The hospital nearest my home has its first covid patient.

[NNadir]

Patient #4 in New Jersey apparently lives nearby.

Stuff happens. There are, of course tens of thousands of people in my area who don't have the virus. So that's good.

Sometimes my posts are bad for people, but the nice thing about the internet is that viruses transmitted by it generally just cause your computer, but not your life to crash.

So that's good. If I should be exposed to it, my friends here will not find me contagious, not that I've ever been all that contagious.

[5X]

1. Maybe you could infect a few with your tendency to study. n/t

[htuttle]

2. I just found out from someone in town that there are 9 confirmed cases at UW Hospital in Madison

And 70 under observation. CDC says only 1 in the whole state.

I paid close attention to this, since I work as a software developer on the same campus where UW Hospital is located.

I think you underestimate your impact here. I used to think I was pretty smart until I started reading your posts.

[NNadir]

7. The rumor here - it's just a rumor - is that our local case was involved with Princeton University.

The patient is not at Princeton/UPenn hospital though. A lot of Princeton people live in my neighborhood though, and I'm usually at the university several times a week.

As for being smart...I used to think I was pretty smart until I started reading the stuff about which I write here.

I tell my son, who is way smarter than I ever was that if he's around someone who knows more than he does, that's a person around whom he should want to remain.

I'm not really all that smart; I just read a lot and have lived more time than perhaps I deserved and have had the opportunity to work around some pretty novel things.

Thank you though for your kind words.

[defacto7]

3. I have it from the greatest scientific minds the best method of covid prevention,

Wash your hands with soap while singing Happy Birthday. I have no idea what music has to do with it.

Stay well friend. Quarantine doesn’t sound like much fun. I don't know what we'd do for that couple of weeks without your insight.

[panader0]

4. If you sing it twice at a normal pace,

it takes 20 seconds, the recommended time to wash.

[defacto7]

5. Oh, and I thouht it was the musical overtones

that affected the virus membrane or something.

[NNadir]

6. I understand that the coronavirus depends on a lipid layer. Good old soap is pretty effective...

...I've heard.

I was in an out of town library most of the day; it was empty, but I did wash frequently, and I advise everyone to do that. I saw it in the news as I was leaving.

I did not, however, read papers on virology today, but rather was focused on some very beautiful stuff about mass spectrometric determination of glycans, and some silicon chemistry that I probably should have read a very long time ago.

Having someone in my town hospitalized with corona virus though, does make me take it all a little more seriously. I'll probably take a more serious look at virology later in the week. Although I was involved in AIDS drugs many years ago, I'm sure a lot has changed since I was last involved with real viruses rather than viral vectors.

Thanks for your kind words.