Reputable Recommendations

Avoiding Exposure:

CDC guidance

World Health Organization

Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services

Mental Health:

Remember most people will recover from the illness.

NBA player Christian Wood

Diamond Cruise passengers and others share their recovery

Three patients who struggled with more severe symptoms share their experiences

Support:

A Counselor offers her advice

Board-licensed psychotherapist and National Association of Sports Medicine certified personal trainer offers some tips

National Alliance on Mental Illness

Limit your time watching/reading news.  As the condition in the United States gets worse, important to stay informed, internationally, nationally, and local.  However, try to do this once or twice daily.  Engage in more productive and gratifying activities during the majority of your day.  Look out for one another.

Nutrition:

Boost your immunity

Tips from Harvard

General Advice from the United States Department of Agriculture

USDA on COVID -19 and food safety (click on the + to expand the topic)

Exercise:

Advice from Seattle

Exercising at home

Outdoor advice  Remember to avoid touching common surfaces.

Watch out for scammers:

Chicago Sun-Times

Forbes

Sacramento Business Journal

China has been adapting and adjusting for months to the COVID 19 virus in efforts to contain the spread. Some of the more serious measures implemented include preventing people from going in and out of cities, placing millions of residents on lockdown. The extreme measures appear to be helping.

Iran, Italy and South Korea have seen a spike of cases in their countries, with some of them reporting a significantly higher number of deaths. South Korea has over 7,000 confirmed cases and 44 deaths while Italy has over 4,600 confirmed cases and 197 deaths. Italy has 4 times the number of deaths than South Korea and has nearly half the confirmed cases. One has to wonder why Italy is seeing a higher percentage of deaths. Could it be that these countries have a more lethal strain of the virus?

Italian COVID cases as of 3/7/2020

One theory is that the COVID 19 virus may have more lethal strains in some regions. There are many articles published online about this theory. If true, that could explain why some countries are seeing more deaths than other countries.

Another concern is that our health care system will be overwhelmed with trying to treat infected individuals. One emergency room doctor provides his opinion of what he expects. and Italy is already seeing this occur in their country.

If we are starting to see isolated spots of more lethal strains in the United States, we should be doing more to stop the spread of those strains. The United States passed and signed 8 billion in funding to fight the virus. It is a dramatic start. However, we need to implement even more dramatic changes. We need to follow the lead of other countries who have students learning from home, enforcing better guidelines for travelers, and are aggressively disinfecting hot zones. Unfortunately, we already have 17 confirmed deaths in the US and we will see more unless we implement dramatic changes. Are we as a country committed to implementing the actions necessary to prevent further spread?

Image by David Bruyland from Pixabay

Updated 3/25/20 at 12:34  pm EST