Possible case comes to home

[Jollygoodfellow]

There is now a possible covid-19 case in the other tower where I live. Or they said the other tower but who knows. Might go over there and see if their notices say the opposite to keep people calm.

[peterfe]

12 hours ago, Jollygoodfellow said:

There is now a possible covid-19 case in the other tower where I live. Or they said the other tower but who knows. Might go over there and see if their notices say the opposite to keep people calm.

Let's hope it's a false alarm. After weeks of no cases in this area, we now also have a possible case. We had a false alarm one before, but this one seems a bit more likely, as the man is a policeman who's been working in Consolacion, where there are a number of cases, and his wife is apparently feeling ill. They have of course both been isolated, but the worrying thing for people here is that the wife had a shop where the locals regularly bought things. My niece (15) who stays with us bought vegetables there very recently, and is worried. There's so much we don't know about this virus - obviously if the woman sneezed onto the vegetables just before handing them over (somewhat unlikely!), we would have cause for concern, but what are the chances of getting the virus if someone who's infected sells you vegetables - once? or several times? We really have no idea at all, do we? 

As other members of our extended family have no doubt bought things from that shop, what do we do if they come to visit us? Let them come? Put up a sign saying "No visitors"? It really depends on the chances of someone getting Covid-19 from buying something in a shop from someone who "may have" the virus...   

[Old55]

Peter I think some of it depends on your age and health. In life there are no guarantees we should live each day as it's our last and enjoy.

 

[Tommy T.]

1 hour ago, peterfe said:

As other members of our extended family have no doubt bought things from that shop, what do we do if they come to visit us? Let them come? Put up a sign saying "No visitors"? It really depends on the chances of someone getting Covid-19 from buying something in a shop from someone who "may have" the virus...   

I hear you, Peter.

L, my partner, is a high school teacher. One of her past services to her school was as a coordinator with the Red Cross. She was also Clinic in charge at the school. So she has some experience in health care, but is not professionally trained.

Anyway, my point is that she became truly paranoid about the virus and remains so, but to a lesser degree than at first. We have a working student who regularly goes out on errands for us and, of course, we both go out too for our endless hardware store shopping.

Whenever anyone goes out, we treat everything as contaminated, including the ground and road. Someone washes any veggies or wipes down any packaging we pick up outside. After foraging or attending meetings, or anything, the first thing she does when home is remove her shoes outside, then go inside and wash hands up to the elbows. Then she removes her mask. She goes upstairs, peels off all clothing and showers. Then the clothes go into the machine. All of the four of us follow the same regimen.

It may appear or sound a bit extreme, but I am a senior, she and her daughter have allergy and asthma issues at times and they are also on the cusp of diabetes...just.

Any money goes into a small bucket to sit for a while and we wash hands after handling any. We wipe cell phones with alcohol after we have been outside.

We do not permit visitors inside the place or closer than 2 meters or more from the door - this includes family and close friends. She even keeps the doors and windows closed whenever there is activity outside by passers by or workers.

While a tad inconvenient, the systems work okay for us and we have become accustomed to most of them. However I do cheat and remove my mask when nobody is nearby - 3 meters or more - she keeps hers on and gives me a bit of stink-eye then but it works out.

1 hour ago, Old55 said:

Peter I think some of it depends on your age and health. In life there are no guarantees we should live each day as it's our last and enjoy.

 

Great advice, Old!

[peterfe]

1 hour ago, Tommy T. said:

L, my partner, is a high school teacher. One of her past services to her school was as a coordinator with the Red Cross. She was also Clinic in charge at the school. So she has some experience in health care, but is not professionally trained.

Anyway, my point is that she became truly paranoid about the virus and remains so, but to a lesser degree than at first. We have a working student who regularly goes out on errands for us and, of course, we both go out too for our endless hardware store shopping.

Whenever anyone goes out, we treat everything as contaminated, including the ground and road. Someone washes any veggies or wipes down any packaging we pick up outside. After foraging or attending meetings, or anything, the first thing she does when home is remove her shoes outside, then go inside and wash hands up to the elbows. Then she removes her mask. She goes upstairs, peels off all clothing and showers. Then the clothes go into the machine. All of the four of us follow the same regimen.

Maybe you have more cases in Davao, but my partner, S, is quite relaxed about Covid-19 so far. We do wash our hands and rub them with alcohol regularly if we go out, but we're obviously less worried than 'L'. I'm a bit oldish, but in good health like the others in the house, so that obviously makes a difference. Well, it will be interesting to see if S or others around here get more paranoid if it turns out that the woman in the shop has Covid-19.

Apparently the husband took some swab tests: one was positive and 2-3 negative. I tried to find out on the Internet the chances of getting a false positive, but like everything else about Covid-19, it's all a bit vague and uncertain, so many factors involved... 

