Nurse Claire's Advice Against The Corona Virus

      Last Friday during my flight from Columbus to Chicago (see post from 2/22/2020) I sat next to a friendly guy about my age wearing a paper surgical mask. The man assured me that he wasn't sick (though I hadn't asked him if he was) but that he didn't want to get sick. Thus the mask.
       My seat mate was, of course, referring to the coronavirus - also called COVID-19 - which, we are told by health officials, is on the verge of invading the United States massively, the 60 cases so far diagnosed here being only the vanguard of the coming epidemic.
      As my seat mate was obviously worried about catching the coronavirus, I decided to share with him the advice passed on to me by my daughter Claire, an Intensive Care Unit Nurse,

...who has also worked around the globe as a disaster response nurse during health care crises,

...including the Ebola epidemic in Africa,

...on the best defensive actions against contracting the coronavirus. I will now share with you the advice I shared with my flight mate.

   Nurse Claire's Advice On The Best Defenses Against The Coronavirus

                                                       1. Wash your hands.

        Wash them often. Wash them really well, getting the soap between your fingers and up under your rings. Be obsessive about washing your hands.

                                               2. Avoid touching your face.

     Your fingers touch all kinds of germy things including, potentially, something that's been schmeered with the coronavirus. If you touch your face the germs can then shimmy from your fingers onto your face then into to your mouth, eyes and nose, the expressways to your bloodstream, which is the expressway to everything else going on under your skin.

                                                              
                                                  3. GET YOUR FLU SHOT !!!

       Seriously. get it. Not because this year's flu shot will vaccinate you against COVID-19, but because it will protect you from getting the flu, which is already hitting the United States and the rest of the world in epidemic numbers. Here's the CDC stats on the flu in the U.S. alone:

     And here's what's so stupid about this: WE HAVE A VACCINE FOR THE FLU BUT ONLY 40% OF AMERICANS GET IT! Meanwhile everybody's fretting about the coronavirus. So far it's been confirmed that COVID-19 has infected 81,000 people and killed 2,764 world-wide.
      My daughter says her hospital is packed with flu cases. So what happens when the coronavirus hits and masses of people need to be hospitalized on top of all the flu cases?
        Get your danged flu shot!
      
                                                4. Wear A Mask    

         According to Nurse Claire, a surgical mask will lessen the spread of  the disease among the population. So be a good, responsible citizen,

...and wear your mask!  And wash your hands and get your flu shot! (And don't touch your face!)

References:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/25/health/coronavirus-us-american-cases/index.html

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/26/coronavirus-latest-updates.html

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/03/the-flu-has-already-killed-10000-across-us-as-world-frets-over-coronavirus.html