Urgent Petition To Keep RV Campgrounds Open

The testing is still dismal. No doubt about that. OTOH, social distancing is starting to show results (we think). We are in one of the first 7 counties in the SF Bay Area to start Stay-at-home (over 3 weeks now), and California, in general, seems to be managing the outbreak for now. CA has twice the population of NY, yet roughly 1/10 the number of COVID-19 cases. Even better, there are only about 5% of the fatal cases. The Guvna was on the podium yesterday and was breathing a little easier, as our ICUs and hospitals are not being overwhelmed, and he said that we are sending at least 500 ventilators back to the stockpile so they can be used by the folks in NY and NJ.

That is the core of the science behind this, errors occur in the coding of RNA base pairs during replication, sometimes resulting in modified (aka mutated) viruses which either have more, less, or the same ability to utilize their available resources (unfortunately, that's us humans).  We veer away from the science when we attribute the human concept of a "grander function" to that process.  That is the realm of philosophy and religion, which we should stay away from here.

I attempted a lay explanation of how viruses mutate, which was requested on the forum. It certainly is an incomplete explanation, and I am no expert in molecular biology. So if I got something wrong I'm happy to be corrected. 

You raise a good point regarding the risk of contamination from handling of supplies we pick up at the store. There is the observation floating around that the virus survives up to 24 hours on cardboard and 72 hours on plastic or metal surfaces. I haven't seen the study behind that.  Some folks (including the staff at my dad's assisted living) are using this information and assuming that leaving boxes and letters sit for 24 hours is an effective way to disinfect them. Others are suggesting segregating "contaminated" items and wiping all packaging down with disinfecting wipes (which of course assumes you can get disinfecting wipes, none to be had around here). Then there is the "contaminated" shoes and clothing you wore when you went out. 

Here's what I'm doing:

I've set up a table in our basement where I bring in all my essential supplies and mail.  I also have a second fridge there. The table has a "dirty" and a "clean" area. I wash my hands, then wipe down the supplies with a little spray cleaner and paper towels, and place the supplies on the "clean" side of the table or in the basement fridge. Then I take off my shoes, drop my clothes in the washer and clean my hands again. I let the supplies sit there for 72 hours before I bring them upstairs. Just for additional safety we've also quit eating uncooked foods like salads, in case someone sneezed on the lettuce just before I bought it. 

Probably depends more on how fast the increase will be in testing capacity than the increase in infections. IOW, we're likely pretty close to that number already, if not over it, we just don't know it. 

Iceland, which has done more testing than any other country, has 4600 cases per million pop, which would be the equivalent of 1.5 million cases in the US. It's still only tested 8.5% of its population, we've only tested 0.6 percent of ours. Most European countries have tested around 1-2% and are in the range of 2000 cases per million, or about 500-700,000 equivalent in the US. 

The more you test the more cases you have. 

I do agree, we are probably over that mark now and don't know it.

Stay safe you all.