Here are three good, credible, authoritative lists of products by brand name, as well as a list of active ingredients and their working concentrations, that will kill the coronavirus. If you are looking for a particular product on one of these three lists, and cannot find it, you can check the active ingredients on the label against the list provided here, to see if it will kill the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.
The head of the World Health Organization said on Tuesday that the global mortality rate for Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, was 3.4 percent, a figure that primarily reflects the outbreak in China, where the vast majority of cases have been detected.
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the organization’s director general, said in a news conference in Geneva that Covid-19 was deadlier than the seasonal flu but did not transmit as easily. “Globally, about 3.4 percent of reported Covid-19 cases have died,” Dr. Tedros said. “By comparison, seasonal flu generally kills far fewer than 1 percent of those infected.”
The estimate takes into account the growing number of infections being recorded outside China, mostly in Iran, Italy and South Korea.
…
“While many people globally have built up immunity to seasonal flu strains, Covid-19 is a new virus to which no one has immunity,” meaning more people can be infected and some will suffer severe illnesses, Dr. Tedros said. The coronavirus does not transmit as efficiently as the flu but “causes more severe disease,” he added.
This new overall case fatality rate (CFR) of 3.4% is significantly higher than regular seasonal influenza, which usually has a CFR of 0.1%. As I have written before, about the broadest research study of clinical outcomes published to date, the actual CFR varies by the infected person’s age, weight, and the presence of any underlying health conditions:
Some sobering statistics from that study of 72,314 cases, the largest conducted to date, are:
– 81% of cases are mild, 14% are severe, and 5% are critical (the case fatality rate for critical cases was 49.0%; in other words, half of the critical patients died) – the case fatality rates were 8.0% in patients aged 70-79 years and 14.8% in patients aged ≥80 years (I worry for my parents) – the case fatality rates were 10.5% for people with cardiovascular disease, 7.3% for diabetes, 6.3% for chronic respiratory disease, 6.0% for hypertension, and 5.6% for cancer
How to Prepare for a Potential Pandemic
Here, once again, is a reminder of what you should be doing to prepare: mentally, emotionally, and physically/logistically.
You will probably need to prepare to stay isolated in your homes for a period of several weeks, avoiding contact with as many other people as possible, as a wave of illness caused by the Wuhan coronavirus sweeps through your community, forcing schools, businesses, and public transportation and public gathering places like movie theatres and shopping malls to close (as we already seen in Wuhan and many other cities in China, as well as places such as South Korean, Iran, and Italy). The time to prepare for the imposition of quarantines and social distancing policies by local governments is NOW.
If you need lists of how to prepare and what to buy in order to get your household ready for a potential pandemic, here are six suggestions to help you get started:
At least two weeks of food and other supplies (toilet paper, first aid supplies, soap and hand sanitizer, garbage bags, etc.). There are already reports of panic buying in many places around the world, including North America. You do not want to leave it to the last minute! If you cannot find any hand sanitizer, you can make your own (see recipe below).
Refills of all your presecription medications, plus a stock of over-the-counter medicines (talk to your doctor and pharmacist about creating an emergency supply of your prescription medication).
Power sources (flashlights, extra batteries, car chargers and adapters for your mobile devices, etc.).
Other things that you should do:
Sign up for any local alerts from your city, state/province, or federal government (or know where to find the information on the Internet). Find out what plans your employer is making (and if they’re not making them now, they should be).
If you haven’t yet, get your seasonal flu shot. It can’t hurt, and it will help to figure out whether or not you do have SARS-CoV-2 if/when you do become sick. Many areas now give out the flu shot for free.
Train yourself NOT to touch your eyes, nose, and mouth! The SARS-CoV-2 virus can remain viable on hard surfaces anywhere from 2 hours to 9 days (scientific journal article source), and you can transfer the virus from your infected hands to your mouth, nose, and eyes by touching or rubbing them.
Watch the following video from the World Health Organization on how wash your hands! Yes, I know I have posted it before. You may think you already know how to wash your hands properly, but you still might learn something you didn’t know before. Proper hand hygiene will also help you avoid catching regular seasonal colds and influenza, so there’s a net benefit to society.
