Archived Facebook Coronavirus Posts: March 13th

[I'm transitioning a bunch of Facebook posts I made on the Coronavirus to my blog.  This was from March 13th]

Some new information (to me) on COVID-19 coming out of the UK that has some specific implications for self-isolation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYTFk34nhoI

Key new information:

* Infectiousness of the disease starts before any symptoms show, but peaks around the time symptoms first show up. Then once symptoms begin, infectiousness goes way down after around 7 days.

* The most characteristic elements of COVID-19 are still a fever and/or a *dry* cough. The fever, however, is often not high--the UK criteria is only 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

* It is now confirmed that children do get the infection and spread it; it's just that they very frequently get an extremely mild form of the disease. While this is good news in the sense that most children are safer than everyone else, it does kind of make children our "plague rats" in this outbreak.

So, what are the self-isolation implications of these facts?

1. We need to have a high level of suspicion and self-quarantine *right away* as soon as even mild symptoms show up.

2. We especially need to pay attention to *dry* coughs and/or any level of fever.

3. We should probably quarantine our children if they are sick *at all*. Note that the UK is not recommending shutting down schools, though.

4. Seven days of self-quarantine should be enough unless you continue to get sicker.