this is the mobile version, switch to computer if needed
18 March 2020
main information
(all times are Pacific unless specified otherwise)
mobile version of tracker
CLEANING
Soap
It’s the best way to wash up (and much easier to find than hand sanitizer).
Disposable gloves
For handling things that might be contaminated. Do not wash or reuse.
Disinfectant wipes
Look for products with active ingredients such as quaternary ammonium, sodium hypochlorite, or hydrogen peroxide.
Towels, clean linens
Or anything else you might need more of as cleaning habits change.
FOOD/NECESSITIES
Supplies of shelf-stable food
Beans, rice, flour, and canned items: enough for a couple of weeks, if access to grocery stores is limited.
Coffee or tea
Or other everyday “necessities”.
A first aid kit
Hospitals may be overwhelmed, so you’ll want to be able to treat minor problems at home.
90 days of medication
The CDC recommends stocking up on prescriptions, so contact your doctor.
WORK AND ENTERTAINMENT
Yarn, art supplies, or other hobby items
It’s a good time to dive into an activity you can do at home. Morale matters!
Things for working from home
From a desk chair to a mouse, it’s better to have the tools for your job if it’s possible to work remotely.
Electronics and, potentially, spare parts
If your phone or computer breaks, it’s an inconvenience in the best of times. Right now, it might be more than that, if stores aren’t open to get a replacement.
Games for family time
If you’ve got kids at home, you’ll need distractions!
IF YOU GET SICK
Medication for reducing a fever, like acetaminophen (Tylenol).
A thermometer for monitoring a fever.
Cough and cold medication
including cough drops and lozenges, cough syryps like Dayquil/Nyquil, and decongestants like Sudafed (the active ingredient is pseudoephedrine, so get the much lower cost generic version).
A humidifier can also help with a cough that makes it tough to sleep.
Rehydration solutions
Pedialyte or Gatorade works, but you can make it at home with a liter of drinking water, a scoop of sugar, and a pinch of salt. Plain water or other liquids also work for mild dehydration in adults.
Basics
what is COVID-19?
Coronaviruses (CoV) are a large family of viruses that cause illness ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV). [WHO: Coronavirus]
Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is a new strain that was discovered in 2019 and has not been previously identified in humans. [WHO: Coronavirus]
Coronaviruses are zoonotic, meaning they are transmitted between animals and people. Detailed investigations found that SARS-CoV was transmitted from civet cats to humans and MERS-CoV from dromedary camels to humans. Several known coronaviruses are circulating in animals that have not yet infected humans. [WHO: Coronavirus]
Common signs of infection include respiratory symptoms, fever, cough, shortness of breath and breathing difficulties. In more severe cases, infection can cause pneumonia, severe acute respiratory syndrome, kidney failure and even death. [WHO: Coronavirus]
Standard recommendations to prevent infection spread include regular hand washing, covering mouth and nose when coughing and sneezing, thoroughly cooking meat and eggs. Avoid close contact with anyone showing symptoms of respiratory illness such as coughing and sneezing. [WHO: Coronavirus]
How do I care for myself and family?
Everyone should take care of their health and maintain hand and respiratory hygiene to protect themselves and others, including their own families.
Regularly and thoroughly wash your hands with soap and water, and use alcohol-based hand sanitiser. Maintain at least 1.5 metres or 6 feet distance between yourself and anyone who is coughing or sneezing.
Persons with persistent cough or sneezing should stay home or keep a social distance, but not mix in crowd. Make sure you and people around you, follow good respiratory hygiene, meaning cover your mouth and nose with a handkerchief or tissue or into your sleeve or tissue when you cough or sneeze. Then dispose of the used tissue immediately.
Stay home if you feel unwell with symptoms like fever, cough, and difficulty in breathing. Go to the emergency room if your symptoms turn serious. Do not engage in self-medication.
COVID-19 prepartions
Masks and other protective gear [What preppers are stocking up on for COVID-19]
Water and storage [What preppers are stocking up on for COVID-19]
Medical equipment [What preppers are stocking up on for COVID-19]
from Dr. Sarah Boon:
These are the basic, solid graphics that people need to understand what to do and not to do in these times. Basic #scicomm, people!
