Community Chat

[ms traditional]

huh? the military in So Korea can handle this on site. unless they ask for help. 

[patbz]

Per today's NYT: Col. Edward Ballanco, the Army garrison commander for the affected area, said the military was not yet evacuating anyone from the base and that it was running a grocery delivery services for those quarantined. Restaurants remained open, but only for takeout.

[SilleeMee]

I think the military will be a vector in the spread of the virus. As it stands now there no 100% effective detection or containment of the virus which means there is always that chance of spreading the virus unknowingly.

[pitdakota]

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@Snowpuppy wrote:

Base hospital/infirmary/staff will be ill equipped for a serious outbreak considering patients will need both isolation and critical care.

If you move military and/or civillian contractors to community hospitals off base, then two questions arise.

Who do community hospitals treat first? Their own citizens or US soldiers? And the bigger question...who pays the bill? 

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Although I don't know specific contingency plans, having a cousin that served in command at the Joint Command base in South Korea I do know there are contingency plans for mass casualties with multiple mobile units.  The bases in South Korea operate knowing that at any time North Korea could launch a military initiative with either conventional or biological methods that would jeopardize all US military individuals & their dependents in South Korea.

Mobile ICU units can be set up quickly as they have done in both Iraq and Afghanistan.  So they should have the plans to handle a fairly good size outbreak for both treatment and quarantine areas.  

Of course, monies may need to be appropriated for planning and implementing those plans, but that is another story. 

It will certainly be interesting to see how the situation does develop.  

[Allegheny]

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@patbz wrote:

I fear that we are woefully unprepared for what is coming; we'd better gear up!  Having "the best scientists" is akin to sticking our collective heads in the ground!

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I am not one to normally get alarmed, but I sadly agree with you.

[reiki604]

Given that the agency created to deal with pandemics and health crisis durilng the Ebola crisis was defunded and disbanded, The USA is woefully unprepared to deal with the covid-19. The HHS secretary admitted to Congress that we don't even have enough supplies (respirators, etc)  stockpiled to deal with it.

[Porcelain]

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@reiki604 wrote:

Given that the agency created to deal with pandemics and health crisis durilng the Ebola crisis was defunded and disbanded, The USA is woefully unprepared to deal with the covid-19. The HHS secretary admitted to Congress that we don't even have enough supplies stockpiled to deal with it.

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SARS and H1N1 gave us plenty of warning. But the money was voluntarily spent elsewhere. When you have people who are not experts and don't listen to experts making these decisions in crucial departments, you get a certian lack of seriousness in the results. Everyone knew this would happen. Some just hoped calamity would only befall their "enemies." But acts of God and Nature don't happen that way.

My hope is that this all passes us by unscathed and in a few years we'll look at our masks and whatnot the same way we look at our cardboard eclipse glasses from a few years ago.

[SilleeMee]

The timing of this 'pandemic' couldn't come at a more worse time. Seems the focus is on other more 'important' events. That takes away the seriousness of it, I think.

[pitdakota]

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@reiki604 wrote:

Given that the agency created to deal with pandemics and health crisis durilng the Ebola crisis was defunded and disbanded, The USA is woefully unprepared to deal with the covid-19. The HHS secretary admitted to Congress that we don't even have enough supplies (respirators, etc)  stockpiled to deal with it.

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@reiki604, yes budget cuts to the CDC and the elimination of the position of senior director for global health in that agency does, I think,  present probably the greatest challenge for managing outbreaks here in the US.

[pitdakota]

I know there are several here that are interested in the scientific  aspect of COVID-19 so I will post a link to an article published recently in the journal Microbes and Infection.  

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1286457920300265 

For those that don't like to click on links, the reference for the article:

Chen, J.  (2020).  Pathogenicity and transmissibility of 2019 -nCoV - A quick overview and comparison with other emerging viruses. Microbes and Infection, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.micinf.2020.01.004.

For those really interested in epidemiological information, it is a good article.  Although as happens many times with emerging disease, the numbers of cases have increased since the data for this article was compiled so some of the information will be different as of today.  But still some interesting information for those that like this type of stuff.