Advice From Bergamo Italy Where Coronavirus Situation is Grim

There is some advice from Bergamo Italy which is the worst-hit town in Italy. Nextbigfuture received it via email. Bergamo had a population of 120,000.

Stay home with your immediate family members only. Try to isolate as much as possible.

Grocery shopping should be done ONCE A WEEK and by one family member only.

Maintain a 1.5 meter (5-6 foot) distance from people while in a store and the fewer in the store at any one time, the safer we will all be.

There is a US state CDC recommendation to wipe down key surfaces at your home every day.

If you are sheltering in place anyway then follow a strict procedure for the next few weeks. Minimize any sloppiness or relaxation. There are no points for doing just enough. Follow full self-isolation procedures.

The CDC has guidance on preventing the spread of coronavirus. We are in the critical 2-4 weeks. The shutdowns are being mandated so the economic damage is occurring, we should try to make the shelter in place work.

Do not share dishes, drinking glasses, cups, eating utensils, towels, bedding, or other items. After the patient uses these items, you should wash them thoroughly. Wash laundry thoroughly.

Be sure to avoid any sloppiness around anyone older than 50. It can affect younger people.

Hospitals are overloaded in Bergamo and several areas of Italy. They now have enough beds but not enough healthy doctors and nurses. They are not able to get all people to the beds.

Dead are being sealed into homes because they do not have the people to safely remove them.

SOURCES – DW, email from contact in Bergamo, ITV News, Sky News
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com

17 thoughts on “Advice From Bergamo Italy Where Coronavirus Situation is Grim”

  1. 😉

    Let’s be optimist: maybe this time things will be different. At least, let’s hope for it and do whatever we can to make it happen.

  2. I agree with the first part of your message. I am a bit skeptic on the second, as I believe that health issues cannot be reduced to vaxxer / anti-vaxxer positions. 

    Being “healthy” is foremost a matter of balance and harmony with our own environment. As long we are structurally misbalanced, we’ll have a never ending fight with nature… Vaccines won’t be enough. 

    I believe there is another way to be healthy. I’m not an anti-vaxxer, but I don’t believe that a vaccine is the cure for everything. It is definitely useful in some situations, but if it becomes a fog to hide the “soil” of the viruses emergence (and our immune confusion), we might as well disappear very soon.

  3. The “general vaccine” has been a holey grail for as long as I have been in the medical field. Seems to me that if such a thing were possible, i.e. there was some antigen common to all viruses, the human body would have already adapted to this and we would not have viral infections. Remember, it is not enough to pick out an antigenic target on a virus, you also have to ensure that the antigen you have chosen is different enough from human/self antigens so that you do not run the risk of inducing autoimmune disease with a given vaccine.

  4. I agree there will be a before and an after covid-19 concerning world wide disease response.

    The world can no longer play stupid nor allow stupidity and/or greed to run amok.

    The less bad response if to change the medical research against viruses to a WW2’s Manhattan Project level as you say, where general cures are finally pursued and any new threat is immediately tackled and nipped in the bud. Private interests be dammed, either they align with the fight against civilizational collapse or they get forcefully out of the way (that includes revoking anti-viral patents and other stupid legislation).

    The not as good outcomes can be an end to some perceived freedoms, like the unrestricted right of reunion and to medical privacy. In a world in a state of war against viruses, nearly everyone will have to be tested, quarantined and vaccinated whenever the threat arises, including in the poorest places, and this despite if they believe in tests, quarantines and vaccines or not. Anti-vaxxers and other charlatans could start to be perceived as the criminals they are.

    Some aspects of this will be ugly, some others not so much. But the world’s gonna change.

  5. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2004973

    TLDR:
    SARS-CoV-2 is COVID19

    Stability on cardboard and plastic is up to 72 hours
    Stability on stainless steel is up to 48 hours
    Stability in aerosol is more than 3 hours

    What does this mean for you: When in public areas touching things, assume they are contaminated. Do not tough your mouth/nose/face if you can help it. Sanitize hands when returning to your personal environment (home/car). wipe down items brought into your home from the public with either alcohol or bleach solution before storing them and again sanitize your hands after doing this process.