—Dr. Sarah Boon, Co-founder & BoD @ScienceBorealis, Writer, editor, photographer, Former scientist, as posted on Twitter 12:32 pm, 24 March 2020
Coordinate help for charities.
If you have contact info and items needed by other charities, please let us know through the website contact form.
Contact
Feeding the working poor, elderly, and homeless
The Someone Cares Soup Kitchen, Costa Mesa, CA, has an extreme shortage of paper plates, paper napkins, paper towels, plastic forks and spoons, and toilet paper needed to feed hundreds of working poor, elderly, and homeless every day.
If you are in the Orange County area you can contribute. See their website. Please provide contact info for other charities around the world.
720 West 19th Street, Costa Mesa, CA 92627 USA
[949] 548.8861 Office
shannon@someonecareskitchen.org Executive Director
News and historical timeline
(all times are Pacific unless specified otherwise)
regular timeline
18 March 2020
from K. Sennholz MD:
El Salvador has cancelled all rent, water, phone, internet, electricity bills for three months AND they’re building a hospital IN CASE of a major outbreak. MY third world country did THAT
—K. Sennholz MD, as posted on Twitter 10:08 pm, 18 March 2020
from K. Sennholz MD:
I’M NOT KIDDING HERE:
We need seamstresses who can make masks for doctors.
NO NEW MASKS, running out SOON.
If you or you and a group can get together and make masks, it would be greatly appreciated.
ALL STATES are running out of masks.
—K. Sennholz MD, as posted on Twitter 5:29 pm, 18 March 2020
from SockApocalypse:
Apart from being racist, calling COVID-19 the “Chinese Virus” is just another example of Trump refusing to take responsibility, and blaming others for his own incompetence
—SockApocalypse, as posted on Twitter 5:17 pm, 18 March 2020
from Florian Krammer:
Thread: 1) OK, so I promised to explain the manuscript that we just put on medRxiv
medRxiv: A serological assay to detect SARS-CoV-2 seroconversion in humans
2) First, I wanted to thank our awesome collaborators @VivianaSimonLab at Sinai, @Olli_Vapalahti @hepojoki at University of Helsinki and @kedzierskalab at University of Melbourne. This would not have been possible without them.
3) Now, typically, when we get infected with a virus, we make antibody responses, especially against proteins on the surface of the virus. Often these antibodies can neutralize the virus and protect us from getting infected again.
4) The main target on the surface of most coronviruses is the spike protein, or S. below you see a model of the virus and a visualization of a crystal structure of the spike of SARS-CoV-2 (solved by @veeslerlab - heroes!).
5) Now, in order to detect antibodies, we use an ELISA or enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. For this, an antigen - in this case the spike protein - is coated on a sticky plastic plate (a miniaturized format). Then we let serum from patients react with it and can detect that.
6) So, first, we needed the spike antigen. We don’t want to sue the virus for various reasons. So we make recombinant antigen. We can do that in insect cells or in mammalian cells in cell culture. We made two versions: a soluble version of the full spike trimer.....
7) ...and the receptor binding domain (RBD) which is part of the spike on its own (the red part in #4). Then we run them on a gel to see if they look OK and purified. i=insect, m=mammalian. Here are the recombinant RBD proteins. They turned out very nicely.
8) And here are the full length proteins. We added several stabilizing mutations. nevertheless, we got two bands. One full length version and a degradation product. We don’t know why but think this is not important for assay.
9) So we had the following sera from controls (not exposed to COVID19) and from COVID19 patients.The controls are from different age groups. Also, we had serum from a person with a confirmed NL63 infection. NL63 is a human CoV that causes common cold and uses the same receptor...
10).....as SARS-CoV-2, namely ACE2. We though if we get any crossreacivity to the spike of SARS-CoV-2, then with this sample. So we ran our ELISAs. For this the serum is diluted out and you get these curves. The higher up on the y-axis, the more reactivity. We used all four......
