Covid diagnostic alert

This is not a travel-related post. I have notified the webmaster. Please read:

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/general-europe/refocusing-this-forum

This is for the benefit of the general readership , however , glad to see that you are doing your righteous duty .

Still a good read. Why be so picky? I actually think it is very travel related since it has such huge impact on travel both present and future.

Steven, you are a good man. But you know this is exactly what the Webmaster asked us to avoid. But it was a good read. Feel free to PM me anything like this you come across. Hope you and yours are well.

Thank you Steven: This was an excellent article and one that informs all people including travelers, why the Coronavirus is keeping us from seeing others, working and for the benefit of this forum, why it's keeping us from traveling. So many have been asking, when can we travel again. Maybe this article will help people understand the coronavirus and understand why they cannot travel this year.

We as travelers need to keep informed about what is happening and why and the more knowledge we have, the better we are able to deal with what is happening and to keep us safe. This will make us better travelers in the future.

We as travelers need to understand that this is happening all around the world and understand why other countries are not ready for travelers yet.

Thanks Steve for sharing this vital information to all us travelers on this forum! We need to stay informed if we are going to battle and beat this virus!

Thanks Ann for your comments, agree with it .Thanks Steven for the excellent info.

Hey, whatever, folks. The webmaster posted this. Clearly, none of you have read it.

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/general-europe/refocusing-this-forum

Thank you Steven. Good article. Dealt with factual aspects of the disease process via a first hand experience; the author has first person travel experience, traveling through a New York hospital with the disease

Paul- you should really try reading the Webmaster’s post yourself. It acknowledges there will be and can be discussions of Covid, within reason. Furthermore, NO ONE at RS appointed you to the position of Jr, Grand Pooh-bah of the forum.

Furthermore, Forum Rules clearly state if you find an objectionable post you are to Report the Post but you are NOT to comment on the post. Just report it and move on. You have clearly and quite deliberately violated that rule thus leaving me no option but to report your intentional misconduct to the Sr, Grand Pooh-bah.

Edit: spelling corrected.

My only quibble with onefastbob's prior post is the spelling of pooh-bah

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pooh-bah

Although the subject of this post is not travel related, the fact that low blood oxygen could be an early warning of COVID infection could be life saving information, and I am personally glad that Steven shared it with us.

Thank you Joe! Spelling correction made.

Thanks Steve. My daughter’s in laws had a device to check their oxygen levels, as soon as it started going low they went to the hospital. They both had pneumonia but only needed oxygen and some meds, no respirator. They are both home now. I believe this is what saved their lives.

Webmaster,

This is a great "test post" on the new guidelines.

I join those who are very, very pleased to have this potentially life-saving information, but agree that the original post does seem to fall outside the guidelines in the "Refocusing" thread.

If it is indeed deemed to be outside the guidelines, I think a clarification post on this thread would be more helpful than just deleting it.

I will also add my thanks to Steve for sharing this link/information.

I read the article as well and agree it was very useful.

FWIW, the author of the article, Richard Levitan, is a famous ER doc who is a pioneer in airway studies. My Dh is an ER doc. He says that in emergency medicine Rich Levitan is very revered and very famous “he’s like the Michael Jordan of EM”. We have a pulse oximeter in our house that I think we got at Walgreens back when. We view this as another tool in the toolbox of self monitoring. Dh is high-exposure, thus our family is. He checks his O2 regularly.
Travel related: a pulse ox is the size of a clothespin. Easy to pack and could add a layer of self-monitoring if/when one decides to increase their and others exposure

Interesting article. Maybe a pulse oximeter will be the next essential travel accessory.

Thanks for sharing.
Stay healthy.

Great article. It helps explain why so many people go from mild symptoms to suddenly critical or even dying. Thanks, Steven.

Hey everyone, we're not trying to be heartless and this information sounds helpful. If it were normal times, we could have a lighter hand in allowing a one-off shared article here and there. These aren't normal times and our forum as a whole has strayed too far from its intended purpose. It's not any one person's fault and I don't fault Steven for sharing this.

However, this is the last time that we're going to keep something like this up in the forum -- and not because we accept the content. We are purely keeping this up to make an example out of this. Allowing this completely undermines our efforts to refocus this forum. This is not a virus forum. This is not a health forum. This is a travel forum.

We will delete threads like this in the future. Make it directly about travel.