How to Make Your Own Hand Sanitizer
There have been reports of panic shopping in various countries around the world, including in North American. In particular, hand sanitizer is in short supply, with many stores being sold out of stock. Fortunately, if you cannot find sanitizer to buy, you can make your own. Here’s the recipe:
Ingredients: 2/3-cup rubbing alcohol (99% isopropyl alcohol) 1/3-cup aloe vera gel (GEL, not liquid)
Directions: Add the alcohol to the aloe vera gel and stir. Using a funnel, pour the mixture into a pump bottle; you can use cleaned soap bottles for instance, or you can find inexpensive pump bottles at dollar stores. If you have empty store-bought hand sanitizer bottles, you can use those.
If you wish, you can add 8-10 drops of essentials oils. Lemongrass, eucalyptus, peppermint and orange oils, which have been shown to have some antibacterial properties (source), would be a good choice.
My local drug store had aloe vera gel in stock, but they were sold out of isopropyl rubbing alcohol, but I was able to order some on Amazon last night, and it should arrive next week sometime. I have enough regular hand sanitizer to last me until then.
Good Sources of Information on SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19
Here is my updated list of good, credible, authoritative resources to learn more about the Wuhan coronoavirus (formerly called 2019-nCoV and now officially called SARS-CoV-2; the disease the virus causes is now called COVID-19):
Another instructive YouTuber to watch is Dr. John Campbell, a British nurse educator who very clearly explains what you need to know
If you prefer to get your informtion via audio, the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) has started a weekly half-hour podcast on SoundCloud, called COVID-19: What’s Happening Now.
A brand-new, excellent podcast to follow is EPIDEMIC, with co-hosts Dr. Celine Gounder and Ronald Klain (the former United States Ebola response coordinator under President Barack Obama)
Watch the following video from the World Health Organization:
If you want a quick, up-to-date overview of the current situation, here are three good places to check:
2019-nCoV Global Cases (by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University); other good statistics dashboards can be found here and here.
Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 This transmission electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2—also known as 2019-nCoV, the virus that causes COVID-19. isolated from a patient in the U.S., emerging from the surface of cells cultured in the lab. Credit: NIAID-RML
As you know, since late January, I have been following all the newsfeeds and discussion groups that I can, scouring them for information on the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the disease it causes, COVID-19.
At times I have completely stressed myself out, but at this point I feel as if I am as prepared as I am going to be, in order to deal with whatever happens now, and all that preparation greatly helps alleviate my anxiety. (One of the last steps I did this morning was to meet with my financial planner at my bank, asking him to sharply reduce my exposure to the stock market in my retirement investments. Why? Because I am convinced that a potential coronavirus pandemic will have a severe, negative impact on global financial markets, as we have already seen so far this week.)
I realize that I am, still, trying to write about a potential pandemic situation on a blog I originally created to cover social VR, virtual worlds, and the metaverse! I feel for my readers who might be somewhat confused and upset at this tangent I am following. All I can say at present is that I will endeavour to continue my coverage of social VR, virtual worlds, and the metaverse, but that I will also cover SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 from time to time as well. It’s going to be a mighty juggling act, and I might just drop a few balls! So, please bear with me. Thanks.
Today, I wanted to share with you an extensive excerpt from a website I recently discovered, called ThePrepared.com, which specializes in “emergency preparedness and prepping checklists for everyone”. The reader-supported website is up-front about its using affiliate marketing links as a means of generating income, but they state:
The Prepared is more like a curated wiki than a blog. And you may have noticed the lack of ads and other junk. The Prepared is supported by readers, and when you buy something we recommend, we may get an affiliate commission — but it never affects your price or what we pick.
(The above link goes to their Mission and Values statement, which you might want to read through completely if you are curious and/or suspicious of their motives. If you do not like their approach, there are certainly other places you can go to get advice on how best to prepare, which I will link to below.)
The excerpt I do want to share with you comes from ThePrepared.com’s comprehensive document titled One-page laypersons’s guide to the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19), which offers a calm, rational, well-organized overview of what priorities you should be focusing on as you prepare for a potential SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic.
The part I want to highlight, which I have not really seen covered anywhere else in my admitted obsessive reading, is titled “What the next weeks might look like”, and it outlines two possible scenarios: a baseline scenario and a severe disruption scenario:
What the next weeks might look like
The range of realistic scenarios laid out below are not predictions. They’re planning tools to help you prepare based on what you might face.
Even in pessimistic models, experts aren’t planning for doomsday. We don’t think a really bad situation where food stocks are low and critical infrastructure is iffy is even worth talking about at this point.
We’ll update this page if expert predictions get worse.