11)....proteins as substrate to compare. Reactivity was a little lower to RBD than the full length spike. But it was clearly possible to distinguish sera from COID19 patients (red) and sera from controls (black), including the NL63 serum (green).
12) We can quantify the area under the curve to make this easier to grasp. Here we saw more background reactivity with the insect cell derived proteins than the mammalian cell derived ones.
13) I won’t go into details about isotypes of mAbs we found in the positives, but that was also pretty interesting.
14) Now, what does this all mean? A) With this assay we can figure out who was infected and who wasn’t. That means we can determine the true infection rate and infection fatality rate. B) We can use the assay to screen for people who seroconverted and are now immune.....
15)...and they can donate their serum and it can maybe used to treat patients. C) We can test health care workers and ask the ones who are already immune to work with infectious patients. In that way the virus is not easily spread to colleagues or other patients. And D) ....
16)...we can now use this assay to better study how our immune response reacts to the virus. And then there are two more take home messages that are important: First, it looks like we are all naive, meaning we have no immunity whatsoever to SARS-CoV-2. That would....
17)....explain why it spreads so quickly. And second, it means we make an immune response to the spike. Antibodies to the RBD domain are often neutralizing, and it is likely (but needs to be confirmed) that once the antibody response sets in, we become protected.
18) Please keep in mind that these conclusions are preliminary and based on small numbers. Larger studies to confirm this are needed and ongoing. We have started to share the reagents globally and hope that this or similar assays can be set up in many places.
19) Finally, I want to thank the student who took the lead on this, Fatima Amanat as well as my whole group of dedicated students, postdocs, techs and assistant professors who dropped all their beloved influenza work to help out with creating tools to fight SARS-CoV-2.
—Florian Krammer, Professor at the Department of Microbiology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, as posted on Twitter 6:35 pm, 18 March 2020
from Bill Wang:
Dr. Krammer, if the patient previously contracted SARS-CoV, could this patient get cross-reaction to SARS-CoV-2 S protein ELISA? btw, I translated your previous tweet and posted on weibo, people are super thankful for you were standing up for them. https://m.weibo.cn/status/4480098616481724?
—Bill Wang, as posted on Twitter 6:40 pm, 18 March 2020
from Florian Krammer:
It is likely that a SARS-CoV positive person would cross-react. But there are only 7200 of them worldwide.
Thanks for translating! Yeah, I am sick of people blaming people. We need to work together to fight this!
—Florian Krammer, Professor at the Department of Microbiology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, as posted on Twitter 6:43 pm, 18 March 2020
from Bernie Sanders:
We will get through this difficult time by looking out for one another and protecting the vulnerable. What is something someone has done to help you, or what have you done to reach out to others?
—Bernie Sanders, as posted on Twitter 1:21 pm, 18 March 2020
from eman:
the fact that Bernie Sanders doesn’t give a single shit about his status in the election and is instead ONLY concerned about the pandemic should tell you everything you need to know about what his presidency would be like.
—eman, as posted on Twitter 1:21 pm, 18 March 2020
from Ryan Knight:
REPORTER: “When are you going to make a decision about your campaign?”
BERNIE: “I’m dealing with a fucking global crisis. Right now I’m trying to do my best to make sure we don’t have an economic meltdown & people don’t die.”
SPICY BERNIE IS THE BEST BERNIE!
—Ryan Knight, as posted on Twitter 11:48 am, 18 March 2020
from Pier Paolo:
the Ro Kahnna and Tim Delaney bill is proposing $6,000 immediately per person
—Pier Paolo, as posted on Twitter 8:37 am, 18 March 2020
from Terrence McNulty:
Based on EITC. One-time pay out. And it’s UP TO $6k. Means tested.
—Terrence McNulty, as posted on Twitter 8:42 am, 18 March 2020
from David Leonhardt:
President Trump is now claiming that he always took coronavirus seriously. In fact, he spent months dismissing it as less serious than the seasonal flu. During this time, he could have taken actions that would have saved lives. He chose not to.
Here are the facts:
On Jan. 22, Trump was asked, “Are there worries about a pandemic at this point?” He replied: “No. Not at all. And we have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”
Trump on Jan. 24: “It will all work out well.”
