Sunday, March 15, 2020

Coronavirus and Surfside

Be cautious and use common sense....updated

Update:
Go to the web site below for the current information from the CDC on the Coronavirus
https://www.cdc.gov/

At this time, there are no known cases of the virus in our area.

Some facts about our area (Surfside)...

Most of our full time residents are senior citizens and many have health issues.
There are no advanced medical facilities in our area.
There are no hand sanitizers  or face masks available.
As of yesterday, there was a supply of antibacterial soap and bleach available.
There is no apparent run on food supplies.

Threats: 

Part time residents and visitors from outside our area, remain a threat to our community.
If you are one of the above, please don't come if your not feeling well and do not attend committee or Board Meetings.   Avoid going to the Business Office.

Surfside has a limited number of employees and it is important that we do not expose them to unnecessary exposure.

Avoid social events, committee meetings and Board Meetings.  The best prevention we have right now, is to wash your hands and avoid situations with groups of people.

Note:
This is a rapidly changing situation, and we need to follow the advice and directives of our local health officials.  I hope this information is useful to our out of the area members.  Stay safe everyone and use your common sense.


20 comments:

George Miller said...

My son sent me this information yesterday, Friday, from Vancouver in Clark County,.

This corona virus is starting to get kinda scary! At WinCo and Fred Myers there is a limit of 3 that you can buy in cleaning supplies. Quite a few empty spots on the shelves... Almost all the bottled water is gone too! Really scary for older people and people with health issues, I've seen quite a few people wearing masks. My scanner was going crazy this morning taking sick people to the hospitals, mainly from senior care facilities... They even ran out of ambulances for a while, and I think they keep about 10 in the county.

Steve Cox said...

Any such spread of an illness is scary, but it seems the severity in China brought about a slow building fear through the constant coverage on news. Had Trump never been elected we would have been well prepared for this pandemic, as previous scares with Ebola, SARS, and the usual Flu strains had resulted in organizations being put in place for quick response to such illnesses. Trump eliminated these organizations, as well as many research grants, to save money for his wall

It was known in November that this was a serious outbreak, but nothing was done to try and prepare. A test was developed but not tested for effective results until the disease popped-up in the U.S.. Trump had announced that his administration would deal with it by preventing it from reaching our shores, and isolating those who contract the disease.

You may have seen him yesterday on the news telling a group of Doctors at the CDC that he had a talent for understanding these things, and knew that there was little need for concern. There are no tests to determine who is infectious in a timely way, with only hundreds of test kits available. South Korea has tested tens of thousands of their citizens.

The outbreak in Washington could have been contained somewhat had there been adequate tests to determine who of the exposed folks was contagious. Some can carry the illness and not realize they have it. The responses by different people vary greatly. The idiocy of this administration will be very apparent as there still isn't any means of stopping the spread without widespread testing being done.

A vaccine will take at least 18 months they say.

Dan Crooks said...

We do not need the political overtones here...this is not a political issue...

The FDA handles these types of problems and they are certainly not shutdown...

It's impossible for anyone or any department to stop a virus when you don't know what it is or how it spreads, I don't care who you are, so let's focus on prevention and awareness and stop pointing fingers and keep your political rants to yourself.

Larry Amundson said...

We can always " pray " that the virus doesn't spread to the and of god's chosen people.

JoAnne said...
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Steve Cox said...

The point that needs to be acknowledged is that the spread of this disease in our state could have been minimized had the current administration not stripped the funding and dismantled gov. departments put in place specifically to handle speedy response to pandemics such as this.

The lack of vision and understanding of the current president is entirely to blame for there not being thousands of test kits that could have been used to test family members and contacts of those infected. Most of the people who have died were all residents at a nursing home and were not frequently out in public. As it is, careworkers at the Care facility have not been tested, nor have the family members of the deceased.

Trump stated that he thought that one day it would just magically disappear. That is nearly an exact quote. It's important that people understand that this man is incapable of governing or rational decisions, and he has put the country in much greater jeopardy than would be the case, had all of the systems in place been preserved and funded.

Because we have so many health related research facilities in the Seattle area, labs here can manufacture the tests given Federal Gov. permission, but even that has not yet occurred, in spite of Trump's claims otherwise. So far, the Feds have sent a couple hundred thousand sets of protective clothing for careworkers.

We see now how far reaching the impact of this outbreak, with events being cancelled, businesses shutting down, and general fear, and only a few hundred verified cases known in the country. Most of this is due to the inability for those known to have been exposed, tested.

This would not have been a political issue, had all of the safeguards put in place in the last decade, been left in place to do what they were intended to do.

Dan Crooks said...

That is total crap sir...there is no way you can verify if anything you just said is true or not. Stop and desist with your false accusations. What you are posting is complete BS.

JoAnne said...
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Reality Check said...

Fear mongering? Really? Interesting comment there.

Speaking as someone who works at a major hospital in Seattle, my co-workers and I sure don't see it that way. Please give an example where one facility had around 10% of their patients die within a week from the same illness. Or when a country like Italy, who had more than 160 people die in one day, was forced to put their entire country in quarantine. Fear mongering, please. Easy to be so dismissive when you live away from what's going on.The news would be derelict in their duty if they didn't report as they are doing now. 

Also, cuts were made to the CDC in Trumps recent budget. In fact the head of the CDC was just asked about it yesterday and he admitted that those cuts did have an adverse effect. So your Obama remark has nothing to do with the present.

If you are going to admonish someone for being political, maybe you shouldn't do so by repeating Fox news talking points.

