinks that will fly off of the shelves next. If that happens in Utah today, I know its one of youse guys who spilled the beans. The drinks in italics, that is what I will use to get my zinc dosage. May have to drink a few more now to really protect myself.
I subscribe to McKinsey. Not sure if you can get this. The work contains some interesting charts on the state of different countries in the evolution of CorVid19. China is the most advanced. Also, it offers three sober scenarios on impact to global businesses, broken down by a number of countries. One chart shows where CorVid19 stands relative to other human infectious diseases (reproduction vs. fatalities).
The virus disproportionately affects older people with underlying conditions. Epidemiologists Zunyou Wu and Jennifer McGoogan analyzed a report from China Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that looked at more than 72,000 cases and concluded that the fatality rate for patients 80 and older was seven times the average, and three to four times the average for patients in their 70s. 1 Other reports describe fatality rates for people under 40 to be 0.2 percent.
FYI, 0.2% is roughly double the rate for flu.
The report also has a section on Responding to CorVid19, aimed at businesses.
And even though his own grandfather died from the flu, until a few days ago trump wasn’t aware that people died from the flu. Honestly, how is a human that stupid?
Rudy has it. Both teams quarantined in locker rooms for now they say.
ETA: Clip going viral now of Rudy joking about Corona, first not touching anything then going back to touch every reporter microphone and recording device/phone. Not the best look in hindsight, assuming it’s real.
