ISOLATION - Your Experience

[DanK]

On the issue of packages and mail: here is something more authoritative that I happen on after posting the earlier post.

[ST1]

This place is a ghost town. We've had 4 confirmed cases, 3 have recovered and one remains hospitalized. I'm down to two trout streams to fish as one runs through a busy cattle ranch and it is calving season. I offered to help the rancher but he graciously declined my offer. He didn't have any objections to me fishing but I decided to stay out of the way and fish the neighborhood water. I caught this guy yesterday near my home.

Nice fish, Hardy Cascapedia reel, is the rod split cane and a Hardy too Paul?


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[LePetomane]

Peter, the reel was made by a physician in Maine, Dr. Paul Hermann. It has the S shaped handle and counterbalance like the Cascapedia. The rod is a split cane made by Chris Raine of Utah. Bamboo rod making had become a cottage industry in the US. The rod casts and fishes beautifully.

[mugge]

We went for our daily walk for takeaway coffees and I was informed by my beloved that I only needed to wear my 'good tracksuit' instead of having to iron my 'good jeans.'

I do not think that this state of affairs will last (my tracksuit attire) and the coronavirus. We will get rid of it.
Cheers Ole

[rpcrowe]

Although social distancing has proven it will blunt the curve of infections, I don't think that we will be totally safe until a vaccine is developed...

[DanK]

Although social distancing has proven it will blunt the curve of infections, I don't think that we will be totally safe until a vaccine is developed...

And almost everyone gets it. Most vaccines are not 100% effective, so we need herd immunity. What vaccination rate that requires depends in part on the R0, and I haven't read any estimates. Measles, which has a much higher R0, requires about a 95% vaccination rate. I follow this stuff to some degree because one of my grandkids is immunocompromised and is in substantial danger because of antivaxers.

[Tronhard]

And almost everyone gets it. Most vaccines are not 100% effective, so we need herd immunity. What vaccination rate that requires depends in part on the R0, and I haven't read any estimates. Measles, which has a much higher R0, requires about a 95% vaccination rate. I follow this stuff to some degree because one of my grandkids is immunocompromised and is in substantial danger because of antivaxers.

I struggle to understand the agenda of those who put out propaganda against vaccination. The scientific evidence is overwhelming from almost 200 years of its existence. Yet, people who resist this are often well-educated and intelligent, but they plain refuse to accept the science. go figure...

[Manfred M]

I struggle to understand the agenda of those who put out propaganda against vaccination. The scientific evidence is overwhelming from almost 200 years of its existence. Yet, people who resist this are often well-educated and intelligent, but they plain refuse to accept the science. go figure...

I suspect it is because the science does not match their expectations, so they assume that the science is wrong (and not their expectations / views).

Someone once told me that as a child, the best medical advice was that eggs were nutritional and should be part of a healthy diet. When he was older, he was told that eggs were bad for you and should be avoided. Some decades later, it was found that the studies that linked the cholesterol in eggs to unhealthy cholesterol levels in humans was wrong and eggs were again cleared as an healthy food (in moderation, of course). His conclusion is that science is wrong because the advice that comes out of it can change over time.

Anyone who understands science will understand that advice will change over time as more data comes in and is analyzed. Science does get things wrong at times but in general as the body of knowledge improves, we continue to get better advice.

The anti-vaxers, especially the strident ones, put up persuasive arguments, just like most "cults". Unfortunately, people can be won over by these arguments that are NOT backed by any real data.

[DanK]

I struggle to understand the agenda of those who put out propaganda against vaccination. The scientific evidence is overwhelming from almost 200 years of its existence. Yet, people who resist this are often well-educated and intelligent, but they plain refuse to accept the science. go figure...

It will be interesting to see whether COVID-19 beats some sense into them.

I testified a few months ago in support of a bill that would clamp down on vaccine exemption. The room was packed with antivaxers. One wore a t-shirt that said "I don't have polio. Do you?" I almost couldn't force myself to go by without chewing her out. W\I wanted to say was that no, I don't, but one member of my family was partially crippled by it, and another--a child--was killed by it, and the reason she doesn't know of similar cases now is because of the vaccine.

[Manfred M]

It will be interesting to see whether COVID-19 beats some sense into them.

You are an optimist...

[DanK]

You are an optimist...

I'm grasping at straws

[Jim A]

Of course, as you are now back in New Zealand, Trev, our experiences have something in common. Hope you are settling back well! My wife and I practice some Iyengar Yoga each day. It is less than our two days at our Leisure Centre, but over a week, quite a bit more. When the weather permits we have a walk, so today we walked into our local "village", Birkenhead. It is a suburb, but still (less and less) has a village feel. We are extremely fortunate in having an excellent supermarket, just across the road, though, the queues are amazingly long. Each person stays the requisite distance apart, or more. There is a huge carpark, but the queue stretches and snakes through it and even to the road behind. Still, I am amazed and gratified that seemingly everyone is taking this seriously. Dan, recounted our experience perfectly about walking along and us or others making way, so that we keep distance, however still smiling and/or acknowledging the other.