Scenario A. Baseline scenario
Our baseline scenario — what we feel is most likely to unfold — is that the virus will spread person-to-person in a sustained way globally, not only in Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa, but also in the U.S. or Europe. We’re expecting disruption to daily life at some point here in the U.S., and in most places worldwide.
This scenario envisions a rising case count in one or more major U.S. cities, possibly to the point that a city has hundreds of cases before serious lockdown measures are taken to halt the spread.
We’re assuming in this scenario that we can, in fact, keep really bad outbreaks more or less geographically contained with Chinese-style quarantines, lockdowns, and travel restrictions in some cities and counties. We’re also assuming in this scenario that the fatality ratio is low, at about one or two percent at the most, but possibly below one percent.
What to prepare for:
– International travel restrictions that extend well beyond China, including the rest of Asia, Africa, and LatAm.
– Some pressure on US healthcare systems as hoarding of supplies results in shortages for healthcare workers. Health systems in the most affected cities will likely be overloaded.
– Possible disruptions in domestic air travel, due to the following: 1) pilots and airline staff refuse to fly in and out of affected cities, 2) fear and infection control measures like temperature checkpoints make air travel too inconvenient and people stop flying, which translates into lots of canceled flights.
– Cancellations of large gatherings or events (eg. concerts), especially in affected cities.
– Some significant amount of voluntary home quarantine by people whose work and/or lifestyle makes this possible (eg. remote workers, parents who homeschool).
– Isolated examples of voluntary relocation within your own network, as friends, family, or coworkers opt to move out of an affected zone until things calm down.
– Isolated but high-profile instances of xenophobic/racist violence, which causes widespread worries about physical safety among targeted groups.
Scenario B. Severe disruption
As with our baseline scenario, our severe scenario assumes the virus goes pandemic and spreads domestically, but the situation is worse because we’re not able to keep it constrained in any way.
If America has uncontrolled community transmission in most cities and counties, then the big questions that determine how severely our lives are disrupted are the following:
1. What is the fatality rate here in the US, with our advanced healthcare system?
2. What percentage of non-fatal cases have severe symptoms that require hospitalization, or even just a doctor visit and treatment?
These are big unknowns, so for the sake of planning we’re currently assuming the following general outlines for a severe scenario: the fatality rate in the US is on the order of about 2-4 percent, and the percentage of severe cases that require treatment is about 15 percent. With less than ten percent of our population infected, this latter number (15 percent requiring a hospital bed) is more than enough to overload the capacity of our hospitals and clinics.
What to prepare for:
– Long waits at hospitals and clinics, and more deaths from unrelated illnesses because of overall reduced access to healthcare.
– Widespread voluntary lockdown in homes for severely affected regions.
– Dedicated quarantine areas set up by FEMA, the military, the Red Cross, and other groups.
– Serious restrictions on domestic air travel, either from official order or because pilots and crew refuse to show up.
– Widespread school and daycare closures.
– Widespread closures of local businesses.
– Large companies pushing employees into remote work, halting all air travel, and moving meetings to video chat.
– Extended delivery times from carriers like USPS, UPS, and FedEx, as they cope with a combination of increased load (everyone’s ordering from home), reduced staff, and travel restrictions.
– Internet slowdowns in some neighborhoods, since everyone is home and streaming (or remote working) at the same time.
– Sealing off an area of a home or apartment in order to quarantine an ill family member.
– Temporary relocation to a safer area with much lower case count and less chaos and disruption.
– More instances of xenophobic/racist violence, along with some inter-ethnic conflicts in urban areas, as scared people begin to group up and turn on one another.
My advice to you is to read through each the potential events listed under both scenarios, A and B, and think about how you would respond to them, and what steps you would have to take to accommodate the event. For example, if your children’s school closes, will you, a friend, a relative, or a babysitter be available to care for them at home?
Good Sources of Information on SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19
Here is my newly-updated list of good, credible, authoritative resources to learn more about the Wuhan coronoavirus (formerly called 2019-nCoV and now officially called SARS-CoV-2; the disease the virus causes is now called COVID-19):
Another instructive YouTuber to watch is Dr. John Campbell, a British nurse educator who very clearly explains what you need to know
If you prefer to get your informtion via audio, the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) has started a weekly half-hour podcast on SoundCloud, called COVID-19: What’s Happening Now.
If you want a quick, up-to-date overview of the current situation, here are three good places to check:
2019-nCoV Global Cases (by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University); other good statistics dashboards can be found here and here.
Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 This scanning electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2 (orange)—also known as 2019-nCoV, the virus that causes COVID-19—isolated from a patient in the U.S., emerging from the surface of cells (gray) cultured in the lab. Credit: NIAID-RML
It would appear that outbreaks of SARS-CoV-2 virus (and the disease it causes, COVID-19) are springing up in places far from its birthplace in Wuhan, China: in South Korea, Iran, and Italy, among many other nations, with the coronavirus infection showing up in dozens of people who cannot be easily linked to China.
The Washington Post newspaper reported yesterday, in story titled Coronavirus outbreak edges closer to pandemic (original, archived copy):
In South Korea, coronavirus cases quadrupled over two days, as 144 people linked to a religious sect tested positive. In Singapore, clusters of infection have been traced to two churches, a hotel business meeting, a health products shop and a construction site. In Iran, an outbreak has seeded new cases in Lebanon and Canada — a worrisome sign the disease could be spreading more widely than realized.
There are outbreaks. There are epidemics. And there are pandemics, where epidemics become rampant in multiple countries and continents simultaneously. The novel coronavirus that causes the disease named COVID-19 appears to be on the verge of that third, globe-shaking stage.
Amid an alarming surge in cases with no clear link to China, infectious disease experts believe the flu-like illness may soon be impossible to contain. The World Health Organization has not declared COVID-19 a pandemic and the most devastating effects, including more than 2,200 deaths, are still in China. But the language coming from the organization’s Geneva headquarters has turned more ominous in recent days as the challenge of containment grows more daunting.
…
“What we find is that this virus is going to be very difficult to contain,” said Jeffrey Shaman, an infectious disease researcher at Columbia University and co-author of the study posted Monday. “Personally, I don’t think we can do it.”
Harvard epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch estimates that 40 to 70 percent of the human population could potentially be infected by the virus if it becomes pandemic. Not all of those people would get sick, he noted. The estimated death rate from COVID-19 — roughly two out of 100 confirmed infections — may also drop over time as researchers get a better understanding of how widely the virus has spread.
That death rate, estimated at 2% of cases at present, is significantly higher than that posed by regular seasonal influenza, at 0.1%. While many people (especially the young) have only a mild response to this virus, the latest scientific research shows that approximately 20 percent of those who land up in hospital with COVID-19 are severe cases that often require intensive care. Those who are older, overweight, or have underlying health conditions such as asthma, heart disease or diabetes are more likely to have a severe or even deadly reaction to this virus.
The current fatality rate is less than 0.5% for people under the age of 50. But it rises to 8% for people in their 70s and 15% for people over 80. Meanwhile, nearly 11% of people with diseases of the heart died when infected. As did 7% of people with diabetes and 6% of people with long-term lung problems. The average for healthy people is 0.9%.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in the United States, explained in a recent CNN interview why we’re nearly at the brink of a global pandemic with the novel coronavirus outbreak:
Today officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warned that although the agency is taking historic measures to slow the introduction of COVID-19 into the United States, the country should prepare for the possibility of community spread, as seen in China and neighboring Asian countries.
“The day may come when we may need to implement such measures as seen in Asia,” Nancy Messonnier, MD, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said in a press conference, referencing the closing of businesses, schools, and churches in multiple countries where transmission is now occurring within the community.
This is no longer a “what-if” scenario for us in North America, or an “over there on the other side of the world” problem that we can ignore. This potential pandemic is already wreaking unprecedented havoc in Chinese society, and that havoc is spreading to other countries now—South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Iran, and Italy all have documented cases of human-to-human transmission.
In other words, you need to prepare yourself—emotionally, mentally, and physically— for a pandemic. The time to begin preparing is NOW.
When someone first learns about a new and potentially serious risk, the natural, healthy, and useful reaction is, in a sense, an over-reaction:
– You pause – You become hyper-vigilant – You personalize the risk – You take extra precautions
These responses are signs of what psychiatrists call an adjustment reaction. They are part of the process of adjusting to the new risk. Here are the key characteristics of the adjustment reaction to crisis:
1. It is automatic 2. It comes early 3. It is temporary 4. It is a small over-reaction 5. It may need guidance 6. It serves as a rehearsal 7. It reduces the probability of later over-reaction
This is the teachable moment! Instead of criticizing or ridiculing people’s adjustment reactions to emerging crises, smart crisis communicators encourage the adjustment reactions, legitimize them, ally with them, and guide them.
