Capitol Hill Blue Forums Science and Technology Health, Medicine & the healing Sciences Coronavirus: The Plague of The 21st Century?

Years ago when zinc became famous for reducing the duration and effects of the common cold I did my own experiments and noticed not one iota of difference. I was and am a meat eater and so likely got sufficient zinc from my diet to do all the things that zinc is supposed to do when your body is attacked by a virus.

I think it's safe for any medical practitioner to assume that if there are shortages going into a viral attack then remedying them pronto is a good idea. Zinc, vitamin D and a bunch of other nutrients are needed to fight off sickness. The worse your diet...the worse the illness will be.

And old folks often have very poor diets. That may be why a simple cold can put them in the grave. Interesting thing: Back in the height of the industrial revolution, when many inner-city kids were getting rickets for lack of sunshine, doctors found they did not die from broken bones. They died from pneumonia.

There is a strong correlation between good diet and health. That connection may include getting enough zinc and getting enough quercetin from vegetables for the zinc to get into your cells.

New data out shows that kids have a lot more virus than adults in their upper respiratory tract, even if asymptomatic. That means they are all potential superspreaders. Unless a school district adapts cheap saliva-strip testing every day for everybody, I predict a massive failure. Kids will all get infected, as well as teachers, administrators, custodian, cafeteria workers, etc. They will run out of staff, and substitutes are going to stay away because of little benefit for great risk. And those mostly asymptomatic kids will take the virus home to infect parents and grandparents. If they follow post-exposure isolation rules, kids (and their parents) will actually spend more time in isolation than in school. Because every exposure requires 14 days of isolation. Then the kid goes back to school and gets exposed again after a few days. Rinse and repeat...

Summer Camp Outbreak

They followed a bunch of rules, like everybody there had a negative Covid test within 12 days before attending. But all it takes is one teen who does not remain isolated, or even catches it from an essential worker parent, within those 12 days and you have a massive outbreak.

260 staffers and kids positive! This is epidemic 101. With a large group you can not create a safe bubble. You have to still follow all the isolation rules or it spreads throughout the group. I'm afraid most schools are going to have the same experience.

82 kids got Covid at Jesus Camp this summer.

The mistake they are making is they assume they can create an isolation "bubble" in which nobody has the virus, so they can act just like they used to. The fallacy is because some large percentage of the population don't take the isolation seriously or even believe the virus exists. That's why so many state's infections are rising exponentially.

If they want to have summer camps, daycare, or open in-person schools they have to follow all the isolation, mask, social distance, hand washing, etc. rules, plus no singing or shouting allowed. In other words, nothing like those spaces used to be. Just the PPE rules plus hand washing may make in-person school impractical. How do they disinfect the bathrooms after every student uses it?

I saw where a university (forget which one) is going to make a run at an isolation "bubble". they are also going to do the 15 minute test on everybody every day, everybody will wear masks, etc. I think we are going to see everything thing tried in every school not going pure internet.

It seems to me that we are going to do this rather than get the virus under some kind of control before we try this stuff on kids. If nothing else its gonna be real educational for a lot of parents. Particularly in places like Georgia, Texas and Florida.

Oh, I also noticed that Trump has also suggested using vaccine before phase three tests are done and before the election. This guy REALLY believes in Hail Mary's and, I am sure, will simply ignore the failures. The shame of it is that, if he had stuck to a reasonable plan, from the getgo, he probably could have had the economy and schools up and running by now. Instead we now have what Pelosi calls the "Trump Virus". The only problem with that is that the regular Democrats never signed on to that and, as far as I know, don't use the phrase, unfortunately.

Short-circuiting Phase 3 trials may actually happen in someplace like Brazil with a rising infection rate. If the trial shows that the vaccine arm never gets infected and the control arm does at the same rate as the rest of the population, the statistics can tell them to end the trial because it's passed the test.

Of course, that does not tell you how long the immunity lasts, but they are hoping for years and nobody wants to wait that long.

I doubt they can make an isolation "bubble". That would mean nobody gets to come or go on campus without 14 day quarantine, and delivery quarantine on everything that comes in. And nobody has to wear masks.

What they can do is create a system that actually follows public health guidelines including masks, quarantine, and contact tracing. What America could have done, with reasonable leadership.

I dunno about that...leadership can only do so much. Those folks following the leaders need to comply with the rules and apparently there is a worldwide issue with compliance. Even back in the 1918 flu epidemic there were many who simply refused to comply.

For the most part, people simply refuse to do what they are told.