[ST1]

Peter, the reel was made by a physician in Maine, Dr. Paul Hermann. It has the S shaped handle and counterbalance like the Cascapedia. The rod is a split cane made by Chris Raine of Utah. Bamboo rod making had become a cottage industry in the US. The rod casts and fishes beautifully.

Thanks for the update Paul, my Son was impressed when I showed him your image. It was his suggestion regarding the Hardy reel (his current equipment is all Hardy kit) he is still into fly fishing and fly tying interspersed with mountain biking. He only inherited the fly fishing/tying from me, though he has attempted to get me out on mountain biking trips


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[davidedric]

Re: anti vaxers and the like.

It has been demonstrated that the more facts you relay to someone who holds to an irrational opinion, the more strongly they will hold to their opinion.

As they say, "science is true whether you believe it or not". Of course, as a trained scientist I know it only represents the current best knowedge, and that in turn allows the irrational to accuse one of inconsistency, At least they are not yet advocating a return to human sacrifice to appease the gods.

[LePetomane]

It has been demonstrated that the more facts you relay to someone who holds to an irrational opinion, the more strongly they will hold to their opinion.

Well stated. These anti-vaxers are true believers. Hypochondriacs are just as bad. They believe that they are legitimately sick and concoct symptoms. The problem is when they do get sick, no one believes them.

Peter, I don't have any Hardy rods. They are hard to find here in the US. I do have Hardy Perfect and Angel reels that were made in England before they took the production of a lot of their gear to South Korea.

[Manfred M]

At least they are not yet advocating a return to human sacrifice to appease the gods.

At least not yet...

Some of the opinion sources that I have seen from the USA seem to be hinting at something along those lines. When they suggest that having people (i.e.the old and infirm) get sick and die may be preferable to having the economy tank further looks like the modern equivalent of your comment.

[rpcrowe]

Taking COVID-19 seriously... In order to take this disease seriously, you must have heard about the disease. Everyone in the world knows something about COVID-19, right? WRONG! Well those that have not heard about COVID-19 must be living n remote areas with little or no information from the outer world, right? WRONG....

A New York Times investigative reporter has interviewed residents of a low-income, high rise, residential structure in New York City, and was astonished and flabbergasted to learn that a significant portion of those people interviewed had never even heard of the COVID-19 (or any other name for the virus) outbreak; much less know anything about such esoteric terms as social distancing It appears difficult to believe that anyone in America's largest city which is the epicenter of the disease outbreak could be ignorant that a disease is rampant within that city

In reply to Manfred's last comment... I seriously doubt whether the values of the Republican block of politicians and avid Tronald Dump supporters are very far removed from those who, in the past, thought that human sacrifice was a viable way to appease their god - only now, their present god is money.

[DanK]

At least not yet...

Some of the opinion sources that I have seen from the USA seem to be hinting at something along those lines. When they suggest that having people (i.e.the old and infirm) get sick and die may be preferable to having the economy tank further looks like the modern equivalent of your comment.

Not just opinion sources. One of the people making this argument is the Lieutenant Governor of Texas.

[LenR]

"Some of the opinion sources that I have seen from the USA seem to be hinting at something along those lines. When they suggest that having people (i.e.the old and infirm) get sick and die may be preferable to having the economy tank further looks like the modern equivalent of your comment."

With regards to the captioned comments it may be of interest to contributors to this thread that this is already happening in Italy. I have family in the Emilia Romagna region. Given that the medical facilities have been overwhelmed it seems that only patients who are deemed to have a good chance of recovery are being admitted for treatment.
The elderly with pre existing health issues who have little chance of recovery unfortunately are not.

[DanK]

What is being suggested in the US is very different. What you describe is triaging, and we will likely have it here very soon because he-who-should-not-be-named waited more than two months to start the process of getting more ventilators. Physicians will have to decide who gets ventilators and who doesn't when they run out, which could happen as early as this coming week in New York. Faced with saving either me or one of my kids in their 30s, the rational choice, unfortunately for me, would be to let me die. Likewise, if they have both me (no relevant pre-existing conditions, no risk factors other than age) and a person of the same age with severe pulmonary deficiencies, they may let the other person die because the odds of saving him or her with the scarce ventilator are low. When resources are insufficient, this is inevitable. It's the sort of choice that doctors and medics in many situations (e.g., in wartime, in very poor countries) face frequently. What makes this so infuriating is that we could easily have reduced triaging dramatically by taking simple measures that our narcissist-in-chief refused to take until far too late--like starting to increase production of protective gear, testing materials, and ventilators, and warning the population that they need to take this seriously rather than calling it a hoax (yes, he did that) and telling people early on that the 15 identified cases would rapidly go to zero (and yes, he did that too).

What the Lt. Governor and others are suggesting is very different from triaging: that younger people should go to work and ignore social distancing in order to keep the economy going, even though that would end up killing a very large number of older (and not just very old) people. Trump is suggesting much the same thing with his proposed Easter opening, albeit without specifically admitting that the cost would be to kill a lot of people.