COVID-19 daily news round up

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Published 03/18/2020 | Reading Time 3 min 36 sec

By Sarah Peterson

Repeating the words of Dr. Anthony Fauci because he is a hero and this message is important: “If it looks like you’re overreacting, you’re probably doing the right thing.” Keep it up! You are doing great!

Here is a link to the folder containing all daily updates. Please feel free to forward this to anyone, and let me know if you have any suggestions or would like to add others to the distribution list.

Things to give you hope:

Italy’s number of cases has stabilized for a fourth day in a row (Johns Hopkins).
Not science but still important: Department of Housing and Urban Development has committed to suspending foreclosures and evictions until at least the end of April (Bloomberg).
Social distancing works! Keep it up! See the graphic below for additional motivation.

Educators and educational companies everywhere are sharing resources and removing paywalls so that parents can have access. If you would like a list of what is available I’m happy to share what I’ve seen.

Things to be aware of:

New studies of COVID-19 show that the virus can live in the air for up to three hours and on surfaces for up to 3 days. The more porous the surface, the shorter the virus lives, so things like cardboard and cotton will see a shorter survival period than steel and plastic (NIH).
Data from France continue to show a large number of young people getting infected with COVID-19 and requiring hospitalization. Many of the young people hospitalized have not had co-morbidities (NYPost).
Smoking or vaping may increase your chances of having severe infection (Scientific American).
WHO has officially recommended avoiding NSAIDs (ex. Ibuprofen) for fever control. I avoided adding this yesterday since the study is small and their are mixed reviews on it, but since the WHO has made a stand I wanted to include it (ScienceAlert).
Medical facilities continue to run low on Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). In order to fight this pandemic we will need fully staffed hospitals, and in order to have fully staffed hospitals we need PPE to keep our healthcare workers safe (Bloomerg).

Data of the day:

Here is a graph that provides the various trajectories depending on the level of isolation that our country embraces (Imperial College).

Below is a graph of the current number of cases and projections in the United States. It is important here to remember that we will definitely see a spike of cases as testing becomes more widely available. That is a good thing, because the more confirmed cases that we know about, the more we can have people isolate. This pandemic gets better if we have information and people isolate. This pandemic gets worse if people try to “push through” and continue going to the gym and the office when infected (Tableau).