The US has been slow to respond to the novel coronavirus. It now appears that self-isolation is the ONLY protocol that actually slows the spread of COVID-19 (
COrona
VIrus
Disease-20
19).
If infected and death occurs, it is
usually a result of acute respiratory failure with pneumonia symptoms being the causative contributing factor. I have had two pneumonia vaccinations, but I doubt that would be effective against COVID-19. COVID-19 may also indicate infection of organs other than the lungs, so a weak autoimmune system can make an infected person more susceptible to death instead of recovery. This is indeed a scary virus although, so far, the death rate is a small fraction of those who have tested positive for the novel coronavirus.
I have been mostly house-bound for almost two months now, wife doing all the shopping and disinfecting what she brings home. So far, so good. No symptoms of COVID-19 in either of us. It sure would be nice if wife and I could get a test that was specific for the novel coronavirus, but the few test kits that use
reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (
RT-PCR) for definitive identification are apparently not available, or are reserved for other uses, not to be offered to the general population. More information available in
this Google search result.
There have been reports that patients, recovering in hospitals in South Korea, who test negative for COVID-19 (thereby being eligible for discharge), have a few days later tested positive for the novel coronavirus. It is not certain what this means in terms of communicability of the disease, but perhaps it means the pandemic will NEVER be over, that the novel coronavirus is here to stay. Let's hope an effective vaccine is developed "real soon now" before the whole world disintegrates.
Although I consider myself fairly brave, and somewhat of a risk taker, I am not yet willing to deliberately expose myself to COVID-19 infection in the hope that (1) I will survive and (2) infection will produce enough antibodies to make me immune to infection again next year. It would be somewhat of a comfort if my wife and I could receive a test that would tell us whether or not we had been exposed to, and recovered from, infection by the novel coronavirus. A positive result would probably be enough encouragement for me to venture forth into the real world... or what's left of it.
Florida is almost completely shut down now... according to one news-video I saw yesterday, tomato and other crops have been left to rot in the fields because there are no retail our wholesale establishments still open to accept produce deliveries. That seems really stupid to me, since tomatoes can be easily canned for future use. I haven't seen any lack of produce at Detwiler's farm market yet, nor any lack of produce at Publix or Wal-Mart grocery stores, so the "news-video" may have just been more left-wing MSM scareware.