COVID-19 General Colorado Thread (Denver: purchasing, safer, Walmart)

[Vision67]

Mike, I've got one. Amazingly cheap. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B086QRC6BL...NsaWNrPXRydWU=

Ironically, I developed an ear oximeter in 1973 as a biomedical engineer during grad school at the Univ of Ariz.

I never thought I'd need one.

[katharsis]

Of all the things I miss due to COVID-19, I think that I miss the library the most!

(Btw, I Googled it, but couldn't find anything about it, and unless I missed, Polis didn't mention libraries in his press conference yesterday.)

[pikabike]

Originally Posted by katharsis

Of all the things I miss due to COVID-19, I think that I miss the library the most!

(Btw, I Googled it, but couldn't find anything about it, and unless I missed, Polis didn't mention libraries in his press conference yesterday.)

Me, too!

[townshend]

Originally Posted by katharsis

Of all the things I miss due to COVID-19, I think that I miss the library the most!

(Btw, I Googled it, but couldn't find anything about it, and unless I missed, Polis didn't mention libraries in his press conference yesterday.)

Have you checked to see whether the library has eBooks that can be read online?


This is a list of "stuff" that, according to the Denver Public Library, is available seven days a week:
https://www.denverlibrary.org/COVID-19

Check your library card to view your account or renew items
Download an eBook, Audio eBook or eFlick
Stream or download free local music on Volume
Stream classic films, indie cinema, and award winning documentaries on Kanopy
Read a magazine using RBdigital, a free service that offers full digital copies of your favorite magazines to view on a computer or mobile device
Search our databases
Chat with a librarian 24/7 or email a question
Listen to streaming music from the Music Online, Classical Music Library, or Smithsonian Global Sound collections
Browse our Recommendations section for books, movies and music resources
Register for a library card online

Lots of books can be read in Kindle edition at Amazon. And you don't need a Kindle -- you can read them on your home computer, e.g.

[townshend]

Originally Posted by bluescreen73

So sorry for your loss mtngigi.

A high school classmate of mine (in his mid-40s) was sedated and on a vent for nearly a week with COVID-19. He was was one of the lucky ones. They weened him off the vent on Friday. He's got a long road to recovery ahead of him.

The volume of stupid, off-the-wall s*&t that people are sharing on social media is astounding (and growing by the day). One of the more moronic anti-lockdown videos being shared is from a "Dr. Knut Wittkowski." He's being passed off as an expert in epidemiology, and he's not even a damn medical doctor. He's got a PhD in statistics. I swear stupidity/ignorance and the lack of critical thinking will do more damage to this country than COVID-19 and the lockdown will.

Decades ago, Isaac Asimov summed it up as follows:

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

And it seems to become truer as the years pass.

[brightdoglover]

I think what people miss is going out to the actual place, at least some do. I know the local lectures and arts and all are often on line but I miss the gathering of the community.

[townshend]

Originally Posted by Mike from back east

The big killer in this pandemic is what doctors are calling COVID Pneumonia.

I read about it here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/20/o...gtype=Homepage

The gist is to use a simple ($40) "pulse oximeter" that measures the level of oxygen in your blood, which should be 94% to 100%. In the early stages of COVID Pneumonia the oxygen saturation declines but the person does not feel short of breath as in 'normal' pneumonia so people think all is well.

By the time a person feels sick enough to go to the ER, their pulse/ox is in the 50% range and bam, on a ventilator they go, where far too many die. Attending to people on ventilators places stunning workloads on hospital staffs.

The doctor who wrote the article said if they can get you in before your pulse/ox gets down to that 50% level they can keep you off a ventilator and get you recovered and out of the hospital fairly fast.

Pulse oximeters may be bought at most drugstores or online all over the internet.

My reading is consistently 98% which is very good. Daily readings take less than a minute. I keep my pulse-ox on the desk next to my keyboard. If I detect a drop in my ox levels I'll be on the phone with my Doc asap.

Mike, I can't read the NYT article (I am so thankful for paywalls to protect me from having too much knowledge; :^( . . . ), but from my readings, it is pneumonia PLUS ARDS -- acute respiratory distress syndrome.

The inciting injury, is commonly pneumonia, sepsis, or trauma: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5122485/

So yes, they get pneumonia, which is rough enough, but when this leads to ARDS, the prognosis is (very) poor.

[Mike from back east]

And today I'm reading about how a third or more of deaths seem to be from blood clots in the lungs. Not good news.

"A mysterious blood-clotting complication is killing coronavirus patients" is in today's WaPo which is also a paywall site but some of the COVID-19 articles are open to the public. Excerpts follow:

"... It was in as many as 20, 30 or 40 percent of their patients. ... Asymptomatic pregnant women suddenly in cardiac arrest. Patients who by all conventional measures seem to have mild disease deteriorating within minutes and dying at home. ... Autopsies have shown some people’s lungs fill with hundreds of microclots. ... the clogging of the dialysis machines, which filter impurities in blood when kidneys are failing and jammed several times a day. ... Then came the autopsies. When they opened up some deceased patients’ lungs ... they found tiny clots all over. ... clots might be responsible for a significant share of U.S. deaths — possibly explaining why so many people are dying at home.

[brightdoglover]

Originally Posted by Mike from back east

A... ... Autopsies have shown some people’s lungs fill with hundreds of microclots. ... the clogging of the dialysis machines, which filter impurities in blood when kidneys are failing and jammed several times a day. ... Then came the autopsies. When they opened up some deceased patients’ lungs ... they found tiny clots all over. ... clots might be responsible for a significant share of U.S. deaths — possibly explaining why so many people are dying at home.

I read a speculation (cannot remember the link but it was valid) that the virus attacks the epithelial cells all over, and on the lungs, to ARDS. Hence the very low O2 levels while people are relatively functional. Or something like that.

[Mike from back east]

Originally Posted by brightdoglover

I read a speculation (cannot remember the link but it was valid) that the virus attacks the epithelial cells all over, and on the lungs, to ARDS. Hence the very low O2 levels while people are relatively functional. Or something like that.

Here's one article referencing those epithelial cells.