  6. Like Goat, I like this study too.

    However, I spot a more fundamental flaw in the application to our situation. They are quite clear in their assumptions, they explicitly state the measurements are in still air. For obvious experimental reasons.

    But what does this mean in practice? It means that after 80 cm, the micro droplets come to a stop, relative to the air.

    If that air is itself drifting across the room at 0.5 metres per second (hardly noticeable draft, due to the existence of pretty much any ventilation at all) then the droplet cloud will now be moving across the room at 0.5 m/s.

    And it will keep moving as the droplets are now near stationary relative to the air. So the droplets will continue moving through the room and building following the air circulation patterns. Over a couple of minutes the droplets can cover a hundred metres or more.

    Either that or the droplets will settle down and land on a surface, where, as we all know now, they remain alive and active for some time between hours and days depending on conditions. Where you will touch them, get them on your hands, and immediately rub your nose (which I found myself doing midway through writing that sentence!)

  7. Sure, it’d be awesome if Humanity could engineer a cocktail of complimentary vaccines to eliminate ALL the common chronic-but-non-lethal ailments.  It collectively SAVE billions a year, in so doing. That’d be worth it on the cover. 

    Thing is tho’, drumming up funding to do so, with the dark forces working against doing so, is pretty much a non-starter without a Beneficent Omnipotent Dictator in charge. Democracies, Republics and Kleptocracies are ALWAYS undermined in noble-purpose by ignoble scrabbling to pick up easily collected ‘sin tax’ monies. Even if the sin isn’t self induced.  

    It is a constant in Human History, barring all others.

    In a way, it has an analogue in “fusion power” research. HARD to do — Lord, do I know that — yet a Beautiful Answer to Mankind’s most knotty problem: compact, inexpensive generation of potent power, from an inexhaustible source. 40 years back, it looked just-in-the-next-decade-or-two. Here we are, eye-level with 2020 … and its a couple of decades out. Maybe.  

    Why?  Because FISSION also works, is “easy” and has huge dark forces funding it. Because SOLAR had huge forces under it. And Wind. And FracGas. And coal, and oil

    As I said… since time immemorial, this is the way We shît on progresses’ possibilities.

    ⋅-⋅-⋅ Just saying, ⋅-⋅-⋅
    ⋅-=≡ GoatGuy ✓ ≡=-⋅

  8. Dark forces have long, long thwarted serious “Manhattan Project” curing of commonplace, irritating-to-annoying-to-sickening-but-not-lethal diseases. There are far too many tens or hundreds of billions of dollars of sales directly the result of naïve customers wanting ‘relief’ from the symptoms. The ‘cure’ is dependent only on one’s body to do its magnificent work. But … that snotty snout, that itchy throat, that annoying cough, that headache and ear-ache, and even that chippy tummy, … pap-medicine, baby. Billions to be Coined. The DARK forces don’t want that to go away for even 3 seconds.  ⋅-=≡ GoatGuy ✓ ≡=-⋅

  9. Not QUITE as grim as that. HVAC systems are big-volume dilution systems, too. If being in “the locker room” gets you quite-concentrated stinky-athlete exposure, the HVAC sucking that air in, circulating it around, dilutes it 100× to 10,000× with both outside air and stadium atmosphere. 

    You undoubtedly know the saying, “The Solution to Pollution is Dilution”.  If you are exposed to ¹⁄₁₀₀ to ¹⁄₁₀₀₀ the number of active virus particles thru dilution alone, well … your probability of catching the bug drops mathematically therein.  

    Yah know what I mean?
    ⋅-=≡ GoatGuy ✓ ≡=-⋅

  10. Always good to see real science at work. With (useful) fancy words like distal, proximal, co-variable and mean-squares. I understand it, you probably do … but what really are the conclusions with regard to MY ‘context case’?

    Best example: you’re talking to someone who has strong body-odor. Forgot the antiperspirant for a few days.  

    If you’re close-close, under 1.5 meters, you’ll definitely get strong whiffs. If you back off to say 2 meters, you’ll occasionally get some, but not to the point necessarily of wrinkling your nose or running to the front door. If the stinker is talking to someone else, across the room, you’ll not get a whiff at all, in highest likeliness.  

