Covid-19 Central

So there’s a Corona outbreak in Northern Italy with Milano being the centre of it. Many villages around Milan are on lockdown, schools and unis closed. My brother’s new girlfriend happens to be a doctor (internal medicine) working in Milano. She got sent home for the week because they don’t have the right special protective clothing for residents (young docs)- apparently no case of Corona among her patients, friends, relatives yet. She and my brother have been travelling back and forth To the affected area. So since she’s off for the week (because of Corona) my brother has the magnificent idea of visiting us (haven’t met the new lady and all of that). After initial excitement we thought twice about and decided that we actually don’t want to take that risk for now (especially for the kids)- so I told him we had to postpone the visit. They seem to be thinking we are borderline paranoid, but then, incubation time is 2 weeks, right, and we have a baby as well. How would you go about such a situation? „Better safe than sorry“ or „the chance of infection is slim so let’s move on with life“? Have you been personally affected by Corona or any other outbreak of disease?

 

Better safe than sorry. Strange that they don't see it that way, especially knowing you have an infant in the mix.

 

Thanks for your reply. They respect it-but they don’t have kids themselves so I guess they don’t understand that responsibility yet.

 

Hurting their feelings or risking being down for 6 weeks and possible death of a child. Hmmm.

Let me hurt them feelings real good. To me "moving on with life" always includes risk management.

Here we haven't been affected much, but they talk about the diesease as if it has too many unknown factors to prevent it from impacting us.

 

I don't understand how some people can have that disconnect. Not saying that your brother & his GF are, but it comes off as a bit hardcore self centered.
.

 

Why take a risk ?
We are not sure how the virus is spreading. They are still looking for the source of the virus in Italy.
Now it has sread to Canary islands, Algeria, Croatia etc
People must understand and do oour best to limit its spreading.

 

First case in one state of Switzerland, Ticino, bordering with Italy. That’s 1 hour from where I live. Either way, it’s probable there’ll be more cases in Switzerland but there are no travel restrictions yet. I’d have locked that Southern border by now, but they are playing it cool there.

 

They are not bad. I think they just don’t see the situation as personally threatening to them so it didn’t occur to them that I might not even want to take the slightest risk. Sometimes you have to take an unpopular decision.

 

It’s becoming difficult to control. They don’t even know the source of the Italy outbreak now. Sooner or later it might get to the US as well.

 

Scary indeed.

 

True indeed. You had to be careful.

 

You did the right thing. What makes this virus so transmittable is the fact that someone can be asymptomatic for two weeks or so before they actually get sick. The whole time they're contagious. This will get worse before it gets better. Everything I'm reading says it's not a matter of if it will spread in the States, it's when.

 

I believe so. However I think your President is the kind of person who would come up with Draconian measures, so that might be useful for once! Have they started extra checks at airports for people flying in from affected areas?

 

"Hey we live right near the Corona outbreak in Italy but have no symptoms. I know! Let's come to Switzerland and cough all over your newborn child!"

Just wow

 

Ok, thanks everyone for confirming that I’m not just paranoid!

 

No, you are being prudent. Good for you.

 

I get this is scary but I wonder if it's as bad as people are panicking about. From what I'm reading the only people at risk are the really young and the really old like the flu.
Is it because we don't have a vaccine or no well studied cases to see where we will be long term?
This is gonna wreck the economy if everything has to be on hold till further notice.

 

I agree it’s a fine line to tread between panic and precaution. However, the mortality rate is significantly higher than that of the flu(1/1000), CoVid (1-2/100). I think it also plays a big role that it hasn’t been researched much.

 

We just got our first case of a person contracting it that hasn't been out of the country. (California) They have no idea how it was contracted.

Also the flu usually only has people down for only a week or two. This stuff knocks people down up to six weeks, that's a long time to be sick. I'm going to get me some masks this weekend just in case they become low on stock in the near future. Hopefully they have latex or at least plastic.

This can become a nightmare if it hits the universities.

As I understand it, the Coronavirus is a family of viruses that they knew about( it's stated on products that kill germs). I wonder why they don't know enough about this particular one. To classify it as a family should mean it has enough in common with other viruses that they could have been studying I would think. But I don't have much background in biology.

 

Oh wow this is scary. I bet that person in Cali easily caught it from someone who was asymptomatic.