Sense of Foreboding

(Image from UC-Berkeley)

During the summer of 1989 the Bay Area experienced a swarm of small earthquakes that caused little damage. On October 17th the 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake struck and, according to Wikipedia, resulted in 63 deaths, 3,757 injuries, and about $6 billion of damage.

Although I've experienced many earthquakes in my 50 years living here, the 1989 experience has taught me to stop what I'm doing after a jolt to see if there's a bigger one coming. Fortunately that didn't happen after a series of shocks along the Hayward fault on Thursday.

It's been 158 years since the Hayward fault's last major temblor, a 6.8, and it's perhaps more "overdue" than the San Andreas fault that produced the great 1906 and 1989 quakes.

The Bay Area has escaped the natural disasters that have occurred in other parts of the State, but I am feeling a sense of foreboding based on nothing more than wondering how long both major faults will continue to be quiet. May we keep our go bags ready and our gas tanks full.

Hang On, Help is Coming

The WSJ updates the status of clinical trials: [bold added]

Some patients have recovered after receiving Gilead Sciences ’ experimental antiviral treatment remdesivir, though there isn’t yet enough clinical data to understand if the drug is truly safe and effective and, if so, for what specific disease stages or populations. That could soon change: A series of clinical trials that began in early February will start to generate results in March and April...

Elsewhere, drugmakers Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Sanofi SA are studying whether their jointly-owned drug Kevzara helps prevent overactive lung inflammation in severe Covid-19 patients receiving the drug last week in New York....

Hospitals also have begun to include the old malaria drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine in treatment protocols [blogger's note: favorable results have been reported when these drugs are used with azithromycin]. Those drugs, which aren’t approved by regulators to treat the virus but have generated promising but inconclusive results in small, open label studies, can be administered by doctors on an off-label basis. Several large drug manufacturers have vowed to donate large quantities of the drug or crank up production.

The odds are high that at least one of these treatments will prove effective in reducing deaths from COVID-19.

Meanwhile, testing is ramping up, and the stumbling block of requiring a doctor's order for a test may well disappear in the next few weeks. It already has in Hayward, just 10 miles east of us over the bridge.

On the inventory side Factory America is producing more ventilators and masks, with higher production rates to follow. Supply of essential matériel has been woefully lacking for two months, but that will change soon as long as most of us remain uninfected or at least asymptomatic. Dawn hasn't broken, but there's a faint glow on the horizon.

(Yosemite image from KVDDesign)