    Now, what if you’re walking into a nice big Futbol locker-room after a World Cup knockout match? Them’s some stinky ball players, we can assume. How’s that 1.5 meter rule working out?  Obviously, almost anyplace you as the avid journalist for the Beeb knows, anyplace in that room is going to stink. Strongly.  

    THAT is my point, friend. 
    EXACTLY that.

    Just replace ‘stink’ with ‘plumes of COVID–19 aerosols‘, and you’ve got the corpus of my point. Its just that we can’t “smell ’em”. Or see ’em. But we CAN catch them, as I will argue … for many, many minutes (apparently) after their “emission”. 

    ⋅-⋅-⋅ Just saying, ⋅-⋅-⋅
    ⋅-=≡ GoatGuy ✓ ≡=-⋅

  11. Parenthetically, something else to consider. The 6 foot ÷ 2 meter rule.

    In terms of “sources”, topping the list is SNEEZING and COUGHING. The thousands-to-millions of little particles explosively emitted carry hundreds-to-thousands of viruses, each! As they waft around, depending on the temperature, humidity and turbulence, the evaporate. Eventually drying out completely. Possibly deactivating the viruses, perhaps hot.

    The 2 meter rule is as arbitrary a rule as ever has been invented.
    Pure, unadulterated nonsense.

    If you are surrounded with people coughing and sneezing, even 20 meters away… you’re GOING to get the virus load, without a doubt. Got that folks? It is only slightly related to distance. More, to total-sources-AND-sum-of-distances.

    Sheesh.
    I’m almost ready to give up.
    Stupidity seems profoundly instilled in our Public Response.

    ⋅-=≡ GoatGuy ✓ ≡=-⋅

  12. Yep, wash, rinse, repeat.  

    Maybe that needs repeating

    WASH — RINSE — REPEAT

    Here’s the idea… let’s say that WASH removes 95% of the bugs from whatever it is you have washed. OK, 5% are left. The next wash will not remove as high a proportion, but still maybe 80%. Leaving 20% of 5% or 1% bugs behind. IF you do a 3rd wash (highly recommended), that’ll get another ⅔ of them. Leaving ⅓ of ⅕ of ¹⁄₂₀ or ¹⁄₃₀₀ of the bugs. 

    EVEN IF you were to scrub like a crazy person, only once, you might only improve the original 95% to 98%. Leaving 2% or ¹⁄₅₀.  Nowhere near as good as ¹⁄₃₀₀!

    WASH — RINSE — REPEAT

    University Quantitative Chemistry… is about removing all contaminants from flasks. We use chromo-sulfuric acid. Thick, like maple syrup. Nasty stuff. And reused over, and over, and over again.  

    The procedure is simple:  transfer a bit to the working flask. Gently swirl. Then pour it BACK into the storage flask, while rotating the ‘work flask’, so the chromic acid touches all surfaces. Easy!  

    Add distilled water. Swirl and drain into sink, again turning flask to rinse all surfaces. 

    Do this three times. Using the 99% rule:

    1.0 → 0.01 → 0.0001 → 0.000001.  One millionth.

    This is good enough for just about all lab-bench chemistry. But to be ‘really sure’, 2 more rinses can be done. Now better than one billionth.  

    That’s my point.
    WASH — RINSE — REPEAT

    ⋅-=≡ GoatGuy ✓ ≡=-⋅

  13. And now, because you posted that AND because it was the first comment, you must now keep your nickname as “Darkness” xD

    You can cancel Easter all you want, but NOBODY cancels the Cadbury Bunny!!! NOBODY! Lol

    I did have to go out to the store today, and I noticed that people were doing a very good job of giving each other distance. It’s a weird thing to experience, realizing how close we frequently come to strangers in every day life. When it stops happening, it’s rather surreal.

  14. “Easter is cancelled”… by the darkness… released 2019…strangely prophetic in the title of the album.. lyrics: rock n roll [generation] deserves to die die die die (repeat 30 times)”

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