Edhat Staff
By edhat staff
Coronavirus appears to spread throughout Northern California, but Santa Barbara County remains clear as officials attempt to calm fears.
Coronavirus can cause coughing, shortness of breath and fever with approximately 80 percent of people developing mild or no symptoms at all. Globally, three to four out of every 100 people confirmed to have the illness have died.
The Santa Barbara County Public Health Department is currently monitoring the situation and is providing ongoing guidance and alerts to healthcare partners in coordination with the California Department of Public Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Healthcare partners, including EMS providers, are participating in weekly teleconferences to assure that procedures are in place at each facility to safely screen patients and protect healthcare workers and the community.
Recent Cases in California
There are currently no cases of anyone who has tested positive for the COVID-19 within Santa Barbara County, however, cases are growing throughout Northern California.
Sonoma County has declared a local emergency after confirming a positive COVID-19 diagnosis from a patient who recently traveled to Mexico onboard a cruise ship. This is the county’s second patient that tested positive.
Placer County reported its first case stating a health care worker who treated a COVID-19 patient at a Solano County hospital has been diagnosed with the respiratory illness.
San Mateo County reported a presumptive coronavirus-positive patient, awaiting official CDC testing, is in isolation. The source of exposure is currently unknown as the patient has had no known contact with recent travelers.
The Santa Clara County confirmed two more cases of COVID-19 bringing the official count to nine.
Currently, there have been 20 reported cases of positive COVID-19 in California where 18 of those remain active. The one case in Los Angeles County and one case in Orange County remain active.
National and Global Numbers
As of Monday, there are 91 cases in the United States. On Friday there were 62 reported cases, according to a map by Johns Hopkins University. The CDC reports 44 of the total cases belong to passengers from the Diamond Princess cruise ship.
The current worldwide total is over 90,300 with approximately 80,000 in mainland China. South Korea has reportedly 4,300 cases while Italy reports over 2,000 and Iran states 1,500 cases.
Johns Hopkins reports 3,085 total deaths, with the majority located in the Hubei province of China. The United States has reported 6 deaths due to the coronavirus, five of them located in Washington State.
Travel Restrictions
Four countries have been added to Level 3 Travel Restrictions List due to the spread of COVID-19. A Level 3 Warning is listed as avoiding nonessential travel. China, Italy, Iran, and South Korea are listed as Level 3 locations. Japan is listed as Level 2 and Hong Kong is listed as Level 1.
Warning – Level 3, Avoid Nonessential Travel—Widespread Community Transmission
Coronavirus Myths
Below are some facts and guidelines regarding COVID-19.
Common Coronavirus Misconceptions (source: World Health Organization):
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Myth: Coronavirus can be transmitted via mail from China. Fact: WHO reports that the coronavirus cannot survive for long on objects in the mail and it is safe to handle packages and letters from China.
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Myth: Surgical masks can prevent someone from getting coronavirus. Fact: According to WHO, surgical masks are not an effective prevention measure for the transmission of coronavirus and should not be used by healthy people at this time.
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Myth: A vaccine or homeopathic cure can help prevent spread. Fact: There is currently no vaccine to prevent transmission of coronavirus, and WHO says the use of homeopathic substances to self-treat should be avoided.
Prevention
Guidelines to Protect Yourself (source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention):
- Avoid close contact with people who are sick.
- Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth.
- If you’re sick or don’t feel well, stay home.
- Cover your cough or sneeze with a tissue.
- Clean and disinfect frequently-touched surfaces.
- Facemasks are not necessary or helpful for healthy people and should only be used by those with coronavirus symptoms.
- Frequently wash your hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, especially after going to the bathroom, before eating and after blowing your nose, coughing or sneezing.
- If soap and water are not available, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol.
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This is beginning to look like the virus that cried wolf. If it’s been in Washington State for weeks, then why aren’t we hearing reports of overrun emergency rooms full of non-elderly people with pneumonia-like symptoms? In the US it appears to be no worse than the flu, but for most they can’t tell they even have it or it’s a mild cold. If you’re elderly or have compromised health then it is a threat to you, no doubt. Hopefully I’m not premature here, but this virus doesn’t seem to be living up to the hype and panic.
Twitter’s coronavirus info page: https://twitter.com/i/events/1219057585707315201
WIth the cases showing up with no known epidemiologic link, one can wonder what happened with Gary Michael Bean, who suddenly died after a week or more in which he appeared sick and walked around Isla Vista wearing a surgical mask. I saw him the day before he collapsed and he appeared ill but he was unwilling to visit a physician and seemed to be waiting out a ‘flubug’. The next day he collapsed and was whisked to the ER and, we are told, he died very quickly. Maybe it was bacterial sepsis from untreated pneumonia. Maybe it was viral. Not to jump to conculsions, but it cannot be entirely ruled out that Michael died of coronavirus, although that cannot be thought to be particularly likely. There are a lot of people who are interested in the coroner’s report and I would bet he was not tested. Since it seems that he did indeed have some kind of microbial pathogenesis, and rapid death is consistent with coronavirus,it might be worth looking into. On the other hand, I did not see conspicuous pulmonary distress, so odds are it was something else. The real bottom line is that the “natural” way of mistrust of all “corporate” things like vaccines and doctors and hospitals and food conglomeratesand unbridled faith in “natural” remedies and avoidance of “Western medicine” carries a down side risk, and Michael, who engaged in purposeful “recycling” ie. “dumpster diving”, as a kind of dutiful way of “living simply that others may live” – he paid a dear price for that approach to things. Rather sad, and I don’t think it was coronavirus, but, lacking lab results, the possibility cannot be ruled out.
