Where is the Information Desk?
Apr. 11th, 2020 10:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blogcutterPlease, sir - I want some more. Information, that is. About Covid-19.
Maybe that sounds completely ludicrous. Aren't we already bombarded with Covidformation every time we pick up a newspaper, turn on the TV or radio, or tune into a podcast?
Well, no. Getting data-bombed is not the same thing as informing oneself. Here are some of the areas where I would like more information:
1. Symptoms of Covid-19
2. Solutions
3. Testing - What kinds of tests are available, and when are they useful?
I'm going to discuss each in turn, although I know I'll only be scratching the surface of what needs to be considered.
First, the symptoms. Fever, dry cough, trouble breathing, loss of senses of smell and taste, double-lung pneumonia. All of those sound like the symptoms of a pretty serious disease. Yet in the next breath, officials tell us that in many (perhaps most) cases, the symptoms are mild and resemble those of the common cold. In my experience, when you get a cold, you don't usually have a fever, or not a very high one anyway. Dry cough? Maybe, but usually it's a rather wet, phlegmy one, at least in the initial stages. And they say that a runny nose is not usually a symptom of Covid 19. Trouble breathing and loss of senses of smell and taste? Well, yes - up to a point. If your nose is all stuffed up and you have to breathe through your mouth, you're not going to be able to smell things very well. And you probably won't taste much either, because the senses of smell and taste are interconnected. Double-lung pneumonia? That's definitely not the same thing as a cold, although certainly a cold can lead to more serious diseases while your resistance is lowered.
So, on to solutions. A vaccine is touted as the ultimate solution, the holy grail, the elixir of life. And I absolutely agree - we definitely should and must work towards developing a vaccine. But is it necessarily the ONLY solution? Are there other options we could explore? What about anti-viral or other drugs, for example? You might say they're a cure rather than a prevention, but it ain't necessarily so - drugs are used preventatively as well as to alleviate symptoms and provide (along with time and TLC) a cure. What about birth control, for example? Or arthritis drugs? For rheumatoid arthritis, I am taking both NSAIDs (Non Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs) and DMARDs (Disease Modifying Anti Rheumatic Drugs). One of the DMARDs that has been prescribed to me is Hydroxychloroquine, often known as Plaquenil. And interestingly enough, that's one of the drugs that seems to be showing some promise in the treatment of coronavirus too. I'm rather hoping that my own supply line doesn't dry up, although luckily it's not the only weapon in my personal arsenal as I fight the war on arthritis.
Now, about testing. Apparently we need to test far more people than we have been. But when we do test, are we relying on just one type of test?
As I understand it, we are conducting swab tests. Results take time. The usefulness of the results is limited, too. I gather a person tests either positive or negative for the virus, meaning they either a) definitely do have it at time of testing; or b) don't have it, or are only within the first couple of days of contracting it so it may be a false negative that needs to be re-tested.
But are there, for example, other tests that test for having already HAD the virus, or having had a virus similar enough to Covid-19, or having ANTIBODIES to the virus for whatever reason? And if so, would a positive test result for them also mean that they would NOT be a carriers who could put others at risk? Maybe we could issue some sort of certificate to these people (sort of akin to a vaccination certificate) and they could get back out into the community, freed from physical distancing restrictions themselves and also in a position to help those still suffering? If there were enough of them, think what a boon to society that could be, both from a medical and an economic standpoint!
Remember those TB patch tests we used to get? After a family trip to the UK in 1962, my brother always tested positive on those and sometimes got sent off for a chest X-ray. He hadn't had an active case of tuberculosis but evidently he had been exposed to it. I, on the other hand, continued to test negative - I was a fair bit younger and probably not as free to mill about the streets of London.
On the other hand, I DID get pneumonia in the mid-1980s. And then in the summer of 2018, I contracted a nasty lung ailment. My doctor initially decided to treat it as if were pneumonia, even though she had already given me the vaccine, which (unlike the flu vaccine) is supposed to be a one-time thing. I went through the usual diagnoses and treatments - the chest x-ray, the inhaler, the meds, some breathing tests. The symptoms were similar to those of diseases which typically plague smokers, even though I am not a smoker.
I'm not sure she ever did pinpoint what exactly I had had. The good news is that I recovered, although it took a few months. I'm pretty sure I picked it up during Music and Beyond, in early July (lots of crowded venues at a festival like that). It wasn't until some time in October that I got my final breathing test and a clean bill of health.
Could it have been something akin to Covid-19, even if they hadn't identified it yet? And if so, is there a possibility that it could have conferred on me some immunity from, or at least resistance to this nasty virus? I guess I can always hope.
So those are some of the questions uppermost in my mind at the moment.
You know, I have a sweatshirt with this slogan on it: Google can find you 100,000 answers. A librarian will find you the right one.
During this pandemic, people are relying on Google like never before, but libraries are closed. Will people be able to find the right answers before googols and googolplexes of people get infected? Or do I mean googols and googolplexes of the virus since I know there are only a few billion people in the world?
I guess maybe I'm a failure as a librarian because right now, I certainly haven't found the answer. I'm not at all confident that there IS just one right answer - there rarely is.