Trump on Jan. 28 retweeted a headline from an outlet with a history of spreading false conspiracy theories. The headline: “Johnson & Johnson to create coronavirus vaccine.”
Trump on Jan. 30: “We have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment — five. And those people are all recuperating successfully.”
Trump on Feb. 2: “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.”
On Feb. 10, Trump repeatedly said that warm spring weather could kill the virus: “Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.”
Trump on Feb. 19: “I think the numbers are going to get progressively better as we go along.”
On Feb. 23, Trump pronounced the situation “very much under control” and added: “We had 12, at one point. And now they’ve gotten very much better. Many of them are fully recovered.”
On Feb. 26, Trump criticized CNN and MSNBC for “panicking markets.”
On Feb. 28, he falsely blamed “the Democrat policy of open borders” for bringing the virus into the country.
On Feb. 25, Trump tweeted about “Cryin’ Chuck Schumer” and mocked Schumer for arguing that Trump should be more aggressive in fighting the virus.
On Feb. 26, Trump said: “We’re going down, not up. We’re going very substantially down, not up.”
On Feb. 27, Trump predicted: “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.”
On March 2, Trump said: “We’re talking about a much smaller range” of deaths than from the flu.
On March 2, Trump said, about coronavirus: “It’s very mild.”
On March 7, Trump said, “I’m not concerned at all.”
On March 10, Trump promised: “It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.”
—David Leonhardt of the New York Times, as posted on Twitter 1:21 pm, 18 March 2020
from Elizabeth Warren:
The number of coronavirus cases is growing, and we need more resources to care for new patients. Today I’m requesting that Donald Trump deploy the Army Corps of Engineers to retrofit existing facilities to care for patients with coronavirus.
—Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, as posted on Twitter 7:17 am, 18 March 2020
from Tulsi Gabbard:
Good news! I intro'd a bill last week calling on federal govt to immediately begin UBI payments of $1,000+ a month. Now Dems & Republicans, including President Trump & Mnuchin, have all started speaking out in support of this direct cash payment to every American. #EmergencyUBI pic.twitter.com/3ae6wL89XM
— Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) March 18, 2020
—Representative Tulsi Gabbard, D- HI, as posted on Twitter 7:30 am, 18 March 2020
from Jeff Tiedrich:
here’s who Trump has met with in the past few days:
— industry executives
— airline executives
— tourism industry executives
— restaurant executives
— grocery executives
who Trump hasn’t met with:
— ordinary people just struggling to pay their bills and stay alive
—Jeff Tiedrich, as posted on Twitter 7:17 am, 18 March 2020
from StanceGrounded:
Some of these healthcare workers are sleeping away from their families. & It’s going to be that way for them for months. For the greater good. Imagine that sacrifice. Have some empathy.
STAY HOME
—StanceGrounded, as posted on Twitter 6:21 am, 18 March 2020
from StanceGrounded:
My heart can't
— StanceGrounded (@_SJPeace_) March 18, 2020
"We also have family but we can't stay home...Be responsible and STAY HOME because I can't"
...."HELP US"
Healthcare workers are literally risking it all to save us. Realize that.
They are humans not robots. Over worked, under staffed.
STAY HOME! pic.twitter.com/M3iO2gRcl2
—StanceGrounded, as posted on Twitter 5:23 am, 18 March 2020
from Donald Trump:
I always treated the Chinese Virus very seriously, and have done a very good job from the beginning, including my very early decision to close the “borders” from China - against the wishes of almost all. Many lives were saved. The Fake News new narrative is disgraceful & false!
—President Donald Trump, as posted on Twitter 4:46 am, 18 March 2020
from Maggie Haberman:
Moments after we discussed his false claim that he had always considered this a pandemic on CNN comes this tweet.
—Maggie Haberman, as posted on Twitter 4:50 am, 18 March 2020
from Aaron Rupar:
Reminder: Trump fired the government’s pandemic response team in 2018 and his government hasn’t been able to test enough people for coronavirus
—Aaron Rupar, as posted on Twitter 5:14 am, 18 March 2020
from Bishop Talbert Swan:
7 1/2 weeks ago, nearly 2 months ago, we lost #KobeBryant and— “Drug makers are hustling to make a vaccine to counter the rapidly spreading respiratory virus that has sick and at least 1975 people in China and five in the United States.”
