California State University's Closed for the Fall →

The 23-campus California State University system plans to all but cancel in-person classes in the fall and instead will offer instruction primarily online, Chancellor Timothy White announced Tuesday.

The vast majority of classes across the Cal State system will be taught online, White said, with some limited exceptions that allow for in-person activity. The decision comes as schools throughout the country grapple with how long to keep campuses closed amid the coronavirus crisis.

We are in for a new normal. And with Los Angeles announcing a shelter-in-place order until the end of summer, it’s going to be a very different West Coast experience or lack-thereof. At least the beaches are open?

California Seeing an Uptick in COVID-19 Cases as Mobility Increases

Hopefully everyone continues to keep their distance as we start mobilizing a bit more. I know I’m getting antsy. In today's news (Monday, May 11, 2020), California is looking worse than expected and one family gathering at Easter has resulted in a cluster of 5 cases including an individual who was coughing and joking about possibly having it. Do everyone a favor and protect yourself. Wear a mask not only for yourself but for others as well. We should know this already! Thanks to contract tracing, it hopefully has been isolated.

Researchers are now predicting that California could see more than 6,000 COVID-19 deaths by the end of August, up about 1,420 from projections they released last Monday. It’s the fifth-largest increase in projected death tolls among U.S. states, after Pennsylvania, Illinois, Arizona and Florida.

The upward revisions “are a result of a combination of updated daily death and case data, recent actions to ease previously implemented social distancing measures and steadily rising levels of mobility in many places,” the researchers said in notes released with the data.

Eating Healthy During This Shelter in Place →

Sometimes lists aren’t in perfect tens but Julia Belluz from Vox summed up how to “eat healthily.” I found this article particularly helpful during this shelter in place but I’ll let you be the judge.

1. Keep your pantry stocked

2. Consider the nutritional bang for your buck

3. Meat should be a rare treat — and when you buy it, look for tough cuts

4. Buy in bulk

5. Cook in bulk

6. Don't shy away from frozen fruits and vegetables

7. Never buy salad dressing

8. Make coffee or tea at home

9. Season your food so that it actually tastes good

10. Replace soda and juice with water

11. Don't be scared of expiration dates or food that looks less than perfect

For those that prefer video, check out down below. I’ll say that I agree with the meat being a rare treat but if it is, I’m not in favor of the tough cuts and rather treat myself to some Prime Grade. And to dive even further into it, I’m not necessarily into cooking in bulk either since I tend to get tired of similar flavors over and over again but the rest, I’m all in! Oh, and don’t forget to add in a workout here and there. At least 3-4 times a week should help out those endorphins!

How Many Days is Enough? →

The 14-day quarantine period put forward by WHO and the CDC was based on smaller studies of sicker hospitalized patients. But an estimated 80% of adult COVID-19 patients are not sick enough to be hospitalized, and people can be infectious with the new coronavirus well before they develop symptoms. The new study found that the median incubation period was seven days for adults and nine days for children, far longer than the mean of 5.2 days from an earlier study out of Wuhan.

So hopefully, 8 days is enough for me? But…

For that study, researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and two other universities analyzed 181 cases of COVID-19 in 25 countries, from early January to late February. They found that 97.5% of people who developed symptoms did so within 11.5 days of exposure.

However, the researchers extrapolated that for every 10,000 exposed individuals, 101 would develop symptoms after a 14-day quarantine. Reuters reported on one such case in late February, that of a 70-year-old man in China’s Hubei Province who did not show symptoms until 27 days after he was infected.

Maybe 11.5 days is better? I haven’t been around any known cases that I know of but like I mentioned, I did traverse quite a few areas while being out on Captain training and the journey back to where I am today.

Collaboration is Key →

In interviews with a dozen of the world’s leading experts on fighting epidemics, there was wide agreement on the steps that must be taken immediately.

Those experts included international public health officials who have fought AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, flu and Ebola; scientists and epidemiologists; and former health officials who led major American global health programs in both Republican and Democratic administrations.

Americans must be persuaded to stay home, they said, and a system put in place to isolate the infected and care for them outside the home. Travel restrictions should be extended, they said; productions of masks and ventilators must be accelerated, and testing problems must be resolved.

For some reason, Americans are still being complacent, denialist and love ignoring the specialists. We need to work together and nip this NOW! Besides it being already a bit late, it is ever too lat to save yourself and friends.