From today’s (2/29/20) NYT: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Saturday that it was authorizing American laboratories to develop their own coronavirus tests, which should significantly increase the country’s testing capacity.The effect could be rapid. About 80 labs and private companies have applied for emergency approval for tests they have already created. If they…

I think all the advice provided here (dated today 2/27/20) is sound, and is not alarmist. This virus has spread remarkably quickly, frequently triggers lethal illness, and there has not been anything like it since the 1918 flu.   COVID-19 must be spreading within the US in ways we don’t know yet.  The lack of available…

The problem of highly restricted testing in the US The COVID-19 virus is quite deadly (mortality appears to be between 2 and 10% as discussed in my last post) though since we don’t know how many asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic cases there are, we still can’t be sure of this. Why don’t we know the…

Fomites   These are inanimate objects like doorknobs, shared computer keyboards, surfaces where droplets from coughs and sneezes land, or where hands have touched, which may transmit the virus. Questions that the authorities should be making every attempt to answer include the following.   a)  What % of infections are transmitted via fomites?  (In other…

January 31, 2020 I keep being asked about the coronavirus, and have been noncommittal about it, because there was not a lot of information to go on. But now there is more information, so I will say a little. 1.  Anthony Fauci, head of the NIH’s infectious disease branch, said the death rate is 1-2%…