George Miller said...

At this point, it does no good to blame anyone. We are where we are and it is now up to you to take precautions. The government or anyone else, can't protect you from yourself. Start with common sense. Some thing that seems in short supply here in Surfside.

Dan Crooks said...

16,000 people have died from the flu virus and 280,000 people have been hospitalized during the 2019-2020 flu season. Now THAT's a pandemic...

I guarantee the CDC and Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) will get all the money they request.





Reality Check said...

Not sure if you are trolling or not Mr. Crooks but either way this will be my last time on here with this subject. You want to talk numbers, let's do.

First off you really can't compare those numbers you gave accurately to covid-19 since it hasn't been a year yet. But the key point about covid-19 is the one you left out and the one that the true experts are worried about, the mortality rate, which is much higher than the normal flu.

In China where it has been going on the longest it is at around 3.5%. They have been more proactive than we have. In Italy it's up to 5% and still climbing. Because of this it is creating major issues there with hospital resources to the point where they are running low on available equipment like respirators which most people know is a very important machine to have..

To put this in perspective and to use your flu virus statement, remember some years back when the swine flu was happening? It actually spread faster than covid-19 but thankfully had the lower mortality rate that is common with the flu. If instead of that the rate was like covid you know how many people would have died in this country in a year? Around 2 MILLION. Let that sink in sir. 

Again, that is why the experts are worried. But what do they know, right? They've only dedicated their lives to working in the field and dealing with actual facts. If you truly think that they are just being alarmists and that what's happening elsewhere in the world can't happen here then I'm sorry, you are living in fantasy land.   

Dan Crooks said...

A parting comment since you didn't use your name...

The problem with your argument is that very few people have been tested for COVID-19 and that artificially inflates the numbers you are quoting.

Again, let's focus on how to fix it and stop pointing fingers...we all have a part to play...

Steve Cox said...

In spite of statements by the president, as of yesterday, only about 7000 people had been tested nationwide. The tests are NOT available on request as has been stated, and it takes a few days to get results. It is estimated that it will still be a matter of weeks before tests will be available in large numbers.

Mr.Crooks might acknowledge that there are experts and there are posers, and Mr. Crooks is obviously not an expert. This really isn't something to argue about with facts available, and Marilyn Raymer's well informed advisory. This is a new virus that has not been seen before, and we are all in the process of learning the facts as more is gradually revealed.

Dan Crooks said...

Mr Cox calling me a poser? Now that is really amusing.

With all the news outlets using fear tactic headlines to grab viewers there is no way to discern fact from fiction. Everything at this point is pure conjecture since they cannot and will not test everybody, so nobody knows how many are infected or carriers.

Follow the CDC guidelines and pray we can survive this pandemic.

Steve Cox said...

That statement is baloney. The number of known cases is a matter of record, and the numbers of those who have been tested is data to be had as well. MSNBC has experts on their shows periodically, talking common sense, and the hosts are not sensationalizing anything.

If you need a spin on it, or want to hear a bunch of crazy accusations about the pandemic, watch FOX news.

The country should have been better prepared for testing, and would have been, had the system put in place by the Obama admin. been left in place and funding continued. Trump ended the funding and dissolved the dept. He then claimed he had nothing to do with it. Then claimed that the virus would magically disappear. It has taken weeks for him to start addressing the reality of the situation.

It's important to acknowledge this fact when election time comes.

Dan Crooks said...

That explains everything...#SMH

Dan Crooks said...

But the president has proposed cuts to the CDC in past budgets that Congress did not enact. It’s misleading at best to claim Trump “slashed funding,” when his proposals haven’t taken effect. For instance, Trump’s fiscal 2020 budget proposal would have reduced CDC funding by $750.6 million, compared with what was enacted for fiscal 2019 (see the “program level” line in the linked document). But Congress passed, and Trump signed, a budget that increased CDC funding by $420 million.

This is what I mean when I say Who ya gonna believe...

Steve Cox said...

The fact that Congress has not made the massive cuts that Trump has asked for does not in any way indicate that he grasps what is going on here. He continues to work counter to expert advice.

You are trying to make excuses for these obvious mis-steps that have helped create this chaos. Had effective testing been available, our state could have slowed the outbreak in Kirkland. Careworkers who worked at the care Center where this started, had carried the virus outside the facility, many working in other similar elderly Care Centers. Once detected, they all should have been tested. Much of this can also be credited to lax methods at the care Centers.

But lack of effective testing STILL is an aggravating factor. The Whitehouse had been warned by various sources of the oncoming pandemic, and refused efforts by legislators to fund stepped-up preparations. 2 days ago Trump said the hospitals didn't need so many ventilators. He has finally enacted the War Powers efforts to produce the ventilators. Florida still has no restrictions on citizen movements.

The point is really, that he has allowed the structural aspects that have been put in place to make our government function well, become ineffective through funding cuts, and leadership voids. He has no staff of advisors, and shuns expert advice. That may have been okay running his own business, but it is proving to be a recipe for disaster in this national emergency.

He failed miserably in Puerto Rico after the first hurricanes, and a huge amount of money that was pledged to a re-building effort was never provided to Puerto Rico. (Since then, another hurricane has hit the island) That country is still a shambles, a territory of the United States. He has filed for bankruptcy multiple times as a business man, but there is no such escape as the president of the U.S..

Dan Crooks said...

I am done with you and your constant attempts to make this POTUS fault. Your attempts to place blame are seriously misguided and total BS.