Coronavirus is acknowledged to have mortality rates
“that cannot be thought to be particularly likely … odds are it was something else” — right, so this is off topic.
Hey Job, an undiagnosed death from a viral or bacterial pathogen is precisely on topic. This fatality, reported in the SBI, is subject to quite a bit of speculation. Whether or not he was tested or screened is the point. The surplusage regarding his predilection for exposure to germ-rich environments is subsidiary to the main point, which you seem to overlook. Ah, the internet brings out the most persnickety qualities of us now doesn’t it. Good day.
Young people were drying from vaping contaminated products, coincidental with this corona virus, Coincidence is not causation, so I do hope they do learn more from his untimely death.
” an undiagnosed death from a viral or bacterial pathogen is precisely on topic an undiagnosed death from a viral or bacterial pathogen is precisely on topic” — No, it obviously isn’t, else we would be discussing each and every one of those here. “the internet brings out the most persnickety qualities of us now doesn’t it” — as evidenced by you resorting to this personal attack?
“Coronavirus is acknowledged to have mortality rates 2%” (greater than 2 percent)
Hopefully the situation will improve soon. https://twitter.com/into_the_brush/status/1234685467682979840?s=20 “I live in Seattle, I have all symptoms of COVID-19 and have a history of chronic bronchitis.
Since I work in a physical therapy clinic with many 65+ patients and those with chronic illnesses, I decided to be responsible and go to get tested. This is how that went.”
The 2% mortality rate is based on deaths tested positive for Covid-19 versus sick people tested positive for Covid-19. What it doesn’t account for is the number of sick people with the virus who never got tested. If the pool of untested, yet sick with Coronavirus people is 10x the tested pool then the mortality rate comes down to 0.2%. It’s likely that only the sickest people are going to the hospital and getting tested so I think that’s skewing the results in favor of doom.
See http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/02/study-72000-covid-19-patients-finds-23-death-rate — “44,672 were classified as confirmed cases of COVID-19 (62%; diagnosis based on positive throat swab samples)” … “untested, yet sick with Coronavirus people is 10x the tested pool” is not plausible. It certainly isn’t supported by the data. “It’s likely that only the sickest people are going to the hospital and getting tested ” — No, many people were tested who didn’t go to the hospital.
I personally have seen zero hype or panic. Whomever IS panicking, is listening to bad sources of information.
You don’t get internet access in Tahoe?
South Korea has reported 5,328 cases with 33 deaths which gives a ratio of 0.6%. Italy reports 2,502 cases with 79 deaths for a ratio of 3.2%. This is a big range in case count reporting. We have yet to see emergency rooms start filling up with 40 year olds with pneumonia symptoms, especially in WA. I don’t trust the numbers out of China—it’s like trusting the old Soviets giving us the truth about Chernobyl. *** https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
“5,328 cases with 33 deaths which gives a ratio of 0.6%” — but almost all of those cases are still in progress!
From your link: 5,254 active cases, 41 fully recovered, 33 deaths, 27 severe or critical. So assuming that none of those cases becomes severe or critical, the morality rate is somewhere between .6% and 1.1% … certainly more than the flu. At this point we’re just throwing darts, but the South Korea data should certainly be followed. Keep in mind though that South Korea has tested something like 130,000 people and the U.S. has only tested about 500. Hopefully that will get ramped up a lot.
Even if this is “no worse than the flu”, in the 2018-2019 flu season, considered “moderate” (the 2017-2018 season was considerably worse), in the U.S. alone
42.9 million people got sick, 647,000 were hospitalized, and there were 61,200 deaths. The latest estimates are that the flu kills 291,000 to 646,000 people worldwide each year. 67% of these deaths are among people 65 and older.
COVID-19 is a separate disease caused by a separate organism, which can be expected to cause at least as much *additional* damage as the flu if it is not contained. Despite the major efforts to contain it, there are confirmed cases in about 80 countries.
People who are over 65, or have diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, or a suppressed immune system certainly have reason to be concerned and should take reasonable precautions to try to avoid contracting COVID-19. And if you aren’t in any of those categories, and you get the disease, you owe it to others to try not to spread it. And you will be in one of those categories eventually, and it seems likely that this disease is here to stay.
People psychotically panicking.