46-1 was golfing and tweeting gibberish.
—Bishop Talbert Swan, as posted on Twitter 7:34 am, 18 March 2020
from David Sinclair, PhD AO:
This common graph of the global patient explosion is deceptive. The Y-axis is logarithmic. It should be as high as the roof. They are great for math but human eyes (including those of our leaders) don’t comprehend logarithmic graphs.
Bloomberg Politics
—David Sinclair, PhD AO, as posted on Twitter 3:47 am, 18 March 2020
Portugal declares emergency
Portugal declared 15-day state of emergency to combat coronavirus. The number of cases in the country neared 650.
—Pharmaceutical-Technology.com, 18 March 2020
Italy reports 475 more deaths
The death toll in Italy increased by 475 to 2,978, a surge of 19%.
The total number of cases jumped by 31,506 to to 35,713, up 13.35%, said the Civil Protection Agency.
—Pharmaceutical-Technology.com, 18 March 2020
Swiss cases cross 3,000
The number of cases in Switzerland has jumped to 3,028, including 21 deaths.
—Pharmaceutical-Technology.com, 18 March 2020
France reports 89 new deaths; total 264
France confirmed 89 new deaths in the past 24 hours, taking the death toll to 264. The number of cases in the nation reached 9,134.
—Pharmaceutical-Technology.com, 18 March 2020
Cases in Singapore reach 313
Singapore’s health ministry reported 47 new infections to total 313.
Starting Friday, the country will impose self-quarantine measures for 14 days on everyone entering, as well as citizens and residents.
—Pharmaceutical-Technology.com, 18 March 2020
Second death in Turkey
Turkey confirmed its second death in a 61-year-old male. The first fatality occurred on Tuesday.
With 93 new cases, the nation’s total increased to 191.
—Pharmaceutical-Technology.com, 18 March 2020
Cases in Spain reach 13,716
Spain health emergency center head Fernando Simon said that the country’s total cases surged to 13,716, including 558 deaths.
—Pharmaceutical-Technology.com, 18 March 2020
Iran’s death toll rises to 1,135
With 147 new fatalities, Iran’s death toll jumped to 1,135.
The total infections in the nation had reached 17,361, with 1,192 new cases in the last 24 hours.
—Pharmaceutical-Technology.com, 18 march 2020
Austria announces €38 billion aid package
Austria Chancellor Sebastian Kurz announced up to €38 billion aid to secure jobs and ensure coronavirus affected companies remain liquid.
The country is also offering €9 billion in guarantees and warranties, €15 billion in emergency aid, and €10 billion in tax deferrals.
—Pharmaceutical-Technology.com, 18 March 2020
Malta and Malaysia close borders
Malta will stop all incoming passenger flights from Saturday to prevent spread. The country has 38 cases, of which 32 contracted the infection abroad.
Malaysia closed its borders with Singapore, starting 14-day partial lockdown as the number of infections in the country reached 673.
—Pharmaceutical-Technology.com, 18 March 2020
Study says initial infections on Diamond Princess came from food worker
In a study published by the CDC, it was found that the initial cases of the COVID-19 on the cruise ship came from food workers.
It stated that of the 20 confirmed cases of crew members, 15 were from food service members.
—Centers for Disease Control (CDC), 18 March 2020
Kyrgyzstan, Djibouti, Zambia register first cases
Kyrgyzstan recorded its first cases in three citizens who returned from Saudi Arabia.
Djibouti confirmed its first case as a Spanish national who was part of a 32-member Spanish special forces unit that came to the country on 14 March.
Zambia’s health ministry confirmed its first two COVID-19 cases today.
—Pharmaceutical-Technology.com, 18 March 2020
Moldova confirms first death
Moldova confirmed its first death today, while the cases in the country increased to 30.
The nation declared a state of emergency on Tuesday.