But right now, I'd settle for a half-decent answer - even if it's multiple choice.
Maybe that sounds completely ludicrous. Aren't we already bombarded with Covidformation every time we pick up a newspaper, turn on the TV or radio, or tune into a podcast?
Well, no. Getting data-bombed is not the same thing as informing oneself. Here are some of the areas where I would like more information:
1. Symptoms of Covid-19
2. Solutions
3. Testing - What kinds of tests are available, and when are they useful?
I'm going to discuss each in turn, although I know I'll only be scratching the surface of what needs to be considered.
First, the symptoms. Fever, dry cough, trouble breathing, loss of senses of smell and taste, double-lung pneumonia. All of those sound like the symptoms of a pretty serious disease. Yet in the next breath, officials tell us that in many (perhaps most) cases, the symptoms are mild and resemble those of the common cold. In my experience, when you get a cold, you don't usually have a fever, or not a very high one anyway. Dry cough? Maybe, but usually it's a rather wet, phlegmy one, at least in the initial stages. And they say that a runny nose is not usually a symptom of Covid 19. Trouble breathing and loss of senses of smell and taste? Well, yes - up to a point. If your nose is all stuffed up and you have to breathe through your mouth, you're not going to be able to smell things very well. And you probably won't taste much either, because the senses of smell and taste are interconnected. Double-lung pneumonia? That's definitely not the same thing as a cold, although certainly a cold can lead to more serious diseases while your resistance is lowered.
So, on to solutions. A vaccine is touted as the ultimate solution, the holy grail, the elixir of life. And I absolutely agree - we definitely should and must work towards developing a vaccine. But is it necessarily the ONLY solution? Are there other options we could explore? What about anti-viral or other drugs, for example? You might say they're a cure rather than a prevention, but it ain't necessarily so - drugs are used preventatively as well as to alleviate symptoms and provide (along with time and TLC) a cure. What about birth control, for example? Or arthritis drugs? For rheumatoid arthritis, I am taking both NSAIDs (Non Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs) and DMARDs (Disease Modifying Anti Rheumatic Drugs). One of the DMARDs that has been prescribed to me is Hydroxychloroquine, often known as Plaquenil. And interestingly enough, that's one of the drugs that seems to be showing some promise in the treatment of coronavirus too. I'm rather hoping that my own supply line doesn't dry up, although luckily it's not the only weapon in my personal arsenal as I fight the war on arthritis.
Now, about testing. Apparently we need to test far more people than we have been. But when we do test, are we relying on just one type of test?
As I understand it, we are conducting swab tests. Results take time. The usefulness of the results is limited, too. I gather a person tests either positive or negative for the virus, meaning they either a) definitely do have it at time of testing; or b) don't have it, or are only within the first couple of days of contracting it so it may be a false negative that needs to be re-tested.
But are there, for example, other tests that test for having already HAD the virus, or having had a virus similar enough to Covid-19, or having ANTIBODIES to the virus for whatever reason? And if so, would a positive test result for them also mean that they would NOT be a carriers who could put others at risk? Maybe we could issue some sort of certificate to these people (sort of akin to a vaccination certificate) and they could get back out into the community, freed from physical distancing restrictions themselves and also in a position to help those still suffering? If there were enough of them, think what a boon to society that could be, both from a medical and an economic standpoint!
Remember those TB patch tests we used to get? After a family trip to the UK in 1962, my brother always tested positive on those and sometimes got sent off for a chest X-ray. He hadn't had an active case of tuberculosis but evidently he had been exposed to it. I, on the other hand, continued to test negative - I was a fair bit younger and probably not as free to mill about the streets of London.
On the other hand, I DID get pneumonia in the mid-1980s. And then in the summer of 2018, I contracted a nasty lung ailment. My doctor initially decided to treat it as if were pneumonia, even though she had already given me the vaccine, which (unlike the flu vaccine) is supposed to be a one-time thing. I went through the usual diagnoses and treatments - the chest x-ray, the inhaler, the meds, some breathing tests. The symptoms were similar to those of diseases which typically plague smokers, even though I am not a smoker.
I'm not sure she ever did pinpoint what exactly I had had. The good news is that I recovered, although it took a few months. I'm pretty sure I picked it up during Music and Beyond, in early July (lots of crowded venues at a festival like that). It wasn't until some time in October that I got my final breathing test and a clean bill of health.
Could it have been something akin to Covid-19, even if they hadn't identified it yet? And if so, is there a possibility that it could have conferred on me some immunity from, or at least resistance to this nasty virus? I guess I can always hope.
So those are some of the questions uppermost in my mind at the moment.
You know, I have a sweatshirt with this slogan on it: Google can find you 100,000 answers. A librarian will find you the right one.
During this pandemic, people are relying on Google like never before, but libraries are closed. Will people be able to find the right answers before googols and googolplexes of people get infected? Or do I mean googols and googolplexes of the virus since I know there are only a few billion people in the world?
I guess maybe I'm a failure as a librarian because right now, I certainly haven't found the answer. I'm not at all confident that there IS just one right answer - there rarely is.
But right now, I'd settle for a half-decent answer - even if it's multiple choice.