It’s okay to tell people that they’re jumping the gun a little – that there is still time and you advise them to hold off on particular precautions until the risk gets closer, bigger, or clearer. It’s okay to recommend substitute precautions – precautions that are more useful or less burdensome or less likely to backfire than the ones they’re attracted to. It’s okay to remind them that nobody knows yet whether the situation will worsen or blow over, that they should try to stay poised to ramp up or ramp down their level of concern. That’s all part of guiding the adjustment reaction.
What isn’t okay is to suggest that people shouldn’t be worried yet, that they shouldn’t take any precautions or even think about what precautions they want to take until you give the word. It isn’t okay to tell people that their normal and useful impulse to rehearse is irrational or panicky. Healthy people are going to rehearse. They are going to imagine the worst before it happens and before we know for sure if it’s coming. They are going to take premature precautions. An adjustment reaction is a big improvement over being caught unawares. Don’t try to tell people not to have one. Help them have a good one.
In other words, an adjustment reaction is normal, it helps you to begin to take the risk of a pandemic seriously, and it gives you the kick-start you need in order to begin preparing for it.
At this point all the experts are now saying the same thing: that the Wuhan coronavirus will continue to spread worldwide. It cannot be contained, either within the city of Wuhan, the country of China, or the region of south-east Asia. The best that countries outside China can do at this point is to use case isolation and contact tracing to slow down the spread of the virus within their countries, and implement quarantines and social distancing policies to buy more time in order to prepare. As Dr. Amesh Adalja says above, “It is not a matter of if—it is a matter of when”.
No hospital system, anywhere in the world, has enough intensive care beds to deal with a surge of tens of thousands of serious 2019-nCoV cases, as we have already seen happen in Wuhan, China.
As I have written before, throughout history there have been eight tactics used to combat infectious diseases. It is possible—some would say, likely—that national, state/province, and city governments will impose quarantines and social distancing policies in order to try and contain 2019-nCoV outbreaks.
What this means for you, reading this now, is that you need to prepare yourself and your family for the possibility that you will need to stay in your homes for a period of several weeks, avoiding contact with as many other people as possible, as a wave of illness caused by the Wuhan coronavirus sweeps through your community, forcing schools, businesses, and public transportation and public gathering places like movie theatres and shopping malls to close (as we already seen in Wuhan and many other cities in China). The time to prepare for this is NOW.
At least two weeks of food and other supplies (toilet paper, first aid supplies, soap and hand sanitizer, garbage bags, etc.). There are already reports of panic buying in places such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Italy. You do not want to leave it to the last minute! For example, both my local drug store and my local grocery store are now completely sold out of hand sanitizer, and the manager at the grocery store said they’ve been out of stock for two weeks now.
Refills of all your presecription medications, plus a stock of over-the-counter medicines (talk to your doctor and pharmacist about creating an emergency supply of your prescription medication).
Power sources (flashlights, extra batteries, car chargers and adapters for your mobile devices, etc.).
Other things that you should do:
Sign up for any local alerts from your city, state/province, or federal government (or know where to find the information on the Internet). Find out what plans your employer is making (and if they’re not making them now, they should be).
If you haven’t yet, get your seasonal flu shot. It can’t hurt, and it will help to figure out whether or not you do have 2019-nCoV if/when you do become sick. Many areas now give out the flu shot for free.
Train yourself NOT to touch your eyes, nose, and mouth! The SARS-CoV-2 virus can remain viable on hard surfaces anywhere from 2 hours to 9 days (scientific journal article source), and you can transfer the virus from your infected hands to your mouth, nose, and eyes by touching or rubbing them.
Watch the following video from the World Health Organization on how wash your hands! Yes, I know I have posted it before. You may think you already know how to wash your hands properly, but you still might learn something you didn’t know before. Proper hand hygiene will also help you avoid catching regular seasonal colds and influenza, so there’s a net benefit to society.
Good Sources of Information on SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19
Here is my updated list of good, credible, authoritative resources to learn more about the Wuhan coronoavirus (formerly called 2019-nCoV and now officially called SARS-CoV-2; the disease the virus causes is now called COVID-19):
Another instructive YouTuber to watch is Dr. John Campbell, a British nurse educator who very clearly explains what you need to know
If you prefer to get your informtion via audio, the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) has started a weekly half-hour podcast on SoundCloud, called COVID-19: What’s Happening Now.
If you want a quick, up-to-date overview of the current situation, here are three good places to check:
2019-nCoV Global Cases (by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University) UPDATE Feb. 24th: This website appears to be down (temporarily, I hope!); other good statistics dashboards are here and here.