[manofthecoldland]

2 hours ago, peterfe said:

Maybe you have more cases in Davao, but my partner, S, is quite relaxed about Covid-19 so far. We do wash our hands and rub them with alcohol regularly if we go out, but we're obviously less worried than 'L'. I'm a bit oldish, but in good health like the others in the house, so that obviously makes a difference. Well, it will be interesting to see if S or others around here get more paranoid if it turns out that the woman in the shop has Covid-19.

Apparently the husband took some swab tests: one was positive and 2-3 negative. I tried to find out on the Internet the chances of getting a false positive, but like everything else about Covid-19, it's all a bit vague and uncertain, so many factors involved... 

Several years ago while reading a science volume ( I don't recall the title, but I habitually read items in the 'new books' section from my local US library while there during the N. hemisphere's summer months), I came across a chapter or section re the science of 'false positives'.

What I took away from that in the end was...... if you get a 'positive' that indicates bad news...... retest again and again to be certain.... because of the mathematics involved.

This is the first search article I found on it now, but there are many others, better written I am sure.

https://www.mathsisfun.com/data/probability-false-negatives-positives.html

[GeoffH]

53 minutes ago, manofthecoldland said:

This is the first search article I found on it now, but there are many others, better written I am sure.

https://www.mathsisfun.com/data/probability-false-negatives-positives.html

That's a lot clearer than the same subject covered way back when I was at university and taking statistics as an optional class (makes it seem simple).

[JJReyes]

16 hours ago, Tommy T. said:

I hear you, Peter.

L, my partner, is a high school teacher. One of her past services to her school was as a coordinator with the Red Cross. She was also Clinic in charge at the school. So she has some experience in health care, but is not professionally trained.

Anyway, my point is that she became truly paranoid about the virus and remains so, but to a lesser degree than at first. We have a working student who regularly goes out on errands for us and, of course, we both go out too for our endless hardware store shopping.

Whenever anyone goes out, we treat everything as contaminated, including the ground and road. Someone washes any veggies or wipes down any packaging we pick up outside. After foraging or attending meetings, or anything, the first thing she does when home is remove her shoes outside, then go inside and wash hands up to the elbows. Then she removes her mask. She goes upstairs, peels off all clothing and showers. Then the clothes go into the machine. All of the four of us follow the same regimen.

It may appear or sound a bit extreme, but I am a senior, she and her daughter have allergy and asthma issues at times and they are also on the cusp of diabetes...just.

Any money goes into a small bucket to sit for a while and we wash hands after handling any. We wipe cell phones with alcohol after we have been outside.

We do not permit visitors inside the place or closer than 2 meters or more from the door - this includes family and close friends. She even keeps the doors and windows closed whenever there is activity outside by passers by or workers.

While a tad inconvenient, the systems work okay for us and we have become accustomed to most of them. However I do cheat and remove my mask when nobody is nearby - 3 meters or more - she keeps hers on and gives me a bit of stink-eye then but it works out.

Great advice, Old!

We are following a similar, strict procedure. Most of our purchases are done online and the goods delivered to your home usually within 2 to 3 days.  No one wants to accept currency because supposedly it is full of germs. You need a credit card when shopping.  No currency accepted even as birthday gifts so we send eGift money usually for purchases through Amazon. After login, it only requires 3 clicks and 5 minutes before the birthday recipient acknowledges receipt.  

 

[peterfe]

Getting back to the possible case in my barangay... Millions have no doubt been spent on research to find out how Covid-19 is transmitted, and still we know very little, it seems. Instead of doing simulations in laboratories, why don't they do more down-to-earth research involving real people in real life? Why, I can do some research here (just pay me $100 an hour ). If it turns out that the woman who has the shop has the virus, then we could find out who has been going to her shop, how often, how many people in total, etc. Then we wait a few weeks and see if anyone else catches it. There have been no cases in the barangay before, so probably any transmission would come from that woman. If, say, 10 out of the 80 people who went to the shop get the virus, we would know (a) it's very risky buying something in a shop from someone who's infected - without a mask, that is - almost nobody wore masks in this barangay before this incident, and (b) the hypothesis that Covid-19 isn't (easily) transmitted in high temperatures will be laid to rest, as there's no AC there and the temperature is around 30 all the time. 

On the other hand, if nobody else catches it after a few weeks (you'd have to wait a bit because there might be e.g. asymptomatic children who'd bought sweets there who'd then pass it on to their grandparents), this suggests that even without a mask (in a high temperature), people are unlikely to catch Covid-19 from an infected shop person. Of course, more similar research would be needed, but I honestly think this would be the most useful kind of research to do.