—Pharmaceutical-Technology.com, 18 March 2020
Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia report new cases
The Philippines’ health ministry reported 15 additional cases to total 202.
Indonesia recorded 55 new cases, taking the total to 227, including 19 deaths and 11 recoveries.
With 117 new cases, Malaysia registered 17% rise in infections to total 790.
—Pharmaceutical-Technology.com, 18 March 2020
South Korea reports 93 new cases
The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 93 new cases to total 8,413. This is the fourth consecutive report of fewer than 100 new cases.
—Pharmaceutical-Technology.com, 18 March 2020
Cases in India reach 149
The number of cases in India reached 149, including one new case each in Pondicherry and Pune, Maharashtra.
—Pharmaceutical-Technology.com, 18 March 2020
First death, new cases in Pakistan
With new cases reported on Monday and Tuesday, the number of cases in Pakistan reached 236.
The country also confirmed the first death of a suspected coronavirus patient in Lahore, Punjab. The patient is reported to have recently arrived from Iran.
Prime Minister Imran Khan said that Pakistan cannot currently afford the economic cost of closing down its cities.
—Pharmaceutical-Technology.com, 18 March 2020
WHO calls for “aggressive” action in Southeast Asia
The WHO has asked Southeast Asian countries to implement “aggressive” action to control the spread of the virus.
WHO regional director Poonam Khetrapal Singh said: “More clusters of virus transmission are being confirmed. While this is an indication of an alert and effective surveillance, it also puts the spotlight on the need for more aggressive and whole of society efforts to prevent further spread of COVID-19.”
—Pharmaceutical-Technology.com, 18 March 2020
New Zealand reports new imported cases
New Zealand has confirmed eight new cases, all in people who had recent international trips, said the health ministry.
The total number of cases in the country reached 20.
—Pharmaceutical-Technology.com, 18 March 2020
Death toll increases to 7,900
The death toll due to COVID-19 has increased to 7,900 as of the end of 17 March.
The total cases cross 198,000 while the recoveries stand at 81,000.
—Pharmaceutical-Technology.com, 18 March 2020
Study finds novel coronavirus can remain stable for days
A study led by the US National Institutes of Health found that the novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19 can be viable in air for several hours and on surfaces for days.
The team, which included researchers from CDC, UCLA, and Princeton University, revealed that SARS-CoV-2 remained stable in aerosols for up to three hours.
On copper, the virus could be detected for up to four hours, up to 24 hours on cardboard, and up to two to three days on plastic and stainless steel.
—Pharmaceutical-Technology.com, 18 March 2020
Cellenkos to trial cell therapy for CoV-ARDS
Cellenkos has filed a proposal with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to conduct a Phase I / II clinical trial of CK0802 to treat Covid-19 mediated acute respiratory distress syndrome (CoV-ARDS).
—Pharmaceutical-Technology.com, 18 March 2020
Moleculin, UTMB partner to study WP1122 for coronavirus
Moleculin Biotech has partnered with the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) to test its molecular inhibitors, including WP1122, to treat different viruses, including coronavirus.
—Pharmaceutical-Technology.com, 18 March 2020
Covid-19: MannKind, Pneumagen conduct research
MannKind has shifted the research and development resources allotted for its serious lung diseases pipeline to help fight respiratory viral infections, including Covid-19.
—Pharmaceutical-Technology.com, 18 March 2020
SignPath, Relief explore drugs for Covid-19-related ARDS
SignPath Pharma has started efforts to develop Lipocurc, an intravenous liposomal curcumin formulation, to treat acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) caused by Covid-19.
—Pharmaceutical-Technology.com, 18 March 2020
Regeneron identifies several antibodies against Covid-19
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals has announced the identification of hundreds of fully human antibodies against Covid-19, which is caused by the novel coronavirus.
—Pharmaceutical-Technology.com, 18 March 2020
Chinese official says Fujifilm’s Favipiravir could treat Covid-19
China’s Science and Technology Ministry official Zhang Xinmin has said that Japan-based Fujifilm’s anti-flu drug Favipiravir helped Covid-19 patients recover.
—Pharmaceutical-Technology.com, 18 March 2020
